The Nature of Predators was created by u/SpacePaladin15.
Special thanks to u/Saint-Andros for giving feedback on this first chapter's draft!
This is my first time writing a fanfic, or any multi-chapter story for that matter. Updates are likely to be slow and inconsistent. Your feedback is definitely appreciated, so if you have anything to say please leave a comment!
I hope you enjoy.
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THE FOLLOWING PROGRAM IS RATED [TV-MA-HM] (FOR HUMAN-STANDARD MATURE AUDIENCES) AND CONTAINS:
- ADULT OR "PREDATOR-LIKE" THEMES
- COARSE LANGUAGE
VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
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SLEEPWALK
CREATED BY NEKAN AND SIMON GREY
1 - Prologue to a Nightmare
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JULY 8, 2136
Walk in, be polite, do your job, walk out, and no more.
It was the five-step mantra my feathered friend had given me to get me through the working days, and it’s served me quite well for the past couple of years. His voice was always a soothing guide, repeatedly ringing in the back of my head like a well-meaning wake-up call.
I was getting on in my years a little, at least it felt like it, so I still gladly accepted his help even after all this time. He was a polite fellow, almost as old as I was but far more able and proficient. Maybe he cared about me a little too much as he did many things for my convenience—he even got me my janitorial job in the first place—but who was I to turn away such a good friend?
I gave a satisfied tail swish as I said goodbye to Fevri, the receptionist’s lovely tone a soft farewell. The end of every shift always came with a calming walk back to my apartment building, like an extra treat for all the helpful work I’ve done. It was far enough from the office for the time to last but close enough to not be tiring, giving me a moment to appreciate the ambiance of the Capital and ‘mull things over’ as my friend would always encourage.
Well, mulling things over, almost everything was in its place. My job was still good; I was doing good. I was good!
My friend just hasn’t been visiting lately, which is fine. It’s happened a few times before, and he’s told me what to do to get through the day so many times that I know his instructions like the back of my paw.
I just hope he’s doing well too, and that he’ll be back soon to give me some medicine again to stop my recent headaches.
I didn’t know why, but recently I’ve been expecting something to happen to me. Something bad or good, I didn’t know. But this sort of feeling and the headaches always came up when I didn’t take my medicine.
My friend’s voice softly chided me, his advice echoing from the past. “Remember, Havan: you can’t get the medicine from any other doctor. You’ll get hurt and taken away from your home.”
The air was colder today. Strangely, I knew that for whatever reason it wasn’t why I felt a shiver go through me. I had no reason to be afraid, I was good! Always good!
I walked through the apartment building’s front door and swiftly made my way to my own unit. Before, it was much easier to push that feeling of—fear?—aside. Maybe something bad is coming this way.
Right to my doorstep.
I hurriedly locked the door behind me.
I shed my jumpsuit and tool belt, setting them aside on a rack. The jumpsuit wasn’t particularly dirty—for now, at least—so I could just have it washed some other time. My friend would understand. He always did. I just hope he’ll be back soon with more of my medicine. I don’t want to be bad.
After a small meal, it was time for bed. I couldn’t eat more as the headache was getting worse by the minute, ending my appetite.
My paws placed themselves over my forehead like useless cushions. The worst was yet to come; the bad dreams would arrive the moment I fell asleep. Sometimes, even the medicine wasn’t enough to stop them from invading my head like a predator on the hunt.
They were mostly the same. A woman and her child: a dream repeated forever like the infinity of space.\
For some reason, I felt like I should know them.
Whenever I tried to look at their faces, I could feel something rip my gaze away with claw and fanged force—when I could see them at the edges of my eyes, their empty faces were nothing but smudged paint on a watery canvas. Just out of reach, an orange-eyed predator snarled behind them.
It always scared me.
I’ve tried talking to my friend about it many times, but he never wanted to hear it. He’d look away and tell me to let it go, just take the medicine and forget the nightmares.
He was like me in the dream.
I hope he’ll be back soon.
Sometimes, he’d look ready to tell me something—staring straight at me mid-conversation. Then, he’d just look away all tired and heavy, deflating like someone had given him a weight to carry. He’d usually take his leave whenever those moments happened: “Farewell, Havan. See you next time.”
Now that I think about it, he also looked like that whenever I told him about the dream. Maybe he wished he could know them too.
​
​
JULY 11, 2136
I’m losing track, I think. I’m not sure. I’ve got a slow-burning headache that just won’t leave, simmering every part of my mind it could get its claws on. I can barely keep myself upright most of the time; I had to call in sick yesterday. My friend’s still not back with more medicine.
Medicine for what; I didn’t even know anymore.
Wake up.
“Shit… d-dammit,” I managed to croak out before hurling the rest of my lunch into the toilet. The act of cursing was paradoxically unknown yet familiar to my tongue—like an old routine left untouched for years.
All my dreams were relentless and mocking—I was rendered helpless to their onslaught. I couldn’t tell what was real and what was cruel imagination. In fact, the only things that felt real were the solid and smooth toilet and the force of my vomiting. I held on for dear life to save myself from the vortex churning around me.
A singular thought beckoned me again, a glaring beacon in a foggy sea of pain: ‘Wake up.’
There was nothing else to wake up to.
“DAMMIT!” I repeated before unceremoniously slumping back onto the floor. Something within me was changing—rapidly and viscerally. I was a stranger in my own body, adrift in a world far removed from the one I knew. I couldn’t breathe.
Someone was knocking on my door, calling my name.
I dragged myself out of the bathroom, feverish and frail, ignoring that weak voice in my head that asked: ‘What if it wasn’t your friend?’
I needed anything. Anything at all.
My body moved on its own, paws desperately reaching the doorknob. Somehow, I managed to unlock the door. It wasn’t my friend.
I would’ve screamed if I had the strength left for it. Instead, my legs gave way; my back eagerly greeted its old friend: the floor. Dragging myself backward with my vision blurred and hearing muted, the stranger came inside—crossing the threshold that marked my safety from the things my friend warned me about.
“Please… don’t hurt me…”
But the stranger marched on, grabbing ahold of me.
