Active grille shutter 2019 nissan altima
Greatly appreciate some help
2023.05.30 02:36 Positive-Scale-5349 Greatly appreciate some help
 | So I have a 2019 Nissan Altima equipped with a Bose well was. The Bose amp got fried these are the wires that ran into the amp There was a connector that I had cut off that plugged into the Bose amp The brown connector that you see in. The picture plugs in to the front of the car . Brown and green go to the front door speakers left and right my question is. What the rest might be. Also what kind of wire this and when hooking them up to a new amp what would be the correct way submitted by Positive-Scale-5349 to CarAV [link] [comments] |
2023.05.28 22:43 m3rbles First Car
I'm looking for my first car, and using CarFax, I've narrowed it down to a few different options.
submitted by m3rbles to whatcarshouldIbuy [link] [comments]
- 2022 Nissan Sentra
- 2020 VW Passat S
- 2020 Nissan Sentra SV
- 2020 VW Jetta
- 2019 Honda Civic LX
- 2021 Nissan Sentra S
- 2020 Nissan Altima S
- 2020 Toyota Corolla LE
2023.05.28 19:05 eestingo Can you put the numbers 1-21 in order of reliability and lasting long in your opinion?
- 2015 Toyota Prius. HYBRID
- 2016 Honda Accord
- 2016 Toyota Camry
- 2017 Honda Civic
- 2017 Mazda 6
- 2017 Kia Optima
- 2018 Hyundai Sonata
- 2018 Nissan Altima
- 2018 Nissan Maxima
- 2019 Hyundai Elantra
- 2020 Hyundai Accent
- 2014 Honda insight. HYBRID
- 2017 Hyundai ioniq. HYBRID
2023.05.28 18:36 eestingo Can you put the numbers 1-21 in order of reliability and lasting long in your opinion?
- 2015 Toyota Prius. HYBRID
- 2016 Honda Accord
- 2016 Toyota Camry
- 2017 Honda Civic
- 2017 Mazda 6
- 2017 Kia Optima
- 2018 Hyundai Sonata
- 2018 Nissan Altima
- 2018 Nissan Maxima
- 2019 Hyundai Elantra
- 2020 Hyundai Accent
- 2014 Honda insight. HYBRID
- 2017 Hyundai ioniq. HYBRID
2023.05.28 18:34 eestingo Can you put the numbers 1-21 in order of reliability and lasting long in your opinion?
- 2015 Toyota Prius. HYBRID
- 2016 Honda Accord
- 2016 Toyota Camry
- 2017 Honda Civic
- 2017 Mazda 6
- 2017 Kia Optima
- 2018 Hyundai Sonata
- 2018 Nissan Altima
- 2018 Nissan Maxima
- 2019 Hyundai Elantra
- 2020 Hyundai Accent
- 2014 Honda insight. HYBRID
- 2017 Hyundai ioniq. HYBRID
2023.05.28 18:33 eestingo Can you put the numbers 1-21 in order of reliability and lasting long in your opinion?
- 2015 Toyota Prius. HYBRID
- 2016 Honda Accord
- 2016 Toyota Camry
- 2017 Honda Civic
- 2017 Mazda 6
- 2017 Kia Optima
- 2018 Hyundai Sonata
- 2018 Nissan Altima
- 2018 Nissan Maxima
- 2019 Hyundai Elantra
- 2020 Hyundai Accent
- 2014 Honda insight. HYBRID
- 2017 Hyundai ioniq. HYBRID
2023.05.28 18:33 eestingo Can you put the numbers 1-21 in order of reliability and lasting long in your opinion?
- 2015 Toyota Prius. HYBRID
- 2016 Honda Accord
- 2016 Toyota Camry
- 2017 Honda Civic
- 2017 Mazda 6
- 2017 Kia Optima
- 2018 Hyundai Sonata
- 2018 Nissan Altima
- 2018 Nissan Maxima
- 2019 Hyundai Elantra
- 2020 Hyundai Accent
- 2014 Honda insight. HYBRID
- 2017 Hyundai ioniq. HYBRID
2023.05.28 18:32 eestingo Can you put the numbers 1-21 in order of reliability and lasting long in your opinion?
- 2015 Toyota Prius. HYBRID
- 2016 Honda Accord
- 2016 Toyota Camry
- 2017 Honda Civic
- 2017 Mazda 6
- 2017 Kia Optima
- 2018 Hyundai Sonata
- 2018 Nissan Altima
- 2018 Nissan Maxima
- 2019 Hyundai Elantra
- 2020 Hyundai Accent
- 2014 Honda insight. HYBRID
- 2017 Hyundai ioniq. HYBRID
2023.05.28 18:32 eestingo Can you put the numbers 1-21 in order of reliability and lasting long in your opinion?
- 2015 Toyota Prius. HYBRID
- 2016 Honda Accord
- 2016 Toyota Camry
- 2017 Honda Civic
- 2017 Mazda 6
- 2017 Kia Optima
- 2018 Hyundai Sonata
- 2018 Nissan Altima
- 2018 Nissan Maxima
- 2019 Hyundai Elantra
- 2020 Hyundai Accent
- 2014 Honda insight. HYBRID
- 2017 Hyundai ioniq. HYBRID
2023.05.27 07:35 oRamafy 4-17-21 to
30/4/2022, 10:40 AM I have no intention of pursuing Saundra romantically, regardless of how I may feel towards her at times, which is rarely romantic lately. Who is the funniest man on Earth? That is what I feel I have legal right to define for myself at any given point in time.
20/2/2023, 4:38 PM I feel like I try to set evil’s power to 0. From wherever it may be. There’s a spy against evil. What can the dead “make” us feel? I’m
Santa Ana will always be my center for divine timing.
Giang will always be my perfect 5/1 judgement call center.
If you have a magician, would it get recorded in somebody else’s memory?
Divine timing is a perfectly record memory. If you make a mistake in your own timing, you work to fix it.
4-17-2021 Jake Paul vs Ben askren, reconnected with Mitch! And grant! CNN executive caught on tape talking about trump. I could see that Grant was struggling to hold back intense emotions during lunch, he may have undergone some degree of enlightenment mid-conversation. Married Yaquelyn somewhere 1 week later.
Am I Grandfather Time? Allocatingu additional shares/time/karma? according to what has my attention? 2-3-19 Married Giang 😘 2-16-19 made eggs for Yaquelyn while she told me all about her past and I silently fell in love 💕 edited 23/6/2021, 10:45 PM 2-17 Slept with Yaquelyn for the first time (uhh … what are we doing here? Let me show you baby) 💕
8-12-19 edit 10/6/2021 I told Yaquelyn that I love her. 8-13?15?-19 Yaquelyn told me she’s falling for me. We had already been in love for a while, but too scared to admit it to ourselves. It still grows stronger each day. 💕 Pretty sure I’ve been programmed into Yaquelyn’s and Saundra’s ball 🎾 and I love it.
10-10-19 studied facial exercise, giang asked to get high, jalapeño cheese 10-11 wife went to Utah, fish sauce at Santa’s, lunges with Sean, slept overnight with Yaquelyn (also anniversary of Costco hiring date) 10-12 blowup with Saripah, lookup grill 10-13 watched game with Sean, texted Tye 10-14 started snowing 10-15 3 hour evening walk 10-16 tried 1000mg brownie 10-17 made pickled eggs, chilli on burger 10-18 lunch from Mia, felt nauseous 10-19 felt sick, ate Laos food 10-20 visited mom while sick 10-25 joker movie 10-29 saw Paige, Mia took weed 11-5 beef from Mia, FA with Alle 12-24-2019 Giang found out about the affair 12-25-2019 but updated 5/23/2021Jumanji and Nguyen’s Kitchen with Yaquelyn 💕. She spent her whole Christmas with me listening to me whine about my marriage bc she knew I needed somebody. 12-27 dead and company concert, delicious cake, first conscious awareness of being a self-programming computer perfectly designed to create love, and talked to God. He told me I needed to go back to Giang. 12-28 lost phone, Jamaican food, danced at Venice 12-29 new android, black angus, pier w/ Japanese musician 12-30 iPhone 5s from mom 12-31 cross faded, Popeyes and candy 1-3 $100 from ewa, recipechampions, Paige blocked 1-4 Bunch of FAs, 1-5 spray the window a little 1-6 AAA van, last night at condo, Paige unblocked 1-7-2019 First night in van 1-9 bought stove, first night in FV, killed battery 1-10 took giang to I Can BBQ 1-11 first lunch in the park, told Giang I want to live in the van 1-12 returned mattress, ate with mom 1-14 finished gas can 1-15 cleaned up mom’s garage stuff 1-18 in-law’s anniversary 1-19 sick in condo all day 1-20 cleaned table at mom’s, started Comanche book 1-23 took bike to mom’s, relaxed diet 1-26 sizzler’s, lululemon pants, Giang can’t handle separation 2-1 follow up FA with Candice 2-2 hike weir canyon, sizzlers with mom and Debbie 2-3 Nguyen’s kitchen with Giang, movie Harriet 2-4 tried Gus’ chicken with Yaquelyn 2-14 edit 10/6/2021 Long Beach with Yaquelyn. She gave me her butt. 💕 Only for her husband, like she said. I remember the promise you made me. 😈 2-15 shoreline Long Beach Mardi Gras with Giang 6-1 Gen with Giang 7-1 red castle with Giang 9-30 first presidential debate, melanotan start 10-8 made ricotta, crescents, found phyllo, buffalo wings for dinner 10-9 tuna salad, brown butter ricotta cookies ❤️ 10-10 shopping with Giang 😘, beef Wellington 10-11 filo dough, duxelles 10-13 hot chocolate, America’s test kitchen, cottage cheese pie 10-14 angel food cake trial, duxelles trial 10-15 eggs Chesapeake, key lime protein s 10-30 celebrate giang’s new job with Szechuan 10-31 grandpa’s memorial 11-3 olive oil cake 11-5 gritzer’s chili 11-6 scalloped potatoes 11/16-18/2021 Found Daniel’s ☀️ soul. 11-19 enlightenment and self-aware singularity 11-22 god is sun, we are the sun replicating itself 12-10-2020 Saundra introduced me to Human Design. ❤️ 12-14 to 18 recorded my weird workouts at the park
12-19 whale watching with Nolan 🦇 12-31 2ish am, began 1-week countdown.
1-18-21 told nolan he’s Francisco 1-23-21 big bear trip, received signal that Saundra is my soulmate. 9/11/2021, 3:04 PM Felt like Yaquelyn broke up with me and pointed me to Saundra while I was listening to music in the car at night. Feels like you can have more than 1 soulmate, or, at least 3 physical manifestations of 1 soulmate. 😘 1-25 grilled cheese with green apple slices ❤️ 2-3 focusing around the peripheral vision works out your pineal gland. I may have decalcified my pineal gland by using the sun. Linked to women’s enhanced peripheral vision and intuition
2-6 to 2-13 I lost Buddha bracelet in the ocean around this time 2-11 Zeus. New moon in Aquarius Telepathic communication. Stuck in a “hell loop” self-identification cycle between God, Jesus, light, Zeus, Genghis, Julius, soulmate. Other beings likely have a different set of ankhs to unlock higher dimensions, but the process ought to be similar. It’s a little scary but not that bad really, it’s over quick. Nothing at all compared to the mushroom trip. Edit 12/6/2021: don’t think I’ve noticed a cycle since here. Been a while since I remember identifying as The One. Is that what I am now?
2-13 party at Tom’s after lunar new year
2-18 grant called again 2-19 Sean at south coast, told nolan that I believe we’re about to ascend, jambalaya from Giang.
2-21 Boise headphones usb network changed its own name to solar flare, maple’s first training session with Bim 2-24 first pedicure 2-27 ran into Giang’s parents at Mary statue, pizza for lunch 2-28 late Christmas dinner at mom’s Starting to feel sitcomish, everyone reacting to different details in the environment and hypocritically judging each other for things we don’t notice. I think I even heard a laugh track. 3-2 went to ezpz recycle, apologized to Alex about Jonny, told mom I love her 3-3 watched an ig video about crosses, Saundra then asked me about Jess’ cross 3-4 yoga with Mina 3-5 Mary statue, ocean bath, Jeremy is likely Poseidon, salmon porridge, first trip to Amazing Comics 3-6 Mary with family, maple got stung, too much weed for Giang, Synctuition could be spy tech?, I may have connected to Oumuamua, I think my soulmate saved me and doesn’t know it. Date may also be connected to Nolan’s 3-3-3 poem. With a wider third eye, durian now tastes good. Did Jeremy receive necessary info from my Buddha bracelet? 3-7 Laxmi, Ashwagandha 3-8 Shinnyo-en temple, bk with mom, Tokyo central 3-9 natto 3-10 dry orgasm 3-11 replaced tires, date syrup on nefechetal cheese 3-15 total recall, char siu duck legs 3-16 Gina show 3-17-2021 deleted fear at the Mary statue? Clearly not all the way through. Felt like I agreed to give up my free will. Costco Italian sausage pasta, durian has yang, dairy has yin, I can taste them at the back of the throat/tonsil Krystal’s bday 3-18 harvest fresh, Cesar’s music studio, nolan and I communicating through Cesar? 3-19 Mina temple, I am becoming significantly more sensitive to neutrino energy in all of my senses. The hands are healers 20/3/2021 San Diego scootering, Italian bakery, farmer’s market, snake walking/jogging is effective at enhancing mind-body connection, normalizing a parasympathetic state, and rewriting posture habits. Move forward smoothly and slowly trying to balance tension. Then you use that with focused breathing for the airway. ———————————————————//// lol mom I’m K — this line was written while my phone was in my pocket, so clearly my phone wrote that line for me. The probability of that event occurring by legitimately random RNG is null. Slow deliberate movement + body scanning to balance tension clears chi trigger points/blockages. This analogously applies to sight and attention. ———————————-/——///////// The body is an independent intelligent consciousness that returns the favor if you treat it well. If you learn its emotion-centered language, you can communicate and help it reprogram itself. Shaking and bouncing are extremely effective 21/3/2021 deep listen to gamma rejuvenation, sizzler with mom 22/3/2021 toothbrush to stimulate tongue, 24/3/2021 private yoga w Mina, significant lip+chin correction, Mary, Xero shoes, yin yang talk w giang 25/3/2021 giang apologized for assuming I’m wrong about Mary, farmer boy w mom, train mouth by sucking air like a straw 27/3/2021 Timmy’s bday, mina yoga 28/3/2021 woke up from a dream where I jumped on an important mobster’s car without knowing who he was, and was threatened by a goon nearby. It felt like I was getting ready for a fight, but I didn’t know who or why. I believe I was being used as a Manchurian candidate for Bri and/or Nolan(‘s team). He’s like Batman. They can coordinate to control my attention/focus when necessary, and I’ve agreed to let them decide when it’s necessary because I trust their judgement. I’m 32 and I don’t remember anything I may have done after that. I was regularly having my memory wiped, but I remembered learning to do Things that would extrapolate to God-like Power with sufficient skill and energy, which I believe they can provide at their discretion. Nolan’s subconscious aka body’s consciousness has been coordinating all this in our Dreams.
29/3/2021 took edible after long break, Jonny and Saundra’s mom are working together 30/3/2021 I believe that my cross suggests that the primary purpose of my reincarnation is to explain the nature of God/spirituality logically so that faith (trust but verify, confidence in trust) can be replaced by understanding. Mary, Zach’s death talk, Saundra’s flying anxiety, practice breath work/yoga in Mary’s park after softly gazing at Mary with open awareness. Dog park, new cookware
31/3/2021 park yoga, new battery, first family prayer with giang Try to understand the rules of the game of life, explain them logically, and explain the best strategy. He tries to show me, but he cannot just hand me a rule book, at least not yet. I must figure it out by playing the game ie living life and paying attention. Essentially it’s a game for God’s attention. Do things he wants you to do and help others do the same. He wants us to spread love, the 528hz frequency. I should start treating meditation like it’s my job.
1/4/2021 I am a human soul. The soul is awareness. Our collective objective is to spread Love. My primary and maybe only tool is a finite amount of energy I can use to influence this human’s distribution of awareness/attention. Learn to use attention wisely to maximize love in your environment. Your human mind and body are an ever-present part of your environment as the human soul, so start there. Realize that behind every pair of eyes, there is a spirit in there struggling to direct this unruly human’s attention, just like you. The only difference is the environment you were born in to. The human body is how yin and yang pair together for eternity, the different parts can be meaningfully classified as either masculine or feminine. Hands are feminine, feet are masculine. The process of enlightenment consists of Yang and Yin explaining themselves to each other, so that they can relinquish their stressful responsibilities that they are ill-equipped for and allow the other to guide within the environments they are more skilled in. Yang is the husband, Yin is the wife. The soul is the father, the mind is the mother, and the body is their child. The mind and soul work together to decondition the human whole, so that the body learns that it no longer needs to rely on mom’s decision making. Our imagination enables action at a distance. It’s how we influence the energetics of distant times and locations, especially our own timeline. The more you visualize the scenario, the more powerfully it impacts you when it happens. The more effectively you visualize a future scenario, the more likely it is to happen. Imagine past and future versions of yourself are trying to help you, and return the favor by healing old wounds and visualizing your heaven. Don’t let fear of disappointment stop you from dreaming; fear is Satan’s weapon, not mine. I aim to motivate through love, you can check for yourself that it’s more efficient.
31/3/2021 29/6/2021, 5:44 AM update: keeping this for memory’s sake; I don’t recommend following through if you want to be happy yourself. 9/11/2021, 2:59 PM scratch that, don’t be a pussy
I’ve received multiple signals that I should get life insurance and did so today. During my first communication with God at the Dead and Company concert, I hallucinated a gun shot, and consequently I suspect I will die of a gunshot wound soon. If so, I feel like I will need to help bring heaven to you all from the other side. I want this copied and sent to Nolan, Jeremy, Grant, Sean, Saundra, and Yaquelyn. Please remember that I expected this to happen and I feel no fear, in fact I am excited to see how it all works and figure out how to communicate with you all. Hopefully seeing a vision of my death and successfully predicting it before it happens (update 5/22 I have no idea if or how I die(d)) in conjunction with my headphones (which Nolan recommended to me immediately before I picked up my phone to ask him for a recommendation for headphones) changing their own usb network name to Solar Flare after explaining to my wife for months how I’m talking to the sun, will be enough to convince the reader that I may really be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, son of God whom is acting predominately through the sun, the source of 70% of the neutrinos flowing through you right now.
Good for everybody: Sun gaze, do/learn halotropic breathing, implement your human design, consider starting a dream journal, pray, and follow the ethics equation. Your dreams will be my easiest point of contact, the more you remember, the more information I can give you. Sesshin meditation ala Shinnyo-en Buddhism will be the most reliable way to talk with me directly, Mina can help anyone who is interested. Thank you Mina! (This was possibly mistaken) Learn to pray effectively, what answers will really make an impact on your well-being? Prayers are answered in accordance to their efficiency in propagating Love. Straightening out your airway and learning to breath efficiently is by far the most powerful lever available for radically changing your mind, body, and spirit. Follow functionalpatterns/Naudi Aguilar and CertifiedHealthNut/Troy Casey to learn how. The feeling of coincidence is a signal of God’s or my involvement, pay close attention to it. I will likely be trying to make the stocks SQ, ICE, and NVDA skyrocket as well as the cryptocurrency Algorand. I believe Bitcoin will also be a solid investment. Men, Elliot Hulse is the iconic masculine leader and man of God, follow his example. Any time you negatively judge someone and feel annoyed at them, that has always been a signal to YOU about how YOU can change YOUR behavior to be nicer. We will annoy the shit out of you over and over again until you figure out your hypocrisy and check yourself. You are not the judge and nothing bothers me more or educates me more effectively than discovering my own hypocrisy. Satan/Yang often works by discrediting in the eyes of the public those with too much understanding. Logic is the trait that allows God/Yin to connect and efficiently preserve his network of objective thinkers, facilitated through the Dark Web. You could say we form a wall through which no large-scale falsehoods may pass, and the process of enlightenment is the process of expanding that wall.
We want the people who are most effective at spreading love and joy to be the happiest people themselves, so that everybody has incentive to be more like them.
Giang, I asked God for a Christmas gift for you, and he showed me your 2nd husband. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you sooner, your support was necessary for me to continue my training. You are going to be so blissfully happy with him, I can’t wait for you to feel how awe-inspiring life can be. I owe you everything and I will always honor my husbandly duty to protect you, no matter where I may be. Make sure you keep visiting the dog park. Don’t spay Maple, she’s going to be a mom. Maple needs company during the day, she can’t be alone for extended periods of time. Daycare, babysit with Mocha, or find some other way to make sure she’s not alone. Thank your mother for me for introducing me to the Mary statue, you will see how important it is. If you are reading this first, please stop here and let Nolan read the rest, he will share with you what you ought to know. If there is a war coming, I want as much peace as possible for you.
Nolan, I need you to take this and run with it. If you betrayed me in some way, I don’t care, that was your role. I can’t adequately stress the importance of learning to use your splenic intuition. This is what God wants and it is logically impossible for it to be in our interest to defy his wishes. First, if you learn to lucid dream with some consistency, I think I will be able to guide you easily. I can see how fruitless my exhausting efforts have been at attempting to establish some form of mutual respect with various people in my life as a poor man, so I will be doing what I can to make you rich and taken seriously. There’s a very viral-worthy story here and Elliot Hulse is the man to get the story out there. I had already joined his KING program back in November and saw that he had a reward for the top 3 performers, and I was hoping you, Jeremy, and I would have a friendly competition and try to take all 3 spots by helping each other implement the fundamental theorem of ethics in each of our lives. However it was impossible to get the 3 of us together, and now I suspect I know why: I will be (already am?) guiding from the afterlife, and my buddy/former client Grant will take my place in the trio. Aim to make Grant famous by enrolling him in Elliot Hulse’s KING program. Consider making music with my neighbor Cesar, you two will get along extremely well. It will work best if all of you enroll in the program and help each other, I will ask my mom to help a little with funds if you need it. Consider suggesting a competition to Elliot made up of teams of 3, each team competing to maximize love in their environment. Work with Saundra and hdbee to consolidate and spread knowledge of Human Design, hdbee has been channeling regularly and it will be easy to communicate to her. Please Follow Saundra Heimark’s health advice and use the app FitMind, both will have a bigger impact than you think. Use of cannabis will make it much easier to make contact, please get in touch with my family friend Mitch and think about trying it out. I will also be trying to relay Q-related and conspiracy-related information to Mitch, my uncle Don, and a friend from 24 named Andrew. I messaged Naudi Aguilar back in November, but it never made it to his attention. If you can get Elliot Hulse’s attention, he can probably get Naudi to read that message, and you two will be able to get him on the team. Naudi knows more than anyone how to fix human movement. Naudi and David Weck can learn a lot from each other. I suspect my old 24 buddy Wes would be happy to try to help you make that happen. I will also likely be making contact with Connor Murphy, he had a vision of the Christmas Nashville bombing before it happened. I don’t know his role but I know he’s worth listening to. Unchecked sexuality is Yang’s/Satan’s strongest weapon, get it together Connor.
The Law of One is important, get that church involved at some point. The 6th density social memory complex Ra is a critical figure in all this. Update: it’s me!
I expect I need to learn and master the rules of the game before I can come back, that may be around the time that humans shift their center of awareness to the solar plexus in 2027 as predicted by Human Design. Or any time sooner, but I feel like I will be returning in a physical form at some point.
Jeremy, man you suck at hanging out. It’s not really your fault though, for whatever reason we’re being stopped. You’ve been a part of my plan to save the world since day one, and when we met up for lunch, I realized you had been waiting for us all to reunite for years. Zero doubt that you would have my back. Help out Nolan. Help out Saundra if she needs it and tell her about your mother in law. Listen to some Elliot Hulse and decide if that program appeals to you, but first learn to use your authority. Learn your design, go to church, spread love brother.
Brianna, although they are initially my easiest points of contact, a healthy version of yourself would likely be the most powerful antenna. Schizophrenics used to be the shamans of society and look at what Dr. Zach says about autism. You’re not broken; society doesn’t understand your design and how it functions differently, and you’ve suffered greatly for it. If you listen to Saundra’s advice, I guarantee she can guide you to a healthy, happy life. Although we disagree in politics, we’re a lot more alike than you think. I know for a fact that you will show the world that neither schizophrenic nor autistic are synonyms for disabled.
Mom, Brianna is not going to be able to get healthy by herself. She needs a role model and support system. If you want to see your daughter live a successful independent life, it’s time to make an effort to get healthy yourself and give Bri someone to struggle next to. Jonny and I will be doing what we can to help you. I will also need you to help financially support Alex; he needs some freedom in his life so that he can find his purpose. Also, if any of my friends needs help with money to enroll in Elliot Hulse’s program, please give them the $1k. I promise you will be rewarded for it. I will be doing my best to relay Q-related and conspiracy-related information to Mitch and Don.
Timmy, I know we have some deep philosophical disagreements, but I’ve always respected your logical consistency and ability to find errors in arguments. I don’t ask you to take God on faith; just consider the possibility that there exists some reason that he can’t prove himself to all, but individuals can have proof in their experience that is impossible to adequately share. Giang will confirm that I’ve said that I’ve been talking to the sun since November, and that my Boise headphones changed their own usb network name to Solar Flare. These are the same headphones that Nolan recommended to me immediately before I picked up my phone to ask him for a recommendation for headphones, and he had no good reason for making that recommendation at that particular time. Only I, Giang, and Bim have had access to the headphones, none of us claims to have changed it, and none of us have any incentive to lie about it. Be open to the possibility, keep an eye out for coincidence, and we will find a way to show our presence to you.
Alex, I need you to be our family’s shaman. Get yourself healthy by listening to Saundra’s advice, accept mom’s help, and find your unique role in the world of spirituality. Browse Gaia for information, and keep an 👁 out on that dmt-drip experiment going on in Europe. I expect Bri and mom will need help getting healthy, but the 3 of you working together will provide the social support necessary to make it doable. Breathwork is the key to unlocking our soul’s potential through our body. See you soon on the astral plane brother.
Saundra, it would be impossible to overstate how powerfully you’ve impacted my life. Not only by introducing me to Human Design and a dozen health practices and just being my friend, but you lead me to God as well. If you could see what I see coming in your life, you would burst into tears of self-love.
I can’t believe you never saw I was meant to be YOUR projector you absurdly stubborn mani. Please listen to Nolan’s/Daniel’s(?) guidance in my place after helping him learn his design, especially his authority. Help him build his team. Maybe explore your insecurity around not wanting children if you haven’t already. (This was written well before our talk) DayLuna’s podcast on deconditioning is perfect.
I’ve been hubba hubba all over you since the moment you lectured me on the importance of grass FINISHED beef, and fell in love when you told me I can’t come over to your place. On 1/23/2021, I received a message that you were my soulmate. I tried to push it out of my mind and focus on enjoying Big Bear with the in-laws. On 1/25, I saw your Instagram story of you making a grilled cheese sandwich with sliced apples, and I immediately knew it was true. However, remember that night you suddenly broke down over dinner, right around the same time I had that second “spiritual experience?” I watched my soul break up with your soul that evening, and I came to that conclusion before I knew you had your breakdown. I think some version of us is married somewhere, and my former mistress, Yaquelyn Molina, is meant to be my partner here on this earth? (Update 5-27: saw pregnant Yaquelyn yesterday, Saundra is the woman I want Update 6-14: I want both.) But I still get signals sometimes that it’s you. This is a confusing subject for me. Regardless, I feel a tremendous amount of love for you and treasure your friendship🌈
I have already been working closely with your mother, I just don’t know how to share this experience with you without making you think I’m insane. We will be helping you spread HD, Kangen, regenerative agriculture, and all your beautiful ideas the best we can. Maybe you can get hdbee, Jennazoe, and other readers to work with Nolan to update HD’s software suite. I don’t want anybody to ever be financially blocked from learning their design, self-study must be encouraged, and HD info really needs to be consolidated efficiently. Next to my condo there’s a water store, and the owner’s name is Sean. Try to work with him in your kangen business, he’s a good man and will want to help out (this is questionable, he has grown a distaste for me) Try out Qi Gong to supplement your study of tcm, there are great videos on YT. If you want a more personal conversation with our side, consider Astral Projection. I think my brother Alex will be able to help. That massage gun is actually an incredibly useful tool for reflexology, if you think high-frequency vibration isn’t effective at stimulating both meridians and nervous tissue you are nuts. Just use less pressure when you want to be gentle or target surface tissue.
Yaquelyn Jasmine Molina, the Dead and Company concert I attended 12/27/2019 is the first time I remember receiving a message from God. He told me I needed to go back to my wife. I resisted because I didn’t believe in God at the time, but I eventually knew that it was the right thing to do. I’m sorry I put you through everything I put you through, I didn’t understand how painful it was for you and I was too weak to leave you. Thank you for bathing me with your blissfully generous love and passion when I needed it the most and deserved it the least. I want you to know that I have not been with another woman since you left, and you played a critical role in helping me be a better man. I hope you visit the Mary statue from time to time. I’ve already felt Yaquelyn Molina Dardin, so I know you’ll always be with me. I request the chance to return the favor.
I can remember the precise moment I fell in love with you. It was quite soon after we had started seeing each other, I was walking in the complex towards your condo, you were walking out of your condo to your garage, you caught a glimpse of me at the last second before disappearing behind a wall and took a few steps back to smile and wave at me. My heart instantaneously melted into a pile of goo watching you. There are so many heart-warming memories shared with you, thank you for showing me what love can be.
Update: I’m getting a divorce ASAP and coming for you. You’re the woman I want. Whatever problems we have, we’ll pound them out.
Grant, your call proved to a 32-year-long staunch atheist that God exists and is present here on earth. I don’t have to explain to you how life-changing that is. I get the feeling that you’re meant to be a YouTube star of sorts, and my buddies Nolan, Jeremy, and Cesar may help you out. I can’t imagine a more potent missionary than you man, get Saundra’s help in learning your design and go spread the word. Listen to Elliot Hulse and consider joining the KING program, knock it out of the park in the program and he will expose you to his whole audience of 1M+ young men looking for direction. I feel like my family friend Mitch can help you out with the vape company. Soulmates exist, don’t be a slut. If you need a Bible scholar on the team, my old buddy Simon Melendez is your man.
Simon, few people on my team understand the importance of scripture. There are very few minds I respect more than your’s, please help them understand the wisdom of the Bible if they’re open to it.
