Bloxburg house layout ideas 1 story

!WARNING! I’m not a guru, okay? That’s just my hobby.

I think the environment may impact how the cognitive functions develop. And there’s no two same places in the world since each is formed by specific factors. Therefore, the grownups from these environments are completely different, as well as the factors. There’s no such a thing as a perfect correspondence of Fi-Se-Ni-Te in an ISFP due to the environment they grow up. These cognitive functions don’t work in this particular order in reality since an idea can be way too flawless for this world. For example, the ISFP. In theory, they are those who have a strong sense of personal identity and values due to dominant Fi. However, they may struggle with organisation of the external world, or simply procrastinate due to inferior Te. I don’t think all ISFPs are like that. Some of them were forced to be more ‘Judging’ so they could, dramatically speaking, survive. In particular, this one had irresponsible father who was always forgetting to lock the door and leaving a burning up cigarette on a wooden table, while the mother was working late. Therefore, the ISFP had to take responsibility for the house to make sure the mother would arrive in an intact home. The ISFP begun doing checklists to make their life easier: ‘1. Check on the table in the dining room; 2. Make sure the doors are locked before midnight.’ This ISFP may score high on Te bar, but probably won’t notice the dominant Fi because it was suppressed for the sake of, realistically speaking, survival. However, they are still an ISFP because they Don’t Like using Te. According to Wikipedia, ‘MBTI is an introspective self-report questionnaire indicating differing psychological PREFERENCES in how people perceive the world and make decisions.’ And so, the ISFP constantly uses well-developed Te while Not Preferring to. But it still changed their perception of themselves: ‘I am the one who’s always in charge.’ While a stereotypical ISTP from MBTI memes would say: ‘I am the one who certainly doesn’t want to be in charge. Let me do my thing!’ That’s the screaming high Fi or Ti for you. Ultimately, the environment is essential to form one’s image of oneself. It also forces an individual to develop the traits they’d rather not to, as well as impacts how they determine their personality type. It may lead to confusing contradictions between the perception and reality since there’s no an ideally balanced mind system in the world but in the theory of MBTI. Just like the Vitruvian Man, MBTI is similar to a formula — pleasing the eye with its thoroughness, but doesn’t fit the reality the way people would like it to. 

I enjoyed his new book How Westminster Works…And Why It Doesn’t.
Here is one short excerpt:
The continued use of Downing Street is an act of pathological national sentimentality, the product of a country that has come to value tradition over function and its past over its future.
Various attempts have been made to reform it, but they all came to nothing. Powell tried to convince Blair to swap it for open-plan space in the nearby Queen Elizabeth II conference centre, but was twice defeated. In August 2008, Gordon Brown set up a horseshoe-shaped work centre in the chief whip’s office in No. 12 Downing Street. Cameron dropped it as soon as he entered government. Dominic Cummings, chief adviser to Boris Johnson, moved to 70 Whitehall to create a kind of space station information nerve centre, but the project died when he was sacked.
Instead, the British government has simply made do with a p hysical structure that prohibits it from working effectively.
Dunt defends the House of Lords (!) as one of the most functional parts of British government, calls for proportional representation, and most of all he wants to open up candidate selection to the public.
Here is his summary take on what is wrong:
At the heart of the problem with Westminster is machismo. It’s a sense, deep at the base of our assumptions, about what politics is about and how we conduct ourselves: that we do not need to seek consensus or compromise, that the winner takes all, evidence can be ignored, the government must get with civil servants who are moved so quickly they cannot sensibly advise on what is happening, and would be undermined by a spad caste even if they could.
Spad cast refers to special advisors.
The post Ian Dunt on how Westminster works, or doesn’t appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
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](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/06/ian-dunt-on-how-westminster-works-or-doesnt.html#comments) - Once Brexit is done, the UK will be able to do what it wants, ...by Don't worry - …evidence can be ignored… No way!by MikeP

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Ive read and handful of batman comics
Batman year one
The man who laughs
long Halloween
Dark victory
The killing joke
In that order. and im planning on A death in the family next my goal is to build an idea of the characters before branching out and reading more modern runs and want to know what comics people would recommend to read whether they introduce characters or just important story arcs

1. any comics you would recommend for whatever reason it may be
2. comics that introduce you to characters
3. other vital stories in batman's history

Comics I got on the to read list
Scott Snyder Omni 1 and 2
Batman Hush
Knightfall Book 1
I'm waiting for some reprints because I prefer to collect physical comics and was thinking about getting
Batgirl year one because I got the Gail Simone Omni
Under the red hood
and i want the new Nighting run by Tom Taylor because i heard its a good jumping on point for the character
Anything helps I've been into comics for like a month so far so general advise helps too. Sorry for the messy post I just need answers. any advice helps

So to premia this there are a few story’s behind this. 1.F Cousin 2.M political cousin and 3. M me. To clear out I’ve been told I need help ever since I was 10 but ever since I turned 15 I enjoyed my illness. And know that I need to get help Im afraid of what will happen.

1. This family member never liked me and honestly the feelings mutual this POS spend my child hood saying I’d be an abuser, then trying to burn me, then kill me and finally pointing a gun at me. The last one shouldn’t be posible since she supposedly told a phychiatris she was thinking of “closing curtains on” herself. And she wanted to be a balístics 👮‍♀️ but since she said that she couldn’t get a job working with weapons. This stop me from seeking help when I was 12 because I wanted to be a soldier.
   
2. Political cousin was married to the older doughter of my grandfather older brother. He was sexually assaulted when he was young (I know this because he also said he saw the world hazy). And had some dark tendency’s when I was 15 he tried somthing with me I got mad became my better self and somehow he got the idea to go to phychiatris. I tried to tell him that they make records and to be careful about what you say. He “wanted to get better and be a better person for his family” the first time he got out of it by giving blackmail to another cousin of ours.
   

The second he started taking the 💊 but since the social worker found out he was a family member of mine she ether gave him a bigger dose or the wrong medicen. And did somthing else to him but another family member got him out of it. The third time they tried dragging him back I don’t want to give details on how he got out of it.

1. When I was 15 I went of the deep end because I got humiliated publicly. The first thing they brought was an exorsist, then a child phychiatris who is the same social worker from story 2 I humiliated her and tried to manipulate her to speed up the process. Then she gave me this wierd test where she clapped behind my head and I dindt react. She tried to convince,guilt and threaten me to “get help” at one point she even tried to kill me. But I ended up winning and she ended with a demotion.

The reason I’m writing this is that I need advise I’m doing the pill way because I love a woman. But I think she doesn’t love me anymore and I’ve tried to get in contact with her but there is nothing. And as I stated in the story’s the phychiatris hates me I want to speed through it. Because i want to show her I love her and I think I know what I’ve got and I’ve been trying to figure it out since I was 11. I have a short fuse with memory loss and DID(this last one was told to me by a doctor).
The main problem is im worried that they will mess with me to the point we’re I wont even be able to clean myself. I want to know if I go to the phycward will that speed it up?

I (15 F) have a ginormous crush on a girl I'll call Delilah. We met on the first day, played I spy and talked about what we were excited about for camp and oh my god I have been smitten ever since. There's 4 days of camp left and I really want to achieve 2 things in that time period. Figure out if she likes girls, and ask for her number. I have no idea how to go about 1 without being very obvious. Maybe ask her if she likes owl house idk. She's so cute and pretty I really hope we can stay in contact after this. I'm going to bed now, I'll keep you guys updated.

