When I first started, I was rated 800. For a while I hovered about there, and for a point in time I fell down into the 700s. I have maybe about 1500 games under my belt now with a few openings that I'm decent with for each side. As of today, my elo is at an all-time high of 1220. I have so much left to learn, and so much left to practice as we all do.
I saw that post the other day where someone came in incredibly discouraged and frustrated because they felt like they couldn't beat their friends who didn't study at all. If you enjoy chess, and you want to actively get better, that's all you have to do: keep playing to get better, and please don't stop having fun. If I can get better at the game, I know you can, too.
Some things that really worked well for me:

1. Study openings. That's the first thing players who understand the basics of the game should do. If you don't know what to study for black because you're responding to white, there are some strong universal options that should work in many cases against the most popular white openings. You can also pick two to get decent with, and then stick to one for white until you get bored and want to play with another set. (Though I will say I always open with The Italian or some other variation, and I'm still not bored because there are so many ways a game can go when you're in lower elo.)
2. Puzzles! Puzzles have elevated my game like crazy. Seriously. And you only need 15 minutes a day doing them. Once you find that you're just getting repeatedly stumped, it means your brain is fatigued and you can't hold anymore new patterns. The whole objective behind puzzles is to intuit patterns. There are so many re-occurring patterns in chess, and once you can recognize them off the bat, they will seriously elevate your gameplay. I cannot tell you how many games I have won because of a single multi-exchange I recognized the pattern of, but could tell my opponent did not. If sacrificing material for an advantage, or even a win, in game is something you've always enjoyed the thought of, puzzles will unequivocally get you there.
3. Don't worry about theory yet. Seriously, the first two points here are so much more important than chess theory that most people below 1100 haven't even googled. I'm just now at the point where theory is coming into play, I can feel the pace of the game has significantly changed because of it. When you're in low elo, you're gonna be playing chess with big irrational moves and low levels of forethought. Theory is time-consuming, and you're going to really take advantage of these big moves with solid foundations you've developed in your openings, and pattern recognition than you will through understanding that "the middle game is supposed to be for grinding out edges against your opponents" (this is reductive, but the point stands).

If there's anything else I'm missing here, I welcome the veterans and stronger players to chime in. But don't get discouraged, seriously. If I can climb, then unequivocally, so can you. There are so many brilliant resources out there to elevate your game. Keep learning. Keep having fun.

So I had an evaluation for autism done and I feel like the lady who was doing the testing is just trying to just disregard me completely. I have been diagnosed woth ADHD and I also have PTSD thanks to childhood trauma so she already had some predetermined thoughts I think. Not to mention I'm a trans man, so I dunno maybe she didn't think to look at my childhood experience being as a female kid and ya know raised to be female.
But I got the results and it was like this 29 page thing where she basically outlines that I'm too smart to be autistic. That I have magical thinking but my iq is to high for an autistic person. Then there was this very long survey I filled out that basically was about my social skills and struggles which I scored very very high on which absolutely suggested autism but she just put down "their over estimating their symptoms or are just way to negative about themselves."
My friend did the collateral survey and read the report with me. The evaluator put down that my friend said that no I don't struggle and I can handle social situations but that's not true. I was in the other room when they talked on the phone, I could hear my friend arguing with them trying to say "yeah no, they have a hard time interacting with people I mean if they're really forced to they can get through it but it's really hard" and she was basically pressured to give as low of scores as possible. If she wanted to say 3 the doctor would just go "well what if they had to? Then it'd be a 2 not a 3"
She claimed that I could read her facial expressions despite me literally not looking at her the entire 4 hours I was there. I stared at a corner of the table the whole time messing with my hand or the pop socket on my phone the entire time, I barely remember what she looked like because I just really really hate eye contact. She also said I didn't display hand fidgeting despite me actually tearing a part of my thumb from trying to stim while we talked. She did absolutely no test on reading expressions.
I had told her a bunch about my childhood, like how according to my mom I never looked at peoples faces let alone made eye contact. Even as an infant I wanted nothing to do with anyone who wasn't my mom. I wouldn't look at them, react anything just hide. She also was told about how in school my mom had to pick me up all the time because I'd just get severely overwhelmed by sensory stuff and no one could understand why. She also had to pick me up from my aunts all the time to because I "would do these behaviors and breakdowns" that'd they'd never seen before. And just a bunch of other stuff.
However the doctor never talked to my mom. She called once when my mom was at work and couldn't answer. My mom tried to call back and it went to a fax machine and the doctor never reached out again. But in the report she claims she did talk to my mom and my mom claimed that everything I said wasn't as severe as I Stated even though I was reading from notes I wrote up when I asked my mom about that stuff.
The doctor then proceeded to claim I was just looking for illnesses basically but then proceeded to throw things out like I might have schizophrenia or border line personality disorder, while also saying that my ptsd wasn't real because i didnt "almost die". Then she also tried to drill those diagnoses into my therapist who argued that neither of those was even remotely true. Not to mention this doctor also stated that my hyper focus on special interests werent real. Even though the only true conversation we had was about dogs, which is my main interest. The report concluded that my struggles were just my anxiety, adhd and non ptsd related trauma. And through out the entire report she constantly said "don't take the patients answers seriously as they could be making it up" about everything that actually pointed to autism.
It sucks... this was the first time I was legit honest with a new doctor about what I experience and they just told me I'm lying. Like it took me 2 years to tell my therapist I think I might be autistic and open up to all the stuff I struggle with about it. I'm on meds for my adhd and it helps a little But there's this huge amount of struggles especially socially and sensory wise that just continue to be severe which is why I suspected autism might be a thing for me. My mom and friend both believe im autistic. My therapist believes I'm autistic too and also thinks that the evaluator is just one of those by the book people and probably didn't take into account me being raised female as a factor. She was also extremely mad to hear this doctor tried to say I didn't have ptsd.
I feel like this doctor just wanted to throw me to the side and move on. My therapist has been helping me figure out how to get on disability due to the severity of my ptsd, and recommended the autism test because if it was diagnosed it'd help my case. And despite this new doctor saying she doesnt think im autistic, she backed us on me needing to be on disability because my symptoms are still severe. But like I didn't do this for disability, it's what got me to finally do the test but wasn't why I wanted the diagnose. I just wanted to know what's wrong with me..
I feel really defeated... it was really hard to be upfront and honest. This lady would just drill me if she thought I was lying and I would just kinda shut down and try to get the appointments done as quick as possible. I've gotten really good at masking because of the abuse I went through, I'd get yelled at for not just being quiet and behaved. So maybe I screwed myself over and masked even when I really tried not to. I still feel like I'm autistic, just too much stuff makes sense but is it even okay for me to say that? Can I still be autistic even though this one doctor says I'm not?
Everyone around me still thinks I am. Even my therapist said that in like 5 years when the criteria finally gets rewritten I'll probably be diagnosed then. But im afraid it'd be wrong for me to say i am after all this. I don't want people to think I'm claiming this for attention...
.

Hi all, pretty new to the fragrance world so I don’t immediately recognize these. They’re pretty cheesy I know lol. Could anyone tell me what fragrances they are dupes of?

1. https://www.fivebelow.com/products/twinkling-night-eau-de-parfum-34oz
   
2. https://www.fivebelow.com/products/nyc-blossom-eau-de-parfum-34oz
   
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6. https://www.fivebelow.com/products/mysterious-moonlight-eau-de-parfum-34oz
   
7. https://www.fivebelow.com/products/kimberly-nude-trinity-eau-de-parfum-34oz
   
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Thanks everyone 🤍

Hello, I'm gonna dump everything here! The judge ordered me to pay my ex $20,000. The house is in her name, and she is to deed the house to me once I pay her.
​
House Purchase Price - $145,000 (will appraise for 151-160k) Amount on Loan - $123,000 Right now it is a VA loan at 3.125%, but will take the underwriters 90 days to 'manually' underwrite the deed transfer. Much longer than the court order. I can get a new VA loan in my name-- new rate will be 6%.
Cash in the bank- $10,000
I make $5,000 / month starting this month, since I picked up a second job.
I have a friend who is able to spot me the $20,000. - I already owe him $8,000.
What should I do? Cash out Re-fi the full 20k and pay my buddy back, or just $10,000 to pay my ex off? Neither me nor my friend want me to walk around with a $28,000 IOU.