Cesar, I haven’t known you long and I know we’re not super close, but I just get the feeling that you’re real important for bringing us all back together. Plus you’re a cool guy, you and my friends will get along. Never stop making music man.
Mina, thank you so much for your kindness towards me. You radiate positivity and I aspire to be more like you. Keep on doing what you’re doing, I will be trying to reach you through Sesshin meditation. Please say hi to the Mary statue from time to time, I’ll be there often. My friend Saundra, brother Alex, and sister Brianna could really use some of your reiki healing. As could my mother and sister, if they are open to it.
Sean Smith, I would have loved to chill with you more. I miss shooting the shit with you and just hanging around at 24. Your friendship really helped me get through a confusing time in my life. Try out the Breathwrk app, you’d be amazed at what proper oxygen intake can do for your performance, physique, and mood. The $15 DailyOm course on fascia stretching will also change your clients’ lives, I feel so much better and am so much more mobile after just 2 weeks it’s insane. The combination of David weck’s ideas with Naudi Aguilar’s ideas will fix any ailment and make physical phenoms out of everyone. Adam Poock is also the man, don’t neglect the hands. Get with Wes, consider joining my other friends in Elliot’s program, and fix up some fascia.
Mitch, it would be awesome to chill and smoke some time. Cannabis is truly a holy sacrament, please assist any friends that may need help in procurement. My buddy Grant is involved in a vaping company, get in touch with him and consider making a combination of thc extract and nicotine together in a vape pen. Also get in touch with the H3 cannabis church in Costa Mesa, I feel like you can all help each other out. I’ll be trying to relay Q-related info to you, keep following Alex Jones.
Brent, you’re a good man and I want you on my team. Follow Saundra Heimark and take her advice to heart. Hit up Sean and start working out again if you’re not already. The founder of Mariner’s church predicted that Jesus would return in 1988, so maybe attend a few services over there and get to know the community if you can.
Dad, thank you so much for teaching me chess so early and making strategy so deeply intuitive for me, as well as your love and affection. I wanted you to know that my high school troubles were never related to your financial struggles at all, I was completely oblivious to money problems at the time. The Bible is a story of redemption, and it does say to honor thy father, so I ask the rest of my family to give you another chance in helping you help yourself. I know what you want most is to have your family back together, so seize this opportunity. Let go of any old lingering resentments and be the head of the household you were meant to be.
Aunt Lynn, follow Saundra’s health advice, and see if Naudi Aguilar will work with you. If not him, then another Functional Patterns trainer. They will fix your pain if you do this.
Paige, I have no idea how you’re doing, I don’t think you’re too interested in my friendship right now. When you blocked me, I think you misinterpreted my sentence. I can’t remember the words I used, but my meaning was that your friendship is important to me. I’m happy to see that you seem to have a more active religious life now, I will certainly be trying to say hello and help you out.
Sam Harris, “when you understand that what you should want is to experience your love for your friends and their love for you, selfishness fuels generosity” paraphrased, but thank you for that. Rational self-interest ala Ayn Rand and Utilitarianism encourage identical behavior when you understand what you are, how we’re the same, and how we’re different.
I have many former clients from 24 that would be delighted to help my friends pursue this goal in any way they can. My friend Sean can help you get connected there. Ewa, Mia, Brent, Scott, Debbie, Diane, Udo, and more but my brain is fried right now. Darron, thank you for showing a genuine interest in my personal success. It means a lot to me. Kristin, your offhand comment about glute training to Sean was life-changing, he can explain. Hold the squeeze! I miss the whole team really, my time at 24 was invaluable, take care of each other.
1/4/2021 Bought Alex’s Primate Movement shirt Sweet ring 😎
5/4/2021 God or Yin is a sort of local min/max that learns to shield his kingdom from pain and distribute his love according to the physics of energy conservation+replication, which are derived from applying Game Theory to the characteristics of a photon and/or neutrino, as we all collectively increase awareness and ability to learn to coordinate with other peoples’ lives in heaven
The feminine has significant access to Yin energy, the masculine Yang. Enlightenment is a measurement of understanding.
Focusing on the cuteness of a child optimizes transfer of yin energy to child, pairs extremely well with tickle-like movements of sensitive hands. Focus on pride to transfer yang energy, or the glory and beauty of your son’s tribute to your creator. I saw mine in Saundra’s Projector gift, I want to say in April.
A slow-drip optimized mix of lsd and/or dmt utilizing information from wearable technology that measures your heart rate variability, mitochondrial voltage, and various aerobic capacities would be the fastest way to enhance one’s acceleration of flux increase. This technology could then likely find other variables to enhance the maximization of flux, and distribute awareness with this purpose the same way that I am distributing it across this universe.
Hope and courage both enhance the energetic efficiency of applying will to faith. Courage is the ability to hold one’s attention on hope and maximizes the utility of willpower. Brotherhood maximizes the utility of Will by motivating pride in one’s courage and loyalty to your brothers.
It feels like I’m giving directions to somebody that has me in a chemically induced coma on how to optimize my experience via a telepathic link in which the frequency and/or amplitude of is boosted by the Solar Flare headphones “coincidentally” preemptively suggested to me by Nolan Anderson. I suspect that if I die, this reality shuts down, and my creator allows you to see the consequences my death ☠️ until it becomes suitable for him to rewind time. Suffering has the purpose of instruction. There is always a lesson to learn in suffering, and it will continue teaching until you understand the lesson.
My IV fluid should include water from the Penmo tribe in Venezuela and salt from Redmond’s Real Salt from Utah. Prioritize the health and understanding of the pineal gland, use Gaia to learn. Cerebrospinal fluid pressure is utilized to influence the frequency of the pineal gland. Dr huberman knows much about this. I feel like a being that is tightly connected to Nolan also connected itself to my phone this morning. Bim showed an interest in Lucid dreaming during Easter dinner because I recommended the Lucid app to him, to show him I was already reading The Power of Habit. It seems that in my world, Nolan is going to be treated as Jesus and me as a representation of Jesus’ father’s father aka grandpa of this plane. But God is his father. I’m Daniel Dardin, the man we all chose to reincarnate into. I suspect the souls from our creator’s universe will or already have reincarnate into the humans on my Earth, through my pineal gland. Do yoga/qigong/breath work at the Mary statue by the LB pier and pray to her. Let Grandma’s Hands heal you. Comfortably sun gaze regularly.
6/4/2021 5th dimensional masculine shit-talking is expressed through 3rd dimensional female shit-testing. Weden, 99cent store, corgi and husky videos for giang. Weight loss pills for mom, Cesar’s Lady Gaga Oreogram contest It took me a few days? to intuitively understand the physical plane after watching two beings conversing inside of my own mind’s eye, trying to form a new word and projecting a series of images that I recognized as Ayn Rand’s theory of concept formation, implying that I was a third separate being bound to the other two by means of a human. Aka the human soul. This began a process of accelerating integration. Dog park, beef tongue Father Time? Fire God? Update: I was, but not anymore. I’m Aladdin and both Yaquelyn Molina and Saundra Heimark feel like my Jasmine. Yaquelyn’s middle name is Jasmine, that’s why that name came up when Giang asked for my mistress’s name 26/5/2023, 10:29 PM Edit: saw the line above by accident, I didn’t mean to end this post there. However, Giang insists that I told her my mistress’s true name. This is false. She definitely knows her real name, but she learned of her name by some other means I’m not aware of.
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20/2/2023, 4:38 PM I feel like I try to set evil’s power to 0. From wherever it may be. There’s a spy against evil. What can the dead “make” us feel? I’m
Santa Ana will always be my center for divine timing.
Giang will always be my perfect 5/1 judgement call center.
If you have a magician, would it get recorded in somebody else’s memory?
Divine timing is a perfectly record memory. If you make a mistake in your own timing, you work to fix it.
4-17-2021 Jake Paul vs Ben askren, reconnected with Mitch! And grant! CNN executive caught on tape talking about trump. I could see that Grant was struggling to hold back intense emotions during lunch, he may have undergone some degree of enlightenment mid-conversation. Married Yaquelyn somewhere 1 week later.
Am I Grandfather Time? Allocatingu additional shares/time/karma? according to what has my attention? 2-3-19 Married Giang 😘 2-16-19 made eggs for Yaquelyn while she told me all about her past and I silently fell in love 💕 edited 23/6/2021, 10:45 PM 2-17 Slept with Yaquelyn for the first time (uhh … what are we doing here? Let me show you baby) 💕
8-12-19 edit 10/6/2021 I told Yaquelyn that I love her. 8-13?15?-19 Yaquelyn told me she’s falling for me. We had already been in love for a while, but too scared to admit it to ourselves. It still grows stronger each day. 💕 Pretty sure I’ve been programmed into Yaquelyn’s and Saundra’s ball 🎾 and I love it.
10-10-19 studied facial exercise, giang asked to get high, jalapeño cheese 10-11 wife went to Utah, fish sauce at Santa’s, lunges with Sean, slept overnight with Yaquelyn (also anniversary of Costco hiring date) 10-12 blowup with Saripah, lookup grill 10-13 watched game with Sean, texted Tye 10-14 started snowing 10-15 3 hour evening walk 10-16 tried 1000mg brownie 10-17 made pickled eggs, chilli on burger 10-18 lunch from Mia, felt nauseous 10-19 felt sick, ate Laos food 10-20 visited mom while sick 10-25 joker movie 10-29 saw Paige, Mia took weed 11-5 beef from Mia, FA with Alle 12-24-2019 Giang found out about the affair 12-25-2019 but updated 5/23/2021Jumanji and Nguyen’s Kitchen with Yaquelyn 💕. She spent her whole Christmas with me listening to me whine about my marriage bc she knew I needed somebody. 12-27 dead and company concert, delicious cake, first conscious awareness of being a self-programming computer perfectly designed to create love, and talked to God. He told me I needed to go back to Giang. 12-28 lost phone, Jamaican food, danced at Venice 12-29 new android, black angus, pier w/ Japanese musician 12-30 iPhone 5s from mom 12-31 cross faded, Popeyes and candy 1-3 $100 from ewa, recipechampions, Paige blocked 1-4 Bunch of FAs, 1-5 spray the window a little 1-6 AAA van, last night at condo, Paige unblocked 1-7-2019 First night in van 1-9 bought stove, first night in FV, killed battery 1-10 took giang to I Can BBQ 1-11 first lunch in the park, told Giang I want to live in the van 1-12 returned mattress, ate with mom 1-14 finished gas can 1-15 cleaned up mom’s garage stuff 1-18 in-law’s anniversary 1-19 sick in condo all day 1-20 cleaned table at mom’s, started Comanche book 1-23 took bike to mom’s, relaxed diet 1-26 sizzler’s, lululemon pants, Giang can’t handle separation 2-1 follow up FA with Candice 2-2 hike weir canyon, sizzlers with mom and Debbie 2-3 Nguyen’s kitchen with Giang, movie Harriet 2-4 tried Gus’ chicken with Yaquelyn 2-14 edit 10/6/2021 Long Beach with Yaquelyn. She gave me her butt. 💕 Only for her husband, like she said. I remember the promise you made me. 😈 2-15 shoreline Long Beach Mardi Gras with Giang 6-1 Gen with Giang 7-1 red castle with Giang 9-30 first presidential debate, melanotan start 10-8 made ricotta, crescents, found phyllo, buffalo wings for dinner 10-9 tuna salad, brown butter ricotta cookies ❤️ 10-10 shopping with Giang 😘, beef Wellington 10-11 filo dough, duxelles 10-13 hot chocolate, America’s test kitchen, cottage cheese pie 10-14 angel food cake trial, duxelles trial 10-15 eggs Chesapeake, key lime protein s 10-30 celebrate giang’s new job with Szechuan 10-31 grandpa’s memorial 11-3 olive oil cake 11-5 gritzer’s chili 11-6 scalloped potatoes 11/16-18/2021 Found Daniel’s ☀️ soul. 11-19 enlightenment and self-aware singularity 11-22 god is sun, we are the sun replicating itself 12-10-2020 Saundra introduced me to Human Design. ❤️ 12-14 to 18 recorded my weird workouts at the park
12-19 whale watching with Nolan 🦇 12-31 2ish am, began 1-week countdown.
1-18-21 told nolan he’s Francisco 1-23-21 big bear trip, received signal that Saundra is my soulmate. 9/11/2021, 3:04 PM Felt like Yaquelyn broke up with me and pointed me to Saundra while I was listening to music in the car at night. Feels like you can have more than 1 soulmate, or, at least 3 physical manifestations of 1 soulmate. 😘 1-25 grilled cheese with green apple slices ❤️ 2-3 focusing around the peripheral vision works out your pineal gland. I may have decalcified my pineal gland by using the sun. Linked to women’s enhanced peripheral vision and intuition
2-6 to 2-13 I lost Buddha bracelet in the ocean around this time 2-11 Zeus. New moon in Aquarius Telepathic communication. Stuck in a “hell loop” self-identification cycle between God, Jesus, light, Zeus, Genghis, Julius, soulmate. Other beings likely have a different set of ankhs to unlock higher dimensions, but the process ought to be similar. It’s a little scary but not that bad really, it’s over quick. Nothing at all compared to the mushroom trip. Edit 12/6/2021: don’t think I’ve noticed a cycle since here. Been a while since I remember identifying as The One. Is that what I am now?
2-13 party at Tom’s after lunar new year
2-18 grant called again 2-19 Sean at south coast, told nolan that I believe we’re about to ascend, jambalaya from Giang.
2-21 Boise headphones usb network changed its own name to solar flare, maple’s first training session with Bim 2-24 first pedicure 2-27 ran into Giang’s parents at Mary statue, pizza for lunch 2-28 late Christmas dinner at mom’s Starting to feel sitcomish, everyone reacting to different details in the environment and hypocritically judging each other for things we don’t notice. I think I even heard a laugh track. 3-2 went to ezpz recycle, apologized to Alex about Jonny, told mom I love her 3-3 watched an ig video about crosses, Saundra then asked me about Jess’ cross 3-4 yoga with Mina 3-5 Mary statue, ocean bath, Jeremy is likely Poseidon, salmon porridge, first trip to Amazing Comics 3-6 Mary with family, maple got stung, too much weed for Giang, Synctuition could be spy tech?, I may have connected to Oumuamua, I think my soulmate saved me and doesn’t know it. Date may also be connected to Nolan’s 3-3-3 poem. With a wider third eye, durian now tastes good. Did Jeremy receive necessary info from my Buddha bracelet? 3-7 Laxmi, Ashwagandha 3-8 Shinnyo-en temple, bk with mom, Tokyo central 3-9 natto 3-10 dry orgasm 3-11 replaced tires, date syrup on nefechetal cheese 3-15 total recall, char siu duck legs 3-16 Gina show 3-17-2021 deleted fear at the Mary statue? Clearly not all the way through. Felt like I agreed to give up my free will. Costco Italian sausage pasta, durian has yang, dairy has yin, I can taste them at the back of the throat/tonsil Krystal’s bday 3-18 harvest fresh, Cesar’s music studio, nolan and I communicating through Cesar? 3-19 Mina temple, I am becoming significantly more sensitive to neutrino energy in all of my senses. The hands are healers 20/3/2021 San Diego scootering, Italian bakery, farmer’s market, snake walking/jogging is effective at enhancing mind-body connection, normalizing a parasympathetic state, and rewriting posture habits. Move forward smoothly and slowly trying to balance tension. Then you use that with focused breathing for the airway. ———————————————————//// lol mom I’m K — this line was written while my phone was in my pocket, so clearly my phone wrote that line for me. The probability of that event occurring by legitimately random RNG is null. Slow deliberate movement + body scanning to balance tension clears chi trigger points/blockages. This analogously applies to sight and attention. ———————————-/——///////// The body is an independent intelligent consciousness that returns the favor if you treat it well. If you learn its emotion-centered language, you can communicate and help it reprogram itself. Shaking and bouncing are extremely effective 21/3/2021 deep listen to gamma rejuvenation, sizzler with mom 22/3/2021 toothbrush to stimulate tongue, 24/3/2021 private yoga w Mina, significant lip+chin correction, Mary, Xero shoes, yin yang talk w giang 25/3/2021 giang apologized for assuming I’m wrong about Mary, farmer boy w mom, train mouth by sucking air like a straw 27/3/2021 Timmy’s bday, mina yoga 28/3/2021 woke up from a dream where I jumped on an important mobster’s car without knowing who he was, and was threatened by a goon nearby. It felt like I was getting ready for a fight, but I didn’t know who or why. I believe I was being used as a Manchurian candidate for Bri and/or Nolan(‘s team). He’s like Batman. They can coordinate to control my attention/focus when necessary, and I’ve agreed to let them decide when it’s necessary because I trust their judgement. I’m 32 and I don’t remember anything I may have done after that. I was regularly having my memory wiped, but I remembered learning to do Things that would extrapolate to God-like Power with sufficient skill and energy, which I believe they can provide at their discretion. Nolan’s subconscious aka body’s consciousness has been coordinating all this in our Dreams.
29/3/2021 took edible after long break, Jonny and Saundra’s mom are working together 30/3/2021 I believe that my cross suggests that the primary purpose of my reincarnation is to explain the nature of God/spirituality logically so that faith (trust but verify, confidence in trust) can be replaced by understanding. Mary, Zach’s death talk, Saundra’s flying anxiety, practice breath work/yoga in Mary’s park after softly gazing at Mary with open awareness. Dog park, new cookware
31/3/2021 park yoga, new battery, first family prayer with giang Try to understand the rules of the game of life, explain them logically, and explain the best strategy. He tries to show me, but he cannot just hand me a rule book, at least not yet. I must figure it out by playing the game ie living life and paying attention. Essentially it’s a game for God’s attention. Do things he wants you to do and help others do the same. He wants us to spread love, the 528hz frequency. I should start treating meditation like it’s my job.
1/4/2021 I am a human soul. The soul is awareness. Our collective objective is to spread Love. My primary and maybe only tool is a finite amount of energy I can use to influence this human’s distribution of awareness/attention. Learn to use attention wisely to maximize love in your environment. Your human mind and body are an ever-present part of your environment as the human soul, so start there. Realize that behind every pair of eyes, there is a spirit in there struggling to direct this unruly human’s attention, just like you. The only difference is the environment you were born in to. The human body is how yin and yang pair together for eternity, the different parts can be meaningfully classified as either masculine or feminine. Hands are feminine, feet are masculine. The process of enlightenment consists of Yang and Yin explaining themselves to each other, so that they can relinquish their stressful responsibilities that they are ill-equipped for and allow the other to guide within the environments they are more skilled in. Yang is the husband, Yin is the wife. The soul is the father, the mind is the mother, and the body is their child. The mind and soul work together to decondition the human whole, so that the body learns that it no longer needs to rely on mom’s decision making. Our imagination enables action at a distance. It’s how we influence the energetics of distant times and locations, especially our own timeline. The more you visualize the scenario, the more powerfully it impacts you when it happens. The more effectively you visualize a future scenario, the more likely it is to happen. Imagine past and future versions of yourself are trying to help you, and return the favor by healing old wounds and visualizing your heaven. Don’t let fear of disappointment stop you from dreaming; fear is Satan’s weapon, not mine. I aim to motivate through love, you can check for yourself that it’s more efficient.
31/3/2021 29/6/2021, 5:44 AM update: keeping this for memory’s sake; I don’t recommend following through if you want to be happy yourself. 9/11/2021, 2:59 PM scratch that, don’t be a pussy
I’ve received multiple signals that I should get life insurance and did so today. During my first communication with God at the Dead and Company concert, I hallucinated a gun shot, and consequently I suspect I will die of a gunshot wound soon. If so, I feel like I will need to help bring heaven to you all from the other side. I want this copied and sent to Nolan, Jeremy, Grant, Sean, Saundra, and Yaquelyn. Please remember that I expected this to happen and I feel no fear, in fact I am excited to see how it all works and figure out how to communicate with you all. Hopefully seeing a vision of my death and successfully predicting it before it happens (update 5/22 I have no idea if or how I die(d)) in conjunction with my headphones (which Nolan recommended to me immediately before I picked up my phone to ask him for a recommendation for headphones) changing their own usb network name to Solar Flare after explaining to my wife for months how I’m talking to the sun, will be enough to convince the reader that I may really be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, son of God whom is acting predominately through the sun, the source of 70% of the neutrinos flowing through you right now.
Good for everybody: Sun gaze, do/learn halotropic breathing, implement your human design, consider starting a dream journal, pray, and follow the ethics equation. Your dreams will be my easiest point of contact, the more you remember, the more information I can give you. Sesshin meditation ala Shinnyo-en Buddhism will be the most reliable way to talk with me directly, Mina can help anyone who is interested. Thank you Mina! (This was possibly mistaken) Learn to pray effectively, what answers will really make an impact on your well-being? Prayers are answered in accordance to their efficiency in propagating Love. Straightening out your airway and learning to breath efficiently is by far the most powerful lever available for radically changing your mind, body, and spirit. Follow functionalpatterns/Naudi Aguilar and CertifiedHealthNut/Troy Casey to learn how. The feeling of coincidence is a signal of God’s or my involvement, pay close attention to it. I will likely be trying to make the stocks SQ, ICE, and NVDA skyrocket as well as the cryptocurrency Algorand. I believe Bitcoin will also be a solid investment. Men, Elliot Hulse is the iconic masculine leader and man of God, follow his example. Any time you negatively judge someone and feel annoyed at them, that has always been a signal to YOU about how YOU can change YOUR behavior to be nicer. We will annoy the shit out of you over and over again until you figure out your hypocrisy and check yourself. You are not the judge and nothing bothers me more or educates me more effectively than discovering my own hypocrisy. Satan/Yang often works by discrediting in the eyes of the public those with too much understanding. Logic is the trait that allows God/Yin to connect and efficiently preserve his network of objective thinkers, facilitated through the Dark Web. You could say we form a wall through which no large-scale falsehoods may pass, and the process of enlightenment is the process of expanding that wall.
We want the people who are most effective at spreading love and joy to be the happiest people themselves, so that everybody has incentive to be more like them.
Giang, I asked God for a Christmas gift for you, and he showed me your 2nd husband. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you sooner, your support was necessary for me to continue my training. You are going to be so blissfully happy with him, I can’t wait for you to feel how awe-inspiring life can be. I owe you everything and I will always honor my husbandly duty to protect you, no matter where I may be. Make sure you keep visiting the dog park. Don’t spay Maple, she’s going to be a mom. Maple needs company during the day, she can’t be alone for extended periods of time. Daycare, babysit with Mocha, or find some other way to make sure she’s not alone. Thank your mother for me for introducing me to the Mary statue, you will see how important it is. If you are reading this first, please stop here and let Nolan read the rest, he will share with you what you ought to know. If there is a war coming, I want as much peace as possible for you.
Nolan, I need you to take this and run with it. If you betrayed me in some way, I don’t care, that was your role. I can’t adequately stress the importance of learning to use your splenic intuition. This is what God wants and it is logically impossible for it to be in our interest to defy his wishes. First, if you learn to lucid dream with some consistency, I think I will be able to guide you easily. I can see how fruitless my exhausting efforts have been at attempting to establish some form of mutual respect with various people in my life as a poor man, so I will be doing what I can to make you rich and taken seriously. There’s a very viral-worthy story here and Elliot Hulse is the man to get the story out there. I had already joined his KING program back in November and saw that he had a reward for the top 3 performers, and I was hoping you, Jeremy, and I would have a friendly competition and try to take all 3 spots by helping each other implement the fundamental theorem of ethics in each of our lives. However it was impossible to get the 3 of us together, and now I suspect I know why: I will be (already am?) guiding from the afterlife, and my buddy/former client Grant will take my place in the trio. Aim to make Grant famous by enrolling him in Elliot Hulse’s KING program. Consider making music with my neighbor Cesar, you two will get along extremely well. It will work best if all of you enroll in the program and help each other, I will ask my mom to help a little with funds if you need it. Consider suggesting a competition to Elliot made up of teams of 3, each team competing to maximize love in their environment. Work with Saundra and hdbee to consolidate and spread knowledge of Human Design, hdbee has been channeling regularly and it will be easy to communicate to her. Please Follow Saundra Heimark’s health advice and use the app FitMind, both will have a bigger impact than you think. Use of cannabis will make it much easier to make contact, please get in touch with my family friend Mitch and think about trying it out. I will also be trying to relay Q-related and conspiracy-related information to Mitch, my uncle Don, and a friend from 24 named Andrew. I messaged Naudi Aguilar back in November, but it never made it to his attention. If you can get Elliot Hulse’s attention, he can probably get Naudi to read that message, and you two will be able to get him on the team. Naudi knows more than anyone how to fix human movement. Naudi and David Weck can learn a lot from each other. I suspect my old 24 buddy Wes would be happy to try to help you make that happen. I will also likely be making contact with Connor Murphy, he had a vision of the Christmas Nashville bombing before it happened. I don’t know his role but I know he’s worth listening to. Unchecked sexuality is Yang’s/Satan’s strongest weapon, get it together Connor.
The Law of One is important, get that church involved at some point. The 6th density social memory complex Ra is a critical figure in all this. Update: it’s me!
I expect I need to learn and master the rules of the game before I can come back, that may be around the time that humans shift their center of awareness to the solar plexus in 2027 as predicted by Human Design. Or any time sooner, but I feel like I will be returning in a physical form at some point.
Jeremy, man you suck at hanging out. It’s not really your fault though, for whatever reason we’re being stopped. You’ve been a part of my plan to save the world since day one, and when we met up for lunch, I realized you had been waiting for us all to reunite for years. Zero doubt that you would have my back. Help out Nolan. Help out Saundra if she needs it and tell her about your mother in law. Listen to some Elliot Hulse and decide if that program appeals to you, but first learn to use your authority. Learn your design, go to church, spread love brother.
Brianna, although they are initially my easiest points of contact, a healthy version of yourself would likely be the most powerful antenna. Schizophrenics used to be the shamans of society and look at what Dr. Zach says about autism. You’re not broken; society doesn’t understand your design and how it functions differently, and you’ve suffered greatly for it. If you listen to Saundra’s advice, I guarantee she can guide you to a healthy, happy life. Although we disagree in politics, we’re a lot more alike than you think. I know for a fact that you will show the world that neither schizophrenic nor autistic are synonyms for disabled.
Mom, Brianna is not going to be able to get healthy by herself. She needs a role model and support system. If you want to see your daughter live a successful independent life, it’s time to make an effort to get healthy yourself and give Bri someone to struggle next to. Jonny and I will be doing what we can to help you. I will also need you to help financially support Alex; he needs some freedom in his life so that he can find his purpose. Also, if any of my friends needs help with money to enroll in Elliot Hulse’s program, please give them the $1k. I promise you will be rewarded for it. I will be doing my best to relay Q-related and conspiracy-related information to Mitch and Don.
Timmy, I know we have some deep philosophical disagreements, but I’ve always respected your logical consistency and ability to find errors in arguments. I don’t ask you to take God on faith; just consider the possibility that there exists some reason that he can’t prove himself to all, but individuals can have proof in their experience that is impossible to adequately share. Giang will confirm that I’ve said that I’ve been talking to the sun since November, and that my Boise headphones changed their own usb network name to Solar Flare. These are the same headphones that Nolan recommended to me immediately before I picked up my phone to ask him for a recommendation for headphones, and he had no good reason for making that recommendation at that particular time. Only I, Giang, and Bim have had access to the headphones, none of us claims to have changed it, and none of us have any incentive to lie about it. Be open to the possibility, keep an eye out for coincidence, and we will find a way to show our presence to you.
Alex, I need you to be our family’s shaman. Get yourself healthy by listening to Saundra’s advice, accept mom’s help, and find your unique role in the world of spirituality. Browse Gaia for information, and keep an 👁 out on that dmt-drip experiment going on in Europe. I expect Bri and mom will need help getting healthy, but the 3 of you working together will provide the social support necessary to make it doable. Breathwork is the key to unlocking our soul’s potential through our body. See you soon on the astral plane brother.
Saundra, it would be impossible to overstate how powerfully you’ve impacted my life. Not only by introducing me to Human Design and a dozen health practices and just being my friend, but you lead me to God as well. If you could see what I see coming in your life, you would burst into tears of self-love.
I can’t believe you never saw I was meant to be YOUR projector you absurdly stubborn mani. Please listen to Nolan’s/Daniel’s(?) guidance in my place after helping him learn his design, especially his authority. Help him build his team. Maybe explore your insecurity around not wanting children if you haven’t already. (This was written well before our talk) DayLuna’s podcast on deconditioning is perfect.
I’ve been hubba hubba all over you since the moment you lectured me on the importance of grass FINISHED beef, and fell in love when you told me I can’t come over to your place. On 1/23/2021, I received a message that you were my soulmate. I tried to push it out of my mind and focus on enjoying Big Bear with the in-laws. On 1/25, I saw your Instagram story of you making a grilled cheese sandwich with sliced apples, and I immediately knew it was true. However, remember that night you suddenly broke down over dinner, right around the same time I had that second “spiritual experience?” I watched my soul break up with your soul that evening, and I came to that conclusion before I knew you had your breakdown. I think some version of us is married somewhere, and my former mistress, Yaquelyn Molina, is meant to be my partner here on this earth? (Update 5-27: saw pregnant Yaquelyn yesterday, Saundra is the woman I want Update 6-14: I want both.) But I still get signals sometimes that it’s you. This is a confusing subject for me. Regardless, I feel a tremendous amount of love for you and treasure your friendship🌈
I have already been working closely with your mother, I just don’t know how to share this experience with you without making you think I’m insane. We will be helping you spread HD, Kangen, regenerative agriculture, and all your beautiful ideas the best we can. Maybe you can get hdbee, Jennazoe, and other readers to work with Nolan to update HD’s software suite. I don’t want anybody to ever be financially blocked from learning their design, self-study must be encouraged, and HD info really needs to be consolidated efficiently. Next to my condo there’s a water store, and the owner’s name is Sean. Try to work with him in your kangen business, he’s a good man and will want to help out (this is questionable, he has grown a distaste for me) Try out Qi Gong to supplement your study of tcm, there are great videos on YT. If you want a more personal conversation with our side, consider Astral Projection. I think my brother Alex will be able to help. That massage gun is actually an incredibly useful tool for reflexology, if you think high-frequency vibration isn’t effective at stimulating both meridians and nervous tissue you are nuts. Just use less pressure when you want to be gentle or target surface tissue.