I curled into a pathetic shield, attempting to cover as much of myself as possible. Somehow, it all still felt like I was falling.
Through the blur, I heard the stranger’s voice. “Havan! It’s just me!”
Fevri?
The realization was a bullet through the skull, rattling my brain into something like focus. There it was: the receptionist’s young and frightened face. Lying in the hallway beyond the open door was a basket full of goods that were probably meant for me.
Whoops.
“Let’s get you lying down somewhere comfortable, okay? You need to rest. I’ll call a doctor—”
My head snapped back up. “No! Y-you shouldn’t! You can’t!”
“O-okay! Okay. No doctors. I’m sorry,” she reassuringly patted my shoulders after having dragged me to the side of my couch. “Look, forget that I ever mentioned it. Now, I need to pull you up onto the couch; is that fine with you?”
I limply nodded. I probably didn’t have the strength to do something as simple as that by myself.
Fevri pulled me up while that all too familiar voice in the back of my head spoke again: ‘She better keep her word, or I’ll…’
​
…
​
I didn’t finish that thought. What the hell was that all about? I wasn’t a violent man.
Was I? I can’t even recall who I am anymore. The vortex of dreams overtook me again, Fevri’s voice fading away as she momentarily left my side to grab the basket outside.
I was alone once again.
A predator’s face revealed itself in the blood-orange veil of my brain, sneering as it revealed itself to be the beckoning voice echoing through my skull.
‘WAKE UP.’
I fell.
I don’t know what it would mean if I’ll ‘wake up.’ Powerless, I lost myself to a seemingly infinite and dark slumber.
​
​
JULY 12, 2136
I arrived at the light at the end of the tunnel, the bottom of the bottomless pit.
My eyes opened, and a strange sense of peace washed over me. Coming from the television were alarm clock tones, an emergency broadcast stuck on the screen. ‘Predator arrival,’ ‘evacuate,’ and ‘await further instructions’ were the only phrases I took note of before rising from the couch.
This wasn’t my home.
The window blinds were closed throughout my apartment. Outside, the city was deathly silent. I didn’t need to look to know that there were likely a few bodies lying face-down on the street, casualties of panicked stampedes to the bunkers.
What happened to me?
Decades of half-remembered memories flooded outward, smashing through the dam of my mind. To my horror, I realized this was the first time I’d felt my heartbeat in a long, long while.
My Krakotl ‘friend’ was an exterminator; he always wore his uniform whenever he visited me. The medication was for predator disease.
I’m not ‘Havan.’ I didn’t use to be, and I couldn’t remember my real name.
The woman and child in my dreams were my wife and son—
With no other outlet for my frightened rage, I resorted to slamming my foot into the side of an empty trash can.
I gritted my teeth as pain shot up through my leg. For the first time, I felt the stiffness and aching that came with being middle-aged and taking those damn predator disease pills for years. Twenty years. I’d been out of it for twenty fucking miserable years.
A small part of me wished I stayed ‘asleep.’ I cast the thought aside almost immediately.
The exterminator had never given his name. How convenient. I had nowhere to go.
I should be weeping.
My head turned towards the bedroom door as Fevri walked out, clearly having just woken up. “W-what’s going on? What was that noise? Oh, Havan, you’re awake!”
“Nothing,” I winced, forcing the scowl off my face. “I just… accidentally knocked a trash can over. I should be the one asking you what’s going on.”
Fevri shook her head, trying to focus through her drowsiness. “Uhm, alarms started ringing out through the city, and that emergency broadcast said it was predators. N-nothing’s happened, though. It’s been about an hour and a half since it started, but it’s been so quiet.”
“You stayed.”
That seemed to wake her up. “I couldn’t leave you—you could’ve gotten hurt if something did happen! I… I couldn’t ask for help bringing you to the nearest shelter—everyone else was too busy trying to get themselves into safety.”
“Thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say to that. I sat back down on the couch, rubbing my paws across my face as I mulled over everything.
I bet my past self had never felt as lost as I did at this moment. All I could feel was the weight of my newfound clarity and my current confusion—a balancing act of anguish and pain.
“Is something wrong, Havan? Don’t worry about the predator raid; if nothing’s happened so far then we’re probably safe and sound.”
“No, it’s…”
I paused myself. Did I actually want to tell Fevri everything? She was only an acquaintance from work.
But she did stick around and help me. That said a lot about the kind of person she is.
Call it foolishness, call it loneliness—I told the truth, recounting everything I could to her. Right now, she was the only friend I had. She was horrified, of course, but surprisingly it was directed to my circumstances rather than myself.
Fevri sat down beside me, placing a sympathetic paw on my shoulder. “I know it isn’t much, but… I’m really sorry. I thought—we all thought…”
“Thought what?”
“Well, we always had a feeling that you had some form of predator disease. You were amicable, sure, but you were always… distant? Plus, you never talked about your family and always dodged questions about them. We all thought you lost them to a raid and it just made sense to us.”
She nervously flicked her tail. “Guess we weren’t entirely wrong, in a messed up way. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
I sighed, flicking my ears dismissively to show I wasn’t offended. Everything else about me would always be worse by comparison, a pillar of distress as strong as an Arxur’s jaw and equally as biting.
What else can I do now? I have no leads. All I had were blurry faces and names I didn’t know.
…
Why’d he stop?
It made no sense for my ‘friend’ to suddenly stop medicating me for weeks. The fact that he had consistent access to medication to give me made me suspect that he was an exterminator-specialist, which would also make him a doctor specializing in treating predator-diseased individuals like me.
In fact, none of what he did made any sense at all. Why go through the effort of giving me a false name—to give me instructions on how to live by myself and dodge questions?
He had been trying to protect me. Was it a fucked up way of doing it? Absolutely, but it didn’t change the fact that he actually helped. For all I knew, he was the one thing stopping me from finding a new home in a correctional facility.
My tail twitched with irritation. Fevri looked expectantly at me. “What now?”
“I don’t know. I guess looking for the exterminator to get some answers would be my safest bet, but I’m not walking to the nearest guild office or the damn headquarters to ask for him.”
