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I worked as a park ranger in Alaska. There were inhuman things living in the vast wilderness (part 1)
2023.06.01 19:54 CIAHerpes I worked as a park ranger in Alaska. There were inhuman things living in the vast wilderness (part 1)
I worked as a park ranger in Northern Alaska for years, from when I was in my early twenties until my mid-thirties. At first, when I took the job, I was trying to escape, but over time, I learned to love it- the endless wilderness, the snow-capped mountains, the muffled way everything sounded during blizzards. With no light pollution, the stars up there look like tiny chips of diamond. And during the winter, the Northern Lights roll in, twisting and shimmering in strange, alien colors.
But a few years ago, things got much worse. People up here have started to go missing at an alarming rate. And I started having strange experiences around the park and the nature preserve.
One of the strangest parts of my story started on a freezing, dark night in 2018. I was on a snowmobile out in a terrible blizzard. The conditions were nearly to the point of being impassable. The snow was falling so thick and fast that it looked like a moving, shimmering wall of white on all sides of me.
Another ranger, a huge, lumbering man named ‘Ace’ Acosta, pulled up behind me on a second snowmobile. I looked at him, standing six foot six with majestic peaks stretching up into the night sky, and thought about what a great picture this would make. As I was looking around, I saw the faint tracks in the snow. Ace’s snowmobile lights were pointed in their direction, and I had been standing almost on top of them without realizing it- which is fairly easy to do when a few inches of snow are falling every hour.
At first, I thought it was the frozen tracks of an injured animal. I saw the drops of blood soaked into the superficial ice first. Following their direction with my eyes, I realized there were footprints pressed into the frozen crust leading away from me and towards the flat stretch of the tundra. I squinted, getting down on my knees and leaning inwards. I didn’t want to trample the tracks.
I quickly realized I was looking at human footprints- naked human footprints. But who would be out here in December in -40 degree winds without shoes? They would die rapidly out here. Just for me to drive across the tundra on a snowmobile required me to wear three jackets, long-johns, snow pants, thick jeans, a ski mask and multiple layers of socks and gloves with hand-warmers. I wore special water-proof boots with composite toes that wouldn’t freeze like steel toes. And despite all of this, I was still cold.
I moved forward, and saw handprints mixed in with the footprints, all of them bloody. The ice was thick enough to slice open human hands and feet, undoubtedly. The logical conclusion was unshakable- someone had crawled through here, maybe naked, on all fours, and their frozen body would be somewhere up ahead. I sighed, turning to Acosta. He still stood in the same position, his face covered in a red scarf with only his eyes showing. I saw one ice-covered eyebrow raise questioningly.
“I think we got us a body somewhere nearby,” I said, getting back on my snowmobile and starting it. He did the same.
“What kind of freaked-out tweaker would be walking around here without clothes on?” Ace asked in his deep baritone. “Man, I need a hit of whatever that guy’s on. I’ve got two sweaters and two winter jackets on, and I’m still cold. Eh, Kelton? Eh? What do you say?” He started elbowing me jokingly. I frowned, not responding.
Ace always had a smart aleck remark. He was next to me when I was interviewed for this job originally, down at the recruitment center in Washington state. The old lady doing the interviewing was a bloodless, angry-looking specimen of a woman with huge glasses that magnified her eyes twice over. She spat out each of the questions like a drill sergeant talking to fresh meat in the Army.
“Are you a member of any organized religion?” she had asked brusquely. Ace shook his head.
“No, ma’am, but I am a member of a disorganized religion,” he said. “We call ourselves ‘the Servants of the Old Ones’. We’re waiting for the ancient reptilian gods at the bottom of the ocean to awaken. So far, however, they haven’t responded to any of our texts.” I thought about this as I revved the engine twice, a sign that I was about to pull off and that he should stay close.
We took off, going slow and following the tracks as close as possible without destroying them. But the tracks just kept going, the bloodstains seeming to grow fainter as we moved forward- and strangely enough, the distance between the hand and footprints also started to get longer, as if someone were running on all fours and speeding up. We were nearing the beginning of the forest of evergreens when I saw a white flash just up ahead.
The thing that ran from us was humanoid, but I knew at once that it was no person. It ran on hands and feet, totally naked, its skin a pale, lifeless white color. It turned its head towards the lights of the snowmobiles briefly. I saw a hairless creature with skin that clung tightly to its simian body, its lips permanently pulled back from its mouth as if they were eaten away. Underneath it showed mottled black and red gums covered in thick, clotted blood. Its nose appeared as little more than two irregular holes, and its eyes- they reflected the light of the snowmobiles, like the eyes of a raccoon or opossum. They were huge and sunken in its starving, monstrous face.
And I saw what was leaving the bloody trails. The creature was, as far as I could tell, totally uninjured. In its permanently grinning mouth, between rows of crooked, sharp, blood-stained teeth, it held the body of an infant. The baby’s head lolled from side to side, the neck seemingly broken, and blood dripped constantly from its mouth and nose. It had deep puncture marks in its tiny parka, half-rings of teeth marks that must have broken its ribs. The bloodstains on the snow were becoming fainter, because the heart was no longer pumping in the body of the one leaving them.
I had a loaded rifle inside my snowmobile, and kept a 12-gauge shotgun slung around my back, mostly in case of bear or moose attack. I always kept the shotgun loaded with slugs, which were, in my experience, the most versatile ammunition for stopping any large animal. The .308 might take down a polar bear, at least with a good headshot, or it might just piss it off on a bad day. But a shotgun slug to the head or heart will stop any bear or moose in its tracks.
Of course, this was no polar bear ahead of me. For all I knew, it was something far worse. I looked down at the speedometer to see I was going twenty miles an hour, in the dark, in a blizzard. And yet this strange humanoid creature was still losing us, its seemingly never-ending store of energy still sending it forward at a superhuman speed. Its pale, bony legs and arms pumped back and forth so fast that they were just a blur. It kept its sharp teeth around the nape of the dead infant’s neck, like a mother cat carrying its young.
I kept one hand on the steering wheel while trying to free the strap of my shotgun over my head. I slowed down below twenty, and the creature responded by going even faster. It was making a break for the mountain forests that started only a few hundred feet away. I got the gun free and quickly stopped the snowmobile and raised it. I centered the sights, taking a deep breath to steady myself, and fired.
I missed, though I don’t know by how much. Shotguns had the drawback of being significantly less accurate at further distances than the rifle. But by the time I got the .308 out, I knew the creature would have long since disappeared in the thick brush and trees. By this point, Ace had also stopped and opened fire, but the creature had already gone.
“God damn!” Ace screamed. “That was one fast motherfucker. I can’t believe he got away after all that.” I heaved a deep sigh.
“I think we better go find out where he got that baby from,” I said. “We might have a lot more corpses on our hands than we realize.”
***
We found a radio in the snowmobile and messaged in what had happened, or at least the basic gist of it. I left out the part about naked, half-human abominations, and said that it was an unknown animal. There wasn’t much law enforcement up in these parts, because, hell, there were barely any people. The rangers as well as fish and wildlife agents regularly worked with the police officers in small towns, at least those that had police officers. Dozens of the local tribal villages had no police at all. These people would come to forest rangers and fish and wildlife agents most of all, and were always some of the county’s friendliest and most helpful residents.
By the time we got back to the original blood-stained footprints, the snow had covered up the tracks completely. However, based on the direction that the creature had been going and where the tracks had come from, I thought I knew where it might have started. Following the path in a nearly straight line led to the Lutna Peak Trailer Park. Ace and I drove off at max speed across the rolling hills and flat plains, the snow coming faster and heavier now. They say eskimos have dozens of words for snow, and after being a ranger up here, I can say I’ve seen every variation of it a thousand times. This was turning into the kind that was wet with huge flakes and tended to stick to everything. We would probably have to find refuge soon, especially if it got any heavier.
I heard the screaming before I saw the commotion. As we came around the sharp right turn where the dirt road turned into the trailer park, I saw dozens of people out, flitting like gnats around one of the trailers at the back corner of the park. All of the lights were on in that particular trailer, and I saw one woman comforting another who was bent over and crying.
Even though almost everyone knew us here, I pulled out my badge identifying me as a federal law enforcement officer. Up here, all the rangers were technically federal agents, allowed to carry guns and make arrests like typical police, except we were licensed under the Department of the Interior rather than under state law enforcement agencies.
I ran into the trailer, and after one long glance around the place, I knew there was no need to call for any ambulances. Ace followed close behind me, his heavy, thudding footsteps shaking the trailer slightly as he ascended the steps. We said nothing for a long moment. The entire family was dead.
There was blood everywhere, even spotting the ceilings. Most of it had frozen in the cold, and I wondered how long the door had been left open. Body parts were scattered across the floor, an arm in the corner of the room, a head standing up on the kitchen counter, even a random tooth embedded into the sheetrock. The savagery was brutal, and the amount of strength required to carry out such an attack must have been extraordinary.
“I think we’re going to need a lot more people on this than just me and you,” Ace said. I nodded, already bone-tired, and with so much more work to do tonight before I could go to sleep.
We phoned both state and federal authorities in the area. Since much of the land was tribally owned, we had to deal with multiple branches. Eventually we got CSI out there in the middle of a snowstorm, though they had to come from over three hours away. We just secured the scene while we waited, constantly being brought into neighboring trailers where townsfolk would tell us the latest gossip. They also brought us hot coffee and tried to milk us for any information we might have, as they usually did in such situations.
“No, Maggie, honest,” Ace was saying to one old lady wrapped up in an ancient fur coat, “I don’t know any more about it than you do. You can be sure that you’d know if I did.” By that point, police cars were slowly pulling in, one by one. Ace and I told them a simplified version of the night’s events, said goodnight and left the scene to them. I went home and took a scalding hot shower, trying to force the night’s coldness out of my bones. Then I slept deeply, though I had nightmares of that creature’s face turning to me, holding a dead baby in its mouth and marking me with its emotionless, reflective eyes. I didn’t know it then, but that would be the last time I would sleep in a bed for many days.
***
The state police assigned us an officer the next day, stating they wanted an official representative of their interests involved in the case. It was, by this point, a fairly high-priority case. We didn’t even have many assaults or robberies up here, less likely murders, and the murder of an entire family really stirred up the locals. The fact that the CSI techs couldn’t make heads or tails of it made it even worse. They hadn’t even agreed on whether it was done by humans or animals or a combination of the two, like men with fighting dogs who went berserk. With no leads, they wanted us to go back to where we had seen the creature the previous night and see what we could find.
The police officer who would be tagging us, a woman named Officer Melinda Jansen, had the look of someone who just started a new job, and doesn’t realize how terrible it is yet. She was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and when she shook my hand, she nearly crushed the bones together under her iron grip. I saw Ace wince slightly when he shook her hand too. When she turned her back, he looked at me with one eyebrow raised, as if he were saying, “What can you do?”
It didn’t take us long to find the spot from the previous night. When we got close to the forest where the creature disappeared, I saw a branch that had been hit by a shotgun blast, and knew we were right on the money. In the daytime, I saw that there was a slight, curving trail through the trees here, maybe an old deer trail. It was just wide enough for us to take our snowmobiles through if we went slow. Occasionally, I would have to get off, being in the lead, and move large branches that lay across the path, but overall it was faster going than I had expected.
The trail followed across the top of a rolling hill, went down and then spiraled up around a mountain. We were high now, at least 7,000 feet above sea level, and the view went for hundreds of miles. It was breath-taking, seeing the frozen white landscape below us, mountains lining one horizon and the Arctic Ocean on another. A couple hundred feet ahead of us, however, the trail just stopped. I saw an opening in the mountain. Slowly bringing my snowmobile up, I looked into it and saw what looked like naturally-formed stone hallways.
The halls sloped down at a steep angle without stairs. An eerie silence radiated from the gradually thickening darkness. The other two snowmobiles cut out right behind mine, and Officer Jansen came walking up, flicking on her LED headlamp. Immediately, I saw a strip of light blue cloth. I walked forward, bending down to confirm what I had already suspected: that this was a piece of the missing infant’s clothing.
“That looks like more than enough cause to me. Let’s do this,” Jansen said. “I’d like to be back before sundown.” She kept walking without waiting for confirmation. Ace and I slung on our packs and turned on our headlamps. I tried using the radios and sat-phone to share our location, but neither was working. The bright, artificial lights showed that the natural stone walls of the hall just kept on descending into the mountain. A warm breeze blew past me, an acrid, sulfuric smell following in its wake.
“This is just a body recovery mission at this point,” I whispered to Ace, giving Officer Jansen a wide space so I could talk. “So why are we potentially risking our lives here? We should be waiting for back-up. We both know that the infant is dead, and has been for a while.”
“You know what I think…” Ace whispered conspiratorially, before a low shriek stopped us all in our tracks and ended conversation. I never did get to hear what he thought. By this point, it was much warmer than it had been outside, and I had the urge to start stripping off jackets. The shrieking had intensified, and was now being answered by dozens of others that surrounded further away in the stone halls.
Officer Jansen had pulled out her gun, which I saw with some astonishment was a .454 Ruger, a large caliber gun with good stopping power. I saw enough magazines strapped around her hips to decimate an entire herd of buffalo. I also pulled off my shotgun, making sure it was filled with lead slugs.
“Do you have any idea what we’re up against?” I asked her. Ace was right behind us, his shotgun already cocked and loaded, the muzzle pointed downwards. I was sweating heavily by this point. The air in the tunnel just kept getting warmer. It felt like I was walking into a sauna. Thin clouds of mist and droplets of hot condensation clung to the smooth granite ceilings. The hall continued to descend at the same steep rate, but now I could see something at the bottom: light.
“Not much more than you, really,” Officer Jansen said with a slight sneer. “My only advice is to shoot first and ask questions later. Kill anything that moves. This place has taken a lot of people already, people who were too fat and slow to watch their own backs…” I squinted as I examined the lights. They seemed to emanate from some sort of organism growing on the stone’s surface.
It wasn’t electrical lights, and it certainly wasn’t natural sunlight. It glowed like the lights of millions of fireflies, a purplish-blue color that painted the granite floors and walls in a totally different light. We were walking as quietly as possible by this point, but I still hadn’t seen anyone. We reached the bottom of the stone halls, where strange mushrooms glowed in the darkness, their mycelium giving off that black-light color everywhere as it stretched across the threshold of the opening. I turned off my LED, seeing my comrades do the same, then poked my head through, looking back and forth.
I saw more of those creatures from before, their lips missing, their skin pale, their eyes huge and rabid. They constantly twisted and snapped their heads to the left or right, as if hearing something only they could perceive. Two were dragging an elk that had been mutilated and torn down the middle. Another was dragging an old man’s dead body forward by the upraised legs. I saw the old man’s head was missing, his wrinkled hands trailing behind the body. I watched where all this activity was headed, then I gasped.
A huge, insectile monster sat lazily against the stone wall as these creatures brought it meat. The monster was so fat that I wasn’t even sure it could stand up. It had a blood-red, chitinous exterior with a hood like a rattlesnake’s that extended around its head. Its teeth trembled together constantly as it shoved more gory offerings into its mouth, sending blood gushing forwards in thick clotted rivulets that dripped down its chin. Its long, thin arms had sharp knife-like digits, and its six legs branched like those of a praying mantis, splayed out on each side of its body, shining a dark red color in the strange light of the chamber. Its belly stretched far in front of its body, and with horror, I saw it drop a cluster of eggs, each as big as a dog. Their surfaces writhed and trembled, looking tight and ready to burst at any moment.
The creatures that fed and cared for this monster rushed over, dragging the eggs to the corner of the warm chamber. I saw that there were dozens more of them over there, and that some had already hatched.
Whatever that monster was, it had already given birth, and now those things were walking around, totally free to kill anything, or anyone, they wanted.
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But a few years ago, things got much worse. People up here have started to go missing at an alarming rate. And I started having strange experiences around the park and the nature preserve.
One of the strangest parts of my story started on a freezing, dark night in 2018. I was on a snowmobile out in a terrible blizzard. The conditions were nearly to the point of being impassable. The snow was falling so thick and fast that it looked like a moving, shimmering wall of white on all sides of me.
Another ranger, a huge, lumbering man named ‘Ace’ Acosta, pulled up behind me on a second snowmobile. I looked at him, standing six foot six with majestic peaks stretching up into the night sky, and thought about what a great picture this would make. As I was looking around, I saw the faint tracks in the snow. Ace’s snowmobile lights were pointed in their direction, and I had been standing almost on top of them without realizing it- which is fairly easy to do when a few inches of snow are falling every hour.
At first, I thought it was the frozen tracks of an injured animal. I saw the drops of blood soaked into the superficial ice first. Following their direction with my eyes, I realized there were footprints pressed into the frozen crust leading away from me and towards the flat stretch of the tundra. I squinted, getting down on my knees and leaning inwards. I didn’t want to trample the tracks.
I quickly realized I was looking at human footprints- naked human footprints. But who would be out here in December in -40 degree winds without shoes? They would die rapidly out here. Just for me to drive across the tundra on a snowmobile required me to wear three jackets, long-johns, snow pants, thick jeans, a ski mask and multiple layers of socks and gloves with hand-warmers. I wore special water-proof boots with composite toes that wouldn’t freeze like steel toes. And despite all of this, I was still cold.
I moved forward, and saw handprints mixed in with the footprints, all of them bloody. The ice was thick enough to slice open human hands and feet, undoubtedly. The logical conclusion was unshakable- someone had crawled through here, maybe naked, on all fours, and their frozen body would be somewhere up ahead. I sighed, turning to Acosta. He still stood in the same position, his face covered in a red scarf with only his eyes showing. I saw one ice-covered eyebrow raise questioningly.
“I think we got us a body somewhere nearby,” I said, getting back on my snowmobile and starting it. He did the same.
“What kind of freaked-out tweaker would be walking around here without clothes on?” Ace asked in his deep baritone. “Man, I need a hit of whatever that guy’s on. I’ve got two sweaters and two winter jackets on, and I’m still cold. Eh, Kelton? Eh? What do you say?” He started elbowing me jokingly. I frowned, not responding.
Ace always had a smart aleck remark. He was next to me when I was interviewed for this job originally, down at the recruitment center in Washington state. The old lady doing the interviewing was a bloodless, angry-looking specimen of a woman with huge glasses that magnified her eyes twice over. She spat out each of the questions like a drill sergeant talking to fresh meat in the Army.
“Are you a member of any organized religion?” she had asked brusquely. Ace shook his head.
“No, ma’am, but I am a member of a disorganized religion,” he said. “We call ourselves ‘the Servants of the Old Ones’. We’re waiting for the ancient reptilian gods at the bottom of the ocean to awaken. So far, however, they haven’t responded to any of our texts.” I thought about this as I revved the engine twice, a sign that I was about to pull off and that he should stay close.
We took off, going slow and following the tracks as close as possible without destroying them. But the tracks just kept going, the bloodstains seeming to grow fainter as we moved forward- and strangely enough, the distance between the hand and footprints also started to get longer, as if someone were running on all fours and speeding up. We were nearing the beginning of the forest of evergreens when I saw a white flash just up ahead.
The thing that ran from us was humanoid, but I knew at once that it was no person. It ran on hands and feet, totally naked, its skin a pale, lifeless white color. It turned its head towards the lights of the snowmobiles briefly. I saw a hairless creature with skin that clung tightly to its simian body, its lips permanently pulled back from its mouth as if they were eaten away. Underneath it showed mottled black and red gums covered in thick, clotted blood. Its nose appeared as little more than two irregular holes, and its eyes- they reflected the light of the snowmobiles, like the eyes of a raccoon or opossum. They were huge and sunken in its starving, monstrous face.
And I saw what was leaving the bloody trails. The creature was, as far as I could tell, totally uninjured. In its permanently grinning mouth, between rows of crooked, sharp, blood-stained teeth, it held the body of an infant. The baby’s head lolled from side to side, the neck seemingly broken, and blood dripped constantly from its mouth and nose. It had deep puncture marks in its tiny parka, half-rings of teeth marks that must have broken its ribs. The bloodstains on the snow were becoming fainter, because the heart was no longer pumping in the body of the one leaving them.
I had a loaded rifle inside my snowmobile, and kept a 12-gauge shotgun slung around my back, mostly in case of bear or moose attack. I always kept the shotgun loaded with slugs, which were, in my experience, the most versatile ammunition for stopping any large animal. The .308 might take down a polar bear, at least with a good headshot, or it might just piss it off on a bad day. But a shotgun slug to the head or heart will stop any bear or moose in its tracks.
Of course, this was no polar bear ahead of me. For all I knew, it was something far worse. I looked down at the speedometer to see I was going twenty miles an hour, in the dark, in a blizzard. And yet this strange humanoid creature was still losing us, its seemingly never-ending store of energy still sending it forward at a superhuman speed. Its pale, bony legs and arms pumped back and forth so fast that they were just a blur. It kept its sharp teeth around the nape of the dead infant’s neck, like a mother cat carrying its young.
I kept one hand on the steering wheel while trying to free the strap of my shotgun over my head. I slowed down below twenty, and the creature responded by going even faster. It was making a break for the mountain forests that started only a few hundred feet away. I got the gun free and quickly stopped the snowmobile and raised it. I centered the sights, taking a deep breath to steady myself, and fired.
I missed, though I don’t know by how much. Shotguns had the drawback of being significantly less accurate at further distances than the rifle. But by the time I got the .308 out, I knew the creature would have long since disappeared in the thick brush and trees. By this point, Ace had also stopped and opened fire, but the creature had already gone.
“God damn!” Ace screamed. “That was one fast motherfucker. I can’t believe he got away after all that.” I heaved a deep sigh.
“I think we better go find out where he got that baby from,” I said. “We might have a lot more corpses on our hands than we realize.”
***
We found a radio in the snowmobile and messaged in what had happened, or at least the basic gist of it. I left out the part about naked, half-human abominations, and said that it was an unknown animal. There wasn’t much law enforcement up in these parts, because, hell, there were barely any people. The rangers as well as fish and wildlife agents regularly worked with the police officers in small towns, at least those that had police officers. Dozens of the local tribal villages had no police at all. These people would come to forest rangers and fish and wildlife agents most of all, and were always some of the county’s friendliest and most helpful residents.
By the time we got back to the original blood-stained footprints, the snow had covered up the tracks completely. However, based on the direction that the creature had been going and where the tracks had come from, I thought I knew where it might have started. Following the path in a nearly straight line led to the Lutna Peak Trailer Park. Ace and I drove off at max speed across the rolling hills and flat plains, the snow coming faster and heavier now. They say eskimos have dozens of words for snow, and after being a ranger up here, I can say I’ve seen every variation of it a thousand times. This was turning into the kind that was wet with huge flakes and tended to stick to everything. We would probably have to find refuge soon, especially if it got any heavier.
I heard the screaming before I saw the commotion. As we came around the sharp right turn where the dirt road turned into the trailer park, I saw dozens of people out, flitting like gnats around one of the trailers at the back corner of the park. All of the lights were on in that particular trailer, and I saw one woman comforting another who was bent over and crying.
Even though almost everyone knew us here, I pulled out my badge identifying me as a federal law enforcement officer. Up here, all the rangers were technically federal agents, allowed to carry guns and make arrests like typical police, except we were licensed under the Department of the Interior rather than under state law enforcement agencies.
I ran into the trailer, and after one long glance around the place, I knew there was no need to call for any ambulances. Ace followed close behind me, his heavy, thudding footsteps shaking the trailer slightly as he ascended the steps. We said nothing for a long moment. The entire family was dead.
There was blood everywhere, even spotting the ceilings. Most of it had frozen in the cold, and I wondered how long the door had been left open. Body parts were scattered across the floor, an arm in the corner of the room, a head standing up on the kitchen counter, even a random tooth embedded into the sheetrock. The savagery was brutal, and the amount of strength required to carry out such an attack must have been extraordinary.