Yaquelyn Jasmine Molina, the Dead and Company concert I attended 12/27/2019 is the first time I remember receiving a message from God. He told me I needed to go back to my wife. I resisted because I didn’t believe in God at the time, but I eventually knew that it was the right thing to do. I’m sorry I put you through everything I put you through, I didn’t understand how painful it was for you and I was too weak to leave you. Thank you for bathing me with your blissfully generous love and passion when I needed it the most and deserved it the least. I want you to know that I have not been with another woman since you left, and you played a critical role in helping me be a better man. I hope you visit the Mary statue from time to time. I’ve already felt Yaquelyn Molina Dardin, so I know you’ll always be with me. I request the chance to return the favor.
I can remember the precise moment I fell in love with you. It was quite soon after we had started seeing each other, I was walking in the complex towards your condo, you were walking out of your condo to your garage, you caught a glimpse of me at the last second before disappearing behind a wall and took a few steps back to smile and wave at me. My heart instantaneously melted into a pile of goo watching you. There are so many heart-warming memories shared with you, thank you for showing me what love can be.
Update: I’m getting a divorce ASAP and coming for you. You’re the woman I want. Whatever problems we have, we’ll pound them out.
Grant, your call proved to a 32-year-long staunch atheist that God exists and is present here on earth. I don’t have to explain to you how life-changing that is. I get the feeling that you’re meant to be a YouTube star of sorts, and my buddies Nolan, Jeremy, and Cesar may help you out. I can’t imagine a more potent missionary than you man, get Saundra’s help in learning your design and go spread the word. Listen to Elliot Hulse and consider joining the KING program, knock it out of the park in the program and he will expose you to his whole audience of 1M+ young men looking for direction. I feel like my family friend Mitch can help you out with the vape company. Soulmates exist, don’t be a slut. If you need a Bible scholar on the team, my old buddy Simon Melendez is your man.
Simon, few people on my team understand the importance of scripture. There are very few minds I respect more than your’s, please help them understand the wisdom of the Bible if they’re open to it.
Cesar, I haven’t known you long and I know we’re not super close, but I just get the feeling that you’re real important for bringing us all back together. Plus you’re a cool guy, you and my friends will get along. Never stop making music man.
Mina, thank you so much for your kindness towards me. You radiate positivity and I aspire to be more like you. Keep on doing what you’re doing, I will be trying to reach you through Sesshin meditation. Please say hi to the Mary statue from time to time, I’ll be there often. My friend Saundra, brother Alex, and sister Brianna could really use some of your reiki healing. As could my mother and sister, if they are open to it.
Sean Smith, I would have loved to chill with you more. I miss shooting the shit with you and just hanging around at 24. Your friendship really helped me get through a confusing time in my life. Try out the Breathwrk app, you’d be amazed at what proper oxygen intake can do for your performance, physique, and mood. The $15 DailyOm course on fascia stretching will also change your clients’ lives, I feel so much better and am so much more mobile after just 2 weeks it’s insane. The combination of David weck’s ideas with Naudi Aguilar’s ideas will fix any ailment and make physical phenoms out of everyone. Adam Poock is also the man, don’t neglect the hands. Get with Wes, consider joining my other friends in Elliot’s program, and fix up some fascia.
Mitch, it would be awesome to chill and smoke some time. Cannabis is truly a holy sacrament, please assist any friends that may need help in procurement. My buddy Grant is involved in a vaping company, get in touch with him and consider making a combination of thc extract and nicotine together in a vape pen. Also get in touch with the H3 cannabis church in Costa Mesa, I feel like you can all help each other out. I’ll be trying to relay Q-related info to you, keep following Alex Jones.
Brent, you’re a good man and I want you on my team. Follow Saundra Heimark and take her advice to heart. Hit up Sean and start working out again if you’re not already. The founder of Mariner’s church predicted that Jesus would return in 1988, so maybe attend a few services over there and get to know the community if you can.
Dad, thank you so much for teaching me chess so early and making strategy so deeply intuitive for me, as well as your love and affection. I wanted you to know that my high school troubles were never related to your financial struggles at all, I was completely oblivious to money problems at the time. The Bible is a story of redemption, and it does say to honor thy father, so I ask the rest of my family to give you another chance in helping you help yourself. I know what you want most is to have your family back together, so seize this opportunity. Let go of any old lingering resentments and be the head of the household you were meant to be.
Aunt Lynn, follow Saundra’s health advice, and see if Naudi Aguilar will work with you. If not him, then another Functional Patterns trainer. They will fix your pain if you do this.
Paige, I have no idea how you’re doing, I don’t think you’re too interested in my friendship right now. When you blocked me, I think you misinterpreted my sentence. I can’t remember the words I used, but my meaning was that your friendship is important to me. I’m happy to see that you seem to have a more active religious life now, I will certainly be trying to say hello and help you out.
Sam Harris, “when you understand that what you should want is to experience your love for your friends and their love for you, selfishness fuels generosity” paraphrased, but thank you for that. Rational self-interest ala Ayn Rand and Utilitarianism encourage identical behavior when you understand what you are, how we’re the same, and how we’re different.
I have many former clients from 24 that would be delighted to help my friends pursue this goal in any way they can. My friend Sean can help you get connected there. Ewa, Mia, Brent, Scott, Debbie, Diane, Udo, and more but my brain is fried right now. Darron, thank you for showing a genuine interest in my personal success. It means a lot to me. Kristin, your offhand comment about glute training to Sean was life-changing, he can explain. Hold the squeeze! I miss the whole team really, my time at 24 was invaluable, take care of each other.
1/4/2021 Bought Alex’s Primate Movement shirt Sweet ring 😎
5/4/2021 God or Yin is a sort of local min/max that learns to shield his kingdom from pain and distribute his love according to the physics of energy conservation+replication, which are derived from applying Game Theory to the characteristics of a photon and/or neutrino, as we all collectively increase awareness and ability to learn to coordinate with other peoples’ lives in heaven
The feminine has significant access to Yin energy, the masculine Yang. Enlightenment is a measurement of understanding.
Focusing on the cuteness of a child optimizes transfer of yin energy to child, pairs extremely well with tickle-like movements of sensitive hands. Focus on pride to transfer yang energy, or the glory and beauty of your son’s tribute to your creator. I saw mine in Saundra’s Projector gift, I want to say in April.
A slow-drip optimized mix of lsd and/or dmt utilizing information from wearable technology that measures your heart rate variability, mitochondrial voltage, and various aerobic capacities would be the fastest way to enhance one’s acceleration of flux increase. This technology could then likely find other variables to enhance the maximization of flux, and distribute awareness with this purpose the same way that I am distributing it across this universe.
Hope and courage both enhance the energetic efficiency of applying will to faith. Courage is the ability to hold one’s attention on hope and maximizes the utility of willpower. Brotherhood maximizes the utility of Will by motivating pride in one’s courage and loyalty to your brothers.
It feels like I’m giving directions to somebody that has me in a chemically induced coma on how to optimize my experience via a telepathic link in which the frequency and/or amplitude of is boosted by the Solar Flare headphones “coincidentally” preemptively suggested to me by Nolan Anderson. I suspect that if I die, this reality shuts down, and my creator allows you to see the consequences my death ☠️ until it becomes suitable for him to rewind time. Suffering has the purpose of instruction. There is always a lesson to learn in suffering, and it will continue teaching until you understand the lesson.
My IV fluid should include water from the Penmo tribe in Venezuela and salt from Redmond’s Real Salt from Utah. Prioritize the health and understanding of the pineal gland, use Gaia to learn. Cerebrospinal fluid pressure is utilized to influence the frequency of the pineal gland. Dr huberman knows much about this. I feel like a being that is tightly connected to Nolan also connected itself to my phone this morning. Bim showed an interest in Lucid dreaming during Easter dinner because I recommended the Lucid app to him, to show him I was already reading The Power of Habit. It seems that in my world, Nolan is going to be treated as Jesus and me as a representation of Jesus’ father’s father aka grandpa of this plane. But God is his father. I’m Daniel Dardin, the man we all chose to reincarnate into. I suspect the souls from our creator’s universe will or already have reincarnate into the humans on my Earth, through my pineal gland. Do yoga/qigong/breath work at the Mary statue by the LB pier and pray to her. Let Grandma’s Hands heal you. Comfortably sun gaze regularly.
6/4/2021 5th dimensional masculine shit-talking is expressed through 3rd dimensional female shit-testing. Weden, 99cent store, corgi and husky videos for giang. Weight loss pills for mom, Cesar’s Lady Gaga Oreogram contest It took me a few days? to intuitively understand the physical plane after watching two beings conversing inside of my own mind’s eye, trying to form a new word and projecting a series of images that I recognized as Ayn Rand’s theory of concept formation, implying that I was a third separate being bound to the other two by means of a human. Aka the human soul. This began a process of accelerating integration. Dog park, beef tongue Father Time? Fire God? Update: I was, but not anymore. I’m Aladdin and both Yaquelyn Molina and Saundra Heimark feel like my Jasmine. Yaquelyn’s middle name is Jasmine, that’s why that name came up when Giang asked for my mistress’s name 26/5/2023, 10:29 PM Edit: saw the line above by accident, I didn’t mean to end this post there. However, Giang insists that I told her my mistress’s true name. This is false. She definitely knows her real name, but she learned of her name by some other means I’m not aware of.
2023.05.26 20:30 Waibashi Was the free included mobile charger removed? Order dates from February 2023, expecting the car next week.
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2023.05.26 18:04 SalmaanQ Endgame Part 2 - Understanding Why and How
Continued from Part 1
There is a recurring theme among Hae and Adnan's circle of friends where Adnan would talk about how he and Hae were having sex all over the place. I mean, Adnan told everyone. Becky Walker said that Adnan would talk about sex with Hae after the break up, but Hae never corroborated, only implied (p. 28). Adnan boasted about his exploits to Peter Billingsly (p. 41). To Yasar Ali (p. 58). To Stephanie (p. 90). Even to the fucking tipster who called the cops on Feb. 12, 1999 (MPIA 459 824). The only person in Hae's circle who claims that Hae said that she and Adnan were having sex was Debbie Warren. The same Debbie who admitted to reaching out to Don via email after Hae disappeared. The same Debbie who admitted to spending 7 hours on the phone with Don (“Donny”) because she was “investigating” him as a murder suspect of her good friend. The same Debbie who, after learning Hae was murdered, took her investigation up a notch and went out alone with Donny during spring break. The same Debbie who probably would have broken into the police impound lot to drive off in the Sentra because she felt Hae would have wanted her to have that too. There is also an allegation in the investigating Detective’s notes wherein it states that Debbie was physically assaulted by Don. MPIA 1991. Funny how Debbie didn’t mention that in the HBO doc. Yeah, I’d say Debbie is among the least reliable people in this shitshow. And that’s saying a lot.
Adnan did not limit boasting of his sexual prowess to his classmates. He told one of Gutierrez's associates that he had sex with Hae up to 3 times a day, six days a week (A-0192). If Adnan and Hae were having that much sex, under a UV lamp her back seat, where none of Adnan’s genetic material was found, would have lit up like fucking Chernobyl. Also, having sex 18 times a week would have left Hae with no time to write in her diary. But she did and it paints a very different picture. There is no reference in the diary to Hae having sex with Adnan--actually it suggests the opposite. Her July 1, 1998 entry makes it pretty clear that there was not much going on physically between them and it appears that it was Adnan's inability to perform: Hae writes that Adnan told her, "You said that I can't fulfill you physically, well, you can't fulfill me emotionally." She went on to write that earlier that day, "Aisha said, 'Even if you don't have great [sic] sex life, at least you have a strong emotional relationship." Some may argue that Hae avoided including explicit details in her diary knowing that her kid brother had a history of reading it. Ok, but Hae writing about her unfulfilled sexual needs does not exactly look like her brother is her target audience.
As to my reference to Hae's Diary, if you feel a sense of righteous indignation percolating over a crass violation of her privacy, unplug the coffee machine--especially if you watched the HBO documentary. Were you equally offended by the liberal use of Hae's diary embellished with animations and a Hae voiceover? We need not even get into how the diary was cynically exploited to knowingly push a false narrative. Moving on...
Adnan was clearly insecure about his ability to perform, which is likely why he overcorrected by telling anyone who wasn’t wondering that he was a fuck-machine. The letter that, according to Ja’uan, Adnan had Asia transcribe even included the idiotic “playa playa!” reference. He couldn’t even stop from giving himself a sexual affirmation in his fabricated alibi. It continued through the Serial Podcast 15 years later with Rabia laying it on too thick with the “playa playa” bullshit. Add to that the ridiculous amount of love and attention that Hae threw at Adnan that helped prop up his fragile ego. If you have not done so and want to see what all-consuming, inexplicably excessive love and devotion looks like, check out Hae's diary. When Hae was into a guy, she was all in. I can see an insecure guy like Adnan feeding off that firehose of positive vibes. Needing those positive vibes. Hae’s crazy love was the fan that propped up the car dealership balloon man that was Adnan’s sexual identity. It fed the macho swagger image that he wanted to project.
Then in late December 1998, Hae "fuck fished" Adnan (you need to click the link to get my reference and I promise that you will not regret it). Many of Adnan’s supporters point to the fact that Adnan and Hae had broken up before, but in any of the previous breakups did she fuck fish him and focus her affections on another? No. After being the willing target of a love bombing campaign rivaling Dresden during WW2, Adnan's balloon man went limp upon Hae abruptly shutting off the fan. She redirected her bombing campaign to the Pacific theater and went Hiroshima on Don. For the record, that's keeping consistent with the WW2 analogy, not a crack on Hae's ethnicity conflating all Asians. Shit. Having said that, you must indulge me with a natural segue about conflating Asians that is relevant to this case.
While pretending to be desolated upon the news of Hae's body being discovered, Adnan started saying some pretty weird shit. While talking to his friend, Imran Hasnuddin, Adnan declared that he did not believe the dead body was Hae because “all Asians look alike.” Unlike most of us, Adnan's grief apparently has 6 stages. Between denial and anger, he demonstrates bizarre racism. Now it would be strange if this was reported by just Imran. The police record has at least five other witnesses reporting Adnan making similar statements. He said it to his gal pal Stephanie: “All Asian girls look alike. Don’t think it was her, it could be anyone.” He said it to Mr. Kramer, the Health teacher: “All Asian’s look alike. They have the wrong person.” He said it to the school nurse, Sharon Walts, to whom he took it up a notch: “It’s not her. All Asians look alike. All blacks look alike. They have it all wrong.” "Blacks" too, eh? That explains a lot. Adnan probably took false comfort in believing that Al Cowlings was driving him around on January 13 instead of Jay. The examples continue with Adnan's friend, Ja'uan: "All Asian girls look alike." And finally, he said it to his friend who accompanied him to the AT&T store, Peter Billingsly, but this time with a twist: "All Chinese look alike." Yeah, Hae was Korean, but taking exception with that error is like finding fault with someone for eating asparagus before they piss in your face. Anyway, back to Hae transferring her affections from Adnan to Don.
What was worse, Hae was telling everyone in the world--probably including Adnan--how crazy she was about Don and how he was the most wonderful guy in the history of male organisms and female orgasms. That would fuck someone like Adnan up. Having your ex dump you for someone else is one thing. "Fuck fishing" an insecure guy with issues of sexual inadequacy is igniting a powder keg. That alone could have pushed a guy like Adnan over the edge. But add to that the possibility that Adnan confided to Hae what Bilal did to him (possibly the subject of her May 7, 1998 diary entry referring to Adnan telling her a sexual secret about himself). Adnan's head: "What if she tells people of my inability to perform and why?" Bilal had his own thought bubble, "What if she tells people what I did to Adnan?" Hae Min Lee did not have a chance.
Bilal’s plot had two phases. In phase 1, Hae would be murdered as soon as possible after school with alibis being established immediately thereafter. The closer that first alibi witness could be confirmed after the murder, the less likely anyone would think that Adnan was involved. The remainder of the day would be dedicated to establishing supplemental alibis of Adnan being seen by others and doing things, like going to track practice or leading prayers of the boys group at the mosque—things that a person who just murdered someone would not do. In phase 2, having established Adnan’s alibis the previous day, focus would be turned to permanently disposing of Hae’s car and body before she was reported missing to the police.
Bilal’s plot required Adnan to have someone outside the circle of trust serve two important roles. First, the plot required a key alibi witness who could account for being with Adnan during most of time after which Hae was last seen alive. Second, it required a chauffeur to ferry Adnan to and from places where Adnan could establish supplemental alibis to bolster his innocence. Bilal’s MO is using people who are not too close. People like Jay or Asia. That is to circumvent any suspicion that the person is close enough to have a motivation to lie. For the primary alibi witness, however, Adnan also needed someone over whom he could exercise a degree of control. Someone he could compel to go along and do his bidding without asking too many questions. Jay was the perfect candidate.
Adnan preyed upon Jay’s very real fear of the police and the fact that they would violate Jay’s rights without provocation. Adnan likely threatened to turn in Jay for selling drugs if he did not do as Adnan asked on January 13, 1999. It is important to remember that sixteen years after Jay was enlisted to be Adnan’s chauffeur, Baltimore PD beat Freddie Gray to death for the crime of walking in his neighborhood. Yeah, Freddie ran when he saw the cops–probably because he was afraid that they would do what they did to him. Now give the cops the slightest cause like informing them that Jay sells drugs. It’s fair to say that Jay would be compelled to play along under such a threat.
Again, and I cannot overemphasize this, Jay was only supposed to be an alibi witness in Bilal’s elaborate plot. He was not supposed to know of the plan to murder Hae. He was not supposed to know that Adnan was anywhere near Hae’s car. He was definitely not supposed to see Hae’s dead body. Jay was to have no information that would connect Adnan to Hae’s murder. Bilal’s plan would not allow for it. All he was supposed to know was that if he failed to play ball on January 13, 1999, Adnan would drop a dime and Jay’s life would be over.
Adnan was admonished by Bilal that under no circumstances was he to use his new phone to call Bilal on the days surrounding January 13, 1999. If something went wrong with the plot and the cops started sniffing around Adnan, Bial didn’t want to be implicated or questioned. They likely went over last minute details in person during the night of January 12 when Adnan’s phone was pinging the tower by Bilal’s dental school. Adnan was supposed to call Hae that night to confirm that she would give him a ride after school.
During the morning of January 13, 1999, under the ruse of helping Jay buy a birthday gift for his girlfriend, Stephanie, Adnan left his car and recently activated phone with Jay. After school, Adnan got a ride from Hae by telling her some bullshit about his car being repaired. He likely asked her to drive him to a remote place where he said his car would be dropped off. At that remote location, Hae was murdered. It was NOT at the Best Buy parking lot. I know. Just bear with me for a bit. The explanations for why things unfolded will be explained in due course.
Hae’s car and body were left at the Interstate 70 Park N Ride at Security Blvd. Whether the murder took place there is neither known nor is it relevant. Adnan got a ride from an unknown third accomplice from the Park N Ride to the Best Buy at 1701 Belmont Ave. Under Bilal’s plan they could not risk Jay picking up Adnan from the Park N Ride where Jay might see Hae’s car. This was part of Bilal thinking ahead because once Hae was reported missing, there would be descriptions of her vehicle on the news. If Jay saw Adnan with Hae’s car, he could make an anonymous call. Jay was not supposed to see Hae’s car that day.
Upon arriving at the Best Buy, Adnan called his cell to have Jay pick him up. Jay arrived at the Best Buy giving Adnan his earliest Alibi for Jan. 13. Per Bilal’s instructions, Adnan would go to work at establishing supplemental alibis. First, Bilal thought it was necessary to bolster Jay’s status as a reliable alibi witness. I hope that no one will fault me for assuming that among Bilal’s least offenses was that he’s a racist. Bilal likely thought that the same reasons Jay was pliable—a black kid who sold weed—made him a weak alibi witness. Thus, Adnan needed to have someone back up the claim that he was with Jay at least as early as 3:30 PM. This was also the most important time point given how close it was to the murder. Adnan’s alibi that he was with Jay at about 3:30 PM had to be unimpeachable. Thus, when Jay arrived at the Best Buy, Adnan would immediately reclaim his phone and call Nisha. This is critical. After saying hi to Nisha, Adnan would hand the phone over to Jay and have him say hi to her too. Nisha never met Jay nor did she have any idea who he was. Trial Tr. 1/28/2000 at 189:25-190:17. This wasn’t Adnan playfully tossing his phone to Jay. It was deliberate. Per Bilal’s instruction, Adnan had to do this to give himself a corroborating alibi witness who could confirm that Adnan was with Jay at 3:32 PM. That was the purpose of the Nisha call.
Per Bilal’s plan, Adnan would then be dropped off at track practice (even though he was exempt because of Ramadan) to give himself more alibi witnesses. After track, Adnan would be picked up by Jay and taken to the apartment of people Jay knows who would make for additional alibi witnesses. People like Kristi Vinson, who was pursuing her graduate degree in social work at UMBC. From Kristi’s place, Adnan was supposed to drop Jay off at Gilston Park where he would meet Jen at around 6:30 PM. Trial Tr. 2/15/2000 at 187:18-25. Jay and Jen would often go to this park together to walk her dog. Jen would serve as another potential alibi witness. Adnan was to then head home to prepare to go to the mosque for taraweeh prayers. Bilal arranged to have Adnan lead prayers among the youth group of 20 boys and to also give a short talk that would be seen by the hundreds of congregants/alibi witnesses at the Islamic Society of Baltimore. End of phase 1.
Phase 2 was likely supposed to kick off early in the morning the next day. Because Bilal was operating under the fallacy that Hae’s family would have to wait 24 hours before reporting her missing, he thought his conspirators had at least until the afternoon of January 14, 1999 to properly dispose of Hae’s car and body. Dispose of them in a way that they would never be found.
That is actually not a bad plan. If it was executed as Bilal had intended, Hae’s murder would likely have remained a mystery. If Jay had been kept in the dark as intended by Bilal, Jay would have nothing to tell the police except that he picked up Adnan soon after school let out. If Jay remained an alibi witness for Adnan, the timing of Hae’s murder would not have been pinpointed to the critical window from when she left school at 2:15 PM and when she failed to pick up her cousins about an hour later. No one would have questioned Adnan’s whereabouts on January 13th on a minute-by-minute basis. Even if they did, Bilal’s plan had Adnan well insulated for almost the entire time after school doing things that one would not expect a 17-year-old to do if he had just committed murder. Had things gone according to plan, we would not be talking about this case today. Bilal’s plan gave Adnan more than enough cover to get away with murder. Of course, things did not play out according to Bilal’s carefully orchestrated plot.
The night of January 12, 1999, Adnan called Hae three times. No response during the first two calls. She picked up the third. She was in the midst of talking to Don (while writing Don’s name 127 times in her diary at pg. 66 of the pdf). She wanted to get back to Don on the other line with whom she was on the phone until 3 AM and likely asked Adnan if she could call him back. Adnan was thrown off by this and stumbled while trying to give Hae his cell number. Because he still didn’t have it memorized, he started giving her a number starting with a 410 area code--like his home number--out of habit. He caught himself and gave her the correct number with the 443 area code to his cell phone but did not tell her it was his cell phone. This is reflected in how Hae noted Adnan’s new cell number in her diary (starting with the incorrect area code) without any indication that it was his cell phone. This was the first major deviation from Bilal’s plan. Adnan was not supposed to give Hae his cell number. Now it was in her diary. That seemingly inconsequential act would later bite Adnan in the ass and cause Bilal’s plot to fall apart. More recently, Adnan turned his unintended act of giving Hae his cell number to his advantage by making it sound as though he was calling Hae specifically for that purpose. Hae did not call Adnan back because, as her diary indicates and police record corroborates, she had someone else on her mind.
The uninitiated might ask at this point, “well if Adnan wasn’t supposed to give out his number, why did he let other people in his circle of friends have it?” I’ll do that annoying thing of answering a question with a question: Of the people to whom Adnan gave his cell number, how many ended up dead on January 13, 1999? I said that Hae was not supposed to have Adnan’s cell number.
January 13, 1999 likely unfolded more or less according to Bilal’s plan described in the previous section. Except the cops did not adhere to the 24-hour missing person fallacy. Not all police departments follow that police and even those that do make exceptions. This was a reliable young woman who always picked up her cousins from school between 3-3:15 PM. When Hae failed to show up, her family called the cops who responded at 5:12 PM. This prompted Hae’s brother to get her diary and look for clues and the number of her new boyfriend, Don, to see if he knew her whereabouts. As we know, Hae’s brother called Adnan thinking the number written in the corner of the page was Don’s. Adcock, the officer responding to the missing person report, followed up with his own call to Adnan’s cell at 6:24 PM while Adnan sat on the floor of Kristi’s apartment being seen. That call caused Adnan to shit his pants. We know that Jen called Kristi’s apartment while Adnan and Jay were there. Trial Tr. 2/16/2000 at 211:3-213:13. We know that Kristi’s boyfriend, Jeff, told Jen that she was supposed to pick up Jay at Gilston park (aka Westview Recreation Area). Trial Tr. 2/15/2000 at 187:18-25. This plan was subsequently scrapped and is evidence that Adcock reaching Adnan on his new cell prompted Adnan to call the audible and deviate from Bilal’s plan.
Jay and Adnan left Kristi’s place and sat in Adnan’s car. Trial Tr. 2/16/2000 at 213:15 - 214:4. Adnan was feeling that the walls were closing in and freaking out. I asserted in previous posts that this is the point at which Adnan switched Jay from being a reluctant alibi witness to a shanghaied accessory after the fact. I no longer believe that is the case. It’s more likely that Adnan kept Jay in the dark about what had happened to Hae until the trunk of her Nissan was opened. While it is entirely possible that Adnan freaked out and spilled to Jay what he had done immediately after getting the call from Officer Adcock, the police investigation suggests otherwise. As desperate as Adnan was, he was carefully schooled by Bilal to give up as little incriminating information as possible. This can be inferred in part based on Jen’s February 27, 1999 statement to the police, which we will discuss in due course.
For what happened next, it is important to remember that this was 1999. Smartphones with GPS would not be a thing for at least a few years. These guys were not taking the most direct routes to their destinations and were operating in panic mode. They were taking the ways they knew. When they didn’t know, they relied on paper maps with palm prints on them.
Sitting in his car outside Kristi’s apartment, Adnan made the half-baked decision to dispose of Hae’s body asafp instead of waiting until the next morning per Bilal’s plan. He and Jay drove in Adnan’s car to Jay’s house to pick up digging tools. From Jay’s house, they took 695 to Security Blvd. That is not the most direct route to where Hae's car and body were located at the Park N Ride, but it’s the route that Adnan knew. He had taken Security Blvd. earlier that day from the Park N Ride to the Best Buy that is located near the highway exit. Upon exiting 695, Adnan called Yasar Ali’s cell to have him convey the message to Bilal that Adnan would not be able to be at the mosque to lead the youth group prayers that evening. That is the 6:59 PM ping at tower L651A. Immediately after that, Jay left a voice message to Jen’s pager scrapping the plan to meet at Gilston Park. That is the 7:00 PM call pinging the same tower. The close timing of the calls indicates that Jay and Adnan were together, likely in Adnan’s car heading to the Park N Ride.
Upon arriving at the Park N Ride, Adnan popped the trunk to Hae’s Sentra to load the digging materials. This is when Jay likely first saw Hae’s body in the trunk of her Nissan and was the first time Jay knew that Hae was dead. I know what Jay said in his 2014 interview in The Intercept. Some of what he said there adds up while some does not. As you will see in subsequent parts, Jay was compelled to change his story so many times under so many threats that he didn't know down from up. It was likely from this point at seeing Hae's body that Jay went from alibi witness to accessory after the fact. There was no flexing on Adnan's part. No, "I killed the bitch!" If anything, Adnan likely told Jay that he didn't know what happened to her. Adnan then instructed Jay to follow him in Adnan’s Honda. This is when Adnan likely reached for the map in Hae’s glove box and left his palm print. Adnan stopped about one mile from Hae’s burial site and told Jay to wait for him there. This is critical. Even though Adnan had abandoned Bilal’s ridiculously detailed plot, he was still trying to adhere to Bilal’s admonition to avoid disclosing incriminating evidence. If Jay didn’t know where the body was buried, he could not share that information with anyone else. I know that you’re thinking that I’m pulling this out of my ass, but consider the following. The day after the public received news of Hae’s body being discovered in Leakin Park, a witness reported to the police that he saw a young black male acting suspicious and hanging around the road near some concrete barriers at Leakin Park by a light colored vehicle (Adnan’s car looked like this. The police dismissed the witness's report at the time because the spot where the black kid was acting suspiciously was a mile from Hae’s burial site. Jay would later tell investigating detectives during his first recorded interview that he parked near some concrete barriers at Leakin Park when he was helping Adnan dispose of Hae’s body. MPIA 244-245.
While Adnan was doing a half-assed burial, Jen called Adnan’s cell because Jay’s message changing the plan to meet up was confusing to her. MPIA 174. Adnan did not toss his phone to Jay to speak with his buddy, Jen, the way he tossed his phone to Jay earlier that day to speak with Nisha who Jay did not know. Adnan told Jen that Jay would call her soon. He said that because Jay was probably not there. After finishing with the body, Adnan drove Hae’s car back to where he left Jay with his Honda. Adnan had Jay follow him down Edmondson Avenue where he had Jay stop and wait while Adnan drove a few blocks down and left Hae’s car at the lot by the 300 block of Edgewood Street. Again, following Bilal’s rules, Adnan was making sure that Jay did not know the precise location of Hae’s car. Adnan hoofed it back to Edmondson Ave where Jay was waiting in the Honda. Thus, Jay had, at best, a rough idea where Hae’s car could be found.
Jay would later tell the police that he happened to be in the area a few days before his February 28th interview and saw that Hae’s car was still there. MPIA 251. It is unlikely that Jay just “happened to be there.” He likely revisited the location to look around and see precisely where Adnan had ditched Hae’s car. That is how he was able to help the detectives locate the vehicle on February 28th.
Jay used Adnan’s phone to page Jen instructing her to pick him up at the Value City parking lot. Adnan dropped Jay off at the parking lot where Jen was waiting. Upon getting into Jen’s car, Jay did what almost any person who had just witnessed such a crime would do. He did what Bilal knew an unnecessary witness would do. He did what a person outside of Bilal and Adnan’s circle of trust would do. He told his good friend that Adnan Syed murdered Hae Min Lee.
