TL;DR /mashups will go dark indefinitely, starting June 12. Only first place will be announced from the current bi-weekly contest.

Background

On May 31, 2023, Reddit announced new pricing for API usage in third-party apps.
Starting July 1, third-party app developers will have to pay an exorbitant amount of money once they exceed the usage limits of the free tier. One figure cited was $12,000 per 50 million API requests, which is significantly higher than the $166 per 50 million API calls Imgur is charging (Christian Selig, lead developer of Apollo). This is a quick turnaround that caught developers off-guard.
Adding insult to injury, Reddit leadership has responded in a way that is tone deaf and dishonest at best, and slanderous at worst, to fellow app developers (see "Bizarre allegations"). This includes the recent AMA that took place.
As a result, popular third-party apps, such as Reddit Is Fun and Apollo, are planning to shut down on June 30.
Multiple contest mode polls on /mashups have shown that a sizable number of users are on mobile, with Reddit Is Fun and Apollo being the most popular third-party apps. Both are targeted by the policy.
Based on /SaveThirdPartyApps's pinned post, killing third-party apps will have several negative consequences:

• Quality of life features only found on these apps will no longer be available, to include screen reader tools for the blind
• Moderation on mobile will be significantly more difficult, since the official Reddit app is limited in capabilities
• If left unchecked, a significant change like this may pave the way to removing Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES) or Old Reddit

/Modcoord also listed the three areas that need to be addressed for the blackouts to conclude: API technical issues, accessibility for blind people, and parity in access to NSFW content.
With all this in mind, several subreddits will be going dark on June 12 to protest the API policy.

/mashups community decision

The /mashups community ran a contest mode vote over a 48 hour period from June 6-8 to determine how we will respond on June 12. The results* were:

• +176 in favor of going dark indefinitely
• +98 in favor of going dark for 48 hours
• -71 to not go dark and keep running (yes, this option actually got downvoted)

Based on the results, the /mashups community overwhelmingly chose to go dark indefinitely starting on June 12. In the event an admin or mod wants to cast doubt, we have receipts.
If you've read other subreddits shamelessly copying the /SaveThirdPartyApps post verbatim in their statement to go dark, you would have already known most of this.
I write separately to discuss the cultural impact of mashups and how this protest is woven into that fabric.
* You may see these number show up slightly differently due to vote fuzzing, but are close within +/- 5 upvotes on page reload.

Cultural impact in the past

I think a discussion of cultural impact starts with a simple question: When you think of mashups, what crosses your mind?
One might see it at a basic level as simply a vocal over a different instrumental. Another might see it as two well-known songs mixed together. Many of our users might think of it as a fusion of several different sources together with transitions in between (Girl Talk). Others might have experienced it during the early 2000s in the form of bastard pop. There are also others who may have heard complex sampling that's so well-made that they don't know they're hearing mashups (Pretty Lights, Fatboy Slim, Coldcut, The Avalanches, etc.). Some even look at it as a commentary on culture (Negativland, Evolution Control Committee). Regardless of how you first experienced it, mashups evoke a certain excitement when sources you know fit like a glove to the point that it sounds like quality art.
In the early 2000s, there was no YouTube and no social media the same way there is today. There were peer to peer file sharing services (Morpheus, Kazaa, LimeWire, etc.) and forums (Gybo). Computers were getting to the point where they were powerful enough for remixing to be affordable to the average consumer.
This meant that mashups were more underground, and gradually came to the surface through word-of-mouth circulation and bootleg releases. Some were mainstream, to include Can't Get Blue Monday Outta My Head (Kurtis Rush).
Back in August 2002, Salon.com published an article that termed this phenomenon as "bootleg culture". This article can also be accessed as of this writing. At that time, 2ManyDJs tried to get their work cleared by labels and failed. Eventually, their work circulated over the Internet and became mashup classics. The article points out Smells Like Booty by 2ManyDJs, Stroke Of Genie-us by Freelance Hellraiser, and George Gets His Freak On by Kurtis Rush, which are all all-timers. This playlist on RateYourMusic lists more mashups from that time and earlier.
Later in the article, Salon calls out mashups as a form of cultural commentary back in the late 80s/early 90s:

Mash-ups were typically created as statements about pop culture and the media juggernaut that surrounds us, not as fodder for the dance floor.

It also calls out mashups in the early 2000s as a "subcultural movement that has threatened the status quo". To put it another way, bootlegs and mashups took on a form of cultural resistance in getting to a point where more and more producers could make mixes that could circulate like popular art outside the labels.
Bootie Mashup was founded in San Francisco in 2003 to become the first and biggest mashup party worldwide. It's about to turn 20 years old. I don't remember if "we ruin your favorite song" was a slogan directly tied to Bootie, but I know it was worn as a badge of honor.
The Grey Album would soon follow in continuing this cultural movement in 2004, and then Girl Talk in 2006. At the same time, the popularity of mashups led to a mainstream mashup album in 2004 in the form of Collision Course.

Cultural impact today

At this point, you're probably asking why I mention all of this.
Today's mashups are more mainstream with social media, as well as both audio and video sharing services. There is an expectation of high quality with recognizable sources.
However, there is still a subtle element of cultural resistance in poking fun of pop music and how much the music industry (and others) lean on nostalgia to create hits. Flowers is a modern clone of I Will Survive. Blinding Lights leans on 80s production and rhythms (some comparing it to Take On Me). Good 4 U is similar to Misery Business. Sweetest Pie lifts the progression from Between The Sheets. Break My Soul is inspired by 90s dance. And so on.
As for mashups, the Four Chord Song and Pachelbel Rant both immediately come to mind as classics in poking fun of similar chord progressions in pop.
Influences are everywhere, and Reddit too, in their song and dance, seems to be channeling Twitter's progression with their latest move to charge an exorbitant amount for their API. Even the AMA responses have a similar tone. Capitalist tendencies won't die as long as there are investors to feed them. And when one company makes a move to see how much they can get away with, others emulate. Just look at when the headphone jack was removed from smartphones, starting with Apple. For these companies, YOLO would not stand for You Only Live Once, but You Obviously Lack Originality.
This protest of Reddit channels the same kind of energy that mashup creators had in poking fun of pop culture and threatening the status quo by creating something different than what the music industry was creating. The genre clashes we create are a part of this movement. Mashups are a part of cultural resistance. And we, as a community, are ready to take this on.
So go ahead, sing the lyrics of your favorite mashups from the rooftops. Let's sign the Four Chord Song. Pachebel's Rant. Boulevard of Broken Songs. Even the chorus lyrics from Call Me A Hole would work nicely as a message towards Reddit leadership. The control they want to impose is too much.
And once we're done partying, and June 12 approaches, the lights fade to black and we continue to sing as we walk out. /mashups will go dark. Reddit had their chance to keep many of us as users, and now they failed us.
All that said, make sure you follow the plan /Save3rdPartyApps set out: Complain, Spread the word, Boycott, and Don't Be A Jerk.
Thank you all for taking part in an incredible journey.

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▪Drama: Tale of the Nine-tailed 1938
▪Korean Title: 구미호뎐 1938
▪Also Known As: Gumihodyeon 1938
▪Network: tvN
▪Aired: May 6, 2023 - Jun 11, 2023
▪Airing On: Saturdays _ Sundays @21:20 KST
▪Episodes: 12
▪Streaming Sources:
°Prime Video (Tale of the nine tailed 1938)
°TVING
▪Synopsis: An unexepcted case lead Lee Yeon back in time to the year 1938 where he reencounters Ryu Hong Joo. Once a guardian spirit of the mountain in the west, she's now the owner of a high-end restaurant in the capital city of Gyeongseong. He also meets his younger brother Lee Rang. Meanwhile, another former guardian spirit and ex-friend Cheon Moo Young has become hostile. Lee Yeon struggles to return to the present, to his loved one.
▪Cast:
° Lee Dong Wook as Lee Yeon,
°Kim So Yeon as Ryo Hong Joo,
° Kim Bum as Lee Rang,
° Ryo Kyeong Su as Cheon Moo Young,
°Previous Discussion:
°Episodes 1-2
°Episodes 3-4
°Episodes 5-6
°Episodes 7-8
°Episodes 9-10
▪Conduct Reminder: We encourage our users to read the following before participating in any discussions on /KDRAMA: (1) Reddiquette (2) our Conduct Rules(3) our Policies and (4) the .When Discussions Get Personal Post
Any users who are displaying negative conduct (including but not limited to bullying, harassment, or personal attacks) will be given a warning, repeated behaviour will lead to increasing exclusions from our community. Any extreme cases of misconduct (such as racism or hate speech) will result in an immediate permanent ban from our community and a report to Reddit admin.
Additionally, mentions of down-voting, unpopular opinions, and the use of profanity may see your comments locked or removed without notice.
▪Spoiler Tag Reminder: Be mindful of others who may not have yet seen this drama, and use spoiler tags when discussing key plot developments or other important information. You can create a spoiler tag in Markdown by writing > ! this ! < without the spaces in between to get this: Lee Yeon is sent back in time

Here's some test results to help maybe https://8values.github.io/results.html?e=55.8&d=59.4&g=55.1&s=60.8 https://10groups.github.io/results.html?y=1.55&ay=2.50&x=1.38&ax=1.38&bx=-0.83&by=1.12&cx=-2.75&cy=-1.85&dx=-1.09&dy=1.89&ex=0.64&ey=0.50&fx=0.00&fy=2.00&gx=-6.00&gy=0.83&hx=-7.67&hy=-3.33&ix=-0.25&iy=8.75&ja=4.33&jb=5.00&jc=-2.67&jd=0.75 https://sapplyvalues.github.io/results.html?right=1.67&auth=1.33&prog=2.50
Idealistically I would like a world government where voting is not a right rather you should have to pass a test to show you know some level of understanding of things such as politics and history or perform public service. I also like the idea of technocracy, but I still think anyone should be allowed to hold public office.
I think a untied world government that is liberal but also pragmatic would be a good thing for the world. I do think some cultures are incompatible with liberal values and I don't think all cultures should be shown respect. I support liberal values such as liberties and freedom, but I think a society needs to be responsible and orderly with freedom. I also highly value order and stability and think in some cases it should take precedence over liberty. I think Singapore is a good example of this and they're a nation I like. Basically, I want a free society that values education, progress and tradition, safety, stability and order and rejects extremism in favor of pragmatism and moderation. I also reject any kind of racism, and think we need to move past race as a whole to unite humanity and work together to progress society. So I'm against nationalism and any type of policy that favors any race, ethnicity or religion.
I support capitalism, but I think the state should be able to step in when it needs to to fix the negative aspects of capitalism. I definitely reject libertarian type capitalism. I also support a strong welfare system that helps people get back on their feet rather than keep them on welfare forever. I support free k-12 education for all, and subsidized higher education for those who can't afford it. Same goes for healthcare.
Socially I am a moderate. I'm ok with legalization of marijuana but not hard drugs. I generally support LGBT rights and abortion, but there should be limits. I generally support gun ownership, but I do support strong gun control such as red flag laws, strict mental health and background checks, and licensing to own certain type of guns.
When it comes to immigration and foreign policy I am mostly pro immigration and I am a strong supporter of free trade and Internationalsim. I am a big supporter of NATO and think China and Russia are our biggest threats.
Some personal things about me that may help is that I'm agnostic, but I do think some religion can be beneficial to society, I really dislike both parties, but I have been voting for democrats most past elections, my favorite presidents are both of the Roosevelt's, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Bush Sr, and Washington, and I just call myself a centrist usually. Sorry for any formatting/grammar issues I typed this fast and on mobile. If you have any questions about other of my views, ask and I'll answer!

Poll

• https://strawpoll.com/polls/e6Z28vMQ6nN

​
Results

• safety (interlude) has been eliminated!

​
Description

• Vote your least favorite song off the list.
• The song with the most votes will be eliminated in the following survivor poll.

​
Tracklist

1. how u feel?
2. if looks could kill
3. fly sht (Round 22)
4. which one (Round 21)
5. raver (Round 18)
6. came it wit (Round 1)
7. by the pound (Round 13)
8. all the time (Round 17)
9. biggest problem (Round 15)
10. chris paul (Round 7)
11. superstar (Round 9)
12. new new (Round 16)
13. right now (Round 20)
14. which way (Round 19)
15. wagwan (Round 3)
16. moment of silence (Round 10)
17. brazy girls (Round 12)
18. goin up (Round 14)
19. passenger (Round 5)
20. promo (Round 2)
21. worth it (Round 6)
22. redlight (Round 4)
23. make sum work (Round 8)
24. safety (interlude) (Round 23)
25. your eyes (Round 11)
26. money & sex (bonus) [with Ken Carson]

Click here to submit your pick

(To confirm your pick, mention the team that you chose in the comment section) Click here to view real-time standings, and game results

• System created by vacuum2440
  
• The daily threads can be found easily using our subreddit /baseballnightlypick
  

Notes/Leaders/Etc:

• Yesterday’s game: The Rays beat the Rangers 8-3 Tyler Glasnow got the win, while Andrew Heaney got the loss.
• Kingofalldogz the overall lead with 9.
• Pizzonia123 lead the month of June with 8.
• Longest current winning streak: LogicalHarm 6
• Longest current losing streak: Audacity_OR and planke103 3.
• The Mets @ Braves series is omitted from tomorrow’s vote as it was selected on 6/8.
• The Rangers @ Rays series is omitted from tomorrow’s vote as it was selected on 6/9.
• The Mariners @ Angels series is omitted from tomorrow’s vote as it was selected on 6/10.
• The Red Sox @ Yankees series is omitted from tomorrow’s vote as it was the ESPN Sunday Night Game.
• Want to get daily email or phone reminders whenever a new thread is posted? If so follow the instructions in this post! It’s simple to set up, and you won't forget to pick again! ***

Today's game will be:
Seattle Mariners (30-31) @ Los Angeles Angels (34-30) at 10:07 PM ET.
MLB.com preview, and analysis
The probable starting pitchers are:
Brayn Woo (0-1 27.00 4K)) vs Patrick Sandoval (3-5 4.14 40K))
Submit your picks in the automated system above, and good luck!
If you are unaware of what this competition is... please click this link as it will explain what is going on.
Here is a list the teams selected the least if you are stuck between picking different matchups. I would advise you to only use this list as a tiebreaker between close matches. I do not recommend using this list if you believe the matchup will be a blowout.
Tigers, and Athletics with 1 game each.