I have sickle cell anemia, I was diagnosed as a child and well it's not an easy thing to manage. Needless to say visiting the E.R. makes me absolutely terrified. It's either they don't believe you, or think you're a junky trying to get high on pain meds or that you're lying about the amount of narcotics your doctor administers for break
Years ago, I had an older physician Dr. B, who was part of a cancer practice group. He was amazing, the best part was he actually listened to me. It honestly felt like a partnership. I saw him for close to 10 years, and because it was a cancer treatment facility, when I got flare ups, I went in and was prescribed/administered IV pain meds and fluids. As Dr. B was older, he finally decided to retire in order to spend more time with his family. When he did retire he referred me to a new doctor who joined the practice. Dr. S.
Right off the bat, on our first meeting she was immediately combative, she went on a diatribe about my pain meds and how she's strict about them. She immediately made me sign a pain management contract and stated if I ever broke the contract I was out.
The first time I had my crisis, and came to the infusion center, she cut my prescription from 6mg to 4. Not a big deal, but now most times I have to go in 2-3 days to get my pain under control rather than the 1 day before.
Then we had a discussion about a drug Hydra. I mentioned that Dr. B had me on it, it caused me to get sick more frequently and eventually caused me to almost die in the ICU. I was going into sepsis from toxicity from that particular medication.
She didn't care, wanted me on it. I tried to argue my case but she never listened. So, I decided I just won't pick up the prescription from the pharmacy. Eventually she found out I wasn't taken the meds (blood tests), I reluctantly agreed to start taking them.
Well my previous experience is repeating itself, I'm having more frequent crisis, almost every other week. The last time I went into the infusion center for pain management, the drugs were cut again, this time from 4mg to 2. I talked 4mg Dilaudid orally, which as I understand it, the bioavailability comes down to 2. So wondering why she'did prescribe 2mg when I've done 2mg every 3 hours at home didn't help. Anyway, talked to the administering Nurse and was told "well you'll get a second dose later so it's the same thing". This came from Dr. S.
With my crisis getting more frequent and having this, I pretty much stopped going to the infusion center. It's all the inconvenience of getting there, getting a ride to come back, without actually relieving my pain, seems like I'm just as well taking the same dose at home.
This brings us to today, she had me stop the hydrea to try a new medication, an infusion of crizanlizumab.
This triggered a bad flare up, my pain was at a 9 in my joints and back, my face was flush. My bp which is normally 110/60 jumped to 155/70. The nurses gave me benedryl, and steroids to mitigate the reaction.
The doctor refused to prescribe pain meds. The nurses asked her a number of times, finally she said I could have Toradal. Anyway, I wasn't looking/feeling better and both nurses decide to contact the doctor again requesting pain meds.
When the nurse came back, she whispered to the other nurse that she asked the doctor whose response was "I don't believe him". It's one thing to go through crap like that from ER doctors who don't know my history, but from the doctor that's been treating me for over 5 years?
I know this is an unusual situation/question for this sub, but at this point I'm at a loss for what to do. So, doctors in the sub, what do you recommend?

Hello all, I'm a Hunter main who's very big on Buildcrafting. I'd like to give feedback over every Hunter exotic with a PvE lens, positive and negative.
I will offer no solutions or potential fixes to problems I perceive, as this is not my job and such discussion is useless to Bungie anyway.
I should state my primary goal in buildcrafting is to create a consistent gameplay loop I find enjoyable. I want my builds to work in most pve content casually, with the only exceptions being grandmasters, master dungeons and master raids, and legendary / master lost sectors. I still make builds for this pinnacle content, but they have entirely different goals.
Note that I will inevitably say something any given reader will heavily disagree with. Please refrain from negative comments insulting my taste, I would like this to be a positive discussion with valid feedback, feedback viable enough for bungie to contemplate if they so choose to do so.
I will not discuss the following exotics as they have offer absolutely zero applications in PvE: - Knucklehead Radar - Stompees
I will also not consider Aeon Swift, as this is not a Hunter exotic.
Alright, let's get started. There will be no order to this.

• Mask of Bakris

The tele-dodge itself does not seem to amount to anything significant in PVE, so the damage boost is the focus. While the damage boost is nice, I find that buff disabling dodge ability generation restricts building around the exotic heavily - significantly reduced effectiveness of means of rapidly recharging dodge, and decreased effectiveness of other parts of the kit, like Shuriken uptime. I do not like using this exotic in PVE because it feels very restrictive if not clunky.

• Renewal Grasps

I find this exotic's two effects to be at odds with each other. If I want to build into its potent damage resistance and enemy weakening, I find that the Duskfield itself makes such a job almost pointless in most content, as frozen enemies do not attack you. If I want to build into the increased Duskfield and Duskfield crystal radius, I find the exotic's cooldown penalty to be restrictive, I cannot justify using this exotic over none when I simply want to throw duskfields at enemies. I used to love this exotic, but I feel like it has an identity crisis, and I do not like using it as of now.

• Foetracer

I appreciate this exotic's damage boosting property, it is potent, especially in raids and dungeons. However, outside of damaging boss combatants, this exotic does nothing in PvE. As non boss-dps is most content, I consider this exotic poor as it lacks oomph or any synergy with anything else I can buildcraft around.

• Celestial Nighthawk

Good fashion aside, this is a super-only exotic designed to increase damage output against boss combatants. Its secondary partial refund mechanic feels far too insignificant if not unreliable to build around, so this exotic does nothing in most pve content. I find its damage also lacking, I cannot justify using this exotic.

• Sixth Coyote

I adore this exotic. It is simple, yet it enables so many different things. I find even more mileage out of it with the new class item mod allowing my dodge to pick up orbs.

• Sealed Ahamkara Grasps

Even with its recent buffs, I still heavily dislike this exotic. With a 7 second cooldown, the Melee reload mechanic feels inefficient, as Impetus on Stasis and Ascent on Strand do the same thing but more often. The new increased speed on melee hit mechanic feels extremely clunky, I find constantly weaving in and out of Stompees' tier speed to be extremely disorienting, as the buff only lasts 4 seconds. Because of that aspect, I would never use this exotic, even over nothing.

• Speedloader Slacks

I appreciate this exotic's monstrous reload speed multiplier, it enables buildcrafting around one-shot reload weapons. I also appreciate its support capabilites, which is something very rare for Hunters. Even with these in mind, I do not like using this exotic as it feels very bland, it does not enable a new gameplay loop - it just makes base gunplay better.

• Blight Ranger

I cannot offer any new feedback over this item. Countless others have done a better job. This exotic needs serious help.

• Raiden Flux

While certainly potent and competitive against Star Eater Scales for scaling Arc Staff, I dislike this exotic for several reasons. First being that it keeps you in your super for much longer and you can't really opt out of it, this is a negative to me because I can't utilize buildcrafting aspects while in a roaming super. Second being that it is a super only exotic that offers no way to back into your super faster, leading me to feel that this exotic overall has very little oomph to it.

• Gwinsin Vest

Despite me having multiple godrolls of this thing stuck in my vault, I almost forgot about putting this here. This Super only Exotic does not offer a Super refund or increased Super damage, it instead increases Spectral Blades' uptime. It is extremely difficult to justify using a Super only exotic in the age of Star Eater Scales, but this takes the cake as the one I am least willing to use any given scenario. Frankly, I don't know how to give feedback for this.

• Raiju's Harness

Excellent fashion aside, I do not think this exotic's recent buffs did enough to make me consider unironically using this exotic for function. The blind radius feels far too small to actually leverage, and doesn't do damage. The weapon damage buff period feels too short. If the build goal is to use the super to cancel the super to maximize uptime on its Arc damage buff, I think I would rather just use Bakris on stasis, which would have more uptime.

• Shinobu's Vow

On paper, this exotic appears godlike. A second grenade charge and a potent grenade refund function is very high value. Unfortunately, Skip Grenades feel awful to use. To be more specific, at base they feel like the single least lethal grenade in the game bar a healing nade. Using Arc 3.0's Jolting nades fragment decreases this exotic's performance, as the jolt kills targets before your Skip Grenade seekers can damage them to recharge your grenade. Even with the current seasonal artifact, I cannot justify using this exotic over just picking any other grenade on arc without an exotic.

• Lucky Raspberry

This exotic is difficult to use in multi-player content, as teammates can and will defeat your targets before your ArcBolt can complete its chain to loop itself. This issue is made worse further when including the Jolting nades fragment, causing Jolt to kill targets before the Arcbolt can connect to them. I also personally just do not like the heavy rng associated with this exotic by design, preferring reliable and consistent gameplay loops over rare moments of extreme power - yet this exotic offers neither.

• Liars Handshake

A powerful, reliable exotic I used to use all of the time. Its damage buff is potent, and its healing is very nice to have. Though this exotic feels like it has poor synergy with Arc 3.0 aspects, lethal current procs from the first melee hit and often clears everything in front of you, meaning there's nothing to use Cross Counter on. It's been a while since I tried, but I don't believe this Exotic even procs off Tempest Strike hits. These components of anti synergy make the Exotic feel clunky in the modern sandbox, making me not want to use it.

• Dragons Shadow

Similar to my thoughts on Speedloader Slacks, I appreciate the potent boosts this exotic provides, though I do not believe it offers buildcrafting potential - it just makes base gunplay better.

• Facade (I will not dare even attempt to spell the first part)

The Anti Flinch component is mostly irrelevant in PvE, so value is instead drawn from the reliable if not indefinite Woven Mail uptime. While it is a potent effect, it feels difficult to justify using my exotic slot over the Woven Mail on Orb pickup fragment, even though this fragment has limited uptime. I believe this Exotic doesn't offer enough oomph in PvE and is difficult to build craft around dedicatedly.

• Assassins Cowl

I find this exotic very awkward to build craft around, as it demands high uptime on powered melee abilities and yet does nothing to grant melee energy. Bar just using the standard fare Arc Hunter loop to tackle endgame content, I believe that this exotic demands too much buildcrafting investment to justify its purely defensive boosts. I thus do not use this exotic, outside of the Arc Hunter loop.

• Kehpris Sting

This exotic offers a 50% increased damage for the lowest damage melee ability in the game. This buff amounts to it still doing less damage than just punching enemies normally. The increased melee recharge speed function seems to only have PvP application, and Stylish Executioner offers more than enough wall hacks for any PvE needs. I cannot justify equipping this exotic, neither can I justify building around offensive Smoke Bombs in general.

• Graviton Forfeit

Oh, do I miss this exotic's prime within the 30th anniversary sandbox. This exotic offers indefinite invisibility, which doesn't feel at all needed in most content, as Void Hunter aspects give plenty of on demand and after-combat invisibility uptime. The reload and recovery boosts offered by this exotic feel difficult to leverage practically. I miss old Bottom Tree Nightstalker's grenade recharge and heart of the pack functions, which complimented this exotic perfectly. Without these things, I cannot justify using this exotic.

