so I've completed rank 9 of master hunter because I wanted the panther cloak thing but when I get to the area South of braithwaite manor where it's supposed to be, nothing. no yellow clue indicators with eagle eye, no notification that I've entered legendary animal territory, I've paced around the area countless times and I've got rid of all the chance encounters and everything. I'm absolutely dumbfounded as to what to do. I'm in chapter six and just finished the hot air balloon mission with saidie and did the Penelope braithwaite final mission on the train just to be sure. any help would be appreciated.

Hello, previously I created another post here but due to busyness, I couldn't continue it. Here is the current situation: My game has been released on Steam as early access, and the journey took about 9 months. The main goal was to complete the journey and reach this point, and it has been an extremely instructive experience for me. In the future, if there are interested people, I am considering creating a post about it because it's not just about finishing the game. Planning the game, creating graphics, programming, voice acting, determining the mechanics are just the beginning. It's a multidimensional journey that includes establishing a company, reaching an agreement with Steam, creating a Steam page after the agreement, paying taxes for a company that hasn't made a profit yet, advertising and marketing, and shaping the game based on the feedback of beta testers, which consists of approximately 20 aspects. (Of course, it is still ongoing since it's in early access. By the way, it has been one month since the release.) In conclusion, I would appreciate it if you could add it to your wishlist. Thank you. (As the number of wishlists increases, the game becomes more visible to more people, and reaching a larger audience is currently my main goal, so your help would be greatly appreciated.) https://store.steampowered.com/app/2368350/Guardians_Survival/

I'm playing through the game for the first time, and I've played the OG before, and I just watched to share some thoughts on this chapter, because it was the worst so far to me, for a couple reasons:

1. It felt like that whole point of that was learning that Aerith can talk/understand ghosts, and it felt pointless, but maybe is a personal problem of mine, since I really don't care about Aerith's character at all, she is very childish and annoying, like someone who is trying really hard to be cute, but isn't
   
2. The party was really concerned about the plates dropping and potentially killings thousands of people, but they took a detour to hunt for a ghost child....why? It made no sense. To the point where when Cloud moves the last train, and they see the helicopters, Tifa says she's worried and I'm like, well no shit, didn't we just spent an hour playing with fuckin ghosts for no reason
   

Anyway, the game has been great so far, I'm really loving it, apart from Aerith and this specific chapter, I'm having really high hopes for the ending!!

I just took my last 0.25 shot. The weight has been melting off and I’m not hungry and it’s been great. I found a pharmacy that was certain they’d have the 0.5 in stock yesterday, but they didn’t. Now they’re saying for sure Tuesday or Wednesday.
I’m not due for my next shot until Saturday, but if they don’t get it in stock by Wednesday that gives me only 2-2.5 days to find it somewhere.
I’m ready to cry. Something finally works and now this roadblock. I wish I’d asked my dr about it 3 months earlier. Ugh.
Weights: 4/30: 220 5/9: 217 - appt with dr 5/13: 212.5 - first shot Today (6/3): 204

Just finished an e-bike tour of Mt Parintha (national park outside of Athens) via the company GR cycling. We aren’t done with our vacation yet, but this was SO MUCH FUN and I think will be my favorite thing on our trip. The company is amazing too- they picked us up at a metro stop and took us to the bottom of the mountain and we rode up as a family. In total it was 16.5 miles we biked, definitely recommend the e-bikes. Our kids are 12 and 9 and did great. Highly recommend if you’re active and looking for something off the beaten path. The views of Athens were amazing. Did I say it was amazing? To quote them..I really did feel like the Greek gods cycling along the skyline of Athens.

From chat support agents randomly disconnecting, or not even allowing you to fully connect with the agent and explain what happened…or the system just flat out denying you any opportunity to plead your case in any way just goes to show how evil and incompetent the leadership at DoorDash has gotten. I guess trying to professionally and maturely ask for a refund or something similar with these guys is like trying to ask them to give me their wallet! 🤣
Yesterday evening I ordered a 9” pizza with a bottle of water for myself, and the restaurant did not mention that their pizza sauces are sweet; on DoorDash it was only mentioned as their ‘original sauce’. The driver did nothing wrong but the pizza was not good at all. So when I tried to to talk to a support agent about it and possibly ask for a refund…moments later, without any consideration or looking at my photos for my order that clearly listed the pizza restaurant name, he was like: ‘I would have to escalate your case to a special team,’ and I was like I spent $16 for this order, the pizza being $14, tipped $3 and paid $3 for the express delivery fee so my pizza wouldn’t be cold…I had $10 worth of credit to use with this order so this order could have easily been $30.
After he randomly disconnected from the conversation because I was asking him why did we have to go that route, a few minutes literally I got a refund for $10. I was relieved, but then again, whoever came up with these procedures are either very dumb or extremely stupid. Not even a supervisor was able to help me with a refund, only a specialized team. It’s like dealing with Uber rides and not DoorDash, how is this supposed to be difficult for these morons? There were so many instances where I let these people see all the evidence I had just so I wait days for a response…over food.
Most of these chat agents are outside the US, and that includes call center teams which I find extremely weird. Some of them are nice but there are some who just don’t even care about you as a customer.
DoorDash is the worst company to be in business right now. Prove me wrong.
I hope everyone has a great weekend and I apologize for ranting :)

Hi all,
I’ve googled around on this and 9/10 it’s people recommending stuff like “write 3 things that would make today great” “write 3 things that was nice today”.
I see the value in that, but I feel like I have other things to work through before those things.
I’m terrible at communicating/understanding my feelings. Is there something a guided journal that pulls things out of you? As in something along the lines of, “is there anything you wish you could have done better today? What made you feel/do that thing? Why do you think you interpreted it that way? Why do you think you felt that way?”.
I need something that baby steps me through understand my feelings if that makes sense. Any recommendations?

This was my first relationship and I was in a long distance relationship with my ex for 15months , I was really serious about the relationship and I loved her tons , but unfortunately the feelings weren't mutual.
She started working around the 7th month of us dating and since that point she was neglecting me really bad , like not-talking for months kinda bad.
A little bit context for the timelines . We met twice , once at summer and once at christmas. Till summer vacation everything was great , a month after the summer vacation she started working and pretty much till christmas she was ghosting/neglecting me. She continued to do so after christmas too. We broke up on May.
We met for christmas and had a talk about it and she claimed that she is a workacholic and has a lot of stress thus she couldn't chat. Honestly , all of that was crap , I already knew she was hanging out with friends on a regular basis so she was just making excuses in my eyes . She'd say "I dont talk with anyone bcs of stress" . I couldn't help but notice her using other chat platoforms , like discord for example , which btw she'd told me she never uses discord , yet she would change her discord pfp multiple times.(She always has her status on invisible there too , so it was already difficult enough) She probably has cheated too tbh , she always spoke fondly of a "gay guy friend" that she couldn't even confirm that was gay and uh he most likely guy wasnt lol . Meanwhile I was getting the cold shoulder after months of being nice and understanding she speaks fondly of some other dude.
Anyway , after the vacation I had a really rough time , 3 people I knew passed away and I had a lot of mental breakdowns , I somehow kept it together to still be supprotive and understanding for her while she was neglecting me. I realized that this is just torture and toxic for me . We both agreed to talk about the relationship early May , I aproached her and well she projected her own shit onto me saying stuff like " You made your conclusion and you know whats best for you and you want this" kinda bs . I really wanted to somehow work it out , or at least end things peacefully with both sides being honest . Either way she left me hanging and I didn't get the chance to say everything I wanted to say , I was really hurt so I deleted her from everywhere.
Here I'm , after a month of therapy and a lot of thinking , sadly still heartbroken and new trust issues. I have written a compact version of everything I wanted to say the day we broke up and it's kinda like me closing this chapter of my life in a way. I'm not even remotely intrested on what she has to say , I just want to be ok with my self that I said everything I wanted to say and have no regrets about something I was so serious and invested about. Every person around me tells me not to do it thought , they tell me it's a really , really bad idea. Yet , I don't really feel ok with myself if I don't do it.
So yeah , whats your thoughts ?
Sorry if my english is not good , it's not my native language.

Star Stable Online may be lacking some small things in the game that would improve gameplay for daily, weekly, and monthly players old and new. I've compiled a list of some ideas that I believe might make gameplay more enjoyable, even in small ways.

1. A notice board!

SSO putting news on their website or social media doesn't always reach the entire community. If they were to put this same news or website links on a notice board in game, it could help to keep more players informed on upcoming discounts, events, updates, and horse retirement.

1. Stable Decoration

What if you could decorate your own stable, or hang tack on the wall? What if you could add pictures and screenshots to the bulletin boards? Maybe the chance to organize your horses or customize their stalls? Adding your own personal touch to these spaces, even in a small way, would add a different sense of connection and home to the home stable.