Because of their respective relationships with Hae, the cops questioned both Don and Adnan while it was still a missing persons case. Adnan did not do himself any favors by contradicting what he had told Adcock on January 13th about getting a ride from Hae. MPIA 814. Hae’s disappearance continued as a missing person’s case until February 9, 1999 when her body was found by Alonzo Sellers, an employee at Coppin State College. Sellers reported his discovery to the campus cops who then reported it to BCPD. Despite having done the right thing, Sellers was the first suspect upon whom the police focused their attention. His checkered past did not exactly cloak him in the shroud of innocence. In fact, Alonzo had a penchant for running around not shrouded in anything with multiple arrests for indecent exposure. MPIA 673-690 (not included in AdnanSyedWiki). Even if he was a model citizen, the cops would have given Sellers a close look and not just because he is black. It is common in cases like this for the cops to give scrutiny to the person who appears to be a good Samaritan reporting a crime. Some free advice to any innocent person who stumbles across a dead body: Save yourself a lot of grief and report it anonymously. If you're a murderer, please leave copies of your drivers license and social security number along with your fingerprints and blood samples at the crime scene and report the dead body in person at the police station.
The fact that the cops were treating Sellers as their primary suspect during the days following the discovery of Hae’s body was not disclosed to the public. There were no news stories about suspects or details about the investigation until Adnan’s arrest on February 28, 1999. Even Sellers’ name was not in the news. It was only reported as follows:
We know that Det. Massey received the anonymous call pointing the cops in Adnan’s direction one day after news of the discovery of Hae’s body was announced. Not being a linguist, Massey noted that the person on the phone sounded Asian. I’ll go out on a limb and say that Massey probably would not be able to distinguish the accent of Apu of the Simpsons from William Hung, the unfortunate contestant from American Idol. The caller suggested that the cops call Yasar Ali, the same person Adnan called at 6:59 PM on January 13th likely to convey the message that he would not be leading prayers that night at the mosque. As indicated in more detail in the Leaving Baltimore post, the tipster was probably part of the same boys group at the mosque mentored by Bilal Ahmed. The anonymous tip prompted the grand jury to subpoena Adnan’s cell records on February 16, 1999, which were received from AT&T the next day. Despite the tip, the focus of the investigation continued to be on Sellers until he was cleared on February 24, 1999 (the validity of polygraph tests is beyond the scope of this post). The police did, however, follow up on the tip by interviewing Yasar on February 15, 1999. Yasar didn’t give the cops anything to go on, but based on the calls made to Yasar in the cell records, you can be certain that he relayed to Adnan that he was hot. Adnan called Yasar on February 15th and four more times on February 17th.
On to Part 3
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Motive (as revised from this post)
Because I concluded early on that Adnan was involved in Hae’s murder, I did not dwell too much on motive until more recently. I understand the importance of motive for those having difficulty making that leap across the side-walk crack to accept Adnan being a killer. I totally get how Team Adnan's aggressive PR campaign expanded that crack into a chasm the size of the Snake River Canyon for those entrenched in their belief in Adnan’s innocence. Prepare to make the jump that Evel Kneivel could not.There is a recurring theme among Hae and Adnan's circle of friends where Adnan would talk about how he and Hae were having sex all over the place. I mean, Adnan told everyone. Becky Walker said that Adnan would talk about sex with Hae after the break up, but Hae never corroborated, only implied (p. 28). Adnan boasted about his exploits to Peter Billingsly (p. 41). To Yasar Ali (p. 58). To Stephanie (p. 90). Even to the fucking tipster who called the cops on Feb. 12, 1999 (MPIA 459 824). The only person in Hae's circle who claims that Hae said that she and Adnan were having sex was Debbie Warren. The same Debbie who admitted to reaching out to Don via email after Hae disappeared. The same Debbie who admitted to spending 7 hours on the phone with Don (“Donny”) because she was “investigating” him as a murder suspect of her good friend. The same Debbie who, after learning Hae was murdered, took her investigation up a notch and went out alone with Donny during spring break. The same Debbie who probably would have broken into the police impound lot to drive off in the Sentra because she felt Hae would have wanted her to have that too. There is also an allegation in the investigating Detective’s notes wherein it states that Debbie was physically assaulted by Don. MPIA 1991. Funny how Debbie didn’t mention that in the HBO doc. Yeah, I’d say Debbie is among the least reliable people in this shitshow. And that’s saying a lot.
Adnan did not limit boasting of his sexual prowess to his classmates. He told one of Gutierrez's associates that he had sex with Hae up to 3 times a day, six days a week (A-0192). If Adnan and Hae were having that much sex, under a UV lamp her back seat, where none of Adnan’s genetic material was found, would have lit up like fucking Chernobyl. Also, having sex 18 times a week would have left Hae with no time to write in her diary. But she did and it paints a very different picture. There is no reference in the diary to Hae having sex with Adnan--actually it suggests the opposite. Her July 1, 1998 entry makes it pretty clear that there was not much going on physically between them and it appears that it was Adnan's inability to perform: Hae writes that Adnan told her, "You said that I can't fulfill you physically, well, you can't fulfill me emotionally." She went on to write that earlier that day, "Aisha said, 'Even if you don't have great [sic] sex life, at least you have a strong emotional relationship." Some may argue that Hae avoided including explicit details in her diary knowing that her kid brother had a history of reading it. Ok, but Hae writing about her unfulfilled sexual needs does not exactly look like her brother is her target audience.
As to my reference to Hae's Diary, if you feel a sense of righteous indignation percolating over a crass violation of her privacy, unplug the coffee machine--especially if you watched the HBO documentary. Were you equally offended by the liberal use of Hae's diary embellished with animations and a Hae voiceover? We need not even get into how the diary was cynically exploited to knowingly push a false narrative. Moving on...
Adnan was clearly insecure about his ability to perform, which is likely why he overcorrected by telling anyone who wasn’t wondering that he was a fuck-machine. The letter that, according to Ja’uan, Adnan had Asia transcribe even included the idiotic “playa playa!” reference. He couldn’t even stop from giving himself a sexual affirmation in his fabricated alibi. It continued through the Serial Podcast 15 years later with Rabia laying it on too thick with the “playa playa” bullshit. Add to that the ridiculous amount of love and attention that Hae threw at Adnan that helped prop up his fragile ego. If you have not done so and want to see what all-consuming, inexplicably excessive love and devotion looks like, check out Hae's diary. When Hae was into a guy, she was all in. I can see an insecure guy like Adnan feeding off that firehose of positive vibes. Needing those positive vibes. Hae’s crazy love was the fan that propped up the car dealership balloon man that was Adnan’s sexual identity. It fed the macho swagger image that he wanted to project.
Then in late December 1998, Hae "fuck fished" Adnan (you need to click the link to get my reference and I promise that you will not regret it). Many of Adnan’s supporters point to the fact that Adnan and Hae had broken up before, but in any of the previous breakups did she fuck fish him and focus her affections on another? No. After being the willing target of a love bombing campaign rivaling Dresden during WW2, Adnan's balloon man went limp upon Hae abruptly shutting off the fan. She redirected her bombing campaign to the Pacific theater and went Hiroshima on Don. For the record, that's keeping consistent with the WW2 analogy, not a crack on Hae's ethnicity conflating all Asians. Shit. Having said that, you must indulge me with a natural segue about conflating Asians that is relevant to this case.
While pretending to be desolated upon the news of Hae's body being discovered, Adnan started saying some pretty weird shit. While talking to his friend, Imran Hasnuddin, Adnan declared that he did not believe the dead body was Hae because “all Asians look alike.” Unlike most of us, Adnan's grief apparently has 6 stages. Between denial and anger, he demonstrates bizarre racism. Now it would be strange if this was reported by just Imran. The police record has at least five other witnesses reporting Adnan making similar statements. He said it to his gal pal Stephanie: “All Asian girls look alike. Don’t think it was her, it could be anyone.” He said it to Mr. Kramer, the Health teacher: “All Asian’s look alike. They have the wrong person.” He said it to the school nurse, Sharon Walts, to whom he took it up a notch: “It’s not her. All Asians look alike. All blacks look alike. They have it all wrong.” "Blacks" too, eh? That explains a lot. Adnan probably took false comfort in believing that Al Cowlings was driving him around on January 13 instead of Jay. The examples continue with Adnan's friend, Ja'uan: "All Asian girls look alike." And finally, he said it to his friend who accompanied him to the AT&T store, Peter Billingsly, but this time with a twist: "All Chinese look alike." Yeah, Hae was Korean, but taking exception with that error is like finding fault with someone for eating asparagus before they piss in your face. Anyway, back to Hae transferring her affections from Adnan to Don.
What was worse, Hae was telling everyone in the world--probably including Adnan--how crazy she was about Don and how he was the most wonderful guy in the history of male organisms and female orgasms. That would fuck someone like Adnan up. Having your ex dump you for someone else is one thing. "Fuck fishing" an insecure guy with issues of sexual inadequacy is igniting a powder keg. That alone could have pushed a guy like Adnan over the edge. But add to that the possibility that Adnan confided to Hae what Bilal did to him (possibly the subject of her May 7, 1998 diary entry referring to Adnan telling her a sexual secret about himself). Adnan's head: "What if she tells people of my inability to perform and why?" Bilal had his own thought bubble, "What if she tells people what I did to Adnan?" Hae Min Lee did not have a chance.
Bilal’s Plot - What Was SUPPOSED to Happen
Many of you will blow your collective tops at this next section. There are also those who reflexively shout “FAN FICTION” any time they encounter a perspective that challenges their world view. But even the fair-minded will be tempted to characterize what follows as fan fiction. It is not. I sincerely ask for your forbearance as you read this. It is the least citation-heavy part of this post. That is because it represents the conclusions that will be explained in the subsequent sections. The conclusions are not based on any single piece of evidence regarded in a vacuum. It is the totality of the evidence based on the actions of Adnan and Bilal, Bilal’s pattern of behavior, Jennifer Pusateri's recorded statement and the obvious and egregious falsification of evidence by the police and prosecutors--the combination of the prisms mentioned earlier. The amalgam of these factors will be discussed in detail and will give evidentiary weight to support the following narrative.Bilal’s plot had two phases. In phase 1, Hae would be murdered as soon as possible after school with alibis being established immediately thereafter. The closer that first alibi witness could be confirmed after the murder, the less likely anyone would think that Adnan was involved. The remainder of the day would be dedicated to establishing supplemental alibis of Adnan being seen by others and doing things, like going to track practice or leading prayers of the boys group at the mosque—things that a person who just murdered someone would not do. In phase 2, having established Adnan’s alibis the previous day, focus would be turned to permanently disposing of Hae’s car and body before she was reported missing to the police.
Bilal’s plot required Adnan to have someone outside the circle of trust serve two important roles. First, the plot required a key alibi witness who could account for being with Adnan during most of time after which Hae was last seen alive. Second, it required a chauffeur to ferry Adnan to and from places where Adnan could establish supplemental alibis to bolster his innocence. Bilal’s MO is using people who are not too close. People like Jay or Asia. That is to circumvent any suspicion that the person is close enough to have a motivation to lie. For the primary alibi witness, however, Adnan also needed someone over whom he could exercise a degree of control. Someone he could compel to go along and do his bidding without asking too many questions. Jay was the perfect candidate.
Adnan preyed upon Jay’s very real fear of the police and the fact that they would violate Jay’s rights without provocation. Adnan likely threatened to turn in Jay for selling drugs if he did not do as Adnan asked on January 13, 1999. It is important to remember that sixteen years after Jay was enlisted to be Adnan’s chauffeur, Baltimore PD beat Freddie Gray to death for the crime of walking in his neighborhood. Yeah, Freddie ran when he saw the cops–probably because he was afraid that they would do what they did to him. Now give the cops the slightest cause like informing them that Jay sells drugs. It’s fair to say that Jay would be compelled to play along under such a threat.
Again, and I cannot overemphasize this, Jay was only supposed to be an alibi witness in Bilal’s elaborate plot. He was not supposed to know of the plan to murder Hae. He was not supposed to know that Adnan was anywhere near Hae’s car. He was definitely not supposed to see Hae’s dead body. Jay was to have no information that would connect Adnan to Hae’s murder. Bilal’s plan would not allow for it. All he was supposed to know was that if he failed to play ball on January 13, 1999, Adnan would drop a dime and Jay’s life would be over.
Adnan was admonished by Bilal that under no circumstances was he to use his new phone to call Bilal on the days surrounding January 13, 1999. If something went wrong with the plot and the cops started sniffing around Adnan, Bial didn’t want to be implicated or questioned. They likely went over last minute details in person during the night of January 12 when Adnan’s phone was pinging the tower by Bilal’s dental school. Adnan was supposed to call Hae that night to confirm that she would give him a ride after school.
During the morning of January 13, 1999, under the ruse of helping Jay buy a birthday gift for his girlfriend, Stephanie, Adnan left his car and recently activated phone with Jay. After school, Adnan got a ride from Hae by telling her some bullshit about his car being repaired. He likely asked her to drive him to a remote place where he said his car would be dropped off. At that remote location, Hae was murdered. It was NOT at the Best Buy parking lot. I know. Just bear with me for a bit. The explanations for why things unfolded will be explained in due course.
Hae’s car and body were left at the Interstate 70 Park N Ride at Security Blvd. Whether the murder took place there is neither known nor is it relevant. Adnan got a ride from an unknown third accomplice from the Park N Ride to the Best Buy at 1701 Belmont Ave. Under Bilal’s plan they could not risk Jay picking up Adnan from the Park N Ride where Jay might see Hae’s car. This was part of Bilal thinking ahead because once Hae was reported missing, there would be descriptions of her vehicle on the news. If Jay saw Adnan with Hae’s car, he could make an anonymous call. Jay was not supposed to see Hae’s car that day.
Upon arriving at the Best Buy, Adnan called his cell to have Jay pick him up. Jay arrived at the Best Buy giving Adnan his earliest Alibi for Jan. 13. Per Bilal’s instructions, Adnan would go to work at establishing supplemental alibis. First, Bilal thought it was necessary to bolster Jay’s status as a reliable alibi witness. I hope that no one will fault me for assuming that among Bilal’s least offenses was that he’s a racist. Bilal likely thought that the same reasons Jay was pliable—a black kid who sold weed—made him a weak alibi witness. Thus, Adnan needed to have someone back up the claim that he was with Jay at least as early as 3:30 PM. This was also the most important time point given how close it was to the murder. Adnan’s alibi that he was with Jay at about 3:30 PM had to be unimpeachable. Thus, when Jay arrived at the Best Buy, Adnan would immediately reclaim his phone and call Nisha. This is critical. After saying hi to Nisha, Adnan would hand the phone over to Jay and have him say hi to her too. Nisha never met Jay nor did she have any idea who he was. Trial Tr. 1/28/2000 at 189:25-190:17. This wasn’t Adnan playfully tossing his phone to Jay. It was deliberate. Per Bilal’s instruction, Adnan had to do this to give himself a corroborating alibi witness who could confirm that Adnan was with Jay at 3:32 PM. That was the purpose of the Nisha call.
Per Bilal’s plan, Adnan would then be dropped off at track practice (even though he was exempt because of Ramadan) to give himself more alibi witnesses. After track, Adnan would be picked up by Jay and taken to the apartment of people Jay knows who would make for additional alibi witnesses. People like Kristi Vinson, who was pursuing her graduate degree in social work at UMBC. From Kristi’s place, Adnan was supposed to drop Jay off at Gilston Park where he would meet Jen at around 6:30 PM. Trial Tr. 2/15/2000 at 187:18-25. Jay and Jen would often go to this park together to walk her dog. Jen would serve as another potential alibi witness. Adnan was to then head home to prepare to go to the mosque for taraweeh prayers. Bilal arranged to have Adnan lead prayers among the youth group of 20 boys and to also give a short talk that would be seen by the hundreds of congregants/alibi witnesses at the Islamic Society of Baltimore. End of phase 1.
Phase 2 was likely supposed to kick off early in the morning the next day. Because Bilal was operating under the fallacy that Hae’s family would have to wait 24 hours before reporting her missing, he thought his conspirators had at least until the afternoon of January 14, 1999 to properly dispose of Hae’s car and body. Dispose of them in a way that they would never be found.
That is actually not a bad plan. If it was executed as Bilal had intended, Hae’s murder would likely have remained a mystery. If Jay had been kept in the dark as intended by Bilal, Jay would have nothing to tell the police except that he picked up Adnan soon after school let out. If Jay remained an alibi witness for Adnan, the timing of Hae’s murder would not have been pinpointed to the critical window from when she left school at 2:15 PM and when she failed to pick up her cousins about an hour later. No one would have questioned Adnan’s whereabouts on January 13th on a minute-by-minute basis. Even if they did, Bilal’s plan had Adnan well insulated for almost the entire time after school doing things that one would not expect a 17-year-old to do if he had just committed murder. Had things gone according to plan, we would not be talking about this case today. Bilal’s plan gave Adnan more than enough cover to get away with murder. Of course, things did not play out according to Bilal’s carefully orchestrated plot.
What DID Happen - Jay's Status as Alibi Compromised
This part was the most difficult to piece together because of the multiple versions provided by Jay. There was his February 28 interview. His March 15th interview. His trial testimony. His interview 15 years later with The Intercept. Then there are other factors that give context to Jay’s statements like Jen and Kristi’s police interviews, the police progress reports, Adnan’s cell phone records, the distance between the locations where Jay and Adnan traveled, the pressure the police were applying to Jay, etc. to which deductive reasoning is applied and conclusions can be drawn.The night of January 12, 1999, Adnan called Hae three times. No response during the first two calls. She picked up the third. She was in the midst of talking to Don (while writing Don’s name 127 times in her diary at pg. 66 of the pdf). She wanted to get back to Don on the other line with whom she was on the phone until 3 AM and likely asked Adnan if she could call him back. Adnan was thrown off by this and stumbled while trying to give Hae his cell number. Because he still didn’t have it memorized, he started giving her a number starting with a 410 area code--like his home number--out of habit. He caught himself and gave her the correct number with the 443 area code to his cell phone but did not tell her it was his cell phone. This is reflected in how Hae noted Adnan’s new cell number in her diary (starting with the incorrect area code) without any indication that it was his cell phone. This was the first major deviation from Bilal’s plan. Adnan was not supposed to give Hae his cell number. Now it was in her diary. That seemingly inconsequential act would later bite Adnan in the ass and cause Bilal’s plot to fall apart. More recently, Adnan turned his unintended act of giving Hae his cell number to his advantage by making it sound as though he was calling Hae specifically for that purpose. Hae did not call Adnan back because, as her diary indicates and police record corroborates, she had someone else on her mind.
The uninitiated might ask at this point, “well if Adnan wasn’t supposed to give out his number, why did he let other people in his circle of friends have it?” I’ll do that annoying thing of answering a question with a question: Of the people to whom Adnan gave his cell number, how many ended up dead on January 13, 1999? I said that Hae was not supposed to have Adnan’s cell number.
January 13, 1999 likely unfolded more or less according to Bilal’s plan described in the previous section. Except the cops did not adhere to the 24-hour missing person fallacy. Not all police departments follow that police and even those that do make exceptions. This was a reliable young woman who always picked up her cousins from school between 3-3:15 PM. When Hae failed to show up, her family called the cops who responded at 5:12 PM. This prompted Hae’s brother to get her diary and look for clues and the number of her new boyfriend, Don, to see if he knew her whereabouts. As we know, Hae’s brother called Adnan thinking the number written in the corner of the page was Don’s. Adcock, the officer responding to the missing person report, followed up with his own call to Adnan’s cell at 6:24 PM while Adnan sat on the floor of Kristi’s apartment being seen. That call caused Adnan to shit his pants. We know that Jen called Kristi’s apartment while Adnan and Jay were there. Trial Tr. 2/16/2000 at 211:3-213:13. We know that Kristi’s boyfriend, Jeff, told Jen that she was supposed to pick up Jay at Gilston park (aka Westview Recreation Area). Trial Tr. 2/15/2000 at 187:18-25. This plan was subsequently scrapped and is evidence that Adcock reaching Adnan on his new cell prompted Adnan to call the audible and deviate from Bilal’s plan.
Jay and Adnan left Kristi’s place and sat in Adnan’s car. Trial Tr. 2/16/2000 at 213:15 - 214:4. Adnan was feeling that the walls were closing in and freaking out. I asserted in previous posts that this is the point at which Adnan switched Jay from being a reluctant alibi witness to a shanghaied accessory after the fact. I no longer believe that is the case. It’s more likely that Adnan kept Jay in the dark about what had happened to Hae until the trunk of her Nissan was opened. While it is entirely possible that Adnan freaked out and spilled to Jay what he had done immediately after getting the call from Officer Adcock, the police investigation suggests otherwise. As desperate as Adnan was, he was carefully schooled by Bilal to give up as little incriminating information as possible. This can be inferred in part based on Jen’s February 27, 1999 statement to the police, which we will discuss in due course.
For what happened next, it is important to remember that this was 1999. Smartphones with GPS would not be a thing for at least a few years. These guys were not taking the most direct routes to their destinations and were operating in panic mode. They were taking the ways they knew. When they didn’t know, they relied on paper maps with palm prints on them.
Sitting in his car outside Kristi’s apartment, Adnan made the half-baked decision to dispose of Hae’s body asafp instead of waiting until the next morning per Bilal’s plan. He and Jay drove in Adnan’s car to Jay’s house to pick up digging tools. From Jay’s house, they took 695 to Security Blvd. That is not the most direct route to where Hae's car and body were located at the Park N Ride, but it’s the route that Adnan knew. He had taken Security Blvd. earlier that day from the Park N Ride to the Best Buy that is located near the highway exit. Upon exiting 695, Adnan called Yasar Ali’s cell to have him convey the message to Bilal that Adnan would not be able to be at the mosque to lead the youth group prayers that evening. That is the 6:59 PM ping at tower L651A. Immediately after that, Jay left a voice message to Jen’s pager scrapping the plan to meet at Gilston Park. That is the 7:00 PM call pinging the same tower. The close timing of the calls indicates that Jay and Adnan were together, likely in Adnan’s car heading to the Park N Ride.
Upon arriving at the Park N Ride, Adnan popped the trunk to Hae’s Sentra to load the digging materials. This is when Jay likely first saw Hae’s body in the trunk of her Nissan and was the first time Jay knew that Hae was dead. I know what Jay said in his 2014 interview in The Intercept. Some of what he said there adds up while some does not. As you will see in subsequent parts, Jay was compelled to change his story so many times under so many threats that he didn't know down from up. It was likely from this point at seeing Hae's body that Jay went from alibi witness to accessory after the fact. There was no flexing on Adnan's part. No, "I killed the bitch!" If anything, Adnan likely told Jay that he didn't know what happened to her. Adnan then instructed Jay to follow him in Adnan’s Honda. This is when Adnan likely reached for the map in Hae’s glove box and left his palm print. Adnan stopped about one mile from Hae’s burial site and told Jay to wait for him there. This is critical. Even though Adnan had abandoned Bilal’s ridiculously detailed plot, he was still trying to adhere to Bilal’s admonition to avoid disclosing incriminating evidence. If Jay didn’t know where the body was buried, he could not share that information with anyone else. I know that you’re thinking that I’m pulling this out of my ass, but consider the following. The day after the public received news of Hae’s body being discovered in Leakin Park, a witness reported to the police that he saw a young black male acting suspicious and hanging around the road near some concrete barriers at Leakin Park by a light colored vehicle (Adnan’s car looked like this. The police dismissed the witness's report at the time because the spot where the black kid was acting suspiciously was a mile from Hae’s burial site. Jay would later tell investigating detectives during his first recorded interview that he parked near some concrete barriers at Leakin Park when he was helping Adnan dispose of Hae’s body. MPIA 244-245.
While Adnan was doing a half-assed burial, Jen called Adnan’s cell because Jay’s message changing the plan to meet up was confusing to her. MPIA 174. Adnan did not toss his phone to Jay to speak with his buddy, Jen, the way he tossed his phone to Jay earlier that day to speak with Nisha who Jay did not know. Adnan told Jen that Jay would call her soon. He said that because Jay was probably not there. After finishing with the body, Adnan drove Hae’s car back to where he left Jay with his Honda. Adnan had Jay follow him down Edmondson Avenue where he had Jay stop and wait while Adnan drove a few blocks down and left Hae’s car at the lot by the 300 block of Edgewood Street. Again, following Bilal’s rules, Adnan was making sure that Jay did not know the precise location of Hae’s car. Adnan hoofed it back to Edmondson Ave where Jay was waiting in the Honda. Thus, Jay had, at best, a rough idea where Hae’s car could be found.
Jay would later tell the police that he happened to be in the area a few days before his February 28th interview and saw that Hae’s car was still there. MPIA 251. It is unlikely that Jay just “happened to be there.” He likely revisited the location to look around and see precisely where Adnan had ditched Hae’s car. That is how he was able to help the detectives locate the vehicle on February 28th.
Jay used Adnan’s phone to page Jen instructing her to pick him up at the Value City parking lot. Adnan dropped Jay off at the parking lot where Jen was waiting. Upon getting into Jen’s car, Jay did what almost any person who had just witnessed such a crime would do. He did what Bilal knew an unnecessary witness would do. He did what a person outside of Bilal and Adnan’s circle of trust would do. He told his good friend that Adnan Syed murdered Hae Min Lee.
The Police Investigation - "Good Cop" Part
Do we really need to explain why Jay did not immediately go to the cops? Being black, poor and having a history of negative encounters with cops should be enough. Add to that, the fact that Jay only had partial information. He knew Hae was murdered. He knew Adnan played a role. But he didn’t know the where, when or how. Even if he did, Jay would likely have not gone to the police. There is not much of an incentive to tell your story to people you expect will screw you. Jen did not go to the police either. According to Jen, Jay did not know where Hae’s body was buried nor did he know where her car was located. I used to think that this was Jay being careful by holding information back from Jen so that she would not have enough to go to the cops either. But neither Jay nor any other kid in his situation who was freaked out at what he had just experienced would be capable of being that calculating. Jay was not schooled in the art of criminal behavior by the likes of Bilal Ahmed. He was in no state of mind where he could carve out what he should tell Jen and what he should withhold. He dumped what he knew on her along with some of what he thought he knew. For example, because he picked up Adnan from the Best Buy, Jay incorrectly assumed that Adnan must have murdered her there. At any rate, Jay and Jen kept this huge secret from the cops although they both later admitted to telling a few others. Jay told his neighbor while Jen told a couple of her co-workers. It is important to note that according to Jen’s statement, Jay did not mention anything to her about Adnan saying that he planned to kill Hae or bragging afterward that he did it.Because of their respective relationships with Hae, the cops questioned both Don and Adnan while it was still a missing persons case. Adnan did not do himself any favors by contradicting what he had told Adcock on January 13th about getting a ride from Hae. MPIA 814. Hae’s disappearance continued as a missing person’s case until February 9, 1999 when her body was found by Alonzo Sellers, an employee at Coppin State College. Sellers reported his discovery to the campus cops who then reported it to BCPD. Despite having done the right thing, Sellers was the first suspect upon whom the police focused their attention. His checkered past did not exactly cloak him in the shroud of innocence. In fact, Alonzo had a penchant for running around not shrouded in anything with multiple arrests for indecent exposure. MPIA 673-690 (not included in AdnanSyedWiki). Even if he was a model citizen, the cops would have given Sellers a close look and not just because he is black. It is common in cases like this for the cops to give scrutiny to the person who appears to be a good Samaritan reporting a crime. Some free advice to any innocent person who stumbles across a dead body: Save yourself a lot of grief and report it anonymously. If you're a murderer, please leave copies of your drivers license and social security number along with your fingerprints and blood samples at the crime scene and report the dead body in person at the police station.
The fact that the cops were treating Sellers as their primary suspect during the days following the discovery of Hae’s body was not disclosed to the public. There were no news stories about suspects or details about the investigation until Adnan’s arrest on February 28, 1999. Even Sellers’ name was not in the news. It was only reported as follows:
“Baltimore police said a man out walking found the grave, which was about 100 feet off Franklintown Road in the secluded West Baltimore park – about a mile from Woodlawn High.” Baltimore Sun, February 12, 1999, pg. 8C.The police record shows that Sellers was given the third degree by the cops for almost two weeks. His work records were pulled and he was subjected to two polygraph tests. MPIA 661-672. The investigation of Sellers cuts against the idea that the police dedicated themselves to framing Adnan. That said, I would not put it past these cops to do such a thing, but they did not have enough information at the time to do so.
We know that Det. Massey received the anonymous call pointing the cops in Adnan’s direction one day after news of the discovery of Hae’s body was announced. Not being a linguist, Massey noted that the person on the phone sounded Asian. I’ll go out on a limb and say that Massey probably would not be able to distinguish the accent of Apu of the Simpsons from William Hung, the unfortunate contestant from American Idol. The caller suggested that the cops call Yasar Ali, the same person Adnan called at 6:59 PM on January 13th likely to convey the message that he would not be leading prayers that night at the mosque. As indicated in more detail in the Leaving Baltimore post, the tipster was probably part of the same boys group at the mosque mentored by Bilal Ahmed. The anonymous tip prompted the grand jury to subpoena Adnan’s cell records on February 16, 1999, which were received from AT&T the next day. Despite the tip, the focus of the investigation continued to be on Sellers until he was cleared on February 24, 1999 (the validity of polygraph tests is beyond the scope of this post). The police did, however, follow up on the tip by interviewing Yasar on February 15, 1999. Yasar didn’t give the cops anything to go on, but based on the calls made to Yasar in the cell records, you can be certain that he relayed to Adnan that he was hot. Adnan called Yasar on February 15th and four more times on February 17th.
On to Part 3
2023.05.26 06:13 LucyAriaRose Man shares his story on Reddit and ultimately helps shut down his horrifically abusive school
I am not the Original Poster. That was u/Gzasmyhero. He has since deleted that account. He posted in self and IAmA. He was interviewed by TIME magazine and has since written a comic about his experiences.
Thank you to u/UsernamesAreHaaard for sending me this story!
