Livingston parish school board

Firstly I just want to say that this forum really soothes the soul - everyone is so supportive, worldly and thoughtful. I've been reading many of the threads since my wife was diagnosed last year (and am grappling with my own mild pre-diagnosis - I'm on a weird borderline).
I'm also a primary school teacher, so I get to meet kids struggling with both diagnosed and undiagnosed ADHD.
Since I started teaching just 7 years ago, it feels as if we have come VERY far from an adult awareness perspective. More and more people are being diagnosed, there are anti-discrimination laws, and generally people are more aware of how ADHD people interact with the world.
However in schools, I am regularly sickened by what I witness.
I currently do relief teaching, and have been in about 60 schools (teaching 4 year olds to 12 year olds) in the last two years, so I'm commenting from a pretty decent sample size.
It is extremely common for young children to openly shame and draw negative attention to ADHD behaviours. And strangely, in the various neighborhoods I'm teaching in (in Australia), this sort of thing seems to be increasing.
Just today, a 7 year old ADHD boy wanted to use a wobble/fidget chair. Another kid called out, "no only good kids can use that!"
Other things you'll hear:
"He's always really naughty"
"She's not allowed to sit there, otherwise you have to write her name on the board"
"He's a bad person"
"You have to make him go to see the principal"
Kids are BRUTAL toward others who are struggling to engage in the "expected" way. Whenever this happens I let the kids have it: "Never say to anyone that they're a bad person! There are no bad people....just sometimes we do and say bad things, like what you did just now!"
You can literally see the pain and hurt in these kids eyes when language like that is thrown around so casually...it makes me feel that despite all of these advances and self awareness in the recently diagnosed, bad RSD and other challenges will continue to manifest simply because most kids are FAR too hung up about what others are not doing "right".
I think the increase in this kind of thing is partly owing to the "bystander" education that has been seeping through. In some ways it is good to empower young people to speak up about what they feel is unjust, but I feel like it's backfiring. The confidence these kids have to put a peer under the bus is concerning....when I started teaching they would be more likely to just wear it and stay quiet.
My classrooms are ADHD (and ASD) friendly but I wonder how many teachers are properly trained to shut down any public shaming (and not reinforce it with their language), and how many parents perpetuate these kind of attitudes (eg. "please don't invite the naughty kid to your birthday")
Any other teachers of younger kids out there with experiences of this?

Some Ontario school boards are limiting access to public meetings. It's a complex issue — here's why CBC News

Hi witches! I need some advice/tips to become more confident in myself and my body.
TW: Mentions of eating disorder and dysphoria
Some background info. I have always been uncomfortable in my body and I used to think it was because I have always been skinny/underweight. As a child my parents (mainly my father) used to talk down to me about my weight, saying that I eat like a small bird or that a mouse eats more than me. The school nurse always told me to eat more and to try more foods when we had health checks. In ninth grade (I was 15) I tried to get a "special diet" as this was an option for students that needed it (one reason could be that you liked very few of the school dishes), but this request was declined even though I rarely ate the school lunch. For 9 years (age 6-15) I ate breakfast at 6 am and then usually didn’t eat until I came home at 3/4/5 pm and the school nurse didn’t see this as a problem apparently. When I started a private/boarding high school we got much better food that I most of the time liked and for the first time ever I gained weight that wasn’t just from me growing. Today I am 19 years old and still skinny, but not at all to the same extent. But instead of my parents always commenting on how small/skinny I am I have had friends say that they envy me because of this.
Around 2 months ago I learnt of avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder and I realised that this describes/explains my relationship with food very well. I have probably had this since I started school, if not earlier than that.
Around 1,5 years ago I started learning about the LGBTQ+ community and I soon realised that I was asexual. Not long after I also realised that I was transmasc (he/they) which also explains why I have been so uncomfortable in my body for so long (dysphoria). A few people know that I am ace and one knows that I am not cis (I haven't specified more than that and they live 1200 km away). I am not able to start telling people that I am trans yet for various reasons so I can’t really dress masc or start the process of getting HRT which doesn’t really help my dysphoria or self confidence.
TLDR: I have always been skinny/underweight. My parent talking down to me about it, school nurse ignoring the problem and an eating disorder are the causes to this. Me having dysphoria has also made me uncomfortable in my body, even before I realised I was trans.
So now I am turning to all of you. I am looking for advice on how to become more confident in yourself and your body. Any tips or tricks that I (and others) can use are appreciated greatly. Any tips for dealing with eating disorders are also welcome.

Seeing a lot of fellow rising juniors thinking about college and thought I’d try taking the plunge as well, please be as brutally honest as possible
Demographics: Asian Male (Chinese), competitive small public high school, legacy at UMich
Intended Major(s): CS, CE
GPA/Rank: 3.91 UW, school does not weigh or rank but I’m taking the most rigorous coursework possible, trying to bump it up to 3.94+ by end of junior year
SAT: 1460 PSAT, aiming for a 1570+ on SAT
Coursework: basically all honors, AP Computer Science Principles (5), AP Computer Science A (expected 5), taking DE classes at T15 CS school this summer and during the fall Junior year courseload: APUSH, AP Calc BC, AP Physics C, AP Chem, DE CS classes
Extracurriculars: 1. President of Science Olympiad Team 2. Executive Board of BioSTEM club (basically science fair club) 3. Summer cs research with professor at T15 cs school, expecting to publish 4. Helped organize an in person hackathon for our school, 30+ participants 5. Varsity debate 6. Volunteer at library and help young kids read (20+ hrs) 7. Volunteer at center for people with mental disabilities (20+ hrs) 8. Varsity tennis 9. Helped tennis coach run a clinic for elementary and middle school aged kids (20+ hrs) 10. Not sure if this counts as an EC but I have a passion project where I’m creating a learning website tailored for those with learning disabilities, might turn it into a nonprofit business where revenue is donated to charities specializing in helping those with mental/learning disabilities
Note: gonna try for an internship at a software company next year, as one of my isef judges who worked for 30 years at Microsoft encouraged me to
Awards (probably my weakest overall area aside from my best award) 1. ISEF finalist with CS project, won 2nd place special award 2. 1st place at state science fair for my grade + some extra state science fair awards 3. 5th place at state science Olympiad for my category 4. Regional science fair awards 5. Debate tournament placements (2nd, 4th) 6. USACO silver
Aiming for AIME qual, ISEF category placement (more like praying for one), 2-3 Science Olympiad state placements, and USACO gold for junior year
LOEssays: haven’t started them yet, but writing has always been one of my strong points and I have several teachers that I’m close with so not expecting any problems here
Schools: Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, UMich, UIUC, CMU, Purdue, UCs (Berk, LA mostly), UNC, basically T20 CS schools, but please recommend targets/safeties as well because I’m not really sure how strong my application would be compared to most other people