Hey Everyone, It's been a while haha. I made a post a while back about my initial impressions of the students based upon my experiences as a teacher. Here's a link to that thread if you'd like to read it first: First Impressions
It took me much longer to complete my first playthrough than I anticipated, but I was very thorough in my exploration time and so I attribute it mostly to that and well ... life. I feel like it's harder to speak to the characters as students now but I'll try to revisit some of my earlier thoughts as well as how I view them as a person. (because we all know students aren't people /s)
**Obviously Spoilers Incoming**
I chose the Black Eagles House and went through the Crimson Flower Route:
Edelgard:
- I was pretty spot on with Edelgard when I said she would have high expectations. Early on I wondered if I would get annoyed with her tone towards you as a teacher, but I don't think she ever asked too much of me. I enjoyed her vulnerability with our support conversations and also her interactions with other students. She was stern when she needed to be and while she clearly held herself to a certain standard of etiquette she was human with them too. I guess the elephant in the room with Edelgard is do I find her actions justified. I struggled with this a bit initially because I knew the choice that was incoming (couldn't avoid spoilers for myself) but after I played up to the decision to side with her or the church the choice was obvious in my heart. Now some of this can be attributed to the way the writers/voice actors make Rhea creepy and ultimately wrathful (sounding) but I can't imagine not siding with Edelgard. I also largely agree with her ideals and enjoyed that I was a soldier in the end and not a King or Archbishop. Also, the ending scene *beautiful*
Hubert:
- I said Hubert would be arrogant but not too bad. I think arrogant was the wrong read initially. He's really never a student to you and I think this is for the sake of his role in the story but it made it hard to ever really feel like I knew him or "cared" about him. For a long time I made him Edelgard's adjutant because it felt right and that's really what he is, Edelgard's story assistant. I did enjoy the line during instruction "Maybe I was taught well" (or something like that) but really that was the only moment I felt a connection to him. Our final support scene together was sweet and that's when I started letting him battle again haha. I will say Hubert's interactions with other characters were great. I especially enjoyed his support dialogues with Petra and it shows he's not a "bad" guy, he just never really felt like a student.
Ferdinand:
- Man ... Ferdinand. The tale of two parts. I said arrogant and know it all for him and that's certainly how he is at first. This is how Hubert would have been if he felt like a student. I felt like Ferdinand grew under my instruction. I felt like our interactions were special and substantial. He was so introspective at times that it really made me hold him in high regard as I continued playing. I wanted him to succeed. However, there were some moments that made me annoyed with him. I found his dialogue when offering him a lost item particularly grating. It is something to the effect of "how dare you think this is mine." While this is on par for his early character it is a fault in the system to have it continue after he has made such growth. His support dialogues are somewhat forgetful compared to the everyday interactions we had but there's a good amount of comedic value with Ferdinand (especially his eating with Edelgard dialogue) . And then there is post time skip Ferdinand ... what did they do to my boy. He became what I would've suspected of Sylvain and that's fine, live your life and all that but it seemed like he lost his "heart" the things that made him endearing and special. I could go on but I'll give one example to wrap this up. His support dialogue with Bernedetta early on was so sweet and really painted a misunderstood picture of him ... and then the final support is like "we were almost married. Ok Bye." Sure, I got the comedic value of it all but it just wasn't the same and I missed that student I got to know and care about.
Caspar:
- I had said Caspar would work hard and maybe sometimes try too hard. This is overall pretty accurate and going in I didn't have any expectations on Caspar. Low expectations may have yielded my endearing opinion of him but I also think he wasn't terribly memorable either. As a student he was kind of one note, "I want to be stronger to protect people." The term escapes me, but he is a character like Naruto or Natsu in that he could be an anime main character but minus some of the depth a long running series protagonist may develop. Our support interactions were initially good in that it showed his struggle with being brash and the issues that may cause but then it ended with "I'm just going to be me." The same thing happened with Caspar and Hubert's support dialogues, "think about your actions ... thought about them ... Just be you." As a teacher, I would cheer for Caspar and I liked him. As a viewer I would get tired of him and I ultimately did. That said, I loved his and Bernie's supports and I will always ship them now.
Dorothea:
- I said Dorothea would be attentive and a good student but that maybe her casual language with the teacher could be troublesome. I think I was right on all accounts really. If you really like Dorothea maybe skip this one haha. I found Dorothea to be my least favorite character. As far as a teacher-student dynamic goes Dorothea was great. I liked her feedback and generally liked our interactions and her interactions with other characters weren't tiresome or annoying. I think what it came down to is that she just never surprised me. I wasn't a fan of Hubert but man did he surprise me on occasion and then I'm audibly saying "I see you Hubert." I never had those moments with Dorothea, instead I had more than my share of eyerolls. The crowning moment with Dorothea for me was right before the final battle her dialogue input is something like "I hope I find a man after this is all over." Like ... we are about to fight a dragon and that's your contribution. I understand her story, I do, and I sympathize with her. I know that because of her past her arrogance and superiority are defense mechanisms against an elite that shunned her and treated her like trash. I guess I needed that moment of weakness from her and maybe it's there in some support dialogue (the closest I got being her support with Linhardt) but she just never gave me a moment to remember her by and instead became a little annoying.
Petra:
- I had said Petra would be a good student who maybe needed some language acquisition help. This is what Petra is as a student and as a character. She is kind of one note but man do I love her. This is mostly an aesthetic choice on my part because everything about Petra's look is wonderful. She stands out but not obnoxiously so, she looks unique and feels like the foreigner she is supposed to be. She has some great instruction dialogue that makes you want to help her learn. Our support dialogues were good but pretty plain, just explaining her reasoning and what not. Where Petra really shined though was in her support dialogue with other characters. The "I don't speak the language" trope would have made her pretty boring if not for her interactions with other characters. I especially liked her conversations with Edelgard, Hubert, and Caspar. She showed so many wonderful qualities like independence, conviction, humor, self awareness ... I could go on. Now all that said She and Dorothea are really the same in being kind of one note overall, but I guess I connected more with Petra and I can't point to any one reason why. I loved them both as students but as characters Petra just spoke to me more.
Bernedetta:
- I had said she would be fine to teach but shy. The writers obviously painted her this way from the get go and she does follow that trope faithfully. As a student her little moments of success were so nice and I liked her instruction lines. The yelling, which I'm sure is a meme, was fine ... sometimes annoying, sometimes funny. Our interactions were obviously building up to the moment she steps out of her room but I didn't find it as rewarding as maybe it was intended to be. The real shining moments for Bernedetta were in her support dialogue with other characters (is becoming a theme as I type). Now, these supports follow a formula of "sweet moment ... Bernie realizes she's vulnerable ... she screams." sometimes this was cute, sometimes this was an *eye roll* but I mostly liked them. My favorites were her early Ferdinand supports and her Caspar supports. I thought that I wanted Ferdinand and Bernie to be together until I got that final Caspar support. The way she stood up for what she wanted and took on an uncomfortable situation for her own happiness was touching and made me really want to use her again. I think Bernedetta was the one character I went in not liking that much to wanting to always talk to when I see her.
Linhardt:
- I said Linhardt sleeping wouldn't bother me and that made him a wash as a student. Obviously this was a little bit of a misdirect to make him seem lazy when he's a bit more complex than that. Linhardt was an interesting student. His whole "I'm awake" and similar lines grew old after a while but his support dialogues with me and other students were interesting and made him more endearing to me. I liked that he's just kind of searching for his purpose. The thing about Linhardt that I enjoyed the most was how wise he is. His interaction with Lysithea was really a nice moment as well as an interesting one in how he went about making her realize things about herself and her situation. However, Linhardt also had some Sheldon Cooper moments (which I'm a Sheldon fan) but they could be a little frustrating sometimes. He also had a Dorothea type line before the final battle about crests and so I was rolling my eyes a bit. Overall he had his moments and I didn't mind the ones that were just meh.
Lysithea:
- I recruited Lysithea. I had said maybe sometimes she'd ask questions rudely but would be a good student. I think Lysithea is great, but she can be pretty childish, sometimes comedically so. I understand that she's ~16 while the others are ~18 but they really gave her some overtly childish things to do and say sometimes. As a student she was exactly like I thought she would be so nothing surprising there. As a character I really enjoyed her growth and her story. Our interactions together were cute and she was my Goddess Tower visit during the ball so that was a fun moment as well. I also enjoyed her moments with other characters especially Linhardt. Lysithea was my main target going in with the anticipation of her being one of my favorites. She didn't end up as my favorite but I did enjoy our time together.
Annette:
- Annette was my other recruit (that I intended to get) and I had said she'd probably want lots of extra credit and constantly ask how she was doing in class. This was a pretty accurate assessment of who Annette is as a student. Our early interactions were cute and endearing as she really wanted to do well. I know several characters do the little excited clenched fist cheer when instructing them but Annette's seemed to fit her the best and seemed cannon for how she would really react. Of all the students I most wanted to give Annette a hug. She seemed like she just needed to know she's of value and I wanted her to know I valued her. Her interactions with the Black Eagles weren't terribly memorable, but I did enjoy her and Linhardt's supports. I look forward to using her on a Blue Lions run.
Ingrid/Felix:
- I recruited them unintentionally because I interacted with EVERYONE haha. I didn't do much with them so I will use this to speak to recruitment in general. I wish I had gone in with the intent to only recruit 1-2 additional characters. It just becomes a little too overwhelming when you only use 10 in battle most of the time.
Faculty:
- A few people in my last post asked how I felt about the faculty so I'll mention them a bit here. It seems like maybe the writing focused on the students (as I would expect) and let the faculty be very one note so none of them really stand out but I'll list the ones I talked to a lot.
Alois:
- I liked Alois and our dialogue after Jeralt's death was really touching and I felt like he and I would've hugged and I'd have cried haha. I like that he just wants to be a good person and I want to get my support dialogue further with him next time to see what other interactions we might have.
Manuela:
- Manuela is Blanche Devereaux. If you don't know who that is ... look it up and thank me later for the best TV series of your life. I like her design and she was my wife's favorite character and I took her support to S but our interactions were kind of boring. She is what she is and I don't mind it but I also don't think I'll bother chatting her up in my next run.
Seteth:
- Seteth grew on me. He is meant to come across initially as a no nonsense kind of strict guy and all that but his supports are sweet and his interactions with Flayn were nice and made me like her more than I otherwise would have. I felt bad I couldn't bring him to my side but I wasn't heartbroken about either.
Rhea:
- Man ... Rhea is weird. She's got creepy vibes from the beginning and all the reveals and dialogue only made me like her less. I didn't know anything about her when she and the professor have their moment after he is wounded and like your head is in her lap but that moment didn't strike me as sweet ... it just felt weird. I think it will be hard for me to ever do the church route.
Flayn:
- Flayn is boring haha. I need to do more with her support wise I think but I felt like she was thrust upon me and told to like her but I just didn't.
Shamir:
- Shamir has a cool character design and that's why I gave her a lot of sunflowers but as I built our support I found myself less and less interested in what she had to say.
Jertiza:
- Jeritza and I had such a short life together but I think it could've been magical given more time. Something about his line delivery is satisfyingly dead pan and wonderful. He's also so strong by the time you get him that I used him frequently.
​
Overall Impressions:
- I am going to have a really hard time playing any other route besides Crimson Flower. While not all of the students "spoke" to me I found Edelgard and her goals did speak to me and I loved this particular route.
Character Ranking:
Impacted Me Greatly: Edelgard, Annette
Love Them: Petra, Lysithea, Alois, Linhardt
Really Surprised Me: Bernedetta, Caspar, Seteth, Jeritza
So Much Potential: Hubert, Ferdinand
Avoid Talking To Next Time: Dorothea, Manuela, Rhea, Flayn, Shamir
​
Be sure to comment your own thoughts and please understand these are just my thoughts, everyone likely had a different experience from my own so don't take it to heart when I say someone is boring haha.
I feel like there's thousands more things I could say. I love this game and have started a Golden Deer run, but I will miss Edelgard and will finish my journey with this game doing one more Crimson Flower playthrough. You never forget your first and it was beautiful.

The following is correlated information received from attendees at the Annual General Meeting.
Fraser advised that the meeting was being taped, they were asked why the never streamed the meeting (but took on board streaming for the next meeting) ~ maybe the could put the tape up on the website?, someone else can try ringing them - I give up. ~ respondent to questions is Fraser unless indicated.
Fraser's opening address would have made me vomit, reassuring shareholders that every decision made was in the best interests of shareholders!! Some numbers @GARETH78 -- FYI the Company received 527 proxies representing 450,371,620 (38% SOI) that the Chairman (Fraser) voted in favour of the 2 resolutions.
Fraser was directed to a list of questions that were presented to the Company prior to the meeting, and was happy to discuss various aspects but stated all that has needed to be said was in Company announcements and or the Company's web site, and they have been available to discuss anytime (pick up the phone or email) and have been in close contact with all shareholders. They were pretty adamant that shareholder communications are good!! I hope their idea of good doesn't reflect on what the would consider value for any transaction??
As most these questions were relating to the past year, Fraser wanted to move on to discuss the future, but was reminded that the meeting was for the period 1 Jan 2022 to 31 Dec 2022 as per the Annual Report.
Questions: 1: Why was the decision made to sell the Leo Lithium Shares at a $7.1m loss? ~ Fraser didn't confirm the $7.1m loss but said it was stated in the question, the decision wasn't taken lightly, they were trying to assess what the financial position the Company was in and if they had enough funds moving forward, it wasn't a large holding and they weren't escrow shares and it was only a small part of the holding.
2: Why was the Recapitalisation Package pulled? ~ Used the macro environment, price of gold & exchange rate, able to respond in short timeframe as they were across all their requirements at that point in time. Interjection from shareholder, query on Frasers comment about being available to all shareholders as PR Company that has emails ending up in junk folder. **It was an unfortunate thing, Fraser again stipulated if you wish to contact and not getting a response, through whatever platform, please reach out through phone calls but they have responded to many shareholders. The have and will continue to make themselves available, Citadel-Magnus refer all correspondence.
3: How is Firefinch currently attempting to sell its shares in Morila when it claims they have no internal knowledge of Morila since walking away. ~ Answer is simple and straight forward, we are shareholders and are canvassing parties interested in the project, it is up to them to do due diligence. -- is it true the Company are waiting on a letter of no objection from the Mali government? ~ we are engaged with the government, other stakeholders and interested parties.
4: Update on the Commercial Court of Bamako situation and was it extended? ~ we are not involved, it is up to Morila SA, but we have been informed it has been deferred until July. Q: You are an 80% shareholder of Morila SA ~ yes Q: And you have no idea whats going on? ~ no we don't Q: and you are selling with no idea? ~ yes
5: How many days did Fraser charge $3k a day and who authorised it? ~ the board authorised it, doesn't know how many days or how much it was. All in the financials.
6: Why didn't the Company stream meeting? ~ there is no obligation to stream, and will take onboard and stream next time.
7: What was the outcome of the legal or commercial action against the contractor that under performed? ~ No longer involved in Morila SA, vendor contracts had nothing to do with Firefinch it was all Morila SA, no parent guarantees.
8: Question of related party payments in Quarterly Cash Flows weren't answered but said they are in the announcements. 9: Question on tenement spending or being surrendered? ~ not spending and not surrendering.
10: In the last quarterly report, Corporate spending was $2.2m, can you break down the specifics. ~ short answer, I don't have specifics but this lead to debating -- vast majority spending was on lawyers, we have taken pay cuts, keeping share holders up to date. ~ cut costs by moving office, Company disclosed it is into an office managed by Fraser, cost of office undisclosed as it hasn't been negotiated yet, spending on lawyers will be the same as they have 2 processes running (a) disposal of Morila (b) Corporate Process ~ Treadstone payments to date is confidential within the agreement with Treadstone. ~ reduced overheads by reducing staff.
Lowe: Going back to the 80% shareholding in Morila SA and not knowing what is going on. Has worked in 6 countries with 20 years experience and all governments are different. We don't have control of the Morila SA board, we only have 1 member on the board and get sporadic information.
11: There was no approval from shareholders to start these processes, most shareholders want the LLL shares returned. Lowe: ~ we have had meetings with shareholders & had feedback from shareholders, there are two types of shareholders: (1) that are happy to sit and wait - there are many (2) those that are wanting to realise liquidity now -- there are many, and thats why we started the process. If we can't deliver value then cash and LLL shares will be returned to shareholders.
Q: When does the process end, its been 6 months Lowe: Fair question, starts of with a market search, interested parties, do preliminary due diligence, it is an active process and if there was no chance of a suitable result the process would have ceased. There are interested parties we are engaging with and we will update the market by the end of June if not sooner.
Q: You mentioned a transaction that will provide value and liquidity, can you advise on what that looks like. Lowe: No we can't, it is confidential, we can't tell you who we are in discussions with nor what any offer have been made.
12: What is the ultimate outcome you are looking for with the Company? Are you looking to wind up the Company, or sell the assets and get another project. Lowe: Not looking for another project, we are seeking a corporate transaction that provides value and liquidity in a timely manner, if we can't provide value and liquidity then we will abandon the process and return cash and shares.
13: You were happy to propose a Capital raise at $0.06c, dilute the shares and have a value of 6c per FFX share, what value do you put on it today? for example, at $0.90c Leo Lithium per share puts FFX at $0.14c per share, there are broker reports out there that place $ 1.95 on LLL shares. What economic value do you place on on our Leo share today? ~ what ever transaction that is agreed to as better value and liquidity, any outcome will come to shareholders "most likely" to vote what ever transaction is proposed. Last night LLL shares were worth $0.16c and don't forget we have already delivered $591m value back to shareholders from the demerger. Lowe: we won't bring a deal to shareholders unless we are confident shareholders will approve it.
14: What value is placed on the equipment we purchased? ~ we understand they are still operating over there but can't put a value on what we spent on all the equipment, but the equipment that we acquired sits with Morila and is all part of the Morila transaction.
15: Understand why we walked away from Morila but don't understand as a 80% shareholder we ended up with a minimum board representation. What is the rationale behind only having a minimum board representation. ~ the decision to cease funding wasn't taken lightly, impact was significant, when we walked away the decision was to cut ties completely and after a month the directors resigned from Morila SA Board. Lowe: Important to point out to make, any creditors of Morila SA have no legal claim against Firefinch or its assets.
16: How many directors were on the board of Morila. Lowe: 4: Bill, Tom, Andrew & Seydou. I had to terminate 3 permanent employees.
17: Why was FFX blind sided by the sudden drop off in production but still reporting to shareholders all the new equipment had arrived and was getting assembled, but then we find out equipment wasn't ready and throughput through the plant was grinding to a halt? Lowe: I joined the Company 17th October, read through all the records and completely satisfied that as soon as the Board were made aware of the difficulties on site, the market was notified immediately. ~ on throughput, no happy but happy with recoveries, before the decision worked on what was happening operationally, how to get maximum ounces, how to get cash generation. Operationally could see a turnaround story and we could get to really good production.
18: Why didn't the Morila SA directors notify the Company and why didn't you know the production rates ~ ECOWAS sanctions had kit sitting at port, operator assembled inefficient equipment and found we were missing targets significantly, entered into a Trading Halt. ~ Mali directors operate under Mali law, and the General Manager can commit the Company to things outside the directions of the board. ~ all systems and structures were in place to keep us informed we were not reaching target, this was attributed to not having the right equipment on site.
19: Were FFX directors concerned with any improprieties in regards to management on site? ~ No could see no evidence of that.
Fraser on close: Take on notice that there has been some recent difficulties in communications. We are available to talk to people and feel free to come to talk to us.
All the above is based on information compiled from notes of attendees at the AGM, thank you to all the contributors.
cheers ps: but there is now more questions than answers ....... 📷