Please read the trigger warnings
Trigger Warnings: abuse, sexual abuse, rape, child neglect, suicide, self-harm, bullying, torture, institutional violence
Mood Spoiler: horrifying. Absolutely horrifying. But the school is closed down
Original Post: November 26, 2010
Title: Even skimming this post once will blow your mind, most probably think thats its made up but you would be dead wrong
summary- Google: the elan school (this will basically open Pandora's box)
This place only still exist because so many people believe that it doesn't or that it can't. I believe that the internet is our #1 tool for exposing these horrid blind spots for what they are.
Help me Reddit!
I was sent to a place called The Elan School in 1998 and I was only 16. The scary thing is that Elan is still open, kids aged 13-20 are there right now. Normal kids, many whom may have smoked a joint or two, or who swore at their parents. Of course there were also real criminals there, but they did not make up the majority.
The "school" accepted anyone and then held them as long as they possibly could depending on the age of the child. If you were sent at 14 (many were) you may have been looking at 3-4 years. This is because The Elan School collects $50,000 a year per child, either from the child's state, school, or parents. And, of course, money was the only motivation of the staff and directors. These were the people in charge of your "progress" in the program.
I could write for hours about it, instead I ask you to skim the following bullet points and to understand that I am telling the truth.
We were forced to participate in staff-organized fight clubs, none of which were fair, all were designed to humiliate one child who would be put up against at least 3 others. So even the children who "followed the rules" were forced to fight: in the name of "good".
Children who tried to rebel or be free-thinking were thrown into an isolation room where they had to stay for months at a time, they had to sleep at night on a dirty mattress on the floor of the isolation room The mattress was brought to them at midnight and they were woken up around 7am.
We were all forced to perform in a ritual called a "General Meeting" where the entire house (60 or more boys and girls) screamed at one child who stood behind a broomstick. Many times they were forcibly held up by two other students so they would have to accept the punishment.Education was considered a right, but those of us who earned the right were still robbed of an education.
School was from 7pm-11pm: no homework, no test, no projects. Ex: math class consisted of grabbing a math book and handing the teacher at least one page of work.
The other 12 hours of the day consisted of constant conditioning and brainwashing. In the beginning you obviously rejected it, but then you would be "dealt with". You would not be able to rise through the ranks of the program to earn more 'rights' until you could prove yourself to be a good candidate for more brainwashing. Eventually it became your responsibility to begin indoctrinating the newer residents (basically you, six month earlier).
You had Strength and Non-Strength. Non-Strength's were not allowed to talk, interact, or communicate in any way with other Non-Strengths. It took a minimum of 6 months to earn the title of "Strength". It took some kids years to earn "Strength". Some kids never did.
Elan made money based on the amount of time it took for you to graduate "the program". You had to have a minimum of 7 promotions before you were a candidate for "graduation". Each promotion took a minimum of 3 months, and 90% of the kids never made it past the 5th promotion. These kids had to wait until they turned 18 and could legally sign themselves out. Other kids stayed past their 18th birthday, which is a true testament to the effectiveness of the brainwashing, I remember one dude was 23.
Your level of high-school had no reflection whatsoever on your ability to leave Elan. I was forced to do my senior year of high school twice, even though I was technically done after the first senior year.
The staff members were primarily former students who were hired by Elan after graduating from the program. Many arrived in BMW's and clearly made 6 figure incomes. None of them had degree's in psychology, education, social work, etc... Many of them never went to college at all.
All outgoing letters to parents were screened, many of us having to write many different drafts until they were accepted. All phone calls to our parents were monitored, we were allowed about 15 minutes a week and the person who monitored the call would have their hand hovering over the hang-up button as a constant reminder of our reality.
We were not allowed to write or receive letters until we earned the right (this could take 8 months or more). When someone found out where I was and wrote me, my unopened letters were ripped up in front of me as motivation to move up in the program.
I feel like I am beginning to write too much and I do not want to overwhelm anyone who made it this far. Because most of the bullet points honestly require further explanation to give the full impact of what Elan truly was.
The most important thing that anyone can do is to be aware of this place and make sure that nobody you know ever gets sent there for any reason. If you are a parent then do not send your child there. If you know someone who is there now then beg the parents to do more research.The amount of suicides and tragic deaths of former Elan students is reason enough to take this post seriously.
***if you want to help then Google: the elan school.....dig through the links, learn about it, know that it exist
please email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Relevant Comments:
Original comment: 1. why were you sent there? 2. I assume you talked your parents when you left, what were their reactions? 3. did your parents or guardians basically sign over all rights to the school to do what they liked with you? 4. did people ever 'escape'? 5. are you in touch with any other graduates? 6. did this give you any grounding for university? You spoke about lack of education, what did you do afterwards? And what are you doing now?
"1. I don't want to give away too much info about myself quite yet in case someone is trying to piece together who I am. Maybe its a bit paranoid, but i have my reasons. I am trying to bring down a multi-million dollar establishment that is basically no more than a continuing criminal enterprise.........But lets say that what sent me there made me a perfect middle person. Half the people were there for worse things and half were there for less.
2) My mother refuses to listen and honestly, I was just sooooo happy to be free that it took a bit for all of my emotions to settle and for me to find the right words. Unfortunately i was sent there by the state so my parents had no say in the matter. But once I finally began to tell them everything I realized a) that it sounds crazy b) that it would take days to explain it well and in detail c) my mother was crying even when I began to tell her things that on a scale from 1 to Horrible, were like a 6. Other people have been able to properly express it to their family members and the reaction is obviously one of horror.
Here is a summary of someone who actually was able to do something about it:
“In 1987, a woman named Bethany Berry claimed that she’d suffered sleep-and food-deprivation as well as assault as an Elan resident between the ages of 16 and 18. She later filed a lawsuit against the school, Ricci, and the state of Maine, charging abuse (it was eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum).”
3) Yes, whether sent by parents, state, or school: the child is signed over into the care of Elan and cannot legally sign out until the age of 18.
4) Multiple people have escaped. In the two years I was there only one person successfully escaped AND stayed escaped. Everyone else was somehow brought back. If you tried to run away on a home visit with parents (which took up to 2 years to earn), Elan had established connections with the police in your town in case of a run-away.
The guy I knew who escaped, it was his second attempt. His first was made after 6 months, his second was made after 18 months (on a home visit). He basically became a ghost and nobody heard from him until after his 18th birthday had passed (not even his parents). I called him after I got out and told him he was a hero of mine.
There have also been multiple cases of children running away and never being seen again, or turning up dead. One girl was raped and murdered by a trucker, she was trying to hitchhike home. Another boy was shot was a local who thought he was trespassing on their property
5) yes, I am in touch with multiple graduates, nearly 300."
This sounds like a fucking horror movie, but when I google it it seems real:
"Don't be. People fucking suck. When you hear about rape, brainwashing, beatings, killings, horrible mutilations of any kind in any system? It shouldn't be a shock. This is what political apathy and greed looks like. This is the true face of America, and largely humanity in general. It shouldn't surprise you because it's everywhere, people just turn a blind eye when it's inconvenient to look at. The golden rule of life is: People fucking suck and you shouldn't expect them to really give a shit about anything that doesn't directly inconvenience them. It's seriously that simple."
People suggest arson:
"Hahaha thanks, yeah, sane enough. We have tried everything, even the burning to the ground idea. People tried this even while I was stuck there (former residents who came back in their vehicles to get justice). The entire complex is designed like the Pentagon or something. There is a long driveway going back to the complex and it is heavily guarded and monitored."
Contact law enforcement?
"I have tried. A friend of mine even called the local police in Poland Springs, Maine. Everybody up there knows about it, it is like the dark secret of the area. The people who currently run Elan (the living family members of the late Joe Ricci) are multi-millionaires who have invested their whole life in Elan and keeping it open AKA making sure all the right people have their pocket lined, judges, politicians, etc...
If you are wondering how the ME Department of Education could fund or promote such a place, here is an interesting fact from a linked article titled: New York seeks change at Elan School:
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/070325elan.html'
'While New York conducted a surprise inspection, it is the policy of Maine's education department to let schools know when state officials are going to conduct a visit, said Edwin "Buzz" Kastuck, whose responsibilities within the department include school approval.'
Here is a claim made in the same article: 'Frank McDermott, the Elan School's director of education, said the New York officials who visited in 2005 conducted extensive interviews with students, parents and graduates.
here is a comment written after an article, titled: Good News: Bad Economy Killing Abusive Teen Programs:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maia-szalavitz/good-news-bad-economy-kil_b_162696.html
"I was a student at the Elan School for 3 years from 2005 to 2008. I am still traumatized by what I went through during my time there. Waking up each day the environment was constant screaming and swearing, by students, but more so by the "staff". I remember as a new student, I was crying when I was told to scrub a garbage can as a punishment for something so minor that I can't even remember the cause. I has stopped cleaning it, and that was when the staff determined that I had to be restrained and dragged to "the corner", isolation in a room to the point when one barely feels human. I tried to fight back, as any normal person would do when one is touched and forcefully grabbed without consent. Instead of just bringing me to the corner, the staff had other students hold me up, my hands and feet restrained, as other students were forced to scream and degrade me. I say forced, because regretfully I have also done the same to other students, and I know that if they refused to participate in this abominable event they too would have been punished.
The only way to survive in this setting was to shut down emotionally. This memory haunts me to current day."This school needs to be shut down, and I am happy if that day is coming near. Even if Elan survives the recession, it should still be closed. However, this could prove to be exceedingly difficult, because the students in the school are pressured not even to think a bad thought about the program, let alone utter it, and will receive punishment if they fail to oblige that rule. I know that while I was at the school investigations were conducted, and students were pressured into lying. Furthermore, a survey was also done, which now appears on the school's website, some questions asking about if we felt comfortable at the school. It was said to be anonymous, but again we felt pressured into lying, staff was supervising, and each of our handwriting could be easily identified. "I hope someone reacts to the atrocity that is the Elan School."
More horrifying info:
"They had children (in the positions of Strength) who guarded all the exits. They also had a constant Headcount (every ten minutes) 24 hours a day, yes, even while we slept. If you actually could get out of the house, you had hired adult nightguards posted in the woods. And they were real, I used to believe they were an urban legend told to new residents to scare them, but once i was in a higher position I actually got to meet a few of them. If you could get past the guys in the woods, then you had to run for nearly 5 hours to get to the closest town. One kid dipped into the woods, naturally a bunch of kids in high positions went after him. He got away. He was gone nearly 8 hours. He came walking back, shaking his head, was tackled and then put into restraints, and thrown into isolation. i asked him why he chose to come back, his answer was "I kept running until I had no energy and the i realized I can't run through these woods, I was gonna die out there". Also, it was Maine so most of the year there was snow on the ground and our footwear and clothing were all a thing of constant surveillance. We were not even allowed to wear dark colors, it was called Black on Black. Only our shirt, or pants could be dark, not both."
"Actually, during the night, the way they counted us was by ripping off our sheets so they could see if we were wearing shoes or clothes of any kind. And yes, this happened every ten minutes from midnight-8am. Eventually you just got used to being woken up constantly, especially if you unconsciously liked to wrap your feet up in the end of the blanket."
A different user posts here on November 27, 2010 (next day) on bestof to spread the word
People are quick to help, with many attempting to contact different celebrities, sharing links to sites of survivor stories, sharing personal anecdotes, finding contact information (legally) for current and former staff, and doing everything they can to expose the school. At one point there were links to tumblr and facebook groups of survivors, but those pages have since been deleted. However, I was able to find an archive of the tumblr page here.
OOP posts an IAMA here: November 30, 2010
Since I am new to Reddit, I originally posted this in the AMA section. Oops. Help me spread awareness about this "school" and, o yeah, ASK ME ANYTHING!!!!!!!!
And for all who have no idea what The Elan School is, here is the original Reddit post
And this repost (editor's note- see above post) (by someone like you) has created the large response so far.
(from the original post) I ask you to skim the following bullet points and to understand that I am telling the truth.
Editor's note- the following points reiterate his first post. I deleted them to save space and instead included a few comments.
Some comments:
"I was sent there by the state. Elan accepts children from jails, mental institutions, courts, kids expelled from school systems, and at the same time they convince very wealthy parents to send their children.
Now thats one crazy milkshake."
"No, coming out of Elan was like being 12 again and going through a second awkward "social teenage adjustment". Elan philosophy will get you absolutely nowhere in the real world, unless you want to live as a recluse in the woods and believe that everyone but you is filled with "guilt" and should be punished for it."
Do you have bonds with other students?
"Unfortunately it is not that simple. I have a strong bond with many people but even more I have never seen or heard from again. I have found out a couple of them are dead already, and finding that out hurts like losing a best friend you were never actually able to act "normal" with. Maybe the last interaction you had with that person involved restraining them in The Corner or screaming in their face for not showering quick enough."
Editor's note- OOP posts several comments detailing the horror and abuse. I could not include them all due to length. You may be able to find them easier here.
These include his detailing of watching a student (TW suicide attempt) attempt to commit suicide by stabbing himself in the gut with a pen and not receiving help for hours, overall hygiene, being restrained, sexual abuses his mother not believing him, people attempting to escape, how he endured, and other horrific abuses.
OOP posts several other posts with similar requests for help airing out these horrors. None get as much traction as the first two, but you can see them here.
Time Magazine Article : Published April 5, 2011 ELAN IS SHUT DOWN
Title: Increasingly, Internet Activism Helps Shutter Abusive ‘Troubled Teen’ Boot Camps
The whole article is worth a read, but there is a section dedicated to OOP's posts online:
"He waged an online war using every weapon he could think of: Facebook pages, tumblr blogs, websites and other social media. When Wimbelton posted about Elan on Reddit, the post received thousands of votes and generated enormous traffic. He encouraged others to post their stories too. People responded, posting and cross-linked their missives enough so that anti-Elan sites soon began to rise to the top of Google’s search results, offering parents a very different view of the program than that on the school’s own website.
Wimbelton even looked up the local media’s coverage of school sports, which listed the names of Elan athletes. With a little online sleuthing, Wimbleton was able to find the names of the parents of the kids; he called them to try to warn them about what went on at the school. Upon hearing Wimbelton’s story and reading the links he sent, the parents of four such children decided to withdraw their enrollment, he says."
**UPDATE (on original post) Around September 2011 (10 months later)
Leaked documents which have been posted publicly for the first time EVER. These were written in 1991 by an author trying to expose the school. The author had to flee the country. All major points have been highlighted and set in larger type depending on the seriousness of the allegations. http://www.scribd.com/doc/44635665/Scribd
2018: OOP starts writing a comic based on his experiences. It currently has 94 chapters. You can find it here. The latest was written in April of 2023.
He also created a subreddit here. It is under his new username, u/mr_joe_nobody
August 2019 Post : OOP thanks people on his subreddit for their help after his AMA is archived by reddit.
Current Wikipedia page about the Elan School
Edit: Here are some links for further reading if you are interested:
https://suzukisthoughts.blogspot.com/2019/06/suffer-little-children-elan-school-and.html
Key quote: But Elan's ultimate downfall would not be due to state officials, but, in fact, the internet.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/elan-school#:~:text=Founded%20in%201970%20by%20Dr,eventually%20zeroed%20in%20on%20adolescents.
https://www.darkdowneast.com/episodes/elanschool
Where are they now (this is a reddit post about staff, so I'm unsure of accuracy)
https://www.reddit.com/troubledteens/comments/rudg6x/peter_rowe_fired_sharon_terry_dead_whats_up_with/
There is also a documentary on Amazon Prime here
Edit 2: More resources from commenters!
Behind the Bastards podcast
Last Podcast on the Left podcast
Nexpo's YouTube Video
Petition to keep one of the workers at Elan out of the police force:
https://www.change.org/p/demand-transparency-to-community-of-westbrook-maine?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_34864329_en-US%3A9&recruiter=156606&recruited_by_id=fca144b0-62ca-11e3-86dc-53c93204af33&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&share_bandit_exp=initial-34864329-en-US
Former Staff Listing:
http://www.heal-online.org/elan2.htm
A link to a different school in Maine that was similar:
https://www.reddit.com/troubledteens/wiki/index/ironwoodme/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
Link to a program that helps victims of institutional violence/abuse:
https://www.unsilenced.org/
Annnnd one more link to Joe's comic in case you missed it:
https://elan.school/chapter-1-5/
submitted by LucyAriaRose to BestofRedditorUpdates [link] [comments]
Thank you to u/UsernamesAreHaaard for sending me this story!
Please read the trigger warnings
Trigger Warnings: abuse, sexual abuse, rape, child neglect, suicide, self-harm, bullying, torture, institutional violence
Mood Spoiler: horrifying. Absolutely horrifying. But the school is closed down
Original Post: November 26, 2010
Title: Even skimming this post once will blow your mind, most probably think thats its made up but you would be dead wrong
summary- Google: the elan school (this will basically open Pandora's box)
This place only still exist because so many people believe that it doesn't or that it can't. I believe that the internet is our #1 tool for exposing these horrid blind spots for what they are.
Help me Reddit!
I was sent to a place called The Elan School in 1998 and I was only 16. The scary thing is that Elan is still open, kids aged 13-20 are there right now. Normal kids, many whom may have smoked a joint or two, or who swore at their parents. Of course there were also real criminals there, but they did not make up the majority.
The "school" accepted anyone and then held them as long as they possibly could depending on the age of the child. If you were sent at 14 (many were) you may have been looking at 3-4 years. This is because The Elan School collects $50,000 a year per child, either from the child's state, school, or parents. And, of course, money was the only motivation of the staff and directors. These were the people in charge of your "progress" in the program.
I could write for hours about it, instead I ask you to skim the following bullet points and to understand that I am telling the truth.
We were forced to participate in staff-organized fight clubs, none of which were fair, all were designed to humiliate one child who would be put up against at least 3 others. So even the children who "followed the rules" were forced to fight: in the name of "good".
Children who tried to rebel or be free-thinking were thrown into an isolation room where they had to stay for months at a time, they had to sleep at night on a dirty mattress on the floor of the isolation room The mattress was brought to them at midnight and they were woken up around 7am.
We were all forced to perform in a ritual called a "General Meeting" where the entire house (60 or more boys and girls) screamed at one child who stood behind a broomstick. Many times they were forcibly held up by two other students so they would have to accept the punishment.Education was considered a right, but those of us who earned the right were still robbed of an education.
School was from 7pm-11pm: no homework, no test, no projects. Ex: math class consisted of grabbing a math book and handing the teacher at least one page of work.
The other 12 hours of the day consisted of constant conditioning and brainwashing. In the beginning you obviously rejected it, but then you would be "dealt with". You would not be able to rise through the ranks of the program to earn more 'rights' until you could prove yourself to be a good candidate for more brainwashing. Eventually it became your responsibility to begin indoctrinating the newer residents (basically you, six month earlier).
You had Strength and Non-Strength. Non-Strength's were not allowed to talk, interact, or communicate in any way with other Non-Strengths. It took a minimum of 6 months to earn the title of "Strength". It took some kids years to earn "Strength". Some kids never did.
Elan made money based on the amount of time it took for you to graduate "the program". You had to have a minimum of 7 promotions before you were a candidate for "graduation". Each promotion took a minimum of 3 months, and 90% of the kids never made it past the 5th promotion. These kids had to wait until they turned 18 and could legally sign themselves out. Other kids stayed past their 18th birthday, which is a true testament to the effectiveness of the brainwashing, I remember one dude was 23.
Your level of high-school had no reflection whatsoever on your ability to leave Elan. I was forced to do my senior year of high school twice, even though I was technically done after the first senior year.
The staff members were primarily former students who were hired by Elan after graduating from the program. Many arrived in BMW's and clearly made 6 figure incomes. None of them had degree's in psychology, education, social work, etc... Many of them never went to college at all.
All outgoing letters to parents were screened, many of us having to write many different drafts until they were accepted. All phone calls to our parents were monitored, we were allowed about 15 minutes a week and the person who monitored the call would have their hand hovering over the hang-up button as a constant reminder of our reality.
We were not allowed to write or receive letters until we earned the right (this could take 8 months or more). When someone found out where I was and wrote me, my unopened letters were ripped up in front of me as motivation to move up in the program.
I feel like I am beginning to write too much and I do not want to overwhelm anyone who made it this far. Because most of the bullet points honestly require further explanation to give the full impact of what Elan truly was.
The most important thing that anyone can do is to be aware of this place and make sure that nobody you know ever gets sent there for any reason. If you are a parent then do not send your child there. If you know someone who is there now then beg the parents to do more research.The amount of suicides and tragic deaths of former Elan students is reason enough to take this post seriously.
***if you want to help then Google: the elan school.....dig through the links, learn about it, know that it exist
please email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Relevant Comments:
Original comment: 1. why were you sent there? 2. I assume you talked your parents when you left, what were their reactions? 3. did your parents or guardians basically sign over all rights to the school to do what they liked with you? 4. did people ever 'escape'? 5. are you in touch with any other graduates? 6. did this give you any grounding for university? You spoke about lack of education, what did you do afterwards? And what are you doing now?
"1. I don't want to give away too much info about myself quite yet in case someone is trying to piece together who I am. Maybe its a bit paranoid, but i have my reasons. I am trying to bring down a multi-million dollar establishment that is basically no more than a continuing criminal enterprise.........But lets say that what sent me there made me a perfect middle person. Half the people were there for worse things and half were there for less.
2) My mother refuses to listen and honestly, I was just sooooo happy to be free that it took a bit for all of my emotions to settle and for me to find the right words. Unfortunately i was sent there by the state so my parents had no say in the matter. But once I finally began to tell them everything I realized a) that it sounds crazy b) that it would take days to explain it well and in detail c) my mother was crying even when I began to tell her things that on a scale from 1 to Horrible, were like a 6. Other people have been able to properly express it to their family members and the reaction is obviously one of horror.
Here is a summary of someone who actually was able to do something about it:
“In 1987, a woman named Bethany Berry claimed that she’d suffered sleep-and food-deprivation as well as assault as an Elan resident between the ages of 16 and 18. She later filed a lawsuit against the school, Ricci, and the state of Maine, charging abuse (it was eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum).”
3) Yes, whether sent by parents, state, or school: the child is signed over into the care of Elan and cannot legally sign out until the age of 18.
4) Multiple people have escaped. In the two years I was there only one person successfully escaped AND stayed escaped. Everyone else was somehow brought back. If you tried to run away on a home visit with parents (which took up to 2 years to earn), Elan had established connections with the police in your town in case of a run-away.
The guy I knew who escaped, it was his second attempt. His first was made after 6 months, his second was made after 18 months (on a home visit). He basically became a ghost and nobody heard from him until after his 18th birthday had passed (not even his parents). I called him after I got out and told him he was a hero of mine.
There have also been multiple cases of children running away and never being seen again, or turning up dead. One girl was raped and murdered by a trucker, she was trying to hitchhike home. Another boy was shot was a local who thought he was trespassing on their property
5) yes, I am in touch with multiple graduates, nearly 300."
This sounds like a fucking horror movie, but when I google it it seems real:
"Don't be. People fucking suck. When you hear about rape, brainwashing, beatings, killings, horrible mutilations of any kind in any system? It shouldn't be a shock. This is what political apathy and greed looks like. This is the true face of America, and largely humanity in general. It shouldn't surprise you because it's everywhere, people just turn a blind eye when it's inconvenient to look at. The golden rule of life is: People fucking suck and you shouldn't expect them to really give a shit about anything that doesn't directly inconvenience them. It's seriously that simple."
People suggest arson:
"Hahaha thanks, yeah, sane enough. We have tried everything, even the burning to the ground idea. People tried this even while I was stuck there (former residents who came back in their vehicles to get justice). The entire complex is designed like the Pentagon or something. There is a long driveway going back to the complex and it is heavily guarded and monitored."
Contact law enforcement?
"I have tried. A friend of mine even called the local police in Poland Springs, Maine. Everybody up there knows about it, it is like the dark secret of the area. The people who currently run Elan (the living family members of the late Joe Ricci) are multi-millionaires who have invested their whole life in Elan and keeping it open AKA making sure all the right people have their pocket lined, judges, politicians, etc...
If you are wondering how the ME Department of Education could fund or promote such a place, here is an interesting fact from a linked article titled: New York seeks change at Elan School:
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/070325elan.html'
'While New York conducted a surprise inspection, it is the policy of Maine's education department to let schools know when state officials are going to conduct a visit, said Edwin "Buzz" Kastuck, whose responsibilities within the department include school approval.'
Here is a claim made in the same article: 'Frank McDermott, the Elan School's director of education, said the New York officials who visited in 2005 conducted extensive interviews with students, parents and graduates.
here is a comment written after an article, titled: Good News: Bad Economy Killing Abusive Teen Programs:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maia-szalavitz/good-news-bad-economy-kil_b_162696.html
"I was a student at the Elan School for 3 years from 2005 to 2008. I am still traumatized by what I went through during my time there. Waking up each day the environment was constant screaming and swearing, by students, but more so by the "staff". I remember as a new student, I was crying when I was told to scrub a garbage can as a punishment for something so minor that I can't even remember the cause. I has stopped cleaning it, and that was when the staff determined that I had to be restrained and dragged to "the corner", isolation in a room to the point when one barely feels human. I tried to fight back, as any normal person would do when one is touched and forcefully grabbed without consent. Instead of just bringing me to the corner, the staff had other students hold me up, my hands and feet restrained, as other students were forced to scream and degrade me. I say forced, because regretfully I have also done the same to other students, and I know that if they refused to participate in this abominable event they too would have been punished.
The only way to survive in this setting was to shut down emotionally. This memory haunts me to current day."This school needs to be shut down, and I am happy if that day is coming near. Even if Elan survives the recession, it should still be closed. However, this could prove to be exceedingly difficult, because the students in the school are pressured not even to think a bad thought about the program, let alone utter it, and will receive punishment if they fail to oblige that rule. I know that while I was at the school investigations were conducted, and students were pressured into lying. Furthermore, a survey was also done, which now appears on the school's website, some questions asking about if we felt comfortable at the school. It was said to be anonymous, but again we felt pressured into lying, staff was supervising, and each of our handwriting could be easily identified. "I hope someone reacts to the atrocity that is the Elan School."
More horrifying info:
"They had children (in the positions of Strength) who guarded all the exits. They also had a constant Headcount (every ten minutes) 24 hours a day, yes, even while we slept. If you actually could get out of the house, you had hired adult nightguards posted in the woods. And they were real, I used to believe they were an urban legend told to new residents to scare them, but once i was in a higher position I actually got to meet a few of them. If you could get past the guys in the woods, then you had to run for nearly 5 hours to get to the closest town. One kid dipped into the woods, naturally a bunch of kids in high positions went after him. He got away. He was gone nearly 8 hours. He came walking back, shaking his head, was tackled and then put into restraints, and thrown into isolation. i asked him why he chose to come back, his answer was "I kept running until I had no energy and the i realized I can't run through these woods, I was gonna die out there". Also, it was Maine so most of the year there was snow on the ground and our footwear and clothing were all a thing of constant surveillance. We were not even allowed to wear dark colors, it was called Black on Black. Only our shirt, or pants could be dark, not both."
"Actually, during the night, the way they counted us was by ripping off our sheets so they could see if we were wearing shoes or clothes of any kind. And yes, this happened every ten minutes from midnight-8am. Eventually you just got used to being woken up constantly, especially if you unconsciously liked to wrap your feet up in the end of the blanket."
A different user posts here on November 27, 2010 (next day) on bestof to spread the word
People are quick to help, with many attempting to contact different celebrities, sharing links to sites of survivor stories, sharing personal anecdotes, finding contact information (legally) for current and former staff, and doing everything they can to expose the school. At one point there were links to tumblr and facebook groups of survivors, but those pages have since been deleted. However, I was able to find an archive of the tumblr page here.
OOP posts an IAMA here: November 30, 2010
Since I am new to Reddit, I originally posted this in the AMA section. Oops. Help me spread awareness about this "school" and, o yeah, ASK ME ANYTHING!!!!!!!!
And for all who have no idea what The Elan School is, here is the original Reddit post
And this repost (editor's note- see above post) (by someone like you) has created the large response so far.
(from the original post) I ask you to skim the following bullet points and to understand that I am telling the truth.
Editor's note- the following points reiterate his first post. I deleted them to save space and instead included a few comments.
Some comments:
"I was sent there by the state. Elan accepts children from jails, mental institutions, courts, kids expelled from school systems, and at the same time they convince very wealthy parents to send their children.
Now thats one crazy milkshake."
"No, coming out of Elan was like being 12 again and going through a second awkward "social teenage adjustment". Elan philosophy will get you absolutely nowhere in the real world, unless you want to live as a recluse in the woods and believe that everyone but you is filled with "guilt" and should be punished for it."
Do you have bonds with other students?
"Unfortunately it is not that simple. I have a strong bond with many people but even more I have never seen or heard from again. I have found out a couple of them are dead already, and finding that out hurts like losing a best friend you were never actually able to act "normal" with. Maybe the last interaction you had with that person involved restraining them in The Corner or screaming in their face for not showering quick enough."
Editor's note- OOP posts several comments detailing the horror and abuse. I could not include them all due to length. You may be able to find them easier here.
These include his detailing of watching a student (TW suicide attempt) attempt to commit suicide by stabbing himself in the gut with a pen and not receiving help for hours, overall hygiene, being restrained, sexual abuses his mother not believing him, people attempting to escape, how he endured, and other horrific abuses.
OOP posts several other posts with similar requests for help airing out these horrors. None get as much traction as the first two, but you can see them here.
Time Magazine Article : Published April 5, 2011 ELAN IS SHUT DOWN
Title: Increasingly, Internet Activism Helps Shutter Abusive ‘Troubled Teen’ Boot Camps
The whole article is worth a read, but there is a section dedicated to OOP's posts online:
"He waged an online war using every weapon he could think of: Facebook pages, tumblr blogs, websites and other social media. When Wimbelton posted about Elan on Reddit, the post received thousands of votes and generated enormous traffic. He encouraged others to post their stories too. People responded, posting and cross-linked their missives enough so that anti-Elan sites soon began to rise to the top of Google’s search results, offering parents a very different view of the program than that on the school’s own website.
Wimbelton even looked up the local media’s coverage of school sports, which listed the names of Elan athletes. With a little online sleuthing, Wimbleton was able to find the names of the parents of the kids; he called them to try to warn them about what went on at the school. Upon hearing Wimbelton’s story and reading the links he sent, the parents of four such children decided to withdraw their enrollment, he says."