1. Guided Trail Rides

Ever wanted to go on more trail rides across Jorvik? A nice quiet moment when you need it is always good, and if the Jorvik Rangers teamed up with JERC, more trail rides and guided pathways could become reality.

1. Accessible Swimming

Swimming horses is good for exercise, if done in moderation. Allowing player-guided horses to swim within safe locations would be both realistic and encourage boating safety (because swimming near the ferries is dangerous!). Open water and polluted water are obviously not great ideas, but allowing swimming in other places could be more efficient and enjoyable.

1. Flying Pets Perch

Although this will be an issue mostly for star riders, haven't you ever thought it strange that the flying pets still fly when you aren't riding? What if they perched on you or their saddlebag when walking or stopped?

1. Fishing for Shillings and Coins

How often do you actually see people fishing around Jorvik? What if rather than doing it only for quests, you could fish and sell your catch for Shillings and/or Star Coins, depending on catch rarity. Would you fish more? And while this could be easily overpowered, there could be a limit to so many catches in a day to prevent abuse of this system.

1. Horses Lay Down

Tired horses or horses that trust their ridecaretaker will lay with them. If having a picnic or simply enjoying the views of Moorland and Jorvik, the player's horse will lay beside their person and enjoy it as well. Whether through command or by random chance, it could be a pleasant photo op or a nice way to build personality with the horse.

1. Jorvik Carnival (Concept)

Win prizes, play games! Pin the tail on Tin-can, give your best shot at popping balloons on a dart board, and try your luck at Wheel of Chance. Using shillings to try games and have a chance to win prizes from said games could also create competition between players at a seasonal event akin to a state fair in the US.

1. Cutscene Recaps

Sometimes we forget large swaths of plot. Having a chance to go back and reread the messages and plot could help jog your memory before moving on to a new story quest, or just to relive some nostalgia.
If I missed anything, please respond with what you think would improve overall gameplay in small ways such as this.