“I think we’re going to need a lot more people on this than just me and you,” Ace said. I nodded, already bone-tired, and with so much more work to do tonight before I could go to sleep.
We phoned both state and federal authorities in the area. Since much of the land was tribally owned, we had to deal with multiple branches. Eventually we got CSI out there in the middle of a snowstorm, though they had to come from over three hours away. We just secured the scene while we waited, constantly being brought into neighboring trailers where townsfolk would tell us the latest gossip. They also brought us hot coffee and tried to milk us for any information we might have, as they usually did in such situations.
“No, Maggie, honest,” Ace was saying to one old lady wrapped up in an ancient fur coat, “I don’t know any more about it than you do. You can be sure that you’d know if I did.” By that point, police cars were slowly pulling in, one by one. Ace and I told them a simplified version of the night’s events, said goodnight and left the scene to them. I went home and took a scalding hot shower, trying to force the night’s coldness out of my bones. Then I slept deeply, though I had nightmares of that creature’s face turning to me, holding a dead baby in its mouth and marking me with its emotionless, reflective eyes. I didn’t know it then, but that would be the last time I would sleep in a bed for many days.
***
The state police assigned us an officer the next day, stating they wanted an official representative of their interests involved in the case. It was, by this point, a fairly high-priority case. We didn’t even have many assaults or robberies up here, less likely murders, and the murder of an entire family really stirred up the locals. The fact that the CSI techs couldn’t make heads or tails of it made it even worse. They hadn’t even agreed on whether it was done by humans or animals or a combination of the two, like men with fighting dogs who went berserk. With no leads, they wanted us to go back to where we had seen the creature the previous night and see what we could find.
The police officer who would be tagging us, a woman named Officer Melinda Jansen, had the look of someone who just started a new job, and doesn’t realize how terrible it is yet. She was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and when she shook my hand, she nearly crushed the bones together under her iron grip. I saw Ace wince slightly when he shook her hand too. When she turned her back, he looked at me with one eyebrow raised, as if he were saying, “What can you do?”
It didn’t take us long to find the spot from the previous night. When we got close to the forest where the creature disappeared, I saw a branch that had been hit by a shotgun blast, and knew we were right on the money. In the daytime, I saw that there was a slight, curving trail through the trees here, maybe an old deer trail. It was just wide enough for us to take our snowmobiles through if we went slow. Occasionally, I would have to get off, being in the lead, and move large branches that lay across the path, but overall it was faster going than I had expected.
The trail followed across the top of a rolling hill, went down and then spiraled up around a mountain. We were high now, at least 7,000 feet above sea level, and the view went for hundreds of miles. It was breath-taking, seeing the frozen white landscape below us, mountains lining one horizon and the Arctic Ocean on another. A couple hundred feet ahead of us, however, the trail just stopped. I saw an opening in the mountain. Slowly bringing my snowmobile up, I looked into it and saw what looked like naturally-formed stone hallways.
The halls sloped down at a steep angle without stairs. An eerie silence radiated from the gradually thickening darkness. The other two snowmobiles cut out right behind mine, and Officer Jansen came walking up, flicking on her LED headlamp. Immediately, I saw a strip of light blue cloth. I walked forward, bending down to confirm what I had already suspected: that this was a piece of the missing infant’s clothing.
“That looks like more than enough cause to me. Let’s do this,” Jansen said. “I’d like to be back before sundown.” She kept walking without waiting for confirmation. Ace and I slung on our packs and turned on our headlamps. I tried using the radios and sat-phone to share our location, but neither was working. The bright, artificial lights showed that the natural stone walls of the hall just kept on descending into the mountain. A warm breeze blew past me, an acrid, sulfuric smell following in its wake.
“This is just a body recovery mission at this point,” I whispered to Ace, giving Officer Jansen a wide space so I could talk. “So why are we potentially risking our lives here? We should be waiting for back-up. We both know that the infant is dead, and has been for a while.”
“You know what I think…” Ace whispered conspiratorially, before a low shriek stopped us all in our tracks and ended conversation. I never did get to hear what he thought. By this point, it was much warmer than it had been outside, and I had the urge to start stripping off jackets. The shrieking had intensified, and was now being answered by dozens of others that surrounded further away in the stone halls.
Officer Jansen had pulled out her gun, which I saw with some astonishment was a .454 Ruger, a large caliber gun with good stopping power. I saw enough magazines strapped around her hips to decimate an entire herd of buffalo. I also pulled off my shotgun, making sure it was filled with lead slugs.
“Do you have any idea what we’re up against?” I asked her. Ace was right behind us, his shotgun already cocked and loaded, the muzzle pointed downwards. I was sweating heavily by this point. The air in the tunnel just kept getting warmer. It felt like I was walking into a sauna. Thin clouds of mist and droplets of hot condensation clung to the smooth granite ceilings. The hall continued to descend at the same steep rate, but now I could see something at the bottom: light.
“Not much more than you, really,” Officer Jansen said with a slight sneer. “My only advice is to shoot first and ask questions later. Kill anything that moves. This place has taken a lot of people already, people who were too fat and slow to watch their own backs…” I squinted as I examined the lights. They seemed to emanate from some sort of organism growing on the stone’s surface.
It wasn’t electrical lights, and it certainly wasn’t natural sunlight. It glowed like the lights of millions of fireflies, a purplish-blue color that painted the granite floors and walls in a totally different light. We were walking as quietly as possible by this point, but I still hadn’t seen anyone. We reached the bottom of the stone halls, where strange mushrooms glowed in the darkness, their mycelium giving off that black-light color everywhere as it stretched across the threshold of the opening. I turned off my LED, seeing my comrades do the same, then poked my head through, looking back and forth.
I saw more of those creatures from before, their lips missing, their skin pale, their eyes huge and rabid. They constantly twisted and snapped their heads to the left or right, as if hearing something only they could perceive. Two were dragging an elk that had been mutilated and torn down the middle. Another was dragging an old man’s dead body forward by the upraised legs. I saw the old man’s head was missing, his wrinkled hands trailing behind the body. I watched where all this activity was headed, then I gasped.
A huge, insectile monster sat lazily against the stone wall as these creatures brought it meat. The monster was so fat that I wasn’t even sure it could stand up. It had a blood-red, chitinous exterior with a hood like a rattlesnake’s that extended around its head. Its teeth trembled together constantly as it shoved more gory offerings into its mouth, sending blood gushing forwards in thick clotted rivulets that dripped down its chin. Its long, thin arms had sharp knife-like digits, and its six legs branched like those of a praying mantis, splayed out on each side of its body, shining a dark red color in the strange light of the chamber. Its belly stretched far in front of its body, and with horror, I saw it drop a cluster of eggs, each as big as a dog. Their surfaces writhed and trembled, looking tight and ready to burst at any moment.
The creatures that fed and cared for this monster rushed over, dragging the eggs to the corner of the warm chamber. I saw that there were dozens more of them over there, and that some had already hatched.
Whatever that monster was, it had already given birth, and now those things were walking around, totally free to kill anything, or anyone, they wanted.
2023.05.30 19:11 PritchettRobert506 [HIRING] 24 Jobs in ND Hiring Now!
2023.05.30 18:02 Minespidurr Frustrated with trying to find internships/part time student positions after being out of school for 2 years
Long story short, I had to leave school in 2020 due to a death in the family and COVID. At the time, I was so overwhelmed with everything that I just couldn’t continue. Looking back, it’s definitely set me back significantly in terms of my career. From then on, I worked various retail jobs in order to make ends meet while trying to return to school. Finally, in Fall 2022, I returned back to school for engineering.
The only issue is that, now I have a 2 year gap in my resume, and I’m not sure how I should go about presenting it when applying for internships or part time student positions. For instance, most of my friends (honestly, all of them it seems) have managed to get a part time student position working at John Deere with very little experience and grades that are just as good as mine. The same is true for internships with other companies too.
I on the other hand, have tried and failed to get a part time student position there multiple times despite a somewhat decent resume. This was likely because I was applying my very first semester back, and now that I have taken core classes in my major (digital Logic, object oriented programming, etc), I may try again.
My question is, I’m torn between including the non relevant work experience (mainly at Walmart and Staples) on my resume, and just omitting it and simply stating during an interview that I had a extenuating circumstance, was forced to leave to support my family financially during the pandemic, and worked hard to return to school to finish my degree in spite of it. Which should I choose? Which would better increase my chances of being considered? Does it really matter?
submitted by Minespidurr to EngineeringStudents [link] [comments]
The only issue is that, now I have a 2 year gap in my resume, and I’m not sure how I should go about presenting it when applying for internships or part time student positions. For instance, most of my friends (honestly, all of them it seems) have managed to get a part time student position working at John Deere with very little experience and grades that are just as good as mine. The same is true for internships with other companies too.
I on the other hand, have tried and failed to get a part time student position there multiple times despite a somewhat decent resume. This was likely because I was applying my very first semester back, and now that I have taken core classes in my major (digital Logic, object oriented programming, etc), I may try again.
My question is, I’m torn between including the non relevant work experience (mainly at Walmart and Staples) on my resume, and just omitting it and simply stating during an interview that I had a extenuating circumstance, was forced to leave to support my family financially during the pandemic, and worked hard to return to school to finish my degree in spite of it. Which should I choose? Which would better increase my chances of being considered? Does it really matter?
2023.05.30 11:38 WP306 Seeking advice on old mower
I have a John Deere 757 zero turn. It was formerly used commercially and apparently near the end of its engine life when I bought it. But, at the time, I thought it was a good deal and I wanted a big mower.
When it is running properly, it's a great machine. But I've been plagued with engine problems for about the last two years. First the crankcase seal broke. Then it started blowing oil from somewhere else. Now it's blowing oil again and sounds like it might be the end of the engine.
I'm tired of throwing money at it. But I can't afford to buy another zero turn. (At least not one big enough to justify the expense.)
A new engine appears to be around $2000. I think the unit is close to 20 years old. At least at the moment, all the other parts seem to be functioning as they should.
Is it worth trying to fix or should I give up on it?
submitted by WP306 to mowers [link] [comments]
When it is running properly, it's a great machine. But I've been plagued with engine problems for about the last two years. First the crankcase seal broke. Then it started blowing oil from somewhere else. Now it's blowing oil again and sounds like it might be the end of the engine.
I'm tired of throwing money at it. But I can't afford to buy another zero turn. (At least not one big enough to justify the expense.)
A new engine appears to be around $2000. I think the unit is close to 20 years old. At least at the moment, all the other parts seem to be functioning as they should.
Is it worth trying to fix or should I give up on it?
2023.05.29 22:35 adventurepaul E-commerce Industry News - Week of May 29th, 2023
Hi ecommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry pretty closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of this week's top stories, which I cover in depth in the newsletter. .
-PAUL
submitted by adventurepaul to ecommerce [link] [comments]
- STAT OF THE WEEK: 70% of e-commerce shoppers experienced shipping delays without any reason provided by the business for the delay. Faced with that experience, 90% of respondents said they are less likely to buy from a brand again after a poor online shopping experience, while 29% say they are increasingly willing to share a negative review online. – According to Koerber .
- If some of Temu's deals appear too good to be true — it's because they are! An analysis of the company's supply chain costs by WIRED shows that Temu is losing an average of $30 per order as it throws money at trying to break into the American market. Most of Temu's subsidies are in the form of free international shipping, with even a small package costing the company around $14 to ship to the US (although it offers the shipping for free). When adding in the additional product discounts and cash coupons that Temu gives to customers, the average loss per order jumps to $30. .
- The FTC has proposed new rules in the US called “click to cancel” that will impact e-commerce subscriptions — but in a good way for consumers! The rules would require any business selling subscriptions to add a simple cancel mechanism on the same website as the initial transaction, and include the same number of steps. In other words, a “one click subscription” would require a “one click cancelation.” This “click to cancel” rule is part of the FTC's proposed changes to its 1973 Negative Option Rule, which establishes how subscription sellers must communicate offers, ensure consent, manage billing, and simplify cancellation. .
- BigCommerce announced new leadership including the appointment of Daniel Lentz as the company's CFO, Chuck Cassidy as its General Counsel, and Hubert Ban as its Chief Accounting Officer. .
- Google is launching Product Studio, a new tool that allows Shopping merchants to quickly edit and customize their product images for free using generative AI. According to Google's data, product listings with more than one image typically see a 76% increase in impressions and a 32% increase in clicks compared to listings with a single image. With the new generative AI tool, text prompts can be used within Product Studio to quickly make visual adjustments to product images, such as generating new backgrounds for seasonal campaigns. The tool also allows sellers to instantly remove the existing background of an image if they need a blank backdrop, and increase the quality of small or low resolution images. .
- Morning Consult published their annual report of Most Trusted Brands for 2023. The survey ranks roughly 1,500 brands in the US, most of which were dominated by big, well-established names including: #1 Band-Aid, #2 UPS, #3 Amazon, #4 Lysol, #5 Kleenex, #6 Cheerios, #7 Visa, #8 Dove, #9 The Weather Channel, and #10 FedEx .
- Axios, in collaboration with market research firm Harris Poll, also ran a recent survey to determine the Most Reputable Brands in the US. The results were very different from Morning Consult's most trusted brands. Only one company overlapped in the top ten which included: #1 Patagonia, #2 Costco, #3 John Deere, #4 Trader Joe's, #5 Chick-fil-A, #6 Toyota, #7 Samsung, #8 Amazon, #9 USAA, and #10 Apple . Bottom of the list included: #90 Family Dollar, #91 Balenciaga, #92 BP, #93 Bitcoin, #94 TikTok, #95 Spirit Airlines, #96 Meta, #97 Twitter, #98 Fox, #99 FTX, and #100 The Trump Organization .
- The latest data from PYMNTS shows that high earners are feeling the pinch of credit card debt and that their wages aren't keeping up with inflation. This is resulting in higher-end retailers who depend on wealthier households feeling the pinch as well. The data shows a number of correlations including that for bouseholds earning more than $100k annually, 42% were living paycheck-to-paycheck in April 2022. That number has crept up to over 49% this past year. .
- Netflix must have forgotten what love is since 2017 when it made its famous tweet that “Love is sharing a password.” The company has finally launched its ill-awaited crackdown on password sharing in the US and the UK. The new rules state that subscribers are permitted to share their account with members of their own household, which Netflix defines as “you and the people you live with.” Netflix will begin using a variety of tools, such as IP checking, to spot when people are using another household’s account and prevent them from doing so, or give them the option of adding a household for $7.99/month. The company expects cancellations, but optimistically (or idiotically) predicts that those same people will come back again, which will overall lead to more people paying for subscriptions. .
- Laws are changing in Australia to treat BNPL as a credit product. Finally! When was it NOT a form of credit? BNPL should have been recognized as a credit product the day the first BNPL company put up a coming soon landing page. Australia’s Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones said that a litany of issues reported to the Australia Securities and Investments Commission have added up to “unacceptable levels of unaffordable lending occurring, largely concentrated amongst low-income borrowers.” He added that “BNPL looks like credit, it acts like credit, it carries the risks of credit.” Jones promised draft legislation in the coming months and the introduction of a final bill to the Australian Parliament by the end of the year, which will include the need for BNPL firms to hold Australian Credit Licenses and comply with Resonspible Lending Obligations. .
- Bill Gates said that AI could kill Google Search and Amazon as we know them, and that the technology could radically alter user behaviors, resulting in people never needing to visit a search website again or use certain productivity or shopping tools. Gates remarked that the first company to develop it will have a leg up on competitors. .
- A recent study conducted by Lloyds Banking Group revealed that a UK consumer falls victim to a purchasing scam that originates on Facebook or Instagram every seven minutes, resulting in a cost of over £500k per week. (That man is Michael Scott.) The banking group is now urging Meta and other tech giants to take responsibility and contribute to refunding innocent victims of scams. .
- Analysts at Bernstein project that Reliance Industries is poised to outpace Amazon and Flipkart in the race for India's $150M e-commerce market, citing the conglomerate's robust retail network, mobile network, and home field advantage as its biggest assets. Reliance already operates the country's largest retail chain with over 18k stores and is leveraging its presence to form partnerships with Meta, Shein, and other companies as a strategic advantage against its competitors. .
- Shopify is introducing its POS hardware to the Canadian market. Its mobile selling device, the POS Go, which is built to run Shopify’s POS software, was first rolled out to retailers in the US in 2022. .
- Meta announced that ads in Instagram search results will now be available through the Instagram Marketing API, allowing third-party social-management platforms to offer a new Instagram ad-placement type in their apps. Meta began testing the placement in March and are now opening it up to all brands. .
- Shein is exploring plans to build a factory in Mexico as one of its manufacturing hubs outside China, which could shorten shipping time and cut distribution costs for customers in Latin America and USA. Earlier this month I reported that Shein is creating a hub in Brazil. .
- Amazon opened the first phase of its Metropolitan Park on Monday, its long-awaited second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia that can hold up to 8k employees. However not all Amazon employees are excited about the new office location (or any office location). At least 1,000 office workers are planning a walkout this Wednesday to take a stand against the company's return-to-office mandate. .
- The Vietnamese government is putting pressure on TikTok to police its content and remove videos that fall short of the state’s standards, or risk a ban. Eight government departments are targeting toxic content deemed “to pose a threat to the country’s youth, culture and tradition” — including videos that simply criticize college degrees. .
- eBay unveiled generative AI on its mobile app to help sellers list new items for sale, however the company forgot to inform sellers and didn't label the icon. When clicked, the icon replaced sellers' entire product descriptions with AI generated text, with no way to recover the original description. .
- Boozt AB, a Sweden-based online fashion retailer, blocked 42,000 customers for returning too many items, calling their actions too costly for the company and the environment. The company said that these particular customers represented less than 2% of their 3M customers, but around 25% of the total return volume. .
- Twitter withdrew from an agreement with the EU to cut down misinformation on its social network, which the company joined alongside other tech companies in 2018. Thierry Breton, the EU internal market commissioner, noted that fighting disinformation will be a legal obligation from August 25th, due to the EU's Digital Services Act, so the agreement would become irrelevant. .
- Jeff Bezos is ripped now! The Amazon founder started working with personal trainer, Wes Okerson, who's also trained Tom Cruise and Gerard Butler, and now he's gotten super buff. This is about the least e-commerce specific news you'll ever see me share in this newsletter, but the Jeff Bezos before / after photo is kind of wild! .
- Amazon will close its official Amazon app store in China on July 17, which launched in 2011 as an alternative to the Google Play Store. Amazon noted that its marketplaces and AWS services will remain operational in China. However while it may be leaving China, the Amazon App Store will soon be bringing more Android apps to the Windows ecosystem. The expanded partnership will allow Windows users to access a wider range of Android apps seamlessly. .
- Google updated the badges some merchants display for their product listings in Google Search to say “Top Quality Store” instead of the original “Trusted Store” badge. Google said this is just a name and title change and won't have any impact on search rank or performance. .
- Auctane, an e-commerce shipping specialist that operates brands such as Metapack, ShipStation, Packlink, ShipEngine, Stamps.com, and others, appointed Albert Ko as its new CEO, who previously served as CEO of EWS, which is best known for the Zelle payments network. Current CEO Nathan Jones will join the company's Board of Directors. .
- eCampus.com, a website that sells textbooks and course materials, announced that it would keep offering textbook rentals, even though its retail partner Amazon was exiting the business. The company had been powering the program behind the scenes for Amazon since 2012, and plans to keep it going through its own website. .
- Walmart is partnering with Pawp, a veterinary telehealth provider, to offer Walmart+ subscribers free access to virtual veterinarians for a year, starting this week. Currently Pawp charges $99 for an annual membership. .
- Alibaba Group said that it aims to hire 15,000 people this year, dismissing rumors circulating that the company planned to cut 20% of its staff. They also mentioned that more than 3,000 of those hires would be newly-graduated students. .
- Plus 7 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including a $12M Series A round by Laced to grow its resale marketplace for authenticated sneakers.
-PAUL
2023.05.29 22:35 adventurepaul What's new in e-commerce? - Week of May 29th, 2023
Hi ShopifyeCommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of this week's top stories, which I cover in depth in the newsletter. .
What else is new in e-commerce? Share stories of interesting in the comments below (including in your own business) or on shopifreaks.
See you next week.
-PAUL
submitted by adventurepaul to ShopifyeCommerce [link] [comments]
- STAT OF THE WEEK: 70% of e-commerce shoppers experienced shipping delays without any reason provided by the business for the delay. Faced with that experience, 90% of respondents said they are less likely to buy from a brand again after a poor online shopping experience, while 29% say they are increasingly willing to share a negative review online. – According to Koerber .
- If some of Temu's deals appear too good to be true — it's because they are! An analysis of the company's supply chain costs by WIRED shows that Temu is losing an average of $30 per order as it throws money at trying to break into the American market. Most of Temu's subsidies are in the form of free international shipping, with even a small package costing the company around $14 to ship to the US (although it offers the shipping for free). When adding in the additional product discounts and cash coupons that Temu gives to customers, the average loss per order jumps to $30. .
- The FTC has proposed new rules in the US called “click to cancel” that will impact e-commerce subscriptions — but in a good way for consumers! The rules would require any business selling subscriptions to add a simple cancel mechanism on the same website as the initial transaction, and include the same number of steps. In other words, a “one click subscription” would require a “one click cancelation.” This “click to cancel” rule is part of the FTC's proposed changes to its 1973 Negative Option Rule, which establishes how subscription sellers must communicate offers, ensure consent, manage billing, and simplify cancellation. .
- BigCommerce announced new leadership including the appointment of Daniel Lentz as the company's CFO, Chuck Cassidy as its General Counsel, and Hubert Ban as its Chief Accounting Officer. .
- Google is launching Product Studio, a new tool that allows Shopping merchants to quickly edit and customize their product images for free using generative AI. According to Google's data, product listings with more than one image typically see a 76% increase in impressions and a 32% increase in clicks compared to listings with a single image. With the new generative AI tool, text prompts can be used within Product Studio to quickly make visual adjustments to product images, such as generating new backgrounds for seasonal campaigns. The tool also allows sellers to instantly remove the existing background of an image if they need a blank backdrop, and increase the quality of small or low resolution images. .
- Morning Consult published their annual report of Most Trusted Brands for 2023. The survey ranks roughly 1,500 brands in the US, most of which were dominated by big, well-established names including: #1 Band-Aid, #2 UPS, #3 Amazon, #4 Lysol, #5 Kleenex, #6 Cheerios, #7 Visa, #8 Dove, #9 The Weather Channel, and #10 FedEx .
- Axios, in collaboration with market research firm Harris Poll, also ran a recent survey to determine the Most Reputable Brands in the US. The results were very different from Morning Consult's most trusted brands. Only one company overlapped in the top ten which included: #1 Patagonia, #2 Costco, #3 John Deere, #4 Trader Joe's, #5 Chick-fil-A, #6 Toyota, #7 Samsung, #8 Amazon, #9 USAA, and #10 Apple . Bottom of the list included: #90 Family Dollar, #91 Balenciaga, #92 BP, #93 Bitcoin, #94 TikTok, #95 Spirit Airlines, #96 Meta, #97 Twitter, #98 Fox, #99 FTX, and #100 The Trump Organization .
- The latest data from PYMNTS shows that high earners are feeling the pinch of credit card debt and that their wages aren't keeping up with inflation. This is resulting in higher-end retailers who depend on wealthier households feeling the pinch as well. The data shows a number of correlations including that for bouseholds earning more than $100k annually, 42% were living paycheck-to-paycheck in April 2022. That number has crept up to over 49% this past year. .