**UPDATE (on original post) Around September 2011 (10 months later)
Leaked documents which have been posted publicly for the first time EVER. These were written in 1991 by an author trying to expose the school. The author had to flee the country. All major points have been highlighted and set in larger type depending on the seriousness of the allegations. http://www.scribd.com/doc/44635665/Scribd
2018: OOP starts writing a comic based on his experiences. It currently has 94 chapters. You can find it here. The latest was written in April of 2023.
He also created a subreddit here. It is under his new username, u/mr_joe_nobody
August 2019 Post : OOP thanks people on his subreddit for their help after his AMA is archived by reddit.
Current Wikipedia page about the Elan School
Edit: Here are some links for further reading if you are interested:
https://suzukisthoughts.blogspot.com/2019/06/suffer-little-children-elan-school-and.html
Key quote: But Elan's ultimate downfall would not be due to state officials, but, in fact, the internet.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/elan-school#:~:text=Founded%20in%201970%20by%20Dr,eventually%20zeroed%20in%20on%20adolescents.
https://www.darkdowneast.com/episodes/elanschool
Where are they now (this is a reddit post about staff, so I'm unsure of accuracy)
https://www.reddit.com/troubledteens/comments/rudg6x/peter_rowe_fired_sharon_terry_dead_whats_up_with/
There is also a documentary on Amazon Prime here
Edit 2: More resources from commenters!
Behind the Bastards podcast
Last Podcast on the Left podcast
Nexpo's YouTube Video
Petition to keep one of the workers at Elan out of the police force:
https://www.change.org/p/demand-transparency-to-community-of-westbrook-maine?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_34864329_en-US%3A9&recruiter=156606&recruited_by_id=fca144b0-62ca-11e3-86dc-53c93204af33&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&share_bandit_exp=initial-34864329-en-US
Former Staff Listing:
http://www.heal-online.org/elan2.htm
A link to a different school in Maine that was similar:
https://www.reddit.com/troubledteens/wiki/index/ironwoodme/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
Link to a program that helps victims of institutional violence/abuse:
https://www.unsilenced.org/
Annnnd one more link to Joe's comic in case you missed it:
https://elan.school/chapter-1-5/
2023.05.26 04:45 Effective-Meat2546 Temporary fixed my P0420 code.
 | Hi everyone, submitted by Effective-Meat2546 to f150 [link] [comments] I have a 2020 2.7 EB bought new and carefully maintained. It has less than 37000 miles. My check engine light came on and I plugged in Forscan and these were the codes thrown. PCM P0316 - misfire detected on startup first 1000 rev PCM P0420: catalyst system efficiency below threshold bank 1 P05B0: active grille air shutter B position sensor P0420 malfunction is confirmed What I did: I cleared the code for P0420 which removed all the other DCT codes. The check engine light disappeared. I proceed to pour in two bottles of catalytic converter cleaner one from Duralast and another is Cataclean (once I get it down to 1/4 tank). Will report back. Anyone knows if this is just a temp fix what you had to do to fix this? Do you also recommend cleaning MAF sensor and replacing the entire O2 sensor? Thank god I did purchase Ford Protect the maximum 1000+ components for 7 years 125k miles. I always driven Japanese before and had 200k miles on both my Acura and Toyota without ever changing CC, trans, or engine. Fingers crossed! Thanks! |
2023.05.25 20:15 RoguePhotos Tow a car with CX-9?
Can I tow a Nissan Altima with my 2019 Mazda CX-9 on a tow dolly?
submitted by RoguePhotos to mazda [link] [comments]
2023.05.24 18:00 Unlikely-Alt-9383 I am 53 years old, make $255,000 base (~400K total comp), live in Brooklyn, work as a UX design manager, and this week I accidentally crashed a first date
Section One: Assets and Debt
Retirement/Investments Balance: $2.6 million, which is still mind-boggling to me, even as I know that with better choices I might have even more. More about that later. $1500 in my HSA, $519,000 in traditional IRAs, about half of that in a Beneficiary IRA from my late mother, $10K in a Roth IRA, $40,000 in my employer’s stock from RSUs, $145,000 in my 401K, $990,000 in an unmanaged taxable account, and $920,000 in a managed one.
Equity: Probably about $500,000. I bought my co-op apartment for $500K in 2008, and put in $120K worth of renovations in 2019. I still owe $251,000 on a 3.75% refi, but it’s probably worth close to $800,000 with the updates and as the neighborhood has continued to gentrify; it was assessed at $720,000 when I took out a HELOC for the renovations. I was able to make the 20% downpayment of $100,000 the co-op required because of the money my mom left me; she was very clear that she wanted to enable me to buy a home, and we’d even discussed her helping with a future downpayment before she passed.
Savings account balance: $60,000 in a HYSA. Some of that is earmarked for quarterly taxes, further renovations, and self-care but I try to always have $30,000 which is about 4 months’ expenses available as an “emergency fund.” I also have a non-high-yield savings account, which has some funds earmarked for my nephew’s bar mitzvah but is mostly used as a transfer point between other accounts until I get my act together and close it: current non-earmarked balance of $2000.
Primary checking account balance: $4800. My first post-grad school checking account required a $2K balance for no fee on ATM transactions, and I still try to keep a $2K balance in checking. I tell myself it’s so nothing ever bounces, but actually it’s a mix of habit and superstition.
Secondary checking account: $9,000. This account is funded mostly from dividends from my REIT shares (see below) and used to pay the co-op maintenance fees. I keep saying I should combine the two accounts now that I could theoretically pay the maintenance out of my take-home instead, but I am lazy!
Credit card debt: None currently. I pay my cards every month, though because it’s not automated I fuck up maybe once a year or so.
Student loan debt: I graduated college with about $12,000 in debt, but my grandparents died while I was in college and my mom paid it off from her inheritance, saying “I got this money when I don’t need it, you should have it now when you do.” My siblings and I plan to pay off my nieces/nephews’ college debt in turn to pay it forward. I didn’t take on grad school debt -- never take out loans to get a humanities advanced degree! -- but I racked up $10,000 worth of credit card debt in grad school because I made so little money. I paid it off with work for an early dot-com while I was still in school.
Anything else that's applicable to you: my siblings and I inherited shares in a private company that later sold off assets and turned itself into a REIT. My mom said “never sell those shares!” and even though that company doesn’t exist anymore, we haven't, and selling private REIT shares is a PITA anyhow.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: I've been working in my field for 23 years, my starting salary was $50,000
I was originally going to be a humanities academic, and went to graduate school in the Midwest in the 90s. For most of my 20s, I lived on around $20, $25K a year, eating a lot of beans and rice and sharing a house with lots of roommates. I did a bunch of early digital archive work, so when the web really took off and I realized that I didn’t want to be a professor after all, I had a few skills and some options. It was a big shift, though!
I grew up in the NYC area, but I got my first web job in NYC through the Internet. It was running the website for a magazine. I was 29 and I made $50,000: what one of my still in grad school friends called “grown-up money.” I was able to find a rent-stabilized apartment and live by myself. When my mom, who had raised us with help from her parents, was diagnosed with cancer, I was very glad to be close to home while she fought it into remission.
That job fell apart after a year and a half -- pay attention, it’s a theme! -- because the magazine didn’t really understand what going digital meant and had second thoughts (They have since gone out of business). I saw this coming and had already been networking hard, so I was able, through friends of friends, to land a job doing information architecture for a legacy technology company. That was my first job in UX and really where I count the start of my current career. The starting pay there was $77K, which went up to $85K: I learned they’d started me low because they weren’t sure I could do the job.
Between 9/11 and the dot-com crash I got laid off a year and a half in. Then followed another year and a half of scrounging for freelance work and relying on the occasional help from Mom to get by; according to my records, I was averaging about $40K a year in income.
I had a favorite client -- a small design firm that did very cool stuff -- and I worked hard to stay in touch with them even when they had no work for me. Eventually, that paid off in a longer-term freelance job. I was hoping to get hired there but also actively interviewing when my mom died: she hadn’t told us her cancer had returned until very late. When the design firm offered me a job, I took it, because I knew I would be a mess for a while and they already knew and trusted me and my work.
Starting pay at that job was $80K. I loved it until I hit the glass ceiling, which was unfortunately during the ‘08 recession, so I stayed a little longer than I would have liked. Final pay when I left after 6 years was $115K.
I joined Startup A as their first full-time UX person and design manager. We structured the pay so that while I started at $110K, when they got their B-round funding a few months later, it went up to $120. I got a raise to $130 before I and most of my team got laid off after, yes, a year and a half.
At this point, I knew more people in the NYC UX community so getting freelance work was a bit easier, and I thought about just going freelance for good. I had one great long-term client, let’s call them Client X, that I did most of my work for, and also did some stuff for big name companies. I was making about $120K as a freelancer and doing well.
I got an opportunity that I can’t be specific about, because it’s extremely dox-able, but it was a long-term project that took up 2013 and 2014, into the first months of 2015. It paid $150K/yr, plus I did a little extra work on the side for Client X, an additional $5K/yr. On the long-term project, I was a creative lead, but not a design manager, which was what I wanted to be doing, so when I had a chance to renew my contract, I didn’t re-up. I thought I had a design leadership role lined up, but it fell through, and I fell into a burn-out depression that led me back into therapy and onto meds for the first time.
I kept interviewing for leadership roles and not getting them, and went back to doing work for Client X as well as other freelancing. It didn’t go as well this time. My freelance income in 2015 was $80K and for 2016 it was only $50K. I had to break into my emergency savings.
Client X was falling apart, and I needed a new job, stat. I spoke to a former manager who had followed a similar in-house-freelance-in-house career path, and they told me to look for an individual contributor role rather than a leadership role, and transition once I was inside. So I changed the way I was looking, and eventually opportunity knocked.
In 2017, a professional friend who was at Startup B, in a job I’d applied for and not gotten, reached out and asked me if I would be interested in joining his team. B has a complex enterprise product and he knew I was good at products like that. I asked if there would be leadership opportunities in the future and he said it was a possibility, so I took the job. (I probably would have taken it even if he hadn’t, tbh, I was broke!). It paid $160K, so I felt like I was making progress again.
The professional friend left, I got the lateral move to manager, and I had a fantastic team I really liked. I also had a narcissistic boss, so that job ended in tears a year and a half later. (I really do have a pattern!) My salary was at $168K by then.
Since I started interviewing before I was actually fired, I was pretty far along in the interview process when it actually happened. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t have a long painful job search: in fact a job doing what I’d already been doing, for a large public company, had been posted in an online community I was part of, and I got referred in by someone I didn’t know (but who I am still friendly with now!). I was out of work for only about six weeks.
My starting salary at Company C in 2019 was $202K, with a 15% bonus and $100,000 in RSUs over 4 years. I was so wowed I didn’t even negotiate, though now I realize I still should have. With a promotion and other annual salary increases, my base salary is now $255K, with a 20% bonus. I have gotten RSU refreshes three of the four years I’ve been at this job. Between those and the ESPP discounts, my W2 shows about $400K the last two years.
I should also note that this job is fully remote, and my team is distributed across multiple cities and timezones. My apartment is a two-bedroom, and I use the second bedroom as a guest room/home office.
Main Job Monthly Take Home:
My take-home pay is $9100/month. That’s after $7200 in taxes, $2800 into my 401K, $125 into my HSA, $100 for dental/vision/high-deductible medical insurance, $18/month for the company's legal plan, $30 to my commuter plan, and $1600/month into my ESPP.
Any Other Monthly Income: Not monthly but quarterly: The REIT mentioned above pays dividends of about $10K a year, but this year and last there has been an extra payment of $5K. Starting back in the days when I first bought my apartment and could barely afford to make the mortgage payments, I have set this money aside for the co-op maintenance fees.
I also get a 401K match up to $5000, and a HSA match of $1000 from my employer annually.
Section Three: Expenses
Mortgage: My monthly mortgage payment is $1690, to which I add $140/month in additional principal payment so it’s $1830.
Co-op maintenance (which includes gas, heating, and property tax as well as property management) is $1100.
Co-op insurance: $185/month
Savings contribution: $800/month
Investment contribution: $800/month, plus any RSUs/ESPP shares as they vest: I still have some shares from when I was holding long-term, but now I sell at or close to vest.
HELOC: I took out a $50K HELOC to help pay for the renovation of my kitchen and bathroom in 2019. I’m listing it because I just paid the last of it off a few weeks ago with $10,000 from RSUs. Until then I was paying about $200 a month plus an additional $200 to the principal. It was an adjustable-rate loan so the amount I was paying had gone up to almost 9%, so paying it off ASAP made sense.
Donations. This past year my charitable donations were almost 1% of my W2 AGI, and my goal for 2023 is to reach at least that 1%. My donations include:
Groceries: average $500/month
Wifi/Cable/Landline: $200/month, of which my employer subsidizes $50. I’ve been planning to downgrade but keep putting it off because I don’t want to deal.
Cellphone: I have a corporate-subsidized AT&T plan for $80 with unlimited data. I have been considering switching to Mint: any NYC folks who have it, I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Subscriptions: $30/month on Patreon; $28.53/month for an All Access subscription to the New York Times, $10/month for Spotify with bonus Hulu, $21.76/month for Netflix (shared with my siblings). I have annual subscriptions to the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Disney+, FreshDirect, One Medical, a couple of Substacks, Duolingo, and CityMapper. I also have the Lyft All-Access plan because it comes with Citibike membership.
Gym membership: I will be paying $180/month when the gym I joined opens near me, unless I cancel in the first week they’re open.
Pet expenses: My pup is expensive! $40/month for pet insurance; $800/quarter for doggy daycare 2x/week; $40/month for food and treats; $115 every other month for grooming. She also gets boarded once or twice a year while I travel, which is $75/day plus transportation.
Car payment: None! One of the upsides of NYC living. I do budget $75/month for Lyft and most months don’t spend even that much.
Regular therapy: Right now, I am seeing a therapist through a company-provided service. I’m almost out of sessions though and need to figure out next steps.
Cleaning: every other week at $150 per visit. (just raised from $140 when I got a raise)
BONUS QUESTIONS:
Did your parent/guardian(s) educate you about finances?
My mom and my grandparents taught me to save, and to pay my bills on time, but they never taught me to invest: my mom’s idea of teaching me to invest was getting mad that I wasn’t, and telling me I needed to buy a specific index fund without explaining why or how, before there were things like e*Trade. When she died, I was still getting used to making a middle-class living for myself, and I was thrown into this situation where I had money and no idea how to manage it.
Did you worry about money growing up? Do you worry about it now?
Growing up, I was always aware that we needed to be on a budget, that my dad was cheap about giving money to things outside of the basics of child support, and my mom worked two jobs sometimes to make sure we could do extra things like go to camp. My grandparents helped a lot, both on money and on child care, and their Depression-era mentality about money definitely is part of my psyche now: I get stressed when I don’t have a full pantry, even though I live alone!
I get very anxious about money and spending, which is part of the reason I wanted to write this up to be honest. I have almost all of my bills on autopay because before autopay, I would joke that I paid my bills “every other month like clockwork.” Maybe it’s my family, maybe it’s how little money I had for most of my 20s, but I still get freaked out by an unexpected bill, even though there’s plenty of money to pay for it.
Tell us more about those bad financial decisions you referred to earlier?
Mom had bought some bonds with an investment manager she liked, but he had retired, and the person his office assigned us to in his stead really didn’t know what he was doing -- he knew how to sell annuities to senior citizens and that was about it. When we realized this was a problem, we got a referral through one of my siblings’ coworkers to someone else, who unwound our previous mistakes but made new ones. My siblings managed their own money (with or without partners) but I stayed with that financial advisor, who liked selling options and calls. Tl,dr: I missed basic growth for years because he was focused on short-term wins. At a certain point I knew enough to tell him to stop doing that and start focusing on long-term index funds, but I didn’t know enough to pick low-cost ones. The only good decision I made at that time was that I also told him to hold onto the Apple stock he was selling calls on: 12 years later, an investment of $57,000 is worth nearly $500,000.
When I worked at Startup B, I got options, and on the advice of a smart friend, I bought them, selling a little of the Apple stock to cover it. Startup B went public during the final days of the latest tech boom, and for a brief period my $60,000 investment in those options was worth over $3 million (!!). I wanted to be smart about the tax implications of selling my shares so I decided to wait until 2022 to start doing that, and of course the tech market collapsed: shares were down over 80% at one point. They’re better now but still below IPO price. Right now I’m holding on at $800,000 because the company’s basic business model still makes sense, but the regret is real, not to mention that it’s stressful to have nearly half of my holdings in just two companies!
I had stopped working with my previous financial advisor when Startup B went public because it was clear he really didn’t know how to help, and I found a tax-knowledgeable advisor who set me up with something closer to Boglehead strategy.
I have been thinking it’s time to stop working with that third advisor because basically I’m not going to need the help until I’m ready to retire (hopefully not more than 10-15 years from now!) and the fees stress me out, but my general tendency towards avoidance of all things financial is making this hard.
MONEY DIARY
Day 1, Friday:
I wake up before 6 because I’m out of town on a work trip and need to catch an early train home. I did most of my packing the night before so it’s just a little stumbling around the hotel room, leaving a tip for the maid ($20), checking out and getting in an Uber ($16.67, on company card). Not a lot is open at the train station but thank God the Dunkin’ Donuts is, so I get a medium coffee and a blueberry donut ($6.36, on company card). I’m listed as out of office on my calendar and Slack, but I do some time-sensitive work on the train and call it a week.
At Penn, I’m really tempted to take one last eye-wateringly expensive cab ride on the company dime, but I can’t bring myself to do it when it’s a straight shot on the subway instead ($2.75, prepaid on my commuter card). I get home and maybe because I know I’m reporting to you all, I unpack and get everything put away with record speed. I should do these diaries more often!
It’s a beautiful, unseasonably warm day in NYC, and everyone is out. The place I’d been planning to go for lunch is packed, the cafe I tried next was sold out of pastries and sandwiches, even the bagel joint is low on bagels! I finally get a BLT on a brioche roll and a Diet Coke at the bagel joint ($15) and I sit in their street seating and eat and read my library book on my phone.
Finally, the reason why I wanted to eat on this particular corner happens: the van from the dog boarding facility where my pup has been while I’m traveling shows up. My doodle (let’s call her Ada) and I have our little reunion on the street-corner, and then I walk her home. She runs around the apartment making sure everything is right where she left it, and then she eats some food. We have plans tonight so we both take a nap.
My friend K is having a birthday party in an outdoors venue, and I know she will want to see Ada. If I were going alone I would take a Citibike ebike (presuming one was available), because getting there by train from my place means switching trains or taking a bus to the right subway station. But I have great plans to take Ada on the bus/train route! Of course, those plans fall apart after the nap, when I recognize just how beat I am. I get a “wait & save” Lyft to the venue that shows up while I’m still looking for my keys, put Ada in her bag, and we go ($26 including tip). The venue has non-alcoholic frozen drinks, so I get one of those and a fancy grilled cheese ($29.50).
It’s great to see the birthday girl and our closest mutual friend H, who is also a UXer. H and I talk shop for a bit, catch up, and make plans for a day trip to Beacon over Memorial Day weekend. K is one of those people who is always out doing something, going to art shows or playing sports, and has a wide range of friends at her party. One of them is a guy I knew from abortion clinic defense work when I was 22, the year between college and grad school, and who got me some freelance work when I was starting out. We are surprised to see each other but eventually remember that we both knew we each knew K! It’s been a while. We catch up and he tells me about his current job. Someone else mentions his book and so he admits he has published a graphic design book since we last saw each other. He tells me to check out the website because I’ll get a kick out of it. When I get home ($26 again) I buy the book on Amazon ($23.50) to support him.
Total: $140, plus $2.75 pre-paid and $23 on the corporate card
Day 2, Saturday:
Both Ada and I are up unusually early today and it’s a nice day. I get her into a harness, and we head towards Grand Army Plaza. I’m carrying a big FreshDirect bag full of clothes to donate, which slows me down a bit, but we still get there before off-leash hours end and I get a donation receipt.
I drink a La Coulombe canned latte (which I keep for mornings like this) while Ada plays and rolls around in the grass. She’s not usually all that interested in playing fetch, but she will happily wander the paths of the park with me, occasionally chasing a bird or squirrel who can handily outrun her. She’s wearing a new Wild Ones harness that is too big for her -- I make a mental note to look up their return policy.
I take a couple of wrong turns and we spend longer than I’d planned in the park, but it’s hardly a problem to be outside on a nice day. On the walk back, we spot one of our neighbors, who’s set up a stand among the group just outside the Greenmarket. I didn’t know they had a side gig, so I stop to chat with them for a bit, and I buy (let’s call it a soap) for $6.
Back at the Greenmarket, I make a beeline for the Ronnybrook Dairy stand, where I get 6 drinkable yogurts for $2.50 each, which is $1.50 less than the regular price at stores, and even $.50 less than the on-sale price at FreshDirect. I also buy one of their new no-added-sugar drinkable yogurts in a smaller size for $1 ($17 total, including tip). Next it’s to Roaming Acres for their smoked bones for Ada -- the ostrich ones still aren’t in, which are the best, but we get 2 of the bison bones for $26.13. It’s pricey, but they last her for weeks. I also get 2 bunches of Swiss chard for $8, and stop at Bread Alone for a ciabatta roll and a piece of lemon-poppy pound cake. I throw in a loaf of sliced peasant bread because I’m just in the zone by this point ($10.50). The pound cake prevents me from stopping for something else to eat on the walk home, much to Ada’s dismay.
When we get back, I feed her, have the no-sugar-added yogurt and the pound cake, and put stuff away. I also take out her old harness and open the straps as wide as they will possibly go, hoping she can wear it again.
It’s only 11am and I’ve put nearly 9,000 steps on the ol’ pedometer, so it’s time for another nap.
Much of the rest of the day is spent lazing about, scrolling through Reddit and doing the Sunday crossword. I get a notification that my domain name has renewed ($17.17). I make a pasta dish with one bunch of the chard for dinner. We go for a decently long walk after dinner and the harness seems to be fitting her fine. I do my Duolingo practice in bed.
Total $84.80
Day 3, Sunday
Mother’s Day is fraught when your mom is gone and you don’t have kids. I’m happy to hang out in bed till 10:30, and thankfully so is Ada. She’s had a hectic week too! We do our walk and I make two slices of toast from the Greenmarket peasant bread for breakfast.
I call my aunt, my sister with kids, and my female cousin. My cousin and I discuss my BIL’s upcoming birthday party on Saturday, and the logistics of getting to the party in the suburbs. I don’t know what I’m going to do about Ada, either then or next weekend when I have told H I’ll go to Beacon for a day.
It’s a beautiful day, so I figure a shortish afternoon walk or just hanging out outside the local cafe would be nice. I buy the cafe’s iced tea special ($6 including tip) and am ready to stroll or sit, but Ada is not having it and literally pulls me back towards my building. I decide to take the hint, and go home. I measure Ada to pick out a new harness, order one on Amazon that the Wirecutter recommends for small dogs ($18.21), and spend an afternoon reading with a dog on my lap.
For dinner, I order Indian food. I have a Seamless promo, so I get enough for a few meals ($35.60). I clean up a little for the dishwasher repair tech who’ll be coming tomorrow, and watch Succession. I’d forgotten it was going to be the election episode, so I’m completely nerve-jangled at what’s supposed to be bedtime. Walk, crossword, Duolingo, and a little more reading in bed. I finish the book (don’t like it so I won’t mention the title).
Total: $41.60
Day 4, Monday
Before I left for my work trip, the upscale dishwasher I bought for my kitchen renovation stopped working and was throwing an error code in its display screen. I called the manufacturer and scheduled a service call for as soon as possible after I got back, and that was this morning. The technician arrives as I’m coming back from Ada’s morning walk.
I describe the problem to him and he’s unable to reproduce it. He runs the dishwasher for a while, shows me how to restart it when there’s an error, and listens to it run for a bit. He thinks that leaving it unplugged and open while I was away allowed the water that wasn’t draining right before to drain. It’s still a bit noisier than it was before, but I can’t deny that it’s actually working. An expensive lesson in how “have you tried turning it off and on again” almost always works -- $150 for the visit plus half an hour on site. He can’t get through to the office to process my credit card number so I have to write him a check ($260.21).
My first meeting of the day is canceled and my next one, our group leadership meeting, is just me and my boss. We compare notes on our respective travels over the last week -- she twisted her ankle -- and talk about some of the ideas that came out of our meetings. She tells me about the very nice cane she bought at CVS -- a collaboration with the Michael Graves studio, which has done some great stuff for people with disabilities -- and I look it up online. I have a cane I bought when I broke my ankle, and I’ve kept it because you never know, but now I’m tempted to replace it. Oh great, I think, I’m going to make people believe that your 50s are about impulse-purchasing canes!
My team has our weekly sync, and then I have a lot of email to catch up on, mostly bureaucratic stuff. There’s an invite to an event next week featuring an old professional friend: I RSVP yes, because networking is more fun when people you like are involved.
Lunch is some soup I defrosted and the ciabatta roll from the Greenmarket, reheated. In the late afternoon, I have a telehealth therapy session, and afterwards, I take a long walk with the dog. As we head out, we see several of the building’s other dogs, and the pre-schooler who Ada is special friends with. It’s extremely wholesome.
We pass a local restaurant where an old friend is eating outside with someone I don’t know. I catch her eye and we exchange a look, and I’m certain she’s on a date until she gets up and greets me and invites me and Ada to join them. I order the same drink the guy she’s with is having, talk to them both, and I’m relaxing a bit until I ask him how he knows her and yep, it’s a first date. Both of them seem totally fine with having me there, though I don’t stay for another round. I try to pay for my drink and they both refuse. He seems nice, and he liked my dog: if they end up dating I’ll have a funny story to tell.
I go home, heat up a meal I took out of the freezer back on Friday, and have dinner. I’m still a little tipsy so I drink water and eat Trader Joe’s lentil curls till the feeling subsides. I get a notification that a Substack I forgot to cancel just charged me the monthly subscription fee ($6). I cancel it moving forward immediately.
Walk the dog, crossword, Duolingo. In bed, I start a new library book: Scorched Grace, a mystery that got a rave review in the NYT, about a punk queer turned novice nun, investigating an arson at the school where she teaches.
Total: $266.21
Day 5, Tuesday
My super is at the door at 8:30 am, delighting Ada -- they are besties. He has a package that has his name on it but the number of an apartment in the building: a mystery! I point out that the apartment on the address label is not mine, but the same line, a floor down. I joke that he just wanted to come see Ada, who does in turn want to follow him to his next stop. I put on street clothes and take her for her walk.
Coffee and toast for breakfast again. I notice my AmEx payment has cleared, and schedule payments for the two credit cards (Chase and Apple Card) that I pay at the end of the month. I don’t like to set credit cards to auto-pay, because I like to keep an eye on my spending, but I do like to set up payments in advance. I do a little quick math with the help of the iPhone calculator and work out that even with my savings deductions, I should have about $500 extra left at the end of the month. When I have over $1K extra it will go into investments.
My first meeting of the day is with my favorite colleague J, and we catch up on some organizational challenges and talk about next steps on a project that she is leading. I’m really excited about how much positive attention her work has already gotten.
Lunch is some of the Indian leftovers. Then there’s a boring status meeting, and then I have a one-on-one with one of my direct reports. I’m very serious about making sure I do these every week, because I have had so many bad managers who didn’t. He suggests that he try working on something that I was hoping he could work on, so I am thrilled that he volunteered and tell him what a good idea he has.
My team member mentions that he needs some coffee, and I remember that I’m running low on beans. I click over to Fresh Direct and order coffee beans, a 12-pack of Sprite Zero cans, and a bunch of on-sale yogurts to be delivered same-day. ($45.22) I go through so much Sprite Zero. I got spoiled having free soda at office jobs, and now I probably drink 2-3 cans of soda a day at home. I also finalize my CookUnity order for next week, which I think will be a busy one: 8 meals for $91.17.
I have a meeting with the most senior designers across my boss’s organization, and we talk about holding an internal conference to align on a long-term UX vision. It’s an idea that I brought to my boss, though I give my team credit in the meeting, and I’m happy to see her want to invest in it.
Between meetings, I’m scrolling through Twitter and I see an old friend retweet her friend’s GoFundMe for his mom to help her keep her house. I’m moved by it, so I donate $18 (in Hebrew, letters=numbers and the number 18 has the same letters as the word for “life” so 18 or multiples of 18 are typical Jewish donation/gift amounts). Then I see a GoFundMe for a former colleague who has a lot of mental and health issues and is living out of their car. I donate $100 to that one rather than trying to work out the correct multiple of 18. ($120 total including GoFundMe “tips”)
My last meeting isn’t until dinnertime (the joy of working across time zones!) so I have to feed the dog as soon as I’m done. For myself, I heat up the leftover pasta and fry an egg to go on top. I put all the dishes in the dishwasher and set it to run overnight. By the time the FreshDirect delivery arrives, I’ve forgotten I ordered it!
When I check my email there is already a thank-you note from the friend of a friend whose GoFundMe I contributed to. I click over to his fundraiser, which has gone up a bit in the hours since I donated, and then also to my former co-worker’s, which has already met its goal! I scroll through the list of donors, seeing many familiar names. Most of our former colleagues who have donated have given more than I did: $200, $300 and the like. One, who was always prone to extravagant gestures, gave $1,000! I find myself second-guessing myself and wondering if I’m too cheap -- not just in this case but in general.
Crossword, Duolingo, bed. Whether it’s because of my worries or the lack of exercise I’ve been getting after a very active week last week, I don’t sleep well.
Total: $256.39
Day 6, Wednesday
Toast and coffee for breakfast again. I start my day with a few team one-on-ones. Then I have a meeting with other UX managers about our new talent management system: fun stuff. There’s some talk about how it might impact bonuses for next year, which is depressing. I use part of the meeting to buy new jeans, since the ones I’m wearing have the inevitable thigh rip, and while I’m on the Everlane site I see a gorgeous spring coat on sale and add that too ($244.05).
I check my personal email and there’s a pub announcement for a book on leadership from a design press. I meant to pre-order it, but I guess it’s too late! I buy directly from their website because they offer an ebook/print copy bundle, plus I always order directly from small presses when I can ($36.98).
Microwave mac and cheese for lunch. I take Ada out, planning to walk her to her doggy daycare, but about halfway there, she starts pulling emphatically towards home. Again, I take the hint, and we go home so she can sleep. I email them to let them know we will only be in once this week, and apologize for the short notice.