• Frostees

This is Hunter's only neutral game ability recharge based exotic. While its effects are potent, they only activate while sprinting, and you cannot actively damage targets while sprinting. I find that this makes building around this exotic frustrating. While it is always a good idea to wear this exotic, I tend to avoid it because trying to leverage it frustrates me, I really wish we had another neutral game exotic with ability recharge applications.

• Shards of Galanor

I find this exotic to lack oomph, as it only serves to refund your Blade Barrage, but does not boost its lethality, making buildcrafting around this exotic to not amount to much, though it can be done.

• Orphious Rigs

This exotic has two distinct effects that do not overlap. With Quiver, this exotic increases your Super's damage output but offers nothing to get your super back faster. With Deadfall(?), this exotic grants the super a potent ability refund and super refund function, but only when using your super against multiple targets at once. This conflicts with how most void Hunters use the super, to debuff singular bosses. I find both functions of this exotic to lack oomph and can't justify using it.

• Wormhusk Crown

I appreciate this exotic's simplicity, though I wish it had more oomph to it in PvE. This is one of very few sources of Healing available to Hunter, but I don't think it provides enough of it to build craft around.

• Lucky Pants

I greatly appreciate this exotic single handedly enabling an entire archetype of build, though I find it very clunky. To elaborate, when I use this exotic I find myself worrying over accidentally proccing the lucky pants effect when I am not ready for it, and this heavily restricts my gameplay, not allowing me to use my primary weapon like a primary. This heavily restricts build crafting, blasphemously forcing me to run another primary, or to use a special or heavy capable of running reliable general ad clear. I often find myself wishing I could choose to opt out of proccing the exotic's damage boosting effect in any given moment. This clunkiness fully cancels out the QoL provided by the massively increased Handcannon stats in my eyes. I do not use this exotic often because of these things.

• Bombardiers (Bombies)

This exotic has 5 different functions based off of subclass. Common to all of them is that I find this exotic clunky to use offensively, as the bomb does not travel horizontally at all, and its radius feels lacking. Void Bombies doesn't count as a real Suppression effect in PvE and I wish they did. Arc Bombies doesn't count as a real Blind effect in PvE and I wish they did. Solar Bombies is nice on paper for scorch stacking ignition based buildcrafting, but this build greatly suffers from my first point. Stasis Bombies... doesn't do anything. I would like it to! Strand Bombies feels redundant, Strand Hunter already has a ton of access to Sever, and I find myself wishing Bombies exploded the hologram from the new aspect, which would allow it to bypass my general use issue with this exotic.

• Gemini Jesters

While interesting, I find this exotic lacks oomph. The blind has no arc synergy, and I wish it had a longer duration. It also feels bizzarely inconsistent as to what enemies the blind even works on? I do not use this exotic for these reasons.

• Oathkeepers

I actually used this in PvE before the recent buffs, valuing the small draw time boost it has. I find its new mechanic frustrating to buildcraft around, as it works with absolutely zero special effects like dragonfly and exotic perks. Much of the community seems to have this sentiment, too. If I use this exotic, it will be for the draw time boost and not the damage boosting function.

• Mechaneers Tricksleeves

This exotic incentivizes a unique low-life type of build to get the most out of it. Unfortunately this type of thing is very poorly supported, requiring awkward pauses to deal damage to yourself. This type of build also has the fault of not working in most teamplay, as Solar Warlocks will heal you without your consent. I wish its damage buff had a different or alternative condition to activate.

• Star Eater Scales

An excellent exotic, offering a unique gameplay loop that yields a satisfying and potent payout. I have no complaints, though I don't use this exotic often because I find it overkill for most content.

• Gyrfalcons Hauberk

The sole savior of Nightstalker 3.0 in my eyes. This exotic is extremely well rounded, unique, and offers a ton of build crafting options. I don't use it much these days though, as I am trying more ability focused builds of which this exotic does not assist me in.

• Triton Vice

My feedback mirrors the common community sentiment over this exotic: it's trying to do two conflicting things, and neither job is done well enough to justify using a glaive on Hunter. To add on to that, I find it hard to justify glaives on hunter in general since many of our subclass kits revolve around using thrown melee abilities, and glaives offer no synergy with almost all parts of these kits. I think this is my primary complaint, I wish there were more synergy between glaives and subclasses at base. I do not see myself ever using this exotic without major sandbox changes.

• Omnioculus

Much like my Graviton Forfiet feedback, this exotic's prime is in the past. Though still useful in difficult endgame multiplayer content, this exotic has lacked oomph in most content ever since Void 3.0

• Radiant Dance Machines

I adore the recent rework to this exotic, its fantastic in general play. My only direct complaint is that it's kinda hard to tell when the buff is ready to proc, and when gamblers dodge can meet its nearby enemy proc condition. Any other complaints I could come up with are more so directed at weaknesses associated with Hunter Subclasses.
General Solar Hunter Grenade and Melee Exotic Feedback:
Solar 3.0's Gunslinger revamp has a number of elements I find problems with, and these problems directly affect it's non-super exotics.

• Solar Hunter's looping ability is extremely reliant on ability kills. If a thrown melee fails to kill, a dodge is required to retry. If this fails for any reason, the loop is over. This feels sudden halt in momentum feels really bad to me, it makes me generally avoid Solar Hunter.
  
• Explosive Throwing Knives are often shot out of the air by enemies, severely hurting you and turning off your loop.
  
• Weighted Throwing Knife seems to have been bugged for a very long time now, it very often fails to refund itself with the radiant loop when it ignites an enemy, heavily restricting if not making building crafting impossible for it.
  
• The Radiant knife loop will often fail if it procs too quickly. Needing to actively think about pacing myself makes it hard to enjoy the radiant knife loop.
  
• The current Restoration bug makes Solar Hunter survivability far poorer than it would be without, forcing me to play Solar Hunter far more conservative than I'd like, which causes my loops to fail more often, and failed loops to result in my death more often.
  
• Caliban's Hand
  

Though powerful in general play, this Exotic often feels like its overkill. Ignition explosions will detonate mid-air knives, forcing me to pace my thrown knives further, and causing the loop to fail even more often. This volatility is why I haven't really used the exotic since the tailend of Haunted.

• Athry's Embrace

This felt balanced in the sandboxes before Solar 3.0, but its damage output feels like its been powercrept since. The Weighted Throwing Knife bug, and the lack of 3.0 synergy makes this exotic tough to justify using. The recent buff for +30 strength while the buff is active seems to be primarily pvp focused change.

• Young Ahamkara's Spine (YAS)

This exotic enables its own loop, one remarkably similar to the radiant knife loop. While I appreciate that component of it, I have two issues with this exotic. One: The loop is prone to fail, Ignitions and other related Solar Explosions can detonate the Tripmine mid-flight, and actually sticking enemies with Tripmines in pve is surprisingly difficult to do reliably. In either case the loop fails, and when the backup throwing knives fail for whatever reason, the loop ends and the build is disabled for quite a while. Two: I feel like Tripmines don't deal much damage in PvE, most of a YAS build's comes from ignitions. I know many people are avid fans of this exotic, but I am not.

• Ophidia Spathe

This is my go to Solar Exotic, though I wish its hidden regenerate two knives at once ability were more consistent, in most cases the Radiant Loop only provides one knife charge and no part of this function is explained on the exotic. I enjoy pairing this exotic with the newly buffed Skyburner's oath and fan knives, letting me easily Ignite enemies without suffering from much of the other Gunslinger weaknesses.

Heya,
Timestamps
Picked this up locally to mess with, but I'm realizing I'll never use it as I have multiple switches already. Looks like it was barely used, all the buttons / sticks are tight and it's in great condition.
Comes with a loose copy of Animal Crossing New Horizons, and 3 3rd party Gamecube Controllers.
It's an XKW Model, so more than likely patched.
Looking for $235 shipped for everything!
Would also be interested in purchasing any of the special edition switches (Monster Hunter, Smash Bros, Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 2) once this sells. Box preferred, but open to any region

New Jersey - 6.626% tax rate
Hyundai Kona Limited AWD
3 years 10k miles
Market price: 32,290
Sale price: 31,000
Residual value: 19,696 (61%)
Current lease trade-in equity: 3,400
cap reduction: 1000
money factor: .00125 (which I was blown away by. tho I do have 800+ credit)
Monthly payment: $320

So far we have been providing iptv for 2 years and now after getting introduced to reddit for sometime we have done so many researches and seen people getting scammed, or not getting the service they had paid for , IPTVBros has taken an initiative as we are improving with time we want people to join our community and get the beat service so we are spreading our word, We have started a survey to help more people reach and know about iptv and iptv Bros
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So I have a PC that was prebuild about 6 years ago. I wanted to build it myself at the time, but I have bad anxiety, and I worry that I will get parts that are incompatible, poorly optimized, or hard to use correctly. Everyone says building your own PC is easy, and I bet it is, but I got so hung up on possibilities and details I got discouraged.
Now I am older and moving abroad and need to a new PC. I am now determined to overcome my fear and build it myself! Right now I am reading and watching online guides for building it, but I am also working on picking the parts. I was hoping this community could look over two builds.
My budget is around 1500 Euros, and my main use is gaming. I will be moving to the EU permanently, so my hope is that this build will last a while, and I will be able to upgrade it over time. The link is a build that does not include the accessories I already have and will keep (mouse, keyboard, headset). It goes a little over budget, but that is acceptable since I am including the monitor.
https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/vTGqxs
Feel free to let me know if this will work, if there is anything I am missing, or if I overlooked something. I am also open to suggestions for alternate parts!
Here are a few contextual notes:
-This is my first time trying to do this, so patience is appreciated :)
-I understand the basic principle of motherboards, but I struggle to tell if any given MoBo is good/compatible
-My husband has a quest 2, so ideally I would like to play VR as well.
-I like a wide range of games with different requirements. I want to play Carcassonne, Foxhole, Escape Tarkov, Ready or Not, Stalker 2, Fallout 4, 6 days in Fallujah,HOI4, Stellaris, Hell Let Loose, Into the Radius, to name a few.
-I know almost nothing about CPU coolers, so that one was a guess.
- I like the look of 2 big (200mm) fans, and I heard that bigger fans are quieter and efficient. not sure if true.
-The parts I picked were based on personal research, which I accept may be flawed.
-I really, really appreciate all the help!!!