With the end of Arc 1 we want to know, who was your favorite NPC? Choose from the 6 options below or add others you liked in the comments below!
Results from last week's poll.
Favorite LGBT+ Couple was Euph and Bezzler receiving 76 of 145 votes!
See total results here;
https://www.reddit.com/StinkyDragonPodcast/comments/13yx7nw/poll_happy_pride_month/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
View Poll

Round 2.5 was close right up until the end, but ultimately, the ghetto freaks have survived another day, and Carnival of Carnage has been eliminated. Can Ghetto Freak Show make it to Round 4, or was its runoff survival simply a one-day blip?
​
Round 2.5 Results:

• Total Votes: 14
• 'Ghetto Freak Show': 6 Votes (42.86%)
• 'Carnival of Carnage': 8 Votes (57.14%)

​
Songs Still In:

• The Juggla
• First Day Out
• Red Neck Hoe
• Wizard of the Hood
• Guts on the Ceiling
• Is That You?
• Night of the Axe
• Psychopathic
• Blackin’ Your Eyes
• Never Had It Made
• Your Rebel Flag
• Ghetto Freak Show
• Taste

​
Fucked with the Juggla:
​

• Intro (4/12, 33.3%)
• Carnival of Carnage (8/14, 57.14%)

​
You can listen to the album on Spotify
Vote for round 3 here!
​
Notes:
​

• Please vote for your least favorite song from the remaining ones.
• Feel free to discuss your picks and predictions in the comments, but make sure to also click on the link to cast your vote!
• Round 3 will close at 9 PM EDT on 6/10.

(Edit: Results for title, not final round, oopsies)
Looks like California Gurls weren't completely undeniable. Easy to deny them the top spot here. Which means...

WE ARE LIVING A TEENAGE DREAM, IT WINS!

Results!

SONGS IN:

• Teenage Dream

Rankings:

Rank	Song	Votes Against	Percentage	Runner-Up
1st	Teenage Dream	18/65	27.7%
2nd	California Gurls	47/65	72.3%
3rd	Last Friday Night	37/66	56.1%	21/66 (31.8%)
4th	The One That Got Away	29/61	47.5%	16/61 (26.2%)
5th	Firework	24/50	48%	13/50 (26%)
6th	E.T.	21/44	47.7%	14/44 (31.8%)
7th	Hummingbird Heartbeat	28/39	71.8%	2: 5/39 (12.8%)
8th	Who Am I Living For?	12/21	57.1%	3/21 (14.3%)
9th	Not Like the Movies	9/20	45%	7/20 (35%)
10th	Circle the Drain	7/25	28%	6/25 (24%)
11th	Pearl	8/18	44.4%	5/18 (27.8%)
12th	Peacock	8/23	34.8%	7/23 (30.4%)

ALBUM INFO

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Honestly, the title is the TL;DR. This is rambly and my grammar is bad. I am really sorry for how long this is.
I have no support system. I have no savings. I am taking care of someone who means a lot to me and needs help, but can't get it yet. The point is, I have already been under so much stress that my work's reaction to all of this is simply pushing me over the edge and I don't know who else to ask. Who to reach out to. I don't know if things are going to be okay.
I picked up this really awesome field tech position a few months ago. After a month, my boss was no longer with the company... and it turned out he didn't train me at all. I learned more on my own the two weeks after he was gone than any of the month he was "training" me.
And over the course of the 4 months since, I have worked my butt off to keep this region afloat because I am the ONLY tech here. None of the equipment is updated. Vulnerable devices need to be located and liquidated ASAP. Purchasing is taking 3 and a half eons to get equipment out to sites so I have to work with not enough equipment... as all the old existing equipment begins to fail. None of the internal knowledge about the region was recorded either, so I had to identify that as well (ie what equipment we do have, what we don't, what is available for issue, what needs to be yeeted out a window, etc). The region is 2-4 hr wide in terms of drive time, so on average I usually end the day almost - but not quite - 2 hr away from home. I have to time it that way in order to reach all my sites before they close (often having to skip lunch and breaks). As a result, most of my drive time is at the beginning and end of the day.
It sucked. It meant that if I wanted this region to survive, I needed to put in excessive hours. But I am salary, and as far as I was told by that point, normal work in my region didn't qualify for any extra effort bonuses.
Now before I start, I want to address the why. Why did I tolerate all of this without pay, essentially? Well, to start, because as much as I would like to MC the hell out of them when they first started to drop the ball and make them realize how much I do, the client I take care of does amazing work for people and their communities. To only do my 40 hr a week would mean letting them suffer and fall. It would mean people not getting the help they need. And the other field techs were constantly getting recognized for much more minor things. What reason did I have to think I was going to be any different?
Now I managed to keep up. I put in 50-60 hr a week on average. It got to a point where I was solving so many issues simultaneously that if it wasn't major enough, I just didn't even put a ticket for it because I just didn't have TIME. Like, oh, you need a new mouse? Here is a cheap wired one I was about to throw away, try that.... as I work on these 40 other issues. I am not going to take 5 minutes to fill out a whole ticket about it when I start working at 8 am and finish working at 9 pm. I want to watch YouTube. I want to doomscroll Reddit. I want to sleep. I don't want to stay up making 40 tickets about people who don't understand how the monitor also has a power button and is in fact not a desktop. They are wonderful, beautiful people, and those issues and questions are very valid, so I take them very seriously. These people need to focus on their jobs that are helping so many people, not on petty IT problems. However... wasn't worth the effort of a whole ticket. Especially when I wasn't getting any extra effort pay. I used to do them at first but got burnt out too fast. On average my timecard now shows around 8.5-10 hr a day, sometimes the full 12-13 hr.
Now, I was about to start PTSD treatment so a couple of weeks ago I reached out to my boss to explain the situation. I told him the state of my region and that I will not be able to keep up with this anymore, especially when they keep asking me to find and wipe these old vulnerable devices to such an excess and in such a time frame that it was a full-time job on its own. I still had normal tickets and issues I had to resolve as well. I couldn't do both and only work 40 hr a week. That was when I finally got told that if I simply recorded all of this, I could have been getting extra effort hours the whole time!!! No one just bothered to tell me. Apparently no one actually looks to see if you worked an excessive amount each week, just that you work at least 40 hr. Because for some reason, as salary, we are required to do 8 hr of work a day, and if we don't, then PTO gets deducted hourly. Make that make sense.
So my boss tells me that the workload should be decreasing soon once all the old equipment is pulled (at once), and that I had been doing a good job.
This gave me some hope. I thought, maybe, I might have some work-life balance. I just had to make it another month. And since he said I did a good job, maybe I might finally get some recognition! Sure, by that point, I have seen colleagues get recognized for much smaller things over and over while I got nothing, but hey, it just wasn't my time yet, I guess.
So last week was a test of if I will get extra effort pay. I will find out at the end of the month, although I feel like the odds are very low. That week was my calmest week yet. I only worked 10-12 hr a day every day! I was done working by almost 7 pm every day, it was great. I was still exhausted, but I got everything done. People had functioning devices to get their jobs done.
Last Wednesday, I made the mistake of mentioning how I was thankful for all my drive time counting since I lived more than 20 miles (the minimum distance needed for expensing mileage) from any site. You see, the travel policy for field techs said that the first and last travel of the day (so to and from home) didn't count towards your timesheet unless it was more than 20 miles (aka a "normal commute") away. This was just how I had interpreted this rule the whole time and my original boss agreed because it just felt like common sense. However, it turns out, my brain placed a comma where there shouldn't have been and in fact, reading back, I interpreted it wrong. Apparently, first and last travel doesn't count at all unless it is outside your assigned region. My region was just big.
And that was all my boss seemed to care about. My first and last travel will never count. REGARDLESS of the distance. Sure, if I cross into the next state, he considered that excessive enough (so around 3-4 hr one way), but he specifically asked me for a list of sites over TWO HOURS AWAY ONE WAY. I am supposed to just give away 4 hr of my day for free? After everything I have done for thing company?
Nearly all of my sites are around 1 hr 30 min to just under 2 hr away from my home without traffic. My closest is about an hour away. I cannot efficiently stop by the closest site every time on the way home. It would mean adding an extra 30 min to an hour just to stop by my closest site. I think this first/last site policy was made for people who live like 30 min away from their closest site at most. I guess I was a type that was never accounted for.
This puts me in an impossible situation because it feels like I really have only three choices if I stay here and they don't change their policy in my case:

1. Stop by my closest site on the way to work and on the way home everyday: I wouldn't even be doing any work at this site or able to get into the building since it would be after closing hours, so I worry about it being considered a sort of time fraud, like, you only went there to get extra money! You did nothing billable there, you should have just gone home! It would also add an extra 30 min to 1 hr everyday, just to have 2 hr of total drive time not count in the end. Driving an extra 30 min to 1 hr simply to make 30 to 1 hr of that 1.5 hr drive home count toward my time card feels so stupid. I would rather just go home at that point. "But what if you just work 30 min to 1 hr less then to make up for it," I have too much work to do and I don't want to let down these people who need their technology to do the great work they do.
2. I could lie and say I went to my closest site on the way to and from home: personal principle here. I avoid lying at all costs - like Buddhist-level dedication here, just minus the actual Buddhism. Also, I feel like they can just later decide to fire me for time fraud after I end up being just too much hassle to deal. They can't fire me now, but what if they hire me some "help" who ends up simply being a replacement.
3. Plan my day to arrive at my first site by 8 am and leave at 5 pm for an 8 hr day: You see, ironically, in this case, my drive time will count... because traffic! Remember that 2 hr remark from my boss? When you add traffic, almost all my travel time doubles. I make an effort to avoid traffic conditions so I can spend more time... you know... working... Leaving during normal people times on normal people roads will mean I will be spending probably around 5-6 hr a day driving to and from home (my time driving between sites always counted so that isn't the issue). So I would regularly be getting 14+ hr days. This would be my only option where I get a lunch break though.
4. Keep doing what I am doing: I will only have around 8-9 hr count everyday, if even sometimes. On average about 3-4 hr of drive time will not count. I will be able to keep up with my region, not need to work as much as the other options, but I will never get any recognition. I don't have time for lunch breaks. I will be working for free. I have no motivation. It just makes me want to cry... I am also scared because with my mental health deteriorating, I know I cannot keep this up. I already collapsed these last two days, I am just so lucky my office managers and receptionists have been looking after me when I have been on site because I have been a complete mess. All I can think of is why? It makes me so hopeless.

I am currently trying to get them to compromise and let me just deduct 30 min each way to and from home every day, but to be honest, at this point, they have lost my trust. This isn't the first time they dropped the ball. My very first bonus was supposed to represent 40 hr of extra work I did over a 3-week period. What did I get? If converted to an hourly rate, it would be considered below the federal minimum wage. It was insultingly low. Apparently, most of what I did didn't count somehow! I was devastated. My interim boss at the time tried arguing that mileage reimbursement WAS the bonus. I was still pissed and upset, so they decided to give me an extra couple hundred dollars. Which was barely anything after taxes.
I don't trust them anymore. I want to get out. I feel so unsafe. I have seen the worst in humanity when it comes to management and corporate, so I know exactly how bad it can get. I just have no support system. My lease is coming up for renewal at the end of this month and the landlords haven't gotten back to us. I can't afford to move. My credit score sucks right now. What if they just decide they don't want us to stay and don't tell us until the day the lease expires?
Now I am looking for a new job, but the work that I do I have done in a short period of time. My biggest hang-up is the length of my work experience, not the quality or skillset, simply because I am doing a job with less than 1 yr recent experience that most need 3-5 yr for. HR often times won't believe me. I had one phone screen but unfortunately, I don't have hands-on experience in configuring VMWare (my last job started training me in it before they went under) which was too important to not have. Which makes sense, they are looking for that type of skillset, and I don't have that specific experience.
I am just so tired. I don't know what to do. I know my company would bend over backward to remedy this because they cannot afford to lose this, but I worry about potential retaliation since it is so easy to hide in seemingly unrelated things. I worry about them trying to hire someone behind my back, and then because no one will believe me when I say I can do the things I do, I end up never getting hired again... then getting evicted... then my best friend loses his only safe space and chance to recover... I have so much to lose. I don't know what to do.
Oh, and I just found out my new work insurance doesn't cover therapy apparently, so I can't do my treatment anymore. I still have to find out a way to fork over the $400 I now owe which I didn't know I would be.
Has anyone been through anything like this before? What did you do?