Part 26: https://www.reddit.com/Viidith22/comments/141nvay/my_roommate_is_slenderman_part_26/
(Terry)
I awoke an hour later, brain pulsing. I was in the back of the van laying on the floor, “The prodigal son returns, welcome back you crazy son of a bitch!” Tucker laughed.
“Took on a god face to face. Pretty sure the only one with bigger balls than that would be Abraham. Though, balls didn’t save you.” Doc said, looking up from his book.
“Took the last core I had, but at least I can say I’ve killed a god now.” Tucker snickered with a smirk.
“Concentrated light, can’t say it’s what I would have thought of, but it was effective.”
“Yeah, wasn’t effective portably until we came across some anti-matter from a crashed–”
“What?” I tried sitting up but failed.
“Right.” He stood, propping up the left row of seats, and pulled out a black case. Flicking it up he aimed it down at me, “Anti-matter annihilation laser. Think you can piece it together.” There were about five lenses that each shrunk, narrowing the barrel to a tip. Everything but the lenses was coated in a vanta black paint, “Each lens reduces the energy state while also–”
“I couldn’t give less fucks if I pulled them out of Doc’s patients. You killed him with that thing?”
“Yup, his head’s probably gettin' breathed in from the wildlife out here.” He clicked the case shut, put it back in place, and sat.
“And the data is intact?”
There was a brief pause, “While it is, I feel it’s important to be more concerned about yourself. You have major skull fractures, a concussion, you’re missing your face flesh, your back had to be clotted to avoid you bleeding out, and you are severely low on blood. You should be sleeping right now.”
“I just, I had to know.”
“Knowing you, you’ll be back on your feet in–”
I passed out again before he finished talking.
---------------------------------------------
When I awoke, I was on my bed, Sepratine was applying herbs to my face, “Ho–”
“16 hours, Doctor Sadist and Rachel are busy. You really ought to be more cautious, this isn’t one of your video games.”
“Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind. You heard from Jones?”
“No, apparently he passed out at the wheel after he parked. The Sadist said they’d be out for a while. He’s having Rachel look them over once she finishes a project she’s working on.”
“Shouldn’t you be helping her?”
She put her mortar down and sighed, “Flip onto your side, I need to replace the bandages on your back, then you need to eat.”
She finished tending to me in silence, then went to cook. The whole time, I just wanted to get up and finish everything. But even if I did, the data wasn’t fully recovered until it was sifted through. So I resigned to wait until the detective got back to me.
Sepratine came back a while later with a plate toppling over itself and a glass of water. Not to get too detailed, but both were empty in a matter of… 30 seconds or so? “Now get back to sleep. Your face should be back to normal in another day, and your skull is still fusing back together.”
“Let me know when Jones has the info.” She stood, taking my plate and cup.
“Someone will I’m sure. Get some rest, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t. You were reckless enough… Whatever, goodbye.”
-------------------------------
When I came to again, my face was dry, the medicine Sepratine had put on felt like a cracked desert, leaving a green crust behind. I stood, heading to the bathroom to wash my face. I took my meds, then removed the bandages from my back. Heading back to my room, I grabbed my phone, seeing several missed calls and texts. I immediately opened the message from Jones.
Call me when you wake up, I’ve got it, you’re not gonna believe where it is.
The phone rang four times, “Eh? Terry, that you?” He yawned.
“Yeah, what’s the deal?”
“You remember when you first met me?”
“No.”
“Well, I was headed to a town down in southeastern Oregon, one that wasn’t on any maps. And you’re not gonna believe this shit, but Tenyit Lane, the place I went, that’s where he’s being held.”
“So you know where I need to go?”
“Yeah, the place is a hot zone for organizations. There’re at least seven that I’ve recorded since I first went, and that’s not including–”
“And?”
“Well, point is, there’s security everywhere, people are gonna be everywhere, and the police and government officials are gonna be too busy counting bodies to care about one missing person.”
“Send me the coordinates.” I took a picture of my wall, putting the phone back against my ear.
“I’ll do you one better, I still have an old map to the place, I’ll send it over.”
“I don’t care what you say, I am paying you after this.”
I was already out the door, wearing nothing but a hoodie and sweatpants. I started the car, threw on EDM, and headed down to find Joseph.
------------------------------
A grey smoke rose in the night air above the town. I had a good ten miles left on the empty road before getting to the one stop on the entire strip. As I climbed the mountain, I turned my windshield wipers up more and more. The road was coated in a light crust of white, the speckles dropping ever so carefully in the light wind.
As I rounded a bend, I saw a flicker of headlights through the pine trees. Rounding the next one, I saw the lights again, this time coming around their own turn, before heading in my direction. The snow picked up as I met the gaze of the other driver, it was her.
I screeched to a stop, whipping a U-turn that nearly sent me into the rails. I stopped, having noticed her car was pulled over to the railing too. I jumped out of my car, running over to her, and grasping her in my arms, “I thought I’d killed you Tresca!”
Setting her down, my brain fully processed its surroundings. The person in front of me was Joseph, he was a bit shocked, but the rest of him reminded me of how he looked when we first met, “I-I’m sorry, I just–”
“Look, Terry. Honestly, it’s great to see you, great to have clear evidence I’m not crazy, great to know all those fun ass memories at the apartment were real. But…”
“I’m just so glad you’re okay.”
He smirked, but his eyes were hollow, “Yeah, okay…”
“I mean, you’re alive though!”
“Terry, this isn’t going to work.” He looked up, “I can’t ignore what you said when you saw me.” He looked back at me, nervous, “I read up on you, it was intrusive, and I’m sorry for that, but I can’t keep being a replacement. I need to live my own life, I need to get away from all this, I…” His eyes filled, but refused to streak, “I want to live a life away from all of this. I know a normal life isn’t really an option anymore. But I still wanna do what I can.”
“You… read my files?” I glanced at my phone, thinking about the picture I’d taken before leaving, “Which ones?”
“Your old life, hers too. Once I got ahold of my files, I decided to do some digging. I was me, but not I guess, I had to get an understanding of who the people I used to know were. I know about Tresca, I remember your conversation with Maerod.”
“I…”
He waited for a while, a few cars flew by us before he took the rope, “I will never regret the time we had. We had fun, we had some adventures and even a few emotional tipping points. Without you and everyone else, I’d probably have a slab of a ruck on top of me now. I don’t feel like dying anymore, but I also don’t feel like living. I’m sorry, but… I need to find my life out there.” He threw his arm up, gesturing around, “But if I stay with you, I’ll never get that chance.”
I tried to maintain myself, for seemingly the first time, taking Joseph as a person in. His overgrown brown hair, his blue eyes, broad shoulders, bland outfit. “You look different from before.”
“I feel different.” He shot a breath out his nose.
I staggered, “Let me grab something from my car before you go. You mind coming with?”
He nodded, gazing up at the grey sky. Several more cars flew past us as we made our way to mine. When we got there, I pulled out a small bag,
I reached into my car, pulling out the contract, “This was the guy that placed a hit on your wife. He’s dead now.”
A car flew by, lighting up his face to reveal his frozen face, “Y-you mean it? Who killed him?” He snatched the paper from my hand, looking over the entire sheet.
“The detective put on her case, the original guy is my understanding. Goes by Jones, he’s a P.I. now.”
“Really? Where is he?”
I cleared my throat, “You su–”
“Positive, where is he?”
I rubbed my arm, but looking at his hopeful face, I caved, “Apex Investigation Office, downtown Albany.”
He hugged me, “Thank you… Seriously, this…” He cried into my stomach for a time before pulling back and recomposing himself. Rubbing his nose dry, he turned around.
“Wait!”
He stopped, turning his head to me, “Yeah?”
I held onto my phone, debating to show him the picture or not. We stood still as two more cars flew by, followed by one with sirens. I pushed my phone back into my pocket, “Where are you going?”
He turned back to his car, holding up the contract, “To repay a debt. You’ll get yours too one of these days.”
Sitting in his car, he drove off without another word.
I sat in mine, pulling the phone from my pocket, and opened the gallery. I had one recent picture, it was one of the walls in my room, one with several posters. All of which were had drawn anime style portraits of Tresca. “Maybe Abraham was right, and maybe, Joseph has the right idea too.”
----------------------------------------
(Joseph)
Epilogue:
I dried my face as I left him behind, unsure of what to do first. I sat with music blasting for the first hour, mind flashing through the events like a slideshow. When I eventually came across a convenience store. It was a 24/7 place, the kind that had hot dogs on the roller for days at a time, and the only people that worked there couldn’t get a job anywhere else.
I pulled into a parking space and picked my phone off the passenger seat. I’d already decided I’d go to the detective’s place last. But I’d never been to Rachel’s before, and I didn’t remember her phone number. “What if I?”
I dialed a number, letting it ring a good five times when “Chad’s Cads how can I help you?”
“God, tell me that isn’t the name of your shop.”
“Joseph? Is that you bro?”
“Yeah, it’s been a while, good to hear from you.”
“Where the hell have you been man!? Terry’s out look–”
“It’s all sorted now. I don’t mean to be callous, I promise I’ll catch you up to speed later. But do you have Rachel’s number?”
“Oh, yeah. Everything good dude?”
“Yeah, she apparently told Terry to have me see her when he found me, so…”
“Oh for sure.”
“So can you send me her number?”
“Oh right, yeah. Good luck bro, come by when you have time. I wanna see how strong you are.”
“Sounds good Chad.” I hung up, smiling. A minute or so later, I had her number.
“Joseph?” Her voice was smooth.
“Hey Rachel I…”
“Chad messaged me.”
“Gotcha, Terry said you wanted to see me?”
“Yes, there’s a lot you need to know biologically if you want to pass for human.”
I sighed, rubbing my side, “Where should I meet you?”
“I’ll send you the location, Sepratine will be here too.”
“Oh, yaaaaaay.” She was alright, but she always had a whole bag of chips on her shoulder.
“See you soon. Oh, and did you happen to feel an aching in your right side at any point?”
“More than you know.”
“How frequently?”“Well, I was starved for a few days at one point, aside from that though I’d say a couple times a week if not more?”
“...Was that the entire time you were gone?”
“Not entirely sure, the first month or so is still kind of hazy, but since I was moved into town yeah.”
“...Okay, just… See you when you arrive.” Click
“I thought Doc was supposed to be the cryptic one of the bunch,” I smirked, a tear forming in my eye. “Goddamnit.” I wiped it, clicking the address she’d sent me, and heading on my way. Only after I picked up some gas station food.
-----------------------------------
“Oh my.”
“It’s me.” I did jazz hands, wearing a faux smile.
“Your soul is much… larger than I anticipated. Come inside, I’m sure you’re hungry.”
A whiff of cedar and sweetgrass slapped me in the face, “Wow, that’s… pungent.”
“Apologies, my sense of smell isn’t very strong, and Sepratine is….”She took a sharp intake of breath, closing the door behind me.
Looking around, the house seemed pretty standard, aside from the greenhouse in the living room, “So uh, what’s this you got goin here?”
“Take your shoes off please,” She did the same, “Creating chemicals from what’s in the air is taxing, it’s more convenient to just have the plants you need on hand.” She headed toward a door down the hall, “My equipment is downstairs.” She opened the door and I followed.
The air was a solid 80 or so, with humidity so thick it was like snorkeling, pollen so strong it activated allergies I hadn’t had since I was five. “Quite the quaint home you have here.”
“Oh right, sorry again.”
“No, you’re good, I’m just gonna need a few boxes of tissues is all.”
“Oh Jo–Joseph, my gods, you’re… wow. Different is a word, what happened to your soul?” Sepratine was turned to us, standing in front of a table with apparently every plant unknown to man of it.
“That’s kinda why I’m here.”
“Oh right, don’t mind me, just running a few experiments, Rachel has the perfect climate down here for a few plants.”
“Alright Joseph, hop on the bed.” Rachel stood in front of a wooden table, I couldn’t help but notice vials and jars stacked neatly on a counter that circled half the room, as well as a set of tables that held assorted plants with different lights hovering over them.
I sat on the table, “You need me to turn my head and cough?”
“No, first I need you to eat. It’ll be easier if you’re digesting food.”
She headed to a small closed-off area, then came back, plate in hand. Mostly just leafy greens. Maybe some kind of bean too?
“Go ahead, this should pass through you at just the right speed for me to catch it.” She turned, heading to another room, “Oh right, when you’re done I’ll need you to take off your shirt and lie down.” Then she headed through a door.
A few minutes passed and I finished the salad. Putting my plate on an open section of a counter and throwing my shirt to the side, I laid down, “Sepratine, you know anything about Vampirism?”
“Only rumors, they’re rare, so you’re the only one I’ve met.”
“Rarer than what you are?”
“Dryads are uncommon for sure. But given my personal experience, I’d say you’re one of a kind.”
“Awwwe, thank you.” I said sarcastically, “But is that all? They’re rare?”
“You’re here for Rachel because they’re rare. She’s met something like five, even got to do a lab experiment on one of them, saw how their stem reacted to stimulus. She’s the closest thing to an expert I can think of.”
Rachel made her entrance with the smack of the door on the wall, “Alright, don’t worry Joseph, I’m not going to cut you open today, I just want to see how large your stem has gotten. Based on your soul, you might be around half to ¾ vampire. But the only way to tell for sure is to see the size of your stem.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask, but everyone else I’ve met who knows about it has been a psychopath. What’s a stem?”
“Oh, kind of like a parasite is my current understanding.” She picked up a large metal plate, pressed it against my stomach, and used a metal rod to probe my right side.
“Come again?”
“Well… it’s more like a symbiotic relationship? Consider it another organ, only it’s wrapped around a portion of your large intestine. A full vampire has them fused, and it becomes an addition. But a partial, you can still see where they are two entities.”
“So you can cure me?”
She scoffed, “No.” Putting the plate and rod away, she pulled out a roundish object and squeezed some kind of gel onto the end before rubbing it against my right side. “If it’s removed, both entities die. You’re a symbiote now, you each rely on each other. In return for giving it nutrients, it gives you cells that allow you to regenerate anything short of half or more of it. They’re akin to stem cells, but enhanced. It extracts your DNA and replicates what it needs to to keep you alive for as long as possible. That’s the working theory I currently have anyway.”
“So I have a parasite in me?”
“A symbiote, you two aid each other, there are only benefits for each of you. Not to mention the enhanced soul… which I’m not entirely sure what causes that yet. Though the more vampirized you are, the more spiritual power a vampire seems to have. Considering that’s how it’s been with the last five, it’s only an assumption. But if that is the case, I am curious about the correlation.” She put the device down, handing me a towel, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to see the images I got back. Time to see how far along you are.”
Patting me on the stomach, she walked out of sight, and I wiped my side down. Sitting up, I hopped off the table, picked up my shirt, throwing it back on. Then, it was dark.
---------------------------
My eyes shot open, I was upright on the hardwood table, eyes darting around for the threat.
“Relaaaax, you’re fine.” Rachel and Sepratine stood beside me, and I loosened up, wired as hell.
Standing, I regained my balance, “Which one of you knocked me out?”
“Neither.” Rachel said, offended, “You fainted, you had several nutrient deficiencies, and call me crazy, but I don’t think you were willing to hear what I had to say.”
I mulled it over, a burst of panic surging when I thought about the thing inside me. But I managed to push it back into its little jar. Which I promptly placed back on the shelf with the rest of my emotions. “I’m fine.”
“Yes, now. But I have to be honest with you, the ultrasound came back more worrying than I expected. You’re only about ¼ so far. Your soul is far larger than any of my calculations suggested.”
“Right on.”
“Joseph, you have far more potential than I expected. While I advise safety, occasionally fasting may build up your soul to around as strong as Smudge.”
“Cool beans.”
“The issue is that you have an extremely high-functioning stem. You’ll need extremely nutrient-dense foods with extremely specific nutrients to maintain yourself as you are, let alone grow stronger. I’ll have what you need, but if you don’t want to go on a killing spree every few days, you’ll need an extremely strict diet.”
“How much is that gonna run me?”
She sighed, rubbing her eyes, “Quite frankly, I’ll charge you what it costs me. I don’t want you going on a murder frenzy. You’re my friend, but that’d also guarantee your death. As not only an alchemist, but a scientist, I can’t allow that. I’ll charge you at the end of each month. How does that sound?”
“Cool, do you have an estimate?”
“Joseph I feel you are hearing me but not listening.”
“No, I’ve got it.”
“This will be in the ballpark of 1500 dollars a month, and that’s alongside normal meals. Which should help you not only maintain but build up. The pain will feel like you’re being digested if you get to the point of dangerous starvation. Now, repeat everything I just said back to you.”
When I did from start to finish, she rubbed her face, “Alright, you can pick up your supply weekly from here. For now, though, I have something that should hold you over until next Friday, when I’ll have the actual supplies.”
She helped load a few milk crates into my overstuffed car, and when I went to start my car, she gestured for me to roll the window down. “Yes?”
“There are places you can get help you know?”
“I think I can handle the vampirism thing.”
“Joseph…” She stared at me, tugging at my bucket of guilt, tipping it ever so slightly.
“I’ll be fine. Thank you Rachel.” I flicked the button up and the window went with it as I pulled out of her driveway in the suburbs of West Salem.
-----------------------------
“Joseph?” The familiar guy behind a desk just across from me stared, eye agape.
“D-Detective? What uh… what happened to your erm… you?”
“Long story. What happened to you?”
“Long story.”
He chuckled, “Guess you were in that town for a while. What are you doing here?”
I held up the contract, “I’ve got a debt I needa pay.”
-------------------------------------
Author’s Note:
Hey guys, 4Shot speaking. Holy FUCK guys. This has been my longest-running series, it’s been 3.5 years in the making. Hell, it was the series that got me into this whole writing shebang. It feels weird to be saying goodbye to Joseph, given this series has been with me since the start. I’ve seen my ups alongside this story, and those who read or listened to the poker scene in my detective series will know I’ve had my downs.
Though, it’s not exactly the end. I have one final series I’ll be writing to wrap everything up. Those who have followed my first three may notice a trend. And yes, the final series will be a continuation of Jones’ tale. It’s been a long time coming, and I hope to complete it before february, which is when I’ll be taking an extended hiatus. I’ll be back, but I have some things I want to do first. This entire unraveling story will have been a part of my life for over 4 years by then, something like that is hard to just let go, and I have some life I wanna experience. So I may be gone for around 6 months to a year when I’ve finished the Detective’s story.
I’m glad so many of you have enjoyed my stories. I honestly never expected to go anywhere with any of this, thought I’d give this series up around part 3, and writing would just be another dead hobby of mine. But here we are. Honestly, there are a lot of people to thank, but the main people are my boy TeeStache who got me into writing, NaturesTemper who picked up my terrible rough draft of this series, and Viidith who first found my detective series and asked to narrate it, and proceeded to narrate my Lighthouse series.
It’s been a crazy ride out there, and I only intend to make it crazier in the future. Thanks again guys, cheers.