(Let me know if there is any inconsistency.)
Letter R in team REPR(Reaper): Rogert "Roth" Oberon
Gender: Male
Age: 25 during the Fall of Beacon, 26 or 27 during Atlas arc.
Birthday: 18th day of the 10th month
Height: 1,87 meters
Species: Faunus, Bear. Notable markers: Bear snout.
Family: Father and mother, lost a younger sister and brother in a Grimm attack.
Class: Tank. Speciality: Defense, taking and holding ground.
Colours: Cares little for the colour rule yet the colour of the symbol is brown and uses black armour. Varied colours in the rest of the attire intended for camouflage depending on the environment.
Semblance: =Redacted under orders of Headmaster of Beacon= Authorized personnel only as follows:
Animal morphing, Roth Oberon is able to turn into a big cave bear and is able to remain in full control after years of practice. However, to maintain control of his semblance he needs to change into a bear once every 2 weeks for at least 2 hours to avoid permanently damaging his body. Gained the semblance in his 3rd year as a Huntsman trainee during a hunting mission. Becomes stronger, aura takes more damage and is more animalistic in animal form.
=Classified information ends=
Profession: Huntsman in training at Beacon Academy, team leader. (Former)
Vale defence forces. (Former)
Guardsman of Beacon. (Current)
Appearance: Strong arms with strong legs, broad shoulders, gold brown bear eyes, and brown hair. Bear mouth/snout. Note: Functional muscles instead for show.
Weapons:
Graduate Huntsman in Atlas arc: Two gauntlets with automatic machine guns and a sword blade coming out of them, grappling hooks on both, a spear tip and spear adjusted for his height and physique that can be split into 2 pieces. Carries dust grenades with him with empty dust slots and different dust with him.
Student to Mistral arc: Spear, machine gun gauntlet, sword gauntlet, one-shot reloadable rocket launcher with ammo and a spear tip from a broken spear.
Strengths:
- Roth is very strong and durable allowing him to survive hits that would kill many others.
- Adaptable to changing situations and has strong willpower, keen intelligence, and a sharp mind.
- Versatile combat technique and knows how to use a variety of weapons or forms.
- His ability as a leader and calm attitude has kept his team in tip-top shape and has made them self-reliant on themselves making the team effective alone, in pairs or as a group.
- Bear´s sense of smell.
- Classified ahead: Can gain bear´s abilities because of his semblance when turning fully into a bear or just partially.
Weaknesses:
- Can be slower in a fight than most fighters even in his older years.
- Has some trouble with his introversion and his lack of understanding people.
- Great anger towards Grimm makes him hunt them with abandon or lure them in relatively easily. (Weakness in academy years, in adult years unorthodox trapping and luring method against Grimm. Double-edged sword.)
Inspiration: What I want to be. A person who could beat Hazel Rainart and Brutes from Batman Arkham Knight. Gregor Eisenhorn of Warhammer 40k. Kratos of God of war in his Nordic life.
Skills:
- Knows many melee weapon combat forms and has a lot of fist-fighting experience. After training and fighting in missions in a military unit for 2 years after graduation, he has learned to fight like a commando.
- Knows how to make new weapons from the ground up with primitive equipment and knows how to maintain them effectively and how to repair them.
- Rogert knows how to survive in the wilderness for potentially years. Building shelter, use of camouflage, hunting for food and foraging, how to lose a hunter, navigating etc. His speciality is tracking a target or missing supplies.
- Advanced stealth skills and ability to disappear enhanced by military education.
- Knows how to make grenades and bombs and how to defuse them. (Trained in the military and by Parish Broc.)
- Knows the basics of using military equipment and weapons after graduation and training in the military.
- Interrogation skills enhanced by his physical presence and knows how to gain information by talking. (And knows how to extract information by inflicting pain and suffering. Trained with some success by Elena Nathara.)
- Knows psychological warfare and guerrilla tactics. Specializes in Grimm.
- Knows criminal psychology and how to establish a crime scene and how to gather evidence. (Trained by his father and Raina Odell.)
- Knows how to administer first aid. (Basic and Huntsman academy training.)
Personality: Rogert is a loner who was given the job of a leader despite not wanting it. He became more comfortable in the role over the years yet never truly believed he should be a leader. This dislike ironically might have made Roth a more humble person than he would have been otherwise.
While a humble person, Roth has no illusions of his strengths and how powerful he can be when in battle.
Roth values loyalty and honesty, things he has shown to his team by having no secrets from them and has encouraged his team to do the same with great effect. Because of his values in honesty, Rogert does not forgive attempts to lie to him and tries to limit his words to be as truthful as possible.
Roth has a ruthless attitude when it comes to leadership and dealing with enemies. As a leader, Roth expects nothing but competence and giving 100% in combination with a firm chain of command and on-the-spot obedience.
Roth is a strong believer in learning and improving skills. Because of this Roth has learned from his teammates to skills he lacked before meeting them and has instructed them to do the same.
Desiring to always have the upper hand he learned to keep his emotions in check at all times and focused on his studies in his free time and school time. Other people often consider him emotionless, yet no one is willing to say it in his earshot, and he doesn´t mind this thought about him.
Rogert has mastered his emotions and he can make decisions that would make other people disgusted with themselves be it torture or cruel punishments without flinching as he got older. While his team reminds him about his better nature and while his actions have never been directed against an innocent, Rogert believes he can´t afford to hesitate to act when many lives are at stake.
His team REPR has helped him loosen up and he discovered his liking for playing the saxophone and driving. His team has helped him to become a better man than he thinks he needs to be as the years went by.
Facts about the character:

• Rogert prefers to be called Roth because the name is easier to pronounce and he prefers a shorter name.
• Rogert put the team to vote on whether they should stick together as a group. Ultimately, the team was split up, yet REPR occasionally would help each other on big operations. He voted No, yet never said why even when asked.
• Roth´s closest relationships are with his parents, Elena, and Raina and he thinks highly of Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck due to his teaching and wisdom.