• Drama: Dr Romantic 3
  • Revised romanization: Nangmandakteo Kimsaboo 3
  • Hangul: 낭만닥터 김사부3
• Director: Yoo In Shik (Extraordinary Attorney Woo)
• Writer: Kang Eun Kyung (Dr Romantic 2)
• Starring:
  • Han Seok Kyu as Teacher Kim / Dr. Boo Yong Joo / Kim Sa Bu
  • Lee Sung Kyung as Cha Eun Jae
  • Ahn Hyo Seop as Seo Woo Jin
  • Kim Joo Heon as Park Min Guk
• Network: SBS
• Premiere Date: 28th April 2023
• Airing Schedule: Fridays and Saturdays @ 10:00 PM KST
• Airing Date: 28 April 2023 - 17 June 2023
• Episodes: 16
• Streaming Sources: Disney+,
• Conduct Reminder: We encourage our users to read the following before participating in any discussions on /KDRAMA: (1) Reddiquette, (2) our Conduct Rules (3) our Policies, and (4) the When Discussions Get Personal Post.
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• Previous Discussions:
  • [Episodes 1-2]
  • [Episodes 3-4]
  • [Episodes 5-6]
  • [Episodes 7-8]
  • [Episodes 9-10]
  • [Episodes 11-12]

Vote for your favorite boss from KH3. Like always, maximum 6 choices even though there are many more than that. Enjoy!
Edit: no optional bosses included
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Hi, as the title says, my girlfriend and I are supposed to move in together, but I feel like we have unresolved issues and moving in together won’t fix them, or at least most of them. I guess I should start at the start, and I’ll try not to make things too one sided, as I know most people are inclined to agree with the author of the post as it’s from their point-of-view, so don’t be afraid to push back on everything I have written, I am writing to get peoples opinions, be them agreeing with me or not agreeing with me. Also, sorry about all the text, I sometimes ramble, so each section has a TL/DR if you like.
I’ll start from the start, my girlfriend (who I’ll name Christine here) and I have been together for two years come September. I love her very much and I know she loves me. We met online (as ya do these days) and I was instantly attracted to how warm and thoughtful she was. Christine seemed to take an interest in what I might be interested in and put in the effort to plan dates around these things. She lives in an apartment with her sister, and is more central to town, where as I live in the suburbs, about a 15-20 minute drive away from her, although sometimes more in rush hour. She is very emotional, which is a pretty big contrast compared to my last ex, who either bottled things in or was more suppressed, whereas my current girlfriend will tell me how she is feeling from one hour to next it seems.
A little background on me prior to this relationship, TL/DR at the bottom of this paragraph:
I moved to this town about 6 years ago with my ex (who I’ll call Meg here), and at the time I bought a house when I moved here. Meg was never on the mortgage and I paid for most of the large house expenses, although we did split some of the other bills, like internet, heating, and small house renovations. In that time the company I was supposed to start work with laid off the entire team before my contract started, basically leaving me jobless and with a mortgage. I was quite stressed for a little bit, but was able to set up freelance and full-time work 4 months later. In that time I also started working on projects for myself, and one of them went well and I have been able to work full-time for myself for the past 4 and a half years. This basically makes me my own boss with my own hours, although I do like to keep a regular 9-5 Monday to Friday work schedule. Although I sometimes start later and work later, and on crunch weeks can pull pretty long hours (12 hour days including weekends), but I’ve gotten better with that for the most part. To make a long story short here, Meg and I got engaged after 5 years being together, but we broke up and she left me. In that time we adopted 5 pets, two dogs and 3 cats, she took 2 of the cats and I kept the other animals, leaving me with the house, two dogs, and 1 cat, which is still my current situation. I love my dogs very much and I treat them like my children, but they can be a lot sometimes. They’re a very needy breed, although they keep each other company which is nice. I paid Meg a lump-sum of money at the time to avoid any legal complications, and the statute of limitations has run out if she wanted to try to take more money for the house. Meg ended up getting married to someone 3 months after we broke up, and as far as I know they’re still together, but I have no contact with her, nor do I ever go on social media to see. I’m not huge on using social media, since I use it for my job, I really don’t like using it too much for me personally, although I do like to look at TV clips from shows I like on Instagram haha.
TL/DR for my background: Was in a relationship, bought a house, relationship broke up, I kept 2 dogs and 1 of the cats and was able to keep the house. I work for myself after losing my job, but still work a relatively normal work schedule that is somewhat flexible.
Now that there’s a little bit of background I should get into the meat and potatoes. Christine and I have been having communication issues, which I feel have become more prominent with the planned dates of moving into together. I feel like a lot of these issues have come up in the past, and we talked about them, but some of them are recurring, and I fear moving in together will not be a good way to solve most of them.
Issue 1: The house and how my girlfriend feels about it
It’s a pretty simple house in a quiet neighbourhood, is only one floor and two bedrooms, but is a pretty good amount of space for two people, especially since there is an attached garage and backyard. One of the bedrooms is my office and the other is, well, the bedroom. I have a living room and kitchen, and my hallway has a large closet that houses the washer and dryer. I and my ex did renovate some things, and since she moved out I continued to change some stuff, but am pretty happy with my house, although still have some bigger projects, like a bathroom renovation that I’d like to do at some point. Most people who I first show my house to usually say things like it’s really cute or this place is sweet, things of that nature, although Christine hasn’t really complimented it much. At one point she asked me if I planned to stay in my house forever, and I responded that if that was the case it wouldn’t bother me. Although I don’t necessarily think I’ll be in this place forever, but if I was it wouldn’t upset me. Real-estate where I am is extremely expensive, and I feel fortunate that I was able to but something when I did, as it’s become nearly impossible for my generation to buy anything. While it could be possible for me to sell this place and put the money towards a new mortgage somewhere, that isn’t currently my intention, as I am pretty happy with me current living situation.
Christine has said in the past that she considers my contentment to be me settling, which upset me greatly as I really don’t consider how I live to be “settling”. She has said she in the past that she dislikes my house, and feels she is sacrificing a lot to move in here, and that I haven’t acknowledged this sacrifice enough. The things she’s most sad about leaving behind in her apartment is the more central location, her favourite coffee shops, the shorter commute to work, having her own bedroom that is just her own, and despite sometimes having issues with her sister, she’s gonna miss living with her, as they’ve been roommates for nearly 3 years. She has listed the things she dislikes about my place, but it’s largely more suburban location, and it isn’t clean enough to her liking – it isn’t dirty, but my dogs a pretty messy, so I have agreed to hire cleaners to do more deep cleans every month or so, while I continue to tidy things up in the way that I have been doing. She also the dislikes the direction my house faces and feels like it doesn’t get enough light, although she is often over during the evening, and I feel like my house gets quite a bit of light during the day, so much so I often need to draw the blinds when the sun hits certain areas.
She’s also implied that she feels uncomfortable moving in to my place because I have history with a past relationship in this house, which I can understand, and have agreed to move her bed into the house when she moves in, as living on the same bed as a past relationship would probably be too strange. She has also implied that other couples when they move in together usually move into a whole new space, as she always had a dream of one day buying and picking out her own house and she feels that if she moves in with me that I am taking away her dreams. Although I’ve tried to re-frame her thinking, as once she moves in we can redecorate and change the place, paint, and more or less blend our two styles into one, making it our place. I also think the idea of couples moving into a new place together is usually when they either both already own a house or neither do, if someone in a relationship already owns their own house most often the partner who doesn’t will move in with them, but that’s just my own thoughts on it.
We’ve also gotten into arguments over changing patio furniture, which I already have, and she said we should buy an entire new set of furniture. I said I don’t really see why we would need a new entire set, my dogs have gotten fur on the current set, but otherwise they’re in good condition, and I said we could clean the furniture with my pressure washer whenever we want. I also agreed that we can expand the patio and add more furniture, a piece or two that she can pick out so that she has some choice in the matter. Although to get to that point she cried a lot and then told me she always had a dream of buying her own patio furniture and she feels like this is another dream that I’m trying to take away from her.
To be honest I am quite the saver and value my security over spending money on things that I already have. I grew up in a lower-middle class family and saw my parents struggle with finances, where as Christine grew up in what I would consider upper-middle class or even lower-high class, and possibly expects a little more than I do. Whereas I grew up learning to love what I have, Christine has often dreamed about what’s next and wanting more. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing for either of us, but this I feel has resulted in some of the arguments revolving around things and the house.
TL/DR Issue 1: My girlfriend seems to not like my house and feels she is sacrifising a lot to move in with me.
Issue 2: Me hanging out with my friends
Another issue that has come up is how we value our various friendships. Christine is more of an introvert and works in an office, so can feel relatively drained at the end of the day and often doesn’t feel the need to additional social interactions, although she does have some people she considers close friends, although maybe only sees them once a month or less even. Where as I am more of an extrovert, although I do like my alone time as well and do have introvert tendencies, but because I work for myself at home I do like to fill my social interactions with my friends when I’m not working. Now I’m not a party animal and I don’t go out every night of the week or anything like that, but I do see my friends maybe 2-3 times a week, often in a group setting.
Christine and I did a personality test recently, which showed that she carries the introvert tendencies, but also can be very jealous and feel like she has extreme FOMO when events are going on. Even when she is invited to them but declines as her social battery is low, she still feels like she has been left out, despite being invited to join by me or someone else in my friend group. I always make an effort to invite her most of the time, unless I know it’s just gonna be a guys night, in which case I try to let her know what I’m up to.
Sometimes my friends are last minute with plans so they’ll text me, and I’ll rush to take care of my dogs and then head out. I try to let my girlfriend know what I’m up to and invite her, but since we don’t live together I don’t always give her a play by play at all times of the day of what I’m up to. Past relationships I’ve had haven’t really wanted to know what I was doing at all times if we’re not living together. I’ve also never made plans with her and then ditched her for my friends, I always make a point to stick to my word and keep any plans that we have set in stone.
In the past when I’ve been hanging out with my friends her texts to me have been short and impersonal and I can tell she’s upset, this has sometimes taken away my joy from hanging out with my friends. She has stated that she isn’t upset at me, but just upset that she is missing out on something, despite most of the times being invited to join. While moving in together would result in me and Christine seeing each other more and I’d of course always let her know if I was heading out or wouldn’t be home when she was expecting me, I sometimes fear her FOMO and the sometimes hour long conversations reassuring her about our relationship after I hang out with my friends.
I feel like this comes down to trust issues, and I feel like Christine doesn’t trust me, despite never being dishonest with her. I’ve had previous relationships cheat on my either emotionally or physically and that’s a pain that doesn’t go away, so I’ve always made an effort to never do anything unbecoming as such. The trust issues come down possibly to Christine’s insecurities about herself, and while I’ve tried to comfort her or reassure her, I feel like it’s a personal issue that she should be talking to a therapist about. She was seeing a therapist for a while, but has stopped recently, stating that the therapist was to agreeable with her, and she wasn’t seeing actionable changes. Although she is self-aware enough to realize that these trust and insecurity issues are her own.
This is compounded further because my friend group has a female friend, I’ll call her Carlotta, who is dating one of my closest friends. After my ex and I broke up 2 and a half years ago, Carlotta and her boyfriend (my close friend) broke up, Carlotta and I both got a little drunk and bonded over our breakups and kissed. We only kissed and nothing else happened, but the next morning we both said that it was a bad idea and that was more or less the end of it. My close friend and Carlotta ended up getting back together about a month later, and after some awkwardness, my close friend forgave both of us for the kiss. They were of course broken up at the time, and I respect peoples relationships too much to ever make a move on someone who is in a relationship, nor would I ever make a move on someone when I’m in a relationship myself. Carlotta and I both chalked it up to both feeling lonely with the recent break-ups. I still hang out with my close friend weekly usually, and Carlotta is there I’d say about 25% of the time, so I might see her once a month or so in group settings. In an effort to be honest with Christine I told her about I and Carlotta’s history early on in our relationship, and this only made Christine more insecure. When I told her I was unaware of her underlying trust and insecurity issues, although I still feel like open honesty was probably the best choice.
While the FOMO and jealousy over me hanging out with my friends is still there, if Carlotta is around it is usually worse. This has led Christine to comparing herself to Carlotta, or at least the idea of Carlotta. Christine at one point block her Instagram because she would see Carlotta’s stories feel even more insecure. Christine has accused me of hiding things from her about me and Carlotta’s past, which I haven’t, and accused me of acting awkward when Carlotta is around. Although I feel like any awkwardness is probably because I know Christine is insecure around Carlotta, so I might be a little uncomfortable not wanting to upset my girlfriend.
While I feel like this has gotten better recently, when I hung out with my friends the other day, Carlotta happened to be there and I told my girlfriend as much afterwards. I of course invited my girlfriend to join at the time, but she wasn’t interested. When we talked on the phone and I told my girlfriend what my friends and I got up to, I could feel like she was upset, and she told me she felt triggered. I asked her why exactly, and the conversation eventually spun off, and while recognizing that it is her insecurity issues, she got upset with how she felt I responded to her being triggered. While I was trying to figure out why exactly she was upset, she became upset at me for not instead immediately comforting her. Although I did try to comfort her, I guess it wasn’t in the way she wanted to be comforted. She accused me of “being attracted greatness”, and because she considers Carlotta to be “great” I musty be attracted to her. This isn’t the case, I’m really not attracted to Carlotta in that way anymore, so I feel like I need to defend myself. Then I get accused of being defensive, so really there’s no winning. It took an hour of back and forth talking to eventually come to end the phone call on good terms where neither of us were upset.
TL/DR issue 2: My girlfriend is insecure and very anxious when I hang out with my friends.
Issue 3: Communication stuff I guess?
While this has probably been apparent in some of the above writing, I really feel like we sometime struggle to understand one another. I’m a very logical person and tend to need a reason for something to be a certain way or to change things. Christine is more emotional and a dreamer, she’s more concerned with thoughts and feelings where as I am more interested in facts and data. Neither of these things is a real issue at all, except for when it comes to conversations that lead to disagreements. Sometimes I feel like we’re having a perfectly normal conversation with some back and forth, and then all of a sudden she’s upset at me and in tears, and I try to rewind the conversation to find something that would have resulted in this response, and I legit can’t. That probably makes me sound pretty stupid, because if someone is crying there must be a reason, but even when she repeats what made her upset, I can’t even place in the conversation when this happened. Seriously, I rack my brain trying to place it and it just isn’t there. I feel like I’m losing my mind. Eventually we can maybe rewind enough to the initial triggering, but even when it’s repeated I have no idea why it would deserve this emotional of a response.
Some of the time it’s because she took a joke I said as reality, not realizing it was a joke. So I have to explain the joke in great detail so that she can get it. I’m a very jokey person by nature and do struggle to be serious. Christine is less jokey, and more serious by nature. Sometimes I can say a joke and she laughs really hard, so she isn’t humourless by any degree. I just think because she’s so serious that she sometimes assumes what I’m saying is serious, and suddenly all the context is gone.
Other times it seems she gets upset at me for reasons that others wouldn’t. I play sports with my friend in recreational leagues, and every now and then we’ve needed a sub so my girlfriend has filled in. After some of the games she is, at least I feel she is, angry at me for perceived things about how I play. Sometimes when you’re playing with a sub you don’t have the same groove as your team usually would, but my girlfriend seems to take it personally if I don’t pass the ball to her enough, and accuses me of not wanting to improve at the sport, despite my level of play being equal or better than most of my team-members, at least in my opinion. There are obviously ways I could improve, but this is a rec league and I only play once a week at most and I’m not going for the majors, most of us are there to have a good time and play the game, and then maybe grab some drinks after to celebrate the win or the loss. I can feel Christine’s mood sour if we aren’t doing well, and everyone else isn’t upset at all. Sometimes you lose and sometimes you win, but she hates losing and is very competitive. While she’s not horrible at the game, she doesn’t play as often as we all do, and is probably not quite on our level. So she gets upset when she feels she’s letting the team down, but I’ve told her many times that no one feels like she is letting us down. She does feel like she needs to be the best at stuff, and when she isn’t she gets upset at herself, and then might turn it around on me. It got to the point where I had to stop inviting her to join us as she was getting too upset either visibly in the game or at me after for some perceived slights, for not passing the ball enough, or for me not improving enough since playing.
We have started going to therapy, largely because I want to iron out these issues before moving in together, and in the session I brought up the FOMO and insecurities she has over me hanging out with my friends. We talked and I got some perspective on her side, and I hope she got some perspective on my side. We mostly talked about the house issues though, as that was the most pressing, and the FOMO stuff was relegated to a small part of therapy. Later on in the evening when I went over to her place to hang out she said she felt blindsided about how I brought up her insecurities about this in therapy. She said that she felt we had talked about these issues in the past and didn’t think that it should have been brought up in therapy. I told her that just because we’ve talked about it in the past, and it has gotten a little better, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to talk about it in therapy to gain a better perspective. For context, the next night she got upset when I hung out with my friends, aka the last paragraph of issue 2, so it’s pretty clear that this is an ongoing issue and hasn’t been fully resolved.
The therapist even picked up on something that my girlfriend has started somewhat jokingly diagnosing herself with after watching some videos on TikTok, that is possibly her having ADHD or being somewhere on the Autism spectrum. Both of these would explain why she struggles to contain her emotions, and appreciates having control of her environment, although I can’t really say for sure either way, as I’m not equipped myself to diagnose anything.
TL/DR of Issue 3: Sometimes we just don’t seem to get each other or be on the same page.
In closing:
Welp, that was a long novel. I think Stephen King will be reaching out to me for the rights soon. I know this might seem like a lot of things, but I just wanted to provide as much detail as possible, plus I think it’s probably all kind of the same thing, but written a whole bunch of different ways. I really do love my girlfriend and want to work out these issues. I hope that therapy is enough to be able to see eye to eye, but I maybe wanted some outside perspective. And I would ask that people keep in mind the ass for mentioned bias that this write-up has probably in my favour, so I would appreciate any opinions in favour of my girlfriend. I really want this to workout, I just want this relationship to last when we move in together, that’s why I wrote all this out, and that’s why we started going to therapy. I truly do love her and I know she loves me. If you read this entire thing then I thank you, and even if you just read the TL/DR of each issue I still thank you.
TL/DR: My girlfriend and I want to move in together, but I feel like communication issues, issues with her thoughts on my house, and her insecurities over my friendships may need to be resolved first. Would appreciate any advice. What would you do in my situation, or how would you handle any of the situations noted above?