When I get home, I review my order from Saturday for a new harness. It’s not coming until Friday and I could still cancel it, since the old one is working for her again. I decide not to, since she may need a light-weight harness when it’s really hot out. I also check on an order which never showed up, and learn that it got returned to Amazon. I reorder the dog treats and Vitamin D ($26.14).
The afternoon is taken up by a complete clusterf**k at work, where different teams are working on related products and not working together. One of those teams now wants to launch their product in a couple of months, even though it’s a mess. We talk about it in my team crit, since one of my designers has been asked to do a heuristic review of the product. The designer who asks “Two questions. First of all, why?” makes me lolsob. My manager and I spend our entire one-on-one discussing it, agreeing we are hosed (and agreeing that we can only say “hosed” to each other since none of our younger colleagues use the term). My colleague J and I have a “wtf” moment about it in a meeting that’s supposed to be about something else. Lots of Slack messages going back and forth all afternoon as well. It sometimes feels like this job is just one firedrill after another.
I decide to order in dinner: a carne asada bowl and a side of chips and guacamole from Dos Toros ($33.91). The bowl comes without guacamole, and I get a $4.97 credit from DoorDash for my troubles. I give Ada a bunch of the chips.
I show up for my monthly Zoom call with a small group of professional friends and no one else is there. This used to be a monthly after-work drinks thing that my friend H organized. It went online with COVID and it was just easier to keep online, and it’s been a great way to keep in touch with people whose opinions I value. H doesn’t always come anymore but there’s usually at least three of us. I missed the last one myself so I’m hoping this is a one-off.
Instead, I continue reading Scorched Grace (a banger), play with Ada, and then take her for a walk. (Assume that this walk, like all Ada walks, includes chatting with her friends, talking with people who want to pet her, talking with people who she wants to have pet her. She’s a very sociable dog for an introvert to hang out with!)
When I get home, I check the mailroom and there is a package from my dad -- a god-awful sculpture/lamp thing that looks like a cricket. Apparently, it’s made by an old friend of his who’s an artist in a touristy part of the South. He calls it “a gift of the heart” and thoughtfully includes the receipt -- which says “exchanges only.” Sigh.
Evening routine as per usual.
Total: $341.08
Day 7, Thursday
I oversleep and feel groggy all morning. Luckily, Ada is not a morning dog, and she’s still pretty wiped out from her week at boarding: usually she’d be climbing the walls not having been to daycare all week.
Toast and coffee again. Today I mix it up with some of the last of last year’s homemade jam.
More meetings about the clusterf**k and it’s all going to get argued out well above my head. Lunch is the last of the Indian food, plus the last of the Dos Toros chips and guac. It’s international!
An old friend is speaking at a local conference, and had asked if I wanted to be her guest: the invite from the conference organizers finally arrives and I accept. I’m reminded that the two of us had agreed to see Just For Us during its Broadway run (I saw it off-Broadway and loved it!), so I text her to find out when she’s in town. We quickly agree on a night and I buy the tickets ($279 including fees). She’ll pay me back for half, or buy dinner on the night.
I call my dad to thank him for the gift, and we talk about British mysteries on PBS. Dinner is a peppers, onion, and mushroom omelette. I should use the second bunch of chard, especially since I know I’ll be dining out Friday and Saturday, but I’m too tired to be creative.
I spend the rest of the evening tidying up for the cleaner who will come in the morning and then doing the evening routine.
Total: $279
Categorized Expenses for the Week:
Food + Drink: $262.40
Fun / Entertainment: $314.50
Home + Health: $267.21
Clothes + Beauty: $244.05
Transport: $52
Books: $50.48
Dog: $62.34
Other $143.17
Lastly, reflect on your diary!
My week totals out to about $1400, which is more than I would ideally like, but with the dishwasher repair, the Broadway tickets, and buying food for next week via Cook Unity, it doesn’t feel wildly off. I did notice a lot of quasi-impulse buys -- “oh, I just remembered this, need to buy it now!” -- which is something I should be more mindful of. It makes me more confident in my budgeting to know that even when I’m not watching my money I’m spending reasonably (except perhaps too much on Ada? Never!).
I’m still pretty anxious when I have to think about larger financial decisions, but at least about the day to day, I think I’m doing mostly all right!
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Retirement/Investments Balance: $2.6 million, which is still mind-boggling to me, even as I know that with better choices I might have even more. More about that later. $1500 in my HSA, $519,000 in traditional IRAs, about half of that in a Beneficiary IRA from my late mother, $10K in a Roth IRA, $40,000 in my employer’s stock from RSUs, $145,000 in my 401K, $990,000 in an unmanaged taxable account, and $920,000 in a managed one.
Equity: Probably about $500,000. I bought my co-op apartment for $500K in 2008, and put in $120K worth of renovations in 2019. I still owe $251,000 on a 3.75% refi, but it’s probably worth close to $800,000 with the updates and as the neighborhood has continued to gentrify; it was assessed at $720,000 when I took out a HELOC for the renovations. I was able to make the 20% downpayment of $100,000 the co-op required because of the money my mom left me; she was very clear that she wanted to enable me to buy a home, and we’d even discussed her helping with a future downpayment before she passed.
Savings account balance: $60,000 in a HYSA. Some of that is earmarked for quarterly taxes, further renovations, and self-care but I try to always have $30,000 which is about 4 months’ expenses available as an “emergency fund.” I also have a non-high-yield savings account, which has some funds earmarked for my nephew’s bar mitzvah but is mostly used as a transfer point between other accounts until I get my act together and close it: current non-earmarked balance of $2000.
Primary checking account balance: $4800. My first post-grad school checking account required a $2K balance for no fee on ATM transactions, and I still try to keep a $2K balance in checking. I tell myself it’s so nothing ever bounces, but actually it’s a mix of habit and superstition.
Secondary checking account: $9,000. This account is funded mostly from dividends from my REIT shares (see below) and used to pay the co-op maintenance fees. I keep saying I should combine the two accounts now that I could theoretically pay the maintenance out of my take-home instead, but I am lazy!
Credit card debt: None currently. I pay my cards every month, though because it’s not automated I fuck up maybe once a year or so.
Student loan debt: I graduated college with about $12,000 in debt, but my grandparents died while I was in college and my mom paid it off from her inheritance, saying “I got this money when I don’t need it, you should have it now when you do.” My siblings and I plan to pay off my nieces/nephews’ college debt in turn to pay it forward. I didn’t take on grad school debt -- never take out loans to get a humanities advanced degree! -- but I racked up $10,000 worth of credit card debt in grad school because I made so little money. I paid it off with work for an early dot-com while I was still in school.
Anything else that's applicable to you: my siblings and I inherited shares in a private company that later sold off assets and turned itself into a REIT. My mom said “never sell those shares!” and even though that company doesn’t exist anymore, we haven't, and selling private REIT shares is a PITA anyhow.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: I've been working in my field for 23 years, my starting salary was $50,000
I was originally going to be a humanities academic, and went to graduate school in the Midwest in the 90s. For most of my 20s, I lived on around $20, $25K a year, eating a lot of beans and rice and sharing a house with lots of roommates. I did a bunch of early digital archive work, so when the web really took off and I realized that I didn’t want to be a professor after all, I had a few skills and some options. It was a big shift, though!
I grew up in the NYC area, but I got my first web job in NYC through the Internet. It was running the website for a magazine. I was 29 and I made $50,000: what one of my still in grad school friends called “grown-up money.” I was able to find a rent-stabilized apartment and live by myself. When my mom, who had raised us with help from her parents, was diagnosed with cancer, I was very glad to be close to home while she fought it into remission.
That job fell apart after a year and a half -- pay attention, it’s a theme! -- because the magazine didn’t really understand what going digital meant and had second thoughts (They have since gone out of business). I saw this coming and had already been networking hard, so I was able, through friends of friends, to land a job doing information architecture for a legacy technology company. That was my first job in UX and really where I count the start of my current career. The starting pay there was $77K, which went up to $85K: I learned they’d started me low because they weren’t sure I could do the job.
Between 9/11 and the dot-com crash I got laid off a year and a half in. Then followed another year and a half of scrounging for freelance work and relying on the occasional help from Mom to get by; according to my records, I was averaging about $40K a year in income.
I had a favorite client -- a small design firm that did very cool stuff -- and I worked hard to stay in touch with them even when they had no work for me. Eventually, that paid off in a longer-term freelance job. I was hoping to get hired there but also actively interviewing when my mom died: she hadn’t told us her cancer had returned until very late. When the design firm offered me a job, I took it, because I knew I would be a mess for a while and they already knew and trusted me and my work.
Starting pay at that job was $80K. I loved it until I hit the glass ceiling, which was unfortunately during the ‘08 recession, so I stayed a little longer than I would have liked. Final pay when I left after 6 years was $115K.
I joined Startup A as their first full-time UX person and design manager. We structured the pay so that while I started at $110K, when they got their B-round funding a few months later, it went up to $120. I got a raise to $130 before I and most of my team got laid off after, yes, a year and a half.
At this point, I knew more people in the NYC UX community so getting freelance work was a bit easier, and I thought about just going freelance for good. I had one great long-term client, let’s call them Client X, that I did most of my work for, and also did some stuff for big name companies. I was making about $120K as a freelancer and doing well.
I got an opportunity that I can’t be specific about, because it’s extremely dox-able, but it was a long-term project that took up 2013 and 2014, into the first months of 2015. It paid $150K/yr, plus I did a little extra work on the side for Client X, an additional $5K/yr. On the long-term project, I was a creative lead, but not a design manager, which was what I wanted to be doing, so when I had a chance to renew my contract, I didn’t re-up. I thought I had a design leadership role lined up, but it fell through, and I fell into a burn-out depression that led me back into therapy and onto meds for the first time.
I kept interviewing for leadership roles and not getting them, and went back to doing work for Client X as well as other freelancing. It didn’t go as well this time. My freelance income in 2015 was $80K and for 2016 it was only $50K. I had to break into my emergency savings.
Client X was falling apart, and I needed a new job, stat. I spoke to a former manager who had followed a similar in-house-freelance-in-house career path, and they told me to look for an individual contributor role rather than a leadership role, and transition once I was inside. So I changed the way I was looking, and eventually opportunity knocked.
In 2017, a professional friend who was at Startup B, in a job I’d applied for and not gotten, reached out and asked me if I would be interested in joining his team. B has a complex enterprise product and he knew I was good at products like that. I asked if there would be leadership opportunities in the future and he said it was a possibility, so I took the job. (I probably would have taken it even if he hadn’t, tbh, I was broke!). It paid $160K, so I felt like I was making progress again.
The professional friend left, I got the lateral move to manager, and I had a fantastic team I really liked. I also had a narcissistic boss, so that job ended in tears a year and a half later. (I really do have a pattern!) My salary was at $168K by then.
Since I started interviewing before I was actually fired, I was pretty far along in the interview process when it actually happened. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t have a long painful job search: in fact a job doing what I’d already been doing, for a large public company, had been posted in an online community I was part of, and I got referred in by someone I didn’t know (but who I am still friendly with now!). I was out of work for only about six weeks.
My starting salary at Company C in 2019 was $202K, with a 15% bonus and $100,000 in RSUs over 4 years. I was so wowed I didn’t even negotiate, though now I realize I still should have. With a promotion and other annual salary increases, my base salary is now $255K, with a 20% bonus. I have gotten RSU refreshes three of the four years I’ve been at this job. Between those and the ESPP discounts, my W2 shows about $400K the last two years.
I should also note that this job is fully remote, and my team is distributed across multiple cities and timezones. My apartment is a two-bedroom, and I use the second bedroom as a guest room/home office.
Main Job Monthly Take Home:
My take-home pay is $9100/month. That’s after $7200 in taxes, $2800 into my 401K, $125 into my HSA, $100 for dental/vision/high-deductible medical insurance, $18/month for the company's legal plan, $30 to my commuter plan, and $1600/month into my ESPP.
Any Other Monthly Income: Not monthly but quarterly: The REIT mentioned above pays dividends of about $10K a year, but this year and last there has been an extra payment of $5K. Starting back in the days when I first bought my apartment and could barely afford to make the mortgage payments, I have set this money aside for the co-op maintenance fees.
I also get a 401K match up to $5000, and a HSA match of $1000 from my employer annually.
Section Three: Expenses
Mortgage: My monthly mortgage payment is $1690, to which I add $140/month in additional principal payment so it’s $1830.
Co-op maintenance (which includes gas, heating, and property tax as well as property management) is $1100.
Co-op insurance: $185/month
Savings contribution: $800/month
Investment contribution: $800/month, plus any RSUs/ESPP shares as they vest: I still have some shares from when I was holding long-term, but now I sell at or close to vest.
HELOC: I took out a $50K HELOC to help pay for the renovation of my kitchen and bathroom in 2019. I’m listing it because I just paid the last of it off a few weeks ago with $10,000 from RSUs. Until then I was paying about $200 a month plus an additional $200 to the principal. It was an adjustable-rate loan so the amount I was paying had gone up to almost 9%, so paying it off ASAP made sense.
Donations. This past year my charitable donations were almost 1% of my W2 AGI, and my goal for 2023 is to reach at least that 1%. My donations include:
- Monthly donations: $10 to the Human Utility (paying water bills for low-income families in Detroit and Baltimore); $15 to WNYC public radio; $5 each to a couple of different not-for-profit publications; $10 to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, $5 to NY Common Pantry every time I order from FreshDirect.
- Annual donations: $250 in museum memberships, $50 to Transportation Alternatives, a local activist organization, $1200 to my synagogue, $100 to the New York Public Library. This year I gave $500 to a center at my alma mater, and have also donated $100 so far to Donors Choose and $130 to City Harvest. The first $2K of donations above $50 are matched by my employer.
- I also volunteer for my synagogue helping events run smoothly, maybe 5-10 hours a year, and having volunteered last year for a Housing Works benefit, I want to do that again.
- I also make small recurring non-deductible donations to the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Run for Something, and some local electeds.
Groceries: average $500/month
Wifi/Cable/Landline: $200/month, of which my employer subsidizes $50. I’ve been planning to downgrade but keep putting it off because I don’t want to deal.
Cellphone: I have a corporate-subsidized AT&T plan for $80 with unlimited data. I have been considering switching to Mint: any NYC folks who have it, I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Subscriptions: $30/month on Patreon; $28.53/month for an All Access subscription to the New York Times, $10/month for Spotify with bonus Hulu, $21.76/month for Netflix (shared with my siblings). I have annual subscriptions to the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Disney+, FreshDirect, One Medical, a couple of Substacks, Duolingo, and CityMapper. I also have the Lyft All-Access plan because it comes with Citibike membership.
Gym membership: I will be paying $180/month when the gym I joined opens near me, unless I cancel in the first week they’re open.
Pet expenses: My pup is expensive! $40/month for pet insurance; $800/quarter for doggy daycare 2x/week; $40/month for food and treats; $115 every other month for grooming. She also gets boarded once or twice a year while I travel, which is $75/day plus transportation.
Car payment: None! One of the upsides of NYC living. I do budget $75/month for Lyft and most months don’t spend even that much.
Regular therapy: Right now, I am seeing a therapist through a company-provided service. I’m almost out of sessions though and need to figure out next steps.
Cleaning: every other week at $150 per visit. (just raised from $140 when I got a raise)
BONUS QUESTIONS:
Did your parent/guardian(s) educate you about finances?
My mom and my grandparents taught me to save, and to pay my bills on time, but they never taught me to invest: my mom’s idea of teaching me to invest was getting mad that I wasn’t, and telling me I needed to buy a specific index fund without explaining why or how, before there were things like e*Trade. When she died, I was still getting used to making a middle-class living for myself, and I was thrown into this situation where I had money and no idea how to manage it.
Did you worry about money growing up? Do you worry about it now?
Growing up, I was always aware that we needed to be on a budget, that my dad was cheap about giving money to things outside of the basics of child support, and my mom worked two jobs sometimes to make sure we could do extra things like go to camp. My grandparents helped a lot, both on money and on child care, and their Depression-era mentality about money definitely is part of my psyche now: I get stressed when I don’t have a full pantry, even though I live alone!
I get very anxious about money and spending, which is part of the reason I wanted to write this up to be honest. I have almost all of my bills on autopay because before autopay, I would joke that I paid my bills “every other month like clockwork.” Maybe it’s my family, maybe it’s how little money I had for most of my 20s, but I still get freaked out by an unexpected bill, even though there’s plenty of money to pay for it.
Tell us more about those bad financial decisions you referred to earlier?
Mom had bought some bonds with an investment manager she liked, but he had retired, and the person his office assigned us to in his stead really didn’t know what he was doing -- he knew how to sell annuities to senior citizens and that was about it. When we realized this was a problem, we got a referral through one of my siblings’ coworkers to someone else, who unwound our previous mistakes but made new ones. My siblings managed their own money (with or without partners) but I stayed with that financial advisor, who liked selling options and calls. Tl,dr: I missed basic growth for years because he was focused on short-term wins. At a certain point I knew enough to tell him to stop doing that and start focusing on long-term index funds, but I didn’t know enough to pick low-cost ones. The only good decision I made at that time was that I also told him to hold onto the Apple stock he was selling calls on: 12 years later, an investment of $57,000 is worth nearly $500,000.
When I worked at Startup B, I got options, and on the advice of a smart friend, I bought them, selling a little of the Apple stock to cover it. Startup B went public during the final days of the latest tech boom, and for a brief period my $60,000 investment in those options was worth over $3 million (!!). I wanted to be smart about the tax implications of selling my shares so I decided to wait until 2022 to start doing that, and of course the tech market collapsed: shares were down over 80% at one point. They’re better now but still below IPO price. Right now I’m holding on at $800,000 because the company’s basic business model still makes sense, but the regret is real, not to mention that it’s stressful to have nearly half of my holdings in just two companies!
I had stopped working with my previous financial advisor when Startup B went public because it was clear he really didn’t know how to help, and I found a tax-knowledgeable advisor who set me up with something closer to Boglehead strategy.
I have been thinking it’s time to stop working with that third advisor because basically I’m not going to need the help until I’m ready to retire (hopefully not more than 10-15 years from now!) and the fees stress me out, but my general tendency towards avoidance of all things financial is making this hard.
MONEY DIARY
Day 1, Friday:
I wake up before 6 because I’m out of town on a work trip and need to catch an early train home. I did most of my packing the night before so it’s just a little stumbling around the hotel room, leaving a tip for the maid ($20), checking out and getting in an Uber ($16.67, on company card). Not a lot is open at the train station but thank God the Dunkin’ Donuts is, so I get a medium coffee and a blueberry donut ($6.36, on company card). I’m listed as out of office on my calendar and Slack, but I do some time-sensitive work on the train and call it a week.
At Penn, I’m really tempted to take one last eye-wateringly expensive cab ride on the company dime, but I can’t bring myself to do it when it’s a straight shot on the subway instead ($2.75, prepaid on my commuter card). I get home and maybe because I know I’m reporting to you all, I unpack and get everything put away with record speed. I should do these diaries more often!
It’s a beautiful, unseasonably warm day in NYC, and everyone is out. The place I’d been planning to go for lunch is packed, the cafe I tried next was sold out of pastries and sandwiches, even the bagel joint is low on bagels! I finally get a BLT on a brioche roll and a Diet Coke at the bagel joint ($15) and I sit in their street seating and eat and read my library book on my phone.
Finally, the reason why I wanted to eat on this particular corner happens: the van from the dog boarding facility where my pup has been while I’m traveling shows up. My doodle (let’s call her Ada) and I have our little reunion on the street-corner, and then I walk her home. She runs around the apartment making sure everything is right where she left it, and then she eats some food. We have plans tonight so we both take a nap.
My friend K is having a birthday party in an outdoors venue, and I know she will want to see Ada. If I were going alone I would take a Citibike ebike (presuming one was available), because getting there by train from my place means switching trains or taking a bus to the right subway station. But I have great plans to take Ada on the bus/train route! Of course, those plans fall apart after the nap, when I recognize just how beat I am. I get a “wait & save” Lyft to the venue that shows up while I’m still looking for my keys, put Ada in her bag, and we go ($26 including tip). The venue has non-alcoholic frozen drinks, so I get one of those and a fancy grilled cheese ($29.50).
It’s great to see the birthday girl and our closest mutual friend H, who is also a UXer. H and I talk shop for a bit, catch up, and make plans for a day trip to Beacon over Memorial Day weekend. K is one of those people who is always out doing something, going to art shows or playing sports, and has a wide range of friends at her party. One of them is a guy I knew from abortion clinic defense work when I was 22, the year between college and grad school, and who got me some freelance work when I was starting out. We are surprised to see each other but eventually remember that we both knew we each knew K! It’s been a while. We catch up and he tells me about his current job. Someone else mentions his book and so he admits he has published a graphic design book since we last saw each other. He tells me to check out the website because I’ll get a kick out of it. When I get home ($26 again) I buy the book on Amazon ($23.50) to support him.
Total: $140, plus $2.75 pre-paid and $23 on the corporate card
Day 2, Saturday:
Both Ada and I are up unusually early today and it’s a nice day. I get her into a harness, and we head towards Grand Army Plaza. I’m carrying a big FreshDirect bag full of clothes to donate, which slows me down a bit, but we still get there before off-leash hours end and I get a donation receipt.
I drink a La Coulombe canned latte (which I keep for mornings like this) while Ada plays and rolls around in the grass. She’s not usually all that interested in playing fetch, but she will happily wander the paths of the park with me, occasionally chasing a bird or squirrel who can handily outrun her. She’s wearing a new Wild Ones harness that is too big for her -- I make a mental note to look up their return policy.
I take a couple of wrong turns and we spend longer than I’d planned in the park, but it’s hardly a problem to be outside on a nice day. On the walk back, we spot one of our neighbors, who’s set up a stand among the group just outside the Greenmarket. I didn’t know they had a side gig, so I stop to chat with them for a bit, and I buy (let’s call it a soap) for $6.
Back at the Greenmarket, I make a beeline for the Ronnybrook Dairy stand, where I get 6 drinkable yogurts for $2.50 each, which is $1.50 less than the regular price at stores, and even $.50 less than the on-sale price at FreshDirect. I also buy one of their new no-added-sugar drinkable yogurts in a smaller size for $1 ($17 total, including tip). Next it’s to Roaming Acres for their smoked bones for Ada -- the ostrich ones still aren’t in, which are the best, but we get 2 of the bison bones for $26.13. It’s pricey, but they last her for weeks. I also get 2 bunches of Swiss chard for $8, and stop at Bread Alone for a ciabatta roll and a piece of lemon-poppy pound cake. I throw in a loaf of sliced peasant bread because I’m just in the zone by this point ($10.50). The pound cake prevents me from stopping for something else to eat on the walk home, much to Ada’s dismay.
When we get back, I feed her, have the no-sugar-added yogurt and the pound cake, and put stuff away. I also take out her old harness and open the straps as wide as they will possibly go, hoping she can wear it again.
It’s only 11am and I’ve put nearly 9,000 steps on the ol’ pedometer, so it’s time for another nap.
Much of the rest of the day is spent lazing about, scrolling through Reddit and doing the Sunday crossword. I get a notification that my domain name has renewed ($17.17). I make a pasta dish with one bunch of the chard for dinner. We go for a decently long walk after dinner and the harness seems to be fitting her fine. I do my Duolingo practice in bed.
Total $84.80
Day 3, Sunday
Mother’s Day is fraught when your mom is gone and you don’t have kids. I’m happy to hang out in bed till 10:30, and thankfully so is Ada. She’s had a hectic week too! We do our walk and I make two slices of toast from the Greenmarket peasant bread for breakfast.
I call my aunt, my sister with kids, and my female cousin. My cousin and I discuss my BIL’s upcoming birthday party on Saturday, and the logistics of getting to the party in the suburbs. I don’t know what I’m going to do about Ada, either then or next weekend when I have told H I’ll go to Beacon for a day.
It’s a beautiful day, so I figure a shortish afternoon walk or just hanging out outside the local cafe would be nice. I buy the cafe’s iced tea special ($6 including tip) and am ready to stroll or sit, but Ada is not having it and literally pulls me back towards my building. I decide to take the hint, and go home. I measure Ada to pick out a new harness, order one on Amazon that the Wirecutter recommends for small dogs ($18.21), and spend an afternoon reading with a dog on my lap.
For dinner, I order Indian food. I have a Seamless promo, so I get enough for a few meals ($35.60). I clean up a little for the dishwasher repair tech who’ll be coming tomorrow, and watch Succession. I’d forgotten it was going to be the election episode, so I’m completely nerve-jangled at what’s supposed to be bedtime. Walk, crossword, Duolingo, and a little more reading in bed. I finish the book (don’t like it so I won’t mention the title).
Total: $41.60
Day 4, Monday
Before I left for my work trip, the upscale dishwasher I bought for my kitchen renovation stopped working and was throwing an error code in its display screen. I called the manufacturer and scheduled a service call for as soon as possible after I got back, and that was this morning. The technician arrives as I’m coming back from Ada’s morning walk.
I describe the problem to him and he’s unable to reproduce it. He runs the dishwasher for a while, shows me how to restart it when there’s an error, and listens to it run for a bit. He thinks that leaving it unplugged and open while I was away allowed the water that wasn’t draining right before to drain. It’s still a bit noisier than it was before, but I can’t deny that it’s actually working. An expensive lesson in how “have you tried turning it off and on again” almost always works -- $150 for the visit plus half an hour on site. He can’t get through to the office to process my credit card number so I have to write him a check ($260.21).
My first meeting of the day is canceled and my next one, our group leadership meeting, is just me and my boss. We compare notes on our respective travels over the last week -- she twisted her ankle -- and talk about some of the ideas that came out of our meetings. She tells me about the very nice cane she bought at CVS -- a collaboration with the Michael Graves studio, which has done some great stuff for people with disabilities -- and I look it up online. I have a cane I bought when I broke my ankle, and I’ve kept it because you never know, but now I’m tempted to replace it. Oh great, I think, I’m going to make people believe that your 50s are about impulse-purchasing canes!
My team has our weekly sync, and then I have a lot of email to catch up on, mostly bureaucratic stuff. There’s an invite to an event next week featuring an old professional friend: I RSVP yes, because networking is more fun when people you like are involved.
Lunch is some soup I defrosted and the ciabatta roll from the Greenmarket, reheated. In the late afternoon, I have a telehealth therapy session, and afterwards, I take a long walk with the dog. As we head out, we see several of the building’s other dogs, and the pre-schooler who Ada is special friends with. It’s extremely wholesome.
We pass a local restaurant where an old friend is eating outside with someone I don’t know. I catch her eye and we exchange a look, and I’m certain she’s on a date until she gets up and greets me and invites me and Ada to join them. I order the same drink the guy she’s with is having, talk to them both, and I’m relaxing a bit until I ask him how he knows her and yep, it’s a first date. Both of them seem totally fine with having me there, though I don’t stay for another round. I try to pay for my drink and they both refuse. He seems nice, and he liked my dog: if they end up dating I’ll have a funny story to tell.
I go home, heat up a meal I took out of the freezer back on Friday, and have dinner. I’m still a little tipsy so I drink water and eat Trader Joe’s lentil curls till the feeling subsides. I get a notification that a Substack I forgot to cancel just charged me the monthly subscription fee ($6). I cancel it moving forward immediately.
Walk the dog, crossword, Duolingo. In bed, I start a new library book: Scorched Grace, a mystery that got a rave review in the NYT, about a punk queer turned novice nun, investigating an arson at the school where she teaches.
Total: $266.21
Day 5, Tuesday
My super is at the door at 8:30 am, delighting Ada -- they are besties. He has a package that has his name on it but the number of an apartment in the building: a mystery! I point out that the apartment on the address label is not mine, but the same line, a floor down. I joke that he just wanted to come see Ada, who does in turn want to follow him to his next stop. I put on street clothes and take her for her walk.
Coffee and toast for breakfast again. I notice my AmEx payment has cleared, and schedule payments for the two credit cards (Chase and Apple Card) that I pay at the end of the month. I don’t like to set credit cards to auto-pay, because I like to keep an eye on my spending, but I do like to set up payments in advance. I do a little quick math with the help of the iPhone calculator and work out that even with my savings deductions, I should have about $500 extra left at the end of the month. When I have over $1K extra it will go into investments.
My first meeting of the day is with my favorite colleague J, and we catch up on some organizational challenges and talk about next steps on a project that she is leading. I’m really excited about how much positive attention her work has already gotten.
Lunch is some of the Indian leftovers. Then there’s a boring status meeting, and then I have a one-on-one with one of my direct reports. I’m very serious about making sure I do these every week, because I have had so many bad managers who didn’t. He suggests that he try working on something that I was hoping he could work on, so I am thrilled that he volunteered and tell him what a good idea he has.
My team member mentions that he needs some coffee, and I remember that I’m running low on beans. I click over to Fresh Direct and order coffee beans, a 12-pack of Sprite Zero cans, and a bunch of on-sale yogurts to be delivered same-day. ($45.22) I go through so much Sprite Zero. I got spoiled having free soda at office jobs, and now I probably drink 2-3 cans of soda a day at home. I also finalize my CookUnity order for next week, which I think will be a busy one: 8 meals for $91.17.
I have a meeting with the most senior designers across my boss’s organization, and we talk about holding an internal conference to align on a long-term UX vision. It’s an idea that I brought to my boss, though I give my team credit in the meeting, and I’m happy to see her want to invest in it.
Between meetings, I’m scrolling through Twitter and I see an old friend retweet her friend’s GoFundMe for his mom to help her keep her house. I’m moved by it, so I donate $18 (in Hebrew, letters=numbers and the number 18 has the same letters as the word for “life” so 18 or multiples of 18 are typical Jewish donation/gift amounts). Then I see a GoFundMe for a former colleague who has a lot of mental and health issues and is living out of their car. I donate $100 to that one rather than trying to work out the correct multiple of 18. ($120 total including GoFundMe “tips”)
My last meeting isn’t until dinnertime (the joy of working across time zones!) so I have to feed the dog as soon as I’m done. For myself, I heat up the leftover pasta and fry an egg to go on top. I put all the dishes in the dishwasher and set it to run overnight. By the time the FreshDirect delivery arrives, I’ve forgotten I ordered it!