I've shared fiction here before and it didn't go altogether too poorly, so I'm going to press my luck and do it again. This was written about a year ago, and I'm tired of trying to peddle it to lit magazines. Might as well share it here, know that it met a few eyeballs, and have done with it.
It's relevant to the sub insofar as it's about urban alienation and the working conditions at a small business run by IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE people. (I tried to pitch it as a story of the great resignation with a momentary flicker of cosmic horror.) It's based on a similar job I took on after getting laid off during the lockdown, and the circumstances of the main character's breakup are faintly similar to one I went through several years back (her job sucked the life out of her).
Without further ado:
* * *
It was getting close to midnight, and the temperature outside was still above 80 degrees. We’d locked up the shop at 10:15 and walked over to Twenty, the dive bar on Poplar Street, where a single wall-mounted air conditioner and four wobbly ceiling fans weren’t putting up much resistance against the July heat baking the place from the outside and the dense mass of bodies giving it a stifling fever from within.
Just now I came close to saying it was a Wednesday night, because that was usually when the cyclists descended upon Avenue Brew, the gritty-but-bougie craft beer and sandwich shop I was working at back then. Every Wednesday between March and November, about fifteen to twenty-five Gen Xers dressed in skintight polyester, all packages and camel toes and fanny packs, locked up their thousand-dollar bikes on the sidewalk and lined up for IPAs and paninis. They reliably arrived around 8:00, an hour before we closed, making it impossible to get started on the closing checklist and leave on time at 10:00. The worst of them were demanding and rude, and even the best got raucous and stubborn after a couple drinks. There were nights when bringing in the sidewalk tables couldn’t be done without arguing with them. Most were sub-par tippers, to boot.
After Wednesday came and went that week without so much as a single 40-something in Ray Bans and padded shorts stopping in to double-fist two cans of Jai Alai, we dared to hope the cyclists had chosen another spot to be their finish line from there on out. But no—they’d only postponed their weekly ride, and swarmed us on Friday night instead.
I was the last person to find out; I was clocked in as purchaser that evening. The position was something like a promotion I'd received a year earlier: for twenty hours a week, I got to retreat from the public and sit in the back room with the store laptop, reviewing sales and inventory, answering emails from brewery reps, and ordering beer, beverages, and assorted paper goods. When I put in hours as purchaser, my wage went up from $11 to $15 an hour, but I was removed from the tip pool. On most days, tips amounted to an extra two or three dollars an hour, so I usually came out ahead.
This was back in 2021. I don't know what Avenue Brew pays these days.
Anyway, at about 8:15, I stepped out to say goodbye to everyone and found the shop in chaos. Friday nights were generally pretty active, the cyclists' arrival had turned the place into a mob scene. The line extended to the front door. The phone was ringing. The Grubhub tablet dinged like an alarm clock without a snooze button. Danny was on the sandwich line and on the verge of losing his temper. Oliver was working up a sweat running food, bussing tables, and replenishing ingredients from the walk-in. The unflappable Marina was on register, and even she seemed like she was about to snap at somebody.
What else could I do? I stayed until closing to answer the phone, process Grubhub orders, hop on and off the second register, and help Danny with sandwich prep. After the tills were counted out, I stayed another hour to take care of the dishes, since nobody had a chance to do a first load. Oliver was grateful, even though he grumbled about having to make some calls and rearrange Sunday's schedule so I could come in a couple hours late. Irene and Jeremy, Avenue Brew's owners, would kick his ass if he let me go into overtime.
Danny suggested that we deserved a few drinks ourselves after managing to get through the shift without killing anyone. Not even Marina could find a reason to disagree with him.
The neighborhood had undergone enough gentrification to support an upscale brunch spot, an ice cream parlor, a gourmet burger restaurant, a coffee and bahn mi shop, and Avenue Brew (to name a few examples), but not yet quite enough that the people who staffed them couldn’t afford to live within a ten-minute walk from the main avenue where all these hep eateries stood between 24-hour corner stores with slot machines in back, late-night Chinese and Mexico-Italian takeout joints with bulletproof glass at the counters, and long-shuttered delis and shoe stores. Twenty on Poplar was the watering hole set aside for people like us. It was dim, a bit dilapidated, and inexpensive, and usually avoided by denizens of the condos popping up on the vacant lots and replacing clusters of abandoned row houses.
When we arrived, Kyle waved us over. He didn’t work at Avenue Brew anymore, but still kept up with a few of us. He was at Twenty at least four nights out of the week.
So there we all were. I sat with a brooding stranger freestyling to himself in a low mumble on the stool to my left and Oliver on my right, who tapped at his phone and nursed a bottle of Twisted Tea. To Oliver’s right sat Marina, staring at nothing in particular and trying to ignore Danny, who stood behind her, closer than she would have liked, listening to Kyle explain the crucial differences between the Invincible comic book and the Invincible web series.
I recall being startled back to something like wakefulness when it seemed to me that the ceiling had sprouted a new fan. I blinked my eyes, and it wasn’t there anymore. It reminded me of an incident from when I was still living with my folks in South Jersey and still had a car, and was driving home from a friend’s house party up in Bergen County. It was 6:30 AM, I hadn’t slept all night, and needed to get home so I could get at least little shuteye before heading to Whole Foods for my 11:00 AM shift. I imagined I passed beneath the shadows of overpasses I knew weren’t there, and realized I was dreaming at the wheel.
I was pretty thoroughly zombified at that point. Heather and I had broken up for good the night before, and I hadn't gotten even a minute of sleep. Calling out at Avenue Brew was tough. Unless you found someone willing to cover your shift on like six hours' notice, you were liable to get a writeup, a demotion, or your hours cut if you couldn't produce a doctor's note. So I loaded up on caffeine pills and Five-Hour Energy bottles at the corner store, and powered through as best I could.
I finished the last thimbleful of Blue Moon in my glass. Oliver wiped the sweat from the back of his neck with a napkin and covered his mouth to stifle a laugh at the KiwiFarms thread he was scrolling through. Pool balls clacked; somebody swore and somebody laughed. The TouchTunes box was playing Bob Dylan’s “Rain Day Woman #12 & 35,” and enough bleary 40-something men around the bar were bobbing their heads and mouthing the words to make it impossible to determine which one of them paid two bucks to hear it. A guy by the cigarette machine who looked like a caricature of Art Carney in flannel and an old Pixies T-shirt was accosting a woman who must have been a toddler when he hit drinking age, and she momentarily made eye contact with me as she scanned the area for a way out. Danny was shouting over the bartender’s head, carrying on a conversation with the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, who was sitting on the horseshoe’s opposite arm.
I never got his name, but when Oliver first referred to him as the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, I knew exactly who he meant. Philly scene kid par excellence. Mid-20s, washed-out black denim, dyed black hair, thick bangs, and dark, gentle eyes. He was only truly alluring when he was on the job, because he seldom smiled then—and when he smiled, he broke the spell by exposing his teeth, stained a gnarly shade of mahogany from too much smoking and not enough brushing.
“How’s Best? Marcus still a joker?” Danny asked him.
“Yeah, you know Marcus. You know how he is.”
So the Hot Guy had been working at Best Burger (directly across the street from Avenue Brew) ever since Pizza Stan’s owners mismanaged the place unto insolvency. (Afterwards it was renovated and reopened as a vegan bakery—which incidentally closed down about a month ago.) Danny used to work at Best Burger, but that ended after he got into a shouting match with the owner. I happened to overhear it while I was dragging in the tables and collecting the chairs from the sidewalk the night it happened. It wasn’t any of my business, and I tried not to pay attention, but they were really tearing into each other. A month later, Oliver welcomed Danny aboard at Avenue Brew. I hadn’t known he’d been interviewed, and by then it was too late to mention the incident. But I’d have been a hypocrite to call it a red flag after the way I resigned from my position as Café Chakra's assistant manager two years earlier—not that we need to go dredging that up right now. Let's say there was some bad blood and leave it at that.
Anyway, I was thinking about giving in and buying a pack of cigarettes from the machine—and then remembered that Twenty didn’t have a cigarette machine. I looked again. The Art Carney-lookalike was still there, fingering his phone with a frown, but the girl was gone—and so was the cigarette machine.
I had only a moment to puzzle over this before Danny clapped me on the shoulder and thrust a shot glass in front of me.
“Starfish!” he said. (Danny called me Starfish. Everybody else called me Pat.) “You look like you need some juice.”
He distributed shots to everyone else. Marina declined hers, but changed her mind when Kyle offered to take it instead.
She and Kyle had stopped sleeping together after Kyle left Avenue Brew to work at the Victory taproom on the Parkway, but Marina was still concerned about his bad habits, which Danny delighted in encouraging.
We all leaned in to clink our glasses. Before I could find an appropriate moment to ask Marina if I could bum a cigarette, she got up to visit the bathroom. Danny took her seat and bowed his head for a conspiratorial word with Kyle.
I watched from the corner of my eye and tried to listen in. Like Marina, I was a little worried about Kyle. He got hired at Avenue Brew around the same time I did, just before the pandemic temporarily turned us into a takeout joint. He was a senior at Drexel then, an English major, and sometimes talked about wanting to either find work in publishing or carve out a career as a freelance writer after graduating. But first he intended to spend a year getting some life in before submitting himself to the forever grind.
He read a lot of Charles Bukowski and Hunter Thompson. He relished the gritty and sordid, and had already been good at sniffing it out around the neighborhood and in West Philly before Danny introduced him to cocaine, casinos, strip clubs, and a rogue’s gallery of shady but fascinating people. (None were really Danny’s friends; just fellow passengers who intersected with the part of his life where he sometimes went to Parx, sometimes came out ahead, sometimes spent his winnings on coke, and sometimes did bumps at titty bars.) Kyle recounted these adventures with a boyish enthusiasm for the naked reality of sleaze, like a middle schooler telling his locker room buddies about catching his older brother in flagrante and seeing so-and-so body parts doing such-and-such things.
Marina hated it. She never said as much to me, but she was afraid that the template Kyle set for his life during his “year off” was in danger of becoming locked in. The anniversary of his graduation had already passed, and now here he was trying to convince Danny to contribute a couple hundred dollars toward a sheet of acid his guy had for sale. He wasn't doing much writing lately.
I was the oldest employee at Avenue Brew (as I write this I’m 37, but fortunately I don’t look it), and when Kyle still worked with us I felt like it was my prerogative to give him some advice. The longer he waited to make inroads, I once told him, the more likely he’d be seen as damaged goods by the publishing world. He needed to jam his foot in the door while he was still young.
I could tell the conversation bored him, and didn’t bring up the subject again.
The bartender took my glass and curtly asked if I’d like another drink.
“No thanks, not yet,” I answered.
She slid me my bill.
I missed the old bartender, the one she’d replaced. I forget her name, but she was ingenuous and energetic and sweet. Pretty much everyone had some sort of crush on her. Sometimes she came into Avenue Brew for lunch, and tipped us as well as we tipped her. Maybe three months before that night—Danny witnessed it—she suddenly started crying and rushed out the door. Everyone at the bar mutely looked to each other for an explanation. (Fortunately for Twenty, the kitchen manager hadn’t left yet, and picked up the rest of her shift.)
She never came back. None of us had seen her since. But drafts still had to be poured and bottlecaps pulled off, and now here was another white woman in her mid-twenties wearing a black tank top, a pushup bra, and a scrunchie, same as before. Twenty’s regulars grew accustomed to not expecting to see the person she’d replaced, and life went on.
“How’re you doing?” I asked Oliver, just to say something to somebody, and to keep my thoughts from wandering back to Heather.
“Just kind of existing right now,” he answered. His phone lay face-up on the counter. He was swiping through Instagram, and I recognized the avatar of the user whose album he hate-browsed.
“And how’s Austin been?” I asked.
“Oh, you know. Not even three weeks after getting over the jetlag from his trip back from the Cascades, he’s off touring Ireland.” He shook his head. “Living his best life.”
He’d hired Austin on a part-time basis in September. We needed a new associate when Emma was promoted to replace a supervisor who'd quit without even giving his two weeks. There was a whole thing. I'm having a hard time recalling the guy's name, but I liked him well enough. He was a good worker and he seemed like a bright kid, but he was—well, he was young. Naïve. One day he found Jeremy sitting in the back room with his laptop, and took advantage of the open-door policy to ask why the store manager and supervisors didn’t get health benefits or paid time off. Jeremy told him it "was being worked on," and that he couldn’t discuss it any further at that time. I understand the kid got argumentative, though I never knew precisely what was said.
Irene started visiting the shop a lot more often after that, almost always arriving when the kid was working. No matter what he was doing, she’d find a reason to intervene, to micromanage and harangue him, and effectively make his job impossible. A coincidence, surely.
It’s something I still think about. By any metric, Jeremy and Irene have done very well for themselves. They’re both a little over 40 years old. I remember hearing they met at law school. In addition to Avenue Brew, they own a bistro in Francisville and an ice cream parlor in Point Breeze. They have a house on the Blue Line, send their son to a Montessori school, and pull up to their businesses in a white Volkswagen ID.4. But whenever the subject of benefits, wages, or even free shift meals came up, they pled poverty. It simply couldn’t be done. But they liked to remind us about all they did to make Avenue Brew a fun place to work, like let the staff pick the music and allow Oliver and me to conduct a beer tasting once a day. They stuck Black Lives Matter, Believe Women, and Progress flag decals on the front door and windows, and I remember Irene wearing a Black Trans Lives Matter shirt once or twice when covering a supervisor's shift. None of the college students or recent graduates who composed most of Avenue Brew's staff could say the bosses weren't on the right team. And yet...