Extra skills:
- Scholar: His lack of social interaction in his school years made Rogert focus more on his studies than on making friends. Due to this, he has gained a lot of knowledge and an interest in researching history and myths. Math skills and history were his best subject and often likes to talk about both when asked.

To save on cost I will be attending a university that was recommended to me in order to save on tuition costs. I know an alumni who went there for an MS in ABA. I work at a very good ABA clinic and my supervisor said she will work with me to add even more up to date information to what I will be learning at my school. I work at one of the best clinics in my state, so I know my supervisor can really help me. The alumni I know was also hired at this clinic.
The schools I got into when I look them up say they are considered higher education for this type of master’s degree. And one of the schools has a 91% passing rate for those who sit down and take the board exam.
I’m just wondering during the hiring process, what do employers look for? What will they think when they see a school that maybe isn’t as well known? Should I be worried? I was told if you pass the boards that really is what future employers care about. Please let me know, I don’t want my chances of working as a BCBA to be lessened because of where I went to school! Thank you!

This is a transcription of one of the documents obtained by JA on January 31, 2023 described in this post. This PDF has notes from interviews by C McDonald with the Marrottes, the house behind the red barn, the Atwoods, and the Westmans. We previously had the Atwood interview - however, this is a different document. The Atwood interview we have on file has different formatting, slightly different wording (insignificant such as adding/omitting "Mr."), and footnotes. So this seems to be transcribed notes which were then transformed into a report.
Notes from conversations on the morning of Monday, 16 February
(Conversation at approximately 10-10:30 am)
J and V Marrotte - tel xxx

• Between 7-8 p.m. Mr. Marrotte went to the kitchen window to peel an orange and saw a car with the flashers going
• The car backed up parallel to the road
• Within 4 to 5 min a bus came down route 112 from Woodsville
• The bus stopped at car for 4 to 5 min
• Bus continued down the road and backed into driveway located directly across the street from the Marrotte residence. Driver stayed in bus for quite a while; Mr. Marrotte thought that this was odd. Mr. Marrotte presumed that bus driver was making a 911 call from the bus.
• Mr. Marrotte could not see Maura at the car thereafter.
• Police arrived, loked around the car with a flashlight, walked up to the red barn, walked up the private road, came back down, passed the car, and approached Mr. Attwood, who was still in bus. 15 minutes had elapsed from thetime the police arrived to the time they reached the bus.
• When asked if there were any persons they would possibly be concerned about, John M replied: No, not really but then he looked outt he window down at the Attwood [in my notes I have it as Dewalt, because I thought his name was Dewalt] resigence and (without any prompting from myself) said he and his wife had never really gotten along with those guys (plural) across the street.
• I asked: Guys? Plural?
• John said: The family across the street, he is an "odd cat"
• John then said there were a few people he would be concerned about in the area, but no one specifically.

Conversaton at approximately 10:30-10:35 a.m.
Ellis/Gudek House behind the red barn
I spoke with the man; he told me that he did not see anything --that he had heard about the accident from John on Tuesday (10 February) and that although he was home he didnot hear of see anything the evening of 9 February
(Conversation at approximately 10:40-11:00 a.m.)
Attwood Residence

• I walked up to the house -- Mr. Attwood answered the door and I asked if I could speak with him regarding the Maura Murray case.
• Mr. Attwood responded, "She got in a car and disappeared end of story."
• I pleaded with him to please help us learn more about the evening, we don't have any clues and are looking for anything to lead us to Maura.
• Mr. Attwood again responded, "She got in a car and disappeared end of story -- that is it."
• Mrs. Attwood (a lady younger than the elder woman (mother) who is hard of hearing) said "Yes, please John help her." She invited me into the front porch area of the home.
• Mr. Attwood said he arrived at 7:35 p.m.
• Maura was in the car, sitting there with no lights on.
• I asked: Was there anyone else in the car?
• Mr. Attwood responded, No one else was in the car.
• [There was a little confusion with the next set of questions, when he first commented he said that Maura was in the car and could not get out, because the car was facing the barn and door was blocked. But then said she got out of the car and stood outside the car.]
• Mr. Attwood said that he asked Maura: "Are you okay?" Maura: "Yes, fine"
• Mr. Attwood told me, "I looked over the scene and saw no blood." At this point I asked for confirmation regarding the location of Maura. He described Maura as looking over the car. Mr. Attwood described Maura, "She didn't look like the pictures, her hair was down, it must have come undone during the accident."
• Mr. Attwood said to Maura: "I am going to call the police." Maura. "I have called AAA"
• Mr. Attwood to me: I am thinking you can't call from here. Mr. Attwood to Maura: "I am going to call the police."
• Maura responded: No.
• Mr. Attwood to Maura: "No, I am going to call the police."
• Attwood then left Maura and returned home, entering the house to call.
• Attwood noted during this time 3-4 cars went by.
• I then asked him if he saw Maura walk towards his house since he was on the front porch. He said: No, that Maura was picked up and that during this time they could not see the crash site. He then noted that he did not think that the dog had a scent. The dog just walked, around looking up -- "that wasn't a dog that smelled anything but squirrels."
• How much time elapsed while you were inside calling? Attwood: 7-9 min.
• Mr. Attwood then described how he had to make 5 or so calls because the dispatcher could not connect him.
• Mr. Attwood then said that he went out, looked up the road, saw the police and then, presuming that all was taken care of, got back into his bus to do his mileage.
• Mrs. Attwood then said that she heard the dispatcher call, noting they were looking for a girl (they have a scanner on the front porch).
• Mr. Attwood then said, "It is just beam me up Scotty time."
• Then Mrs. Attwood said it came across the scanner that the windshield had broke.
• Mr. Attwood then said that while he was in the bus he heard a knock on the bus door and found out that Maura wasn't at the scene.
• Mr. Attwood then said he got in his car at 8:10 with his spotlight and searched the area without finding her.
• I then started to say goodbye and thank them when he asked "What about that call?"
• I responded, "What call?"
• Mr. Attwood said: The call that was made after the incident -- the last call the boyfriend received.
• I told him the last call Bill received was before the accident.
• Mr. Attwood then said, "I just should have insisted that she get in the bus -- I tried to get her into the bus."
• Mrs. Attwood then said that she was "probably more scared of you."
• Mr. Attwood then told me that he was very good friends with Officer Smith and to tell him that Butch sent me and that the police will let the family see all the records.