- Netflix must have forgotten what love is since 2017 when it made its famous tweet that “Love is sharing a password.” The company has finally launched its ill-awaited crackdown on password sharing in the US and the UK. The new rules state that subscribers are permitted to share their account with members of their own household, which Netflix defines as “you and the people you live with.” Netflix will begin using a variety of tools, such as IP checking, to spot when people are using another household’s account and prevent them from doing so, or give them the option of adding a household for $7.99/month. The company expects cancellations, but optimistically (or idiotically) predicts that those same people will come back again, which will overall lead to more people paying for subscriptions. .
- Laws are changing in Australia to treat BNPL as a credit product. Finally! When was it NOT a form of credit? BNPL should have been recognized as a credit product the day the first BNPL company put up a coming soon landing page. Australia’s Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones said that a litany of issues reported to the Australia Securities and Investments Commission have added up to “unacceptable levels of unaffordable lending occurring, largely concentrated amongst low-income borrowers.” He added that “BNPL looks like credit, it acts like credit, it carries the risks of credit.” Jones promised draft legislation in the coming months and the introduction of a final bill to the Australian Parliament by the end of the year, which will include the need for BNPL firms to hold Australian Credit Licenses and comply with Resonspible Lending Obligations. .
- Bill Gates said that AI could kill Google Search and Amazon as we know them, and that the technology could radically alter user behaviors, resulting in people never needing to visit a search website again or use certain productivity or shopping tools. Gates remarked that the first company to develop it will have a leg up on competitors. .
- A recent study conducted by Lloyds Banking Group revealed that a UK consumer falls victim to a purchasing scam that originates on Facebook or Instagram every seven minutes, resulting in a cost of over £500k per week. (That man is Michael Scott.) The banking group is now urging Meta and other tech giants to take responsibility and contribute to refunding innocent victims of scams. .
- Analysts at Bernstein project that Reliance Industries is poised to outpace Amazon and Flipkart in the race for India's $150M e-commerce market, citing the conglomerate's robust retail network, mobile network, and home field advantage as its biggest assets. Reliance already operates the country's largest retail chain with over 18k stores and is leveraging its presence to form partnerships with Meta, Shein, and other companies as a strategic advantage against its competitors. .
- Shopify is introducing its POS hardware to the Canadian market. Its mobile selling device, the POS Go, which is built to run Shopify’s POS software, was first rolled out to retailers in the US in 2022. .
- Meta announced that ads in Instagram search results will now be available through the Instagram Marketing API, allowing third-party social-management platforms to offer a new Instagram ad-placement type in their apps. Meta began testing the placement in March and are now opening it up to all brands. .
- Shein is exploring plans to build a factory in Mexico as one of its manufacturing hubs outside China, which could shorten shipping time and cut distribution costs for customers in Latin America and USA. Earlier this month I reported that Shein is creating a hub in Brazil. .
- Amazon opened the first phase of its Metropolitan Park on Monday, its long-awaited second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia that can hold up to 8k employees. However not all Amazon employees are excited about the new office location (or any office location). At least 1,000 office workers are planning a walkout this Wednesday to take a stand against the company's return-to-office mandate. .
- The Vietnamese government is putting pressure on TikTok to police its content and remove videos that fall short of the state’s standards, or risk a ban. Eight government departments are targeting toxic content deemed “to pose a threat to the country’s youth, culture and tradition” — including videos that simply criticize college degrees. .
- eBay unveiled generative AI on its mobile app to help sellers list new items for sale, however the company forgot to inform sellers and didn't label the icon. When clicked, the icon replaced sellers' entire product descriptions with AI generated text, with no way to recover the original description. .
- Boozt AB, a Sweden-based online fashion retailer, blocked 42,000 customers for returning too many items, calling their actions too costly for the company and the environment. The company said that these particular customers represented less than 2% of their 3M customers, but around 25% of the total return volume. .
- Twitter withdrew from an agreement with the EU to cut down misinformation on its social network, which the company joined alongside other tech companies in 2018. Thierry Breton, the EU internal market commissioner, noted that fighting disinformation will be a legal obligation from August 25th, due to the EU's Digital Services Act, so the agreement would become irrelevant. .
- Jeff Bezos is ripped now! The Amazon founder started working with personal trainer, Wes Okerson, who's also trained Tom Cruise and Gerard Butler, and now he's gotten super buff. This is about the least e-commerce specific news you'll ever see me share in this newsletter, but the Jeff Bezos before / after photo is kind of wild! .
- Amazon will close its official Amazon app store in China on July 17, which launched in 2011 as an alternative to the Google Play Store. Amazon noted that its marketplaces and AWS services will remain operational in China. However while it may be leaving China, the Amazon App Store will soon be bringing more Android apps to the Windows ecosystem. The expanded partnership will allow Windows users to access a wider range of Android apps seamlessly. .
- Google updated the badges some merchants display for their product listings in Google Search to say “Top Quality Store” instead of the original “Trusted Store” badge. Google said this is just a name and title change and won't have any impact on search rank or performance. .
- Auctane, an e-commerce shipping specialist that operates brands such as Metapack, ShipStation, Packlink, ShipEngine, Stamps.com, and others, appointed Albert Ko as its new CEO, who previously served as CEO of EWS, which is best known for the Zelle payments network. Current CEO Nathan Jones will join the company's Board of Directors. .
- eCampus.com, a website that sells textbooks and course materials, announced that it would keep offering textbook rentals, even though its retail partner Amazon was exiting the business. The company had been powering the program behind the scenes for Amazon since 2012, and plans to keep it going through its own website. .
- Walmart is partnering with Pawp, a veterinary telehealth provider, to offer Walmart+ subscribers free access to virtual veterinarians for a year, starting this week. Currently Pawp charges $99 for an annual membership. .
- Alibaba Group said that it aims to hire 15,000 people this year, dismissing rumors circulating that the company planned to cut 20% of its staff. They also mentioned that more than 3,000 of those hires would be newly-graduated students. .
- Plus 7 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including a $12M Series A round by Laced to grow its resale marketplace for authenticated sneakers.
What else is new in e-commerce? Share stories of interesting in the comments below (including in your own business) or on shopifreaks.
See you next week.
-PAUL
2023.05.29 18:58 JoshAsdvgi THE BIRD TRIBES
 | submitted by JoshAsdvgi to Native_Stories [link] [comments] THE BIRD TRIBES A Cherokee Legend Winged creatures of all kinds are classed under the generic term of aninâ'hilidâ'hï (flyers). Birds are called, alike in the singular and plural, tsi'skwa, the term being generally held to exclude the domestic fowls introduced by the whites. When it is necessary to make the distinction they are mentioned, respectively, as inägëhï (living in the woods), and uluñni'ta (tame). The robin is called tsiskwa'gwä, a name which can not be analyzed, while the little sparrow is called tsikwâ'yä (the real or principal bird), perhaps, in accord with a principle in Indian nomenclature, on account of its wide distribution. As in other languages, many of the bird names are onomatopes, as wa`huhu' (the screech owl), u'guku' (the hooting owl), wagulï' (the whippoorwill), kâgû (the crow), gügwë' (the quail), huhu (the yellow mocking-bird), tsï'kïlï' (the chickadee), sa'sa' (the goose). The turtledove is called gulë'-diska`nihï' (it cries for acorns), on account of the resemblance of' it cry to the sound of the word for acorn. (gulë') The meadowlark is called näkwïsï' (star), on account of the appearance of its tail when spread out as it soars. The nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis) is called tsulie'na (deaf), and is supposed to be without bearing, possibly on account of its fearless disregard for man's presence. Certain diseases are diagnosed by the doctors as due to birds, either revengeful bird ghosts, bird feathers about the house, or bird shadows falling upon the patient from overhead. The eagle (awâ'hïlï) is the great sacred bird of the Cherokee, as of nearly all our native tribes, and figures prominently in their ceremonial ritual, especially in all things relating to war. The particular species prized was the golden or war eagle (Aquila chrsætus), called by the Cherokee the pretty-feathered eagle, on account of its beautiful tail feathers, white, tipped with black, which were in such great demand for decorative and ceremonial purposes that among the western tribes a single tail was often rated as equal in value to a horse. Among the Cherokee in the old times the killing of an eagle was an event which concerned the whole settlement, and could be undertaken only by the professional eagle killer, regularly chosen for the purpose on account of his knowledge of the prescribed forms and the prayers to be said afterwards in order to obtain pardon for the necessary sacrilege, and thus ward off vengeance from the tribe. It is told of one man upon the reservation that having deliberately killed an eagle in defiance of the ordinances he was constantly haunted by dreams of fierce eagles swooping down upon him, until the nightmare was finally exercised after a long course of priestly treatment. In 1890 there was but one eagle killer remaining among the East Cherokee. It does not appear that the eagle was ever captured alive as among the plains tribes. The eagle must be killed only in the winter or late fall after the crops were gathered and the snakes had retired to their dens. If killed in the summertime a frost would come to destroy the corn, while the songs of the Eagle dance, when the feathers were brought home, would so anger the snakes that they would become doubly dangerous. Consequently the Eagle songs were never sung until after the snakes had gone to sleep for the winter. When the people of a town had decided upon an Eagle dance the eagle killer was called in, frequently from a distant settlement, to procure the feathers for the occasion. He was paid for his services from offerings made later at the dance, and as the few professionals guarded their secrets carefully from outsiders their business was a quite profitable one. After some preliminary preparation the eagle killer sets out alone for the mountains, taking with him his gun or bow and arrows. Having reached the mountains, he goes through a vigil of prayer and fasting, possibly lasting four days, after which he hunts until he succeeds in killing a deer. Then, placing the body in a convenient exposed situation upon one of the highest cliffs, he conceals himself near by and begins to sing in a low undertone the songs to call down the eagles from the sky. When the eagle alights upon the carcass, which will be almost immediately if the singer understands his business, he shoots it, and then standing over the dead bird, he addresses to it a prayer in which he begs it not to seek vengeance upon his tribe, because it is not a Cherokee, but a Spaniard (Askwa'nï) that has done the deed. The selection of such a vicarious victim of revenge is evidence at once of the antiquity of the prayer in its present form and of the enduring impression which the cruelties of the early Spanish adventurers made upon the natives. The prayer ended, he leaves the dead eagle where it fell and makes all haste to the settlement, where the people are anxiously expecting his return. On meeting the first warriors he says simply, A snowbird has died, and passes on at once to his own quarters, his work being now finished. The announcement is made in this form in order to insure against the vengeance of any eagles that might overhear, the little snowbird being considered too insignificant a creature to be dreaded. Having waited four days to allow time for the insect parasites to leave the body, the hunters delegated for the purpose go out to bring in the feathers. On arriving at the place they strip the body of the large tail and wing feathers, which they wrap in a fresh deerskin brought with them, and then return to the settlement, leaving the body of the dead eagle upon the ground, together with that of the slain deer, the latter being intended as a sacrifice to the eagle spirits. On reaching the settlement, the feathers, still wrapped in the deerskin, are hung up in a small, round hut built for this special purpose near the edge of the dance ground (detsänûñ'lï) and known as the place where the feathers are kept, or feather house. Some settlements had two such feather houses, one at each end of the dance ground. The Eagle dance was held on the night of the same day on which the feathers were brought in, all the necessary arrangements having been made beforehand. In the meantime, as the feathers were supposed to be hungry after their journey, a dish of venison and corn was set upon the ground below them and they were invited to eat. The body of a flax bird or scarlet tanager (Piranga rubra) was also hung up with the feathers for the same purpose. The food thus given to the feathers was disposed of after the dance, as described in another place. The eagle being regarded as a great ada'wehï, only the greatest warriors and those versed in the sacred ordinances would dare to wear the feathers or to carry them in the dance. Should any person in the settlement dream of eagles or eagle feathers he must arrange for an Eagle dance, with the usual vigil and fasting, at the first opportunity; otherwise some one of his family will die. Should the insect parasites which infest the feathers of the bird in life get upon a man they will breed a skin disease which is sure to develop, even though it may be latent for years. It is for this reason that the body of the eagle is allowed to remain four days upon the ground before being brought into the settlement. The raven (kâ'länû) is occasionally seen in the mountains, but is not prominent in folk belief, excepting in connection with the gruesome tales of the Raven Mocker (q. v.). In former times its name was sometimes assumed as a war title. The crow, so prominent in other tribal mythologies, does not seem to appear in that of the Cherokee. Three varieties of owls are recognized, each under a different name, viz tskïlï', the dusky horned owl (Bubo virginianus saturatus); u'guku', the barred or hooting owl (Syrnium nebulosum), and wa`huhu', the screech owl (Megascops asio). The first of these names signifies a witch, the others being onomatopes. Owls and other night-crying birds are believed to be embodied ghosts or disguised witches, and their cry is dreaded as a sound of evil omen. If the eyes of a child be bathed with water in which one of the long wing or tail feathers of an owl has been soaked, the child will be able to keep awake all night. The feather must be found by chance, and not procured intentionally for the purpose. On the other hand, an application of water in which the feather of a blue jay, procured in the same way, has been soaked will make the child an early riser. The buzzard (sulï') is said to have had a part in shaping the Earth, as was narrated in the genesis myth. It is reputed to be a doctor among birds, and is respected accordingly, although its feathers are never worn by ball players, for fear of becoming bald. Its own baldness is accounted for by a vulgar story. As it thrives upon carrion and decay, it is held to be immune from sickness, especially of a contagious character, and a small quantity of its flesh eaten, or of the soup used as a wash, is believed to be a sure preventive of smallpox, and was used for this purpose during the smallpox epidemic among the East Cherokee in 1866. According to the Wahnenauhi manuscript, it is said also that a buzzard feather placed over the cabin door will keep out witches. In treating gunshot wounds, the medicine is blown into the wound through a tube cut from a buzzard quill and some of the buzzard's down is afterwards laid over the spot. There is very little concerning hawks, excepting as regards the great mythic hawk, the Tlä'nuwä'. The tlä'nuwä' usdi', or little tlä'nuwä,) is described as a bird about as large as a turkey and of a grayish blue color, which used to follow the flocks of wild pigeons, flying overhead and darting down occasionally upon a victim, which it struck and killed with its sharp breast and ate upon the wing, without alighting. It is probably the goshawk (Astur atricapillus). The common swamp gallinule, locally known as mud hen or didapper (Gallinula galeata), is called diga'gwanï' (lame or crippled), on account of its habit of flying only for a very short distance at a time. In the Diga'gwanï dance the performers sing the name of the bird and endeavor to imitate its halting movements. The dagûl`kû, or white-fronted goose (Anser albifrons) appears in connection with the myth of the origin of tobacco. The feathers of the tskwâyï, the great white heron or American egret (Herodias egretta), are worn by ball players, and this bird probably the swan whose white wing was used as a peace emblem in ancient times. A rare bird said to have been seen occasionally upon the reservation many years ago was called by the curious name of nûñdä-dikanï', it looks at the sun, sun-gazer. It is described as resembling a blue crane, and may possibly have been the Floridus cerulea, or little blue heron. Another infrequent visitor, which sometimes passed over the mountain country in company with flocks of wild geese, was the gu'wisguwï', so called from its cry. It is described as resembling a large snipe, with yellow legs and feet unwebbed, and is thought to visit Indian Territory at intervals. It is chiefly notable from the fact that the celebrated chief John Ross derives his Indian name, Gu'wisguwï', from this bird, the name being perpetuated in Cooweescoowee district of the Cherokee Nation in the West. Another chance visitant, concerning which there is much curious speculation among the older men of the East Cherokee, was called tsun'digwûntsu'`gï or tsun'digwûn'tskï, forked, referring to the tail. It appeared but once, for a short season, about forty years ago, and has not been seen since. It is said to have been pale blue, with red in places, and nearly the size of a crow, and to have had a long forked tail like that of a fish. It preyed upon hornets, which it took upon the wing, and also feasted upon the larva in the nests. Appearing unexpectedly and as suddenly disappearing, it was believed to be not a bird but a transformed red-horse fish (Moxostoma, Cherokee âligä'), a theory borne out by the red spots and the long, forked tail. It is even maintained that about the time those birds first appeared some hunters on Oconaluftee saw seven of them sitting on the limb of a tree and they were still shaped like a red-horse, although they already had wings and feathers. It was undoubtedly the scissor-tail or swallow-tailed flycatcher (Milvulus forficatus), which belongs properly in Texas and the adjacent region, but strays occasionally into the eastern states. On account of the red throat appendage of the turkey, somewhat resembling the goitrous growth known in the South as kernels (Cherokee, dule'tsï), the feathers of this bird are not worn by ball players, neither is the neck allowed to be eaten by children or sick persons, under the fear that a growth of kernels would be the result. The meat of the ruffed grouse, locally known as the pheasant (Bonasa umbellus), is taboo to a pregnant woman, because this bird hatches a large brood, but loses most of them before maturity. Under a stricter construction of the theory this meat is forbidden to a woman until she is past child bearing. The redbird, tatsu'hwä, is believed to have been originally the daughter of the Sun (see the story). The huhu, or yellow mockingbird, occurs in several stories. It is regarded as something supernatural, possibly on account of its imitative powers, and its heart is given to children to make them quick to learn. The chickadee (Parus carolinensis), and the tufted titmouse, (Parus bicolor), utsu'`gï, or u'stûtï, are both regarded as news bringers, but the one is venerated as a truth teller while the other is scoffed at as a lying messenger, for reasons which appear in the story of Nûñyunu'wï (q. v.). When the tsïkïlilï' perches on a branch near the house and chirps its song it is taken as an omen that an absent friend will soon be heard from or that a secret enemy is plotting mischief. Many stories are told in confirmation of this belief, among which may be instanced that of Tom Starr, a former noted outlaw of the Cherokee Nation of the West, who, on one occasion, was about to walk unwittingly into an ambush prepared for him along a narrow trail, when he heard the warning note of the tsïkïlilï', and, turning abruptly, ran up the side of the ridge and succeeded in escaping with his life, although hotly pursued by his enemies. |
2023.05.29 06:50 josheyua ~Pentecost~ The Coming of The Holy Spirit
Acts 1:4-5
he (Jesus) ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; 5for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
When he rose and ascended there was still a culmination to come. A culmination of what the prophets had told of long ago. Hidden, but meant to be unraveled like a gift when the revelation was made open to those that would receive it,
to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. - John 1:12-13
His life had triumphed over death by death defeating the powers of evil making them a spectacle and payed an eternal debt we owed we could not pay all the while making the gift - eternal life itself, the very presence of God possible to live inside every person that would receive him by Faith
5Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” - John 3
They were waiting for the promise. Yearning and waiting with anticipation. Did they know what this 'baptism' in fire would really be? Just like the prophecies about Messiah, what was it that they really thought they were waiting for? Alls they knew was that they needed to be together and pray,
Acts 2
1When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
But more than just the effects of a storm,
3And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
I really like this quote from a respected Christian author
'If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world ablaze.' - Catherine of Siena
That is what happened on Pentecost in that upper room. They were lit ablazed with The Living God, the very presence of God, and I believe The same physical emanation of God that led the children of Israel in a pillar of fire by night and the burning bush that spoke to Moses - The Holy Spirit himself
It says tongues (some translations cloves) as of fire appeared to each of them individually and rested upon them. Like a candlestick, they now could be carriers of God's presence.
But this gift wasn't meant to be exclusively all for them. On the day (which many have called the 'birth of The Church') it was a gathering together of all that would believe, and not just to one group,
9Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” 12And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”
...
And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; - Acts 2:17 / Joel 2:28
This would be just the very beginning of their blaze upon the world. The very tip of even all the miracles Jesus began to do, because through them and through The Spirit now He himself would continue to do all what he did on earth - to redeem, to open the eyes of the blind, and to heal to the ends of the earth.
And now the mission has been given to us.
The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare, and in his temple all cry, “Glory!” - Psalm 29:9
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. - Habakkuk 2:14
submitted by josheyua to Christians [link] [comments]
he (Jesus) ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; 5for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
When he rose and ascended there was still a culmination to come. A culmination of what the prophets had told of long ago. Hidden, but meant to be unraveled like a gift when the revelation was made open to those that would receive it,
to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. - John 1:12-13
His life had triumphed over death by death defeating the powers of evil making them a spectacle and payed an eternal debt we owed we could not pay all the while making the gift - eternal life itself, the very presence of God possible to live inside every person that would receive him by Faith
5Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” - John 3
They were waiting for the promise. Yearning and waiting with anticipation. Did they know what this 'baptism' in fire would really be? Just like the prophecies about Messiah, what was it that they really thought they were waiting for? Alls they knew was that they needed to be together and pray,
Acts 2
1When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
But more than just the effects of a storm,
3And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
I really like this quote from a respected Christian author
'If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world ablaze.' - Catherine of Siena
That is what happened on Pentecost in that upper room. They were lit ablazed with The Living God, the very presence of God, and I believe The same physical emanation of God that led the children of Israel in a pillar of fire by night and the burning bush that spoke to Moses - The Holy Spirit himself
It says tongues (some translations cloves) as of fire appeared to each of them individually and rested upon them. Like a candlestick, they now could be carriers of God's presence.
But this gift wasn't meant to be exclusively all for them. On the day (which many have called the 'birth of The Church') it was a gathering together of all that would believe, and not just to one group,
9Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” 12And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”
...
And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; - Acts 2:17 / Joel 2:28
This would be just the very beginning of their blaze upon the world. The very tip of even all the miracles Jesus began to do, because through them and through The Spirit now He himself would continue to do all what he did on earth - to redeem, to open the eyes of the blind, and to heal to the ends of the earth.
And now the mission has been given to us.
The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare, and in his temple all cry, “Glory!” - Psalm 29:9
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. - Habakkuk 2:14
2023.05.29 06:45 josheyua ~Pentecost~ The Coming of The Holy Spirit
Acts 1:4-5
he (Jesus) ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; 5for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
When he rose and ascended there was still a culmination to come. A culmination of what the prophets had told of long ago. Hidden, but meant to be unraveled like a gift when the revelation was made open to those that would receive it,
to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. - John 1:12-13
His life had triumphed over death by death defeating the powers of evil making them a spectacle and payed an eternal debt we owed we could not pay all the while making the gift - eternal life itself, the very presence of God possible to live inside every person that would receive it by Faith
5Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” - John 3
They were waiting for the promise. Yearning and waiting with anticipation. Did they know what this 'baptism' in fire would really be? Just like the prophecies about Messiah, what was it that they really thought they were waiting for? Alls they knew was that they needed to be together and pray,
Acts 2
1When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
But more than just the effects of a storm,
3And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
I really like this quote from a respected Christian author
'If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world ablaze.' - Catherine of Siena
That is what happened on Pentecost in that upper room. They were lit ablazed with The Living God, the very presence of God, and I believe The same physical emanation of God that led the children of Israel in a pillar of fire by night and the burning bush that spoke to Moses - The Holy Spirit himself
It says tongues (some translations cloves) as of fire appeared to each of them individually and rested upon them. Like a candlestick, they now could be carriers of God's presence.
But this gift wasn't meant to be exclusively all for them. On the day (which many have called the 'birth of The Church') it was a gathering together of all that would believe, and not just to one group,
9Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” 12And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”
...
And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; - Acts 2:17 / Joel 2:28
This would be just the very beginning of their blaze upon the world. The very tip of even all the miracles Jesus began to do, because through them and through The Spirit now He himself would continue to do all what he did on earth - to redeem, to open the eyes of the blind, and to heal to the ends of the earth.
And now the mission has been given to us.