“Maybe I can? After the lockdown, anyway.”
“I don’t know. Honestly, this sounds like a stupid idea,” I shook my head, another sigh escaping from my lips. “Hell, I’m lucky you still want to help me for some damn reason I can’t think of.”
To my surprise, she let out an amused snort. “It’s the right thing to do?”
“I’m predator-diseased. Probably dangerous in some way.”
“Well, you won’t hurt me, will you? Besides, you look like you really need the help.”
She didn’t get my point, but fine. I guess that answer was enough for now.
Fevri must’ve noticed my reluctance, making her continue. “Look, you don’t seem to be a bad man. Just… someone caught up in something really horrible. Everyone back in the office—myself included—liked you and felt sorry for you, you know? That hasn’t changed with me, at least.”
“Alright, alright,” I stood up from the couch, giving in to the receptionist’s offer. There was something else that made her want to stick around; I wasn’t an idiot.
For now? I couldn’t doubt her. She’s my only real friend; anything is better than being alone.
“I’m gonna clean up.”
She gave a nod of acknowledgment as I entered the bathroom and locked the door behind me. I stared at the unfamiliar visage in the mirror, examining every little line and nick that marked my face. The graying Venlil in front of me was someone else entirely.
I was old. I was exhausted. I was likely insane—but I was awake.
My true trial is just beyond the walls of my apartment building once the lockdown ends. The past twenty years of being lost and asleep had only served as a prologue to a nightmare.
The worst was yet to come.

**retaliation after you file a complaint, improper discipline, workplace harassment
Hi legaladvice
I am trying to see if my wife has a case against her old employer. She just quit this past Saturday after a horrible and inflammatory manager-to-employee meeting held Friday. To preface, this all occurred in Howard County, MD.
Here are the details:

• She started this job in June of 2022, and has received consistent harassment from a maintenance manager. My wife was a leasing manager for an apartment/townhome complex. From the beginning, the relationship with the maintenance manager has been hostile. Every time she contacted him for questions or ticket inquiries, he would respond aggressively, would yell & curse, and berate her about even asking questions at all. This made it extremely difficult to do her job from the beginning as she needed to be able to commute maintenance inquiries back to the tenant/contractors who are asking for said info.
  
• 3 Months into this job, the maintenance manager, after yelling at her about something mundane, stood up and got in her face, acting as though he wanted to get physical to shut her down. This is when she first complained to management about her treatment from the said maintenance manager.
  
• Since this incident, he never changed his tune, continued to be verbally aggressive and combative, which leads her to believe he did not receive proper discipline from management.
  
• Now the incident that made her quit.
  

o Part of her job is coordinating with maintenance and Government housing programs to make sure a unit can pass a state inspection before a tenant using government assistance can move in. About a month ago (late April/early may), a unit she was coordinating failed inspections, and the maintenance person in charge was the same one who has been harassing her. (the maintenance manager)
o The maintenance manager was hostile about this situation and was not communicative about the fixes needed to pass inspection, and the unit had failed for a second time. She went to management again to complain about the treatment she was receiving from the maintenance manager. At this time, the property manager and the maintenance manager are fully aware of the fixes that need to be made to pass inspection.
o The unit fails for a third time. When my wife called the maintenance manager about the 4th inspection being scheduled and if the fixes had been completed, the maintenance manager screams at her, and lies about the day he received the list of things needed to be fixed. He said he just received it the other day. (When he has had it for weeks at this point). My wife called the property manager immediately. When she described how the maintenance manager has been treating her about this situation and since she has started this position, the property manager said his behavior “is verbally abusive”. The property manager also said her, and another office worker have also received this kind of treatment from the maintenance manager before as well.
o A couple days later, the day of the 4th inspection, my Wife went to the unit and saw some items on the list of needed fixes were still not completed.
o She texted photos of the unit to the property manager, and went back to the main office. She went to the property managers office to discuss this situation and all the incidents of maintenance requests not being done in a timely manner. The property manager texted the photos to the maintenance manager and called him herself. He yelled at her, and tried to act like he still didn’t know what needed to be done. The property manager told my wife to go back to unit and describe to the maintenance manager what needs to be done in detail (something she has already done). My wife said “If you send me back there, and he continues to treat me abusively, I am going to curse him out, I am tired of this treatment”. The property manager said Okay and sent her anyway.
o At the unit in question, My wife meets the maintenance manager at the door. When she was about to enter the unit, the maintenance manager grabs her shoulder. My wife says to him “do not fucking touch me”, brushed him off, and walks in the unit.
o At the front door, the first thing he does is “correct my language” about the unit and fixes. Being super combative about the list of fixes and what the property manager had sent him photos of. My wife says “do we have to fight about this, or can I just show you what needs to be done?”. She begins showing him different things that need to be fixed, and he yells at her the entire time saying these items cannot be fixed. My wife responds saying “then you can fucking explain to the inspectors why that is this time”. She goes to hand him the keys to the unit, and the maintenance manager grabs her hand and holds onto it, trying to make her not leave. After she had yelled at him to not touch her multiple times. My wife yelled again, “do not fucking touch me!” she yanked her hand back from him and left the unit.
o She goes back to the main office, and she immediately tells the property manager what happened (briefly) that she did indeed curse him out and he grabbed her. She didn’t get to tell the full story because the property manager was heading into a meeting at the time.
o After that meeting, the property manager left the office entirely, so my wife wasn’t able to share the full details of the ordeal, but she was able to tell the full story to the assistant property manager.
o The next day, the property manager called my wife and said “I understand both sides of this situation.” This made my wife confused and she said back “I will respond with the energy that I am met with from here on out”.