This is a response to https://doorcountypulse.com/the-importance-of-pronouns/, and it also reflects on https://doorcountypulse.com/hello-peninsula-pulse/.
Dear Emma,
Supreme Court cases do not operate the way the Independent article suggests. Small details in a decision, tangential to the issue being decided, do not turn it into a landmark case, or even establish precedent. Rather, it is a decision's holding which determines whether a case is a landmark or not. The Independent is foreign owned and operated, but being a large outlet, they should know better than to put out an article like the one you linked to.
In the court system, pronoun policy is currently split at the appellate level, with the Sixth Circuit and the Seventh Circuit taking opposing sides. The Supreme Court has not weighed in on this yet, but the split makes it more likely they will choose to rule about it.
Besides this, Jonathon Turley writes at https://jonathanturley.org/2023/04/25/seventh-circuit-upholds-termination-of-high-school-teacher-who-objected-to-pronoun-policy/ that a currently pending religious accommodations case, Groff v. DeJoy, could "gut the underlying standard used by the Seventh Circuit in its ruling for the school district".
Links:
Sixth Circuit https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/21a0071p-06.pdf
Seventh Circuit https://adfmedialegalfiles.blob.core.windows.net/files/KlugeSeventhCircuitOpinion.pdf
Oral argument for Groff v. DeJoy https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/22-174
The results of a 2021 survey imply that the purpose of pronoun requirements are especially in order to get rid of conservative employees and civil servants. https://legermarketing.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Leger-The-Atlantic-Survey-Wokeness.pdf#page=10 found that Biden voters backed woke pronouns by a nearly 3 to 1 ratio over Trump voters. The table on page 4 shows that most people surveyed disagreed with woke pronouns: https://legermarketing.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Leger-The-Atlantic-Survey-Wokeness.pdf#page=4. It follows from this that you should not expect your article to be supported by most readers. If people aren't responding negatively to you, it may indicate that they stay quiet because they don't want to be targeted, rather than that they agree. The 14,202 Door Countyites which voted yes on Wisconsin Referendum 1 not that many years ago didn't just disappear when 5 Supreme Court justices ruled against them between eight and nine years afterwards: https://web.archive.org/web/20081127174554/http://elections.state.wi.us/docview.asp?docid=10049&locid=47.
Both Champaign and Indianapolis are large cities, which can draw on outlying areas to get workers, making up for having below-replacement fertility. Door County also relies on importing workers, but because it is not a large city with lots of political power, this is less reliable. In 2020, for example, the supply of foreign J-1 workers was abruptly cut off. Door County manages to get a consider number of immigrants from outside the county, but most who relocate for longer than a season are wealthier than people residing in Door County. They also tend to be older and not looking to start new families.
Instead, as larger-scale governing bodies destabilize Door County and break down its social fabric and economy, they can use former Door Countyites to solve the worker shortages in large metro areas. Support for transgenderism is a shibboleth for the economic interests of large metro areas. This manifests itself locally as a lower quality of life and an economic leakage to outside the county. An example of this is in the letter by Janet Wilmoth about having to drive to Green Bay to see a veterinarian: https://doorcountypulse.com/letter-to-the-editor-emergency-veterinary-service-needed/.
Because it isn't a big city, Door County is especially dependent on its birth rate for its future. Its total fertility rate in 2020 was 1.533 lifetime births, well below replacement of 2.1 lifetime births. At this rate, each generation, without factoring for immigration or emigration, will be 27% smaller than the one before. However, since something like 30% to 40% of young adults leave the county, the effect is even stronger than 27%.
Transgenderism's concomitant drugs and surgeries tend towards sterilization, and towards making its subjects less attractive to the opposite sex. Assisted reproductive technologies are too expensive to be implemented on a broad scale. Transgenderism is a risk to Door County's future, because it could help push that 1.533 figure even lower. In this way, transgenderism is a demographic factor in the overall gentrification, just as unaffordable housing is an economic factor. Just as it is unwise to encourage unaffordable housing, it is unwise to encourage transgenderism.
Or even if you think replacement fertility is unrealistic and unachievable, consider that when the age structure of a population gets too unbalanced, it is harder to take care of the elderly. The struggles at Scandia Village are an example of this: https://doorcountypulse.com/scandia-village-up-for-sale/. Or should elderly people just be relocated far away, or as some think, even euthanized? Every transgender sterilization is a step in the wrong direction.
It follows then, that someone who refuses to use preferred pronouns might not be a horrible bigot who gets perverse satisfaction from it, but rather, someone who loves his or her community and wants it to have a future. Such people may even be willing to personally be on the losing side of a litmus test for the collective good.
The sponsors for Open Door Pride are listed at https://opendoorpride.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/THANK-YOU-TO-OUR-2023-SPONSORS-2-1024x576.jpg.
Some of them, such as the Miller Art Museum, Door County Community Auditorium, Peninsula Music Festival, Northern Sky Theater, have benefited from, and can expect to consider benefiting from, public, tax-funded support. Because taxpayers come from all sorts of political backgrounds, these organizations should have avoided all political activities, aside from lobbying for particular things directly related to their organization.
An example of the political trust vested in the Door County Community Auditorium is described in https://doorcountypulse.com/struggle-for-a-stage-door-community-auditorium/. But like Disney in Florida, they are engaging in partisan activity, betraying that trust. Institutions which benefit from public funding should be non-partisan and impartial. Public money should not be spent on group-think.
Most of the sponsors are local, but Carrie Busse Shorewest Realtors and Napalese are from Green Bay, the Avenue Art & Company is from Appleton, and Marketini Media is from Madison. They get to influence Door County while their cities benefit from Door County's emigrating young-adult population.
I'm not sure if this has been covered in your classes so far, or privately by your boss. If so, bear with me as I restate it. The Pulse has a different political makeup among its advertisers versus its readers. That it is a free paper tends to result in a readership which is inherently less educated than the readership of a subscription newspaper. I used to know a man who had once ran a free paper, but sold it. He was a conservative. It had a lot of general-interest content, nothing political, and especially featured ads for alcohol. Free papers tend to be read by people who read occasionally rather than regularly.
Occasional readers are less educated than regular readers, and the level of education corresponds to the political alignment. This means that natural readership of the Pulse is more conservative than the overall population of Door County. For people with a regular reading habit, the Pulse competes with a number of subscription outlets, while for occasional readers the Pulse has less competition.
Yet the Pulse isn't dominated by gas station and liquor store ads. Unlike many other free papers, its advertisers run more towards the left. This makes sense, because presently Door County has a disproportionately left-wing visitorship. One factor in the loss of right-leaning tourists may be in marketing decisions over recent decades has shifted. Right-wingers from the Chicago metro area are probably drawn more towards state parks in Indiana and other Door County alternatives. Local businesses geared toward tourists, or even seasonal residents, will probably be well-served by advertising in the Pulse.
This leaves the Pulse in the situation where it is to the left of its readership, but still financially sustainable. Its leadership must be aware of this vulnerability, as the Pulse's podcast tends to be to the left of the paper. That it sometimes leaves its readership behind is exemplified how, in the recent midterm election, Ron Johnson did not return any answers to the Pulse's questionnaire, while his Democratic opponent did. Door Countyites voted for him anyway, by a margin of only 75 votes. During the 2022 election it seems that a number of Republicans intentionally spurned media outlets over left-wing bias. To the extent that they did so, and won office anyway, this served to send a message to their base that they were unwilling to be manipulated by left-wing media. It could even be seen as a plea for fair treatment in the future.
Instead of pronouns, there are other topics out there. Recently, a large firm was paid a lot of state money to write a report which claimed that "Potawatomi was chosen in honor of the tribe that had lived in the area before ceding its land to the US government in the 1830’s."
Link: https://widnr.widen.net/view/pdf/infpwyoyy2/GRAEF-Potawatomi-Tower-Concept-Report.pdf#page=9
You could write an article debunking this, and explain what really happened. I think it would be well-received locally, though maybe not by the DNR. Had you written an article about how pronouns should always be biologically honest, that would have hurt your chances of getting a job someday as a journalist in a large metro area, but I don't think debunking Graef would hurt you. With some effort, you should be able to find other topics which are win-win for both your future career and for Door County. Although this is a social relationship, were it a biological relationship instead, this would be "mutualism" rather than "parasitism" or "predation".