The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare, and in his temple all cry, “Glory!” - Psalm 29:9
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. - Habakkuk 2:14
submitted by josheyua to Christianity [link] [comments]
he (Jesus) ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; 5for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
When he rose and ascended there was still a culmination to come. A culmination of what the prophets had told of long ago. Hidden, but meant to be unraveled like a gift when the revelation was made open to those that would receive it,
to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. - John 1:12-13
His life had triumphed over death by death defeating the powers of evil making them a spectacle and payed an eternal debt we owed we could not pay all the while making the gift - eternal life itself, the very presence of God possible to live inside every person that would receive it by Faith
5Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” - John 3
They were waiting for the promise. Yearning and waiting with anticipation. Did they know what this 'baptism' in fire would really be? Just like the prophecies about Messiah, what was it that they really thought they were waiting for? Alls they knew was that they needed to be together and pray,
Acts 2
1When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
But more than just the effects of a storm,
3And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
I really like this quote from a respected Christian author
'If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world ablaze.' - Catherine of Siena
That is what happened on Pentecost in that upper room. They were lit ablazed with The Living God, the very presence of God, and I believe The same physical emanation of God that led the children of Israel in a pillar of fire by night and the burning bush that spoke to Moses - The Holy Spirit himself
It says tongues (some translations cloves) as of fire appeared to each of them individually and rested upon them. Like a candlestick, they now could be carriers of God's presence.
But this gift wasn't meant to be exclusively all for them. On the day (which many have called the 'birth of The Church') it was a gathering together of all that would believe, and not just to one group,
9Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” 12And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”
...
And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; - Acts 2:17 / Joel 2:28
This would be just the very beginning of their blaze upon the world. The very tip of even all the miracles Jesus began to do, because through them and through The Spirit now He himself would continue to do all what he did on earth - to redeem, to open the eyes of the blind, and to heal to the ends of the earth.
And now the mission has been given to us.
The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare, and in his temple all cry, “Glory!” - Psalm 29:9
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. - Habakkuk 2:14
2023.05.29 04:11 ThrowinRods Be careful who you let repair your machine
 | My neighbor had her John deere lx277 AWS repaired 3 years ago, battery light on and it died while mowing after awhile. She paid a local well known mechanic almost $1000 to have this fixed. She got it back and the problem was exactly the same and he wouldn't refund her because he just threw parts at it, a stator and a regulator. I just fixed it in 10 minutes, the charging wire (Red) was loose in the connector from the engine to the frame, a simple continuity test solved it in about 10 seconds, just had to find where the break was. submitted by ThrowinRods to lawnmowers [link] [comments] Be careful who you let work on your machines, sometimes your brother's wife's second cousin that owned a mower once will make it worse before he makes it better, and make sure to ask what their plan is before they start throwing parts at a machine hoping to fix it while you foot the bill. |
2023.05.29 01:15 kjdinofireg1 Names?
 | submitted by kjdinofireg1 to PM7 [link] [comments] |
2023.05.29 01:14 kjdinofireg1 Name
 | submitted by kjdinofireg1 to PM7 [link] [comments] |
2023.05.28 17:53 falco-sparverius Mower question: How do I get this pulley off and replace the seal?
 | So I have a massive (like spraying oil 8 feet) leak from behind this pulley for the hydraulic pump on my John Deere 737 Ztrack mower. I can get the nut off the pulley, but how do I remove the pulley? I don't see any set screw or anything on the mower or in the parts diagram, but don't want to go wailing on this and break something. I have a pulley puller to borrow to try if the is nothing else retaining it. submitted by falco-sparverius to MechanicAdvice [link] [comments] Then, once that's off am I able to remove the retaining clip and seal (parts 57 and 12 in the diagram)? Is that seal just press fit in there? |
2023.05.28 10:36 Proletlariet Daniel LaRusso
Daniel LaRusso
"So, karate's fighting. You train to fight"Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1966, Daniel LaRusso lived there until his mother moved the two out to Reseda, California in 1984. Upon arriving in Reseda, Daniel made quick foes with the Cobra Kai karate dojo, especially top student Johnny Lawrence and sensei John Kreese. While taking a beating from the Cobra Kais after a school dance, Daniel was saved by Mr. Miyagi, the handyman at his apartment complex. Daniel was taught karate by Mr. Miyagi, entering a lifelong friendship with the man. After winning the All-Valley Karate Tournament two years in a row, Daniel went on to marry a woman named Amanda, have two kids, and open a car dealership. When Johnny reopened the Cobra Kai dojo, Daniel opened the Miyagi-Do karate dojo in order to train new students.
"That what you think?"
"...No"
"Then why train?"
"So I won't have to fight"
Source Key
Miyagi-Verse
The "Miyagi-Verse'' is a term coined by the Cobra Kai showrunners to describe the storyline of the four Karate Kid movies and Cobra Kai. Feats from the Miyagi-Verse and media adapting it (i.e. the novelizations) will be in this section.General
Strength
Teen
- Knocks over Mr. Miyagi in catcher's gear with a punchKN23
- Throws JohnnyC4
- Chops through six plates of iceK2
- Knocks out a man with a gut punchK2
- Throws a man into a cabinet, breaking itK3
- Breaks a 2x4 with a kick, then breaks boards with punchesK3
Adult
Durability/Endurance
Teen
- Gets beat up by JohnnyK
- NovelizationKN3 - ComicC1
- Gets into a fight with JohnnyC1
- Not too badly hurt after taking a tumble down a hillK
- Gets slammed by a wave into a pilingKN23
- Takes a kick from a karate student to the shoulder that lifts him out of the ringKN26
- Fights Johnny on a damaged legK
- Takes a kick to the face from JohnnyKN28
- Takes multiple hits from Chozen, who breaks part of a stone statue with a kick, and continues to fightK2
- Takes hits from Mike Barnes, including getting tossed into a pallet hard enough to break itK3
- Takes multiple hits from Barnes (who is attempting to inflict as much damage as possible on Daniel during the match) and continues to fightK3
- Gets thrown through shoji screens and a display case by Barnes3N12
- Takes more hits from Barnes3N22
Adult
- Takes several hits from Johnny, including getting kicked into a TVS2E10
- Takes a kick from and gets tackled through a window by KreeseS3E10
- Walks across burning coalsS4E2
Speed/Agility
Teen
- Catches a fly with chopsticksK
- NovelizationKN16
- Dodges a karate student's attack and retaliates with a kickK
- Dodges strikes from Johnny with "lightning reflexes"KN28
- Dodges another kick from JohnnyC4
- Knocks Chozen to the ground, then collects the money he dropped and runs from the building before Chozen can stand up2N15
- Rolls out of the way of a flying kick from Chozen, then stands up and grabs Chozen in midair to slam him to the ground2N23
- Dodges several strikes from Mike BarnesK3
- Balances on the bow of a boat while practicing his blockingK
- Practices balance by kicking waves at the beachKN19
- Climbs down a pole in a typhoon with a child clinging to his backK2
Adult
- Dodges and blocks blows from JohnnyS3E2
- Dodges, strikes, and catches balls from a pitching machineS4E2
- Climbs a hanging chainS4E2
Skill/Misc
Teen
- Performs the Crane TechniqueK
- Mr. Miyagi says that if performed correctly, there is no defense against itK - Chozen does defend against it,K2 but it is unclear if Daniel was performing it correctly in this instance
- NovelizationKN 28 - ComicC4
- Mr. Miyagi says that if performed correctly, there is no defense against itK - Chozen does defend against it,K2 but it is unclear if Daniel was performing it correctly in this instance
- Performs the Drum Technique to divert and counter each of Chozen's strikesK2
- Wins the Under 18 All-Valley Karate ChampionshipK
- Defeats ChozenK2
- Learns how to block strikes under the guise of Mr. Miyagi having him do chores around the houseK
- NovelizationKN18
- Ducks Johnny's kick then sweeps his leg to bring him to the groundK
- ComicC4
- Flips Chozen while being choked by himK2
- Counters Mike Barnes' strikeK3
- Novelization3N24
- Knows a little bit of Japanese2N9
Adult
- Trains with Chozen to learn Miyagi-Do karate's secret pressure points,S3E5 which he uses to defeat KreeseS3E10
- Ties with Johnny in a matchS4E5
- Beats up a group of hockey playersS4E2
- Beats up some thugs that jump RobbyS2E4
- With Johnny, fights a group of thugs in a chop shopS3E2
- Kicks a cup out of a man's handS1E4
- With his wife, meets his dealership's sales quota in one dayS2E3
- Loses a fight to Terry SilverS5E5 but later beats him, though Terry had previously fought Chozen that nightS5E10
Teaching Ability
- Teaches Robby Keene how to block strikes under the guise of him doing choresS1E7
- Teaches Samantha how to block with a bo staff using a fishing lessonS3E7
- Under his tutelage, Robby gets second in the Under 18 All-Valley Karate Championship after only training for a few monthsS1E10
Other Media
The Karate Kid (1989 Cartoon)
Strength
Striking
- Shatters an ice sculpture with a flying kickKE10
- Kicks a dead tree in halfKE12
- Leaps into the air, kicking a tree branch to launch it at a jaguarKE1
- Breaks a section of a fence with a jump kickKE3
- Breaks a wooden post with a kickKE8
- Kicks a molasses barrel in halfKE12
- Kicks his way out of a crate filled with fishKE3
- Breaks a stool in half with a kickKE6
- One shots a hunter with a vaulting kickKE1
- Kicks a gourd into a boy hard enough to break itKE1
- Hits the shrine out of a building using a hockey stickKE10
- Kicks a skateboard in halfKE13
- While shrunken, kicks away a phone receiverKE13
- While shrunken, launches a flower with a kickKE13
- Kicks through rocks covering the mouth of a caveKE9
- The glowing shrine indicates that Daniel was likely receiving power from it, but unlike previous people who were empowered by the shrine,KE2 Daniel lacks magic aura and glowing eyes. So maybe he wasn't being amped I don't know.
Other
- Pushes back a falling tree with his legsKE2
- With Taki, pushes a boulder off of Mr. Miyagi's legKE7
- Clashes hockey sticks with magic-enhanced SashaKE10
- Throws a man across a barKE6
- Throws a man in samurai armor while driving by on a motorcycleKE8
- Launches a magic clone of a man with a kick and throws another into a strength test hard enough to ring the bellKE3
Durability
- Gets checked into a wall by magic-enhanced SashaKE10
- Takes a kick from a karate studentKE2
- While being pulled by a speedboat, gets flung through the air and lands on a chairKE4
- Ok taking a tumble down a rocky hillKE9
Speed/Agility
Dodging/Movement
- Dodges a whip strikeKE6
- Dodges an attack from a magic-enhanced enemyKE2
- Dodges sword swings from a magic-enhanced foeKE5
- Dodges strikes from a karate studentKE2
- Dodges attacks from a man using a staffKE7
- Jumps over a motorcycleKE8
- Cuts onions quicklyKE6
Agility
- Springs into the air off of the shoulders of a foeKE2
- Flips over rollercoaster tracks to grab papers before the car can run them overKE3
- Jumps off a bridge to grab onto a rope on a boatKE4
- Jumps out of a window onto a balcony, then to the groundKE4
- Jumps off of a car through the window of a passing truckKE4
- After being launched into the air, swings on a flag and grabs a man before he can fall, returning to the ground by sliding down a poleKE5
- Parkours on top of market stalls then leaps onto a horseKE6
- Leaps up to grab onto a stone lion then swings into the air off of its pawKE5
- Leaps up to a piece of wood being lifted by a crane, drops down onto a wagon passing underneath, then jumps from the back of the wagon to the horse pulling itKE5
- Jumps down levels of a castle setKE5
- Backflips after tripping on a log, catching the girl who was balancing on his shouldersKE7
- Jumps high into the airKE5
- Quickly makes his way to the deck of the ship from where he was climbing up the mastKE11
- While shrunken, swings from a shoelace and bounces off a racketKE13
Skill
Combat
- Disarms a hunter running at him with a spearKE1
- Disarms a crook running at him with a pokerKE4
- Fights a tribal chiefKE1
- Easily takes down two huntersKE7
Other
- Juggles a gourdKE1
- Wins a log run while trainingKE1
- After a hockey player hits a rock at him, Daniel smacks it out of the air into a tree's branches to knock down snow on the hockey playerKE10
- Kicks a raft so a falling girl lands on itKE11
Video Games
Teen
- One shots goonsAK
- Chops through six ice blocksAK
- Catches several flies with chopsticksAK
- Dodges a swinging hammer several timesAK
Adult
Note that some feats from Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues are performed by other characters, but all playable characters can perform the same physical feats.Strength
- Player characters can break crates, phone charging stations, and wooden railings with their strikesCK
- Slams enemies into cars hard enough to damage themCK
- Can launch enemies using a weapon like a batCK
- Can crack the ground using a weapon like a guitarCK
- Breaks prize cabinets by slamming enemies into themCK
- Slams an enemy into a giant stuffed octopus, leaving them half sticking outCK
- Throws enemies into arcade basketball hoopsCK
- Slams an enemy on a foosball table then strikes them, damaging the table underneathCK
- Breaks a large display case by slamming an enemy into itCK
- Slams an enemy into a sunglasses stand, breaking itCK
- Damages a hot dog cart by slamming an enemy into itCK
- Throws enemies high into the air over a fenceCK
- Strikes a locker door and cause it to collide with an enemy's head hard enough to bendCK
- Slams an enemy onto a wooden table hard enough to break itCK
- Slams an enemy into a cafeteria bar, breaking the glassCK
- Slams an enemy into a jukebox, knocking out recordsCK
- Rocks a tree planter by slamming an enemy into itCK
- Knocks down shelves at a comic store by slamming an enemy into the wallCK
- Slams an enemy into a group of gumball machines, breaking someCK
- Damages a cotton candy machine by slamming an enemy into itCK
- Warps a gas pump by slamming an enemy into itCK
- Can knock around a enemy so heavy he cracks the ground when he lands after jumpingCK
- Breaks a tabletop in half and bends the metal pole by slamming an enemy into itCK
- Kicks around a motorcycleCK
- Damages a sign by slamming an enemy into itCK
- Slams an enemy's face onto a table, bending itCK
- Slams an enemy into the tournament bracket wall, knocking down the namecardsCK
- Throws an enemy through a screenCK
- Throws enemies into banners, knocking them off the ceilingCK
- Breaks a trophy case by slamming an enemy into itCK
- Throws an enemy through a wood fenceCK
Durability
- Takes a kick from Kreese, who makes a large crater in the groundCK
- Can get hit by cars during a boss fightCK
- Can get hit by cars that fall from the sky and explode during a boss fightCK
- Can get hit with several molotov cocktails during a boss fightCK
- Can get hit by an enemy that cracks the ground with his blowsCK
- Can get hit by and parry attacks from an enemy that cracks the ground by landing after jumping into the airCK
Speed/Skill
- Can parry strikes from enemiesCK
- Kicks an enemy into a photo booth as they leapCK
- Kicks an enemy into a portapotty as they leapCK
- Hits an enemy on the edge of a pool, sending them flying so they land on an intertubeCK
- Kicks an enemy into a stack of surfboards as they leapCK
- Throws an enemy into a training dummy such that it wraps around anthemCK
Misc
- Kicks an enemy into a car lift, knocking the car downCK
- Stuffs an enemy in a giant rat head mini golf propCK
Skills
Personal
- Ice Dunk: Leaps over an enemy, smashing an ice block on them that freezes them soldCK
- Icicle Fury: Releases a flurry of ice spikes forwardCK
- Ice Wall: Raises a wall of ice in front of him from the ground that launches foesCK
- Focus Heal: Heals himself after focusing for a momentCK
- Miyagi's Crane Kick: After filling the ultimate meter, Daniel performs the Crane Kick, launching a giant ice crane forward that leaves a trail of ice spikesCK
Dojo
2023.05.28 03:50 Drakolf Sanctuary:
It was desperation, pure and simple.
When the women of the village accused us of the crime, their husbands wasted no time in getting their tools. We tried to plead our case, that we had just arrived this morning, that we had nothing to do with the bodies.
I distinctly remembered the satisfied grin on the village head's face as his axe cleaved my brother's skull in half.
There was no way they would believe one of their own was the murderer, no way we could prove he was the one who desecrated their bodies.
No way we could prove that he was the one consorting with demons.
So we ran, the three of us. It had been myself and my brother, along with the two strangers, who were traveling. My brother and I were going to pay our respects to our mother, who had passed away in the winter.
I choked back the sobs, especially when I heard the village head maniacally screaming for us to be burned alive. "Even just one will do, for our vengeance!"
We weren't prepared for the forest, but in we ran, knowing that the twisting boughs were more likely to offer us protection than not.
Still, they persisted. No matter the paths we took, the twisted turns we made, the rivers we crossed, they were on our heels far beyond the point of sanity.
Indeed, it was likely they were all possessed.
I saw the glow before the others, stopping short in my tracks like a deer that realizes its being stalked.
I'd never seen the entrance to a dungeon before, but I knew the tales. Twisting labyrinths full of wonders and dangers alike, I looked at the others pleadingly, "Is there any other way?" The man asked.
"We're going to die regardless." I said. "Would you rather die to a random monster, or sacrificed to demons?"
it wasn't even a choice, we dove into the dungeon, scrambling over our feet, somehow managing to get past traps that would have otherwise killed us.
That would have been a mercy, yet as the rabid voices of the townsfolk faded to a distant roar- still present, the occasional word indicating they had followed us in without hesitation, only to be stymied by the traps, we knew our safety was only going to be short-lived.
"John, we're safe, John." The woman said.
"I know." John said, "Hell's bells, I need a strong drink and a sheep."
"I wasn't aware you were into that, John." I said. "Need a hard one before you give the sheep a hard one?"
"Aye nay, you get the sheep drunk first."
We stared at each other for a few moments, then we laughed. The woman shook her head, she was trying to look exasperated, but I could see the smile on her face.
"Bloody fuck, sorry about your brother, aye? Least he got a quick death, unlike us three."
I nodded, my heart was still thundering.
"Well, we en't gonna fouckin' go back." The woman remarked. "Bloudy starve to death in 'ere before they let us out."
I gestured toward them. "Siblings?" I asked.
"Aye nae, lad. This woman's the scourge o' the damned, she is." The woman punched his arm, he let out a pained cry.
"Don't you bloudy do that, you fouckin' weasel-arse!" She snapped. "The name's Jimmy, bloody wizard turned me into a woman on a lark. It's been months and we've been trying to find the prick."
"My condolences." I said sincerely. "For your manhood, and the manhood of every man who's tried to touch you."
Jimmy chuckled. She- fuck- He nodded and said, "I'll tell you this mouch, that wizard could have turned our cousin into a woman and made her the happiest lass in the land. But no, I'm the one who got the bad end of it."
"My condolences to your cousin, for her manhood as well."
Jimmy laughed. "Aye, fouckin' brilliant, this. Trapped in a bloudy dress. Can't even put me bloudy pants on, they burst into flames. Now this."
"Aye, sorry lad. T'was just a joke, aye?" John said.
"Aye, a joke, one you keep makin', like I give a damn."
"How do you two know each other?" I asked.
"Cousins." John said. "Not that it hasn't stopped her- bloody fuck- his father from tryin' to marry him off on me."
"Is it really that hard to keep her- his..? My head began to hurt. His?
"The curse makes people think I'm a woman." Jimmy said. "Doesn't make me think it, else we'd not be in this bloudy mess, now, would we, John?"
John nodded. "Aye, and on yer wedding, too. Saw yer bride to be forget all about you."
The screams of the villagers were getting louder. I looked at the others. "We have to keep going. Sometimes these dungeons loop around on themselves, we could get out."
"How do you know so bloudy much about dungeons?" Jimmy asked.
"My brother was an adventurer." I said, forcing myself to stand up. "He hung up his sword a year ago, nearly lost his life, got tired of it. We really could have used it."
They didn't say anything to that. What could they say? Our best chance of getting out of here alive was currently dead, and we would be too if we didn't hurry up.
I took the lead, knowing at least something about dungeons was better than nothing. I kept my eye out for raised tiles, pointing them out and getting us safely past them.
When Jimmy's dress got caught on a trap we missed, we helped him tear he dress enough that he still had some decency.
"A nice kilt couldn't have worked, now, could it?" I asked.
"A kilt isn't a bloody dress." John said. "We should know, Jimmy tried it."
We carefully walked around the edge of a pit, that's when I saw it. A treasure chest, at the end of a hallway. That could be anything, hell, even a cursed weapon would be an improvement.
I carefully moved through the hallway, reaching the far end and- remembering my brother's words- I carefully checked to see if it was a mimic.
Mimics were stupid creatures, they only reacted to touch, so you could look at them all you want and it wouldn't wake up.
"What're you bloudy doin', mate? It's just a bloudy box!"
The 'box' in question just opened its mouth and inhaled, before closing back up.
I carefully walked back.
"You were saying, Jimmy?" I asked.
"What the bloudy fuck was that?" He asked.
"A Mimic. Chest monster. They have all sorts of powerful items, but you so much as touch one, it eats you alive."
Both John and Jimmy nodded, and proceeded to have nothing else to say on the matter aside from a short string of curses.
Still defenseless, I was getting worried that we hadn't seen a single monster in the dungeon.
I tripped, hitting the ground, we all froze, breaths held, then relaxed when nothing happened.
"We need to rest again." I said. "My feet hurt, feels like they're swelling in there."
"Here, sit down and I'll check."
I sat down, wincing as my boots pressed against my feet in awkward and unpleasant ways. Getting the thing off was torture, but Jimmy was able to get it off.
I felt immediate relief as stretched out my toes and- Wait. I looked at my foot, and stared uncomprehendingly at the lizard-like one where it should have been.'
"What in the bloody fuck is that?" John asked.
"That's a Kobold foot." I said. "My brother showed me a stuffed Kobold once, they're vicious little bastards, but they'll leave you alone if you leave them alone."
Jimmy got to work on my other boot, which once gone had done a number on making me more comfortable.
"Why are your feet bloody Kobold feet?" John asked.
"It's something called 'Goblinification'," I said, he shot me a confused look. "It was first seen with Goblins" I explained. "Basically, when a dungeon is brand new, it comes into being without any monsters, any animals that wander in get turned into them. But, in rare occurrences, a dungeon is found before it has a stable population. Any Humans who go in begin undergoing Goblinification."
I touched my feet, the scaly texture was pleasant, left me with a feeling of excitement. "You can check how far along you are by touching the affected parts. If you're afraid, it's only just begun and will reverse in a few days. If you're indifferent, it can still reverse, but it'll take anywhere between a month to three months. If you start feeling excited, it means it can be reversed in a year."
I looked at them, my hands idly rubbing my feet. "When you want it to spread faster, you've hit the point of no return, it's permanent. You can leave, certainly, and you might be able to go back to a somewhat normal life, but you still change, and when the transformation is complete, you have to resist any nearby dungeon's call to break free."
'What happens if you don't leave?" John asked.
"You become a dungeon monster." I replied. "Your thoughts become fixated on protecting the dungeon, depending on how much you embrace it, you could remain extremely intelligent, but if you resist it, you become nothing more than a wild animal."
I unbelted my pants and pulled them off, I could see the slow progression of the transformation, my legs changing to accommodate animalistic legs.
"I can't go anywhere." I said. "Not without help."
"What? Why?"
I looked at John. "Kobolds can't keep their balance without a tail, and I'm at least an hour away from that happening. By that point, I'll be wanting the transformation to quicken."
He nodded and helped me stand up. I needed to lean on him heavily to support my weight.
We continued on, I was finding it easier to notice the traps, it was like they were more obvious to me. In fact, I was beginning to feel excited at the prospect of them going off.
"Kobolds are trapmasters." I said, "We can innately sense what they do and where they are."
"'We'?" Jimmy asked.
"Yeah, we." I said. "Just follow my directions, we'll avoid any traps I set." I paused. "That I set..?"
I distinctly remembered laying those traps down, and couldn't help but feel a surge of pride for my handiwork.