End of conversation.
I then tried to speak with Tim Westman -- white house across the street from red barn -- there was no one home.
Earlier notes:
On Saturday afternoon I went to several of the homes in the area.
At the blue house on the left hand side as you go up Bradley Hill Road: I spoke with a woman who was not home at the time of the accident; she was heading back home from a school board meeting between 8 and 8:30 -- coming from Woodsville area towards Lincoln. Said she did not see anyone on the road walking.
the Westman residence

• Heard accident
• Called 911 (Husband thought it was earlier than wife.) thought it ws sometime between 7:55 and 8:05.
• Saw a flashlight and red glow from the passenger seat.
• Possibly two people.
• Maura sat for a long time in the car.
• Saw school bus at site.
• Maura was at her car up to 1 min before the police arrived.

So I just finished my boards exam of grade 10 we have almost 3 months holiday after our boards to not waste my time I've joined some institute that will probably help me to idk i want to be accepted in one of the popular high school which is really hard lots and losts of people give entrance for that school and they have less acceptance rate only 110 or smthg student will be selected i want to be that student who is accepted there but i feel so dumbbbb idk what to do how to prepare all im able to is sleep all day i cannot do anything productive all i do is sleep eat sleep i don't have any motivation I'm tired of myself i want y'all advice on how i can over come this feeling and work my ass off for what i want to do 🙏🏻

Hey there, I hope your long weekend went well. Over the weekend, I went to the beach a few times with my friends, collecting shells and cool little rocks. Now, I'm back at school, but I'm just looking for more music to listen to. The teachers kinda give up at the end of this term, everyone's all over the place. (Organization isn't really a thing at my boarding school). Some of my interests are listening to/(over)thinking about music, going on walks for hours, chillin with friends, trying new things, and drawing sometimes (I've started drawing my D&D character, I just started playing). If you'd like to talk about your weekend, or anything at all, slide in my chats (:

Hey there, I hope your long weekend went well. Over the weekend, I went to the beach a few times with my friends, collecting shells and cool little rocks. Now, I'm back at school, but I'm just looking for more music to listen to. The teachers kinda give up at the end of this term, everyone's all over the place. (Organization isn't really a thing at my boarding school).
Some of my interests are listening to/(over)thinking about music, going on walks for hours, chillin with friends, trying new things, and drawing sometimes (I've started drawing my D&D character, I just started playing).
If you'd like to talk about your weekend, or anything at all, slide in my chats (:

I posted this on the student thread but I am not sure if it will get much traction. Regardless please see the post below! :)
Hey everyone I am currently studying for my master's in clinical mental health counseling in New Jersey. I am expected to finish August 2024 so next summer. I have a strange dilemma here. So I am planning to move to Pennsylvania when I graduate to live with my girlfriend. The school I attend is a large state school that is CACREP accredited so I am not that worried for finding work nearby where she lives.
However, after a year of living with her she wants to move back to NJ with me. My big issue is while I would be living in PA with her I would be receiving supervision for a licensure in PA. As far as I know I will not be able to get supervision for my NJ license while working in another state and I doubt the NJ board would even take the hours if they saw it was from another state. Not to mention no place in PA is going to give me supervision for an NJ license which makes sense.
All of this is to say, I am debating if I should just stick it out with her in PA and get my full LPC and try to see if I can transfer that to NJ or get a year of experience in PA and then move to NJ and basically have to start over my supervision hours in NJ as a licensed associate counselor (LAC). I also should add I have been long distance with my girlfriend for close to three years now and she is currently in grad school and does want to move to NJ till she finishes. She will not be done till May 2025 so I rather not wait close to another year to be living with her.
Anyone have thoughts on this? Some friends have told me the NJ board might be willing to take some of my hours from PA once I get my LAC but I feel like that is just too good to be true. I also am not even sure NJ will take my LPC if I got it in PA since PA requires less supervision hours compared to NJ.
​
Thanks!
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EDIT: I just found out supposedly you need your LPC in another state for three years or the required supervision hours that NJ requires which PA does not meet.