TW: Animal death, mentions of animal abuse.
Throwaway account and fake names. Sorry for the formatting, I’m on my phone.
Context: Oldest cousin (Olivia )is moved out and lives ~45 minutes away from my aunts house with her boyfriend.
When my cousin Olivia (26f) first got her dog, she was in a new state with family hundreds of miles away. She had mental health issues and was in a toxic relationship. It seemed like a light had flickered on ever since Olivia adopted that dog. She’s told us multiple times how that dog literally saved her life and she wouldn’t be here without it.
A week ago, I hosted an event and invited my extended family. We live five hours away. Olivia drove over 45 minutes to pick up my youngest cousin Maya (17f) since she didn’t have a ride.
The day after the event, Olivia tells us that she has to drive back home earlier and drop Maya off because her boyfriend is saying her 6 year old small dog is sick. She told us that she thought the dog got bit by a bug or spider, and that the dog had been extremely sick the past few days.
Olivia was extremely panicked and crying, so we said our goodbyes a few hours early. She left, but she would still have to drive 5+ hours before even arriving at the home.
I didn’t mention it, but I thought it was weird why Olivia’s boyfriend did not take the dog to the vet during that time. I was later told he had no car to drive, but they live in a small town where walking to the vet would be faster than waiting for over 5 hours.
The day after she left, we got a text in the family groupchat from Olivia telling us that the dog had passed away.
Maya called me that same day and told me her side of the story. Maya said that on the car ride home, Olivia said she’d already taken the dog to the vet. The vet ruled her sickness was caused by internal bleeding from blunt force trauma.
Olivia confessed that in an “autistic stim” her boyfriend of 3 months began punching and kicking the air, and kicked the dog (and her cat) in the process. She mentioned that he wore steel toed boots and that was why the dog was severely injured.
She also said that she previously questioned him for hours on why her dog and cat were afraid of him and why they wouldn’t approach him.
I told my immediate family what Maya told me directly after Maya called. Olivia texted me asking me not to tell anyone what happened (after I told my family) and that Maya took everything out of context and it was a mistake.
I found out later that Olivia is planning to stay with him for emotional support and telling people that he “tripped over the dog” and “landed on the cat”
I don’t want to make assumptions. I’m not autistic. I don’t know any autistic people, so I don’t know if his story is plausible. That isn’t for me to decide.
I’m lost on what to do. I don’t want to push her away in a time like this but I also don’t want to support a relationship where one of them kicks dogs and the other allows him to. I’m trying to be indifferent but it’s extremely hard when I know this information about her boyfriend who I’ve never even met.

Does anybody know? I called 3 numbers today, 1 from Mississippi (google gave me that number) the second one was DeSoto Police Department but it was the wrong person, he gave me a new number but it ended up to be the emergency number, the dispatcher there had a very hard to hear accent so i couldn't hear the number he gave me for non-emergencies. I really need this number, does anybody know?