I'm sorry—I was talking about Austin. He was maybe 30 and already had another job, a “real” job, some sort of remote gig lucrative enough for him to make rent on a studio in the picturesque Episcopal church down the street that had been converted into upscale apartments some years back. Austin wasn’t looking for extra cash. He wanted to socialize. To have something to do and people to talk to in the outside world. He wanted to make friends, and all of us could appreciate that—but it’s hard to be fond of a coworker who irredeemably sucks at his job. Austin never acted with any urgency, was inattentive to detail, and even after repeated interventions from Oliver and the supervisors, he continued to perform basic tasks in bafflingly inefficient ways. Having Austin on your shift meant carrying his slack, and everyone was fed up after a few months. Oliver sat him down, told him he was on thin ice, and gave him a list of the areas in which he needed to improve if he didn’t want to be let go.
When Austin gave Oliver the indignant “I don’t need this job” speech, it was different from those times Danny or I told a boss to go to hell and walked out. Austin truly didn’t need it. He basically said the job was beneath him, and so was Oliver.
It got deep under Oliver’s skin. He did need the job and had to take it seriously, even when it meant being the dipshit manager chewing out a man four or five years his senior. He earned $18 an hour (plus tips when he wasn’t doing admin work), had debts to pay off, and couldn't expect to get any help from his family.
The important thing, though, the part I distinctly remember, was that Oliver was looking at a video of a wading bird Austin had recorded. An egret, maybe. White feathers, long black legs, pointy black beak. Austin must have been standing on a ledge above a creek, because he had an overhead view of the bird as it stood in the water, slowly and deliberately stretching and retracting its neck, eyeing the wriggling little shadows below. As far as the fish could know, they were swimming around a pair of reeds growing out of the silt. The predator from which they extended was of a world beyond their understanding and out of their reach.
The video ended. Oliver moved on to the next item: a photograph of the bird from the same perspective, with a fish clamped in its beak. Water droplets flung from the victim's thrashing tail caught the sunlight. And I remember now, I clearly remember, the shapes of like twelve other fish stupidly milling about the bird's feet, unperturbed and unpanicked.
Danny peered at Oliver’s phone and observed a resemblance between the bird—its shape and bearing, and the composition of the photograph—and a POV porn video shot from behind and above, and he told us so. Elaborately. He made squawking noises.
“And mom says I’m a degenerate,” Oliver sighed. “Can you practice your interspecies pickup artist shit somewhere else?” Oliver flicked his wrist, shooing Danny off, and held his phone in front of his face to signal that he was done talking.
Danny sagged a little on his stool and turned away. I sometimes felt bad for him. For all his faults, he had the heart of a puppy dog. He really did think of us as his tribe. There was nobody else who’d only ever answer “yes” when you asked him to pick up a shift, and he did it completely out of loyalty.
He was turning 29 in a week. I wondered how many people would actually turn out to celebrate with him at the Black Taxi. Kyle probably would—but even he regarded Danny more as a source of vulgar entertainment than a friend.
Then it happened again. When I turned to speak to Oliver, there’d been a pair of pool cues leaning side-by-side against the wall a few stools down. Now they were gone.
This time it might have been my imagination. Somebody passing by could have casually snatched them up and kept walking.
But a moment later I seemed to notice a second TouchTunes box protruding from the wall directly behind me. I let it be.
Marina returned from the bathroom. Danny rose and offered her back her seat with an exaggerated bow. Before she got settled, I asked if she’d like to step outside with me. She withdrew her pack of Marlboro Menthols from her canvas bag, which she left sitting on the stool to deter Danny from sitting back down.
Marina never minded letting me bum cigarettes from time to time. I couldn’t buy them for myself anymore; it’s a habit I could never keep under control, and was only getting more expensive. Like everything else in the world. About once a month I reimbursed her by buying her a pack.
The air out on the sidewalk was as hot as the air inside Twenty, but easier to breathe. After lighting up, Marina leaned against the bricks and sighed.
“I wish Oliver would fire Danny already and get it over with.”
I nodded. Marina rarely talked about anything but work.
“He sneaks drinks and doesn't think anyone notices he's buzzed,” she went on. “He steals so much shit and isn’t even a little subtle about it. He’s going to get Oliver in trouble. And he’s a creep.”
“Yeah,” I said. These were her usual complaints about Danny, and they were all true. “At least he’s better than Austin.”
“That’s a low bar.”
Three dirt bikes and an ATV roared down the lonely street, charging through stop sign after stop sign, putting our talk on hold.
“Remind me. You’ve got one semester left, right?” I asked after the noise ebbed.
“Yep.”
Marina was a marketing major at Temple. She’d had an internship during the spring semester, and her boss told her to give her a call the very minute she graduated. Her parents in central Pennsylvania couldn’t pay her rent or tuition for her, so she was a full-time student and a full-time employee at Avenue Brew. Her emotional spectrum ranged from "tired" to "over it." She’d been waiting tables and working at coffee shops since she was seventeen, had no intention of continuing for even a day longer than she had to, and feared the escape hatch would slam shut if she dallied too long after prying it open.
She’d considered majoring in English, like Kyle. She went for marketing instead. I couldn’t blame her.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’ve been kind of off all day.”
“I’m terrible.”
“Why?”
I gave dodgy answers, but she asked precisely the right follow-up questions to get me going about what happened with Heather the night before.
It was the new job. Before the pandemic, Heather worked as a server at a Center City bar and grill. (That's where I met her; we were coworkers for about a year, and then I left to work Café Chakra because it was quieter and closer to where I lived.) When the place closed its doors and laid everyone off during the lockdown, she got a stopgap job at the Acme on Passyunk, and hated it. Then in March, she found a bar-and-lounge gig in a ritzy hotel on Broad Street. Very corporate. Excellent pay, great benefits. Definitely a step up. But her new employers made Irene and Jeremy look like Bob and Linda Belcher by comparison. It was the kind of place where someone had recently gotten herself fired for leaving work to rush to the hospital after getting the news that her grandmother was about to be taken off life support, and not finding someone to come in and cover the last two hours of her shift.
Heather seldom worked fewer than fifty-five hours a week, and her schedule was even more erratic than mine. At least once a week she left the hotel at 1:00 or 2:00 AM and returned at 9:00 the next morning. Neither of us could remember the last time she’d had two consecutive days off, and it had been over a month since one of mine overlapped with one of hers. She’d spent it drinking alone at home. All she wanted was some privacy.
I’d biked to South Philly to meet her when she got home at 1:30. The argument that killed our relationship for good began around 2:30, when I complained that we never had sex anymore. Heather accused me of only caring about that, when she was so exhausted and stressed that her hair was falling out in the shower. Quit the job? She couldn’t quit. The money was too good. She had student loans, medical bills, and credit card debt, and for the first time in her life she could imagine paying it all off before hitting menopause.
So, yeah, I was cranky about our sex life being dead in the water. Say whatever you like. But at that point, what were we to each other? We did nothing together anymore but complain about work before one or both of us fell asleep. That isn’t a relationship.
She said my hair always smelled like sandwiches, even after bathing, and she was done pretending it didn’t turn her off. I told her she was one to talk—she always reeked of liquor. As things escalated, we stopped caring if her roommates heard us. “You want to be a father?” she shouted around 4:00 AM. “Making what you make? That poor fucking kid.”
We fought until sunrise, and I left her apartment with the understanding that I wouldn’t be coming back, wouldn’t be calling her ever again. I biked home and sat on the steps facing the cement panel that was my house’s backyard. After my phone died and I couldn’t anaesthetize myself with dumb YouTube videos or make myself feel crazy staring at the download button for the Tinder app, I watched the sparrows hopping on and off the utility lines for a while.
At 11:40 I went inside. One of my roommates was already in the shower, so the best I could do was put on a clean Avenue Brew T-shirt before walking to the shop and clocking in at noon to help deal with the lunch rush.
“That’s a lot,” Marina finally said. “Sorry.”
I don’t know what I was expecting her to say. She was sixteen years my junior, after all, and just a coworker. She didn’t need to hear any of this, and I definitely didn't need to be telling her. But who else was there to tell?
She’d already finished her cigarette. I still had a few puffs left. She went inside.
I decided to call it a night.
The second TouchTunes box was gone—naturally. Danny had taken my stool, and regarded my approach with a puckish you snooze you lose grin. I wasn’t going to say anything. I’d just pay my bill, give everyone a nod goodnight, and walk the five blocks back home.
And then Danny disappeared.
One second, he was there. The next—gone.
Danny didn’t just instantaneously vanish. Even when something happens in the blink of an eye, you can still put together something of a sequence. I saw him—I seemed to see him—falling into himself, collapsing to a point, and then to nothing.
You know how sometimes a sound is altogether inaudible unless you’re looking at the source—like when you don’t realize somebody’s whispering at you, and can then hear and understand them after they get your attention? I think that was the case here. I wouldn't have known to listen if I hadn't seen it happen. What I heard lingered for two, maybe three seconds, and wasn't any louder than a fly buzzing inside a lampshade. A tiny and impossibly distant scream, pitchshifted like a receding ambulance siren into a basso drone...
I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. I’m certain I remember a flash of red, and I have the idea of Danny’s trunk expanding, opening up as it imploded. A crimson flower, flecked white, with spooling pink stalks—and Danny’s wide-eyed face above it, drawn twisting and shrinking into its petals.
For an instant, Twenty’s interior shimmered. Not shimmered, exactly—glitched would be a better word. If you’re old enough to remember the fragmented graphics that sometimes flashed onscreen when you turned on the Nintendo without blowing on the cartridge, you’ll have an idea of what I mean. It happened much too fast, and there was too much of it to absorb. The one clear impression I could parse was the mirage of a cash register flickering upside-down above the pool table.
Not a cash register. The shape was familiar, but the texture was wrong. I think it was ribbed, sort of like a maggot. I think it glistened. Like—camo doesn’t work anymore when the wearer stops crouching behind a bush and breaks into a run. Do you get what I’m saying?
Nobody else seemed to notice. The pool balls clacked. A New Order track was playing on the TouchTunes box. A nearby argument about about Nick Sirianni continued unabated.
Finally, there was a downward rush of air—and this at least elicited a reaction from the bartender, who slapped my bill to keep it from sailing off the counter.
“Danny,” I said.
“Danny?” Kyle asked me quietly. His face had gone pale.
“Danny?” Oliver repeated in a faraway voice.
After a pause, Kyle blinked a few times. “You heard from him?”
“God forbid,” said Marina. “When he quit I was like, great, I can keep working here after all.”
“Oh, come on—”
“Kyle. Did I ever show you those texts he sent me once at three in the morning?” The color had returned to Oliver’s face.
“No, what did he say?”
Oliver tapped at his phone and turned the screen toward Kyle.
“Oh. Oh, jeez.”
“Right? Like—if you want to ask me something, ask me. You know? Don’t be weirdly accusatory about it…”
I pulled a wad of fives and ones from my pocket, threw it all onto the counter, and beelined for the exit without consideration for the people I squeezed through and shoved past on the way.
I heard Marina saying “let him go.”
I went a second consecutive night without sleep. Fortunately I wasn’t scheduled to come in the next day.
The schedule. It’s funny. Oliver was generally great at his job, and even when he wasn’t, I cut him a lot of slack because I knew Irene and Jeremy never gave him a moment’s peace. But I could never forgive him those times he waited until the weekend to make up and distribute the schedule. This was one of those weeks he didn’t get around to it until Saturday afternoon. When I found it in my inbox, Danny’s name wasn’t anywhere on it.
As far as I know, nobody who hadn’t been at Twenty that night asked what happened to him. We were a bit overstaffed as it was, and everyone probably assumed Danny was slated for the chopping block. The part-timers were, for the most part, happy to get a few additional hours.
Oliver abruptly quit around Labor Day after a final acrimonious clash with the owners. I never found out the details, and I never saw him again. Jeremy and Irene took turns minding the store while a replacement manager was sought. None of the supervisors would be pressured into taking the job; they knew from Oliver what they could expect.
About three weeks after Oliver left, I came in for my purchasing shift and found Jeremy waiting for me in the back room. I knew it was serious when he didn’t greet me with the awkward fist-bump he ordinarily required of his male employees.
“You’ve seen the numbers,” he said. Business for the summer had fallen short of expectations, it was true, and he and Irene had decided to rein in payroll expenses. My purchaser position was being eliminated. Its responsibilities would be redistributed among the supervisors and the new manager, when one was found. In the meantime, I'd be going back to the regular $11 an hour (plus tips of course) associate position full-time.
Jeremy assured me I'd be first in the running for supervisor the next time there was an opening.
I told him it was fine, I was done, and if he’d expected the courtesy of two weeks’ notice, he shouldn’t have blindsided me like that.
“Well, that’s your choice,” he answered, trying not to look pleased. His payroll problem was solving itself.
I racked up credit card debt for a few months. Applied for entry-level museum jobs that might appreciate my art history degree. Aimed for some purchasing and administrative assistant gigs, and just for the hell of it, turned in a resume for a facilitator position at an after-school art program. Got a few interviews. All of them eventually told me they’d decided to go in a different direction. I finally got hired to bartend at Hops from Underground, a microbrewery on Fairmount.
I’m still there. The money’s okay, but it fluctuates. Hours are reasonable. I’m on their high-deductible health plan. There’s a coworker I’ve been dating. Sort of dating. You know how it goes. In this line of work you get so used to people coming and going that you learn not to get too attached. I walk past Avenue Brew a few times a week, but stopped peering in through the window when I didn't recognize the people behind the counter anymore.