I feel bad for Kenny, and I understand why he’s upset and having a hard time with his dad being torn apart by the monsters and Boyd protecting the person responsible…but I’m still annoyed at how he doesn’t speak up and VOICE why he didn’t agree with dissecting the monster (he mostly just says it’s a bad idea).
I think it’s just annoying how all of them handled the dissection. Why couldn’t they compromise and dissect the monster but secure it better to the table, keep a talisman close by, and do it somewhere less dangerous just in case it isn’t actually dead or can come back to life?
I think Kenny needed to voice his reasoning- not just stand there and tell them all to not do something that has value. He could have attempted to make them see reason if he said “I see why you want to, but let’s do this somewhere safer and let’s consider what could go wrong so we are prepared”— he just kept telling them not to. He could have mentioned so many things, like the idea that the dead monster could have a virus or spread something to them- or bring more monsters to the house or make the monsters more persistent to get in…but instead he just kept telling them not to do it without giving any real reasons besides “it’s evil”
Both parties (Kenny and Kristi’s crew of dissectors) had a point- 1-don’t do it because they don’t understand how these things work- it could invite more into the home, make them sick, turn them into one if the monsters were once infected humans, come back to life after dark, etc. neither one was voicing it though. Very frustrating. 2-do it because they finally have a chance to harvest the worms which could kill more monsters and maybe discover how the cadaver responds to different things like water, different metals, etc just in case it sheds some light on defeating them
But for some reason, they all just stood there and argued without giving sound reasons, and then they dissected it in the most unsafe way- and also stopped short of so much more they could have done…why just collect the bile? What about the brain? What about looking at their saliva? I don’t understand the whole scene. It was irritating. Satisfying to get some forward motion but irritating how so many logical things are left unspoken by the characters.
Also, why did they just leave it on the table? Like, what? And if they did do something with the body, that should 100% be shown to the audience- that’s not something the audience should infer- show the viewer that they at least DISCUSSED what to do with the damn body with night coming.