February 8, 2146, Project Chameleon HQ, Brussels, PRE
It has been a few weeks since Project Autumn has returned back to her normal life. Her days were pretty routine. She would wake up and eat breakfast. Then head to briefs and classes. Then, she would eat lunch before heading off to drills and training that left her sore and extremely fatigued. Autumn would eat dinner, shower, talk to Juliette for a few hours before falling asleep to do it all over again. The days soon became three weeks since she saw Juliette in person. Autumn’s next mission to Rio was quickly approaching. Autumn was excited about it, but what she really wanted to do was spend time with the girl that she really liked. Her training was done, and she was packing her bags for her mission. Autumn was told that she would be a part of the next gauntlet that would take place after she gets back from Rio. She was very excited about it and couldn’t wait to tell Juliette. Autumn looked at the time and saw that it was still five hours before she would normally call Juliette. She was bored, lonely, and really wanted to talk to her. Autumn wrestled with this as she packed her bags.
Agents of Chaos HQ, New York City Containment Zone, PRE
Icari raced through one of the remaining buildings of what was once an overpopulated city. Most of what was once known as New York City was destroyed during the Great War. The city was deserted and hardly anyone lived there. It became the perfect location for the headquarters for the Agents of Chaos. Icari found this out through hacking the government’s mainframe. She decided to put an end to them once and for all. Icari also wanted to know what their connection was to the Prospers. She raced floor to floor eliminating their commanders and whoever she came across. Soon, she found the last remaining members as she stalked
them in the lower parts of the building with her curved blades ready to strike. Icari cornered them ready to end the threat of the Agents of Chaos. They knew that they were out of bullets and out of time. They huddled in fear from what they perceived to be their inevitable demise.
“Wait! Please, don’t kill us.” Agent 1 said with fear in their voice.
Icari was shocked and amused as she stopped and said, “Wait…what? Why shouldn’t I?”
“Be…because we are extremely sorry for all of the stuff that we have done.” Agent 1 replied.
Icari scoffed and started to move closer to them. She suddenly froze when she received a notice of an incoming call. Icari smiled when she saw that it was from Project Autumn.
Icari looked at the Agents and said, “Hey, can you all give me some time. I really need to answer this call.” Icari answered the call with a French accent. “Hello, Mademoiselle Autumn. Is everything alright?”
“Did. Did she just put us on hold?” Agent 1 asked.
“I know right and what’s up with the French accent?” Agent 2 replied.
Icari glared at the agents and put a finger to her lips to silence them. They quickly covered their mouths with their hands with fear in their eyes.
Autumn replied, “Hi, Juliette. It is so good to hear your voice. Yes, everything is fine. I am packing for my mission to Rio. I was bored and lonely. I started to think about you and how much I really miss you.”
Icari smiled as she sat down on a desk facing the agents and said. “Aww. That is sweet of you to say. I have been thinking about you too.”
Autumn said, “I hope that I am not bothering you or anything. Are you busy right now?”
Icari replied, “No, not at all. I was taking care of something easy, but it can wait.”
Autumn quickly replied, “Are you sure? We can talk later if you want.”
Icari smiled and said, “No, it’s okay. I am sure that we can talk now.”
Meanwhile, the remaining Agents of Chaos began to argue with one another about what they
should do. Icari could hear their bickering and became extremely annoyed with everything that they were saying. She stood up and glared at them.
Icari counted the remaining agents, sighed, and said, “Autumn, give me a moment, please. It should take me… about thirty seconds to finish this simple task.”
Autumn replied, “Umm…sure. Take your time. I will be here when you are done. Please don’t take too long.”
Icari smiled and said, “Thank you, Mademoiselle. I promise not to keep you waiting long.”
Icari lunged at the remaining agents as they backed away in horror. Fifteen seconds later, Icari had taken care of the last remaining Agent of Chaos. She picked up a cloth and cleaned her daggers. Icari put them away before she pulled out a black disc out of her pocket. She headed towards their command center.
Icari asked, “Autumn, are you still with me?”
Autumn quickly replied, “Yes, yes. I am still here.”
Icari smiled as she put the disc on the main computer’s case and pushed a button as lights began to light up clockwise. She smiled and said, “Thank you for waiting.”
Autumn smiled and replied, “You’re welcome. I would have waited longer.” Autumn teased as she continued. “But… I guess the issue wasn’t as difficult as you thought.”
Icari laughed and said as she left the command center, “Sorry, I suppose I overestimated how difficult the issue would be.”
Autumn laughed and said, “I guess that I wouldn’t know, but the reason that I called you earlier than normal is I have news that I couldn’t wait to tell you at our normal time.”
Icari picked up a bag as she headed down the stairs to the basement where the building’s support beams were located. Icari said, “News? I appreciate you calling me to give us more time to talk, but what is the news?”
Autumn replied as Icari put small boxes with tubes filled with a green and yellow substance on the support beams and flipped a switch, “Yes, I was told earlier today, that after I get back from the mission to Rio, I will take part in the next gauntlet to decide who I may get paired with. What do you think?”
Icari was shocked and froze when she heard the news. She became scared that it would become a lot more difficult for her to see Autumn. Many feelings and thoughts ran through her head.
Autumn became concerned and asked, “Juliette, are you still there?”
Icari shook her head and replied, “Sorry, to make you concerned, and I am happy for you. Are you excited about your mission to Rio?”
Icari threw the empty bag aside after she placed the last box. She started to head back up the steps to the command center.
Autumn was excited as she replied, “I am super excited to be going for a couple weeks. They said that I deserve it from all of the stuff that I have dealt with lately. It will be two weeks of nothing but swimming and relaxing in the summer air.” Autumn became nervous as she continued. “B-but I- I w-wish that you could be there. It would be my first Valentine’s Day spending it with someone that I really like.”
Icari saw that all of the lights were lit green as she retrieved the black disc. She smiled and said, “Well. Mademoiselle, I may be able to make your wish come true.”
Autumn was shocked as she said, “Really? Tell me you aren’t joking or teasing me. Are you being serious?”
Icari had walked down the stairs to a door that led to an alley. She smiled and replied, “I would not joke or tease you to turn around and break your heart. I cannot make any promises, but I will make sure that I will do my best to help your wish come true.”
Icari walked out the door and pushed a button on her wrist. Suddenly, a black and red motorcycle appeared in the shadows with a black and red helmet with cat ears on it.
Autumn was sad as she said, “I understand. I thought that it would be a great time spending the two weeks with you instead of alone by myself.”
Icari sat on the motorcycle and put on the helmet. The sun started to peek in the east sky. She started
up the motorcycle as she replied, “Do not be sad, Autumn. I promise you that you will have my answer by the time that you land in Rio. You might be surprised by what I can do in such a short period of time.”
Icari pushed a button on her motorcycle as she drove off and disappeared from site. She pushed another button that caused an explosion behind her, and the building collapsed into dust.
Autumn blushed and said, “I believe you and look forward to your answer. Listen, I have to finish packing, eat dinner, and shower. Can I call you later?”
Icari smiled as she replied, “I understand, and you can call me whenever you like. I look forward to talking to you soon, Mademoiselle Autumn.”
Autumn said, “I look forward to talking to you soon too, Juliette. Bye for now.”
Icari said, “Bye for now.” There was a small click. Icari sighed before she continued. “Watcher, are you there?”
Watcher scoffed. “Yes, I am here. Are you done flirting with your girlfriend?” Watcher said annoyed.
Icari snapped back, “I wasn’t flirting with her, and she isn’t my girlfriend. Listen. When I get back to the safe house, I will be uploading the files that I uploaded from the Agents of Chaos mainframe. I need you to decipher the files to see if they were working for the Prospers and any other useful information.”
“Anything else?” Watcher asked.
Icari replied, “Yes, I need you to immediately hack into the system and book a flight for me from Harrisburg to Rio De Janeiro. I need a limousine to take myself and Autumn to the harbor, where a boat will ferry us to a beach home on Paqueta Island. We will be there for two weeks. Put everything under the name Juliette Trudeau.”
“Why should I?” Watcher asked abrasively.
Icari replied, “Well, you have two choices. Either I am out of your hair for two weeks, or I make your life a living hell for the next two weeks. Then, I still book it on my own. You choose.”
“Fine. Fine. It’s not like I care if you spend time with your girlfriend or not. Everything will be taken care of by the time you make it to the safe house and upload the files.” Watcher replied.
Icari snapped back, “For the last time, she is not my girlfriend! And thank you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t mention it. It is kind of nice to see you happy once more. Have fun and
remember that we have a war to win.” Watcher said kindly.
Icari smiled and said, “Yeah, I won’t forget.”
An hour and a half later, Icari pulled into the safe house in Harrisburg. She pushed a button on her motorcycle and the garage door opened. Icari pushed the button, and it closed. She pushed another button, and they became visible once more. Icari took off her helmet and placed it on her motorcycle. She walked to a wall in the garage and revealed a secret panel. Icari inputted the code, and a secret staircase was revealed. She walked down the stairs as the wall closed behind her. A room lit up as she opened the door. The computer turned on and system was running. Icari approached the computer as she took the black disc out of her pocket. She put the disc on a reader. The lights flashed on and worked in reverse. Icari received the itinerary, confirmation for the rentals, and digital tickets. As the disc was uploaded to their mainframe, Icari walks to a closet marked for Juliette. She opened up the closet and pulled out two bags already packed for her for two weeks in a summer environment. Icari closed the door. When she was done, she walked over to check the disc and saw that it was fully uploaded. Icari grabbed the bags and walked up the stairs. When she got near the top, the computer shut down, door sealed closed, and the secret door into the garage opened. After Icari had passed, the door closed and sealed shut. Icari walked into a normal home and left the bags near the front door. She cooked lunch at the same time Autumn would call her. They talked for a few hours before Autumn headed to bed. Soon, Autumn and Icari headed to their perspective airports to start their journey to Rio. Five hours and forty-five minutes later, Juliette’s plan landed at the International Airport in Rio
De Janeiro. She grabbed her carry-on bag and went to get her check in luggage. Juliette headed for the main doors and walked out into a sunny midmorning day. The air was refreshing, and it was already setting up to be a warm day. Juliette had made sure to change her appearance before she left for the airport. Juliette looked around and saw a limousine. The driver was standing outside it. He was holding a sign with Juliette Trudeau written on it in big letters. She smiled and walked over to him. The driver eyed her as she approached.
Juliette said,” Olá, eu sou Juliette Trudeau.”
The driver lowered the sign. “Olá, eu estive esperando por você, Sra. Trudeau.” The driver replied.
Juliette smiled and asked, “Can I see your sign while you put in my bags in the trunk, please?”
The driver bowed. “As you wish, Sra. Trudeau. Your guest should arrive soon from Brussels.” The driver replied as he handed over the sign and a marker.
Juliette smiled as she took the sign and marker from the driver while she said, “Obrigado.”
“De nada, Sra. Trudeau.” The driver said as he placed Juliette’s luggage in the back.
He walked to where Juliette was and took the sign and marker from her. The driver opened the door for Juliette to get in. When she was seated, he closed the door and stood outside of the limousine. Thirty minutes later, Juliette’s heart began to race as she saw Autumn walk out of the airport with her luggage in tow. Autumn had put on her glasses and looked around. She froze when she looked towards the limousine. Autumn slowly walked over to the driver.
Autumn cautiously said, “Hi, I am Project Autumn. Are you looking for me?”
The driver bowed. “Yes, I have been expecting you, Sra. Autumn. Let me put your luggage in the trunk.” The driver replied.
Autumn thought, “I never would think that Project Chameleon would have a limo waiting for me at the airport.”
Autumn replied, “Umm… sure. Thank you.”
The driver opened the door for Autumn to get in. He closed the door after she was comfortably seated in the back of the limousine. Autumn watched the driver take her stuff to the back. She was startled, and her heartbeat faster when she heard the sound of a familiar voice from inside the limousine.
Juliette smiled and said, “Hello, Mademoiselle, Autumn.”
Autumn instinctively lunged at Juliette as she turned to face her and kissed her lips. She immediately realized what she had done from the shocked look on Juliette’s face and blushed as she moved away. Juliette smiled and took Autumn’s hands into her own.
Autumn said, “Hi, and I’m sorry Juliette. I don’t know what came over me. I just got so excited that you were here.” Autumn took a deep breath before she continued. “Wh-what are you doing here?”
Juliette replied, “It’s okay. I am happy to see you too. I told you that you would have my answer by the time that you had landed here. I thought that the best way for me to give you my answer was to be here in person to give it to you.”
They heard the sound of the trunk closing and saw the driver walk down the side of the limousine to the driver’s door. He opened it, got in, closed the door, and started the engine. He pulled away from the cub and headed towards the pier.
Autumn said, “I am really glad that you brought your answer to me. When did you get here? How long will you be able to stay here?”
Juliette squeezed Autumn’s hands and smiled as she replied, “So am I. I got here around two hours before you did. If it is alright with you, I plan on being here the entire two weeks that you are.”
Autumn smiled as she said, “Yes, yes. That would be perfect for me. But…where are we headed?”
Juliette winked as she replied, “It is a secret, and you will have to find out when we get there.”
The driver drove them through town as they talked in the back of the limousine. When they arrived at the pier, The driver parked the limousine and got out. He went to the side and opened the
door. Autumn and Juliette got out and looked around. They spotted a yacht ready to go as the driver took their luggage out of the trunk. Some men came over and grabbed their luggage, and they followed them onto the yacht as the limousine pulled away. Thirty minutes later the yacht pulled away from the pier and headed towards a small island. Autumn looked around excitedly as Juliette smiled and watched her reactions. Soon, they had docked at the island. Another limousine was waiting at the pier as they got off the yacht. The same two men carried their luggage off of the yacht, and the driver put the luggage in the trunk of the limousine after Autumn and Juliette got in. They drove them a little ways until they reached an office building. Juliette got out and checked in. She came back out with their keys. The driver drove them to the beach front rental home. As Autumn got out, she was amazed. She turned to face Juliette as the driver took their luggage out of the trunk.
Juliette smiled brightly as she said, “Surprise.”
Autumn was still shocked as she asked, “Are we staying here the entire time?
Juliette nodded as she replied, “Oui, this is the rental home that I had reserved for us the two weeks. Are you surprised?”
Autumn looked at home and back at Juliette. She blushed as she replied, “Very much so. I can’t believe that you would go through all of this trouble just for me. Thank you.”
Juliette smiled and said, “It was no trouble at all to see you. You’re very welcome. Shall we go inside?”
Autumn blushed and replied, “Yes, I would like that.”
They grabbed their luggage and headed to the front door. Juliette pulled out the key cards and handed one to Autumn. She swiped the key card reader. It beeped, turned green, and an audible click could be heard signaling that it had been unlocked. They headed inside and were at awe from how beautiful everything looked. They looked around and saw two large rooms, a kitchen, patio, living room, both rooms had a bathroom, a breakfast nook, pool, jacuzzi, grill, study, and everything that someone would need. They walked back to the bedrooms.
Juliette asked, “Which room would you like to take?”
Autumn looked away and replied, “Well…I was…thinking that…that we could share…the same room, if…if you don’t mind.”
Juliette smiled and replied, “I don’t mind. I would enjoy that very much.”
Autumn smiled and said, “I would like that too.”
They picked the largest room and took their stuff in there. They put everything away and decided to change into their swimsuits. They headed to the beach and swam for a while. Autumn and Juliette grew closer through the days. They spent every day together. On Valentine’s Day, they went swimming when the sun rose. Autumn and Juliette came back and feed each other chocolates and ate chocolates. They laughed and were having fun until Juliette remembered that soon Autumn would leave for the labyrinth to run the gauntlet and became sad. Autumn noticed this and became concerned.
Autumn was concerned as she asked, “What is wrong, Juliette? Why are you so sad?”
Juliette frowned as she replied, “I just remembered that you will be going away soon for the gauntlet
where they will team you up with a new partner. Then, there will be no room for me in your…”
Juliette was shocked as she looked up at Autumn who had put her finger on her lips.
Autumn smiled warmly as she said, “No one will take your place in my heart, Juliette. I don’t care who they pair me with, but you will be the only one for me. So, do not worry about that. I will always be only yours.”
Juliette smiled and lunged forward knocking Autumn over and the chocolates onto the floor. She kissed Autumn deeply. The day past and was the best Valentine’s Day Autumn ever had. She woke up the next morning to realize that Juliette wasn’t in bed with her. Autumn could hear Juliette’s voice carrying in from the patio. She decided to see what is going on. She was sleepy as she got up, stretched and yawned as she put on a robe. She walked to the patio as she rubbed her eyes.
Juliette said, “.... Yes I... I promise that...See you...I.., you.”
Autumn smiled when she saw Juliette watching the sun rise. She was in a robe and held a cup of coffee. Autumn walked over to Juliette and hugged her from behind. She caught the smell of the coffee, the morning air, the beach, and Juliette’s hair. Juliette smiled and giggled from Autumn’s warm embrace. She leaned back into her. Then, Juliette turned around to face Autumn and handed her the mug that she was holding as she leaned against the railing. Autumn sipped coffee and smiled.
Juliette said, “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”
Autumn smiled and nodded as she replied, “Good morning. I slept very well. I woke up, and you weren’t in bed. I heard you talking to someone. Is everything okay? Who were you talking to?”
Juliette took the mug from Autumn as she replied, “I am sorry to have worried you. I am usually back in bed before you wake up. Yes, everything is fine. I was talking to Dr. Hubert like I do every morning to make sure everything is okay back at home. You know that you could always just run away with me. I know a place where they will never find us. We could start a new life together.”
Autumn smiled warmly as she said, “I am glad everything is going well back home for you. I would like that, but you know that I can’t leave. We would have to look over our shoulders for the rest of our lives on the run.”
Juliette frowned, looked at the mug, and replied, “I know, and I wouldn’t want to live on the run either.” Juliette paused before she continued. “I just have a bad feeling about this. Please, stay safe.”
Autumn put her hands on Juliette’s as she replied, “I will be safe. There is nothing to worry about. The gauntlet is completely safe, because only training rounds are allowed to tally up scores. I will call you immediately after it is over to prove that nothing happened to me.”
Juliette looked into Autumns eyes and said, “I hope that you are right.”
The rest of the time flew by and soon they headed back to the airport for their flights. Autumn left first, and Juliette left next. Juliette landed in Harrisburg International Airport. Autumn landed at Brussels. They had a quick conversation as Icari made it to the safe house. After they hung up, Icari got a phone call from Watcher.
“Hey, Icari. I hope that you had fun. I went over the files that you sent me, but I couldn’t decode them. So, I…” Watcher started to say.
There was a brief pause before a monotone girl’s voice spoke. “Hi, mommy. We need to talk.” The girl said.