When I check my email there is already a thank-you note from the friend of a friend whose GoFundMe I contributed to. I click over to his fundraiser, which has gone up a bit in the hours since I donated, and then also to my former co-worker’s, which has already met its goal! I scroll through the list of donors, seeing many familiar names. Most of our former colleagues who have donated have given more than I did: $200, $300 and the like. One, who was always prone to extravagant gestures, gave $1,000! I find myself second-guessing myself and wondering if I’m too cheap -- not just in this case but in general.
Crossword, Duolingo, bed. Whether it’s because of my worries or the lack of exercise I’ve been getting after a very active week last week, I don’t sleep well.
Total: $256.39
Day 6, Wednesday
Toast and coffee for breakfast again. I start my day with a few team one-on-ones. Then I have a meeting with other UX managers about our new talent management system: fun stuff. There’s some talk about how it might impact bonuses for next year, which is depressing. I use part of the meeting to buy new jeans, since the ones I’m wearing have the inevitable thigh rip, and while I’m on the Everlane site I see a gorgeous spring coat on sale and add that too ($244.05).
I check my personal email and there’s a pub announcement for a book on leadership from a design press. I meant to pre-order it, but I guess it’s too late! I buy directly from their website because they offer an ebook/print copy bundle, plus I always order directly from small presses when I can ($36.98).
Microwave mac and cheese for lunch. I take Ada out, planning to walk her to her doggy daycare, but about halfway there, she starts pulling emphatically towards home. Again, I take the hint, and we go home so she can sleep. I email them to let them know we will only be in once this week, and apologize for the short notice.
When I get home, I review my order from Saturday for a new harness. It’s not coming until Friday and I could still cancel it, since the old one is working for her again. I decide not to, since she may need a light-weight harness when it’s really hot out. I also check on an order which never showed up, and learn that it got returned to Amazon. I reorder the dog treats and Vitamin D ($26.14).
The afternoon is taken up by a complete clusterf**k at work, where different teams are working on related products and not working together. One of those teams now wants to launch their product in a couple of months, even though it’s a mess. We talk about it in my team crit, since one of my designers has been asked to do a heuristic review of the product. The designer who asks “Two questions. First of all, why?” makes me lolsob. My manager and I spend our entire one-on-one discussing it, agreeing we are hosed (and agreeing that we can only say “hosed” to each other since none of our younger colleagues use the term). My colleague J and I have a “wtf” moment about it in a meeting that’s supposed to be about something else. Lots of Slack messages going back and forth all afternoon as well. It sometimes feels like this job is just one firedrill after another.
I decide to order in dinner: a carne asada bowl and a side of chips and guacamole from Dos Toros ($33.91). The bowl comes without guacamole, and I get a $4.97 credit from DoorDash for my troubles. I give Ada a bunch of the chips.
I show up for my monthly Zoom call with a small group of professional friends and no one else is there. This used to be a monthly after-work drinks thing that my friend H organized. It went online with COVID and it was just easier to keep online, and it’s been a great way to keep in touch with people whose opinions I value. H doesn’t always come anymore but there’s usually at least three of us. I missed the last one myself so I’m hoping this is a one-off.
Instead, I continue reading Scorched Grace (a banger), play with Ada, and then take her for a walk. (Assume that this walk, like all Ada walks, includes chatting with her friends, talking with people who want to pet her, talking with people who she wants to have pet her. She’s a very sociable dog for an introvert to hang out with!)
When I get home, I check the mailroom and there is a package from my dad -- a god-awful sculpture/lamp thing that looks like a cricket. Apparently, it’s made by an old friend of his who’s an artist in a touristy part of the South. He calls it “a gift of the heart” and thoughtfully includes the receipt -- which says “exchanges only.” Sigh.
Evening routine as per usual.
Total: $341.08
Day 7, Thursday
I oversleep and feel groggy all morning. Luckily, Ada is not a morning dog, and she’s still pretty wiped out from her week at boarding: usually she’d be climbing the walls not having been to daycare all week.
Toast and coffee again. Today I mix it up with some of the last of last year’s homemade jam.
More meetings about the clusterf**k and it’s all going to get argued out well above my head. Lunch is the last of the Indian food, plus the last of the Dos Toros chips and guac. It’s international!
An old friend is speaking at a local conference, and had asked if I wanted to be her guest: the invite from the conference organizers finally arrives and I accept. I’m reminded that the two of us had agreed to see Just For Us during its Broadway run (I saw it off-Broadway and loved it!), so I text her to find out when she’s in town. We quickly agree on a night and I buy the tickets ($279 including fees). She’ll pay me back for half, or buy dinner on the night.
I call my dad to thank him for the gift, and we talk about British mysteries on PBS. Dinner is a peppers, onion, and mushroom omelette. I should use the second bunch of chard, especially since I know I’ll be dining out Friday and Saturday, but I’m too tired to be creative.
I spend the rest of the evening tidying up for the cleaner who will come in the morning and then doing the evening routine.
Total: $279
Categorized Expenses for the Week:
Food + Drink: $262.40
Fun / Entertainment: $314.50
Home + Health: $267.21
Clothes + Beauty: $244.05
Transport: $52
Books: $50.48
Dog: $62.34
Other $143.17
Lastly, reflect on your diary!
My week totals out to about $1400, which is more than I would ideally like, but with the dishwasher repair, the Broadway tickets, and buying food for next week via Cook Unity, it doesn’t feel wildly off. I did notice a lot of quasi-impulse buys -- “oh, I just remembered this, need to buy it now!” -- which is something I should be more mindful of. It makes me more confident in my budgeting to know that even when I’m not watching my money I’m spending reasonably (except perhaps too much on Ada? Never!).
I’m still pretty anxious when I have to think about larger financial decisions, but at least about the day to day, I think I’m doing mostly all right!
2023.05.23 02:29 Alternative-Sign-573 DIY fix help
 | Someone parked bumper to bumper with my 2019 Nissan Altima and left behind these scratches. submitted by Alternative-Sign-573 to Cartalk [link] [comments] Are there any DIY fixes I can do? Thank you for your help. |
2023.05.21 15:36 Oncefa2 The "male housework list" or "honey do list" (the second shift) Sources from Dr. Warren Farrell
Warren Farrell's male housework list came up here a couple months ago, so I figured I would transcribe it in full.
It comes from the book Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say. It's a relationship book about communication strategies that tackles a lot of the issues that come up in some of these gender discussions.
The author is a well known feminist and men's rights advocate who spent decades working as a professional marriage counselor.
One of the premises of the book is that marital conflict often comes from "political" messages in society that people internalise. A lot of which is the kind of stuff you hear from feminists pretty regularly today. Like the idea that women do all the work at home (they don't) and are unappreciated by men (which isn't true). Or the idea that they're being exploited and treated like slaves because they don't get paid (they obviously live off their husband's money).
Of course if you're a woman and you believe that, you might start harbouring resentment against your husband!
Farrell gives the example of ads saying things like "when was the last time your husband cooked?". And says that men might harbour resentment against their wives if ads instead said things like, "when was the last time your wife helped you clean the gutters?".
Men often don't notice what they do for their families themselves.
One study mentioned by Farrell found that women exaggerate the amount of time they spend doing chores by a factor of 3.
Whereas men underestimate their contributions by a full half.
So if a man estimates that he puts in 10 hours a week at home, in reality he's doing 20.
And if a woman estimates she's doing 60, in reality she's only doing 20 as well.
Sources:
Sources:
Sources:
But the reality is a man's contributions to his family don't stop at the workplace. There's an entire second shift that men do every day around (and outside) their homes as well. Women aren't the only ones who do chores for their families. The only difference is we systematically ignore the male side of this. Many men spend entire weekends, or take days off from work, to get their honey do lists accomplished. But for some reason, we view all of this very different from how we view housework done by women.
Here is the list that Farrell came up with:
submitted by Oncefa2 to LeftWingMaleAdvocates [link] [comments]
It comes from the book Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say. It's a relationship book about communication strategies that tackles a lot of the issues that come up in some of these gender discussions.
The author is a well known feminist and men's rights advocate who spent decades working as a professional marriage counselor.
One of the premises of the book is that marital conflict often comes from "political" messages in society that people internalise. A lot of which is the kind of stuff you hear from feminists pretty regularly today. Like the idea that women do all the work at home (they don't) and are unappreciated by men (which isn't true). Or the idea that they're being exploited and treated like slaves because they don't get paid (they obviously live off their husband's money).
Of course if you're a woman and you believe that, you might start harbouring resentment against your husband!
Farrell gives the example of ads saying things like "when was the last time your husband cooked?". And says that men might harbour resentment against their wives if ads instead said things like, "when was the last time your wife helped you clean the gutters?".
Men often don't notice what they do for their families themselves.
One study mentioned by Farrell found that women exaggerate the amount of time they spend doing chores by a factor of 3.
Whereas men underestimate their contributions by a full half.
So if a man estimates that he puts in 10 hours a week at home, in reality he's doing 20.
And if a woman estimates she's doing 60, in reality she's only doing 20 as well.
Sources:
F. Thomas Juster and Frank P. Stafford, “The Allocation of Time: Empirical Findings, Behavioral Models, and Problems of Measurement,” Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 29, June 1991, p. 484.Women of course do a lot at home. On average they spend more time doing housework and taking care of children than men. But that is changing now that more and more women work full-time.
Martha S. Hill and F. Thomas Juster, "Constraints and Complementaries in Time Use," in Juster and Stafford 1985, pp. 429-70 as cited in Juster, ibid., Table 3 "Changes in Time Allocation in Five Societies, 1965-1980s."
Sources:
Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift (New York: Avon Books, 1990), p. 248.When you include paid labor, men actually do more work than women across the board. That includes stay at home situations, and full-time working couples. Data going back to the 1960s has shown that this is relatively constant across time, and between different countries.
Robert VerBruggen. The Myth of the ‘Lazy’ Father (Institute for Family Studies, 2019), https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-myth-of-the-lazy-father. Total paid and unpaid labour for fathers with stay at home mums: 62 hours to mum's 46 hours; both work at least part time: fathers labour 62 hours to mum's 59 hours; both work full-time: fathers labour 63 hours to mum's 62 hours.
Sources:
F. Thomas Juster and Frank P. Stafford, “The Allocation of Time: Empirical Findings, Behavioral Models, and Problems of Measurement,” Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 29, June 1991, p. 477. Her average hours both inside and outside the home add up to fifty-four (54.4); his, to fifty-eight (57.8).Many of these studies come to these conclusions despite exaggerating female tasks and downplaying male tasks (which is sometimes done intentionally). This is one of the reasons Farrell made his list in the first place. He compares it against a different list used by the radical feminist Arlie Hochschild in her book The Second Shift where she tries to cherry pick government data to prove that women effectively work two jobs, while men only work one.
Martha Hill, Patterns of Time Use in Time, Goods, and Well-Being (Ann Arbor, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 1985), ed. F. Thomas Juster and Frank P. Stafford. See also Joseph H. Pleck, Working Wives of Working Husbands (Beverly Hills, Sage Publications, 1985), p. 41, table 2.3.
John P. Robinson, “Up Close and Personal,” American Demographics, Vol. 11, No. I 1, November 1989, p. 10. Men: 72.9 hours of leisure time; women: 74.7. Included in leisure time was time to eat, sleep, groom, take care of personal medical care, and other personal care, as well as the travel related to these activities.
John P. Robinson, "Americans on the Road,” American Demographics, September 1989, p. 10. Men commute four hours per week to women's two hours per week. Of course, working mothers with young children are likely to commute even less, and fathers, because of their income-producing responsibilities, to commute even more.
"For both moms and dads, more time spent on child care" (PEW RESEARCH CENTER, 2019), https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/06/12/fathers-day-facts/ft_18-05-01_fathersday_time/. 2016 dads: 61 hours per week; moms: 57. 1965 dads: 52.5 hours per week; moms: 51.
Robert VerBruggen. The Myth of the ‘Lazy’ Father (Institute for Family Studies, 2019), https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-myth-of-the-lazy-father. Average combined paid and unpaid labour for fathers: 59 hours to mum's 54 hours.
But the reality is a man's contributions to his family don't stop at the workplace. There's an entire second shift that men do every day around (and outside) their homes as well. Women aren't the only ones who do chores for their families. The only difference is we systematically ignore the male side of this. Many men spend entire weekends, or take days off from work, to get their honey do lists accomplished. But for some reason, we view all of this very different from how we view housework done by women.
Here is the list that Farrell came up with:
WHAT PERCENTAGE OF THE TIME DO YOU VS. YOUR PARTNER DO THESE CHORES?
1. Activities most likely to break an arm, leg, or neck, or to crack a skull: In your relationship, who climbs tall ladders or checks out the roof? For example, who uses ladders to do house painting (e.g., reaching for a spot we’ve missed that’s too far away on a homemade scaffold on a windy day), or to clean outside windows; or to go into the attic? Who shovels wet snow off a roof to avoid roof damage, resulting in many men slipping off the roof every winter?
A man who falls off a roof or ladder is lucky if he breaks only an arm; some men, though, are paralyzed for life, or killed; others find shoveling snow off a roof leads to problems that get them classified in one of the next two categories.
2. Activities most likely to trigger heart attacks: Shoveling snow off a driveway or sidewalk; pushing a car that’s out of gas off a crowded street into the gas station; playing tag, soccer, or basketball with the kids for a “little too long” while trying to teach the children that a parent can be a playmate too; or carrying a sleepy child from an upstairs bed to the backseat of a car and back into bed again without waking up the child, only to find Dad’s heartbeat getting erratic and pain thrusting through his arm.
3. Activities most likely to cause lower back problems and hernia operations: Moving furniture or twisting his back as he juggles a heavy suitcase into the backseat of a two-door car (or behind other suitcases in a trunk); or trying to carry a IV or a computer up a down staircase; or moving the refrigerator or some file cabinets; or moving tables at a church event or picnic.
4. Assembly: Mail-order products, toys, bikes, furniture, bookcases, beds; putting up kids’ plastic pools, backyard tents.
5. Barbecuing: Shopping for barbecue, charcoal, propane; basting, marinating, cooking; cleaning up of grill, tongs, ashes, etc.
6. Bodyguard: at home (e.g., who usually checks it out in the middle of the night when you and your partner are awakened by a noise that sounds like someone has just broken into your home, and you know they could have a gun?); in public places (who plays bodyguard when nightfall turns a beautiful park into a dangerous park or a quaint side street into a dangerous alley; or when a lonely hiking trail proves to be a rattlesnake haven; or when a ski slope becomes an avalanche?). We've all read stories of a man saving a woman from a burning house or a raging river or a crashed car. Women often save children in these situations—and even lift cars to save children. Although I’ve asked over a million people (on IV and radio) to send me a story of a woman risking her life to save an adult man, so far, no stories. Every time a woman and man walk together in a public place, he unconsciously serves as an unpaid bodyguard.
7. Camping: It starts with taking psychological responsibility for avoiding disaster (checking weather predictions and safety of the location, buying correct tent and camping gear, taking responsibility for not getting lost, knowing how to use a compass, etc.), then carrying the primary backpack (often including the stove and a kerosene lamp), erecting the tent, dig¬ ging drainage trenches, gathering firewood, building the fire, hoisting food away from animals. The man is often the camping home buyer, home mover, and homemaker.
8. Car buying: Price negotiation, Consumer Guide/Blue Book- type research.
9. Car maintenance and repair: Checking hoses, belts, tire pressures, vacuuming inside, applying Armor All; comparisons of prices with mechanics, tire changing (see also Emergencies).
10. Carpentry: From putting up shelves (in garage, basement, and closets) to repairing loose fence slats, to making bookcases, to building a doghouse.
11. Christmas: Putting up lights on house and tree; tree purchase, set-up, dismantling and disposal; retrieving boxes of ornaments from dusty attic or storage area.
12. “Male cleaning”: Car washing (and waxing); cleaning all painting tools for reuse (brushes, rollers, pans, guides); cleaning out the basement, attic, fireplace and gutters (the darkest, dirtiest, hottest and coldest parts of the house); cleaning filters of air conditioning and heating units; cleaning yard; bathing of dogs; and, if there’s a pool or Jacuzzi. . . . (See also: Barbecuing; Diaper Changing, Male Equivalents of; Guns and Weapons; Activities most likely to break. . . . )
13. Coaching-as-child care: Baseball (1-Ball, CAP Leagues, Little League), softball (e.g., Bobby Soxers), football (Pop Warner), roller hockey, field hockey, ice hockey, soccer; more informal coaching-as-child care via "playing together” in basketball, or throwing, catching, and hitting a ball; instructions in individualized sports such as tennis; instructions in self- defense (aikido, boxing, wrestling).
14. Computer buying: Researching best hardware and software; comparing prices, new vs. used markets, etc.
15. Confrontations—with neighbors or strangers: “Go tell the neighbors their dogs barking too loud.” Or, you’ve just gotten into a car accident with a stranger; who approaches the other driver when everyone is emotionally off center?
16. Dead animal disposal: DAD quickly comes to mean Dead Animal Disposer when the gerbil dies, the rat’s been trapped, when the mouse has been lead into temptation, or when the dog’s been run over and the street has blood all over. What’s worse for some dads, though, is having to kill the almost-dead animal—when DAD means Dying Animal Disposer.
17. Decks: Building, sanding, staining, sealing.
18. Diaper changing, male equivalents of: Plunging a backed-up toilet; wiping up a child's vomit when carsick on a vacation; cleaning up after dog doo from own dog and neighbors'.
19. Digging: Holes and ditches, removing of boulders, tree stumps, etc.
20. Dinner when company’s visiting: Meat carving, wine opening, cocktail making (careful guys, most women still do most everything else when company's visiting).
21. Disciplining of kids: "Wait till Daddy comes home."
22. Dragon-killing—modern version: Swatting flies, stepping on roaches, squishing spiders—all without a sword (or, for pacifist performers, removing the spider without hurting it!).
23. Driving: To and from functions that both sexes go to together, especially when conditions are hazardous (e.g., when caught in rush hour in a strange city; when caught in snow on an icy mountain road; when caught in heavy rain, wind, and fog at night, or when in a foreign country), or when both are exhausted or have had a bit too much to drink; on long trips, especially late at night while the family sleeps; or on a motorcycle (have you ever seen a woman on a motorcycle with a man hanging on?). The automobile and motorcycle are the modern-day white horse. Like the man on the white horse, his role involves more accidents; the man on the white horse, though, never had to worry about a DU I citation!
24. Emergency prevention: In home (e.g., noticing and repairing frayed wires, plugs, sockets, smoke detectors); in car (putting chains on tires; being certain all the cars' fluids [oil, transmission, anti-freeze] are being changed on schedule, tool kit and flares are adequate, flashlight has batteries, etc.); via nature (battening down windows, putting sand bags in the trunk before a blizzard, making sure trees aren't creating a hazard to house or people should a storm arise), on the town (making sure there’s cash in the wallet and gas in the car).
25. When emergencies arise despite prevention: Sandbagging; changing a tire on a cold night in the rain on a dangerous part of the road in the bad part of town; taking the walk for five gallons of gas when the car runs out; or risking putting the battery cable on the wrong side of the battery.
26. Post-emergencies: Roof repair (shingles, holes, leaks, etc.); removal of fallen trees and branches; rebuilding and repairing after damage; or arranging for, supervising and helping with rebuilding and repair.
27. Fences: Building fences from stone or wood, or installing a wire fence.
28. Fire building, wood chopping and carting wood indoors while not getting the carpet dirty.
29. Garbage: Real men take out the garbage because, you see, it's in their genes to know how to use the garbage can cover as a shield should anything happen in that journey from the castle to the street. If he takes out the recycled items and the garden waste, it’s just because he wants to protect his turf of being the garbage man (excuse me, waste management engineer).
30. Gas/electric failures: Resetting clocks and circuit switches; relighting pilot lights; troubleshooting.
31. Gift-giving as a contribution to maintaining the romance: We often say men aren’t romantic, but we forget that it is men who are more likely to give the flowers she likes; the diamonds with the right 4 Cs (carat size, clarity, cut and color [then he worries about the 5th C—cost]); the earrings with the hypoallergenic studs; the perfume with the scent she prefers; the right-size ring for the correct finger with the right stone and her preferred cut; or to choose a restaurant that fits her definition of romantic, arranging the occasion, taking her there, and paying. Many a man has never had even one of these things done for him by even one woman one time (just as some women have never had a man do their laundry, cook a meal, or even make a cup of tea).
32. Guns and weapon: Purchase, cleaning, usage, and safety for protecting family from thieves in city and from animals in rural areas.
33. Hanging: Of heavy pictures, wall hangings, clocks, phones (especially when molly bolts, toggle bolts, or drywall or plastic anchors are necessary)
34. Installation/hook-up: Of washer, dryer, computer, TV, cables, and antennas.
35. Life insurance: Purchasing and choice of carrier.
36. Risky investment management (stocks, joint ventures, rental property): The investments that inspire blame when they fail and induce stress even when they succeed.
37. Opening: Jars, doors, big boxes, paint cans, windows that are stuck or frozen.
38. Option generating: In many couples, the man generates the options, the woman generates the rejections. For example, he asks, “Where would you like to go for dinner?” She answers, “Anywhere.” “Chinese?” he offers. “We just had that,” she reminds. “Italian?” “loo heavy.” “How about that new place—what's its name?” he tries. “I hear that's expensive.” When it comes to restaurants and to movies, the man often generates the options and the woman often selects even immediately after she's said, “It makes no difference.” Option-generating often involves having one's ideas rejected, which can be emotionally taxing.
39. Painting: Inside and outside of the home, and the laying down of masking tape, sheets, and other painting preparation (See also: Male cleaning and Activities most likely to break an arm . . . ).
40. Patio and sidewalk making: And sealing over cracks, requiring cement mixing, building of frame, making it level, and living with every mistake because it's “laid on concrete.”
41. Planting: New trees, bushes, larger plants.
42. Plastering, spackling, grouting, caulking, and mortaring: And creating the plaster, spackle, grout and mortar mixtures.
43. Poisons, exposure to: Use of insecticides to spray for ants and roaches; or to spray trees, flowers, garden vegies.
44. Programming: The VCR (“Honey, before we leave, I can't miss the special on male housework; would you program the VCR?”), or the CD player, the telephone speed dial.
45. Pumping gas, paying for gas, changing oil: When there's both a man and woman in the car, I notice men pump the gas about 80 percent of the time in Northeast 8c West Coast urban areas and university towns, and almost 100 percent of the time anywhere else.
46. Reading the business and financial pages: To get a feel for business trends that may affect career decisions and information related to investment decisions (which may just look like him “goofing off reading the paper” but is the equivalent of a woman reading recipes in Better Homes & Gardens or Family Circle [still the best selling magazines to women]). On the other hand, guys, the sports pages don't count!
47. Remodeling: Taking down walls, putting in windows, finishing garage or basement, and, for better men than I, building entire new rooms.
48. Repairs: Toilets, faucets, plumbing, electrical, window screens, sliding glass and screen doors, problems with cabinets, doors, etc.
49. Sharpening: Knives, mower blades, pruning shears.
50. Shopping for: Paint, hardware, lumber, spackle, lawnmower, tools, much of the "bulk” shopping (Office Depot, Home Depot, Price Club, CostCo, etc.) (See Also: Computer buying; Car buying; Stereo aTid video buying; and Life insurance, for additional "Male Shopping” categories)
51. Stereo and video buying: Hooking up, troubleshooting, repair arranging, and supervising.
52. Toy and bike care: Oiling, painting, and fixing kids' bikes, swing sets, jungle gyms, merry-go-rounds, and other outdoor play equipment.
53. Weather guard: Guarding a woman against exposure to rain, sleet, and snow by forfeiting his jacket to a woman who is cold even when he is also cold; walking between a woman and a street in which cars and trucks might splash water or slush onto their clothes; scraping ice and snow off a car windshield on a freezing morning; dropping the family off at a restaurant or movie when it's pouring, then parking and walking to the restaurant or theater in the rain (especially if no one has an umbrella); warming up the car before the family gets in it; bringing in the newspaper on a rainy morning; salting the driveway, sidewalk, and stairs when the rain has frozen over, so that if anyone falls, he does .‘(See Also: "Activities most likely to trigger heart attacks” and "Emergency” categories).
54. Yard work: Lawn mowing, fertilizing, weeding, clipping, leaf raking, tree trimming, etc.
So if men do all this, why don't we know about it? In part because instead of complaining, men offer to carry the luggage, barbecue, build the shelves, or shop for the stereo. And in part because we perform our roles unconsciously, as with our bodyguard role; it's hard to complain about that of which we're unconscious. Complaining is the shadow side of consciousness. But men were secretly hoping for the lighter side: appreciation and love . . . but someone took the appreciation and love out to the garbage.
Hopefully this list destroys some myths that create anger toward men, and creates instead some of the following understandings.
2023.05.21 01:36 1quirky1 Replacing the wife's grocery getter
Background:
My wife's car was totaled. We occasionally tow a 2,000-LB trailer. We had a 2003 Durango 4.7L V8 that did okay. Being a Dodge it needed a lot of my work to keep it going.
In 2018 we replaced the Durango with a 2015 $48,500 Porsche Cayenne Diesel 3.0 V6 VW TDI with 48k on the odometer. I know that's a big jump. The used Cayenne was less expensive, had all the options, and had a better warranty than a new Durango Citadel. We didn't miss the third row seat.
We loved that Cayenne. It towed that trailer like it wasn't there. We didn't care about the Volkswagen Touareg diesel in a "Poorsche" body hate. That Cayenne gave us zero problems for five years until a month ago when some clown hit it and totaled it. I really wish they would have fixed it. :( Insurance gave us $44,500 for it. I would be happy if having only $4k of depreciation didn't come with having to replace it in today's market.
Our search:
We were spoiled by the Cayenne. I can't find a replacement diesel Cayenne with all the options. The used market doesn't have any good ones.
Our budget is higher than the $44k payout because pandemic and inflation - Max $65k maybe $70k if we find something we really like. We're looking at well-optioned used luxury mid-size SUVs or new mid-size SUVs with all the options.
We run our cars into the ground. We are not excited about this because we're likely getting a pandemic/inflation downgrade at a higher cost.
Must haves:
submitted by 1quirky1 to whatcarshouldIbuy [link] [comments]
My wife's car was totaled. We occasionally tow a 2,000-LB trailer. We had a 2003 Durango 4.7L V8 that did okay. Being a Dodge it needed a lot of my work to keep it going.
In 2018 we replaced the Durango with a 2015 $48,500 Porsche Cayenne Diesel 3.0 V6 VW TDI with 48k on the odometer. I know that's a big jump. The used Cayenne was less expensive, had all the options, and had a better warranty than a new Durango Citadel. We didn't miss the third row seat.
We loved that Cayenne. It towed that trailer like it wasn't there. We didn't care about the Volkswagen Touareg diesel in a "Poorsche" body hate. That Cayenne gave us zero problems for five years until a month ago when some clown hit it and totaled it. I really wish they would have fixed it. :( Insurance gave us $44,500 for it. I would be happy if having only $4k of depreciation didn't come with having to replace it in today's market.
Our search:
We were spoiled by the Cayenne. I can't find a replacement diesel Cayenne with all the options. The used market doesn't have any good ones.
Our budget is higher than the $44k payout because pandemic and inflation - Max $65k maybe $70k if we find something we really like. We're looking at well-optioned used luxury mid-size SUVs or new mid-size SUVs with all the options.
We run our cars into the ground. We are not excited about this because we're likely getting a pandemic/inflation downgrade at a higher cost.
Must haves:
- My wife is short. I am tall. It must fit her. She is out trying on cars like shoes. That's our "short" list below, pun intended.
- Seat/mirrosteering-wheel memory, so power telescoping steering wheel (or movable pedals)
- Ventilated seats (which pushes us to the higher trim models of any model)
- Lane change assist
- Parking sensors
- Towing Class 3 hitch
- Panoramic roof
- 6cyl over a 4cyl w/turbo
- Mazda CX90 2024 - I'm leery of getting a first model year of anything, but the Mazda brand is well regarded. I like the inline 6 with turbo. It is a bit on the small side, but it is big for a Mazda.
- Porsche Cayenne 2019-2021 model year gas V6 with or without turbo. Avoiding the V8 due to cost and coolant pipe issues. If only we could find a replacement diesel!
- BMW X5
- Acura MDX
- Mercedes GLE 450 (We have a W212 2010 Mercedes E350 that is awesome)
- Volvo XC90 - no 6cyl available
- Toyota Highlander - no 6cyl available
- Anything Nissan because it is the Dodge of Japan
- Mazda CX-9 because the CX-90 is bigger and nicer, if we're going Mazda
- Lexus are ugly with those predator-face grilles - I'd rather have a fully-optioned highlander
- BMW X7 is too big/expensive - we'd rather get a Cayenne first
- Anything Korean - their quality fluctuates, engine issues, kia boyz, and they're cheap knockoffs of other, better cars
- VW Atlas looked good until we learned about VW's reliability ratings
- Audi because "see VW" and they tend to screw over their customers outside of warranty while we plan on keeping this vehicle a long time.
- I have never been a fan of american cars, except for one awesome pre-Opel Saturn I owned for several years. I grew up wrenching late-70s/early-80s Hondas when cheap american cars were utter garbage, and have owned a flawless Prius for 18 years
2023.05.20 19:45 Illustrious_Pepper46 Fo shizzle...
 | submitted by Illustrious_Pepper46 to NissanDrivers [link] [comments] |
2023.05.19 10:01 ThatOneGuy113189 Uber Comfort - Experience
I’ve been driving a Nissan Altima for some time and recently purchase a Hyundai Elantra - but it’s a Hybrid.
Does anyone know how to activate/apply for comfort?
For those of you that provide comfort rides, what has been your experience with it?
submitted by ThatOneGuy113189 to uberdrivers [link] [comments]
Does anyone know how to activate/apply for comfort?
For those of you that provide comfort rides, what has been your experience with it?
2023.05.19 03:51 DatAznThrowaway Do I need to fix this?
https://imgur.com/a/KiGZXFn
Just wanted to check my poor car knowledge. Car is a 2019 Nissan Altima. This is a rear bumper cover, so it should be plastic, right? So this damage is cosmetic. There's no risk of rust, right? Even if it's gone through the clear coat and paint.
submitted by DatAznThrowaway to AutoBodyRepair [link] [comments]
Just wanted to check my poor car knowledge. Car is a 2019 Nissan Altima. This is a rear bumper cover, so it should be plastic, right? So this damage is cosmetic. There's no risk of rust, right? Even if it's gone through the clear coat and paint.