not found... ... Read The Ten Great Emperors At The Beginning Are All My Apprentices - Chapter 51 - MangaPuma. Read more at https://mangapuma.com/the-ten-great-emperors-at-the-beginning-are-all-my-apprentices/chapter-51

I researched short-tailed pythons and blood pythons all day yesterday and think they could be the right snake for me.
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As a background, I currently have a Trans-pecos rat snake and an adult green iguana. I've had my iguana for 12 years and he kind of hates me but is in great health (is about 15+years old and was a rescue). He has his own room. My point is that, I have an animal that wants to attack me most days, so the intimidation factor is not an issue for me. I am okay with rehabbing a "feisty" baby or even adult. Honestly, I find that rewarding and have a lot of compassion for them.
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My TPRS (about 9 years old) is a total sweetheart, was purchased as an ex-breeder and had never seen the outside of a tub. I did choice-based handling with him and he changed from fearful to a total goofy angel in a few months. He has a 4'x18"x18" bioactive desert enclosure that I worked on for an entire year before getting my snake. He asks to come out every couple of days and he looks around, will climb on me and we'll look around the house, go get the mail etc. I know bloods/short-tails won't really climb on you.
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I think I have a decent amount of experience with reptiles. What I'm looking for in my next snake is something less fragile-feeling than my long skinny boy, and I think short-tails/bloods fit that bill.
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The only preference I have is for a female. I want something not too small (for this type of snake). It has to be thicker than my arm. Not too into any specific morph but I like ones where their head is a different color (pumpkin heads and some of the others that just look that way). Not too into the really dark/black morphs though.
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Does anyone want to convince me of a particular type? I guess I'd like to keep the adult in the 20-lb range but I think that fits most of them. I have heard some conflicting info about sizes, saying in particular the pumpkin head Sumatran short-tails are the smallest. I think my ideal size is like a 5' long and about 20 lbs adult, but I'm okay with a bit bigger than that.
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My ideal interaction with this snake is I want to watch movies and play video games with her while she sits there and does basically nothing. Too fat to easily get lost. I will also be choice-basing her (and will see if she ever even like, wants to come out of the enclosure lol, but I will try). Would love a naturalistic setup but that could be unrealistic; input on this is welcome too.
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Sorry if this post is all over the place but I feel enthusiastic about them! I hope some people here can offer some insight.

Rookie Performance Evaluation 4

With so many players in the MLB, some of the newest players get lost behind some of the high profile names. We are here today to evaluate every rookie who has played this year and highlight the top performances of the last two weeks and for the entire year. This week Josh Jung murdered some baseballs, Grant Anderson struck out seven in his debut out of the bullpen, and Bobby Miller shut down the Braves (and Nats).

Top Bi-Weekly Performances

American League:

1. Josh Jung (TEX 3B): Josh Jung continues to dominate at the plate, winning back to back AL rookie of the month awards in April and May. Josh Jung ended the month of May by slugging for 5 doubles, 1 triple and 4 home runs. Jung leads all third baseman in runs and batting average and leads all rookie batters in runs (4), hits (61), home runs (12), and RBIs (37). In his last 10 games, Jung had 9 extra base hits. Offensively, Jung is already worth 2 WAR and has only gotten better throughout the year. Jung sees the ball well, hitting 50.5% over 95 mph (top 90% in the league) and has been able to barrel 12.2% of pitches seen (top 81% in the league). Defensively Josh Jung is in the bottom half of 3rd baseman, having negative -2 defensive runs saved and -1 outs above average. Despite his below average defense, Josh Jung has been one of the best third baseman in the majors all season.
2. Masataka Yoshida (BOS LF): The Japanese superstar is doing all he can to keep the Red Sox afloat. Yoshida continues his hot streak, batting .348/.412/.500 in the the last 15 days. After a somewhat slow start to the season, Yoshida has emerged as one of the two big favorites for AL rookie of the year (along with Josh Jung). Yoshida still only has 21 strikeouts and walks on the year through 48 games on the season. Yoshida will put the ball in play and will rarely kill a batting rally with a strikeout. He hardly chases the ball and is top in the league on whiff rate. Yoshida has adapted to MLB pitching very quickly and will remain a superstar for years to come.
3. Logan Allen (CLE SP): The Guardians have a loaded starting pitching staff with the return of Aaron Civale and Triston McKenzie. Logan Allen, along with rookies Tanner Bibee, Hunter Gaddis, and Peyton Battenfield, has shined in the starting rotation. Allen had his best game of the season, going 7 innings against the Baltimore Orioles allowing only 3 hits, no earned runs, and striking out 10. Through 7 starts in the year. In his last three starts, Allen has only allowed 4 earned runs through 18.2 innings. Of the four rookie starting pitchers for Cleveland, Allen has pitched the most innings (39.2) and holds the lowest ERA (2.72). Allen’s next start is scheduled on June 3rd against the Minnesota Twins.
4. Louie Varland (MIN SP): Varland pitched seven shutout innings against the Houston Astros. Varland has pitched back-to-back quality starts in 4 of his last five starts. The only game Varland did not get a quality start was against the Angels, where he gave up only 2 earned runs in 5 innings. Varland primarily throws a 4-seam (42%) and cutter (30%) and goes to his slider (12%) and changeup (12%) to put batters away. Varland hardly walks batters but gives up a lot of hard contact. Nonetheless Varland has pitched effectively, limiting the damage done in most games he has started. Varland's next start is projected to be on June 6th against the Tampa Bay Rays.
5. Ryan Noda (OAK 1B): Ryan Noda powered a three-run home run to snap the Athletic’s 11-game losing streak. In the last 15 games, Noda has batted .256 with 3 home runs and 3 doubles on 11 hits. Noda hits 48.2% of balls 95 mph or higher and barrels 16.9% of pitches. Despite this, Noda ranks in the bottom percentile in whiff rate. Noda whiffs on 36% of fast balls, 42% in breaking balls, and 38% of offspeed pitches. Noda has struck out in 33% of his plate appearances (61 strikeout total) but simultaneously ranks in the top percentile in walks taken (35 walks total).
6. Zach Neto (LAA SS): Despite all the preseason hype for Anthony Volpe and Gunnar Henderson, Zach Neto has quietly emerged as the most consistent bat for rookie AL shortstops. Only 22 years old, Neto was the first player from the 2022 MLB draft to make the majors. Defensively, Neto has been steller. In 44 games, Neto has already racked up .8 defensive war and has generated 2 more outs above average than other shortstops. In the last 15 days, Neto has 11 hits with 4 doubles and a home run. Neto had small injury scare against the Marlins with a finger contusion, but has already made it back into the starting lineup.
7. Grant Anderson (TEX RP): Grant Anderson has only played in one game this season but I figured he deserved a special shoutout. In his major league debut, Anderson pitched 2 and 2/3rd innings out of the bullpen striking out 7 of the 9 batters. Anderson only gave up one hit and earned the win against the Detroit Tigers.