Residential Contracting 101
With over 20 years of building experience, I would like to share with you my insights in navigating becoming a successful contractor. With many different avenues of the building world its key to understand what problems will arise on any given day. A man once told a saying that stuck-the 6 p’s in life- Piss Poor Preparation leads to Piss Poor Performance. Preparation builds everything in construction, without preparation the jobsite will not run correctly. The best advice I was ever given was to learn a little about every trade giving you the ability to understand trade lingo and secrets. An example would be painters use the terminology flash; this means when the sub structure bleads through the paint. Subcontractors will give the best pricing if they respect your knowledge of the industry. If the subcontractor feels they will have to hold your hand through the job they will charge an extra fee…i.e. I call it the aggravation fee. In this blog I will explain the key elements in finding success in all aspects of the industry. Contracting is a physically and emotionally demanding job which requires planning and foresight to complete projects on time within budget. Picking your customer is just as important as picking your employees or subcontractors. I have worked for some of the most demanding customers leading me to question at the end if the job was even worth it. Sleepless nights, constant changes, lack of payment, lawsuit threats, adding work that was in the contract are just a few things you could face with a tough customer. With so many moving parts at all times it is critical to be able to adapt to changes within a short time frame. Materials will come in damaged, subcontractors will be late, employees will get sick, but the deadline you set does not change. The stress can be overwhelming at times keeping your mind in a good place is key to navigating all that is thrown at you. Choosing your client picking the right jobs-Keep these questions in mind The first question to be asked is what the time frame is to start the job to see if it fits within the timeframe for your business. If the time frame doesn’t work then move on from the project or let them know when you would be available to start. If the client really wants to use, they will wait until you are available. Taking on too much work will only lead to problems. Construction is a serviced based business, staying on top of the project and client will eliminate an unhappy customer and construction issues that will be over seen. With online presence if details are missed and customer service lacks it will only be a matter of time the phone will not ring. The second question to be asked to the client is do they have a budget in mind for the project. If they answer yes this is good, follow through with what the budget is. If the budget seems low let them know, this will eliminate a tire kicker, educate them on what the price range could be. If the budget seems reasonable then continue the discussion to the next question. If they answer no let them know that you can give them an estimate to see if the project is feasible with their finical capabilities. Taking on a job that is not correctly budgeted will lead to an unsatisfied customer due to non-transparency of the construction cost. The third question to be asked is anyone else bidding on the job, if the answer is yes, understand you might just be number check for the contractor doing the job. Dig a little deeper and find out how many numbers they are getting and why. If your business model is to be competitive be completely transparent with customer, this will gain trust with them. Let them know you get what you pay for and if you they choose the lowest bid it could lead into lack of quality of work.
The fourth question I will ask is there any specific subcontractors they wanted to use. If the answer is yes then I would explain to them you only use the subcontractors you have a working relationship with. Otherwise, this could backfire as the subcontractor might not show, do subpar work, talk behind your back to the homeowner. In my experience I would stay away from using any homeowner to alleviate problems down the road. A quick conversation now can save headaches down the road. The fifth question I will ask are planning on getting the job permitted, this needs to be known it takes more time for the permitting process. Plans will have to drawn submitted and approved to the city before work can commence. The sixth question I will ask if a residential remodel is are you going to be living through the remodel if yes understand this will take more time to navigate the project due to answering questions and cleaning the house on a daily occurrence. I would recommend seeing if the customer would be willing to move into an Airbnb or friends for at least the demo portion of the project. If they do plan on living through the remodel add a couple hours a day to accommodate the extra time that will be required. The seventh question I would ask in a residential remodel is how old the house is to see if there is asbestos that would need to removed by a proper company. A home built before 1979 will most likely have some asbestos in the house, use a licensed company with proper insurance to dispose of the materials. If everything looks good to this point find out a little more about the client personality. If the client seems reasonable, I would bid the job. Unreasonable people can cause you more stress than its worth. These are some red flags I would look out for. Some jobs are not worth the money. Very demanding in the way you are going to perform your job- I.e., tell you how you are going to do your job- You’re the professional not them! Give you a hard time about your price- haggle with price you estimated- The price is the price! If they are a family with little money and you want to help them out is one thing, if they are trying to beat you down is another. Mention they have a lawyer-there is no need for them to bring up that they have a lawyer - Run for the hills as if the job goes south, you will be the one losing out! Tell you what the payment terms are. It’s your business you get paid how it works for your company. If you want to get paid every Friday, put it into your contract-If the clients do not agree move on it will save you frustrations If they talk bad about the last contractor, chances are they will talk bad about you. There is a reason why the contractor does not work for them anymore, unless he did subpar work this a red flag Clients are using an interior decorator that will purchasing all of the materials- The materials could be ordered incorrectly by the interior designer your company will not make the mark-up it deserves. Interior decorators usually add time to the job as well as act like your boss. Charging a little extra for the time and stress that it will entail is only fair. Clients want to purchase the materials- You are using your knowledge to buy the correct materials-The mark up on the materials keeps the doors open working for wages only pays the bills The husband and wife do not get along-You will become the mediator between the couple it will lead to taking sides a losing proposition- A drama free work place is always best! Dangling carrot-if you do this job the next one will be better-Only look at what there offering at the present moment, if its not a good fit do not take the job for a job down the road…Its not worth chasing a job that might not happen! The Art of the Sale First things first selling your company is all about presentation. In meeting your clients for the first time show up with a collared golf shirt tucked in, belt, nice jeans, and newer shoes. Have a truck that a clean, no dents scratches, preferably washed the day you are going into your meeting. Have a leather note pad that is clean no dirt or paint visible. Show up 5 minutes early, if you’re running a little late shoot them a text to let them know. Treat the situation as if were going on a first date, best foot forward. As you introduce yourself give them a warm greeting, letting them know you are very interested in the work. Find out a little about them, hobbies, where they lived, etc etc. You are going to be working with them on a daily basis its nice to know what makes them tick. Having a good working relationship from the start is key forming a solid relationship. As the conversation progresses find out who wears the pants in the family…ie who’s the final decision maker. If its fits the wife, chances it is…..then kindly let the husband know happy wife happy life when their in a stall mate on an issue. As your looking at the project throw in some suggestions of what you think would look good from past experiences, this will get their attention that you have knowledge and want what’s best for them. If you see ways to save them money in their project let them know, money is a large point of the sale keep that in mind. Mention that you’re not the least expensive contractor but you’re not the most expensive either. Your customer satisfaction is your number one goal which leads to more time spent on keeping them happy. One happy customer will lead to another, one unsatisfied customer leads to work in the future. Bring up the fact the finishing the job on time is key goal to your business, many contractors run several jobs at once causing the jobs to be finished way behind schedule. You must stand out as having integrity, good morals, and the ability to problem solve to get the job. The clients will be testing you to see if you’re a good fit as well. Keep in mind as you take your notes that you must not forget anything they mention as it will come back before the job is completed…i.e. we mentioned that to you before we started the job! Take pictures of the proposed area for work, that way you can use it to better right your estimate. Let them know you will give them a detailed outline of when the job will be completed letting them see how long each phase will take and correlate it with your payment schedule. Before you leave their house let them know when the estimate will be sent to them. MAKE SURE YOU HIT THAT DEADLINE! Once you sent the email over with estimate make sure you get confirmation that they received it. Wait at least 2 days before checking with them, hopefully they contact you first! If they want negotiate the price, let them know that it is the best price that you can manage, its not worth losing money before you start. I closed 80% of the work I estimated by being very transparent and friendly. If you come off with an attitude charge double what the going rates are you might only land 1 out of 10 jobs as well as getting the reputation of being expensive. Bidding the job Looking up industry standards on pricing is what I would go buy for pricing. If you google the coat of any installation there will be a cost range for everything. Looking at the cost ranging from high to low I would tend to be in the middle. Some items might be low on the internet if this is the case use your best judgment not to lose money. Closing sales is key to success and keep the doors open for business. Being in the middle on pricing is key as most customers shy away from contractors that are extremely low or high on the price range. I tend not bid out hourly as wages do not pay for retirement. Bidding is better as customers no the exact price of the cost of construction. It also keeps the job moving quicker as time and material contractors take longer to complete projects…Thus costing the client more money and valuable time they could spend in their house. Using a Contract Using a detailed estimate tied to a contract covers your butt in 99% of the time. Having a piece of mind that every aspect of the job is covered in the estimate and contract protects both your company and the client. Key terms to include in your estimate/contract are. Have a schedule on excel showing the start dates and dates of each trade this will show the customer you are organized with time lines. If not written in the detailed in the estimate the item is excluded- This ensures if its not written down its not included. TBD- To be Determined- A phrase on a line item that has yet to had final decision of products or service needed. -The pricing will follow the decisions to be finalized Give out what your written warranty will be for parts and labor this changes state to state. If the homeowner provides the product than no warranty will be given on that particular item. In the contract have a start date and end date with the verbiage subject to change due to weather, product delivery, change orders Have a progress payment schedule to ensure the client understands when funding will be expected-Including if not payment is rendered service to the project will stop. Have written terms of how change orders will be charged-cost plus 20% or a set fee Make sure in your contract that arbitration is required versus going to court- This will save lawyer fees and going to court Many contracts can be found online and each state requires different contracts
Finding leads Finding leads is easy with the right network of people. I personally do not find working for friends or family members a good fit. Relationships get strained when money is involved, causing undue stress for both parties. I have listed a couple of ways to build a network or find work using the internet. Get in contact with realtor’s- Realtors have a big client base of homeowners who need work done Contact local Architects to see if they are working with any general contractors Leave some business cards at your local materials suppliers-Doowindow/lumber-many times clients will ask salesman for a referral. Join a business networking group- BNI is one of many Join a internet website lead generation company- Houzz, Angie’s List, Home Advisor, thumbtack, Yelp run an ad on craigslist Use a marketing company to market your website-This could become costly with little results Create a Facebook business page Create a Yelp business page
Building your subcontractor base Having 2 subcontractors for every trade, gives you the flexibility of completing jobs on time if the one the subcontractors is too busy at the time you need their service. Your subcontractors are the face of your business, choose owner run companies that are professional. Check to make sure there license are up to date..ie workman’s comp, liability insurance, state license. Choosing subcontractors with lettered vans, logoed t-shirts is s key to looking professional in the clients’ eyes. In the past I have gotten a lot of subcontractors for material supply shops, stopping by jobsites, researching the internet using Yelp, Home Advisor, etc etc. Once you get one good subcontractor ask them if they know any other trades they would recommend. One good subcontractor leads to another in most cases. The key to having a good group of subcontractors is to let them know that you are there to get help them get the job done. They do work for you but without them you are nothing…keep that in mind! Make them aware a clean jobsite is required at the end of everyday to ensure the proper safety for all parties including theirs! Over the years I have referred a lot of companies work when there is only 1 trade needed. Referring work to subcontractors is a good way to get top priority when you have work that needs to be completed ASAP. Timing is everything in times of emergency having a good group of subcontractors will make your business run smoothly. Pay your subcontractors immediately after performing work, this will make them feel appreciated! A happy subcontractor is one that will gladly go the extra mile for you knowing that there not just a number to your business! Buying lunch once a week for the jobsite is always a good token of appreciation!
Supervising In supervising any jobsite its key to monitor everything from materials on hand, weather, vehicle parking (if applicable), jobsite safety, and subcontractors’ workmanship. If you hired a professional there should be little supervision in the work being performed, on rare occasions a new hire might need some mentoring to get the results completed correctly. If you see a problem with there work address it with the worker directly, no need to call his boss…. building repour with the worker letting him know you got his back goes miles down the road! Checking in on the job first in the morning to answer any questions or changes that need to be conveyed and once in the afternoon to make sure all work be completed is done per construction industry standards. A job that is run blindly will have many more issues than one that is watched over. I have seen many jobs with no site supervision, leading to subpar quality work as well as safety hazards. Its better to be like an eagle than cluck like a turkey!
Working with the City/Inspectors On permitted jobs the city and site inspector will be a large part of how smoothly the job runs. Each phase of construction has an inspection allowing for the project to continue. Make sure your subcontractors are aware that the project is inspected before starting the job. The best way to stay on his good side is to provide a clean jobsite and having the job built to the highest standards possible. When having the site inspected be courteous to the inspector asking any questions or concerns you have with the work during the job. Being completely transparent will save you aggravation of problems down the road. The more he trust you the better if you seem sneaky or rude he will make your life a living nightmare! Many inspectors will have an attitude towards you….I suggest keeping quiet and doing what ever he wants….he’s the boss no need to get in a pissing match you will not win at. How to deal with irate customer Stay calm during any argument with an irate customer. Never raise your voice or show that you are bothered by their disgruntled behavior. If the customer is trying to get more from you than agreed upon stand your ground. Worst case scenario is you walk from the job, which in the long run be more of a loss for the client. I have only run into a couple of these clients; they are unreasonable and not worth losing sleep over a few dollars. Its best to terminate the relationship as it would be my best guess that a referral from this customer would not be one you wanted anyway. If you feel it was just a miscommunication on your end, take reasonability and remedy the problem. Taking accountability for your mistake will go a far way in their eyes and on future issues that arise. Prepping the homeowner pre-construction Before starting the job, it very important to give the homeowners a warning of what will happen during the construction process.

1. All furniture in the proposed working area must be moved- I would recommend having the clients take care of this to limit the risk of damage to their belongings.
2. There will be dust that will be in the house up to 3 months after construction-I would recommend hiring a construction cleaning company at the end of the job even so after it is cleaned dust will be present months after words.
3. There will be conflicts between you in the homeowner at some course of the job. - You will do your best to eliminate them as quickly as they arise-i.e. material damages, miscommunication, job delays
4. All decisions on materials must be made before the start of the job- this will eliminate job stoppage due to materials not being on site.
5. All materials will be on site before commencement of job-
6. Payment structures must be made per contract otherwise job will stop until payment rendered
7. Cars are to be moved out of the driveway- Ensures ease of loading and unloading of materials/tools
8. Give the specific hours that workers will be present- i.e. 7-3:30
9. Determine what areas are allowed to be used as staging for tools/materials
10. If animals are present in the home that they put outside or in a room during the day
11. All valuables in the house are locked in safe
12. Ask if using client’s household bathroom is okay or to bring in Porter Potty
13. Being transparent as possible is key to keeping a great relationship with your client!