This isn’t a doomsday piece; in fact it’s sort of in opposition to the idea that we’re facing a sudden collapse. But I do think harder times are coming in the US, and for many they are already hard. I’m going to throw out problems I personally see coming, and propose some preparations. I think these are realistic concerns – you won’t see nuclear war listed here. Note these are all long term concerns – 5-50 years – but preparations should begin as soon as possible. This is mostly centered on the US, but I think some of it is universal. 1. Grid problems. The US power grid has not been well maintained, and it doesn’t help that we now have occasional radical bozos who take pot shots at substations. (There’s also the risk that a foreign adversary might launch a cyberattack that affects the grid, but I consider it unlikely – they’d get a war they don’t want, for their troubles.) I don’t think CMEs are as much of a concern as some people here think – we can see those coming – but they have caused localized disruptions in a few places over the last 50 years (Canada had problems in March of 1989, though they recovered in less than a day.) Most of the risk, in my opinion, is just more extreme weather – hurricanes, extreme heat, wildfires and ice storms can all knock our power for days. A day’s power failure is an inconvenience to most people – houses don’t freeze or cook, food doesn’t go bad, you might have to resort of a battery powered radio for entertainment. Three days, though, means food will start to go bad, and people on wells are resorting to bottled water. Some folk will literally start to go hungry by a week, and gas can be in short supply, so transportation can be hard. By two weeks, problems can get serious. Solar power is often touted as a solution. It’s a good approach, but not a panacea. Buffalo NY had a blizzard recently that immobilized the city for days, and cloud cover was persistent. Solar solutions stopped working. In some areas this is not a concern; in others, solar just isn’t workable. Preps: solar if it works for you and you can afford it. A generator if you can afford it and are willing to store gasoline or propane (10 gallons/20 pounds at least) is a go to in some areas, but it’s not a maintenance free solution. (Run a generator at least once a month for at least a half hour if it’s gasoline powered, every six months if it’s propane.) But there’s a more workable solution that often gets overlooked – be able to live without electricity entirely, when you need to. This means manual can openers, dry ice for cooling food, propane camp stoves, non-perishable food supplies, stored water, oil or propane or kerosene lamps for light, board games, thick blankets and sleeping bags, solar cookers in some areas, a bucket for sponge baths, and batteries for flashlights and radios. And if it’s practical – for folk with kids, especially in school, it isn’t always – spend a day a month without power, to test your preps. Flip the circuit breaker and get to work. The first few times you try it, you learn a lot. Will fusion come and save they day? Maybe, but fusion is at least 10 years out and no one thinks it’s going to be cheap. I would assume the worst when it comes to energy availability (and cost) in your lifetime. 2. The next pandemic These happen and they will happen again. We’ve all learned the drill. Covid took out a million plus Americans, and it took a year to really get effective mitigation going. The mitigation were phenomenal and became available in record time, and they represent a new standard for pandemics, but the human cost in terms of job loss, difficulties in getting supplies, additional expenses for some, national debt, and just plain social isolation still took a toll that no one but epidemiologists were expecting. It could be tomorrow or two hundred years, but it will happen again. It’s a rare generation that won’t see one going forward. The next one could be mild or vastly deadly; there’s no predicting that. We know the drill on this; what’s important now is passing the lessons along to the next generation. Stock masks, have a financial cushion of at least 6 months if you can, do what you can online instead of in person when pandemics hit, practice hygiene religiously. (Hand sanitizer was a minor player in the war against Covid, which turned out to be airborne, but it’s key against many diseases.) Luckily, preps for pandemics are not that different than preps for major weather events – you might get stranded in your house for 2-4 weeks during extreme peaks or lockdowns. 3. Job loss and inflation Without getting into a discussion of late-stage capitalism or general doomerism, none of which I believe in, there’s one unmistakable trend over the last few decades, and it’s that jobs are just harder to find and keep in many disciplines. It’s not just AI that’s raising questions – it’s ongoing social shifts that are moving wealth up the social ladder and making it hard to get a fair share of what’s going around. It’s international bad actors disrupting supply chains, it’s plain old advances in technology disrupting entire industries. People used to joke about using their college degrees to flip burgers – the joke is less funny today because automation is coming for burger flippers, as well as truckers, taxi drivers, farmers, marketers… Having a financial cushion that last 6 months seems like a cruel joke to many, who are having problems stocking a week’s food. But it’s never been more essential, because every social problem ripples into job losses in the end. Social unrest? Weather events? War in another part of the world? Changes in the tax code? It all affects someone’s bottom line, and long gone are the days when businesses would take the hit and protect their workers. Now workers are the first things cut. And that won’t change anytime soon. All I can suggest is, partner with neighbors to share money saving ideas, put every penny you can into whatever savings you can manage, do group buys to cut costs and have supplies on hand, and know about every social support system out there. SNAP was a lifesaver for a lot of people during the pandemic peaks. Food pantries exist in many towns and will save you money. Learn to trim electricity usage to the bone. Fight to keep medical insurance as long as you can, because there’s not many calamities worse than have to choose between skipping critical medical treatments and poverty. -- Folk will note that I didn’t list climate change. Yes, I think it’s very real. But for just about everyone, the problems show up indirectly. The southwest US is drying up, and that won’t change in your lifetime – but you’ll see it in increased water costs (inflation) and grid issues. Food choices will change – sooner or later, meat will become a luxury item and food costs in general will rise further. Diseases may spread more easily and evolve faster as climate migrations of both people and animals create new mixes of pathogens. It’s not that people will drown as oceans rise up overnight, but more areas will become more expensive to live in, as weather damage increases, insurance rates go up, more electricity gets used to compensate for temperature extremes… in the US, climate change is an economic problem... at least at first. Folk will note that I didn’t list rising fascism, which is becoming a measurable trend worldwide, and the US is in no way immune. I don’t have a prep for this: all you can do is vote, or, ultimately, move if you can. These things come in waves and all I can do is hope this one passes before we trigger much worse problems than we already have. As much as social unrest is on everyone’s mind and politics has started driving violence in the US, the prep is to get on with your life, live peaceably with your neighbor regardless of his politics or skin pigmentation, disconnect from disinformation, and vote for people who don’t tell you who you should hate. Troubles don’t come if no one starts them. Folk will note I didn’t add disinformation to the list. I actually think this is a major concern and that most people have no idea how much chaos it causes. Disinformation campaigns over Covid cost (at my own estimate) 300,000 unnecessary deaths in the US. They’re feeding extremism and causing people to turn their back on democratic institutions, like elections. In a very real way, it’s the biggest problem facing the US today, but… the only prep is don’t listen to the bullshit. And I’ve come to the conclusion that there are simply a lot of people who love to listen to bullshit and have no way to determine when they’re being lied to and manipulated. So I don’t have a prep for this. Online I block people to seem to embrace bullshit, but the problem is still out there, and I’ve come to the conclusion that people who are swept up in it, wanted to be swept up in it and there’s no cure for that. Haters gonna hate. All I can suggest is, spend more time in the garden and less online. Vegetables don’t hate anybody.

So I just finished my boards exam of grade 10 we have almost 3 months holiday after our boards to not waste my time I've joined some institute that will probably help me to idk i want to be accepted in one of the popular high school which is really hard lots and losts of people give entrance for that school and they have less acceptance rate only 110 or smthg student will be selected i want to be that student who is accepted there but i feel so dumbbbb idk what to do how to prepare all im able to is sleep all day i cannot do anything productive all i do is sleep eat sleep i don't have any motivation I'm tired of myself i want y'all advice on how i can over come this feeling and work my ass off for what i want to do 🙏🏻

Hi everyone -
I am in my mid-late twenties an finishing up my degree in evolutionary biology (rising senior). I was planning on double majoring in philosophy, but due to the philosophy course offerings, I am going to replace the second major with a double minor in philosophy and math.
I am planning on applying to PhD. programs in evolutionary biology - but honestly have loved math for a while but been intimidated to pursue it due to fears of / experiences of sexism from high school math teachers. But now that I'm older, IDGAF :). I also love biology ofc, but I am kind of particular about the lab I do a bio PhD in - so I am considering putting out some applications for post-bacc opportunties in pure math should I not get into one of my desired biology programs. I am particularly interested in logic and set theory.
However, I am still new to math and my application for a masters program would be fairly weak. My research experience has been geared for biology and I also won't be able to take a modern algebra course or analysis course before graduating which seems important across the board for most masters programs. By the end of the Fall, I'll have: Calc I, II, and III (as in integral, differential, and mutlivariable), an Intro to Proofs course, and Linear Algebra. I was planning on taking Number Theory and Probability Theory in the spring since there are no Modern Algebra I or Analysis I courses being offered (but I will be asking the faculty advisors about their suggestions / if its possible to take the second semester first).
Ultimately just wanted to know if anyone knew of any post-bacc options such as good bridge programs. Or if any masters programs might consider someone with good grades (3.9 GPA) even if they don't have all the pre-reqs done by the time the application is submitted.
This is all kind of embarrassing to ask because I am not very good at math (yet), but I want to get better and just want to know what options might be out there. Thanks again.