I just started season two and I am liking it so far! Here are some thoughts, questions and red herrings I noticed so far.

1. I seriously doubt Isabella’s selfless intentions for taking the fall for being in the tape. I don’t care who you are or what your friendship is like- no one wants to be known as a person in a tape like that, especially in the 90s. So WHY would Isabella so quickly agree that she would cover for Megan- unless being in the tape is preferable to what Isabella was actually doing at the time the tape was made or if she herself made the tape?
2. I don’t believe that Lisa- Isabella’s best friend- even exists. Or at the very least she is going to be more important to the plot. Megan is right- no one voluntarily leaves their last year of school unless you have no friends- or unless you are running from something or someone.
3. Apparently Luke was sedated before his death- does this have to do with the pills Isabella flushed? Megan is also taking pills. Could the pills have gotten mixed up somehow?
4. The show is really trying to sell us on the idea that the older brother Brent is a monster. And I really dislike him. But I think there is more to this story.
5. Why was the tape shown at the party? Not just to embarrass Luke but to embarrass Luke’s Dad. I can’t really read his character yet. But the tape being played at the party seems significant beyond the fact that everyone was there.
6. The conversation about night swimming and how long that scene took place seemed significant. It went on for so long that I feel like it is an important detail for both Luke and Isabella.

What are your thoughts? Looking forward to more theories!

We bought a place. We didn’t know there was a tenant living in it before we saw it. He was gone before we ever went to go look at it. We found out it had been a rental property from all of our new neighbors who hated the guy, said he was a nuisance who would scream at everyone and pound on walls.
The sink started leaking and we had a plumber come out. The plumber pulled about 20 of those steel picture hanging nails with the twisty tops out of the garbage disposal. We figured out he must have been disgruntled after he was told to leave.
I wrote about this on another group and people ripped me a new one for 1. Buying a property that someone else had previously been evicted from (again, we had no idea he existed until neighbors told us; 2. Using the word “renter” (???????!?) I had no idea the word renter was a pejorative, as I’ve been a renter most of my life, and never considered it an insult.
I have all the sympathy in the world for someone who isn’t thrilled about being displaced when their rental gets sold and the new owners want to live in the home that they purchased. But, again, we didn’t know he existed. He was living there before our time. And we saved up and scrambled and put every ounce of energy and effort into buying this place because we know how awful renting can be. I also googled this guy after the nails in the disposal incident, and he’s currently living in a $3.9 million dollar house not far from this condo. So he’s a lot better off than we are.
I’m just here to ask if anyone else has ever ever experienced this before, both having to fix things from a previous disgruntled tenant, and having to deal with internet a-holes who act like everyone who dares to ever scramble to buy a home of their own must be some kind of evil greedy Dbag.

Hey guys like the title says I have the opportunity to own a family own practice right after graduating and was wondering how good or bad of an idea it is. My family member’s office generates 1.5-1.7 million a year. It’s a FFS office with a single GP practitioner and an associate who comes in every so often. Office has a few in house specialists and hygienists. My fam member only works 3 days a week (office still open M-F) and refers out whatever they believe is a headache to them nowadays. I guess my question is do u think it’s a good idea to jump right into a well established practice and take on the additional debt to have it upon graduating? Good thing is my fam member would stay on for a while to mentor (been mentoring at office already throughout dental school) and phase themselves out into a very part time semi retired associate with no ownership stake. Thanks in advance !

Posts in this series (note: link will only work properly in new Reddit): https://www.reddit.com/lds/collection/363e4ce4-8cec-40ad-8ea9-5954cf1fe52d
Sorry for taking so long to get this posted! I’ve been putting in more than 60 hours a week at work lately, and I just didn’t have time to properly research this post.
This week, the topic under discussion is Joseph’s wives and the way that he personally practiced plural marriage. It’s true that some of the circumstances a little unusual compared to how later members practiced it, and it’s also true that sealing practices in general were unusual compared to how we practice them today. The world was also very different in the 1840s than it is today in the 2020s.
All of that means that it can be very difficult for us to understand what was going on and why. I’m going to do my best to break this all down so that it makes sense, but just remember, it’s okay if it makes you uncomfortable. It’s okay if you don’t like the idea of plural marriage. It’s okay if you don’t ever want to practice it. I don’t, either.
But I do have a firm testimony that it was commanded by God. That testimony didn’t just magically appear one day. I had to earn it. I had to get on my knees and pray, and I had to ask Heavenly Father whether He instituted it or not. I had to study the issue and the circumstances surrounding it. More importantly, I had to ask Him to help me understand the reasons why He instituted it.
That’s the only way to really know for yourself.
So, having said that, let’s get into Faulk’s claims.

• The Women

Due to the secretive nature of Joseph’s affairs, the actual total number of wives Joseph took is unclear. Written records, primary accounts and second hand accounts puts the number between 29-65 women.

They were not affairs, they were sealings. Sixty-five is also a pretty exaggerated number. Most reputable sources put it at around 30-35. And again, remember that sealings are different than marriages, even though we often perform them together today. Many of those sealings were for eternity only, not for both time and eternity the way that sealings are done today. In fact, some of those wives, such as Cordelia Morley and Rachel Ivins Grant, did not have any kind of union with him at all while he was alive, and were sealed to Joseph for the very first time after he was already dead.
One thing to remember is that the sealing power is to seal us all together as one giant family. It’ll be one unbroken chain connecting all of us together. Many of these sealings of Joseph’s were done for that specific reason, to bind families together in the next life. That’s why there were things like adoption sealings, where people would be “adopted” into each other’s families through the sealing process. Siblings were sometimes sealed together. Women who were married to men who were not members of the Church would sometimes to be sealed to righteous Priesthood holders for the next life.
Also, it drives me batty that Faulk keeps repeating that Joseph took wives. None of them were married to him against their will. They all had a choice in the matter.

Most disturbing was the fact that many of these women were already married, much younger and related to each other.

Why is that “most disturbing”? The women were all of legal marriageable age, and there is no evidence of any sexual relations between Joseph and any of the civilly married women, or with any of the youngest wives.
One of the reasons it’s believed that Joseph was sealed to so many women who were already married is because he was trying to satisfy God’s commandment while not hurting Emma. If he was sealing himself to married women, he wouldn’t have to actually marry them and live together as husband and wife. As the Gospel Topics Essay Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo says:

These sealings may also be explained by Joseph’s reluctance to enter plural marriage because of the sorrow it would bring to his wife Emma. He may have believed that sealings to married women would comply with the Lord’s command without requiring him to have normal marriage relationships. This could explain why, according to Lorenzo Snow, the angel reprimanded Joseph for having “demurred” on plural marriage even after he had entered into the practice. After this rebuke, according to this interpretation, Joseph returned primarily to sealings with single women.

Joseph’s youngest wife, Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, was sealed to Joseph when she was fourteen. We’ll discuss her in some detail a little later in this post. But that union was done for dynastic/adoptive reasons at her father’s request, to join Heber C. Kimball’s family to Joseph’s in the eternities.
And, believe it or not, some of the women who practiced plural marriage probably found it easier to do so when the other wife was biologically related to them. After all, they already loved them and knew how to live together with them in harmony.
At this point in the LFMW, Faulk posts a small chart taken from Todd Compton’s In Sacred Loneliness. You can find that chart here.

1. Married: Between 8-11 women were married to other men at the time Joseph took them for his wives.

And every single one of them remained married to their husbands after they were sealed to Joseph. That’s because, again, sealings and marriages are not the same thing, and sealings for the next life had no bearing on their marriages in this one. Joseph did not live with these women as husband and wife.

He sent several men on missions for the Church then married their wives, or married their wives in secret and then sent the husbands on missions afterwards.

Many of the husbands in question knew about the sealings and even participated in them. Joseph also did not send the husbands on missions so he could marry their wives in secret.

• Marinda Nancy Johnson-Hyde-Smith

In September 1831, Joseph and Emma Smith moved in with the Johnson family while Joseph and Sidney Rigdon worked on translating the Bible. While staying with the Johnsons in March, 1832, Joseph Smith was dragged out by a mob and tarred and feathered. Marinda’s brother Eli led the mob because he felt that Joseph had been too intimate with Marinda.

Um. No. Eli Johnson was Marinda’s uncle, not her brother, and he wasn’t the leader of the mob. The mob also didn’t attack him for that reason. Marinda herself said that Joseph had never acted inappropriately while he was staying in her father’s home. This accusation was first introduced during the infamous 1884 Braden-Kelley debate, and repeated by Fawn Brodie, Grant Palmer, and a host of others.
The mob was led by Symonds Ryder and Ezra Booth, because they thought he’d try to steal their property under the Law of Consecration. They’d both already apostatized for various reasons, then led a smear campaign against Joseph and the Church through local newspapers for a while before leading the attack. The only evidence that Eli Johnson was even involved are brief reports that he was the one who provided and heated the tar. According to at least one account, he wasn’t even an active participant, but just left it out for them to use. The mob tried to castrate then murder him, and were unsuccessful in both attempts.

Soon Marinda married apostle Orson Hyde. On April 6, 1840, Orson was sent on a 3 year mission to Jerusalem. Shortly after his departure, Joseph married his wife Nancy Marinda Johnson-Hyde while Orson was gone. In Joseph Smith’s journal, in a list of his marriages he wrote “Apr 42 Marinda Johnson to Joseph Smith.” In 1858 Orson and Marinda separated.

The separation of Orson and Marinda Hyde had nothing to do with her sealing to Joseph, which had happened 15 years earlier. The rest of this is also pretty heavily distorted. Orson Hyde was sent on his mission on April 15, 1840, and returned on December 7, 1842. There are two sealing dates for Joseph and Marinda, making it unclear when it actually happened. It was written down in Joseph’s journal by his scribe Thomas Bullock as taking place in May of 1842. This entry was apparently not recorded until after July 14, 1843, however, and the affidavit Marinda signed stated that the sealing took place in May 1843, after Orson was home.
Regardless of which date is accurate, Orson was not sent on a mission so Joseph could steal his wife if the sealing happened 2-3 years after he left. They were not sealed “shortly after his departure” at all. In fact, even the earliest sealing date is closer to the date he returned than the date he left.

• Zina Diantha Huntington-Jacobs-Smith-Young

Zina was 18 when her mother died and after went to live in the Smith’s home. Soon she met Joseph’s friend, Henry Jacobs. Joseph was to officiate their wedding, but never showed. Instead, bishop John C. Bennett performed the marriage. Later, Zina asked Joseph why he didn’t show, “He told her it had been made known to him that she was to be his Celestial Wife and he could not give to another one who had been given to him.” (Henry Jacobs, History of Henry Bailey Jacobs)
During Henry and Zina’s marriage, Joseph sent Henry on 8 missions. At one point Joseph sent a message to Zina through her brother Dimick. It read, “Tell Zina I have put it off and put it off until an angel with a drawn sword has stood before me and told me if I did not establish that principle and live it, I would lose my position and my life and the Church could progress no further.” After four proposals and pressured with the responsibility for the life of the prophet, Zina finally accepted. (Brian C. Hales, Mormon Historical Studies 11, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 69–70.)