During Construction During construction it is key to take detailed photos to eliminate any damages that were not caused by the construction process. I would also make a video to ensure all areas are included. All subcontractors should also take progress pictures to ensure if problems arise in the future, they will not be responsible for any work that they did not perform. Keep an on-going log of progress to the homeowners and share the pictures for there records. This will keep homeowners excited of the progress being made. When the house is gutted to the studs it is important to have construction photos showing where all utilities are run in the walls or sub floor. If there is a problem in the future there will photos showing all utility locations. Protect all flooring with plywood or floor protective. I also like to protect front door and tarp all areas where subcontractors are to be working. Make sure to cover any chandeliers/furniture/doorways with plastic to eliminate dust. Ask the homeowners if they have any concerns that they could think of. We’re all human and possibly a detail was missed! Post Construction Phase If the project went smoothly appreciation should be shown to the customer. Find out if the husband likes a particular type of liquor. Bring the wife a bouquet of flowers. Send a Christmas card to the family letting how much you appreciated the work. You know you have done a good job if they tell you they will refer you to their friends. The best compliment you could receive is a good referral. In Summary Try to find a knitch in the market, I found kitchens to be a great remodel projects. Bathrooms are tough as they are small, expensive with little profit margin with every trade involved. Windows/doors are also another great knitch as they can be installed quickly. There are so many different remodeling items that can be stream lined to make the selling installing process flawless. Once the core group subcontractors are in place the job almost runs itself. Every day is a learning experience with new materials or methods in construction. Keeping up with codes, materials, fluctuating labor and material cost is a job within itself. Anyone can be a contractor with the right mindset.

As a Mongolian born in China, the pattern of the Turkish opposition reminds me of the so-called Tiananmen Square leaders. After the massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989, these people were seen by the Western world as the most hopeful opposition in China. Over the past thirty years, these people have received substantial funding from the West, but they have used this funding to satisfy their own luxurious lifestyles. They hold annual candlelight memorial events, attend inaugurations of various monuments and memorial halls to gain attention, sympathy, and more funding, and then that's it. They have not taken any substantial actions against the rule of the Chinese Communist Party; they simply repeat their own tragic experiences to gain attention and more support. They would rather spend money on continuing to build meaningless monuments than use it to lobby American politicians and economists.
Why do I think the Turkish opposition is similar to these wastes? In fact, if you just observe the various leaders of the Turkish opposition, you will see how small the world is, with one group of wastes resembling another in astonishing ways.
First, the leader of the Turkish opposition, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, is a terrible leader. What's even worse is that he is considered the most suitable candidate the opposition can come up with. He is a fascist politician in any country's political spectrum, yet he appears very moderate within the entire opposition group. Moreover, he exercises various forms of centralization within the party. In fact, he is a poor replica of Erdoğan within the CHP. Despite leading his team to lose almost all significant elections for twelve consecutive years, he has not been dismissed or assassinated, which makes one wonder if the entire CHP is composed of social scum with less ability than Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, to the extent that no one wants to hire an unemployed dockworker from Istanbul with lira that is practically indistinguishable from waste paper to replace him.
Fortunately, the average intelligence of the Turkish people is not so bad, but unfortunately, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's support rate among intellectually normal voters in Turkey is pitiful, and he has no chance of winning against Erdoğan in a one-on-one election. So, he formed an opposition alliance that includes well-known fascist figure Meral Akşener, a Gray Wolf who massacred thousands of Kurds and suffers from severe hyperthyroidism, Ekrem İmamoğlu, an overeducated intellectual, and Mansur Yavaş, a former member of the terrorist organization MHP who constantly aims to take over Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu himself. He may need to appoint 6 to 8 vice presidents after winning the election.
The opposition alliance was formed, although almost everyone in it has a record of killing and abusing civilians, and they are basically racists and fascists. Yet, they are praised by the Western media as the embodiment of freedom and democracy. By the way, most of the student leaders in the Tiananmen Square in China, who were hailed by the West as democratic fighters, have a father who is a general in the People's Liberation Army or a high-ranking official in the Chinese Communist Party.
However, even so, their approval ratings were still insufficient to secure an electoral victory. As a result, they reached out to the main Kurdish party, the CHP. But as mentioned earlier, almost everyone in this so-called opposition alliance is a racist and fascist. You can guess what happened. Without the Kurdish votes, they were bound to lose. However, from the first day of the elections, this group of misfits began mentally abusing Kurdish voters, commanding them to vote for them or else Kurdish rights would be further restricted under Erdogan's re-election. They refused to adopt any policies that would benefit the Kurdish people after the elections, refused to release Kurdish politicians imprisoned, refused to stop oppressing the Kurds, and even forced Kurdish politicians to admit that the Kurdish people in prison were all deservedly labeled as terrorists.
The political agenda of the opposition alliance has nothing to do with freedom, democracy, or human rights. Anyone with a shred of common sense can see that their ultimate goal is to replace Erdogan's extreme nationalist and racist government with another extreme nationalist and racist government that is pro-Western. The only difference between them and Erdogan is that one is pro-West and the other is anti-West.
Similarly, China's so-called opposition leaders also harbor hostility towards ethnic minorities in East Turkestan and Tibet. They have long refused to engage with Tibetan and Uighur organizations, and some even call for the violent occupation of Taiwan and deny the existence of concentration camps in East Turkestan, labeling the Dalai Lama as a terrorist.
Naturally, Western countries activated their propaganda machinery. Even Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's Twitter videos, which are as boring as my grandmother's bedtime stories, managed to garner millions of views. Keep in mind that Turkey has a population of only 85 million. Pre-election polls funded by the West consistently showed that the opposition would win by a significant margin. But these opposition leaders, after seeing such obvious false propaganda, managed to deceive themselves. It is truly shocking that these carefully planned intentions to undermine Erdogan and his supporters had no effect on their target audience. Erdogan's supporters continued to rally enthusiastically, while the opposition fell for the deception themselves.
Since March, there has been an abnormal optimism within the opposition. All my Turkish friends believed that the opposition would surely win, and as a result, the opposition alliance fell into severe internal strife. Meral Akşener, along with Mansur Yavaş, attempted to overthrow Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, and other candidates resorted to violence to secure positions in the new government. Kurdish leaders were told that they would have no place in the new government while being labeled as terrorists, yet they were still asked to vote for the opposition.
This reminds me of the period before the 1964 massacre, when those heroes in the squares believed they could seize power and started appointing provincial governors and ministers. By the way, during this time, these people remained highly vigilant against the demands of Tibetan and Uighur people, who were informed that they would have no place in the new government but were still asked to support the opposition's cause.
This dark humor frenzy continued until May 14, and we all know the result—the opposition lost in the first round of elections. The opposition was shocked by the outcome and spent a whole week without taking any substantive action. Then, these useless individuals decided to abandon the Kurds and embarked on a campaign of extreme nationalism and racism to appease nationalist voters. The result? They suffered an even more disastrous defeat in the second round of elections.
Then what happened was that the opposition accused election fraud, but eventually accepted the results without any demonstrations or street movements. The opposition alliance, which had been aggressive before the elections, disappeared like a deflated balloon. After losing the support of the Western media machinery, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's video views returned to normal.
So, what are these opposition parties doing now? They are busy blaming each other, seeing it as the fault of the West, the Kurds, the Azerbaijani dictator Aliyev, the Kurds again, and the Armenians. Basically, it's anyone's fault except their own.
By the way, the opposition in China has been doing the same thing for decades, portraying themselves as perfect victims and blaming the whole world.
I understand that the political ecosystems in China, Turkey, Armenia, and Mongolia have many differences, but there are also commonalities in political logic.
China's opposition has been fragmented for over thirty years, while Tibetan and Uighur people have established their own unified authoritative institutions and held several democratic elections. Yet, the Chinese opposition still attacks each other like a group of mafia gangs.
The situation of the Turkish opposition today is similar. Each opposition leader within their own parties acts like a mini-Erdoğan, while the PKK-YPG organization, which has always been seen by the mainstream Turkish public as terrorists, becomes increasingly disciplined and organized.
It seems to me that both the Turkish and Chinese opposition, just like the ruling class in their respective countries, are actually part of the imperial ambitions. They don't oppose Erdoğan and Xi Jinping's imperial ambitions; they only believe that they can achieve those ambitions better if the state machinery is in their hands. Therefore, their opposition to Erdoğan and Xi Jinping is not against these toxic ambitions but rather a desire to replace them.
Thus, they participate in politics with a ruler's mindset, believing themselves to be the chosen ones. They are more inclined towards winner-takes-all, while Tibetan, Kurdish, and Uighur people, who are relatively disadvantaged ethnic groups, tend to cooperate and compromise, which makes them perform better in political operations.
What's even worse is that, like the Chinese opposition, most supporters of the Turkish opposition are urban students and middle-class individuals from coastal areas. Moreover, these regions historically lack a culture of martial arts, have alarmingly low military enrollment rates, and lack any armed forces, either foreign or domestic, similar to India's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to protect themselves. This leads to the situation where this group can only attack Erdoğan in the realm of public opinion.
I know that public opinion can play a significant role in many cases, but to be honest, throughout history, public opinion has been like pepper on a steak, adding flavor but having no practical effect. Hitler was defeated by the Allied forces, not by newspaper articles exposing the atrocities in concentration camps. Saddam was captured by the US military, not by online criticism.
If the opposition considers the elections unfair, they should find ways to use force or initiate street uprisings to overthrow the unjust results, just like the Ukrainians did in 2014. Instead, they engage in ineffective and superficial actions through public opinion.
Unfortunately, this is the current behavior of the Turkish opposition. They simultaneously shout that the PKK is a terrorist organization, that the Republic of Turkey doesn't need a second official language, that Greece oppresses the Muslim minority in Western Thrace, that the Greek president is weak in the face of Erdoğan, that they support Azerbaijan's invasion of Armenia, that the Armenian president attended Erdoğan's inauguration ceremony, that they cheer for the ethnic cleansing of Kurds in Afrin, and that they blame Syrian Kurds for not liking them. These people want others to fight and sacrifice for them against Erdoğan so that they can enjoy privileges on the land stolen from the great massacre in the Republic of Turkey, while they hide behind and reap the benefits.
Now, I actually wish that Erdoğan would drive tanks into Istanbul and give these opposition parties a heroic death so that everyone would forget these pathetic clowns. At least, many years later, their children would shed tears in front of their tombstones instead of laughing at the ridiculous words and actions of their parents before their death.
I can already foresee the ultimate outcome of these so-called opposition groups. The West has wasted thirty years of time and money on the Chinese opposition, and now they have wasted five precious years on the Turkish opposition. I hope that those who harbor illusions about the Turkish opposition, especially the Armenians, understand that these people are nothing but a laughable bunch of waste. It would be better to channel their energy and resources into engaging with Greece, Cyprus, France, and the United States. Even negotiating with Erdoğan in exchange for time and money to rearm would be more productive than hoping for any internal change within Turkey through the so-called opposition.
I apologize for my limited English proficiency. These are some thoughts I have shared with some political science friends regarding the recent election results in Turkey. If there are any inaccuracies, I welcome corrections.