Pitchers	W / L	GS	ERA	IP	SO	BB	H / R / ER	HR	WHIP	HBP	GDP
Allen, Logan	1 - 1	7	2.72	39.2	43	11	41 / 13 / 12	3	1.31	0	1
Varland, Louie	1 - 0	7	3.51	41	39	8	39 / 16 / 16	9	1.15	1	2
Batter	Team	Games	At Bats	AVG/OBP/SLG	HR	RBI	SB / CS	SO/BB	2B / 3B / HR	Off WAR	Def WAR
Jung, Josh	TEX (3B)	52	207	.295/.341/.531	40	37	1 / 2	63K / 14BB	11 / 1 / 12	2	0.3
Yoshida, Masataka	BOS (LF)	48	186	.312/.389/.500	26	31	3 / 0	21K / 21BB	12 / 1 / 7	1.1	-0.6
Neto, Zach	LAA (SS)	44	147	.245/.319.374	15	18	3 / 0	32K / 7BB	6 / 0 / 6	1.2	0.8
Noda, Ryan	OAK (1B)	53	143	.231/.393/.448	28	19	2 / 1	61K / 35BB	11 / 1 / 6	1.3	-0.1​
Relief Pitcher	G	W - L	ERA	IP	SV / SVO	SO / BB	WHIP	H / R / ER	HR	GDP	HLD
Anderson, Grant	1	1 - 0	0	2.2	0 / 0	7K / 0BB	0.38	1 / 0 / 0	0	0	0​

National League:

1. Bobby Miller (LAD SP): The Dodgers #2 prospect has done nothing but impress. In his first two starts on the season, Miller has posted a 1.64 ERA through 11 innings. Miller equally throws a sinker, changeup, slider, and 4-seam fastball. On his fastball, Miller averages 99 mph on his sinkers and 4-seam and sometimes will go to his curveball to strike out batters. In his debut, Miller went 5 innings and only one earned run on 4 hits against the Atlanta Braves. He followed his debut by going 6 innings, allowing only 1 earned run on four hits. Bobby Miller's next scheduled start is June 4th against the New York Yankees.
2. Spencer Steer (CIN 3B): Spencer Steer uses every side of the field. In the last 15 days, Steer has batted .389/.424/.667 with 4 doubles, one triple, and three home runs. Steer currently leads NL rookies in hits (59), RBIs (T28 with Outman), and doubles (T15 with Tovar). Steer has recently returned to his 2022 self hitting 8 home runs on the season and putting the ball consistently in play. Steer has struggled greatly defensively with -8 outs above average at both first and third base and generating -.4 WAR on the season. He ranks in the bottom 1% of outs above average and, when fielding, is completely 7% of plays as expected at both first base and third base. Despite these struggles, Steer’s production at the plate has lead him to be named the National League Rookie of the month for May.
3. Matt McLain (CIN SS): The Red’s #5 prospect made his major league debut after TJ Friedl was moved to the 10-day injured list . In the last 15 days, McLain has the most at bats (57), hits (T21 Steer) and runs (T11 Steer) in the National League. McLain won this week’s player of week and continues to bat .329/.390/.486 in 16 games. McLain is primarily causing damage against fastballs and breaking balls, batting over .400 on such pitches. Defensively, McLain has been stellar. In only 16 games, he has generated 2 outs above average at shortstop and has added 5% success rate at the position off 43 attempts. If McLain can continue his success at the plate, along with fellow ROY contender Spencer Steer, then they can help Cincinnati compete for a relatively week NL Central division (who knows what may happen if the Reds call up fellow shortstop Elly de la Cruz).
4. Corbin Carroll (ARZ LF): Corbin Carroll continues to impress and at this point I feel like I am repeating myself. The 22 year old left-fielder has power, defense, and speed. Carroll has helped the Diamondbacks to take control (or at least tie) in the National League West. In the past 15 days, Carroll has slugged for 4 doubles and three home runs on 15 hits. He leads the national league in stolen bases and has a real shot at joining the 20 / 20 club as a rookie. On the year, Carroll’s slash line is .287/.372/.516. Of all rookies, Corbin Carroll leads in WAR, already accumulating 2.1 on offense. On the defensive side of the ball, Carrol has generated 2 outs above average and has added 2% to the expected fielding average in left field. Expect to see Carroll on these lists for the rest of the season.
5. Patrick Bailey (SF C): Joey Bart was thought to be the replacement at catcher for the San Francisco after the departure of Buster Posey. With everyone’s focus on Bart, Bailey went under the radar. In 11 games, Bailey has batted .333/.350/.564 with 12 hits, of which 3 were doubles and 2 were home runs. In the minor’s. Bailey was praised for his framing abilities behind the plate. If Bailey can continue his success at the plate, San Francisco may be posed well at the catcher position for years to come.
6. Will Brennan (CLE RF) - Although he is not a batter that consistently hits the ball hard, Will Brennan, in the last 15 days, has 12 hits in 12 games including 3 doubles and 1 home run.. He is batting .364/.400/.515 and has been reliable at the plate when batters are at first base. Brennan has a batting average of .318 with a runner at 1st (23 plate appearances) and batting .500 with runners at 1st and 2nd (6 plate appearances). Though Will Brennan did kill a bird on a ground-ball single last week. So… he has that going against him.

Pitchers	W / L	GS	ERA	IP	SO	BB	H / R / ER	HR	WHIP	HBP	GDP
Miller, Bobby	2 - 0	2	1.64	11	9	2	8 / 2 / 2	0	0.91	0	0
Batter	Team	Games	At Bats	AVG/OBP/SLG	HR	RBI	SB / CS	SO/BB	2B / 3B / HR	Off WAR	Def WAR
Steer, Spencer	CIN (1B)	53	204	.289/.358/.500	30	28	1 / 2	47K / 21BB	15 / 2 / 8	1	-0.4
McLain, Matt	CIN (SS)	2	65	.354/.417/.523	13	9	1 / 1	20K / 6BB	5 / 0 / 2	0.9	0.2
Carrol, Corbin	AZ (LF)	54	188	.287/.372/.516	27	24	16 / 2	43K / 23BB	14 / 1 / 9	2.1	-0.3
Bailey, Patrick	SF (C)		39	.333/.350/.564	4	12	0 / 0	11K / 1BB	3 / 0 / 2	0.6	0.2
Bae, Ji Hwan	PIT (CF)	51	149	.275/.329/.360	19	12	15 / 5	40K / 10BB	8 / 0 / 2	0.1	-0.4​

Worst Bi-Weekly Performances:

1. Brice Turang (MIL 2B) - In the last 14 games, Turang is batting only .077/.122/.154. In his last seven games, Turang only has one base hit. In his last 15, Turang only has 3. Turang, on the season, has struck out in 27% of his plate appearances and barrels on only 3.6% of pitches. Turang primarily is struggling in making contact with offspeed pitches, whiffing on 40% of those seen.
2. James Outman (LAD OF) - After starting the season hitting everything out of the park, Outman bat has cooled off immensely. In his last 10 games, Outman only has two singles and is batting .074/.182/.074. Outman hits the ball hard when he makes contact, but has whiffed on 40.4% of pitches seen. Outman has striked out in 35% of his at bats. Outman leads all rookies in strikeouts and 5th in the majors. Defensively, Outman has been above average in furling in the outfield. He is converting 3% more outs than estimated success rate and has created 3 outs above average in the outfield.
3. Anthony Volpe (NYY SS) - Defensively, Anthony Volpe has been phenomenal at shortstop. The Yankee’s #1 prospect is only 22 years old and already has .7 defensive war. Volpe has recently struggled at the plate. He is second among rookie pitchers in strikeouts (68) and 8th in the majors. On the season, Volpe is only batting .192/.270/.355. But when Volpe does get a hit, he hits for power and brings speed on the basepaths. Volpe has 13 steals on the season and has yet to be caught stealing.
4. Karl Kauffmann (COL SP) - Kauffmann made his major league debut on May 19th and has not had a good time. In three starts, Kaufman has posted an 11.37 ERA and earned 3 losses. In his first start, Kauffman went 4.1 innings against Texas and allowed 4 earned runs off seven hits. In his next start, Kaugment again went 4.1 innings against Miami ang gave up 5 earned runs on 6 hits. In his final game, he went 4.0 innings against Arizona and allowed 7 earned runs on 9 hits. In all three games combined, Kauffman only struck out 7 and walked 8. Kauffman is only averaging 90 mph on his fastball and has left too many pitches in the middle of the strike zone.