3 years 10k miles -- New Jersey - 6.626% tax rate

Market price: 32,290

Sale price: 31,000

Residual value: 19,696 (61%)

Lease trade-in equity: 3,400

cap reduction: 1000

money factor: .00125 (which I was blown away by. tho I do have 800+ credit)

Monthly payment: $320

I'm a Masters student in the US. Im currently interning at a small well established company that works in healthcare IT. My team is working on products that use AWS services (S3, SNS ,SQS, Neptune, Dynamodb, lambda , step functions etc) and a Python/ chalice framework, React JS etc. All this is very new to me. I'm planning to study AWS and get certified(I feel like this will be a good test for my knowledge). I'm also understanding the product better And trying to contribute to the team. This internship will last ~8months - 1year (part time).
[[ Before you answer, please know that I'm new to software development. I've been a big data admin in the past and I know most of how the corporate IT works. You don't have to be very specific about your advice. Please comment any questions you may have about my profile/job. ]]
Where I need your help - 1. What kind of contributions to the project will make me a significant team member? (Working on improvements/features? Etc?) 2. Tell me how I can I prepare for full time jobs i.e. what else do I need to study to become a hirable candidate. 3. Is it okay to not be looking for one specific role? I feel like I can build a good DE profile (using my SQL, python and AWS experience), SDE, as well as SRE. Do you recommend this or I should focus on only one? 4. Generally, do you think the job market will become better Q4 2023 onwards? 5. If you've been a masters student in the US, when did you start looking for full time jobs and when did you get an offer?
Thank you for reading my post! I appreciate your advice or anything you have to say 🙏