Here's this weekend's rundown of fun events you can enjoy in Blacksburg and throughout the surrounding areas within the New River Valley. There's quite a few annual events occurring this weekend such as the Pearisburg Festival in the Park and Claytor Lake Festival if you have a caride and feel adventurous.
Weekend Rundown for June 9th - June 11th: 1. A Night To Fight Alzheimer’s with Boxing Sparring Sessions Blacksburg Boxing and Fitness, Blacksburg Friday, June 9, 2023, 6:00 - 8:00 PM Advance Tickets: $15.00, At the Door: $20.00 Enjoy live, local boxing with sparring sessions with 100% of the proceeds benefitting The Alzheimer’s Association and The Longest Day to raise money for Alzheimer's research. Please note: These are not sanctioned fights. Instead, they are USA Boxing approved Sparring sessions lead by USA Boxing Certified Coaches, amongst USA Boxing athletes, using USA Boxing Sparring rules. The intent is to put on a show, raise money for a great cause, and keep all participants safe. There will also be raffle tickets to win sweet prizes from local companies. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708170 2. 2023 Relay for Life Annual Event (Montgomery County, VA) Christiansburg Middle School, Christiansburg Friday, June 9, 2023, 6:00 - 11:00 PM Admission: Free Join Relay for Life of Montgomery County for their annual Relay for Life event. Celebrate survivors, remember those we have lost and fight back as a community to give cancer the boot. Enjoy live entertainment, children's fun, food, arts & crafts and small business vendors, silent auction, 50/50 Raffle and more. The event is free to attend, but please plan to bring payment for any food and vendors you wish to purchase from. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=707517
3. 2023 Pearisburg Festival in the Park Pearisburg Community & Recreation Center, Pearisburg Friday, June 9, 2023, 6:00 - 11:00 PM and Saturday, June 10, 2023, 9:30 AM - 11:00 PM Admission: Free The Pearisburg Festival in the Park celebrates its 38th anniversary in Giles County, Virginia. Enjoy carnival rides, two days of live entertainment, food vendors with all your favorite festival foods, special activities, vendors and crafters. Festival in the Park promises to be an awesome two days of community spirit, family fun, live music, and great food. There will be rides and games for the whole family. Friday is Unlimited Wristband night and Saturday features a full day of entertainment, the Cancer Kids and Christmas Car Show & Cruise along with headliner Chris Higbee and closing with a fireworks display. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/VenueEventListing.cfm?V=542
4. Root Down in Concert Rising Silo Farm Brewery, Blacksburg Friday, June 9, 2023, 6:00 - 9:00 PM Admission: Free Root Down is a jazz trio based in the New River Valley area featuring musicians Justin Craig, Doug Norton and Nick Romantini. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708744
5. MLB / USA Baseball: Danville Otterbots vs. Pulaski River Turtles (Star Wars Night and Fireworks) Calfee Park, Pulaski Friday, June 9, 2023, 7:00 - 10:00 PM General Admission: $5.00, Seniors Ages 65 & Older: $1.00, Kids 6 & Under: Free Grandstand: $11.00, Reserved Seating: $12.00, Party Zone: $12.00, Club Seating: $15.00 The Pulaski River Turtles MLB / USA Baseball's Appalachian League team hosts the Danville Otterbots as they continue their 2023 season with Star Wars Night. Several characters will be on-site throughout the game to interact with fans and take photos. In addition, every Friday night game will end with a fireworks show for the fans. Tickets can be purchased at the gates on game day or online. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708693
6. Ripejive in Concert Dogtown Roadhouse, Floyd Friday, June 9, 2023, 8:00 - 11:00 PM Admission: $8.00 Ripejive is a Blacksburg, Virginia based quartet that delivers original, hard-hitting funk. From retro grooves to jazz fusion, blazing guitar and soaring saxophone color tight pocket rhythms with sounds from New Orleans to New York that always bring a party. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708066
7. Summer Tea In Honor of Lucy Lancaster's Birthday (Reservation Deadline) Lancaster House, Blacksburg Saturday, June 17, 2023, 11:00 AM and 12:30 PM Registration Deadline: Saturday, June 10, 2023 Admission: $25.00 The YMCA at Virginia Tech presents their 1st Annual Summer Tea in Honor of Lucy Lancaster's Birthday with two seatings on 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM with a reservation deadline of Saturday, June 10, 2023. Located in the beautiful, historic Lancaster House, mark Lucy Lee Lancaster’s birthday by enjoying a deliciously decadent celebration featuring tea and delicious homemade delicacies. The Tea will be catered by Carolyn Ansley, famous for her authentic and delicious teas in past years in Blacksburg. Proceeds from the Tea will directly benefit the Y Community Programs such as Meals On Main, International Programming and After School care. Deadline to purchase tickets is Saturday, June 10th. Lucy Lee lived in the Lancaster House built in 1913 by her parents William and Lucy Lee Sibold Lancaster until her death in 1989. She left the house to the YMCA at Virginia Tech. Lee was one of the first five women admitted to Virginia Tech in 1925. She majored in biology and worked in the library which was housed at that time in what had been the campus chapel. Her work in the library led to her decision to become a librarian, and she attended Columbia University Library School where she received her Masters of Library Science degree. She returned to Blacksburg and worked in the university library until her retirement in 1970. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708759
8. 2023 Native Plant Sale Price House Nature Center, Blacksburg Saturday, June 10, 2023, 9:30 AM - 1:30 PM Admission: Free The New River Valley Chapter of the Virginia Native Plant Society will hold its Fifth Annual Native Plant Sale. The Native Plant Sale includes perennials, trees, shrubs, ferns and more. All plants in the sale are native to Virginia and do not include cultivars. Most are pollinator friendly. The native plant sale only uses sustainable non-peat potting mix. All proceeds from the sale go to support the activities of the New River Valley Chapter, including public education and outreach, improving habitat at local parks, removing invasive species and awarding grants to area youth for native plant garden projects. In addition to the many plants for sale, there will be activities for adults and children. There will be booths where you can ask how to create a pollinator garden or which plants are exotic invasives which kill off natives which the wildlife need to survive on. Tree tubes to protect trees and shrubs from deer will also be sold. Storytime with Joelle for children begins at 12:30 PM. You can also visit the Price House Nature Center which will be open from 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM. Parking is one block away in the Blacksburg United Methodist Church. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708676
9. 2023 Claytor Lake Festival Claytor Lake State Park, Dublin Saturday, June 10, 2023, 10:00 AM - 10:00 PM Parking is $20.00 per vehicle or $15.00 with five cans of food. The Claytor Lake Festival Committee presents the 24th Annual Claytor Lake Beach Festival. The festival kicks off the summer season at Claytor Lake State Park each year. Enjoy entertainment all day, fireworks at night, arts & crafts vendors, beach access included with admission, free children's activities, youth & adult fishing tournament, wine tasting and lots more. Registration for the annual Everett Lee Yearout, Jr. Adult and Youth Fishing Tournament will be held 7:00-10:00 AM. This year the tournament theme is "Fishing is the Best Hobby Because". The Car Show voting is done by the show participants who are completely registered by 10:30 AM. All entries will receive a dash plaque, goodie bag and category winners will receive trophies. There is no pre-registration fee. The fee is $20.00 to enter the car & motorcycle show and this is the only fee you pay to enter the festival. Swimming is included with admission. The event is rain or shine. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708202
10. Procession of Appalachian Species (Giant Puppet Parade) and Biodiversity Fair Warren G. Lineberry Memorial Park, Floyd Saturday, June 10, 2023, 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM Admission: Free Springhouse presents the Procession of Appalachian Species and Biodiversity Fair with events centered around Warren G. Lineberry Memorial Park. New River Valley residents are invited to participate in a giant puppet parade celebrating our region’s biodiversity. This event, dubbed, "The Procession of Appalachian Species," will start and end at Lineberry Park in downtown Floyd, VA. Participants are encouraged to bring homemade puppets and costumes that represent one of our region’s many spectacular species. Musicians and dancers are also encouraged to bring their crafts to this event. The parade starts at 11:00 AM. If you don't have a homemade puppet or costume please come and you can puppeteer one that we have made. After the parade, join the Biodiversity Fair featuring food, music and activities from 12:00-2:00 PM. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708682
11. June 2023 Used Book Sale Montgomery Museum of Art & History, Christiansburg Saturday, June 10, 2023, 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM Friday, June 9, 2023, 2:00 - 7:00 PM and Saturday, June 10, 2023, 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM Mass-Market Paperback Books: $0.50, Large-Format Paperbacks: $1.00, Hardback Books: $1.50, Children’s Books: $0.50-$1.00 The Montgomery Museum of Art and History will be holding a two-day Used Book Sale featuring thousands of books including children’s books, adult fiction, and non-fiction. Genres include mystery, romance, science fiction, cooking, history, crafts, religion, self-help, and much, much more. The book sale will also feature puzzles, magazines, comic books, audiobooks, CDs, and DVDs.. On Saturday, June 10th from 1:00-4:00 PM, bring your own bag for a bag sale. All books that can fit will be offered at a total of $10.00 per bag. Brown paper bags and tote bags are perfect for the bag sale. Please, no plastic trash bags. Proceeds will be used to help the museum in areas such as educational programming, collection care, and exhibit preparation. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708149
12. 2023 Two-Day Floyd Artisan Trail Annual Tour Downtown Floyd, Floyd Saturday, June 10, 2023 and Sunday, June 11, 2023, 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM Admission: Free The Floyd Center for the Arts hosts the 11th annual two-day Floyd Artisan Trail. Floyd County artisans, farms, galleries, and more will open their doors for this year’s Artisan Trail. Featuring over 30 different individuals and businesses, the Artisan Trail is a years-long tradition in Floyd to celebrate the abundant artistry available in this area. The Artisan Trail is a free to attend and invites locals and tourists alike to travel around the county to visit the open studios, see live demos, and purchase one-of-a-kind handmade art and goods in a self-guided tour across Floyd County, Virginia. The Trail happily hosts local farms and farm markets, offering tours and locally grown produce and farm goods. There may even be adorable farm animals to see. Maps and brochures with all participants’ information are available online and will be available at the Floyd Center for the Arts. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708882
13. Balance and Brews Iron Tree Brewing Company, Christiansburg Saturday, June 10, 2023, 10:45 - 11:45 AM Admission: $20.00 Move through foundational yoga poses, gentle stretches, and experience the many restorative benefits that yoga has to offer. This one hour class is appropriate for all levels, including those who are totally new to yoga. The cost includes an Iron Tree beverage of your choice. No reservation required, just show up. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708760
14. Author Talk with Penny Blue Christiansburg Library, Christiansburg Saturday, June 10, 2023, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Admission: Free Christiansburg Library presents an Author Talk with Penny Blue about her first book "A Time to Protest: Leadership Lessons from My Father Who Survived the Segregated South for 99 Years". Historians have written about famous names in Black History, such as: Martin Luther King, Jr., Madam CJ Walker and Booker T. Washington. Penny Blue’s dad, Charles Edwards, Sr., is not famous, but the way he lived his life made an impact on his 10 children and the community in which he lived. The stories he told his children and grandchildren are the inspiration for Blue’s book. Penny says the main theme is standing up and speaking out for what is just and right. Books will be available for purchase for $25.00 through CashApp or with cash or check only. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708891
15. Sugar Magnolia 5th Anniversary Celebration Sugar Magnolia, Blacksburg Saturday, June 10, 2023, 11:00 AM - 10:00 PM 25% Off Storewide, $2.00 Ice Cream Scoops Sugar Magnolia presents their 5th Anniversary Celebration at their original location in Blacksburg, VA. There will be face painting and a balloon artist in store from 12:00-2:00 PM. Guests can also enjoy: 25% off storewide all day, $2.00 ice cream scoops all day, tasting stations, raffles, gifts with purchase and more. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708741
16. Fourth Birthday Party Celebration with Music from Cinémathèque Eastern Divide Brewing, Blacksburg Saturday, June 10, 2023, 12:00 - 9:00 PM Admission: Free Eastern Divide Brewing presents their Fourth Birthday Party Celebration with Music from Cinémathèque. Enjoy free ice cream and live music from 5:00-8:00 PM featuring the upbeat and unique rhythms of Cinematheque including surf rock, exotica, spaghetti westerns, Ethiopian jazz, and Afro-Beat. Eastern Divide will also have a vintage and artisan pop up market featuring Eden's Emporium, Broken Arrow Creations, Madigan Made and Tees Don't Grow on Trees. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708886
17. Music at the Villa with Parker's Pillbox Villa Appalaccia Winery, Floyd Saturday, June 10, 2023, 1:00 - 4:00 PM Admission: Free Relax and enjoy some great music along with great wine and food. Sprung from the western hills of Virginia, Parker's Pillbox is an on-the-rise power trio to watch. Parker's Pillbox is instantly recognizable by their unique, cohesive sound, which manages to be unto itself while drawing influences from a multitude of genres. Flavors of country, jazz, grunge, and good 'ol southern rock and roll blend together to create music which is truly an experience. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708181
18. Saturday Afternoon Music with Ball & Chain New River Vineyard & Winery, Fairlawn Saturday, June 10, 2023, 2:00 - 5:00 PM Admission: Free Join New River Vineyard & Winery on the patio for an afternoon enjoying their wine, frozen wine slushies, handcrafted beer and music from Ball & Chain. Ball & Chain is a stripped down acoustic rock duo. A girl from the mountains of Virginia and a boy from the Bronx. The regional musical influences of each coalesce into melodious tension. Passion, fun and sass pervades Jon & Lucinda’s blend of rock, R&B, and blues, resulting in vocals and harmonies that stroke your soul. Seating is first come, first served. Guests can bring a blanket and chair. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708884
19. Arc in the Park 2023 Nellie's Cave Park, Blacksburg Saturday, June 10, 2023, 3:00 - 6:00 PM Admission: Free Enjoy the free food including an all-you-can-eat hot dog bar and pulled pork barbecue, outdoor field games, face painting, entertainment, snow cones and friendships. The Gift Card Raffle will help raise funds for the organization. Prizes include gift cards from Avellinos, PKs, The Maroon Door, Zeppoli’s, In Balance Yoga, The Cellar, The Lyric and lots more. Tickets are $5.00 each and can be purchased online or in person at the event. The prize drawing will be held at the event at 5:00 PM. Participants do not have to be there in person to win. The event is handicap accessible. The Arc promotes and protects the human rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and actively supports their full inclusion and participation in the community throughout their lifetimes. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708881
20. Rockin' Main Street Concert Series with Travis Reigh and The Jared Stout Band Downtown Christiansburg, Christiansburg Saturday, June 10, 2023, 5:00 - 9:00 PM Admission: Free The Town of Christiansburg and the Christiansburg Parks & Rec continues their Rockin' Main Street Concert Series featuring music from The Jared Stout Band and Travis Reigh. Attendees can purchase food and drinks from a selection of food trucks and wine and beer vendors. Patrons are encouraged to bring lawn chairs to sit and enjoy the live performances. Travis Reigh is a singer-songwriter born and raised out of Southwest Virginia, bringing you original material with rock roots and a country sound that you don't want to miss. Get ready to experience the high-octane energy and soulful sound of the Jared Stout Band! This alt-country powerhouse hails from Southwestern Virginia and is known for their unique blend of Appalachian rhythm and blues. As runners-up for the "On-The-Rise" award at FloydFest 22, the Jared Stout Band delivers an unforgettable performance by bringing their own energetic and soulful original songs to the stage. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=707447
21. Mount Tabor Ruritan Club June Fish Fry with The Blacksburg Community Band Slusser's Chapel Church of God, Blacksburg Saturday, June 10, 2023, 5:00 - 7:00 PM Adults: $12.00 Children Ages 3-11: $6.00 Children Under 3: Free Carry-Outs: $12.00 The Mount Tabor Ruritan Club presents their June Fish Fry with the Blacksburg Community Band performing. Enjoy a serving fish, fries, slaw, homemade desserts and beverage. The Blacksburg Community Band, Inc. is an all-volunteer community organization formed in 1989 under the auspices of the Department of Parks and Recreation in the Town of Blacksburg, Virginia. This is a fundraiser for the Ruritan Club's community service projects and scholarships. Held rain or shine under the picnic shelter below the lower church parking lot. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708078
22. 2023 Music on the Lawn Concert Series with Virginia Hollow Christiansburg Library, Christiansburg Saturday, June 10, 2023, 6:00 - 7:30 PM Admission: Free Virginia Hollow is a mixture of Americana, Bluegrass, Country, Indie, and Rock. A singer-songwriter band that performs songs written by lead singer Carrie Hinkley, along with an occasional handpicked cover or two. Virginia Hollow is a band and a sound born from the hills, valleys and mountains of Appalachia. Their performances and music take you on a journey fraught with raw emotions and stories of love, trust, betrayal and longing. Each month, one talented local band will play a concert on the library's lawn after hours. Bring your lawn chairs and blankets for an evening under the stars. Feel free to bring a picnic as well. This concert is rain or shine. In case of rain, the concert will be moved inside. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=707890
23. Slushie Saturday with Music from Furious Jones Moon Hollow Brewing, Blacksburg Saturday, June 10, 2023, 6:00 - 9:00 PM Admission: Free Moon Hollow Brewing presents their first Slushie Saturday with Music from Furious Jones. This Summer every Saturday is now Slushie Saturday at Moon Hollow. This Saturday will have two slushies available one made with Ebb & Flow Prickly Pear and one non-alcoholic slushie, Prickly Pear Raspberry flavored. Singer and songwriter Furious Jones will perform a live acoustic solo show featuring Americana, Blues, Folk, and Rock with both originals and extensive covers. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708719
24. Mist on the Mountain in Concert Rising Silo Farm Brewery, Blacksburg Saturday, June 10, 2023, 6:00 - 9:00 PM Admission: Free Mist on the Mountain is an Irish Traditional Music group based in the New River Valley of southwest Virginia. From lively jigs and reels to heartbreaking laments and rollicking ballads. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708745
25. Dean Trimble in Concert Long Way Brewing, Radford Saturday, June 10, 2023, 6:00 - 9:00 PM Admission: Free Dean Trimble is a musician playing 70s and 80s classic soft rock and classic country and he is based in the New River Valley. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708860
26. Cary Wimbish Band in Concert Brick House Pizza, Radford Saturday, June 10, 2023, 7:00 - 10:00 PM Admission: Free The Cary Wimbish Band makes its debut performance at Brick House Pizza. Hailing from Richmond, Virginia, Cary Wimbish has quickly earned a loyal following in the Richmond area since his debut in 2018. Combining powerful vocals with both acoustic and electric guitar, Cary’s repertoire includes covers of well known traditional country, bluegrass, classic rock and blues songs. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708866
27. June Blacksburg Vintage Market Market Square Park, Blacksburg Sunday, June 11, 2023, 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM Admission: Free The Blacksburg Vintage Market hosts their June Vintage Market. Vendors will be selling all things vintage from clothes, jewelry, vinyl records, and more. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708681
28. Sunday Mountain Music Series with Indian Run Stringband Mountain Lake Lodge, Pembroke Sunday, June 11, 2023, 4:00 - 6:00 PM Admission: Free The Indian Run Stringband plays fiddle and banjo foot stomping dance tunes and sings traditional songs with old time harmonies perfect for dancing the two step. From dance tunes to the blues, the Indian Run Stringband plays with love and abandon. They make old-time music fresh and new. Stop by Salt Pond Pub every Sunday starting Memorial Day weekend through August for live music and delicious food & drinks. Perfect for relaxing with the whole family (furry friends welcome too). Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708136
29. Gearheads For A Cause for Ashley Ray Blue Ridge Church, Christiansburg Sunday, June 11, 2023, 5:00 - 9:00 PM Admission: Free Gearheads For A Cause is hosting a special cruise in in memory of Ashley Ray of Dublin, VA that was took from this world at the young age of 25. Ashley was a amazing mother of two sons and always happy and outgoing. The money raised will be for Ashley's family to help with her two boys and the family's needs. Vehicles of all type are invited to attend as well as spectators. Admission and entry are free. There will be a raffle, cake walk and vendors on site. Gearheads For a Cause hosts car shows to help raise spirits given all our community has undergone and bring together an otherwise separated community. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708892
30. Freddy Modad in Concert Palisades Restaurant, Eggleston Sunday, June 11, 2023, 5:00 - 7:30 PM Admission: Free Guitarist Freddie Modad performs classic rock and more. Reservations are not required, but recommended for dining area seating. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708893
31. MLB / USA Baseball: Burlington Sock Puppets vs. Pulaski River Turtles (Saddle-Up Sunday) Calfee Park, Pulaski Sunday, June 11, 2023, 7:00 - 10:00 PM General Admission: $5.00, Seniors Ages 65 & Older: $1.00, Kids 6 & Under: Free Grandstand: $11.00, Reserved Seating: $12.00, Party Zone: $12.00, Club Seating: $15.00 The Pulaski River Turtles MLB / USA Baseball's Appalachian League team hosts the Burlington Sock Puppets as they continue their 2023 season. Saddle-Up Sunday returns. Arrive early for free cowboy hat giveaways while supplies last and take a ride on the buckin’ mechanical bull. Rides are free of charge. It's also Sunday Savings featuring concession specials. Tickets can be purchased online or at the gate. Link: http://www.nextthreedays.com/FeaturedEventDetails.cfm?E=708695
Have a great weekend and thanks for reading!