That last line there is a pretty big exaggeration of what the article actually says. In fact, the article doesn’t talk about Zina Huntington at all. The only place she’s mentioned at all is her inclusion in a chart of the different accounts of the angel with the drawn sword. I’ve included a screenshot of the only three mentions of her from Faulk’s cited source. In fact, it’s actually a paraphrased line from Todd Compton’s In Sacred Loneliness.
Zina, however, clarified that she came to accept the principle through searching the scriptures and praying, and that she received an answer from God that it was from Him. It wasn’t because she felt pressured into it at all.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to pin down exact details when it comes to Zina’s timeline, as there are a lot of discrepancies. When I wrote my response to the CES Letter, I cited liberally from a book titled 4 Zinas: A Story of Mothers and Daughters on the Mormon Frontier. This book used to be housed on the Internet Archive, but has since been taken down. Forgive me that I can’t show exact pages anymore on those citations. Many years after all these events took place, Zina gave testimony saying that she first learned of the principle of plural marriage from Dimick, who had heard it from Joseph. Other sources, seemingly reliant on her diary, say that she learned it from Joseph while she was staying at his home. Some sources say that Joseph proposed to her three times while she was living at his home and that she refused him each time out of respect for Emma. Other sources say she declined to give him an answer and kept putting him off, also out of respect for Emma. Some sources say that Joseph wrote Zina a letter saying he’d been threatened by an angel with a drawn sword, while others say that it was a verbal message passed to her by Dimick, who had been sent to offer her another proposal (even though she was already married to Henry Jacobs at that point). Some sources say that Henry was present for that initial sealing to Joseph, but absent from the other resealing to Joseph for eternity and sealing to Brigham for time. Others say Henry was there for the sealing to Brigham, but are silent on whether he was there for the first sealing to Joseph. Zina said in her later testimony that it was just Joseph, her, and Dimick present at their initial sealing, but that Brigham later resealed them after he returned from a mission to England, meaning that she would have been sealed to Joseph three times in total. However, in signed affidavits collected by the Church, Zina, Dimick, and Dimick’s wife Fanny all verified that Fanny was there at the sealing, too. Etc.
Because of all of this, it’s difficult to know exactly what happened, who was aware of what, and when and how they all became aware of it. However, Zina did say that the Lord had prepared her for the doctrine prior to her hearing it:

I will tell you the facts. I had dreams — I am no dreamer but I had dreams that I could not account for. I know this is the work of the Lord; it was revealed to me, even when young. Things were presented to my mind that I could not account for. When Joseph Smith revealed this order I knew what it meant; the Lord was preparing my mind to receive it.

Additionally, Henry was called on his first mission in May of 1839, before he ever even met Zina. The guy was a prolific missionary who served repeatedly throughout his life. None of those missions overlapped with Joseph’s sealing to Zina.
In fact, according to family tradition, he was present when Joseph told Zina that the reason he hadn’t officiated their wedding is because she was meant to be his plural wife. Henry accepted the news because he was close to Joseph and trusted him. Zina was the one who hadn’t received an answer yet and still had reservations.

After Joseph’s death, Brigham Young also took Zina for his wife while she was still married to Henry Jacobs. Brigham called Henry to serve a mission in England and told him to find another wife. While Henry was in England, Zina began living at the Young house with her children and soon bore a child with Brigham.

Let’s walk through all of this. First, many of Joseph’s sealed wives who were already civilly married to someone else just stayed married to their husbands after his death. They had the choice on whether to re-seal themselves to Joseph or not, and the single wives had the choice of which members of the Twelve they wanted to be sealed to for time. Zina wasn’t forced to leave her marriage to seal herself to Brigham. She chose to do that.
Brigham supposedly told Henry to find another wife, though that can’t be corroborated. He also supposedly had to tell Henry to stop writing love letters to Zina after they were married.
Brigham eventually had several dozen wives and 57 children, in addition to being the leader of the Church and the governor of Utah Territory, owning multiple businesses, and directing the settlement efforts across a very large area. Dude was a busy guy, just saying. Zina did not live with him and did not spent tons of alone time with him. She lived for a time in a separate home with her children, and for a time in a house with several of his other wives. The time she spent alone together with him was sporadic and infrequent.
How would Brigham know that Zina was getting love letters from Henry Jacobs unless she told him? And if she enjoyed receiving those letters, why would she tell him? Why not hide them from him? It would’ve been pretty easy to do so—all she had to do was keep her mouth shut. It’s not like Brigham was snooping through all of his wives’ things in his limited free time. The only reason for her to bring the letters to his attention was if she didn’t like receiving them.
Imagine it from her point of view. You get divorced and move on. You describe that marriage as an unhappy one at several points throughout the rest of your life. You marry someone else and even have a child with them, but your ex keeps contacting you, telling you how much they still love you and still want to be with you. How uncomfortable would that be? It’d be an extremely awkward situation for anyone.
To me, it’s far more likely that Zina went to Brigham and asked him to intervene because it was making her uncomfortable than it is that Brigham found out on his own and flew into a rage and forbade Henry from contacting Zina despite her protestations.
Aside from a very few notable exceptions, most of Brigham’s wives and children spoke of him in glowing terms. Zina herself mentioned his kindness repeatedly.
Henry, meanwhile, was married three more times and all four of his marriages ended in divorce. I don’t know what led to the end of the other three marriages, but I do know that he’s the common denominator in all of those marriages.
It seems clear that Zina left him in what is sometimes called a “folk divorce,” which was a thing in the 19th Century where the man and woman decided to dissolve their marriage and go their separate ways, leaving each of them free to marry again. She chose to marry Brigham for time, and Henry struggled to move on afterward...for a time. Brigham asked him to back off, and he did.

• Vilate Kimball

Shortly after Heber’s return from England, he was introduced to the doctrine of plural marriage directly through a startling test. He had already sacrificed homes, possessions, friends, relatives, all worldly rewards, peace, and tranquility for the Restoration. Nothing was left to place on the altar save his life, his children, and his wife. Then came the Abrahamic test. Joseph demanded for himself what to Heber was the unthinkable, his Vilate. Totally crushed spiritually and emotionally, Heber touched neither food nor water for three days and three nights and continually sought confirmation and comfort from God. On the evening of the third day, some kind of assurance came, and Heber took Vilate to the upper room of Joseph’s store on Water Street. The Prophet wept at this act of faith, devotion, and obedience. Joseph never intended to take Vilate. It was all a test.” (Heber C. Kimball, Mormon Patriarch and Pioneer by Stanley B. Kimball, p.93)

Yep, because blessings come after the trial of our faith. Heber and Vilate were sealed for time and eternity that same night as a reward for their faithfulness. Theirs was one of the very first sealings of this dispensation.

Teenagers: Ten of Joseph’s wives were teenagers.

Here, Faulk posts another little chart, which I have also linked.

• Helen Mar Kimball-Smith

Instead of taking Heber C. Kimball’s wife, Vilate, as Joseph had done with others, he married Heber’s 14 year-old daughter, Helen, in May of 1843.

This is presented somewhat disingenuously. Joseph and Helen were sealed two years after Heber and Vilate were sealed. The two incidents are not connected at all. And, as mentioned earlier, Joseph and Helen were sealed at Heber’s urging. He wanted to link his family to Joseph’s in the eternities.

“The youngest was Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of Joseph’s close friends Heber C. and Vilate Murray Kimball, who was sealed to Joseph several months before her 15th birthday.” (Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo, LDS.org, Oct. 2014)
In a letter written by Helen Kimball, her father had asked her if she would be willing to be sealed to Joseph Smith, Joseph himself came to her and said,
“If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation and exaltation & that of your father’s household & all of your kindred.” She talks of her mother’s hidden grief “to see her child, who had scarcely seen her fifteenth summer, following in the same thorny path [of polygamy].” “I would never have been sealed to Joseph had I known it was anything more than ceremony. I was young, and they deceived me, by saying the salvation of our whole family depended on it.” (Helen Mar Kimball, Mormon Polygamy: A History, by LDS Historian Richard S. Van Wagoner, p.53)

Ooh, this is super dishonest framing! The first two lines in quotation marks are indeed taken from an autobiographical letter written by Helen to her children in 1881. The first is from page 482 of a book titled A Woman’s View: Helen Mar Whitney’s Reminiscences of Early Church History, and the second from page 486.
But that third quotation, about how she’d never have been sealed to Joseph if she knew it was anything more than a ceremony? That’s taken from page 19 of an early anti-Mormon pamphlet called Narrative of Some of the Proceedings of the Mormons: Giving an Account of Their Iniquities by Catherine Lewis, published in 1848. She claimed to have Helen say this to her mother at some point, though everything in the book is suspect. It’s all pretty badly distorted from reality, which you can see for yourself just by reading it.
Helen herself certainly never backed up its claim. She did admit to being upset as a 15-year-old at being prevented from going out to dances with her friends because of the sealing, so it’s possible she said something like that at one point in her frustration and disappointment. But the circumstances surrounding it are certainly skewed, since Catherine reports it in the context of Helen refusing, after Joseph’s death, to be sealed for time as her father’s plural wife. That surely never happened. And in fact, after a few more years, Helen became a very vocal defender of plural marriage and of Joseph Smith for the rest of her life.
So, I’d take that statement with a very big grain of salt. That Faulk presents it here as if it was a direct quote from Helen’s own letter to her children is repulsive.

Joseph told a reluctant Helen Mar Kimball that if she married him it would ensure her salvation and the salvation of all her family. Imagine the burden on a 14 year old girl’s emotions of the salvation for her entire family riding on accepting Joseph’s proposal.

Except that Helen herself admitted that she didn’t understand what he was trying to teach her, and neither of her parents, who were there at the time of the proposal, understood it that way at all.

• Nancy Winchester Smith

While records show Nancy was married to Joseph, no dates were written. At the time of Joseph’s death, Nancy was 15 years old. It is possible that, like Helen Mar Kimball, Nancy could have been 14.

It’s not confirmed that Nancy Winchester was a plural wife of Joseph Smith, though evidence leans that way. We also have no idea when that sealing would have taken place, because no records of the sealing exist. We don’t know much about her at all. Her brother Benjamin was a known and rather hostile critic of Joseph’s who never mentioned the fact that they were sealed, so either he didn’t know about it, he didn’t see anything wrong with it (which is highly doubtful), or it never happened and her inclusion on the list was a mistake.
Eliza R. Snow listed her as one of his wives, and so did Orson Whitney, the son of Helen Mar Kimball Whitney. Helen was one of Nancy’s good friends so there’s solid evidence to believe it, but it’s not confirmed.

Unlike what is commonly taught in Sunday school lessons, marriages to young teenagers were not “common in pioneer days.”

Not true, and Faulk’s evidence for this claim doesn’t even say that:

“In 1890, when the U.S. Census Bureau started collecting marriage data, it was recorded that the average age of a first marriage for men was 26 years, and the average age of marriage for women was 22 years.” (http://classroom.synonym.com/agemarriage- us-1800s-23174.html)

Note that this quote says the average age was 22 years old. That means that some women were much older and some were much younger. 1890 is also half a century later than 1840, and society can change a lot in 50 years.
Craig Foster wrote a great article for the Interpreter a few years ago) which demonstrated that in frontier America in the 1800s, females often married quite young, and their husbands were usually older and more settled. It was much less common in the settled cities along the East Coast, but on the frontier (which included Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and especially Utah), it was relatively common. Men in their 20s-40s marrying teenagers was not unusual.
Even today, it’s legal for teenagers to get married. Let’s not forget that most of Joseph’s teenaged wives were 17-19 years old. Many of us in this church know women who got married at 18 or 19. While they are technically still teenagers, calling them teen brides is implies that they were underage.
The entire concept of “underage” did not exist in the 1800s. In fact, the concept of “teenagers” didn’t even exist back then. You were either a child or an adult, and there was no in-between.
Applying our societal standards to a past society and judging them for their lack of adherence to our norms is a logical fallacy known as “presentism.” I get it—today, it’s unusual and it makes us squirm to hear of girls aged 14-16 getting married. But it was also not out of place in that day and age. And, most importantly, there is no evidence of any sexual activity between Joseph and his youngest wives.