 The property manager had previously given my wife assurances that she should stand up for herself. That my wife could ask people to leave if they were being harassing. Basically, giving my wife a sense of autonomy about where to draw the line.
o A few days later, My wife officially meet with the property manager about what had occurred at the unit. The property manager said my wifes behavior was unprofessional, and that “corporate would have written you up for this had they known”. (the property manager was talking about the cursing…. Which the maintenance manager does ALL THE TIME to the office workers). When my wife reminded The property manager that she said she was going to curse the maintenance manager out if she was sent to the unit and if he got aggressive with her, the property manager said, “I cannot control your actions”. The property manager could’ve gone to the unit herself and met the maintenance manager but chose to send my wife knowing this situation was unraveling. When my wife mentioned the maintenance manager getting physical and grabbing her, the property manager brushed it off completely saying “you did not make me aware of that”. (even though my wife mentioned it before the property manager left the office that day) However, My wife later learned that the maintenance manager told the property manager that my wife yelled “don’t fucking touch me”. So, the property manager did in fact know that the situation got physical, and still chose to verbally berate my wife and call her reaction unprofessional.
o Here is where the retaliation comes in. Since March of this year, my wife and the property manager came to a gentlemans agreement that my wife would work one less day (4 days a week) while still being paid for full time work. My wife suffers from chronic pain, and there is a surgery scheduled for August to address it, and the property manager let her work one less day a week since that helped manage the pain while still being able to work. After the meeting about the unit and the maintenance manager, the property manager said my wife would begin coming into the office 5 days a week, saying she had “officially asked corporate” about her working one less day a week, and they had “listed my wife’s Job”. This is a clear sign of retaliation. The property manager has known about the upcoming surgery and my wife’s health issues, but chose to punish her anyway.
o Not only did she receive unjust punishment for an abusive situation, but she was also made to feel unsafe and uncomfortable at work knowing the property manager is okay with things getting physical. My wife had complained several times about the abuse she was receiving, and nothing was ever done. It seems the property manager was trying to silence her about the situation to get her to move on. Because of not feeling safe in that environment any longer, she quit the next day.
So, do you think my wife has a case? Happy to provide more details if asked.

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Hi everyone! This is a complete English translation of the Aniara sequel book by Harry Martinson called Doriderna that was put together after the author died. This translation was put together using various translation programs that can be found online, so I can't guarantee that it is a perfect translation, but it's better than nothing. I will also post the original in Swedish so you can improve the translation or look up words etc. if you want. Hope you enjoy!
I would also like to let everyone know that I am also working on my own Aniara fan fiction short story that I call "The Lost Voices of Aniara". This story tells about the events aboard the Aniara from the view point of another passenger and attempts to add more details to the story. It should be ready in the next week or two.
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HARRY MARTINSON
The Dorides (Doriderna)
Remaining poems and prose pieces in selection and with preface by Tord Hall Albert Bonniers Förlag
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PREFACE
For reasons I will not go into here, Harry Martinson did not publish any new work in the last years of his life. There is therefore a very large literary legacy, the publication of which began in the fall of 1978 with "Längs ekots stigar" (Along the paths of the echo), published by Georg Svensson. This collection contains only a few purely scientific poems - the emphasis is on nature poetry. The selection was made from unpublished material - which had nevertheless reached the proof stage - in three previous collections.
It remains to address other lines of thought in Harry Martinson's work: the ideas in Aniara, which in various forms occupied his imagination until the end. To follow the continuation of this great theme - at least in part - is what I am trying to do in this second selection from the surviving archive.
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The 103 songs in Aniara were part of a larger set of poems, and the author then worked for several years on a sequel, to be called 'The Dorids', the people of the tribe of Doris. Around 1959 there were about 80 songs - most of them in more or less completed drafts. The dominant figure in the Dorids would not be Isagel or the Mimarobe, but Nobia, the Samaritan from the tundra planet and deportation site of Mars. Nobia would be a norna (fate goddess), though not a cruel goddess of fate, but a norna who weaves goodness into the fabric of the world.
But the whole project remained a large-scale endeavor. The reasons were many: illness, world events, which seemed to be moving towards a fulfillment of the prophecies in Aniara, and which gave him an increasingly dark view of life: he told me that "Aniara has become a neurosis" ... I feel like Mima being blown apart'. But the decisive reason was surely his demand for absolute freedom in his creativity. He did not want to be confined, and the result was, as he himself said, 'I have stepped out of Aniara'.
The fact that Harry Martinson stepped out of Aniara, and thus also out of the Dorides, does not at all mean that he left the motifs or ideas found there, which cover the scientific field from atoms to stars. Rather, it means that he was able to write without direct connection to the characters of Aniara and the Dorides in particular.
I have therefore considered it justified to call this entire collection the Dorides, even though the prose pieces and several poems do not have a clearly visible connection with such a title.
In order to comment briefly on the selection, I would like to say a few words about Harry Martinson's attitude towards modern science (it is my intention to return to this subject in more detail).
There are two main lines. One is deterministic, and has its roots in classical physics, founded by Newton, which dominated until the end of the 19th century. It has a philosophical form in the law of causation, which means that if you know enough facts about a certain course of events in the present and in the past, you can precisely specify the course of events in the future. Examples of such events in the 'big world' - the macrocosm - are solar and lunar eclipses.
But in the world of atoms - the microcosm - this determinism does not apply. Heisenberg demonstrated this through his uncertainty relation, also known as the indeterminacy principle. In the atoms, individual events are indeterminate, we cannot discern any causality - there is randomness. But chance can be mastered by the methods of statistics, and we must content ourselves with a "statistical causality", which describes the course of events in the atom with the highest possible degree of probability.
It is this second, indeterministic line that has long been followed by most physicists. But there is one major exception, and that is Einstein. At the 1927 meeting of physicists in Brussels, for example, he asked Bohr, Heisenberg and others with mild irony whether they really believed that God plays dice - "ob der liebe Gott würfelt". Einstein was convinced that the universe follows an ordering principle, a geometric structure, which can be called a world soul. This is a pantheistic view that is reminiscent of Spinoza.
Similar ideas are already present in Aniara, but in this selection the picture has become more sharply defined. Harry Martinson does not believe that chance plays a decisive role in the course of the world, as is clear from several poems and prose pieces. He believes more in Einstein than in dozens of other Nobel Prize winners. Apart from these authorities, he follows his intuition.