So, I was rewatching a few of the old school seasons during the past few days and I just can't help but feel a bit disappointed with what the show has become.
I don't think we should have more as*holes or bullies, don't get me wrong, but I really feel that we desperately need some "regular" people on the cast. Having regular folks who are not well off in their regular lives and who have either not watched Survivor at all or have just some basic knowledge about the show, brings so much excitement and real human interactions.
Those people are entering the game ready to really give it all for that million dollar prize, which is what's making them fight harder and take things more personally and emotionally. The game has much bigger stakes for them.
Like it's great that Survivor casts fans as well, all of us would die to have a chance at playing our favorite game, however, with casts being completely made out of fans, the game becomes much more stale and everyone is just trying to do everything "right" instead of just going all in. Also, a lot of people who get on the show in the new era are pretty much well situated and the prize itself is not a "do or die" for them, so even though they'd like to win, it's not such a huge deal for them if they don't.
This, combined with the fact that social media also has a great impact on the players (they seem to be very afraid of how the public might perceive them) makes for all these game-boty exits, where everyone is smiling and thanking the production for the opportunity, basically being "over the moon" about the fact that they'd just been voted out. (I swear I miss Michaela so much ❣️)
These are also the reasons why we keep getting the same ftc vote time after time. People are just "pressured" into voting "correctly" and being on the "right" side of the consensus, cause if there are 6 other people who voted the same way, then they can justify their decision in front of the general public more easily, in case the viewers get upset by the end result. Which is so underwhelming, cause who cares what the people will say, screw them, you're playing for yourself. Plus, even being in the majority doesn't guarantee you'll be spared of the backlash anyway (Karla and Jesse know this best after all the shit they got last season).
I'm personally not a fan of this narrative and would much rather have some regular people, reacting emotionally and taking things to heart. It makes for a much more interesting game and it also makes the ftc performance much more meaningful, cause you, as a finalist, now possibly have to find a way to persuade someone who really hates your guts to give you a vote.
Due to all this 44 has been the first season in quite a bit that had me engaged, cause the production really lucked out with people like Carolyn and Yam Yam to some extent, who are not afraid to express their emotions and who I could (finally) relate to.
Anyway, I know nothing's gonna change, but I just felt the need to vent. Sorry for having to read all the shit I had to say if you got this far lol 😂

I am NOT OP.
trigger warnings: concerning
mood spoilers: Good
 
I found my boss' highly critical notes about a coworker - 7/21/21
After 10 years of working together, my direct manager — our director of operations, Jessica — was let go from our company a few months ago. There were apparently some behind-the-scenes issues between herself and our CEO, Bruce (he alluded as much to me and others in conversation, I think in an attempt at transparency) that led to this result.
Bruce had the replacement for Jessica set to start less than a week after Jessica was let go (she was let go on a Tuesday, my new manager Elizabeth started the following Monday), which leads me to believe that this change was in the works for well over a month (due to the notice Elizabeth would have had to give at her previous job).
I don’t know if I can communicate how sudden Jessica’s termination was. It was a surprise to everyone but especially to Lila, who is one of Jessica’s best friends and who works as a manager. When Elizabeth first started, one of the tasks at the top of her list was meeting with the managers and department heads to get a feel for the organization … but the meeting with Lila took place after hours and from what I heard of it, it was not polite or professionally handled (I work after usual business hours and the doors to my office and the conference room were both open). Elizabeth and Bruce were quite aggressive toward Lila. Thankfully, another manager, Mandy, was also in the meeting and was able to give Lila a little support and a chance to take a breath. The meeting eventually seemed to calm down (and I closed my door once I realized what I was hearing) and I have chalked that up to Elizabeth being primed by others (possibly Bruce) to take a defensive position due to Lila’s close friendship with Jessica.
This is my conundrum. I went to our communal supply closet last evening to get some notepads. There weren’t any fresh, new ones, but I was looking for scratch paper for myself and don’t mind using up the dregs of someone else’s old notepad. I grabbed a few remnants and went back to my desk. When sorting through the notepads quickly to clean up any loose pieces, I noticed that one had writing on the second page down. I flipped the page up, intending to remove and shred whatever notes were on there.
The notes that I saw were Elizabeth’s notes from (or possibly after) that first meeting with Lila. I’m sure I won’t shock you by telling you that the notes (at a glance, once I realized what they were) were not flattering to Lila in the least. Some pertained to her work performance, but others were very crude (and inaccurate) assessments of Lila’s personality and what Elizabeth did not like about her. There was also a page after those notes with some jotted-down info from a high-level meeting that Elizabeth attended (again, at a quick glance).
I don’t know what to do now. Should I pretend I never saw the notes, shred them, and keep my mouth shut? Should I take the notepad to Elizabeth and explain how I ended up with it, allowing her to destroy the notes herself? I could even play it more as, “Funny thing, I grabbed this old notepad from the supply closet and it looks like you still have some notes on here. Did you want to check them to see if you still need them?” … But of course, she will want to know if I saw what the notes were about. It is very fortunate that I was the one who came across this information as I work at the manager level (with clearance and responsibilities to match) and previously did HR-esque work for the company.
I suppose my biggest issue here is wondering, if Elizabeth made notes like that about Lila, what kind of notes did she make about me after our first encounter? I can’t ask her that, but I worry that bringing up the Lila notes to Elizabeth will cause her to mistrust me.
To be very clear, I have no intention of telling Lila or anyone else about what I saw. Elizabeth and Lila seem to have evened out a bit and their relationship is maybe not the best in the world, but it is certainly better than when Elizabeth first started. I don’t want to cause issues or drama, I just want a good working relationship with my new boss.
 
update: I found my boss’s highly critical notes about a coworker - 6/21/22
The primary update – We don’t have HR, and the only members of the company who were above me in hierarchy at the time were Elizabeth and Bruce. I felt a lack of ownership when it came to drawing attention to the situation or deciding what the correct course of action would be. My final determination was to seek out the counsel of Amy (Bruce’s Executive Assistant) who had been in charge of cleaning out Jessica’s office. When I showed the notes to Amy, she instantly made the decision to shred them (we have a third party company who shreds our documents and those are kept in secure, locked boxes until picked up). I also left it to Amy to decide whether to inform Elizabeth about the situation (as far as I know she did not). I had also gone through the cabinet to make sure no other notepads had any written pages on them – and I found one notepad with Jessica’s notes from a common meeting a few years prior, so I shredded those.
Some general updates about everyone involved:
Elizabeth is no longer with our company. She gave notice about six months in (citing the not-great fit on both sides as well as an opportunity she could not pass up). Elizabeth remains … a mixed bag in my opinion. Before she left the company, she ensured that I received a review and a raise – after not having a review for over three years. However, there were some professionalism problems evident. For example – Elizabeth and I were having a very serious one on one discussion and while I was talking she reached into her drawer, pulled out her floss, and proceeded to floss her teeth. I was stunned and I assume I stopped speaking, because she gestured for me to continue. I asked if she needed me to come back and she replied that no, it was fine – and flossed all of her teeth. Not in an “Excuse me, this popcorn kernel is stuck, please – one second” with a turn away and quick floss. It was both hands in her mouth just sawing away at her gums. At that point I think she had already mentally checked out (our serious discussion was about something she had done without thinking and I was doing my best trying to minimize the fallout).
The real benefit of Elizabeth is Regina, who Elizabeth hired prior to leaving. Bruce promoted Regina into the role Elizabeth had vacated and we are all delighted to work with Regina.
Bruce is … still Bruce. After Elizabeth left he went around seeking guidance on what had gone wrong (he has a history of taking resignations a little too personally), but I honestly think that the situation worked out as best it could. Elizabeth was a “rebound” in a sense and, while I did not wish such a short tenure on her, Regina was able to step into the role without the crushing weight of constantly being compared to Jessica.
As far as I know, Jessica is doing well in her new job. The same for Lila – Lila, the unknowing recipient of this vitriol, found a great job elsewhere and from all accounts is thriving. Lila’s last day was close to Elizabeth’s and, while I think Lila might have stayed with Elizabeth gone, her new work environment sounds much healthier for her and the work well-suited to her skillset – along with the lack of baggage she still had here as Jessica’s close friend.
As for me, Enid (the NotePad Goblin), I’m still using up dregs of old notepads and imagining myself in Sweet Valley.
Thank you, Alison and the commentariat, for your kind words and suggestions. I was at an absolute loss with no HR and the problem involving my only supervisors, and so I greatly appreciated the anonymous third-party guidance. Keep up the great work!
Reminder - I am not the original poster.