Spirits are the least conventional lifeforms in Gnosis and the people of its worlds really don't understand what they are or how they function. As they are so highly unconventional, I'm looking for a little feedback on the core concept. I'll keep it as quick as I can, but this is a big complicated topic and spirits are weird so I may need to explain a lot.
From the Outside:
Let's pick a common spirit for an example, in fact the most common spirit species, fey. From the outside, they look like a tiny winged humanoid of some description. We'll go right to the one of the two contenders for least common of four subspecies because they'll require the least explanation, fairies. They basically look like miniature glowing humans with large butterfly wings, coming in every imaginable color for their skin although some are more common for each part than others and that means they're glowing those colors. Fey have some size-changing going on but in their smaller default form fairy women typically range from about 45-50cm and fairy men about 35-40cm in both height and wingspan, and in their larger form they go up to 1.5x scale. Spirits don't need to sleep, can if they want to and there are reasons they might even if usually only for a couple minutes to fix some recent major injury.
Most species of spirits are 75% female and fey are in that group, so let's look a bit closer at a fairy gal. The first thing you'll notice about her is that she is very colorful her surface has zero texture, but you may not notice from a distance because her surface is using artistic tricks to imitate texture without actually having it. Her various features are simplified, yet either exaggerated or understated. Her usually quite a bit of head hair is usually also a pretty loud color but it's also actually just part of her head which is one rigid piece and if this gal has long hair you'll notice it only bends at the top of the neck one time to keep the rest "hanging" where it "should be", and trying to change her hairstyle is painful and fruitless. Her jaw stretches and twists to imitate an actual joint being there but there also clearly isn't one if you look closely. Spirit hands and moreso heads, especially their eyes, are larger while their legs are slightly shorter relative to their height and their feet are tiny, meanwhile secondary and tertiary sexual characteristics are exaggerated overall but with a larger standard deviation from the average in each area between individuals to the point where they still reach 0 if less often. They're not a very convincing imitation, to put it lightly, they should be well on the "less human" side of the uncanny valley.
Spirits are regenerating shapeshifters, in the case of fey it's mostly size-changing, but all spirit sophonts also have the ability to imitate clothing, weapons and equipment even if the imitated gear is not nearly as good as the real thing. It and the body part it's on are not separate and the false gear cannot be taken off or set down except by shapeshifting it out of existence, nor can they imitate chemicals or complex machinery like the magitech in nearly all proper melee weapons, which of course means imitating any sort of ranged weapon or explosive is off the table. It also means they aren't rendering their body underneath the gear, if she's wearing a shapeshifted knee skirt and you were to look up it you'd see an opaque void the same color as the skirt which her knees are sliding freely along the surface of, there's nothing between it and where the shapeshift gear ends, everything from hem to waist currently IS the skirt. (Of course if she's wearing actual clothes this does not apply.) Same if she shapeshifts a sword into her hand, the sword and hand are a single piece so it only looks like she's holding it, like a cheap action figure. It also needn't be a sword, most hand tools can be imitated effectively, from hammers and saws to ladles and spatulas, just note that it's part of her and smacking it on things or getting it too hot will hurt even though shapeshift gear is not very sensitive.
Fey also can control the brightness of their glow or generate spotlights, generate and manipulate magnetic fields, of course fly and pretty quickly, they swim fine too which is extremely odd for fairies given their apparent butterfly wings, and all but pixies have easy if slow contact healing albeit the fairy's healing is stronger and pixies have their own benefits (stealth, sensors and a 3-day forecast). Healing is a fairy's main ability, when in water it's strengthened (as is a nymph or ghillie) and in emergencies fairies can massively drain their energy reserves even to the point of depleting them in order to staunch more severe wounds than they would be able to normally, although that's something they can't do more than once or at most twice without a refill and it's still got its limits, "already dead" is beyond those limits, "decapitated" also counts, if somebody's heart got bisected that's somebody they're not fixing, but this burst of frenzied automatic medical treatment is just the thing for some poor sap who's just taken multiple bullets to the chest and head. They're pretty good at self-repair and generally have less downtime than some fey when the poor things get severely injured very easily. (Not because they're little, being a spirit makes that difference often less than it appears, but because they're spirits.)
But what if you touch her? Well, then you'll discover her textureless surface isn't actually a surface at all. You'll start feeling resistance just before you make contact, like trying to touch like poles of two magnets. This is pretty mild, but intensifies as you go on and once your finger passes through her stomach miss fairy will scream and hit you but more importantly you'll contact something solid not far beyond it, many somethings solid spaced apart, teeny-tiny balls and stands. That's odd, so let's put on a mask with goggles and stick our face in this fairy who hopefully agreed to that but it seems unlikely on account of how much this is going to hurt. (Maybe for science. And food. ...And a hug or five or six.)
On the Inside:
What you'll find in the little lady is exactly what it felt like, many less than one millimeter thick strands connecting hundreds of millimeters-wide orb-shaped nodes and thousands more nodes no bigger around than the wires leading to them. Most of the spirit's body is empty space, covered by a gradient forcefield and projected light. These internal structures are brightly colored, in the case of fey blaze orange and notably each part of their facade is most commonly an orange/brown of various hues, brightnesses and saturations (including super dark brown or super pale orange for their pupils and sclera), but if broken open are transparent or translucent white/grey inside. For ages there was no even vaguely comparable material to the unusual lipid-derived organic stuff these nodes are made out of, but the Drachentäller invented a very similar one half a century ago called "plastic" (though only they make it right now so it's still pretty pricey). The nodes have openings on them of different types which differentiate their function, but these aren't well understood, except the biggest ones outside the core that are just storage tanks for slurries of liquid nutrients. The wires feel like normal rubber-insulated wires but super thin, but under a microscope they look to be another bioplastic and if split open will reveal themselves to actually contain both piping for transporting material between nodes and actual copper wire that carries a current too low-gauge to be powering anything so it's speculated to effectively be her nervous system.
This explains her shapeshifting, seeing as her body's not real she just needs to re-arrange her wires and nodes, alter the shape of her outer fields and the image she's projecting. To grow from 50cm to 75, she just increased the distance between her nodes by 50%, her "surface area" by 125% and her "volume" by 237.5%, her mass and weight are completely unchanged. This also explains how such giant variations can exist within one species or even subspecies, they aren't really nearly as big of a change as they externally look to be. Fairies can project light and generate powerful magnetic fields, those are also being done by her nodes, with the very projectors that create her outer fields and holographic "self" which she doesn't know isn't real unless you tell her (she probably won't believe it). It also explains why they feel pain when you attempt to penetrate their fields, for starters they think there's actual physical flesh you're pushing into except for how it visibly doesn't react like it once you've started (and that confusion's only going to make them freak out more), and it makes sense if this imitation is a defense mechanism for a pain response to exist to reduce the odds of you or them discovering what's inside or either of you being able to make sense of what little you do see.
Of course, passing through their fields doesn't always hurt, only if they're expecting it to, the field projectors will even roll inwards to create an opening if one is expected in that spot. IE she bites things by rolling her face fields inwards to "open" her "mouth", then uses them to apply pressure, but as she has no actual teeth this is blunt and often she'll need to yank at it with her entire head, neck and even engage her torso to, for example, tear a chunk off a steak and swallow it. If you were to observe this hunk of steak you'd watch it get passed by repair nodes down into the woodchipper-like opening of one of her digestive nodes in her core, where it will be broken down into proteins and lipids and sent to storage through her piping. We know that because people have in fact stuck periscopes inside spirits to see what goes on inside them. As she uses energy, you may notice a tiny bit of fine dust descending from around her, this is ash and it's all that's left of the nutrients she efficiently consumes in exorbitant amounts to power everything she does. As she repairs damage, her repair nodes can produce the plastic of her tubing her core production nodes print complex components, even required metals coming out of what she eats.
The Core:
The core is the center of a spirit's being, a series of seven dreamcatcher-looking rings large nodes and thicker wire in rings stacked front to back with cross-crossing wires notably devoid of metal instead having silica fibers and flashing lights on each node for signalling between them, making sure every one in each ring is directly connected to each other for redundancy. Here you'll find, in her notably female case, from front to back, half her reproductive system, forward core nutrient storage, forward core cognitive ring (memory and motor control nodes are scattered throughout the body), central digestive and manufacturing ring, aft core cognitive ring, aft core nutrient storage and her other ring of reproductive nodes, and notably there is lots of tubing running between rings 1, 2, 4, 6 and 7. If she was male instead both reproductive rings would be at the back as the purpose of them is different.
In a fey, any humanoid spirit really, this is in the chest where you'd expect the heart to be. Some spirits have two cores, the second will be lower down, in a humanoid it'll be in the pelvis and/or abdomen, as low as it can be at its size and still fit without blocking the leg tendrils. These nodes require more exotic materials less common in food or that are more difficult to work with and even with recycling as much as possible are usually significantly harder to repair and replace. Losing digestive and manufacturing nodes is a big hit to regeneration rate, enough that they usually start by replacing those if at all possible. The way spirits die is by receiving too much core damage, or losing too much mass overall, to the point where they don't have the manufacturing nodes to fix themselves despite all being multiple redundant, or they lack both material in storage and the functionality to go get them. If starved, they will eventually enter an inert state and be left laying as a bundle on the ground until somebody revives them or they decay which takes a very long time even though their plastic is biodegradeable as it is coated in a preservative (in this case orange) chemical that takes years to corrode and is frequently replenished during normal activity. Even then, if you go grab the bundle and drop them into a bunch of loose resources like a bowl of ground beef and fruit preserves that'll solve the lack of resources and if they didn't lose all the required nodes they'll start fixing themselves up.
Damage control and repair:
As mentioned, spirits regenerate. As also mentioned, this is an internal repair system with distinct parts performing distinct tasks, which when they are unconscious gets all of their energy and resources allowing it to work significantly faster, whether they're unconscious because they were nearly destroyed or because they decided to go lie down for a minute because they just saw their wires and nodes for the first time. You may think this could be defeated by severing a part, since they wouldn't be able to reach out and grab it, but what'll actually happen is microwaves will be emitted by the repair nodes on each end of the breach and it'll fly right back into place to get fused back together, and if a node is is destroyed that node'll be replaced a part at a time which will take longer than patching a wire and it won't be working until it's fully reconnected, but the bioplastic that makes up most of it is pretty easy to print and paint if they've got proteins and fats on hand. If she takes too much damage, though, to the point where she's at risk of being destroyed she will involuntarily bail on this entire situation, dropping her outer fields and image, curling her wires into a tight ball, coating herself in a much denser forcefield, rocketing into the distance in a direction with nobody (detected) in it and as clear of a shot as possible. This launch is very forceful, reaching hypersonic speeds in a matter of seconds before the thrust stops and she cruises ballistically to a different post code and at quickly slows to a gentle landing. (Assailants: Brace for the backblast, or it may knock you on your ass.) She is semi-conscious during this process and once she's landed will fully lose consciousness in order to dedicate all her energy to self-repair until she's either back to 100% or as close as she's getting without getting up and finding something to eat. Significant damage to her core, whether it's that "enough core cables are cut to defeat their redundancy" or "a core node is destroyed", will usually result in her blasting off right away, as will her ending up in a situation where destruction otherwise seems unavoidable. Take a moment to absorb the implications of this while you imagine how much worse her being swallowed by a giant frog or something is going to work out for it than her even if she has to clean that mess up. Spirits actually dying due to violence is a rarity because of their remarkable ability to bail in the nick of time, although it does happen. They get hit with a 7-ton naval shell they're absolutely donezo, but dropping them in a volcano won't work because they'll blast off into the sky.
Reproduction and Development:
In her core, this fairy has two rings dedicated to reproduction, one at the very front and one at the very back. These are rings of dedicated manufacturing, wire-printing and assembly nodes, which create and keep in stock a set of redundant nodes, enough to make 1/2 of a new spirit minus their core. If we look in the chest of Sir Mothwing next to her he has none of the assembly or wire-printing nodes but he's got a bunch of dedicated manufacturing nodes in two rings at the back of his core and between them is kept the fruits of their labour: One entire spare core, in addition to half the nodes needed for the rest of a spirit stored stored between the reproductive rings and the back of the spirit which these nodes also manufactured. All they need to do is keep their cores together so a single opening through both their fields can allow them to interact. The actual internal process is unconscious, any activity that'll align their cores and press their bodies together will do the job. They mimic humans generally, but they don't always know how humans do it so this might just be hugging.
The spirit man will pass his spare parts into the spirit woman's chest, one at a time as she needs them, that's his entire job in the actual reproductive process. Granted, those are hard to replace parts, especially all those core cognitive and manufacturing nodes, so he can't do this nearly as often as she can and that puts the bottleneck on the side of the less common sex, giving them a slow reproductive rate. (Then again, they're massive resource hogs for their size, have indefinite lifespans and are hard to kill. Maybe slow reproduction's a good thing long-term.) As for her part she'll be externally paralyzed and unresponsive while her unconscious works as fast as it can making wire and connecting these parts together. In the mean time, he'll be semi-conscious, cuddled as close as humanly possible, only able to move if it's strictly necessary (if a coyote's wondering if they're edible he can go deal with that real quick and come back). The rest of the time while this process is going on, both of them will be tripping balls. No, that's not doing it justice, they're having a life-changing psychedelic experience. Why is unknown, only they're seeing the same things, communicating somehow and by the end they usually claim to "feel" the newborn's presence before they're born, if their estimates are right seemingly a couple hours after the core's done being assembled. Some think it's how the newborn's consciousness is formed, some think it's how all the child's various traits superficial and meaningful alike are determined, some think it's a deep spiritual experience meant to make them reflect on and prepare for the life-changing thing they're doing bringing another tinier person into the world, some think it's just meant to keep their conscious mind entertained while their unconscious does all the actual work. It's also notably intensely euphoric. Regardless, after about one day in 5d technicolor dreamland, the new infant spirit will be assembled and will exit the mother however makes sense to her. They may just pop right out of her chest as a little rolled-up ball, unfurl and form their facade mid-air before any of them wake up, only provided nobody's there to witness it (as far as any of them know).
The even littler one will as usual typically resemble hehis parents in many ways except often with several completely random minor variations like a ginger and a blue-haired parent may have a violet-haired child and have no idea why even if most of the time most of their traits seem to be inherited from their parents. Mutations that large shouldn't be occurring that often with biology as we know it, but this is not biology as we know it. Their sex is determined by how their mother assembles their core, whether they left room and connections at the front and back (female) or all at the back (male), and their facade matches their core in what may be a "natural" metaphor. As the father donates the core nodes the child will always be their father's subspecies, in fact this is how subspecies are classified because it's that reliable. ...And the exception is there are two species of hermaphroditic spirits who all have one male and one female core and each parent provides one of each and this means that if they are of different species you get actual hybrids, for example an ant myrmidon queen and a bee myrmidon queen make a wasp myrmidon queen with one ant core and one bee core. (Myrmidon queens look like little half-meter anthropomorphic insect queens, they make even tinier autonomous frameworks called "workers", "soldiers" and so on who are full-fledged sophonts. They have a limited cast of minions, a bee queen has six workers, four soldiers and two drones whose minds, memories and personalities are backed up every night in the queen's caboose in case they get smashed and they have to print a new copy. They usually don't understand the original is actually permanently dead and has not come back.)
A newborn fairy is already about half the mass of their parents despite looking externally like the infant they are and being the right size relative to them. The extra weight goes into thicker wire and fitting just as many forcefield and repair nodes into the way tinier body. At birth both sexes are always of identical actual mass, even if there's an apparent size difference, and will not appear to age externally despite accumulating actual mass as they go until suddenly overnight they appear to age years all at once complete with a change in their otherwise permanent hairstyle that seems to be subconsciously or even unconsciously decided and only usually has any continuity with the last style. This will first happen at 2, then at 5, then at 10. Their reproductive tract will grow in during their equivalent of puberty, until then there's just empty space, and even once it's there (age 14-16) it'll need just as much time to generate the parts as will be needed between kids later. If the kid's a girl that's only about six weeks, but for boys it's about two years, notably roughly coinciding with one of their overnight metamorphoses episodes when they turn 17, the previous having been at age 10, and they will suddenly go from looking like a kid in their pre or early teens to somebody vaguely in their late teens or early twenties, as they usually appear to be about the middle of the age group they're in, but it is while they are asleep on their exact birthday that these visible changes occur, all at once, exactly at midnight if they're already out. There is no upper limit on their age, after the "adult metamorphoses" at 17 they stop gaining actual mass (except they can always make more storage nodes if they need to) and their final visible change is at 82 at which point they look about a hundred years old indefinitely.
Combat Performance and the Framework:
Spirits aren't very strong, tend to be sent flying to the next county over from the next county over with one swing of a sword and their nutrient stores aren't much for how fast they can burn through them. That itty bitty fairy eats as much as a human toddler who appears to be several times her size and is many times her mass. Most of that normal operating cost is her facade, its fields and holograms are not cheap and she's not nearly as dimly glowly as other spirits even if turns it down as far as it'll go she will illuminate dim surroundings rather than only truly dark ones so that's more energy spent. All of that's coming from food eaten, and although their metabolism is more efficient and only leaves a fine ash she's still eating several times her actual mass on a daily basis. She also only has at most a couple days of nutrients stored, far less than if she spends that time, say, on a battlefield repairing damage to herself and others and shooting electro-lasers out of her wizard's staff in which case she'll be eating nearly as much as a physical folk-sized caster and more than any of the non magic-using soldiers. Thankfully, all spirits are omnivorous and not super picky about what they eat. Fat's got the most calories for them to use, sugar's the quickest to burn, carbs are sugars with extra steps and they need protein for their bioplastics that's most of what they'll need. They need other organic materials and minerals sometimes too, sometimes they'll eat rocks and even they can't have no explanation to give, but anything even vaguely edible to the least discerning and most voracious of goats will work just fine for them and they don't seem to be subject to poison or disease. (Corrosion is a different matter.)
They're really resistant to projectiles, they're mostly empty space after all a bullet could potentially go right through them and hit nothing, their forcefield does well against explosions, heat and corrosion, nor is cold really very effective, but a sword with good edge alignment faces comparatively little resistance from the forcefields and will cut them right in half straight through the core. Also, blunt impacts work fairly well, as although the force transferred through the fields is distributed between multiple projector nodes an impact can still jolt them hard enough to snap the wires they're connected to, it's not like they're spread across the entire facing side of the spirit's body like a blast wave and the forcefield is good at deflective most of the force of a blast wave away. This amounts in total to a significant melee weakness, especially since regeneration takes time and melee combat tends to be more short-lived than ranged combat. Although they are very hard to actually kill and all have interesting abilities, they tend to lose fights with physical sophonts pretty hard and may have issues with creatures that a physical sophont would demolish, since physical sophonts are stronger than they are, are capable of faster reaction times and can dish out a hit after taking one in a way a spirit won't because they'll probably be in the stratosphere. Of course, all of these people are probably wearing armor and that complicates this entire subject considerably, as does the fact that direct one on one duels are not exactly common.
Frameworks are their built-in attempt to make up for this, vaguely resembling a "wicker man" in the shape of one specific form of theirs complete with any and all shapeshifted gear as actual solid pieces. It's actually made bioplastics and glass as usual with them and it's articulated, it's got nutrient storage tanks, more forcefield and motor-function nodes, more holographic nodes too so their appearance gets more detailed (her hair even becomes a seperate piece from her head and flexible along its length) and they generally look more life-like with slightly less exaggerated proportions. Once in a framework, they can't shapeshift until they get back out, but while they're in it they're more protected, faster, stronger and have room for considerably greater reserves. They're both too metabolically expensive to manufacture and take up too much space to keep one of every possible gear variation, and while frameworks can be re-configured this is also metabolically expensive despite recycling as much as possible and being way cheaper than a whole new framework, so usually frameworks use shapeshift gear only if absolutely necessary even though framework gear is much more effective than normal shapeshifted gear between stronger fields and backing them up with various plastic and glass. Instead, spirits who have call for them tend to cap out at one framework for each of their major forms and not waste resources or space making more. Little miss fairy probably has a 50cm and 75cm framework, for example, and if she's not in danger often they'll last her until she outgrows them, and even then she can recycle them to mitigate the cost of the new ones. They last despite being made of bioplastic because thankfully, the framework is coated in a preservative coating just like her insides are that takes anywhere from months to decades to decay and is constantly being replenished when she's in the framework, it'll also take about as long for the bioplastic to degrade, and it can still be saved for a little while because her own repair system can also repair her framework. Of course, when you compare plastic and glass to actual armor and weapons it comes up short, but once forcefields are added to the mix... They still do in the balance, but only because the real armor and weapons can have internal magitech or be a different kind of weapon that couldn't be replicated, the framework weapons and armor tend to directly deal more damage and provide more protection by weight although that's "more protection" compared to lighter armor and "lighter weight" to denser armor.
What the IU Meat-People Think:
As you may have guessed, a common early "hypothesis" was that spirits were ethereal beings and their internals and frameworks were believed to be some sort of congealed ectoplasm and their connection to the corporeal realm. That belief died pretty hard when they were clearly reproducing, except to the kind of religious nutcase to whom reality is always irrelevant. Actual scholars who study things that exist are currently arguing as to whether to settle on "mechanical lifeform", "semi-physical lifeform", "holographic lifeform", or something like that except they all seem to think only their suggested term is acceptable and everybody else is WRONG BECAUSE (17 paragraph diatribe here). Still, they're at least seen by the scientific community as being an extremely bizarre lifeform. You might think they'd have a little issue accepting them as a lifeform because of all the plastic and metal wiring, but there's one important background detail I should mention: Spirits first came from the Otherlands.
In the Otherlands of west Sohei, meat grows on the ground, plants get up and walk around, animals come from spores, giant clonal colonies of sedentary animals grow throughout forests seeping caustic sludge, meteors sometimes fall from the sky followed by crystals that forge themselves mecha made of the ossified remains of what died in the blast, you get in too deep and all electronic sensors are jammed, electroreception is hit with a signal so overwhelming the sense goes completely dead to keep the creature from ripping its sensory organs out, concrete buildings grow on their own by millimeters per day, random paved roads with painted lines exist and change shape so slowly you don't notice until you're hopelessly lost, usually after running into a vertical loop or something unreasonable like that which those among us overly prone to antropomorphising might attribute to spite, sometimes broken glass falls from the sky, you get giant lightning storms where the strikes are so powerful they produce enough ionizing radiation to create a secondary electromagnetic pulse, the wind sounds like an unintelligible modulating electronic tone, people swear the clouds are watching them.... My point; Spirits are only debatably the strangest thing coming out of that place, and they're definitely not the most artificial-seeming thing that seems to be occurring there without outside intervention. At this point the answer to "Could spirits be natural creatures?" is "Uh... Oh I don't know, why the hell not?" or sometimes "Insufficient data; Please define the term 'natural' within the context of The Otherlands.".
But what do YOU meat-people think of them? (And what term would you choose to describe them?)