His approach to religion has often been quoted: he chooses the Riddler over the God. This belief is reflected in 'The Riddle'. In 'Poems on Light and Darkness', published in 1971, Harry Martinson, with 'The Inner Light' and 'The Bird in the Phoenix Bell', presents the events inside the atom itself. These poems show that - although 'Aniara' and 'The Dorides' are more about stars than atoms - he never lost his interest in the microcosm. In this selection, it is the atoms that are more interesting than the stars.
The bard enters the atom. He describes the course of events in a world which is completely beyond our senses and which, despite the enormous aids of science, we will probably never be able to understand exactly. The story itself probably comes from Gamow's book "Mr. Tompkins Explores the Atom". Published in Swedish translation in 1946, it is, along with "Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland" (also 1946), the versatile Gamow's best popular science books. Harry Martinson rated them highly.
The two poems 'Submerged as in a dream but still awake' and 'Actually, the comprehensibility was slight' depict a journey of thought into the atom, and the same motif recurs in several other places.
The poem "A Cosmic Thickness Lying Boundlessly Spread" poetically depicts a world development related to the hypothesis of the "stationary universe" put forward by Hoyle and others, and to Klein-Alfvén's "symmetrical cosmology". For several reasons - mainly aesthetic - Harry Martinson did not like the theory of 'the big bang', which was celebrated by most scientists. His poem should have been written quite a long time ago, and perhaps he would have changed his mind if he had been given the opportunity to understand what the "cosmic background radiation" - with a temperature of about 3 degrees above absolute zero - means for the credibility of "The big bang". It took natural scientists some time to become convinced that this radiation can best be interpreted as a fading glow after an unimaginable cosmic explosion some 18 billion years ago.
This selection also contains several pieces of prose, which in general do not need any comment. But I would like to mention a few. For "The Figuration Patterns of the Goddancer's Juggling Program", in three sections, there is a drawing by Harry Martinson, reproduced on the cover of this collection. The spread comes from Hindu philosophy: we see 'Siwa's juggling dance before Brama'. The dominant curves are so-called lemniscates, which were already known to the ancient Greeks. The lemniscate looks like an eight and is the mathematical symbol for infinity. It is defined as the trajectory of a point under the condition that the product of its distances to two given points is constant. In the center of the drawing there are several small curves. They are ellipses, and an ellipse - also first studied by the Greeks - is defined as the trajectory of a point under the condition that the sum of its distances to two given points is constant. The result is a geometric pattern, similar to a flower, which at the same time provides a poetic image of the complex interplay of forces in the atom with outward and inward energy impulses The juggler finds it increasingly difficult to work with his ball-particles as he progresses through the periodic table of the elements. In the end, he "dances the spectral theme in the dance of the Phoenix" - a symbol of the indestructibility of both energy and poetry, and a recurring motif in Martinson's poetry.
"Delsaga om tidens ariadnetråd" (Part of the saga of the Ariadne thread of time) is almost a fantasy about four-dimensional space, where you have to be careful not to get on the wrong track. The selection of prose pieces ends with "Some fairies dancing in the summer night near a quiet lake". It is a cheerful tale where the author combines a love of the Swedish summer with a love of light.
​
I made this selection at the direct request of Harry. He even said several times that I should have all his scientific poems and prose pieces. But I think I judged this offer correctly when I saw it as an expression of his great generosity towards his friends. I always replied that he himself should complete and select what was to be published. But in his last years he did not want to publish anything. I therefore promised to make a selection if he did not change his mind.
​
He did not, and this collection is the result.
Finally, I would like to thank Ingrid Martinson and Georg Svensson for the understanding and assistance they have given me in bringing this selection to fruition.
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Tord Hall
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​
The Dorides (Doriderna)
The book you hold was written in Mima's hall.
Now, on a secret wavelength, it is sent home to you, my friend, who for some years inhabits a spherical beach called the Valley of Doris.
In other words, it was written so close to your own being that nothing could be closer to you than those described here. You are one of them.
​
Over the graves, the indifferent wind spreads
the whisper of the immortal gods
that no loss is foreseen in the grand scheme of things.
But what do the gods - those wasteful billionaires of the heavens - know about the beautiful and wonderful Doris?
how she was worth saving forever
and that whoever loved her
can never be comforted by the gods' continued waste.
About her a bird sings now alone in the tree of the grave. Of her as she was, the glorious one, if no other, the Dorides' thrush sings.
​
The window was full of stars,
The Leonids' swarm of stars came, then you know the time.
Autumn was gone, its yellowing burnt.
The lookout tower, closed on the wooded mountains.
I stood as a child of a time that saw the stars detach from the roofs towards a room where novas frightened a more distant valley, I found other myths than those I was used to picking hurled at me from the space of the Leonids.
I stood in the cathedral of fear of dreams.
The great copper woman who lay there with her back soldered to the lid of the sarcophagus drove horror into me, cast my foot with lead.
That the copper woman knew who I was, I immediately sensed as a deadly weight, and that I had been summoned here by herself, by the queen of copper, of that I was certain.
In empty benches sat forgotten years, from the emptiness of the auditorium the organ pipes shone like stalactites in the vault of a cave and there was nothing, no light, no hint that gathered my crumbling courage.
For everything was fulfilled as it was written in stone once when the water abandoned the green and it was said that man will go away and become the dead slave of the dead dust.
And as I stood there gripped, filled with horror
for this judgment and epitaph
which was predetermined and rehearsed
in the mute trumpet of the seraphim of the stones,
bells fell suddenly from the towers to the earth that rocked with an ore-broken thunder, and the copper woman rose, a scream of remembrance drawn from afar to her lips as she drew me in close to her copper body in terrified death.
He woke up. There was light. It was day.
And the Samaritan Nobia sat silent, but still heard the echo of the screams his dreams had squeezed out of his fear.
She searched for words simple enough for a stranger to grasp, but not so simple as to drive away his trust, hardly won yet.
In simple action she finally found them.
And she stood up and smiled with milk
From the moors of Gondrin to the mouth of this fugitive.