I wasn't at the stage where I wanted the transformation to happen faster, but the pride I felt was making it hard not to wish for it.
"Your face is beginning to change." John said.
"Nak, I know." I said. I let go of the Humans and looked at them. "I have enough tail to walk, I can still guide you out, but you can't come back, understood?"
"What are you saying?" John asked.
"That's always the problem with you, Humans. Just because you're in a hurry, you just barge into people's homes and-" I rubbed my head. "Oh, sorry. I forgot who I was for a moment." I looked at my body in annoyance. "Can't this thing hurry up!?"
"You're at the point of no return." John said morosely.
"Yeah, I am." I said. I walked over to a wall and slid open a panel. "But it also means I know where there are hidden paths. This will be a tight squeeze for you." I looked at Jimmy. "You okay, Human?"
"Aye." He said. "Just wonderin' why we're not fouckin' turning into bloudy Kobolds."
"The dungeon's focusing all its attention on me, it knows we're trying to get out, so it's trying to get as many monsters as it can." The Humans crawled behind me as I let them through the passageway. We came out on the other side, inside a small treasure room.
I looked at them. "Every instinct is telling me if you so much as touch a shiny, you die." I warned. I walked over to the treasure and picked up a dagger, then a sword, and then a bow and arrows. "There are no rules that say I can't give them to you."
John took the bow, while Jimmy took the sword. I then picked up a ring and held it out to Jimmy. "This is a cursed item, it forces men to become women and the reverse. It only works once. Put it on."
"What?" He asked.
"Now, unless you like having breasts and being ogled at."
He took the ring and put it on. As his body physically changed, he drew in a shuddering gasp and began crying.
I sighed. "Look, we've got three hours before I'm stuck here for good, I'm starting to get annoyed with you Humans, and the one of you is going to start changing." I looked at them both. "Unless you want it, we can't waste time."
They nodded.
I scoured the rest of the room for anything of immediate use, then grabbed a bag of holding, shoved as much gold inside of it as I could, and carried it on my back. "When we get outside, you are going to need to drag me out of here. I am going to get violent. No matter what I do, keep me away from this place."
They nodded.
We kept moving, going faster because I knew where we were, and I knew the quickest path outside.
We stepped into a hallway, and I saw the bastard who killed my brother.
"If you walk forward past two hallways, the third one will take you to the entrance." I said, handing them my bag.
"What?" John asked.
"Are you bloudy fouckin thick, mate?" Jimmy asked.
I looked at them. "I can't let that man live. Not only did he kill my brother, but if he gets taken by the dungeon, he'll take control of it. I'll die before I let that happen. So go, and don't wait for me."
I started running down the hallway, dagger grasped in hand, seething hatred burning in every fiber of my body. I stepped onto a pressure plate and leapt, letting out a mighty battle cry. The man looked up at me, grinned, and then was speared in the side by a trap. Before he could even react, I landed on his shoulder and slit his throat.
The dungeon was safe, the treasures were safe, except there were two Humans leaving. I yanked my dagger out. "Nak nak nak nak nak!" I snapped as I raced down the hallway. There they were, just outside. Waiting for me.
I snarled, running headlong at them. "Humans!" I screeched. "Those shinies belong to the dungeon!"
I leapt at the nearest Human, who kicked me out of the air. I felt the wind get knocked out of me, my dagger flew out of my hand, an for a moment, I was completely stunned. The Human grabbed hold of me and I struggled to fight him off.
"Calm down!" He shouted. I froze. "Calm down, please. It's me, John."
"Shit." I said. "I was about ready to kill you."
"About?" He asked. "If Jimmy didn't kick you out of the air like that, you'd have bloody stabbed me."
He let go of me, I walked over to get my dagger, picked it up, and looked back at my home.
My home.
I looked at John. "I can't abandon my home like this." I said. "Who will maintain all of the traps? Who is going to empty out the pits? Who is going to kill the foolish Humans who come seeking our treasure?"
John knelt down to my height and grabbed my shoulders.
"You used to be Human." He said. "You helped us escape, even to the very end. You asked us to take you with us, and we will."
I looked back at my home, then started walking away from it. It hurt, it felt like my soul was being ripped out. I didn't have any memories except as a Kobold, I didn't know anywhere except the dungeon.
Two hands grabbed hold of me and lifted me up before placing me down on a pair of shoulders.
"Don't worry, we've got you, you bloody reptile."
"Keep talking like that, you smelly Human, and I'll-!" I cut myself off. "Sorry."
They kept carrying me through the forest. Every now and again, I looked back, the dungeon was still calling me, telling me to come home.
But I couldn't.
We walked into an empty village, John and Jimmy hesitated for a moment.
"Let me down." I said. He did so, and I pushed open a door. "Help me loot the place, we're going to need food and water."
"Bout, that's immoral." Jimmy said.
"Says the Humans lugging around a bag of dungeon gold!" I snapped. "Bloody ingrates, can't even appreciate when a Kobold's trying to help them survive."
We went through the village's stores, helping ourselves to anything that was still good.
I paused as I passed by a dead Human on the ground. I looked at him, his head caved in half by something, maybe an axe.
I searched through his pockets and found some coins, a silver identification tag, and a letter. I opened the letter, read the contents, then threw it aside.
It was unfortunate for those two, but it didn't matter a whit to me. I looked at the Human again, my vision blurring. I wiped my eyes and looked at the tears that stained my beautiful scales.
My breathing hitched, and though I didn't understand why, I began to weep.
Why did I care about some dead Human?
submitted by Drakolf to DrakolfsWritings [link] [comments]
When the women of the village accused us of the crime, their husbands wasted no time in getting their tools. We tried to plead our case, that we had just arrived this morning, that we had nothing to do with the bodies.
I distinctly remembered the satisfied grin on the village head's face as his axe cleaved my brother's skull in half.
There was no way they would believe one of their own was the murderer, no way we could prove he was the one who desecrated their bodies.
No way we could prove that he was the one consorting with demons.
So we ran, the three of us. It had been myself and my brother, along with the two strangers, who were traveling. My brother and I were going to pay our respects to our mother, who had passed away in the winter.
I choked back the sobs, especially when I heard the village head maniacally screaming for us to be burned alive. "Even just one will do, for our vengeance!"
We weren't prepared for the forest, but in we ran, knowing that the twisting boughs were more likely to offer us protection than not.
Still, they persisted. No matter the paths we took, the twisted turns we made, the rivers we crossed, they were on our heels far beyond the point of sanity.
Indeed, it was likely they were all possessed.
I saw the glow before the others, stopping short in my tracks like a deer that realizes its being stalked.
I'd never seen the entrance to a dungeon before, but I knew the tales. Twisting labyrinths full of wonders and dangers alike, I looked at the others pleadingly, "Is there any other way?" The man asked.
"We're going to die regardless." I said. "Would you rather die to a random monster, or sacrificed to demons?"
it wasn't even a choice, we dove into the dungeon, scrambling over our feet, somehow managing to get past traps that would have otherwise killed us.
That would have been a mercy, yet as the rabid voices of the townsfolk faded to a distant roar- still present, the occasional word indicating they had followed us in without hesitation, only to be stymied by the traps, we knew our safety was only going to be short-lived.
"John, we're safe, John." The woman said.
"I know." John said, "Hell's bells, I need a strong drink and a sheep."
"I wasn't aware you were into that, John." I said. "Need a hard one before you give the sheep a hard one?"
"Aye nay, you get the sheep drunk first."
We stared at each other for a few moments, then we laughed. The woman shook her head, she was trying to look exasperated, but I could see the smile on her face.
"Bloody fuck, sorry about your brother, aye? Least he got a quick death, unlike us three."
I nodded, my heart was still thundering.
"Well, we en't gonna fouckin' go back." The woman remarked. "Bloudy starve to death in 'ere before they let us out."
I gestured toward them. "Siblings?" I asked.
"Aye nae, lad. This woman's the scourge o' the damned, she is." The woman punched his arm, he let out a pained cry.
"Don't you bloudy do that, you fouckin' weasel-arse!" She snapped. "The name's Jimmy, bloody wizard turned me into a woman on a lark. It's been months and we've been trying to find the prick."
"My condolences." I said sincerely. "For your manhood, and the manhood of every man who's tried to touch you."
Jimmy chuckled. She- fuck- He nodded and said, "I'll tell you this mouch, that wizard could have turned our cousin into a woman and made her the happiest lass in the land. But no, I'm the one who got the bad end of it."
"My condolences to your cousin, for her manhood as well."
Jimmy laughed. "Aye, fouckin' brilliant, this. Trapped in a bloudy dress. Can't even put me bloudy pants on, they burst into flames. Now this."
"Aye, sorry lad. T'was just a joke, aye?" John said.
"Aye, a joke, one you keep makin', like I give a damn."
"How do you two know each other?" I asked.
"Cousins." John said. "Not that it hasn't stopped her- bloody fuck- his father from tryin' to marry him off on me."
"Is it really that hard to keep her- his..? My head began to hurt. His?
"The curse makes people think I'm a woman." Jimmy said. "Doesn't make me think it, else we'd not be in this bloudy mess, now, would we, John?"
John nodded. "Aye, and on yer wedding, too. Saw yer bride to be forget all about you."
The screams of the villagers were getting louder. I looked at the others. "We have to keep going. Sometimes these dungeons loop around on themselves, we could get out."
"How do you know so bloudy much about dungeons?" Jimmy asked.
"My brother was an adventurer." I said, forcing myself to stand up. "He hung up his sword a year ago, nearly lost his life, got tired of it. We really could have used it."
They didn't say anything to that. What could they say? Our best chance of getting out of here alive was currently dead, and we would be too if we didn't hurry up.
I took the lead, knowing at least something about dungeons was better than nothing. I kept my eye out for raised tiles, pointing them out and getting us safely past them.
When Jimmy's dress got caught on a trap we missed, we helped him tear he dress enough that he still had some decency.
"A nice kilt couldn't have worked, now, could it?" I asked.
"A kilt isn't a bloody dress." John said. "We should know, Jimmy tried it."
We carefully walked around the edge of a pit, that's when I saw it. A treasure chest, at the end of a hallway. That could be anything, hell, even a cursed weapon would be an improvement.
I carefully moved through the hallway, reaching the far end and- remembering my brother's words- I carefully checked to see if it was a mimic.
Mimics were stupid creatures, they only reacted to touch, so you could look at them all you want and it wouldn't wake up.
"What're you bloudy doin', mate? It's just a bloudy box!"
The 'box' in question just opened its mouth and inhaled, before closing back up.
I carefully walked back.
"You were saying, Jimmy?" I asked.
"What the bloudy fuck was that?" He asked.
"A Mimic. Chest monster. They have all sorts of powerful items, but you so much as touch one, it eats you alive."
Both John and Jimmy nodded, and proceeded to have nothing else to say on the matter aside from a short string of curses.
Still defenseless, I was getting worried that we hadn't seen a single monster in the dungeon.
I tripped, hitting the ground, we all froze, breaths held, then relaxed when nothing happened.
"We need to rest again." I said. "My feet hurt, feels like they're swelling in there."
"Here, sit down and I'll check."
I sat down, wincing as my boots pressed against my feet in awkward and unpleasant ways. Getting the thing off was torture, but Jimmy was able to get it off.
I felt immediate relief as stretched out my toes and- Wait. I looked at my foot, and stared uncomprehendingly at the lizard-like one where it should have been.'
"What in the bloody fuck is that?" John asked.
"That's a Kobold foot." I said. "My brother showed me a stuffed Kobold once, they're vicious little bastards, but they'll leave you alone if you leave them alone."
Jimmy got to work on my other boot, which once gone had done a number on making me more comfortable.
"Why are your feet bloody Kobold feet?" John asked.
"It's something called 'Goblinification'," I said, he shot me a confused look. "It was first seen with Goblins" I explained. "Basically, when a dungeon is brand new, it comes into being without any monsters, any animals that wander in get turned into them. But, in rare occurrences, a dungeon is found before it has a stable population. Any Humans who go in begin undergoing Goblinification."
I touched my feet, the scaly texture was pleasant, left me with a feeling of excitement. "You can check how far along you are by touching the affected parts. If you're afraid, it's only just begun and will reverse in a few days. If you're indifferent, it can still reverse, but it'll take anywhere between a month to three months. If you start feeling excited, it means it can be reversed in a year."
I looked at them, my hands idly rubbing my feet. "When you want it to spread faster, you've hit the point of no return, it's permanent. You can leave, certainly, and you might be able to go back to a somewhat normal life, but you still change, and when the transformation is complete, you have to resist any nearby dungeon's call to break free."
'What happens if you don't leave?" John asked.
"You become a dungeon monster." I replied. "Your thoughts become fixated on protecting the dungeon, depending on how much you embrace it, you could remain extremely intelligent, but if you resist it, you become nothing more than a wild animal."
I unbelted my pants and pulled them off, I could see the slow progression of the transformation, my legs changing to accommodate animalistic legs.
"I can't go anywhere." I said. "Not without help."
"What? Why?"
I looked at John. "Kobolds can't keep their balance without a tail, and I'm at least an hour away from that happening. By that point, I'll be wanting the transformation to quicken."
He nodded and helped me stand up. I needed to lean on him heavily to support my weight.
We continued on, I was finding it easier to notice the traps, it was like they were more obvious to me. In fact, I was beginning to feel excited at the prospect of them going off.
"Kobolds are trapmasters." I said, "We can innately sense what they do and where they are."
"'We'?" Jimmy asked.
"Yeah, we." I said. "Just follow my directions, we'll avoid any traps I set." I paused. "That I set..?"
I distinctly remembered laying those traps down, and couldn't help but feel a surge of pride for my handiwork.
I wasn't at the stage where I wanted the transformation to happen faster, but the pride I felt was making it hard not to wish for it.
"Your face is beginning to change." John said.
"Nak, I know." I said. I let go of the Humans and looked at them. "I have enough tail to walk, I can still guide you out, but you can't come back, understood?"
"What are you saying?" John asked.
"That's always the problem with you, Humans. Just because you're in a hurry, you just barge into people's homes and-" I rubbed my head. "Oh, sorry. I forgot who I was for a moment." I looked at my body in annoyance. "Can't this thing hurry up!?"
"You're at the point of no return." John said morosely.
"Yeah, I am." I said. I walked over to a wall and slid open a panel. "But it also means I know where there are hidden paths. This will be a tight squeeze for you." I looked at Jimmy. "You okay, Human?"
"Aye." He said. "Just wonderin' why we're not fouckin' turning into bloudy Kobolds."
"The dungeon's focusing all its attention on me, it knows we're trying to get out, so it's trying to get as many monsters as it can." The Humans crawled behind me as I let them through the passageway. We came out on the other side, inside a small treasure room.
I looked at them. "Every instinct is telling me if you so much as touch a shiny, you die." I warned. I walked over to the treasure and picked up a dagger, then a sword, and then a bow and arrows. "There are no rules that say I can't give them to you."
John took the bow, while Jimmy took the sword. I then picked up a ring and held it out to Jimmy. "This is a cursed item, it forces men to become women and the reverse. It only works once. Put it on."
"What?" He asked.
"Now, unless you like having breasts and being ogled at."
He took the ring and put it on. As his body physically changed, he drew in a shuddering gasp and began crying.
I sighed. "Look, we've got three hours before I'm stuck here for good, I'm starting to get annoyed with you Humans, and the one of you is going to start changing." I looked at them both. "Unless you want it, we can't waste time."
They nodded.
I scoured the rest of the room for anything of immediate use, then grabbed a bag of holding, shoved as much gold inside of it as I could, and carried it on my back. "When we get outside, you are going to need to drag me out of here. I am going to get violent. No matter what I do, keep me away from this place."
They nodded.
We kept moving, going faster because I knew where we were, and I knew the quickest path outside.
We stepped into a hallway, and I saw the bastard who killed my brother.
"If you walk forward past two hallways, the third one will take you to the entrance." I said, handing them my bag.
"What?" John asked.
"Are you bloudy fouckin thick, mate?" Jimmy asked.
I looked at them. "I can't let that man live. Not only did he kill my brother, but if he gets taken by the dungeon, he'll take control of it. I'll die before I let that happen. So go, and don't wait for me."
I started running down the hallway, dagger grasped in hand, seething hatred burning in every fiber of my body. I stepped onto a pressure plate and leapt, letting out a mighty battle cry. The man looked up at me, grinned, and then was speared in the side by a trap. Before he could even react, I landed on his shoulder and slit his throat.
The dungeon was safe, the treasures were safe, except there were two Humans leaving. I yanked my dagger out. "Nak nak nak nak nak!" I snapped as I raced down the hallway. There they were, just outside. Waiting for me.
I snarled, running headlong at them. "Humans!" I screeched. "Those shinies belong to the dungeon!"
I leapt at the nearest Human, who kicked me out of the air. I felt the wind get knocked out of me, my dagger flew out of my hand, an for a moment, I was completely stunned. The Human grabbed hold of me and I struggled to fight him off.
"Calm down!" He shouted. I froze. "Calm down, please. It's me, John."
"Shit." I said. "I was about ready to kill you."
"About?" He asked. "If Jimmy didn't kick you out of the air like that, you'd have bloody stabbed me."
He let go of me, I walked over to get my dagger, picked it up, and looked back at my home.
My home.
I looked at John. "I can't abandon my home like this." I said. "Who will maintain all of the traps? Who is going to empty out the pits? Who is going to kill the foolish Humans who come seeking our treasure?"
John knelt down to my height and grabbed my shoulders.
"You used to be Human." He said. "You helped us escape, even to the very end. You asked us to take you with us, and we will."
I looked back at my home, then started walking away from it. It hurt, it felt like my soul was being ripped out. I didn't have any memories except as a Kobold, I didn't know anywhere except the dungeon.
Two hands grabbed hold of me and lifted me up before placing me down on a pair of shoulders.
"Don't worry, we've got you, you bloody reptile."
"Keep talking like that, you smelly Human, and I'll-!" I cut myself off. "Sorry."
They kept carrying me through the forest. Every now and again, I looked back, the dungeon was still calling me, telling me to come home.
But I couldn't.
We walked into an empty village, John and Jimmy hesitated for a moment.
"Let me down." I said. He did so, and I pushed open a door. "Help me loot the place, we're going to need food and water."
"Bout, that's immoral." Jimmy said.
"Says the Humans lugging around a bag of dungeon gold!" I snapped. "Bloody ingrates, can't even appreciate when a Kobold's trying to help them survive."
We went through the village's stores, helping ourselves to anything that was still good.
I paused as I passed by a dead Human on the ground. I looked at him, his head caved in half by something, maybe an axe.
I searched through his pockets and found some coins, a silver identification tag, and a letter. I opened the letter, read the contents, then threw it aside.
It was unfortunate for those two, but it didn't matter a whit to me. I looked at the Human again, my vision blurring. I wiped my eyes and looked at the tears that stained my beautiful scales.
My breathing hitched, and though I didn't understand why, I began to weep.
Why did I care about some dead Human?
2023.05.27 22:02 Outside_Gur_3016 Thoughts of a diesel mechanic preparing to start his own mobile business
Morning everyone. This is thoughts and a rant on my current position as a diesel mechanic. I am 34 years old, been a diesel mechanic for 15 years. I worked in the oil fields as a field mechanic starting out, worked for a semi truck dealer for a year, then to expand on this part of my timeline. I ran my own business for about 2.5 years. I started my business because I hated seeing semi truck owners not being able to get their shit fix properly. I started first as a mobile mechanic in my pickup, I was pretty good at it doing wheel seals, oil changes, brakes, small stuff. One day i had a customer ask to do a head gasket on a isx11.9, i knew a shop that was moving and they had 2 weeks left on their lease. I did the repair in the empty building and the owner of the complex had a shop that was gonna open in a month. I took that shop. I ran $65 an hour no markup on parts this was the down fall. I had a hard time saying no to any work that came in and quickly overloaded myself. I worked in the shop for a full year doing mostly engine rebuilds and small stuff that would come in. Then my landlord didn't allow me to renew my lease. 2 weeks before it ended. I found a shop but It was on the other side of town and went from 5600 square feet to 1000 square feet and no parking. I tried to keep my business afloat but losing that 5600 square foot shop hit hard and the fact most of my customers wouldn't make the trek across town. 1 of my customers offered me a job as a mechanic at their shop so I took it. that is where my current employment is at. been here a few years.
There has always been this internal pull for my thoughts of going back to doing my own business. at the end of last year My wife and I had our first child. I make enough with my income that my wife can stay home with our little girl.
Going into thoughts more, I hate where I work. The money is good and I have limited my hours as there is no shortage of work at this company. I can have as much overtime as long as its productive. I have limited it to 53 hours max. I have 3 other techs in the shop, I'm sorry if this comes off like I'm trying to put my self above the rest but its a joke in our shop. Company policy is 3 write ups and you are gone.
Mechanic #1 has been there for a decade and is so damn slow its not even funny. He's been a mechanic for almost 20 years and every place he worked at before fired him for being to slow. It takes him double or more time then the average mechanic to do his tasks. and when he runs into a problem that takes any kind of thought process he is on the phone with someone asking for help which is calling kenworth, peterbilt, or freightliners service desk asking for opinions. He can't think his way out of a box if the top was closed partly.
Mechanic #2 that we have has no diagnostic skills in his body and he's got 24 years experience. This guy is in his 40's has so many legal problems that has got no drivers license, when he doesn't show up for work we have searched so many times now that its favorited on our bookmarks for the local jail rosters if he has been picked up. He can never show up on time. Last week he left a note for the morning shift that one of our dump trucks needed a whole driver side headlight assembly because the driver side low beam was out. I have no idea how he diagnosed it as there was dried mud on every connector and it was just the bulb was bad.
Mechanic #3 is new but straight out of prison. Im fine with that, having had a felony on my record previously. When my boss hired him he told our boss he had a ton of tools. He's never been a professional mechanic. He came to work and neither did he had an actual weight of a ton of tools of have many tools at all. He has multiple half sets of random shit. no flat head screw drivers, a 1/2 impact that can't twist a wet noodle in half. he spends more time looking for tools then fixing things. He's sadly the one that has the best work ethic besides myself. He can understand how to do things once its explained to him and he does decent work. he has to borrow tools and he will never return them. I have finally stopped loaning him my tools as they never come back.
I was the shop foreman for this company. I stepped down as i'm also the only one that does heavy repairs and diagnostics. Which is electrical on engine, chassis, and transmissions. Clutch replacements, differentials, engine repairs and rebuilds, and every other thing that can break on a semi and trailer. I was also scheduling techs their work for the day and talking with customers, also dealing with ordering parts, putting them into inventory and billing parts out, as well as building quotes for customers and insurance companies and invoicing out customers and collecting payments.
My boss told me i needed to be there more and now that i had my daughter i want to be home a little more. I work so hard currently i have a john deere loader apart completely rebuilding the hydraulic system and the engine in that, I have a c13 im rebuilding and a series 60 detriot im rebuilding as a out of frame since the crank and block needed machining. An my boss keeps adding more shit to my plate. I had to fit a hydraulic pump on a customers truck that we pump on 2 months ago that mechanic #1 did that was leaking. I had a c15 dropped on my plate that started knocking, it had dropped a exhaust valve on cylinder #2 thank god the customer sent that to cat i didn't have time.
My benefits from this company are basically a joke, I can't afford the insurance through them as with a family its $1500 just for medical. I got 2 weeks vacation after i bitched at them while i was the foreman that i only got a week, but it dont matter even though every week i hit 40+ hours if im sick and still get 40 hours in the week they still take a day of vacation away. that time is meant for a break from work. Im so fed up with this company. I stay only because I get overtime to support a few things i have which is my tool box and a scanner that will be done in 6 months.