Shout out to Miles Mastrobuoni as well who is batting .053 in 9 games (19 plate appearances) and for having an ERA of 108.

Pitchers	W / L	GS	ERA	IP	SO	BB	H / R / ER	HR	WHIP	HBP	GDP
Kauffmann, Karl	0 - 3	3	11.37	12.2	7	7	22 / 17 / 16	3	2.29	1	4
Batter	Team	Games	At Bats	AVG/OBP/SLG	HR	RBI	SB / CS	SO/BB	2B / 3B / HR	Off WAR	Def WAR
Turang, Brice	MIL (2B)	53	156	.205/.253/.301	13	12	7 / 3	46K / 10BB	4 / 1 / 3	0	0.4
Outman, James	LAD (CF)	55	175	.234/.323/.469	28	29	6 / 1	70K / 19BB	8 / 3 / 9	0.7	-0.2
Volpe, Anthony	NYY (SS)	58	201	.194/.272/.358	20	24	13 / 0	68K / 21BB	5 / 2 / 8	1	0.7
Casas, Triston	BOS (1B)	48	149	.188/.301/.349	23	16	0 / 0	49K / 25BB	4 / 0 / 6	-0.7	-0.6​

My Early Rookie of the Year

American League:

1. Masataka Yoshida (BOS LF) - See my blurb above
2. Josh Jung (TEX 3B) - See my blurb above
3. Esteury Ruiz (OAK CF) - In 58 games, Ruiz is already at 28 stolen bases. ALthough Ruiz is not hitting for extreme power, his speed is turning almost half of his base hits into what is essentially a double. In most offenses that are not the Oakland Athletics, this would typically translate to more runs and have them take leads early on balls just put in play. Among qualified rookies in the American league, Ruiz ranks 3rd in batting average, T1st (with Jung) in hits, and 1st in doubles. Ruiz does rank in the bottom percentile for hard hit percentage (1%), barrel rate (5%) and walk rate (5%).
4. Hunter Brown (HOU SP) - In 11 games, Hunter brown has a 3.64 ERA and recently overtaken Kodai Senga for the lead in strikeouts for rookie pitchers. Brown struggled in his last start against Minnesota, giving up 5 earned runs on 6 hits. This was after Brown had pitched back-to-back quality starts against the Oakland As (7 IP 2 ER and 6 IP 1 ER).
5. Logan Allen (CLE SP) - See my blurb above
6. Bryce Miller (SEA SP) - The Mariners #2 prospect dominated the league in his first five starts going at least 6 innings in each and allowing only four runs in total. Miller only had one hiccup game in which he allowed 8 earned runs in 4.2 innings against the New York Yankees. Miller's success has been largely in part in limiting walks and throwing many strikes for weak contact. Miller is top in the league in walk rate only allowing walks in 2% of at bats. Miller primarily throws his fastball 68% of the time and goes to his offspeed pitchers to put batters away. Miller is set to start on June 4th against Nathan Eovaldi of the Texas Rangers.
7. Yennier Cano (BAL RP) - In his first 9 innings of the year, Cano did not allow a single base hit. Can has 30 strikeouts on the season through 30 innings of relief. In 5 save opportunities, Cano has successfully earned 4 saves with a 0.93 ERA and a WHIP of 0.59. Cano remains the secondary closer behind Felix Bautista, used primarily to maintain leads in close games and as the set-up man for the 9th inning.

Pitchers	W / L	GS	ERA	IP	SO	BB	H / R / ER	HR	WHIP	HBP	GDP
Allen, Logan	1 - 1	7	2.72	39.2	43	11	41 / 13 / 12	3	1.31	0	1
Brown, Hunter	4 - 1	11	3.61	62.1	74	20	57 / 29 / 25	4	1.24	4	6
Miller, Bryce	2 - 0	6	3	36	31	3	24 / 12 / 12	2	0.75	2	0
Batter	Team	Games	At Bats	AVG/OBP/SLG	HR	RBI	SB / CS	SO/BB	2B / 3B / HR	Off WAR	Def WAR
Yoshida, Masataka	BOS (LF)	48	186	.312/.389/.500	26	31	3 / 0	21K / 21BB	12 / 1 / 7	1.1	-0.6
Jung, Josh	TEX (3B)	52	207	.295/.341/.531	40	37	1 / 2	63K / 14BB	11 / 1 / 12	2	0.3
Ruiz, Esteury	OAK (CF)	57	223	.269/.335/.350	24	24	28 / 5	44K / 10BB	13 / 1 / 1	0.4	-0.9​
Relief Pitcher	G	W - L	ERA	IP	SV / SVO	SO / BB	WHIP	H / R / ER	HR	GDP	HLD
Cano, Yennier	23	1 - 0	0.93	29	4 / 5	30K / 1BB	0.59	16 / 3 / 3	0	3	11​

National League:

1. Corbin Carroll (ARZ LF): See my blurb above.
2. Spencer Steer (CIN 3B): See my blurb above.
3. Kodai Senga (NYM SP): In his last start, Kodai Senga pitched 7 innings of 1 hit baseball against the Philadelphia Phillies. Senga ranks first among national league pitchers in strikeouts and second in innings pitched (behind Ryne Nelson). Kodai Senga strikes out 29.8% of batters but gives up lots of hard contact. Batters are still only batting .125 against his ghost fork and strikes out 59.1% of batters as a putaway pitch. This is primarily because batters have a 59.1% whiff rate on his forkball (66 PA) and his slider (7 PA). Senga is scheduled to pitch on June 4th against the Toronto Blue Jays’ Yusei Kikuchi.
4. Ezquiel Tovar ( COL SS): In 55 games on the season, the Colorado shortstop has accumulated 46 base hits in 55 games. Tovar leads all NL rookies in doubles (16) and is currently slashing .241/.286/.398. Defensively, Tovar has been exceptional at shortstop accumulating 0.9 defensive war. Tovar has 6 outs above average at shortstop and has successfully converted 3% more plays than the estimated success rate.
5. James Outman (LAD CF): See my blurb above.
6. Francisco Alvarez (NYM C): The Mets #1 prospect has taken the league by storm. Alvarez has been above average in framing especially above the zone and has 5 blocks above average. Alvarez however has struggled in maintaining run control having -3 CS above average. At the plate, Alvarez has 6 doubles and 8 home runs on the season in 35 games with a slash line of .252/.308/.523.

Pitchers	W / L	GS	ERA	IP	SO	BB	H / R / ER	HR	WHIP	HBP	GDP
Senga, Kodai	4 - 2	10	3.44	55	70	31	43 / 21 / 21	6	1.35	0	4
Batter	Team	Games	At Bats	AVG/OBP/SLG	HR	RBI	SB / CS	SO/BB	2B / 3B / HR	Off WAR	Def WAR
Carrol, Corbin	AZ (LF)	54	188	.287/.372/.516	27	24	16 / 2	43K / 23BB	14 / 1 / 9	2.1	-0.3
Steer, Spencer	CIN (1B)	53	204	.289/.358/.500	30	28	1 / 2	47K / 21BB	15 / 2 / 8	1	-0.4
Tovar, Ezequiel	COL (SS)	54	187	.241/.286/.396	19	23	2 / 1	57K / 10BB	15 / 1 / 4	0.8	0.9
Outman, James	LAD (CF)	55	175	.234/.323/.469	28	29	6 / 1	70K / 19BB	8 / 3 / 9	0.7	-0.2
Alvarez, Francisco	NYM (C)	35	111	.252/.308/.523	14	19	0 / 0	29K / 7BB	6 / 0 / 8	1	0.3​

MLB Debuts

• 5/19 Karl Kauffmann (COL SP) - u/TEX 4.1 IP, 4 ER, 7 H
• 5/19 Patrick Bailey (SF C) - Mia 0-0
• 5/23 Bobby Miller (LAD SP) - u/ATL 5 IP, 1ER, 4 H
• 5/26 Randy Vasquez (NYY SP) - SD 4.2 IP, 2 ER, 4H
• 5/28 Andruw Monasterio (MIL 2B) - SF 0-1

Pitchers	W / L	GS	ERA	IP	SO	BB	H / R / ER	HR	WHIP	HBP	GDP
Kauffmann, Karl	0 - 3	3	11.37	12.2	7	7	22 / 17 / 16	3	2.29	1	4
Miller, Bobby	2 - 0	2	1.64	11	9	2	8 / 2 / 2	0	0.91	0	0
Vasquez, Randy	0 - 1	1	3.86	4.2	6	3	4 / 2 / 2	1	1.5	2	0
Batter	Team	Games	At Bats	AVG/OBP/SLG	HR	RBI	SB / CS	SO/BB	2B / 3B / HR	Off WAR	Def WAR
Bailey, Patrick	SF (C)	11	39	.333/.350/.564	4	12	0 / 0	11K / 1BB	3 / 0 / 2	0.6	0.2
Monasterio, Andruw	MIL (2B)	3	4	.375/.444/.375	0	0	0 / 0	3K / 1BB	0 / 0 / 0	0.1	0​

The stats I used for this analysis were prior to any games on Friday May 2nd. If you want to see all the rookies I reviewed and their stats as of me writing this I have attached a (google sheet link here)[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hMB-Eu4fowNgdKSRHoBorhtCOKr8KaTx3kYXfcUvZvc/edit?usp=sharing\]. I am primarily a Chicago Cubs fan so you will likely know more about your team than me, so I apologize if I may have overlooked or underlooked anything. Let me know if there are any memorable moments I may have missed or your own hot takes.