​
​
It is no exaggeration to say that space gave us long winter evenings rolled into one - the one that lasts. Our leisure time finally became a grim question with ice in our eyes and a frozen flame.
It became necessary to tell stories from reality - as it can be taken. I chose to tell about King Basii, who, supported by Chefone, forcibly turned himself into a god and magician in a celestial drama.
The Goldonder King felt like God and determined to live up to the gods he built himself a city in the sky.
It was a global world city of goldonders assembled into a kind of hive heaven.
But Basil's space-city, though it contained twelve million men in his service, was not enough for him; he had another built, and the greatest city in the world was soon in space. That city was a marvel to behold: a mighty golden dome, surrounded by three bionomically serving drabants, one of which was called the Vegetable City, one the Fish Drabant, and the third the Sting.
​
The names reveal their role and purpose.
So Basii sits in his heavenly land. The aquarium dragon orbits faithfully and Stings follows it with fattened animals and the vegetable moon amounts to the redwood.
The golden dome was the city of retreat for all climbers and celestial rebels, for gamma was a poison to all alike and all poor and rich alike had to choose between death and escape.
So many preferred the city of Basil.
But although he rules over twelve million
inhabitants of the great city of space, he is still very rarely happy.
And although the dragons in a faithful circle
raise animals and grow fish and wheat
Basil's only pleasure is when he gets
with Vulvis, the royal slave, to bathe in Lethe.
But all the deliciously good virginity
that can be enjoyed in Basil's harem
is in its nakedness a skin of fear.
of frightened dissimulation. And his love story
...is but a tale to be seen from the outside..,
and all his lust a forced voluptuousness.
​
Thus in The Night of Aniara I draw a little picture that everyone can understand from the rich treasure of reality.
And every time I make an arabesque in the hall of Mima about this space grotesque that Basil's space city can probably be said to be, I can for an hour or so make people sigh: the best is here anyway.
From Basil's false heaven we preserve. No, I'd rather travel with Aniara.
But soon the alarm goes off. The bells proclaim that the images of the fairy tale are overtaken by visions here that distress ignites.
And quickly to the halls I return.
​
The Goldonder's garden bubbled with glamour. A party was being held there and Chefone was there. He showed us a picture of the smith of happiness: the goldonder king Basii, a portrait jubilantly taken on the day the fifteen thousandth goldonder lay in the field ready for the wave of endlessness.
Then we were each seized by thoughtfulness and went to our own in solitude.
For in every ship of this number there was a Mima locked up in its cage.
The Rapid criminal was much loved and could operate as he pleased under the protection of the admiration he aroused. He always appeared at great speeds and abducted women whom he brought to Chefone in light blue rapid rockets.
Of course it was criminal, the people of the valley thought, but the charm was so close to the deed that the rampart was breached by sheer admiration and open worship soon followed the advice of restraint at the murder pedal.
​
Tucked away in a corner of our gondola, I pretend to smile at some rough fellows who spend their evenings with mockery and violence, with a devilish flutter as their sole aim.
They look at me and find me mortified,
- The clear approval is what they expect...
and I'm close to being squeezed badly
every time they jokingly glance at my grave door.
The brute is approaching, his dull face with many a foolish whim weighing on his mind.
And many a scowl missed by pigs from the worst corners of the soul he throws at me.
And when, full of fear, I strike with depleted strength in the dull face, the troll is only amused by my blow and raises his eyebrow with interest.
Then I flee between the troll's legs and out the other side of the danger of death.
How this happened can only be fully explained by the light of the gopher and the fourth tensor theory.
​
Here came the sober, composed and sober man who always kept his soul in trim and stuck to the dry, honest maxims of life.
Now he went into the fire with his imagination.
His cool reason was completely burned His sober composure was fried in seconds when the photo turbo in Xinombra exaggerated the cold matter.
And yet I can't help but admire the man as he made his way to the office where he had been employed for many years
and where, despite offers to flee to the tundra, he provided punch cards for thousands who broke up every day.
There died a man who never raised his voice, who always remained true to his calm tone, the martyr of calm composure who was burned when the cruel fires of excess were lit.
​
One is often chilled to the rock crystal by everything one hears before the ear falls like gray-white ash into the cremation hall.
And the girl from Rind who sees nothing is often heard to ask beyond the eye: how is the world of such torment visible? What is to be seen in this madness, where eeriness against eeriness is heard to answer?
Cultivating insight seemed futile
and many fell away from the faithful crowd.
and its program which was to see through
so that with the transparency of evil
as lens and instrument
try to find new signs
and new ways for the land of Gond.
Most people grew tired and withdrew from the room of the Truth Service, and Nobia sat for long periods almost alone, trying to hold on to her looms, always tormented
by the blood moisture of evil memories, the echoes of horror
surrounded her days
and made the Mara a bedfellow
who tore the fabric of the noman
and raped Nobia's dream
and the mood of life over the moors of Gondria.
It is as important to us to have friends
in the houses of distant worlds as at home by
the familiar road of the green earth.
You are reflected in endless eyes, watched by immense spectators.
They never interfere, but they watch the sewing and the mining,
the nurse and doctor on the rounds and the weapons in the shamelessly cruel wars.
Your own position under their eyes may be likened to the position you take with one whom you do not wish to grieve, but to share joy and to please.
So spoke the old astronomer, and then laid his head down to rest.
And he went smiling to the eternity that had been waiting by his side all his life.
His forehead shone with its ideas, even in the dead of death in the years of space.
He was among those who know the fairies of everything, those who get to comb Berenice's hair.
​
But for the longest time I still want to believe that this is the torment of an evil dream and the ship Aniara a phantom from which I will wake up in the Valley of Doris.
Perhaps everything is a nightmare and I want to wait with poison and a knife. They say there are dreams of a kind that seem as long as a man's life.
Out of the dust you were born, from its gifts you were supported.
You did not manage the gift, many a meadow you made desolate.
What is beyond this sea is called Going down deep among riddles too great to be found in a grave.
Faith can never cover more than what you see in spirit.
​
All the other things are too much to bear.