There is no formal training or any training for that matter. Not even safety training, our MSDS book is outdated, our fire extinguishers are out of inspection date, we have a forklift and 2 overhead cranes that no one has certs to operate yet we do every day.
The way the company is, is a joke I have been pyshically pushed into a steel pillar from a truck driver that drivers for the company, then the dude has the balls to go the HR about it she watched the cameras. the only time i did anything was to push him poff me hold my ground then break the contact with his hold on my arms. HR did nothing about it and neither did the owner of the company. I have had the parts guy/ owners kid threaten to kill me after i told him he wasnt doing his job.... nothing was done about that.
So my current thoughts and plans are. I have applied to other companies but everything i would take would be a $20,000 pay cut and we can't afford that. I am currently working on getting a business license and im secretly starting a side business to boost my income to then turn my side business into my solo income stream. I'm going back to being straight mobile repairs. I love doing engines and heavy repairs, but its not worth it anymore and i can make more money doing brakes, starters, wheel seals, and other light repairs as a mobile repair for semis.
The current scare of the economy is nerve-racking but I can charge around $100 an hour with a lower markup on parts then any shop in the area and I believe that will work if the economy goes to shit. Trucks still roll. People still want food so I dont think that will slow too much. Plus main shops always say 1-2 weeks to get in for stupid shit. I think if i get my name back out there i can grab those customers pretty easy.
Sorry for the rant, I hope everyone has a better shop then I do.
submitted by Outside_Gur_3016 to DieselTechs [link] [comments]
There has always been this internal pull for my thoughts of going back to doing my own business. at the end of last year My wife and I had our first child. I make enough with my income that my wife can stay home with our little girl.
Going into thoughts more, I hate where I work. The money is good and I have limited my hours as there is no shortage of work at this company. I can have as much overtime as long as its productive. I have limited it to 53 hours max. I have 3 other techs in the shop, I'm sorry if this comes off like I'm trying to put my self above the rest but its a joke in our shop. Company policy is 3 write ups and you are gone.
Mechanic #1 has been there for a decade and is so damn slow its not even funny. He's been a mechanic for almost 20 years and every place he worked at before fired him for being to slow. It takes him double or more time then the average mechanic to do his tasks. and when he runs into a problem that takes any kind of thought process he is on the phone with someone asking for help which is calling kenworth, peterbilt, or freightliners service desk asking for opinions. He can't think his way out of a box if the top was closed partly.
Mechanic #2 that we have has no diagnostic skills in his body and he's got 24 years experience. This guy is in his 40's has so many legal problems that has got no drivers license, when he doesn't show up for work we have searched so many times now that its favorited on our bookmarks for the local jail rosters if he has been picked up. He can never show up on time. Last week he left a note for the morning shift that one of our dump trucks needed a whole driver side headlight assembly because the driver side low beam was out. I have no idea how he diagnosed it as there was dried mud on every connector and it was just the bulb was bad.
Mechanic #3 is new but straight out of prison. Im fine with that, having had a felony on my record previously. When my boss hired him he told our boss he had a ton of tools. He's never been a professional mechanic. He came to work and neither did he had an actual weight of a ton of tools of have many tools at all. He has multiple half sets of random shit. no flat head screw drivers, a 1/2 impact that can't twist a wet noodle in half. he spends more time looking for tools then fixing things. He's sadly the one that has the best work ethic besides myself. He can understand how to do things once its explained to him and he does decent work. he has to borrow tools and he will never return them. I have finally stopped loaning him my tools as they never come back.
I was the shop foreman for this company. I stepped down as i'm also the only one that does heavy repairs and diagnostics. Which is electrical on engine, chassis, and transmissions. Clutch replacements, differentials, engine repairs and rebuilds, and every other thing that can break on a semi and trailer. I was also scheduling techs their work for the day and talking with customers, also dealing with ordering parts, putting them into inventory and billing parts out, as well as building quotes for customers and insurance companies and invoicing out customers and collecting payments.
My boss told me i needed to be there more and now that i had my daughter i want to be home a little more. I work so hard currently i have a john deere loader apart completely rebuilding the hydraulic system and the engine in that, I have a c13 im rebuilding and a series 60 detriot im rebuilding as a out of frame since the crank and block needed machining. An my boss keeps adding more shit to my plate. I had to fit a hydraulic pump on a customers truck that we pump on 2 months ago that mechanic #1 did that was leaking. I had a c15 dropped on my plate that started knocking, it had dropped a exhaust valve on cylinder #2 thank god the customer sent that to cat i didn't have time.
My benefits from this company are basically a joke, I can't afford the insurance through them as with a family its $1500 just for medical. I got 2 weeks vacation after i bitched at them while i was the foreman that i only got a week, but it dont matter even though every week i hit 40+ hours if im sick and still get 40 hours in the week they still take a day of vacation away. that time is meant for a break from work. Im so fed up with this company. I stay only because I get overtime to support a few things i have which is my tool box and a scanner that will be done in 6 months.
There is no formal training or any training for that matter. Not even safety training, our MSDS book is outdated, our fire extinguishers are out of inspection date, we have a forklift and 2 overhead cranes that no one has certs to operate yet we do every day.
The way the company is, is a joke I have been pyshically pushed into a steel pillar from a truck driver that drivers for the company, then the dude has the balls to go the HR about it she watched the cameras. the only time i did anything was to push him poff me hold my ground then break the contact with his hold on my arms. HR did nothing about it and neither did the owner of the company. I have had the parts guy/ owners kid threaten to kill me after i told him he wasnt doing his job.... nothing was done about that.
So my current thoughts and plans are. I have applied to other companies but everything i would take would be a $20,000 pay cut and we can't afford that. I am currently working on getting a business license and im secretly starting a side business to boost my income to then turn my side business into my solo income stream. I'm going back to being straight mobile repairs. I love doing engines and heavy repairs, but its not worth it anymore and i can make more money doing brakes, starters, wheel seals, and other light repairs as a mobile repair for semis.
The current scare of the economy is nerve-racking but I can charge around $100 an hour with a lower markup on parts then any shop in the area and I believe that will work if the economy goes to shit. Trucks still roll. People still want food so I dont think that will slow too much. Plus main shops always say 1-2 weeks to get in for stupid shit. I think if i get my name back out there i can grab those customers pretty easy.
Sorry for the rant, I hope everyone has a better shop then I do.
2023.05.27 19:21 SchlesingerMindy323 [HIRING] 25 Jobs in IA Hiring Now!
2023.05.27 04:48 mostreliablebottle If Best Picture was decided by Critics Polls (1940-2021)
Roughly 7 years ago u/TheGreatZiegfeld did an experiment of a post to determine what the best films of each year would be from 1940 to 2011 (before the 2012 S&S polls).
With the recently updated TSPDT and the 2022 S&S list, I decided to do the same from 1940 to 2021 regarding what critics thought were the best of each year.
Keep in mind this is all from a critics' poll, not from one specific critic's list. Also no short films or miniseries (meaning no Twin Peaks or Meshes of the Afternoon), as well as those from 2022 and beyond because of the last S&S poll.
With all that in mind, let's begin.
1940
Winner: His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks)
Other nominees: The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin), The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford), The Shop Around The Corner (Ernst Lubitsch), The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor)
1941
Winner: Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
Other nominees: The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges), Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges), The Maltese Falcon (John Houston), How Green Was My Valley (John Ford)
1942
Winner: Casablanca (Michael Curtiz)
Other nominees: The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles), To Be Or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch), The Palm Springs Story (Preston Sturges), Cat People (Jacques Tourneur)
1943
Winner: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell and Pressburger)
Other nominees: Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer), Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock), I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur), Ossessione (Luchino Visconti)
1944
Winner: Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder)
Other nominees: Ivan the Terrible, Part I (Sergei Eisenstein), Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli), A Canterbury Tale (Powell and Pressburger), To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks)
1945
Winner: Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné)
Other nominees: Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini), Brief Encounter (David Lean), I Know Where I'm Going (Powell and Pressburger) Les Dames du bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson)
1946
Winner: It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra)
Other nominees: A Matter of Life and Death (Powell and Pressburger), Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock), My Darling Clementine (John Ford), Paisan (Roberto Rossellini)
1947
Winner: Black Narcissus (Powell and Pressburger)
Other nominees: Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur), Monsieur Verdoux (Charlie Chaplin), The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
1948
Winner: Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica)
Other nominees: The Red Shoes (Powell and Pressburger), Letters from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls), Spring in a Small Town (Mu Fei), Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini)
1949
Winner: The Third Man (Carol Reed)
Other nominees: Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu), Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford), White Heat (Raoul Walsh)
1950
Winner Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa)
Other nominees; Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder), All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), Los Olvidados (Luis Buñuel), In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray)
1951
Winner: The River (Jean Renoir)
Other nominees: Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson), Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De Sica), Early Summer (Yasujirō Ozu), Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock)
1952
Winner: Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly)
Other nominees: Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa), Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica), The Life of Oharu (Kenji Mizoguchi), The Quiet Man (John Ford)
1953
Winner: Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu)
Other nominees: Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi), The Earrings of Madame de (Max Ophüls), The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli), Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (Jacques Tati)
1954
Winner: Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa)
Other nominees: Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock), Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini), La Strada (Federico Fellini), Sansho the Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi)
1955
Winner: Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Other nominees: The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton), Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray), All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Kirk), Floating Clouds (Mikio Naruse)
1956
Winner: The Searchers (John Ford)
Other nominees: A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson), Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk), Aparajito (Satyajit Ray), Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray)
1957
Winner: Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman)
Other nominees: The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman), Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini), Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa), Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick)
1958
Winner Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
Other nominees: Touch of Evil (Orson Welles), Ashes and Diamonds (Andrzej Wajda), Ivan the Terrible, Part II (Sergei Eisenstein), The Music Room (Satyajit Ray)
1959
Winner: The 400 Blows (François Truffaut)
Other nominees: Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder), North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock), Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks), Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)
1960
Winner: Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard)
Other nominees: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock), La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini), L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni), The Apartment (Billy Wilder)
1961
Winner: Viridiana (Luis Buñuel)
Other nominees: Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais), La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni), West Side Story (Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins), Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa)
1962
Winner: Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean)
Other nominees: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford), Jules and Jim (François Truffaut), Cléo from 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda), L'Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni)
1963
Winner 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini)
Other nominees: Le Mepris (Jean-Luc Godard), The Leopard (Luchino Visconti), The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock), The Executioner (Luis García Berlanga)
1964
Winner: Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick)
Other nominees: Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer), The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy), Black God, White Devil (Glauber Rocha)
1965
Winner: Pierrot Le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard)
Other nominees: Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles), Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Parajanov), Le Bonheur (Agnes Varda), Doctor Zhivago (David Lean)
1966
Winner: Persona (Ingmar Bergman)
Other nominees: Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky), Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson), The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo), Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni)
1967
Winner: Playtime (Jacques Tati)
Other nominees: Mouchette (Robert Bresson), Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville), Belle de Jour (Luis Buñuel), The Graduate (Mike Nichols)
1968
Winner: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
Other nominees: Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone), Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski), Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea), Faces (John Cassavetes)
1969
Winner: The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)
Other nominees: The Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov), Kes (Ken Loach), My Night at Maud's (Eric Rohmer), Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville)
1970
Winner: The Conformist (Bernado Bertolucci)
Other nominees: Wanda (Barbara Loden), Performance (Nicholas Roeg), Husbands (John Cassavetes), Tristana (Luis Buñuel)
1971
Winner: A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick)
Other nominees: Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman), A Touch of Zen (King Hu), Out 1 (Jacques Rivette)
1972
Winner: The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola)
Other nominees: Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog), Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel), Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky)
1973
Winner: Amarcord (Federico Fellini)
Other nominees: The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache), The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice), Don't Look Now (Nicholas Roeg), Badlands (Terrence Malick)
1974
Winner: The Godfather: Part II (Francis Ford Coppola)
Other nominees: Chinatown (Roman Polanski), A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes), Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
1975
Winner: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman)
Other nominees: Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky), Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick), Nashville (Robert Altman), Jaws (Steven Spielberg)
1976
Winner: Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
Other nominees: News from Home (Chantal Akerman), Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders), In the Realm of Senses (Nagisa Oshima), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes)
1977
Winner: Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
Other nominees: Star Wars (George Lucas), Close Encounter of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg), Eraserhead (David Lynch), The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko)
1978
Winner: Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
Other nominees: Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick), The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino), The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi), In a Year with 13 Moons (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
1979
Winner: Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola)
Other nominees: Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky), Alien (Ridley Scott), Manhattan (Woody Allen), All That Jazz (Bob Fosse)
1980
Winner: Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese)
Other nominees: The Shining (Stanley Kubrick), The Empire Strike Back (Irvin Kershner), Heaven's Gate (Michael Cimino), The Elephant Man (David Lynch)
1981
Winner: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg)
Other nominees: Possession (Andrzej Żuławski), Blow Out (Brian de Palma), Mad Max 2 (George Miller), An American Werewolf in London (John Landis)
1982
Winner: Blade Runner (Ridley Scott)
Other nominees: Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg), The Thing (John Carpenter), The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese)
1983
Winner: Sans Soleil (Chris Marker)
Other nominees: L'Argent (Robert Bresson), Videodrome (David Cronenberg), Nostalgia (Andrei Tarkovsky), A Nos Amours (Maurice Pialat)
1984
Winner: Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone)
Other nominees: Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders), Love Streams (John Cassavetes), Amadeus (Milos Forman), Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch)
1985
Winner: Shoah (Claude Lanzmann)
Other nominees: Come and See (Elem Klimov), Ran (Akira Kurosawa), Vagabond (Agnes Varda), Brazil (Terry Gilliam)
1986
Winner: Blue Velvet (David Lynch)
Other nominees: The Green Ray (Eric Rohmer), The Sacrifice (Andrei Tarkovsky), Aliens (James Cameron), Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen)
1987
Winner: Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders)
Other nominees: Where is the Friend's House (Abbas Kiarostami), The Dead (John Huston), Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson), Yeelen (Souleymanne Cisse)
1988
Winner: My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki)
Other nominees: Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore), Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies), The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris), Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata)
1989
Winner: Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
Other nominees: A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien), Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen), When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner), The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (Peter Greenaway)
1990
Winner: Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami)
Other nominees: Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese), Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai), An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion), Paris is Burning (Jessie Livingston)
1991
Winner: A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang)
Other nominees: Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash), The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieslowski), The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme), Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou)
1992
Winner: Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood)
Other nominees: The Quince Tree Sun (Victor Erice), Orlando (Sally Potter), Life, and Nothing More (Abbas Kiarostami), Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino)
1993
Winner: The Piano (Jane Campion)
Other nominees: Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg), Three Colors: Blue (Krzysztof Kieslowski), Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis), The Puppetmaster (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
1994
Winner: Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino)
Other nominees: Satantango (Bela Tarr), Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai), Three Colors: Red (Krzysztof Kieslowski), Through the Olive Tree (Abbas Kiarostami)
1995
Winner: Heat (Michael Mann)
Other nominees: Underground (Emir Kusturica), Safe (Todd Haynes), Casino (Martin Scorsese), Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch)
1996
Winner: Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier)
Other nominees: Fargo (Joel Coen), A Moment of Innocence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf), Secrets and Lies (Mike Leigh), Crash (David Cronenberg)
1997
Winner: Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami)
Other nominees: Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai), Lost Highway (David Lynch), Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson), Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki)
1998
Winner: Histoire(s) du Cinema (Jean-Luc Godard)
Other nominees: The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick), The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen), The Celebration (Thomas Vinterberg), Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
1999
Winner: Beau Travail (Claire Denis)
Other nominees: Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson), The Matrix (Wachowskis), Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick), All About My Mother (Pedro Almodovar)
2000
Winner: In The Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai)
Other nominees: Yi Yi (Edward Yang), The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda), Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr), In Vanda's Room (Pedro Costa)
2001
Winner: Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
Other nominees: Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki), La Ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel), A.I: Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg), The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson)
2002
Winner: City of God (Fernando Meirelles)
Other nominees: Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (Wang Bing), Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar), Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sukurov), Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay)
2003
Winner: Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang)
Other nominees: Dogville (Lars von Trier), Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola), Elephant (Gus van Sant), Oldboy (Park Chan-wook)
2004
Winner: Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Other nominees: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry), The Intruder (Claire Denis), Before Sunset (Richard Linklater), Sideways (Alexander Payne)
2005
Winner: Caché (Michael Haneke)
Other nominees: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu), Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee), The New World (Terrence Malick), Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog)
2006
Winner: Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Other nominees: Inland Empire (David Lynch), Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro), The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck), Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron)
2007
Winner: There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Other nominees: No Country for Old Men (Coens), Zodiac (David Fincher), Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas), 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
2008
Winner: The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel)
Other nominees: WALL-E (Andrew Stanton), Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman), The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan), Hunger (Steve McQueen)
2009
Winner: The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
Other nominees: A Prophet (Jacques Audiard), Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold), Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino), Avatar (James Cameron)
2010
Winner: Uncle Boonmee (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Other nominees: Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzman), The Social Network (David Fincher), Mysteries of Lisbon (Raul Ruiz), Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
2011
Winner: The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
Other nominees: A Separation (Asghar Farhadi), Melancholia (Lars von Trier), The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr), Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
2012
Winner: Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
Other nominees: The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer), The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson), Amour (Michael Haneke), Tabu (Miguel Gomes)
2013
Winner: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
Other nominees: The Great Beauty (Paolo Sorrentino), Blue is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche), Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski), 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
2014
Winner: Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
Other nominees: Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard), The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson), Girlhood (Celine Sciamma), Interstellar (Christopher Nolan)
2015
Winner: Mad Max; Fury Road (George Miller)
Other nominees: Carol (Todd Haynes), Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong Weerasethakul), The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien), No Home Movie (Chantal Akerman)
2016
Winner: Moonlight (Barry Jenkins)
Other nominees: Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade), American Honey (Andrea Arnold), Arrival (Denis Villeneuve), Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt)
2017
Winner: Get Out (Jordan Peele)
Other nominees: Zama (Lucrecia Martel), Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson), You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay), Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig)
2018
Winner: Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)
Other nominees: Happy as Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher), Burning (Lee Chang-dong), An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo), Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
2019
Winner: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Celine Sciamma)
Other nominees: Parasite (Bong Joon-ho), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino), Atlantics (Mati Diop), First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)
2020
Winner: Nomadland (Chloe Zhao)
Other nominees: Time (Garrett Bradley), Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hitman), Days (Tsai Ming-liang), Quo Vadis, Aida? (Jasmila Zbanic)
2021
Winner: Petite Maman (Celine Sciamma)
Other nominees: The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion), Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi), Titane (Julia Docournau), Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
submitted by mostreliablebottle to movies [link] [comments]
With the recently updated TSPDT and the 2022 S&S list, I decided to do the same from 1940 to 2021 regarding what critics thought were the best of each year.
Keep in mind this is all from a critics' poll, not from one specific critic's list. Also no short films or miniseries (meaning no Twin Peaks or Meshes of the Afternoon), as well as those from 2022 and beyond because of the last S&S poll.
With all that in mind, let's begin.