Gen Todoroki, a talented but accident-prone rally driver, gets offered a contract deal from a big-shot car company—and the deal comes with a chance to prove himself in the world of rally racing. However, the road there is bumpy and rife with tough competitors... ... Read Goddamn - Chapter 9 - MangaPuma. Read more at https://mangapuma.com/goddamn/chapter-9

My boyfriend hasn’t done the dishes in almost 3 years and I’m standing at the sink questioning everything. We have been together almost 9 years and we have 2 kids together. I’m staring at the kitchen trying to figure out what to feed the kids for breakfast while he sleeps on the couch after yelling at our kid to be quiet for the 10th time this morning. I love my boyfriend and I love my kids more than anything but I feel like it would be easier to be a single mom sometimes. I have autism and a lot of sensory issues that come with that. I HATE water tasks like dishes, and even showering/ brushing teeth. I obviously still do them because I have to, but he doesn’t realize how much mental energy it takes for me to do these things. He’s never done the dishes because he doesn’t like them. All he does is sit at his computer and play video games every second he’s not at work. I’m a stay at home mom and I’m so burnt out on doing this every day. I’ll have a breakdown because my kid will ask me to open a drink for her when I’m busy instead of her dad who is just sitting there. He’s the guy who will only do things if I ask him to. His only chore is to take trash out. I do absolutely everything else. I am so tired of hearing him talk to his online friends playing games. I’ve tried telling him less screen time for both of us but it’s never happened. Maybe I should’ve known what it would be like to be with a “gamer” but I didn’t think he would prioritize a ranked game over his family. I want him to have friends and play games but I also don’t want to be the only person to bathe our kids, cook, clean, do laundry. I would also like to talk to friends or play a game once in a while. I don’t want to leave him, despite everything I’ve typed he really is a great person and I love him with everything in me. How do I get him to help me more if conversations aren’t working?

I'm currently working on a fanfiction series on Ultraman Ribut's time on Earth, which is essentially a new version of the Upin and Ipin cartoons. I have a general idea of the series' primary plot, but I intended to write as if there were 25 episodes, each of which would be equivalent to 2 chapters. As a result, I was hoping to write a 50+ chapter series—an ambitious goal, I know. Anyway, below is a rough draft of ideas I have for the series. The issue is that I just have a general idea of where this story will go. The specifics, like which Seijin will fit the duties of each League and what kind of message is appropriate for this scenario, are where I get stuck. You guys can help in this situation.
​
XXXXXX
The Heroes
Khairi Terasawa (MC)
• The teams newest recruit and still has a lot to learn.
• Can be a bit naive and idealistic at times but has a strong sense of justice.
• Has a natural talent for combat but lacks experience and can be impulsive.
• Due to ideological differences, he often clashed with other team members over discussing events.
​
Defence and Rescue Force (DRF) Members
Commander Faiz
• A stern but fair leader who always puts the mission first.
• Has a strong sense of duty and honor, and expects the same from his team
• Has a mysterious past that he doesn't like to talk about.
​
Lieutenant Commander Sara
• Faiz's second-in-command and closest confidante.
• Has a no-nonsense attitude but can be compassionate when the situation calls for it.
• Fiercely loyal to Faiz and the DRF, but sometimes struggles with doubts and insecurities.
​
Wani
• The team’s resident scientist and intellectual.
• She is a bit of a perfectionist and can be hard on herself when things don't go as planned.
• Has a curious mind and is always eager to learn new things.
​
Zaid
• The team's wise old veteran and mentor figure
• Patient and understanding but doesn't suffer fools gladly.
• Has a dry sense of humour and often delivers pearls of wisdom with a wry smile.
​
Fizi
• The team's tech expert and resident goofball.
• Always cracking jokes and making light of tense situations.
• Has a childlike enthusiasm for gadgets and technology and is always tinkering with new inventions.
​
Ray
• The team's muscle and enforcer.
• Fiercely loyal to the team and will stop at nothing to protect his friends.
• Has a heart of gold and will go to great lengths to help those in need.
​
Monsters and Aliens
The League
Seraph - The Leader
• A ruthless and calculating leader who will stop at nothing to achieve his goals.
• Intelligent, strategic, and often cold and calculating.
• Not above using fear and intimidation to keep his followers in line and is always looking for ways to gain an advantage over his enemies.
​
Lyla - The Devoted Follower:
• A devoted follower of Seraph and believes in his vision for the future. She is
• Fiercely loyal to him and will do anything he asks of her without question.
• Despite her aggressive nature in battle, she is a calm and collected individual who is always thinking several steps ahead.
• Has a flirtatious attitude towards Ultraman Ribut, half-complimenting him while they fight.
​
Klud - The Opportunist:
• A sly and opportunistic member of the League who is always looking for ways to benefit himself.
• Often relies on deception and trickery to gain an advantage over his opponents.
• Not as loyal to Seraph as Lyla is and will often look for ways to advance his own agenda, even if it means going against his leader's wishes.
• Quick to belittle and mock his fellow League members when they fail or make mistakes.
​
Sources I used for references.
Ultraman: The Ultimate Hero, Ultraman Towards the future, Ultraman Max, TDG trilogy (mostly Gaia), Doctor Who Series 1-4.
​
Tone
The story will have a balanced tone, meaning it can be lighthearted at time but there are it can get serious, especially towards the end of the series.
​
Storytelling style
Overarching story with 2 different big bad for each half of the series but there will be standalone episodes in between them.

Hi everyone. I'm sorry if this topic has been talked about to death, I read through previous threads on the topic and I don't feel like they touched on my specific problem.
I've been working fully in-office in a small charity for the last six months. Everyone there is very extroverted and nearly everyone has a family. For example, it's normal for someone to be talking on the phone or in back-to-back meetings from 9-1, then chat with everyone in the kitchen while eating their lunch and then back to calls and meetings. I'll have lunch with people on a Monday when I'm most rested, but after that I'll be the only one eating my lunch at my desk while I try to harness some semblance of quit in a usually loud office.
I really like this job. I find it very fulfilling and rewarding, but the introvert burnout is ruining my life. I'm tired not from the work, I'm tired from 8:30-5:30 talking with people and dealing with an open-plan office and being looked at and making eye contact. Some days I'm so tired I have to finish getting up the stairs on my hands and knees. I haven't seen my friends in these six months because I need the weekend to recover from being in the office. I just cancelled plans to hang out with a friend who's travelled 14 hours because I'M the tired one (she's seeing other people too. Don't worry, I'm not that much of a dick!).
It's clear that this is a problem that needs a solution, but I fear there's going to be problems getting this solution. This job was advertised as 'hybrid working available', but I got in there and saw that it's subject to passing my six month probation. It's been six months and HR are slow as hell in getting this meeting sorted. I've talked to my boss about it and she said she can't help me get hybrid unless this meeting has happened.
It's also apparent, although I had no way of knowing this beforehand, that it's just not a hybrid working workplace. Everyone there loves coming in and chatting while it's been hell for me. No one in the entire charity is working hybrid, we used to have one person who has since left and apparently she had to fight to get it because her day involved a three hour commute.
Which brings me to the main point -- the fight. If I have to put up a fight to get hybrid working in a workplace of extroverts with families then I'm screwed. People will be awake all night with their vomiting kid and still come into the office. I have no kids and I either walk for 40 minutes or bus for 15 minutes to work, so I can't think of a more unsympathetic case for HR to get on their desk. But I'm on the cusp of depression, have no social life and am gaining weight through comfort eating because I don't have the energy to do many other things that make me happy.
So to greatly summarise this, I think I need help with:

1. Pleading my case for hybrid working to a group of social butterflies with families in a way that doesn't make me look like a delicate super special snowflake and also doesn't make them get defensive ("Oh this job is making you comfort eat is it? Well then go find another one")
   
2. What to do in the interim with my burnout if I can't see my friends and I'm crawling up stairs. Any advice on what people do would be greatly appreciated.
   
3. What to do if my hybrid working gets rejected. I honestly think I would just quit, but on paper it's basically my dream job and would really struggle with this.
   

Thank you for any and all help!