Do you hear the sound of the rescue team calling from an emergency station that is one of a thousand others, regardless of faith?
Now guess where the road leads and what Paradise is.
One of a thousand rescue stations scattered along the coast here.
Now I want to sing to my ear and ask it to listen to a voice that descends not to destroy the language I have collected for comfort. For the comfort of life and death, I whisper the price of sensitivity every time the sinful flow of language storms the breeze of the spirit.
​
One night Heba lay awake in the city of Aniara and heard the painter's joyful painting.
The skilled varnisher was varnishing the years that would one day end on a stainless steel stretcher.
And suddenly from Heba there was a shout against the smooth roof.
The skilled varnishers know their business well.
Too hard to become joy, too happy to become sorrow. The painters paint everything in Aniara's castle.
​
We know that we have been left out of the higher insight of the ocean of mystery and that we lack the tools to reach the depths of clarity that Mima once gave. But since Mima's death, the average of what we achieve of truth is not very high average is what is required if the choice of new paths is to be avoided.
A small number reach the values that should be the average to reach.
The others are satisfied with the flow of thought,
the rattle with which time is made to pass.
A daughter of my mother, called Tovi, was born in the night of space. Alas, dear ones, where can the crowd's demand for sensation and wonder lead us?
First came, as it should be, the blissfully sweet and indescribably pure birth, when the mimicry lay naked, uncovered and panting in the golden bed of the formula.
To her camp now came the mimicry and winged it
the naked one, as when the butterfly flies the honey chalice of its flower, in Dori's meadows. The description is not given (much to my regret) because there is always the possibility of a wave of miracles taking place in secret, to the great disappointment of many who wish to see how the mimagyne makes love, and from what angle the picture of the goddess's love life should be taken in order to really reach the audience.
Can it not be enough that Tovi gave birth to an allegorical child whom Isagel happily suckled at her breast and practiced miracles and consolation You may think so yourself, but others think otherwise.
For not even a mimagyn can defend the fruit of her womb against the human hyena who demands a clear answer on every point of what precedes it all: the prelude to sowing,
with the insides of the thighs well described in a clear image that gives the "public" a feeling that it was in the bed.
​
Yes, it has happened that I have sometimes asked myself (in private silence, of course) whether the smooth ice of superficiality does not have enough joy, and that the great swallows in these spaces are only terrible wakes which, compared to the agile princess and heartlessly threatening with superior power, will in the end become the cold room of beauty.
So small a strip bears, the other breaks, and all the incomparably large gapes with the same dark death which, unchanging with cold upon cold, only imitates itself.
To raise one's hand then with a light-year pound and demonstrate the fugue of eternity on terrible organs, while the girl in the icy distance dances, hardly greater to see than a fly flown away towards the light, it is to chill with the great weapon as when the superpower with the powers the element hides coldly makes its rows in the land of Gond against unsuspecting cities and, although itself dismissing all talk of sin punishment and trial, nevertheless treats the human with such terrible flame that this terrible torrent of loose gamma released by those who do not mean sin punishment nevertheless cruelly destroys both Yaal and Gena and melts down to ashes the wonder Heba
With the same fire they turned on Chebeba.
​
Posterity does not understand you so easily.
It judges according to the image of posterity
and counts up the time you lived in
as rows of negligence, as offenses
against the spirit of foresight, the duties of thought.
To this it adds the work of suffering
and piles up, as blind as a judge
as you were blind as a criminal, case by case.
Can those who have killed the foundations of joy and destroyed the great city of joy have the right to the joys of life?
Does Cain have the right to be happy?
Can those who strangled the joys of Xinombra and burned the valley of paradise have the right to heights of heaven other than Aniara's daily agony?
I ask but never get an answer. I have to arrange for pastimes
for the hordes of Aniara and manage its entertainment.
​
A wave of newly awakened hatred swept through the mountains where Nobia lived in deep mines and ghostly white lights illuminated every thread of life in the fabrics she wove.
She had sought and found the thread of life - a discovery of how healing rays are empowered by the inner council of things and fused with the heart of the atom.
And while hatred swelled around the mountains
and wounds screamed in the valley of time.
she wove day and night until the color of victory
and the skin of life rose in the hall of death.
Of her beauty little can be said. It was lost in a wave of radiation but the clear purity of the soul could be weighed; in healed wounds we saw her reflection.
​
Then I will throw you out of your chair. I will break your armchair view, because it is false and holds a convulsive security in a time that has slipped out of its rooms, but also the other way around: that it becomes a view without deep insight.
From this world, I shall send you happiness today to the kingdom of love, to the evil shore where the Samaritan Nobia and others spread works of love from country to country.
Figuring out the ways of evil and tracking down all the poison in the city of hate was futile, for hate stood there with heavy blocks united row by row.
Within its walls there was life and movement in the birthing centers and squares where human beings were conceived and human beings were born and human life in the human gap was destroyed. It was best to pretend that this city of self-righteous evil existed as nothing more than a devilish childhood that would mature, grow tired of itself.
We resolved to keep on sending saints there for the longest time.
from the saints' camps as long as the funds lasted
and as far as the need still aroused the heart.
This plan was tried for nine years, during which the Rind camp of saints bled to death: an act of self-sacrifice based on faith in the powers of good. But the heavy wall of hate stood just as hard, and the fatigue of leadership followed the act of hate; only too great was the throne of victory we had.
A single city consumed the power which we had thought sufficient for the transformation of the world.
​
On a rare occasion, the happiness of being free from desire also came.
Then the emptiness suddenly became populated by a kind of spiritualized mystery.
We walked the spirit's path of happiness along the beach, exchanging thoughts, making fortune cards.
It was evening and sunset in the sea.
Night fell, but the land of thought stood firm.
He woke up. She said: guess where.
I can't, he said. How did you get here? The same way you did: up the gravel path and then straight to the left among the cypresses. There was a dewy path the moonlight itself went there with light steps which I tried to imitate.
And when everything was past and the path was over
I managed to become a clear crystal and find you, my friend, on this path.