Seriously, I've got a class at 9 am and I've got to leave at 8:20 to get to not be late for the class when I normally can leave 15 minutes early and get there (in the same exact room) on time.
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I'm paying however much they charge for a parking pass, thousands of dollars for tuition, and I've got to walk all the way across campus at 8:40 in the morning, all so UCF can misappropriate their funds to build something no one needs but the Board of Trustees™️ deems valuable.
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UCF is the only state school in Florida without a Student-Run Investment Fund btw

Okay. They aren’t ALL stupid. But a lot of them are. I love holiday traditions. They’re fun, it gives you something to look forward to, and is a lot of nostalgia. Some people have family traditions of various things. Those are always fun, sometimes hokey and even interesting. Why through, do so many people lose their minds over people not wanting to partake in some of these traditions just because they all did and everyone else does?
My daughter is graduating early from high school. We figured out her freshman year because she had been in so many advanced classes in middle school she would have enough credits to graduate a full year early. She’s now exactly 2 weeks away from finishing her senior year and already has college credits under her belt. She probably could have even graduated another half of a year early but the college credits are a big help for her future. Anyhow…she’s been getting a lot of flack from people because we decided as a family she won’t be participating in graduation. There’s a multitude of reasons but really the biggest factor is that it’s not her class. It’s not the peers she’s spent nearly her entire school career with. I completely get it and completely agree. But the sheer amount of people that are upset by it is baffling. It’s her life, for starters. Her life, her choice. I don’t understand why so many people seem to think it’s a mandatory thing to wear some ugly balloon gown and a ridiculous cardboard square hat. Where did this fugly outfit come from anyhow? We did still get her stupid cap and gown and will take photos at the school and at home just so we have some “graduation” photos for the people who are super worried about her having them. She will be attending graduation but she will not walk the stage to accept her diploma holder…which is also stupid. You don’t even get your diploma at graduation. Yet another reason the whole drawn out boring ceremony is a stupid waste of time. There’s hundreds of kids graduation so the ceremony will be several hours long, listening to them drone on every single child’s name. Every graduation I’ve gone to in my life, the only thing keeping me awake is to see if anyone will do anything mildly amusing. Mispronunciation of someone’s name. Maybe someone farting or tripping. A comical valedictorian speech…but no, they’re all lame and boring. Her plan is to play in the band, as they do every year wearing her cap and gown. Sitting with her actual class that will be graduating next year. She texted me from school today to tell me that she told her band teachers of her plan and they both scoffed and made faces like her breaking this corny stupid tradition is absolute blasphemy. What’s interesting is most of our extended family doesn’t even care, they think it’s fine. It seems to be everyone else that has such an issue with it. It would have been a headache also to pick and choose who could even go anyhow, they have to get tickets and each kid is only allowed 4 or 6. So you have to choose only that many people to go. They used to split it into 2 graduating groups because it was so long and more people could go. No idea why they changed it. My own mother was on board and didn’t go to her own graduation because she graduated late and didn’t want to walk with another class. For some reason now she’s acting shocked that my daughter is choosing not to partake.
I just hope she doesn’t keep getting so much grief from people at school over such a dorky tradition. I’m going to continue to teach her to forge her own path. Stop mindlessly following these stupid traditions if you don’t want to follow them. Majority of the dumb traditions we do we don’t even know why we do them or how they started. Again, why the ugly gown and hat? So bizarre. And now they even have kindergarten graduations. Something I didn’t even have when I was a student. So now they’re making even more kids do this weird thing every year.