1940
Winner: His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks)
Other nominees: The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin), The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford), The Shop Around The Corner (Ernst Lubitsch), The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor)
1941
Winner: Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
Other nominees: The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges), Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges), The Maltese Falcon (John Houston), How Green Was My Valley (John Ford)
1942
Winner: Casablanca (Michael Curtiz)
Other nominees: The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles), To Be Or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch), The Palm Springs Story (Preston Sturges), Cat People (Jacques Tourneur)
1943
Winner: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell and Pressburger)
Other nominees: Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer), Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock), I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur), Ossessione (Luchino Visconti)
1944
Winner: Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder)
Other nominees: Ivan the Terrible, Part I (Sergei Eisenstein), Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli), A Canterbury Tale (Powell and Pressburger), To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks)
1945
Winner: Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné)
Other nominees: Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini), Brief Encounter (David Lean), I Know Where I'm Going (Powell and Pressburger) Les Dames du bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson)
1946
Winner: It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra)
Other nominees: A Matter of Life and Death (Powell and Pressburger), Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock), My Darling Clementine (John Ford), Paisan (Roberto Rossellini)
1947
Winner: Black Narcissus (Powell and Pressburger)
Other nominees: Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur), Monsieur Verdoux (Charlie Chaplin), The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
1948
Winner: Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica)
Other nominees: The Red Shoes (Powell and Pressburger), Letters from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls), Spring in a Small Town (Mu Fei), Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini)
1949
Winner: The Third Man (Carol Reed)
Other nominees: Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu), Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford), White Heat (Raoul Walsh)
1950
Winner Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa)
Other nominees; Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder), All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), Los Olvidados (Luis Buñuel), In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray)
1951
Winner: The River (Jean Renoir)
Other nominees: Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson), Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De Sica), Early Summer (Yasujirō Ozu), Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock)
1952
Winner: Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly)
Other nominees: Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa), Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica), The Life of Oharu (Kenji Mizoguchi), The Quiet Man (John Ford)
1953
Winner: Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu)
Other nominees: Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi), The Earrings of Madame de (Max Ophüls), The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli), Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (Jacques Tati)
1954
Winner: Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa)
Other nominees: Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock), Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini), La Strada (Federico Fellini), Sansho the Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi)
1955
Winner: Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Other nominees: The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton), Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray), All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Kirk), Floating Clouds (Mikio Naruse)
1956
Winner: The Searchers (John Ford)
Other nominees: A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson), Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk), Aparajito (Satyajit Ray), Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray)
1957
Winner: Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman)
Other nominees: The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman), Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini), Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa), Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick)
1958
Winner Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
Other nominees: Touch of Evil (Orson Welles), Ashes and Diamonds (Andrzej Wajda), Ivan the Terrible, Part II (Sergei Eisenstein), The Music Room (Satyajit Ray)
1959
Winner: The 400 Blows (François Truffaut)
Other nominees: Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder), North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock), Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks), Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)
1960
Winner: Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard)
Other nominees: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock), La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini), L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni), The Apartment (Billy Wilder)
1961
Winner: Viridiana (Luis Buñuel)
Other nominees: Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais), La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni), West Side Story (Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins), Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa)
1962
Winner: Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean)
Other nominees: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford), Jules and Jim (François Truffaut), Cléo from 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda), L'Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni)
1963
Winner 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini)
Other nominees: Le Mepris (Jean-Luc Godard), The Leopard (Luchino Visconti), The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock), The Executioner (Luis García Berlanga)
1964
Winner: Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick)
Other nominees: Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer), The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy), Black God, White Devil (Glauber Rocha)
1965
Winner: Pierrot Le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard)
Other nominees: Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles), Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Parajanov), Le Bonheur (Agnes Varda), Doctor Zhivago (David Lean)
1966
Winner: Persona (Ingmar Bergman)
Other nominees: Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky), Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson), The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo), Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni)
1967
Winner: Playtime (Jacques Tati)
Other nominees: Mouchette (Robert Bresson), Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville), Belle de Jour (Luis Buñuel), The Graduate (Mike Nichols)
1968
Winner: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
Other nominees: Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone), Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski), Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea), Faces (John Cassavetes)
1969
Winner: The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)
Other nominees: The Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov), Kes (Ken Loach), My Night at Maud's (Eric Rohmer), Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville)
1970
Winner: The Conformist (Bernado Bertolucci)
Other nominees: Wanda (Barbara Loden), Performance (Nicholas Roeg), Husbands (John Cassavetes), Tristana (Luis Buñuel)
1971
Winner: A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick)
Other nominees: Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman), A Touch of Zen (King Hu), Out 1 (Jacques Rivette)
1972
Winner: The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola)
Other nominees: Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog), Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel), Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky)
1973
Winner: Amarcord (Federico Fellini)
Other nominees: The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache), The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice), Don't Look Now (Nicholas Roeg), Badlands (Terrence Malick)
1974
Winner: The Godfather: Part II (Francis Ford Coppola)
Other nominees: Chinatown (Roman Polanski), A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes), Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
1975
Winner: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman)
Other nominees: Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky), Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick), Nashville (Robert Altman), Jaws (Steven Spielberg)
1976
Winner: Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
Other nominees: News from Home (Chantal Akerman), Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders), In the Realm of Senses (Nagisa Oshima), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes)
1977
Winner: Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
Other nominees: Star Wars (George Lucas), Close Encounter of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg), Eraserhead (David Lynch), The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko)
1978
Winner: Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
Other nominees: Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick), The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino), The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi), In a Year with 13 Moons (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
1979
Winner: Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola)
Other nominees: Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky), Alien (Ridley Scott), Manhattan (Woody Allen), All That Jazz (Bob Fosse)
1980
Winner: Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese)
Other nominees: The Shining (Stanley Kubrick), The Empire Strike Back (Irvin Kershner), Heaven's Gate (Michael Cimino), The Elephant Man (David Lynch)
1981
Winner: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg)
Other nominees: Possession (Andrzej Żuławski), Blow Out (Brian de Palma), Mad Max 2 (George Miller), An American Werewolf in London (John Landis)
1982
Winner: Blade Runner (Ridley Scott)
Other nominees: Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg), The Thing (John Carpenter), The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese)
1983
Winner: Sans Soleil (Chris Marker)
Other nominees: L'Argent (Robert Bresson), Videodrome (David Cronenberg), Nostalgia (Andrei Tarkovsky), A Nos Amours (Maurice Pialat)
1984
Winner: Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone)
Other nominees: Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders), Love Streams (John Cassavetes), Amadeus (Milos Forman), Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch)
1985
Winner: Shoah (Claude Lanzmann)
Other nominees: Come and See (Elem Klimov), Ran (Akira Kurosawa), Vagabond (Agnes Varda), Brazil (Terry Gilliam)
1986
Winner: Blue Velvet (David Lynch)
Other nominees: The Green Ray (Eric Rohmer), The Sacrifice (Andrei Tarkovsky), Aliens (James Cameron), Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen)
1987
Winner: Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders)
Other nominees: Where is the Friend's House (Abbas Kiarostami), The Dead (John Huston), Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson), Yeelen (Souleymanne Cisse)
1988
Winner: My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki)
Other nominees: Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore), Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies), The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris), Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata)
1989
Winner: Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
Other nominees: A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien), Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen), When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner), The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (Peter Greenaway)
1990
Winner: Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami)
Other nominees: Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese), Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai), An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion), Paris is Burning (Jessie Livingston)
1991
Winner: A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang)
Other nominees: Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash), The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieslowski), The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme), Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou)
1992
Winner: Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood)
Other nominees: The Quince Tree Sun (Victor Erice), Orlando (Sally Potter), Life, and Nothing More (Abbas Kiarostami), Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino)
1993
Winner: The Piano (Jane Campion)
Other nominees: Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg), Three Colors: Blue (Krzysztof Kieslowski), Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis), The Puppetmaster (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
1994
Winner: Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino)
Other nominees: Satantango (Bela Tarr), Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai), Three Colors: Red (Krzysztof Kieslowski), Through the Olive Tree (Abbas Kiarostami)
1995
Winner: Heat (Michael Mann)
Other nominees: Underground (Emir Kusturica), Safe (Todd Haynes), Casino (Martin Scorsese), Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch)
1996
Winner: Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier)
Other nominees: Fargo (Joel Coen), A Moment of Innocence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf), Secrets and Lies (Mike Leigh), Crash (David Cronenberg)
1997
Winner: Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami)
Other nominees: Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai), Lost Highway (David Lynch), Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson), Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki)
1998
Winner: Histoire(s) du Cinema (Jean-Luc Godard)
Other nominees: The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick), The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen), The Celebration (Thomas Vinterberg), Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
1999
Winner: Beau Travail (Claire Denis)
Other nominees: Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson), The Matrix (Wachowskis), Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick), All About My Mother (Pedro Almodovar)
2000
Winner: In The Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai)
Other nominees: Yi Yi (Edward Yang), The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda), Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr), In Vanda's Room (Pedro Costa)
2001
Winner: Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
Other nominees: Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki), La Ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel), A.I: Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg), The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson)
2002
Winner: City of God (Fernando Meirelles)
Other nominees: Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (Wang Bing), Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar), Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sukurov), Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay)
2003
Winner: Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang)
Other nominees: Dogville (Lars von Trier), Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola), Elephant (Gus van Sant), Oldboy (Park Chan-wook)
2004
Winner: Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Other nominees: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry), The Intruder (Claire Denis), Before Sunset (Richard Linklater), Sideways (Alexander Payne)
2005
Winner: Caché (Michael Haneke)
Other nominees: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu), Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee), The New World (Terrence Malick), Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog)
2006
Winner: Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Other nominees: Inland Empire (David Lynch), Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro), The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck), Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron)
2007
Winner: There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Other nominees: No Country for Old Men (Coens), Zodiac (David Fincher), Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas), 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
2008
Winner: The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel)
Other nominees: WALL-E (Andrew Stanton), Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman), The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan), Hunger (Steve McQueen)
2009
Winner: The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
Other nominees: A Prophet (Jacques Audiard), Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold), Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino), Avatar (James Cameron)
2010
Winner: Uncle Boonmee (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Other nominees: Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzman), The Social Network (David Fincher), Mysteries of Lisbon (Raul Ruiz), Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
2011
Winner: The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
Other nominees: A Separation (Asghar Farhadi), Melancholia (Lars von Trier), The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr), Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
2012
Winner: Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
Other nominees: The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer), The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson), Amour (Michael Haneke), Tabu (Miguel Gomes)
2013
Winner: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
Other nominees: The Great Beauty (Paolo Sorrentino), Blue is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche), Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski), 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
2014
Winner: Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
Other nominees: Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard), The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson), Girlhood (Celine Sciamma), Interstellar (Christopher Nolan)
2015
Winner: Mad Max; Fury Road (George Miller)
Other nominees: Carol (Todd Haynes), Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong Weerasethakul), The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien), No Home Movie (Chantal Akerman)
2016
Winner: Moonlight (Barry Jenkins)
Other nominees: Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade), American Honey (Andrea Arnold), Arrival (Denis Villeneuve), Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt)
2017
Winner: Get Out (Jordan Peele)
Other nominees: Zama (Lucrecia Martel), Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson), You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay), Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig)
2018
Winner: Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)
Other nominees: Happy as Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher), Burning (Lee Chang-dong), An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo), Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
2019
Winner: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Celine Sciamma)
Other nominees: Parasite (Bong Joon-ho), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino), Atlantics (Mati Diop), First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)
2020
Winner: Nomadland (Chloe Zhao)
Other nominees: Time (Garrett Bradley), Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hitman), Days (Tsai Ming-liang), Quo Vadis, Aida? (Jasmila Zbanic)
2021
Winner: Petite Maman (Celine Sciamma)
Other nominees: The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion), Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi), Titane (Julia Docournau), Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
2023.05.27 02:59 Cheeky-Monkey-Tees Briggs and Stratton V-Twin Fuel Pump Pulse Hose Life Expectancy
 | Briggs and Stratton V-Twin Fuel Pump Pulse Hose Life Expectancy submitted by Cheeky-Monkey-Tees to smallenginerepair [link] [comments] Part Number 596163 What is the expected life span of Briggs and Stratton 596163 which is the fuel pump pulse hose between the valve cover and the fuel pump on B&S twins such as 44S977-0019-G1, 44S9, 44U6, 44S8, and others? I have had to replace the hose on John Deere D170 at least once a year and sometimes twice a year due to cracking and leaking. I would appreciate it if you could support me in building Karma by upvoting my original post above. Your assistance is greatly appreciated. Thank you. Hose 596163 Engine 596163 |
2023.05.26 06:26 Gadburn SCP 63
Baggage
Liberation Day Plus Fifteen.
:Carlos Hernandez, [Redacted]:
"Are ya ready lads?"
"Aye Aye, Captain!" Despite the hearty cheer, the rest of the boys were fidgeting, and anxious to begin.
"Good, now let's finish this." Normally Murphy would play along, and shout the next part of the iconic line, but like the Irishmen said, they weren’t here to fuck around.
Though no one had said it out loud, if the old centaur and his woo woo Harry Potter shit didn't pan out, they'd all be in for a fate far worse than death.
An eternity of torment and pain would be their reward for their failure, and worse… that thing would be free again.
"The second stage of the wardstone is ready to commence." The finely sculpted obelisk glowed with an otherworldly light and began purging both seen and unseen corruption.
"Looks like you're up, horseman." The younger horse and deer people bristled at the borderline disrespectful words directed at their spiritual leader.
To be fair, if someone called the Pope a man in a dress, he might take offence as well. Not that he was particularly religious, but it was the principle of the matter.
"I look forward to expunging such a vile entity from this world, Englishman." Goliath and Roo fought back laughter as their intrepid leader had to bite his own tongue for once.
The thick lead door soon began to rise to the sound of churning gears, and Tengri stave in hand led his acolytes forward.
Holding their breath they all watched, and waited. The dwarf was next to enter, then it was their turn.
The bright lights of the room were blinding at first, but as their eyes adjusted they witnessed the once terrifying creature spasming and writhing on the floor of its cold metal prison.
Clearly the Dwarven artefact had done its job well.
Within moments Tengri and the others began their purification ceremony. Chanting, handwaving, glowing eyes, all that jazz…
In response, inhuman screams and howls erupted from the cowering and grotesque looking anomaly.
The dark coloured bile-like slime which had previously covered its body, half heartedly clung to its, and soon began evaporating into wisps of black smoke, leaving behind a gaunt and emaciated humanoid.
The first attempt at exercising the ‘Old Man’ was only partially successful, but fortunately Tengri and his followers had more than enough gas in the tank for another few rounds.
The second round of chanting soon came to an end, followed by the third, and the fourth.
After just shy of half an hour the quivering, whimpering, and sickly humanoid lay curled up in the foetal position, in a vain attempt to hide itself.
By the fifth round, the puta even had the audacity to begin pleading, it moved to its knees, hands clasped together as if in prayer. He could feel something inside snap, and punted the carechimba with his steel toed combat boots.
A satisfying thunk filled the room, and except for Murphy, everyone including himself froze at the outburst. Though, aside from the monster’s head snapping back, nothing happened.
It was almost impossible to resist the urge to continue, but Murphy had already allowed him one good hit without a word, two would be pushing it. The fact that the old Irishmen hadn’t immediately stepped in was more than he could have asked for.
Murphy never allowed for anything less than the highest levels of professionalism, personal feelings were not to be a part of what they did. That’s why the man’s next words came as such an utter shock.
“Don’t stop on my account lad, go on.”
“Wh…what??”
“The fooker never gave any of ‘is victims no mercy, why should he get any?” A cruel and feral look overtook the man’s normally blank and uninterested face.
“I said… get to it!” With a shout, a size eleven boot came down hard with a crunch on the wretched creature.
After that, the floodgates opened.
He wasn’t sure how long the brutal beatdown lasted, but after some time each of the Foundation operatives backed away, their breathing ragged.
Despite their best efforts, very little visible damage could be seen, and once again the rage burned inside him.
Peeling off the black mask he knelt down, and grabbed the thing by the neck.
“Do you remember me, cabrón!?” It gazed blankly back at him with no spark of realisation, or any indication it recognised him.
How could it just act like it didn’t remember!? Slamming its head against the lead floor gave off a squelching crunch.
“What about the boy!?” Again he slammed its head against the metal floor.
“What about Dex?! Parker!? Vic?! Fletcher!?” For each name shouted, another crunch echoed off the walls.
“Are you fucking smiling now!?” A large pair of clawed hands grabbed him around the arm and another around the chest from behind.
In his rage, he almost took a swing at Moro and Pops who had begun dragging him off.
After all the years with the spectre of this thing hanging over his head, the nightmares, and jumping at shadows. To finally vent all the bottled up feelings he’d been carrying since that horrible night…
Fletcher should have been here for this.
“Feel better, Hernandez?” No one had called him that since entering into the Foundation’s service. For years… all he had been was a man with no name, no identity.
How did he feel? He felt like a sedan had just been lifted off him, he felt lighter, and freer than anytime in the last several years.
With a deep ragged breath he let the two members of his unit pull him away.
“Yes, Sir.”
“That’s what I like ta hear.” Without missing a beat, Murphy turned back towards the centaur shaman.
“Hit him again, Tengri.” The ‘Old Man’ recoiled harder from those words than any of the physical blows it had been dealt.
Their allies from beyond the Gate began the seventh round of the ceremony without hesitation, and he was delighted to witness that it could in fact get worse for their prisoner.
After they finished, Murphy knelt down to speak with the creature.
“Ya know how this ends, ya fooker. Give us what we want an it all stops.” That was news to him, hadn’t this just been an execution? What could the Foundation want from it?
“Let those poor bastards out.” It hesitated only for a brief moment before waving a trembling hand.
Human beings began materialising all over the room. It was… it was hard to look at them in the state they were in.
They were in ragged clothes, which hardly covered them at all. Welts, sores, and other marks of torture and abuse were clearly visible as well. None made a sound, or responded to finally being free. How anything could have survived for so long was a question he did not want the answer to, nor What unimaginable horrors they had been subjected to.
Among them were two familiar faces, he shook and quivered while sucking in a breath of air. It was hard to even look at them, as one of the deerwomen tended to them.
As the last of the people finished appearing Murphy nodded to Tengri
A beam of blinding white light erupted from the tip of the shaman's staff and pierced SCP one zero six through the chest. It didn't even have time to scream one final time as it was blasted from this world.
Nothing remained of its body, not even ashes.
It was over, it was finally over.
:Four, London Airport:
"So it's done? Excellent, you take the boys to our special spot, and have a few cold ones for me."
"No, I'm sure. Enjoy yourselves, I'll be in touch. Viel Spaß, Kameraden."
England was just as dreary as the past dozen or so times he'd visited. Opening the umbrella, he stepped outside into the rain.
It was a little frightening just how adaptable Humanity was. The revelations of magic, aliens, and fantastical creatures had done little to get in the way of the day to day rat race.
As he stood waiting for the bus, a man with a truly marvellous moustache and a rather long nose approached.
"A fine English morning, wouldn't you agree?" He offered in greeting.
"It's raining cats and dogs out here, I'd hate to see what you consider a bad day!" They both shared a polite laugh.
"So my good man, what can I do for you?"
"You… you don't know me?" After studying the man's face more closely, nothing jumped out at him.
"I'm afraid I do not, if we have met before, I offer my sincere apologies. I meet a great many people." The man wasn’t exactly disappointed, but more so surprised.
"I see, what about those people there? Do any of them seem familiar to you?" In recent years it had become less common for people to recognise him from old pictures or history textbooks; however it still occasionally occurred.
But to experience the reverse was a novel experience.
"Hmmm, let me see."
There was a tall, finely dressed blond man, with a strong looking physique. To his left was a refined woman sporting long black hair, bright red lips, and sharp narrow eyes.
Neither seemed familiar, onto the others then.
To the right of the blonde man, stood a slightly shorter olive skinned man with long brown hair who had an arm wrapped around a scrawny and twitchy bespectacled young man with poor posture.
"I'm afraid that I don't recognize any of them, but now you've got me curious. Where do you think I know you from?"
"You were in charge of us at the ISTC in Pfullendorf for SOF training."
"Ah, I see. Then you have my apologies, I was a right bastard there."
"You were certainly intense, and demanding but not unfair." That was always the hardest thing to balance.
Being too tough would result in those under your command resenting you, and the authority you represented; however, being too lenient would only aid them in receiving a swift end.
At some point fairness had to yield to reality, and sometimes even cruelty, for every lesson no matter how harsh learned while in the safety of training was one that could save a recruit while in the field.
"You know I recall being masked up in front of all my classes and field tests."
"Yes, you were. As I recall, even in the showers." He had offered some extra incentives to those who could unmask him, but none had been able to meet the challenge, or so he thought.
"Now that I've scratched that itch, what are you doing here?"
"I'm afraid, I'm not at liberty to say."
"Shame, maybe I could have assisted."
"It truly is." The man withdrew an antique pocket watch from his breast pocket and sighed.
"That time?
"Afraid so."
"It was nice speaking to you Bill." The man gazed wide eyed for a moment, then chuckled.
"The name's John."
"Sorry, you just have that 'Bill' look about you."
"There are worse things to bear a resemblance to, I suppose" they both shared a good laugh, then shook hands.
He watched as 'Bill' and his friends departed. It was a strange interaction, perhaps he'd look into them later.
As the rain fell in puddles around him, a rather interesting idea occurred. Pulling out his old Nokia, he punched in Murphy's number.
"Hey, you remember that giant one eyed bastard's declaration? I've got an idea" By the time he was done explaining, Murphy was howling on the other end.
"I figured that you would approve, I'll keep you apprised, enjoy your time off."
Just as Murphy hung up, an old red double decker bus pulled up to the stop. He was comfortably ahead of schedule, and was looking forward to going at a slightly less hectic pace for once.
:Tra’lak Hel’vek, London’s School for Magical Education and Research:
"That's good, concentrate, feel the power flow through you." It was utterly exhausting keeping the tiny flame lit.
"Don't be so tense, relax, trust yourself, and the flame. Let it grow, you are its maker, its guardian, nurture it, and when it grows strong, it will remember."
"I…ugh, I can't." It hadn't even been half a minute yet.
After a few more seconds, the black and gold flame vanished into a wisp of smoke.
At first he had been ecstatic to be free of the Empire, his House, and to be learning this strange ‘magic’, but everyone else in the class was passing him by.
He flinched as a sturdy hand came down on his shoulder.
"Don't you worry, young man, it just takes time. Don't lose heart, If magic were easy, everyone would be an archmage!" The old hairy human's oversized gut shook as he let out a deep bellowing laugh.
Did the males of this world care so little about their appearance they would allow themselves to become so out of shape and unkempt?
“Now get cleaned up, and we can begin with the theory part of the class." Most of the younger students booed while the older ones nodded in appreciation.
An hour passed by quickly as he took down notes with the archaic writing implement. Why they wouldn't let them use electronics was beyond his understanding.
Letting out a deep sigh as his fellow 'classmates' stumbled off towards the next lesson, he once again noticed most of them were older adults who, like himself, required 'special' attention.
According to the instructors, the younger you were when you began your training, the easier it would be to advance. As a person aged, they became more rigid in their thinking, and it became harder for new ideas and perspectives to permeate and develop.
“Oh my God, Tray! I’ve been waiting for the whole class to tell you how cute your nails look!” Though there were a fair number of people older than him, there were quite a few people his own age and younger.
Flicking out his hands he gave his best diva impression, haughty look included. To be fair, it was already a mastered act.
“Who needs to be good at magic, when I've got looks like these, girls!” The teenagers just giggled and performed their own mock version, flicking their hair and posing as well.
The three teenagers had been such a breath of fresh air. While he had been relatively cautious around Melony, Sandra, and Victoria initially, his concerns about them being girls were short lived.
It was more than a little jarring to see them behaving like Shil’vati boys their age, and when those of his own sex downright avoided him, he couldn't really be all that picky.
Males were never really ‘friends’, but when all you had were thirsty or overprotective women in your life, even fake friends were a necessity.
Human women on the other hand were simply lovely to be around, all their compliments felt genuine, and they were more than happy to help a gu- er girl out.
The one thing they definitely had in common though with the rest of the galaxy’s boys, was being absolute gossip princes, and they were absolutely vicious! Ah, it was like being back at the academy.
“Sooo, Melony overheard you talking to your ‘friend’.”
“Oooh, did she now?” He cast an imperious look towards the pale human with light brown hair , who immediately blushed red and covered her face. While they were clearly interested in the opposite sex, it seemed that those desires weren't directed at him.
“Can the Tyra Banks routine. We know you’ve got a hot boyfriend, and we want the deets.” A… what?
“Yeah what Vicky said, and we want to know if he’s got any cute friends!” Sandra asked while eagerly leaning in.
“I want to see who could possibly be in your league!” Victoria interrupted again.
“Wait, you think I'm a.. you think I’m that way?!” All three of the teen girls nodded emphatically and squealed.
“I mean look at you, perfect hair, makeup, nails, clothes, you probably spend like an hour getting ready to go out.”
“Two. Minimum.” he accidentally let slip.
“Told you Sandra, and nobody wears pants that are that tight and colourful if they aren't, well… you know.”
“So I like to look good, what's the problem with that!? None of that means I am-” He was beyond flustered now.
“He was sending you pics from the gym, and you were going on about how big and strong his muscles were." Goddess preserve, hot women had muscles where he was from!
"Yeah, and when he got back, he was taking you somewhere nice and-"
“Have you two done it!? Melony blurted out, seemingly having rebounded from her prior embarrassment.
“Are you a top or a bottom, I mean it's cool either way…” Now it was his turn to blush hard. These girls weren’t even near the age of majority, how did they even know about stuff like that!?
"Okay, that's about enough of that. Stop badgering the poor boy!" Professor Faust exclaimed loudly with a grin on his bushy face before ushering the trio away.
“Bu-”
“No buts, off with you!” Sandra turned back and silently motioned that she would call him later before they all dispersed out of the door.
What a mess, he’d show them Olreev later.
"Good kids, but that social media stuff and reality TV has definitely rotted their brains."
"Though I thank you for the assistance, I am not a child, Professor." The human brushed off his less than polite response with a wave of his hand.
"You live as long as I have, and everyone might as well be straight off their mother's teat!" Another immortal, here?
"Oh i'm not one of those mad bastards, just got lucky some years back after creating a rather special stone, never could do it again though. Nothing really special in me, like them." Well reading minds doesn't count apparently.
"'Not a mind reader either, heheheh."
"I see…"
"Glad to hear it! Now let's see a picture of your lovely lady!" The joyful smile grew even wider.
What could be the harm? Plus Olreev would get a kick out of the whole story, then he could ask why in the deepest depths anyone could think he was a homosexual.
The human let out two long high pitch whistles.
"That is not appropriate, Professor." Perhaps he shouldn't have shown Faust the ones of her doing leg presses and squats.
"What? I'm old not dead young fella! She's gorgeous!
"Of course she is!' He proudly exclaimed.
“Sounds like you’re quite taken with her.”
“She is the most important person in my life.” He couldn't stop the boyish smile from worming its way across his face.
“Maybe after she gets back, I'll pay her a visit, show her what a real man can do.” The friendly and jovial atmosphere surrounding them turned frigid.
“...What did you say…”
“You heard me, boy.” The once gentle hand grabbed him roughly and lifted him well off the ground. Why?! What in the Deep was going on!?
“She’s a strong looking woman, deserves more than you’re weak… effeminate carcass.” He could feel himself heating up, burning…
“You think… she’d leave me for an unwashed boar like you?!” Diffusing the situation was the smart thing to do, not provoke the human further.
“No, not likely while you’re still alive. I’ll be sure to console her afterwards.” Anger, rage, and hate consumed his mind.
“Oh poor Tray, he was such a promising student. I told him to be careful, I told him not to practise by himself, he wasn’t ready yet. It saddens me greatly that he was consumed by his own flames…” The professor threw him roughly to the ground, and conjured blue fire around his hands.
“I’ll have to make sure not to laugh, your flames are just as pathetic as you are, I doubt they'd even be able to roast a marshmallow.”
“You won't so much as even look at her!”
“I want you to know, I’m going to enjoy her whether she likes it or not, maybe those young girls too. They’re just so eager and full of life!”
“I’ll kill you!”