3. Mothers and Daughters: Joseph married a mother and daughter pair.

• Patty Bartlett Sessions (Mother – already married to David Sessions)

She was sealed to Joseph for eternity while her husband was a faithful member of the Church, and though she and her husband both later received their endowment, they weren’t sealed at that time. She also didn’t re-seal herself to Joseph in the temple after his death the way that many of his other plural wives did. The reasons why are unclear. After her husband’s death, she was sealed for time to another man. Around 1867, after submitting an affidavit concerning her plural marriage to Joseph, she was offered the chance to be re-sealed to Joseph again, though I’m not sure if she accepted or not.
We don’t know the reasons for this sealing, just like we don’t know the reasons behind many of Joseph’s sealings to civilly married women.

• Sylvia Sessions Lyon (Daughter – already married to Windsor Lyon).

Windsor Lyon was excommunicated from the Church in November of 1842. Joseph and Windsor remained good friends for the rest of Joseph’s life. There are conflicting dates from two unsigned affidavits saying that Sylvia’s sealing to Joseph either took place in early 1842 or early 1843. Brian Hales favors the later date.
If he’s right, this appears to be one of those sealings where Joseph was sealed to a woman whose husband wasn’t (at the time) a faithful member of the Church so that she could still obtain exaltation.

Sylvia bore children with both husbands; three children with Windsor and one with Joseph. (Josephine - February 8, 1844)

No, no, no. She most certainly did not have a child with Joseph. For a long time, it was considered an unproven possibility, but was never definitive. However, even the possibility was ruled out by DNA testing in 2016, seven years ago.
The fact that this is still in the LFMW after all this time caught me by surprise. We know the LFMW has been updated since its first posting, since the original FAIR rebuttal addresses differently worded accusations. There was plenty of time to correct the inaccuracy. In fact, this particular objection appears to have been added to the original text, rather than removed.

4. Pairs of Sisters: Joseph married 3 pairs of sisters.

• Emily Dow Partridge and Eliza Maria Partridge.
  
• Sara Lawrence and Maria Lawrence.
  
• Zina Huntington Jacobs and Presidia Huntington Buell.
  

Yep, he sure did. Zina and Presendia (her name is not Presidia) were both sealed to Joseph for eternity only, with no marriage in this lifetime. But Emily and Eliza Partridge and Sarah and Maria Lawrence were all sealed to Joseph for time and eternity.
Again, though, I’m not sure why this is supposed to be a point of scandal. None of them were married against their will. They all had the choice, and they all agreed to these arrangements. Is it unusual? Sure. It’s weird, I think we can all agree with that. But is it sinful? Nope. When God commands polygamy, it’s not sinful, and levirate marriages have been around for thousands of years. This is somewhat similar to that practice, particularly in the case of Mary and Mercy Fielding and Hyrum Smith.
Remember, when plural marriage was first introduced, they weren’t really given a rule book. There are some directions and guidelines given in D&C 132, but they only cover certain situations. In the Nauvoo days, they were basically winging it. They had to adjust to the new commandment that completely upended their entire lives and then figure out the best way to live it. There was trial and error, heartache, sacrifice, and suffering involved. It was not easy for any of them, and they did the best they could. If they made mistakes, they need our grace, not our judgment.

Hi all! Long story short, mother-in-law is attempting to sell a manufactured home on Facebook Marketplace. Put frankly, it isn't realistic, and we know it isn't going to get a legitimate buyer (asking $40k over what new models go for, plus other issues), so fiance and I are in damage control mode because she isn't street smart (yesterday both of us had to explain thoroughly why she should absolutely NOT "click this link to verify your identity").
Mother-in-law calls today excited because 2 days after posting, she has a buyer willing to pay full asking price, house unseen, no haggling, and he's heading over this afternoon to hand her $1,000 cash down to reserve it, with no request for a contract (she did not ask for $ down to hold, and she was in fact unwise enough to put address in listing). We live 3+hrs away and can't be there, but after convincing, she put off this visit until tomorrow when my fiance can at least phone in to make sure she isn't getting robbed (wish that was a joke). (Info: We are also looking into non-emergency law enforcement response for safety purposes.)
Our best guess is money laundering or some sort of digital payment scam. We told her do not take ANY money from this guy, but as you probably could tell, she wouldn't agree so we "settled" for no digital transfers/payments, only cash (tried for "only cash if you're at a bank to verify if counterfeit" but that fell on deaf ears).
Any questions we can ask this guy to help reveal this is as the scam it likely is? And anything we could use to help convince a stubborn lady of this?
Thanks for the help!

I’m thinking to buy new construction house from a specific builder. They are offering $37.5k incentives (use it or loose it), if I choose their preferred lender. I got below options but little bit confused on what to choose. Could use your suggestions. Please provide any ideas to better handle this. FYI, it’s move in ready home and closing is in July end. #mortgage #housing #Washington
Purchase: 900k Down: 10% Par rate: 7.25
30 yr fixed was my preferred option but recently learned from Reddit posts that if I do temp buydown the money that we put upfront to buydown will be with escrow and can be used(prorated money) when I refinance within 2 years. But with 30yr fixed, money is lost if I want to refinance. We saw rates pulled back in March 2023 to ~5.25. If this happens again, option 1 is not great to choose.
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Early the next morning, as the sun was just cresting the horizon, Bellona was putting the last of her gear onto a merchant wagon. With the change in plans for several routes that came with the news of the new dungeon came an opportunity to start the first part of her route with some company. For the first leg, she’d be accompanying a caravan, then going by horse alone for the second leg, before going on foot for the last leg. It made her logistics easier, she didn’t have to worry about feed for the horse for most of it.
The champion of Amirume went over her mental checklist one more time as she adjusted the position of her stuff, making everything as neat as possible. All her heavy armor was in the chest, until she was setting out on the last leg there was little reason to wear more than a chain shirt. There was little chance of danger on the main roads, so her axe she’d keep at her side and her shield on the horse. Even when traveling solo, it would be easier on the beast to distribute the weight of her armor rather than have her entire armored mass centered on its back.
For the last leg, when the horse would be left behind, she’d wear her full kit. If you were going to be carrying the weight anyway, there was no better distribution than to wear it. That would also be the section where she’d be traveling up mountain paths, and she didn’t look forward to it. She’d worn her armor for days while moving and fighting across relatively flat land before, but days of going up a mountain in armor were going to be quite different. Fortunately, it was early summer, so the mountains wouldn’t be too cold on her way up.
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After Moriko had reached the monastery, Mordecai and Kazue had turned their attention back inward, for it was time to build. As usual, Kazue went first. With her plans finalized, the walls of the cavern on the fifth floor shifted and formed tiers, enabling ever-higher placement of mushroom buildings, and larger structures that could spread their weight on supports of multiple heights.
This was a large village of artisans, crafters, farmers, athletes, entertainers, writers, philosophers, and similar professions. She expanded on her tokens idea, to pass through the gate required five tokens, but the laganthros were free to hand tokens to one, some, all, or none of a party’s members as they saw fit, and the tokens would attune themselves to those who they were presented to. She also borrowed from Mordecai’s double-door concept: the first door could be opened by anyone who had five tokens, the second door would open only if the first door was closed and everyone inside the corridor had five tokens, and the first door also can’t be opened unless the second door is closed.
In addition to the more straightforward challenges she’d been thinking of previously, she had developed some slightly more complicated quests. Many professions use heat, so a challenge could start with “My fire drake wandered off and I can’t find him!”, leading to tracking down the drake, then figuring out the sub-challenge (it might be somewhere hard to access, or be distracted by a love interest, or maybe it found a shiny to large for it to carry but won’t let it go and hisses at any one who gets close, etc), solving the issue, and then they might still need to persuade the drake to come home.
There were many variations of ‘I need a thing’ that could be made into challenges, and the first obstacle was unstated: The inhabitants could pick the challenge, and could make it harder. If they didn’t like you, it would probably be long and involved, and wind up getting dirty, wet, and cold. So being at least reasonably polite made everything much easier. It wasn’t terribly likely that this would be an issue by the time someone got this far, but Kazue had decided that she was going to include variability in all her future challenges that made things easier for people who were being nice.
Now, people needed proper settings for them to venture into, so she spun off side caves of differing layouts and environments; some were jagged rifts that required navigating a lot of vertical terrain, some were wide with one or more streams or small ponds, others saw a return of crystal outcroppings, and a few were mildly caustic with acidic, alkaline, or salty environments. Nothing too dangerous of course, unless one was exceptionally foolish.
With many of the available challenges being at least partly physical, she started arranging for appropriate rewards as well. Mordecai had made sure she now knew how to craft some of the common physical enchantment items and how to alter their form and fine-tune their secondary abilities. A belt that could let someone carry more weight, boots that made you a little faster or made your steps quieter, a cape that could keep you warm or could help you blend into the background, and many other possibilities.
Not that she neglected the mental side either: glasses that could help decipher an unknown language, a pen that always wrote smoothly and without smearing and with unlimited ink of your choice, crafting tools that enhanced the product you made, and several other items of specialized use were all available rewards. She wanted the rewards here to be more focused on helping people better their skills, rather than rewarding them with direct knowledge as the library did.
Of course, sometimes people would be coming through who knew more than anyone in the dungeon did on a topic. Their challenge would be to teach, and rewards would generally be in raw materials unless there was other information they wanted.
She did have to be careful just how generous she was though. From dawn to dawn, there was a limit to how much the dungeon could create that could be claimed as loot, and they could only ‘stockpile’ for values that had already been won or that they already owed as part of a trade agreement. Their inhabitants were not so limited, but only if they worked with ‘real’ materials rather than ones created directly through dungeon mana, and it took a fair amount of time and effort to craft even a minor enchanted item the proper way. So unless there was a good cause, the items the inhabitants crafted were their own to use or to trade as they saw fit.
When Kazue was done she looked over the town to make sure she was satisfied with her work. There were towering mushroom spires, thick-walled squat mushroom buildings, long buildings made from many mushrooms grown together, and every other combination that had been asked for that she could make work. A lot of them were ‘dummies’ at the moment with no roads to reach them or doors to enter them, but she’d change that as the population grew. She even had a few unoccupied buildings growing from the ceiling, which were left available to be claimed by any inhabitants that could make their way to them. A little challenge and reward set up for her own people, figuring out how to make flying magic items or systems.
Creating the lighting had been one of her favorite parts. There had been a few concepts she’d considered, such as just making every mushroom and fungal surface glow slightly to create a very even and ‘sourceless’ lighting, but in the end, she went for something a bit more flavorful. The underside of the mushroom caps glowed to illuminate the area around their base while large glowing ‘spores’ floated overhead to cast a dimmer radiance to the general area, and all the paths were marked with tiny little puffballs that would collapse in a sudden burst of glowing dust spores if disturbed, most likely coating whoever messed with them and leaving a glowing residue that would smear the more you tried to rub it off.
All of the fungal-based light was in a soft blue/green color, but in addition to the ‘natural’ lighting, the inhabitants had access to fire and normal light spells, making the interior of the buildings look warm and inviting against the backdrop of perpetual twilight outside. Overall she rather enjoyed the contrast of slightly spooky exterior lighting and warm, inviting interior lighting.
.
They’d had plenty of time to build up lots of energy since Kazue’s mother had come through, so technically Mordecai could have built up his side at the same time. But he felt it was best to wait until she finished in case there were any surprises. The upside-down houses on the ceiling had not been in their original ideas for example, though in this case, they didn’t cost a significant amount more. They did, however, give him an idea to add later.
For now he focused on his original plan. At the entrance to the fifth floor, visitors would find themselves entering a wide campsite. There was no equipment, but the space was obviously cleared with a small, 2-foot tall ‘fence’ of piled stones and a fire pit in the center. There was also a plaque that read:

This area is neutral territory for the two warring factions beyond, but animals and monsters do not know such distinctions. Proceed at your own time and in your own way, there is no one path or one method to success. 