World of Warcraft’s latest Race to World First has ended, which means it’s time for another Hobbydrama post! Watching this season’s race, I was really worried that nothing truly drama-worthy would happen, things were pretty smooth for most of it. The gods of WoW must have heard my prayers, however, because right at the race’s end an incident, long-feared but never realized, finally came to pass.
If you’ve read any of my three previous posts on World of Warcraft’s Race to World First, then you’ve seen something mentioned about North America’s “Head Start”. I always put off talking about it because it never really mattered. Well strap in folks, because it finally mattered. Big time.
This is a story of timing, about what happens when two competitors aren’t playing under quite the same rules, and about what “fair” really means in a competition that was never really meant to be a competition.
Background
Released in 2004, the MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW) is one of the most successful videogames of all time. Players create characters to do battle in the fictional world of Azeroth, a kitchen-sink fantasy setting where players fight dragons, gods, lovecraftian horrors, and each other. The game is heavily multiplayer focused, with pretty much all of the most difficult content in the game requiring a coordinated group of players to participate in. One of the most popular things to do in World of Warcraft is raiding.
Raiding and the Race to World First
A raid, in simplest terms, is a mega-dungeon consisting of a series of bosses that are designed to be tackled by groups of ~20 players. They are generally completed over weeks or months by organized guilds of players, who get together at scheduled times 2-3 days per week to try and work their way through them.
Raids are designed as a cooperative activity, but as with all things, some players got into enough to turn it into a competition. For WoW’s most elite players, it has become a race, the race to beat the Raid first.
While the Race for World First (RWF) has been around since WoW began, it really exploded in popularity in 2019 when top guilds started streaming their attempts. Whenever a new Raid is released, top guilds take time off work and play 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week, desperately pushing to become the very first ones to defeat the final boss of the Raid on the highest difficulty, called Mythic. Hundreds of thousands of viewers tune in to watch them stream their attempts on Twitch. While a number of teams compete, for years the top two teams have been Liquid (based in the US and led by Max) and Echo (based in the EU and led by Scripe).
Abberus, the Shadow Crucible
The newest raid, Abberus the Shadow Crucible, unlocked on May 9th of this year. Like the raid before it, they released every difficulty of raid simultaneously (as opposed to previous years where there was a week delay for the hardest difficulty). This once again meant that the top guilds spent most of first three days grinding gear through a nightmarishly boring process known as “split raiding”, something I covered exhaustively (and exhaustingly) in my last post.
What was more interesting, however, was that a few less competitive guilds went straight into Mythic and actually did pretty well, downing the first three or four bosses before the top guilds even set foot inside.
This wasn’t an anomaly, either - as Liquid and Echo would soon discover, Abberus was a surprisingly easy raid, the easiest in living memory. Bosses were falling over quickly, really quickly.
Now, this isn’t hugely surprising - the last race ended in disaster because it has been too hard from the start, so an overcorrection on the developer’s part seemed almost inevitable. Easy bosses also doesn’t equal an easy race - you’re competing against others, so what really matters is beating them fast.
A Rivalry Renewed
The top two guilds in the RWF for years have been Echo and Liquid. Liquid won their first race back in early 2020, the first time a team from North America had ever won a modern race. This was, at the time, chalked up by many European fans as a fluke owing to their ‘21st man’ strategy that other guilds soon copied. However, Liquid then won the next race as well, Castle Nathria, cementing their place as a RWF powerhouse.
That would be their last win for a while, however - Echo, inheritors to the European RWF dynasty, went on to beat them in all of the next three races - Sanctum of Domination, Sepulcher of the First Ones, and Vault of the Incarnates all went to Echo. It was starting to look like maybe Liquid’s success would be short lived.
Then, in Abberus, Liquid won.
(What, you thought I was going to do some long buildup? Really tease it out, have you on the edge of your seat about what the outcome will be? Sorry to disappoint, but like I said, the raid was pretty easy and drama free, not a ton to talk about before the last boss.)
Liquid were the first to reach Scalecommander Sarkareth and the first to kill him, downing the boss around 18:00 UTC on Monday, May 15th. Echo would kill kim the same day, just before midnight, about six hours after Echo.
And that’s when the RWF community exploded.
What do you mean Liquid got a Head Start?
To understand what I’m about to discuss, we need to make one thing really clear: the Race for World First isn’t an official in-game event. The developer, Blizzard, does not (officially) sanction it or (officially) make any allowances for it. Unofficially, they pay extra attention during the race and try to fix any bugs or balance issues that crop up more quickly than usual, and they absolutely benefit from the free publicity, but unlike things like Dungeon or PVP tournaments that are run by Blizzard and held on a tournament realm, the Race for World first is an entirely grassroots event.
The reason this matters has to do with patch timings. See, Blizzard is a US-based company. While they directly control their North American (NA) servers, servers in other regions like the Europe (EU) and Oceania have their own subsidiaries and partners that maintain them.
When new content is added to the game, it is done so via a patch, an update. During patches the servers go offline for maintenance. As such, you generally want patches to happen when the fewest players are online. In North America, that means patches are usually done on a weekday morning, while most of your players are at work/school; it’s also timed such that, if problems arise, the developers have all day to fix them without having to stay at work late.
Thanks to timezones, however, the best time to patch varies based on where in the world you are. In North America, patches happen on Tuesday at 10:00 am eastern. That’s 4:00 pm in Germany, however, right when everyone is logging on for the evening. As such, rather than rolling out patches at the same time as the NA and inconveniencing players and developers alike, the EU servers instead wait until the following morning to patch.
For most content patches, that isn’t a big deal, it’s a minor delay that affects nothing. For the RWF, however, in effect it gives North America a ~12 hour head start on the race.
If you’re like most new fans of the RWF, you’re probably thinking “okay, North America gets a 12 hour head start, so just give European guilds a 12 hour handicap, problem solved, right?” Unfortunately for everyone involved (except for degenerates like you and I who enjoy fandom drama), it’s not that simple.
How Useful is the Head Start, Really?
So the thing is, having a head start…it’s not a bad thing, per se, it doesn’t actively hurt you, but it doesn’t help nearly as much as you think it would. There’s a couple reasons for this:

1. One of the most challenging and skilltesting part of the Race for World First is strategizing, coming up with clever ways to defeat bosses. However, this is really only that hard for the first guild to kill a boss - once someone figures out a strategy that works, everyone who comes after can simply copy the first guild’s strategy, maybe even improve on it. As a result, whoever gets there first has to spend a lot of time doing trial and error to figure out a winning strategy, time no one else has to spend.
2. Bugs and balance issues are both extremely common in the Race for World First (as anyone who followed either of the last two races is well aware). More often than not, a race will have at least one boss who is pretty much unkillable when you reach him, either because the developers tuned him to be too difficult or because one of his mechanics is glitched and doesn’t work correctly. Blizzard doesn’t generally figure this out until a guild actually attempts the boss and discovers the issue, however, so whoever is in the lead has to waste even more time basically doing glorified QA for the developers.

As a result, while the start may look like it’s 12 hours long, in reality a lot, if not most, of that time gets eaten away over the course of the week(s).
On top of this, there’s a lot of other stuff in the RWF that’s not really “fair”, stuff you wouldn’t include if you were trying to design the competition from scratch to ensure the most skilled team always won. To name a few:

1. Variability in gear drops
2. Fluctuating server stability
3. Fans who donate money, time, and gear to their favorite guild
4. Hotfix timing (like the one that decided the last race)

Basically, the head start is just one issue among many, and far from the most impactful. What’s more, there’s no way to objectively quantify what impact it does have in a way that would be fair to everyone.
The thing is, up to this point, it had never actually been an issue. In theory, even if you think North America benefits fully from the 12 hour head start, it only matters if they win by less than 12 hours. Before Abberus, that had never happened before - both of North America’s wins were by at least a day.
In this latest race, however, their margin of victory was, for the first time, smaller, just over 6 hours.
Now, the general agreement between the top Guilds is that World First is World First; whoever kills the last boss first wins, period. When Liquid killed the final boss, Echo immediately pinned a “Congrats on the win Liquid” in their Twitch chat, acknowledging their win and conceding the race.
Thanks to this, all of Echo’s fans agreed that Liquid had won fair and square and congratulated them on a race well won.
Just kidding, they lost their fucking minds.
The Response
From what I could tell, most Echo fans were actually very sportsmanlike and reasonable, as was Echo itself (mostly - more on that later). However, thanks to the magic of algorithms, the most angry and controversial posts get the most visibility so there was no shortage of outraged Echo fans crying foul, saying Liquid only won because of their head start.
Here’s a few examples from the World First megathread over on /wow:

EU better as usual but NA gets the free early start pass because they're worse.
calling neck in neck with the massive headstart lmao. cope harder
Gratz Echo world first, killed within the NA headstart

Part of the drama was fueled by the fact that, the night before their kill, Liquid stopped streaming. See, most of the race is streamed on Twitch, for clout and those sweet, sweet advertising dollars, but Liquid, just as they were reaching the last phase of the last boss, turned their stream off for a few hours. During this time Echo also began the last phase, which they, unlike Liquid, streamed.
The reason Liquid went dark became clear the next morning when they started pulling again on stream. They had developed a really unique and clever strategy for managing the last phase of the boss, involving using careful timing and certain classes having immunity ability to basically skip a huge damage section and make the entire thing much safer and faster. They stopped streaming while they practiced the strategy because they were worried that, if Echo saw it, they would copy it and then kill the boss while Liquid slept.
Their fears weren’t unfounded. Upon seeing Liquid’s strategy, Echo tried to incorporate it, but by then it was too late, and Liquid killed the boss first. Some Echo fans saw this as fuel for the narrative that the head start does in fact matter.
The funny thing is that Liquid actually borrowed the “turning off the stream to protect a clever strategy” move from Echo, who had done the exact same thing against Sire Denathrius back in 2020 in a (failed) attempt to win that race.
As for Echo’s response to the whole debacle, it was congratulatory and respectful of Liquid but still pretty salty about the whole thing. After the race, Scripe, the Echo raidleader, said on his stream:

What a shit tier man…this was a good global release tilt for sure. It was fucking bad…the game is just not good, that’s what it is. Well played Liquid, but bad game Blizzard. That’s the TLDR of this whole tier… it really is a bad game in terms of competitiveness. It’s all about who gets first, and it’s not great to start late, it sucks.

Speaking personally as a Liquid fan, I have to agree with Scripe. Liquid played great and deserved the win, but it’s still frustrating for Echo, and for fans of the race in general, to have this clear issue of start times muddying the waters. It’s not an easy fix, however; Blizzard could open the raid simultaneously for everyone, but, due to how gearing and weekly resets works, that would only solve the problem if every race finished in the first week (unless they permanently moved to a global reset and patch time, which then complicates things for everyone else). The other option would be to move the race onto a tournament realm and make it an official event, but that would fundamentally change the event in a way a lot of people aren’t on board with.
Other Drama
While the head start was by far the most glaring and discussed bit of drama in this race, there’s a few other juicy tidbits that bear mentioning.
First, this race saw the best performance from a non-Liquid/Echo guild in years, with Method making a really strong showing and only being a few hours behind Echo. If you’ve read my previous post about Method, then you, like me, probably have pretty complicated feelings about this. (TL;DR from that post is that Method used to be the top Guild in the world until a MeToo scandal fractured the organization - Echo was formed mostly out of the raiders that left Method following the scandal). On one hand, it’s a great comeback story, and honestly it would be nice if the RWF was a bit more competitive, rather than always being the same two teams. On the other hand, Method fell from grace because one of their members was a sexual predator, something that there’s strong evidence Method leadership was at least somewhat aware of and did nothing about until it started giving them bad press. As far as I know several of the people who were in charge at that time are still there in leadership positions, so I’m not exactly rooting for them.
Another major complaint about this race was the tuning - as I mentioned before, this raid was the easiest in a long time. Blizzard once again released Mythic alongside Heroic and Normal, which meant the first three days of the race were in miserable splits. Once Echo and Liquid started Mythic, it only took them another three days to clear the race, so they spent as much time grinding gear as they did actually progressing. The total pulls for the entire raid were actually less than the number of pulls it took to kill just Halondrus, a single mid-raid boss from two raids ago. RogerBrown, Echo’s co-GM, tweeted:

Very weird race this time. This raid was probably the worst tuned one since Emerald Nightmare [note: Emerald Nightmare was a raid from 2016 that took less than 24 hours start to finish]. 3 days of splits, for just 3 days of progress aint fun. I would take Sepulcher over these 'bosses' any day. [note: Sepulcher is that race that took 3 weeks and broke a lot of world first racers’ will to live]

A much funnier bit of drama involved another one of Echo’s players, Gingi. Before the race, he shittalked Liquid’s raidleader via tweet, saying “I hope you beat Method this time!” (basically saying “good luck getting second place”). After their loss, Gingi tweeted:

Still amazes me how people can’t have a civil discussion and see things from both sides. Actually got so much brain rot reading the most stupid takes. People saying perfect tuning for this tier is one of them. 2.5 days of mythic progress. Same amount of time on splits.

Many fans were quick to point out the hypocrisy of complaining about a lack of civility in discussions, then in the very next sentence referring to those you don’t agree with as having ‘brain rot’. There’s a whole reddit thread about the tweet exchange that’s pretty entertaining.
Takeaways
Overall this was a pretty fun race. It was nice to see Liquid take a race off Echo; even if you’re not a Liquid fan, competition is always more fun when it feels like there’s multiple parties that could win. While the tuning wasn’t great, the bosses themselves were still fairly interesting, and there weren’t any serious bugs that made everything grind to a halt like in several previous races.
At the same time, however, this race has added fuel to the fire for fans demanding a global release for the raid, to fix North America’s head start. I don’t think I’ve properly explained just how annoying the whole thing is for fans of the race - the head start itself is frustrating, but even more so the fact that it dominates the conversation. Every single race people complain about it, talk about how it’s not really fair. It can feel like the only thing anyone ever talks about… and that was before a race had ever been (theoretically) decided by it. Now that NA has won by less than the head start, the complaining is only going to get worse.
We’ll see what, if anything, Blizzard does about this moving forward (my money is on ‘nothing’ but I’m prepared to be surprised).
Thanks for reading, and huge shoutout to Starym, his coverage of the race was really helpful in finding quotes and timings for everything