“AHHHHH!” Black and gold flames erupted alongside his primal scream. The fire washed over the disgusting human, until the disgusting deviant was completely enveloped
Collapsing back to the ground, he looked on in horror as the psychopath stood completely unharmed.
“Merlin’s beard, lad. That was goddamn impressive!” Much of the classroom was charred black, despite it being highly resistant to any kind of damage, physical or otherwise.
His mouth flapped open and shut in shock as he was picked back up off the ground, and returned to his feet.
“Shit, I… fuck lad, I don’t like doing that. Don’t tell no one I pushed you that far. You, you're like me-”
His fist slammed into professor Faust’s chin.
“I am nothing like you!” The fire inside burned, and raged, begging to be released again.
“Shit, your hand is probably broken, we’ll have to fix that as well.” What kind of metal was this brotherfucker made of?!
“I know you're pissed, give me a second to explain. You’re like me, you need to feel the fire to call it. I had to teach you in another way.”
“You call assaulting me, threatening to murder me, and force yourself on my woman teaching!?” The flames returned to his hands, hotter and fiercer than before.
“Fire… fire is both the protector and destroyer, it is the light in the dark and the all consuming blaze. The flame can be manifested within you, to empower and strengthen not just your physical form, but your heart as well, it can even be shared among those most important to you.
“Unfortunately such paths are not open to one such as yourself, your flame is one of destruction and wrath, just waiting to be unleashed. Your flame, unfortunately, will require a much more disciplined hand.”
“Even if any of that is true, you had no right to do ANY of that!”
“You must know from where your fire comes, if you do not, you and those you care for will be consumed in the Flame’s endless hunger.” The black fire spread up his arms and shoulders.
His whole life he'd been powerless, and even after all the grueling training he had undergone, it hadn't amounted to anything. When the humans had put their rockthrower against Olreev's, he couldn't do a damn thing.
“Your flame will grow wild if left unchecked, but under my guidance… you will burn worlds, or heat up your tea. Honestly, it’s your fire, and you can do whatever you want with it; however, as long as you're here, you're going to learn how to control it so that… doesn't happen outside.” His flames had fully engulfed him by now, and was now quite literally melting the floor.
“...Fine… But you won't ever speak about Her like that again.”
“By Zues’ shapeshifting cock, I’ll say whatever I please. My master burned down my village, set my dog on fire and threw me off a cliff, and you’re upset about words? Stop your bitching, and show me your fire, you pissant!”
Was the male still acting? It didnt matter, no one would EVER push him around again! The cunt wanted more, by the Deep Minder, he’d get more!
“I swear, if I have to get the bird involved in this…” Faust mumbled.
First / Next
Thank you to u/BlueFishcake for the setting and my editor u/0rreborre and to all those who have contributed to the SCP universe for years.
Carechimba - Popular Colombian insult meaning asshole, feel free to use any of the swears you see. I got your back.
Viel Spaß - Have fun in German. (Honestly, I didn't even know the Germans had a word for fun.)
Kameraden - I’m gonna go out on a limb, and guess that you all know this one.
ISTC - The International Special Training Centre for signatory nations, which include Germany, Belgium, Greece, the U.S., Norway, The Netherlands, Italy, Romania and Turkey, as well as other NATO allies.
Johann Georg Faust - also known in English as John Faustus was a German itinerant alchemist, astrologer, and magician of the German Renaissance. In the year 1506, there is a record of Faust appearing as performer of magical tricks and horoscopes in Gelnhausen. Over the following 30 years, Faust appeared as physician, doctor of philosophy, alchemist, magician and astrologer, and was often accused as a fraud. The church denounced him as a blasphemer in league with the devil. Faust had also supposedly joined Protestantism.
Oh no, Protestantism!
submitted by Gadburn to Sexyspacebabes [link] [comments]
Liberation Day Plus Fifteen.
:Carlos Hernandez, [Redacted]:
"Are ya ready lads?"
"Aye Aye, Captain!" Despite the hearty cheer, the rest of the boys were fidgeting, and anxious to begin.
"Good, now let's finish this." Normally Murphy would play along, and shout the next part of the iconic line, but like the Irishmen said, they weren’t here to fuck around.
Though no one had said it out loud, if the old centaur and his woo woo Harry Potter shit didn't pan out, they'd all be in for a fate far worse than death.
An eternity of torment and pain would be their reward for their failure, and worse… that thing would be free again.
"The second stage of the wardstone is ready to commence." The finely sculpted obelisk glowed with an otherworldly light and began purging both seen and unseen corruption.
"Looks like you're up, horseman." The younger horse and deer people bristled at the borderline disrespectful words directed at their spiritual leader.
To be fair, if someone called the Pope a man in a dress, he might take offence as well. Not that he was particularly religious, but it was the principle of the matter.
"I look forward to expunging such a vile entity from this world, Englishman." Goliath and Roo fought back laughter as their intrepid leader had to bite his own tongue for once.
The thick lead door soon began to rise to the sound of churning gears, and Tengri stave in hand led his acolytes forward.
Holding their breath they all watched, and waited. The dwarf was next to enter, then it was their turn.
The bright lights of the room were blinding at first, but as their eyes adjusted they witnessed the once terrifying creature spasming and writhing on the floor of its cold metal prison.
Clearly the Dwarven artefact had done its job well.
Within moments Tengri and the others began their purification ceremony. Chanting, handwaving, glowing eyes, all that jazz…
In response, inhuman screams and howls erupted from the cowering and grotesque looking anomaly.
The dark coloured bile-like slime which had previously covered its body, half heartedly clung to its, and soon began evaporating into wisps of black smoke, leaving behind a gaunt and emaciated humanoid.
The first attempt at exercising the ‘Old Man’ was only partially successful, but fortunately Tengri and his followers had more than enough gas in the tank for another few rounds.
The second round of chanting soon came to an end, followed by the third, and the fourth.
After just shy of half an hour the quivering, whimpering, and sickly humanoid lay curled up in the foetal position, in a vain attempt to hide itself.
By the fifth round, the puta even had the audacity to begin pleading, it moved to its knees, hands clasped together as if in prayer. He could feel something inside snap, and punted the carechimba with his steel toed combat boots.
A satisfying thunk filled the room, and except for Murphy, everyone including himself froze at the outburst. Though, aside from the monster’s head snapping back, nothing happened.
It was almost impossible to resist the urge to continue, but Murphy had already allowed him one good hit without a word, two would be pushing it. The fact that the old Irishmen hadn’t immediately stepped in was more than he could have asked for.
Murphy never allowed for anything less than the highest levels of professionalism, personal feelings were not to be a part of what they did. That’s why the man’s next words came as such an utter shock.
“Don’t stop on my account lad, go on.”
“Wh…what??”
“The fooker never gave any of ‘is victims no mercy, why should he get any?” A cruel and feral look overtook the man’s normally blank and uninterested face.
“I said… get to it!” With a shout, a size eleven boot came down hard with a crunch on the wretched creature.
After that, the floodgates opened.
He wasn’t sure how long the brutal beatdown lasted, but after some time each of the Foundation operatives backed away, their breathing ragged.
Despite their best efforts, very little visible damage could be seen, and once again the rage burned inside him.
Peeling off the black mask he knelt down, and grabbed the thing by the neck.
“Do you remember me, cabrón!?” It gazed blankly back at him with no spark of realisation, or any indication it recognised him.
How could it just act like it didn’t remember!? Slamming its head against the lead floor gave off a squelching crunch.
“What about the boy!?” Again he slammed its head against the metal floor.
“What about Dex?! Parker!? Vic?! Fletcher!?” For each name shouted, another crunch echoed off the walls.
“Are you fucking smiling now!?” A large pair of clawed hands grabbed him around the arm and another around the chest from behind.
In his rage, he almost took a swing at Moro and Pops who had begun dragging him off.
After all the years with the spectre of this thing hanging over his head, the nightmares, and jumping at shadows. To finally vent all the bottled up feelings he’d been carrying since that horrible night…
Fletcher should have been here for this.
“Feel better, Hernandez?” No one had called him that since entering into the Foundation’s service. For years… all he had been was a man with no name, no identity.
How did he feel? He felt like a sedan had just been lifted off him, he felt lighter, and freer than anytime in the last several years.
With a deep ragged breath he let the two members of his unit pull him away.
“Yes, Sir.”
“That’s what I like ta hear.” Without missing a beat, Murphy turned back towards the centaur shaman.
“Hit him again, Tengri.” The ‘Old Man’ recoiled harder from those words than any of the physical blows it had been dealt.
Their allies from beyond the Gate began the seventh round of the ceremony without hesitation, and he was delighted to witness that it could in fact get worse for their prisoner.
After they finished, Murphy knelt down to speak with the creature.
“Ya know how this ends, ya fooker. Give us what we want an it all stops.” That was news to him, hadn’t this just been an execution? What could the Foundation want from it?
“Let those poor bastards out.” It hesitated only for a brief moment before waving a trembling hand.
Human beings began materialising all over the room. It was… it was hard to look at them in the state they were in.
They were in ragged clothes, which hardly covered them at all. Welts, sores, and other marks of torture and abuse were clearly visible as well. None made a sound, or responded to finally being free. How anything could have survived for so long was a question he did not want the answer to, nor What unimaginable horrors they had been subjected to.
Among them were two familiar faces, he shook and quivered while sucking in a breath of air. It was hard to even look at them, as one of the deerwomen tended to them.
As the last of the people finished appearing Murphy nodded to Tengri
A beam of blinding white light erupted from the tip of the shaman's staff and pierced SCP one zero six through the chest. It didn't even have time to scream one final time as it was blasted from this world.
Nothing remained of its body, not even ashes.
It was over, it was finally over.
:Four, London Airport:
"So it's done? Excellent, you take the boys to our special spot, and have a few cold ones for me."
"No, I'm sure. Enjoy yourselves, I'll be in touch. Viel Spaß, Kameraden."
England was just as dreary as the past dozen or so times he'd visited. Opening the umbrella, he stepped outside into the rain.
It was a little frightening just how adaptable Humanity was. The revelations of magic, aliens, and fantastical creatures had done little to get in the way of the day to day rat race.
As he stood waiting for the bus, a man with a truly marvellous moustache and a rather long nose approached.
"A fine English morning, wouldn't you agree?" He offered in greeting.
"It's raining cats and dogs out here, I'd hate to see what you consider a bad day!" They both shared a polite laugh.
"So my good man, what can I do for you?"
"You… you don't know me?" After studying the man's face more closely, nothing jumped out at him.
"I'm afraid I do not, if we have met before, I offer my sincere apologies. I meet a great many people." The man wasn’t exactly disappointed, but more so surprised.
"I see, what about those people there? Do any of them seem familiar to you?" In recent years it had become less common for people to recognise him from old pictures or history textbooks; however it still occasionally occurred.
But to experience the reverse was a novel experience.
"Hmmm, let me see."
There was a tall, finely dressed blond man, with a strong looking physique. To his left was a refined woman sporting long black hair, bright red lips, and sharp narrow eyes.
Neither seemed familiar, onto the others then.
To the right of the blonde man, stood a slightly shorter olive skinned man with long brown hair who had an arm wrapped around a scrawny and twitchy bespectacled young man with poor posture.
"I'm afraid that I don't recognize any of them, but now you've got me curious. Where do you think I know you from?"
"You were in charge of us at the ISTC in Pfullendorf for SOF training."
"Ah, I see. Then you have my apologies, I was a right bastard there."
"You were certainly intense, and demanding but not unfair." That was always the hardest thing to balance.
Being too tough would result in those under your command resenting you, and the authority you represented; however, being too lenient would only aid them in receiving a swift end.
At some point fairness had to yield to reality, and sometimes even cruelty, for every lesson no matter how harsh learned while in the safety of training was one that could save a recruit while in the field.
"You know I recall being masked up in front of all my classes and field tests."
"Yes, you were. As I recall, even in the showers." He had offered some extra incentives to those who could unmask him, but none had been able to meet the challenge, or so he thought.
"Now that I've scratched that itch, what are you doing here?"
"I'm afraid, I'm not at liberty to say."
"Shame, maybe I could have assisted."
"It truly is." The man withdrew an antique pocket watch from his breast pocket and sighed.
"That time?
"Afraid so."
"It was nice speaking to you Bill." The man gazed wide eyed for a moment, then chuckled.
"The name's John."
"Sorry, you just have that 'Bill' look about you."
"There are worse things to bear a resemblance to, I suppose" they both shared a good laugh, then shook hands.
He watched as 'Bill' and his friends departed. It was a strange interaction, perhaps he'd look into them later.
As the rain fell in puddles around him, a rather interesting idea occurred. Pulling out his old Nokia, he punched in Murphy's number.
"Hey, you remember that giant one eyed bastard's declaration? I've got an idea" By the time he was done explaining, Murphy was howling on the other end.
"I figured that you would approve, I'll keep you apprised, enjoy your time off."
Just as Murphy hung up, an old red double decker bus pulled up to the stop. He was comfortably ahead of schedule, and was looking forward to going at a slightly less hectic pace for once.
:Tra’lak Hel’vek, London’s School for Magical Education and Research:
"That's good, concentrate, feel the power flow through you." It was utterly exhausting keeping the tiny flame lit.
"Don't be so tense, relax, trust yourself, and the flame. Let it grow, you are its maker, its guardian, nurture it, and when it grows strong, it will remember."
"I…ugh, I can't." It hadn't even been half a minute yet.
After a few more seconds, the black and gold flame vanished into a wisp of smoke.
At first he had been ecstatic to be free of the Empire, his House, and to be learning this strange ‘magic’, but everyone else in the class was passing him by.
He flinched as a sturdy hand came down on his shoulder.
"Don't you worry, young man, it just takes time. Don't lose heart, If magic were easy, everyone would be an archmage!" The old hairy human's oversized gut shook as he let out a deep bellowing laugh.
Did the males of this world care so little about their appearance they would allow themselves to become so out of shape and unkempt?
“Now get cleaned up, and we can begin with the theory part of the class." Most of the younger students booed while the older ones nodded in appreciation.
An hour passed by quickly as he took down notes with the archaic writing implement. Why they wouldn't let them use electronics was beyond his understanding.
Letting out a deep sigh as his fellow 'classmates' stumbled off towards the next lesson, he once again noticed most of them were older adults who, like himself, required 'special' attention.
According to the instructors, the younger you were when you began your training, the easier it would be to advance. As a person aged, they became more rigid in their thinking, and it became harder for new ideas and perspectives to permeate and develop.
“Oh my God, Tray! I’ve been waiting for the whole class to tell you how cute your nails look!” Though there were a fair number of people older than him, there were quite a few people his own age and younger.
Flicking out his hands he gave his best diva impression, haughty look included. To be fair, it was already a mastered act.
“Who needs to be good at magic, when I've got looks like these, girls!” The teenagers just giggled and performed their own mock version, flicking their hair and posing as well.
The three teenagers had been such a breath of fresh air. While he had been relatively cautious around Melony, Sandra, and Victoria initially, his concerns about them being girls were short lived.
It was more than a little jarring to see them behaving like Shil’vati boys their age, and when those of his own sex downright avoided him, he couldn't really be all that picky.
Males were never really ‘friends’, but when all you had were thirsty or overprotective women in your life, even fake friends were a necessity.
Human women on the other hand were simply lovely to be around, all their compliments felt genuine, and they were more than happy to help a gu- er girl out.
The one thing they definitely had in common though with the rest of the galaxy’s boys, was being absolute gossip princes, and they were absolutely vicious! Ah, it was like being back at the academy.
“Sooo, Melony overheard you talking to your ‘friend’.”
“Oooh, did she now?” He cast an imperious look towards the pale human with light brown hair , who immediately blushed red and covered her face. While they were clearly interested in the opposite sex, it seemed that those desires weren't directed at him.
“Can the Tyra Banks routine. We know you’ve got a hot boyfriend, and we want the deets.” A… what?
“Yeah what Vicky said, and we want to know if he’s got any cute friends!” Sandra asked while eagerly leaning in.
“I want to see who could possibly be in your league!” Victoria interrupted again.
“Wait, you think I'm a.. you think I’m that way?!” All three of the teen girls nodded emphatically and squealed.
“I mean look at you, perfect hair, makeup, nails, clothes, you probably spend like an hour getting ready to go out.”
“Two. Minimum.” he accidentally let slip.
“Told you Sandra, and nobody wears pants that are that tight and colourful if they aren't, well… you know.”
“So I like to look good, what's the problem with that!? None of that means I am-” He was beyond flustered now.
“He was sending you pics from the gym, and you were going on about how big and strong his muscles were." Goddess preserve, hot women had muscles where he was from!
"Yeah, and when he got back, he was taking you somewhere nice and-"
“Have you two done it!? Melony blurted out, seemingly having rebounded from her prior embarrassment.
“Are you a top or a bottom, I mean it's cool either way…” Now it was his turn to blush hard. These girls weren’t even near the age of majority, how did they even know about stuff like that!?
"Okay, that's about enough of that. Stop badgering the poor boy!" Professor Faust exclaimed loudly with a grin on his bushy face before ushering the trio away.
“Bu-”
“No buts, off with you!” Sandra turned back and silently motioned that she would call him later before they all dispersed out of the door.
What a mess, he’d show them Olreev later.
"Good kids, but that social media stuff and reality TV has definitely rotted their brains."
"Though I thank you for the assistance, I am not a child, Professor." The human brushed off his less than polite response with a wave of his hand.
"You live as long as I have, and everyone might as well be straight off their mother's teat!" Another immortal, here?
"Oh i'm not one of those mad bastards, just got lucky some years back after creating a rather special stone, never could do it again though. Nothing really special in me, like them." Well reading minds doesn't count apparently.
"'Not a mind reader either, heheheh."
"I see…"
"Glad to hear it! Now let's see a picture of your lovely lady!" The joyful smile grew even wider.
What could be the harm? Plus Olreev would get a kick out of the whole story, then he could ask why in the deepest depths anyone could think he was a homosexual.
The human let out two long high pitch whistles.
"That is not appropriate, Professor." Perhaps he shouldn't have shown Faust the ones of her doing leg presses and squats.
"What? I'm old not dead young fella! She's gorgeous!
"Of course she is!' He proudly exclaimed.
“Sounds like you’re quite taken with her.”
“She is the most important person in my life.” He couldn't stop the boyish smile from worming its way across his face.
“Maybe after she gets back, I'll pay her a visit, show her what a real man can do.” The friendly and jovial atmosphere surrounding them turned frigid.
“...What did you say…”
“You heard me, boy.” The once gentle hand grabbed him roughly and lifted him well off the ground. Why?! What in the Deep was going on!?
“She’s a strong looking woman, deserves more than you’re weak… effeminate carcass.” He could feel himself heating up, burning…
“You think… she’d leave me for an unwashed boar like you?!” Diffusing the situation was the smart thing to do, not provoke the human further.
“No, not likely while you’re still alive. I’ll be sure to console her afterwards.” Anger, rage, and hate consumed his mind.
“Oh poor Tray, he was such a promising student. I told him to be careful, I told him not to practise by himself, he wasn’t ready yet. It saddens me greatly that he was consumed by his own flames…” The professor threw him roughly to the ground, and conjured blue fire around his hands.
“I’ll have to make sure not to laugh, your flames are just as pathetic as you are, I doubt they'd even be able to roast a marshmallow.”
“You won't so much as even look at her!”
“I want you to know, I’m going to enjoy her whether she likes it or not, maybe those young girls too. They’re just so eager and full of life!”
“I’ll kill you!”
“AHHHHH!” Black and gold flames erupted alongside his primal scream. The fire washed over the disgusting human, until the disgusting deviant was completely enveloped
Collapsing back to the ground, he looked on in horror as the psychopath stood completely unharmed.
“Merlin’s beard, lad. That was goddamn impressive!” Much of the classroom was charred black, despite it being highly resistant to any kind of damage, physical or otherwise.
His mouth flapped open and shut in shock as he was picked back up off the ground, and returned to his feet.
“Shit, I… fuck lad, I don’t like doing that. Don’t tell no one I pushed you that far. You, you're like me-”
His fist slammed into professor Faust’s chin.
“I am nothing like you!” The fire inside burned, and raged, begging to be released again.
“Shit, your hand is probably broken, we’ll have to fix that as well.” What kind of metal was this brotherfucker made of?!
“I know you're pissed, give me a second to explain. You’re like me, you need to feel the fire to call it. I had to teach you in another way.”
“You call assaulting me, threatening to murder me, and force yourself on my woman teaching!?” The flames returned to his hands, hotter and fiercer than before.
“Fire… fire is both the protector and destroyer, it is the light in the dark and the all consuming blaze. The flame can be manifested within you, to empower and strengthen not just your physical form, but your heart as well, it can even be shared among those most important to you.
“Unfortunately such paths are not open to one such as yourself, your flame is one of destruction and wrath, just waiting to be unleashed. Your flame, unfortunately, will require a much more disciplined hand.”
“Even if any of that is true, you had no right to do ANY of that!”
“You must know from where your fire comes, if you do not, you and those you care for will be consumed in the Flame’s endless hunger.” The black fire spread up his arms and shoulders.
His whole life he'd been powerless, and even after all the grueling training he had undergone, it hadn't amounted to anything. When the humans had put their rockthrower against Olreev's, he couldn't do a damn thing.
“Your flame will grow wild if left unchecked, but under my guidance… you will burn worlds, or heat up your tea. Honestly, it’s your fire, and you can do whatever you want with it; however, as long as you're here, you're going to learn how to control it so that… doesn't happen outside.” His flames had fully engulfed him by now, and was now quite literally melting the floor.
“...Fine… But you won't ever speak about Her like that again.”
“By Zues’ shapeshifting cock, I’ll say whatever I please. My master burned down my village, set my dog on fire and threw me off a cliff, and you’re upset about words? Stop your bitching, and show me your fire, you pissant!”
Was the male still acting? It didnt matter, no one would EVER push him around again! The cunt wanted more, by the Deep Minder, he’d get more!
“I swear, if I have to get the bird involved in this…” Faust mumbled.
First / Next
Thank you to u/BlueFishcake for the setting and my editor u/0rreborre and to all those who have contributed to the SCP universe for years.
Carechimba - Popular Colombian insult meaning asshole, feel free to use any of the swears you see. I got your back.
Viel Spaß - Have fun in German. (Honestly, I didn't even know the Germans had a word for fun.)
Kameraden - I’m gonna go out on a limb, and guess that you all know this one.
ISTC - The International Special Training Centre for signatory nations, which include Germany, Belgium, Greece, the U.S., Norway, The Netherlands, Italy, Romania and Turkey, as well as other NATO allies.
Johann Georg Faust - also known in English as John Faustus was a German itinerant alchemist, astrologer, and magician of the German Renaissance. In the year 1506, there is a record of Faust appearing as performer of magical tricks and horoscopes in Gelnhausen. Over the following 30 years, Faust appeared as physician, doctor of philosophy, alchemist, magician and astrologer, and was often accused as a fraud. The church denounced him as a blasphemer in league with the devil. Faust had also supposedly joined Protestantism.
Oh no, Protestantism!
2023.05.24 22:36 DownwardCausation Aftermarket part (un)friendliness
As someone who has only had personal experience with Lennox, I am curious if there is significant variance in the aftermarket part (un)friendliness among top tier HVAC equipment manufacturers. IOW, are there some companies that act like John Deer or Apple or Volvo or BMW (or in software Microsoft) who do whatever they can possibly do to attach you to themselves for service/parts after you transact equipment and some that are more friendly to aftermarket parts like Toyota (or in software Linux, I know it's not a company per se)?
submitted by DownwardCausation to hvacadvice [link] [comments]
2023.05.24 10:36 Shinra33459 3x3 of the careers I've considered over the last 4 years
 | submitted by Shinra33459 to WojakCompass [link] [comments] |