Combat challenges were fun and straightforward, but even the library was only a warm-up. Beyond the cleared campsite stretched a dimly lit mushroom and fungus forest that gave away nothing of what lay in wait for brave adventurers to face. Or at least would, when he was done.
Mordecai started with the terrain. The campsite was going to be slightly disadvantageous in that it was at the bottom of a shallow depression. All ways out were uphill, making it impossible to see most of the cavern from here even without the addition of a forest. From there he varied the terrain, creating twisting valleys, solo and clumped hills, the occasional small ravine, and very few areas of simple, flat land. If one tried hard enough, one could even find thin trails running along the walls of the cavern, but those were carefully placed and angled to be difficult to spot from below. Once done with the layout, he created a few springs to become the heads of several streams that eventually combined into a river that flowed into the boss chamber at the end of the cavern.
Back toward the entrance, he also introduced a small, natural ‘alcove’ with three waterfalls coming down along the inner curve of the wall into a small pool, which in turn started its own stream. These three waterfalls were connected back to the warren’s water network, making them part of the ecology of the dungeon. It was also time to add a layer of complexity: rather than just having exclusive pathways for different water uses, he started using nature’s filters of rock, soil, and sand to keep most of the impurities flowing into the sewers, and then let water seepage work its way into various underground ponds, which in turn became the sources for further streams. He made sure the paths alternated going into airless pockets and into caverns that were half-air and had light sources embedded in the ceiling to let photosynthesis take place. All natural purification. This was the source of the water for these three waterfalls and introduced the preexisting biome into this floor.
Now he looked at his entire catalog of available mosses, lichens, and fungi to select the best ground cover options, then he carpeted the entire floor in a mixture of this ‘grass’. Not entirely unaltered, Mordecai did fortify them to make them more resistant to being walked on and generally tougher, but for the most part he left them alone in their design. He was also doing a wild-seeding mix, to let them all compete and find their preferred environments. And there were plenty available, every single visitor had brought in various spores and tiny seeds that most humanoids never realized were clinging to them and shedding from their skin at all times.
He’d also been very considerate of Kazue’s origins. While she knew how to zoom in on material structures, he’d carefully avoided showing her how that technique could be used to examine all the tiny critters that lived on people all the time. Mordecai had found out a long time ago that most people did not want to know about them. It did however provide a source for the next layer of this floor’s ecology, filling all the undergrowth with tiny creatures invisible to most people. Once Mordecai was satisfied that everything had reached a self-sustaining state, it was time for the ‘trees’ of this forest.
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My Discord if you would like to talk about the book or see what else I am up to (I also try to stream once a week, but that's strictly hobby level).
My Patreon if you want to support me directly.
Also to be found on Royal Road.
$3 Patreon: Early chapters, lore excerpts $5 Patreon: Short Stories $10 Patreon: New stories not published anywhere else (Until after I finish this story at least)

Side note: I've added a password, so read carefully. If you message me WITHOUT the password, your messages are automatically IGNORED. tired of getting hit up with people who don't read 😒. It's ridiculous cause I've ignored 5+ chats cause none of them contained the password. Things are written for a reason.
Facts about me:

• I have been roleplaying since 2012. Yes, I got experience under my belt, and yes, my ideas usually have really long reads, but don't let that scare you off! After the starter is off, I may lower myself down to a decent paragraph or two, sometimes three! It all depends on what I've got to work with.
  
• My timezone is EST. I'm awake from 9am - 2am and I'm usually free unless I'm busy doing house chores, out of the house, asleep, or playing video games on my switch. I'm usually become REALLY active at or around 8pm.
  

Rules:
1: if you don't like 50/50 mixture of sex scenes and story, don't bother hopping into my inbox. I'm fine with sex scenes, but when it's constantly back to back, the roleplay itself gets boring.
2: Be literate. No one liners. I like to write..it's annoying when I send a 2-3 paragraph response and I get 3 lines...just...no. I am not accepting people who are just starting out! If you aren't experienced in writing or roleplaying, kindly stay out of my inbox.
3: Be okay with playing canon characters. I'm mainly doing fandom roleplays right now and it's going to be Canon x my oc. No, I'm not doing double ups. Do not even ask, because the answer will be no every time. I do not give a shit if you think that makes me 'lazy' or 'selfish', if you've got a problem, you can simply ignore or block me. Commenting on my post to bitch and whine about me not doubling up will only result in me blocking you. The ONLY time I'll double up, and if I'm confident enough, I'll only do female characters. I suck at males. Got a problem? Not my issue. Block and move on.
4: Roleplay in third person. I can't and won't adapt to first. Don't even bring up the idea of you playing first person and me playing third. Believe it or not, I've been asked this twice and that is just a hell no for me. The only time I do first, is when I'm writing into my book.
5: if you don't know how to share ideas, then don't bother messaging me. I'm tired of carrying the story when the other person doesn't help. If you've got ideas, then PLEASE speak up! Your opinion on the roleplay matters too! I'm an easy going person, and easy to get along with (dispite my rules).
6: DO NOT control my character. I control what she says, does, hears, sees, ect. I don't control yours, so don't control mine. HOWEVER, if it's highly necessary and needed, then run it by me first and ask me. Just leave me some wiggle room so I can make a decent response. Failure to comply by this rule, results in immediate drop of the rp.
End Note:
Yes, I've updated my rules just a tad. I do not care if it makes me sound mean or rude, because I'm neither of these things. I'm just tired of putting these rules down for a specific reason and they go ignored because I can tell when someone hasn't read them, and lied about it. I'm just trying to get my point across and roleplay. I'm a very easy going person who loves to make friends on the side (which I've somewhat given up on making friends...only a selective few have actually gained my friendship).
Do not hop into my inbox with a simple 'hey' 'hi' 'sup', etc and for God's sake, don't message me with a 'rp?'and proceed me to flash me with your talliwhacker. I promise you, you'll get your feelings hurt and I'll be here laughing at ya 😂. Nobody wants a peen on their screen. Do not send me an image of your one eyed noodle. Thank you. The password is pineapple.
Fandoms & Pairings
Deadpool (Wade x my oc)
The Adam's family
Pokemon ((MAYBE. Don't be nasty about it either!))
Bridgerton (or something like it. Can be Oc x Oc)
Disney Decedent's (or anything Disney) (oc x oc)
Orange is the new black (this can be oc x oc).
Criminal Minds (REALLY wanna do)
Marvel:
Loki x my oc
Spiderman (Tom Holland) x my oc
Dog The Bounty Hunter (REALLY wanna do):
Dog Chapman x my oc
The walking dead (REALLY wanna do!!):
Daryl X my oc
Batman x my oc
Lucifer (Netflix show series) x my oc (really wanna do)
The Originals: Klaus x my oc (PLEASE !! I REALLY wanna do this one!)
American Horror Story: Tate x my oc (REALLY wanna do)
Dragon Ball Z - Super (vegeta x my oc) (really wanna do)
Naruto: Minato x my oc
Harry Potter (thanks to the wonderful world of rp, the characters will be 18 or older. For me, I'd like it if it was Draco x my oc. REALLY wanna do)
Game Of Thrones (I'm still very early in the show, but I think we could think of something!)
Once Upon A Time:
killian x my oc, REALLY wanna do 🥺.
Avatar the last Airbender:
Zuko x my oc
Twilight:
Jacob x my oc
(Course, our version will be alot better than the movies).
If any of these interests you, message me!
End note part 2:
Congratulations! You've made it to the end. Still interested? You've got the password. Message me and let's get started 😁.

Tho I regret it now, I'm sharing this story to know your opinion if what I did was actually wrong or what..
A couple of days ago, it was my class ( I'm a student) and we were only 6 students and that 1 teacher in the Institute. We students quickly discharged as the class was over and our teacher was still inside probably packing his stuff... My friend suddenly gave this idea to lock hum inside (we were out already and it was only the teacher inside), I had a dopamine release or somethin and I just did it...I just locked the main door from the outside and we went downstairs!
Later one of us students went upstairs to rescue him ( the student was an intelligent girl and our teacher was least likely to say anything to her).

So I love this post on the no method, method.
It’s a must tool in your journey to learning how to AP! I’m very grateful to the author.
I had a scary thing happen, and was struggling through this new fear I had. So I did the method. Talking to my subconscious mind. But something strange happened.
I asked to not only AP, but to also remember every dream I had. For lucid dreams/to have awareness of the dreams. I asked for awareness. Remembrance. No matter what.
The past few weeks have been crazy. This is my experience in order of them happening. They were each powerful and so important to me understanding the vast dream/unconscious world.
First.
The wrongly accused.
I have a childhood friend who was accused of a crime and just disappeared. They are gone from all social media, and never convicted or anything. I have no way of contacting them or knowing what happen. My first weird dream was of them.
We talked about what happen, how they lost everything they had worked for. And how hard their life has been. How they fucked up. I said, I has a feeling that is what happen. And I surrounded them with love and empathy. This person loved me for many years. And even though it was unrequited, I felt like I was actually with them. Helping them.
Second
The human who lost love … to fear
One of my sad stories of life. Is a deep and powerful love I had for someone. Who broke away from me because of their own fear of illness and death. It was brutal to experience. This person loved me dearly, but never said the words. In the dream we reconnected and spent time together. Free from fear. They said the words.
“I love you”, and I said it back… “I love you so much” which is my favorite way of saying it. So much.
It felt like the ending we always deserved. Instead of leaving things in anger and fear.
Third
The girl who died
A childhood friend who died suddenly, my own age. I went to visit her. She had a house of what I imagine was her dream house. The crazy part was, as I was dreaming of her… it was like she was dreaming of me. I couldn’t remember her name in the dream. It was just beyond my awareness, and she had forgotten too. So it wasn’t entirely lucid. It was something else.
She showed me to a room where people come to visit. And she said her mom came to visit all the time, and would stay in that room.
…
Every time I woke from these dreams I had the loud ringing in my ears, and the buzzing sensation of an astral projection. But they were not lucid in the sense of me controlling the construct. It was like I was visiting a place where we could meet up. Two conscious minds having a hang. Maybe they were a type of astral. I don’t know, but they were just as if not more meaningful to my astral travels.
So I really recommend this technique! Ask your brain for awareness. To remember. Feel the request with all your being.

Ok the title sucks but here’s the scoop. I got my absolute amazing dog at supposedly 1-2 years old from a shelter about 7 years ago. She’s a lab mixed with maybe some border collie, pit, who cares. She’s yellow with white markings. She was a stray turn in so no history on her. She started out as very good aggressive and didn’t know much obedience other than being potty trained which was a plus. After just a few weeks of owning her, she has been absolutely loyal. She listens to me, she sits at the back gate supposedly when I leave the house for a few hours, she follows me to every room I’m in.
The thing that makes me sad is that she will lay her head on my wife and sleep or even lay with my mom or other people if they are in town visiting, but rarely does with me. It’s only very occasionally on a Sunday morning when I’m sleeping in I can coax her up on the bed and lays her head on my chest for 10 minutes then turns into a wiggle worm on her back and I scratch her tummy. I love those times.
Another example, is that we live in the western US and go camping often in the mountains. She stays near me pretty much always but if we sit at a campfire with friends she’s always right behind me looking out, almost if she’s protecting me.
She is extremely alert to perceived danger when it’s just my wife with her but she sleeps like a baby if I’m near by.
Sorry for the long story. She’s the best dog I’ve ever had but also has the strangest personality. Sweet as can be and everyone adores her.
I want to also note, I’ve never mistreated her or used any physical means of obedience training. I mean if I look at her slightly wrong she just looks like she’s horribly disappointed in herself. ☹️It’s been treats for listening, lots of exercise and affection from day 1.
Is this just how some dogs are? I don’t know her past puppyhood unfortunately