It is so transparently wonderful here.
We no longer exist. All that was is over.
Neither god nor devil here reaches us anymore and the end is the cruel parody of life.
​
Where is the plain text?
This is what I'm looking for.
The one that fits but still gives song.
After thanking God that he was a wasp and not something else, he continued between the leafy branches and stung the farmer.
Laid out by spiritual mobs, the truth becomes worse than the lie. When the mob washes the barley, it is never clean.
The rabble always wash in the dunghill from the Augean stables.
​
​
Matema's camel bells ring in the deserts of speech where the caravans of unfinished quarrels
never reach their oasis, only become more camels.
Immersed as in a dream but still awake, I found myself changed and so naked that no dream has words for what it was like when, transformed by the stone, I cut down towards the inner realms and while this was happening I became smaller, smaller and even more stripped of layers and layers of time and space as I sank further and further into the stone, deeper and deeper into things.
Who undressed me, wore me down so much that no conceivable smallness so small on this earth can be imagined unless one is long since beyond what every comprehensible thought wants to deny.
And yet I was being stripped and reduced still further in no direction.
So sunk, unceasingly sunk in
towards even more breathtaking reduction
I retained in my dream a way of seeing
and understand that I was traveling into
to the dimensions, the innermost
who with their interior work with their interior
and whose interiors compose the world.
They scare children with darkness, criminals with punishment and sinners with realms beyond death where the vengeful desire to torment has transported its arsenal of tormenting images.
But sorrow follows us every day, and joy follows us every day.
We ourselves are the sorrow, we are also the joy, everything human is rooted in humanity, and no human being can escape humanity, not her hatred and her self-degradation, nor the joy she spreads, nor the love she forms.
There is a third land that is not death and not life, but the reality that pervades all realities, and spins the very thread of the fabric from which dreams are woven. Yes, I had come to the rooms where these threads are spun. When I arrived, I stepped out and saw no longer surprised the smallest fairy, who herself was not at all surprised to welcome me to her inner land.
And although we were both unimaginably smaller than two grains of traveling dust on a suit on earth, we thought we were big here in this smallest room to which I have now come and which nevertheless encloses with its vault a separate world of realities formed.
On the contrary, I cannot describe what I saw of strange things, but that will follow when the habit of telling stories has been practiced for other habits than what life offers,
and other things than those called death.
For though beyond all I have known
this was not death
and though within all I have known
this was not life.
​
Actually, the comprehensibility was slight, as when multiples arranged in layers, and layered in the directions of space, make the fabric of the dream omnidirectional structural and become a fabric consisting of paths where the thread is only thought of as a path as a sign that here the shuttle has gone, but where is the thread? The thread is the path. I saw how the gnome was in a quandary as to which of two different possibilities to give clarity.
Then came formulas of such an elusive nature that the gnome was again gripped by the anxiety
which arises when the explanation is attempted but little response is felt by the pupil.
And with a look that shone as if with sorrow, he signaled a break in the dilemma. And with a formula more magical than comprehensible, we left the atom.
We expanded to other contexts and sat on a leaf next to a bee eagerly searching for honey in a meadow.
​
The Dance
Around the great star of the day we shall orbit the years we have been given to live, and our family for a few thousand centuries, perhaps more, perhaps less, no one knows.
But the time that we are orbiting is so small compared to that of the suns where they wander around in orbits in the galaxy our family named the Milky Way, luminous to behold.
What can our eyes see, our hearts cry out at the thought of atoms going around in the same way with waves and particles.
Some have called this the dance of the gods - it is always being danced by everything in the universe.
All indications are that among the arts of the muses
the art of dance is the first and the last,
and we are in it, dancing out
our role in the dance, it is already being danced
in other worlds separate from our time,
in other dance theaters,
yet one thing is clear
that we are dancing our turns.
Our role in it
is ours and no one else's.
Our own role in the dance art of all worlds.
​
Economic overview
Our earth wanders alive alone, around the sun our dear parent.
As far as the giant tubes reach no living neighbor to see.
Desolate and empty on the one who received the name of the god of war, burning hot and desolate on the one who received the name of the goddess of love.
Jupiter, planet of Zeus
ice-clad to two hundred times the height of the Himalayas.
The others are death's door.
Beyond that, light years to the next planetary village.
So each sun has only one living person, and that one is a leased farm, indefinitely and to an unreliable and dangerous race.
​
Here is a world of light distributed in the mystery of things.
Here is the salvaged light in the innumerable rooms of the stone.
Wands point with poles directed to their rooms inside mountains and stones, spinning mystery.
Deep in her fairy tale, she lives for the sake of the tale.
the norn who has learned to spin the yarn from the wool of the riddles.
​
The spirit of Ideema from space in endless lines gathered the seeds into the durable wood of the suns.
From far beyond time the hydrogen came in modest garb and built for its God the ingenious nests of the atoms.
Come, let us nurture the foundation of our life. The green sphere we have been given to live on in the universe's lottery system.
When the next lucky draw can get rid of the Milky Way's big tombola we do not know and can never reach.
But we do know one thing for sure: the next draw will not include us.
​
A stranger called chance shuffles the cards and deals them to the local players.
Every single poker face keeps a straight face.
There are plenty of goldfish in the tureen here.
According to the law, the silent coincidence itself is the last to raise its hand, with ice in its stomach.
Soon jaws of granite are chewing the cigar.
Where is the bundle of happiness among the starlings?
That question is answered when chance wins.
Then the shot goes off, chance's life disappears. His house of cards collapses, but soon everyone at the counter thinks it was a nice fish, that no one won, that chance herself was told by Smith and Wesson what chance was.
by Smith and Wesson what chance should do.
( translation to be continued )

Last time on:

Ash vs. The Evil Dead: Kelly is possessed by a demon and Ash did some tripping.
The Walking Dead: Merle escapes the roof but is minus one hand. Rick is reunited to his family. We meet Daryl for the first time.
The Strain: The CDC people finally see their first vampire and crush its skull. Setrakian gets out of jail and plans his next steps to stop the spread. There something going on with the rats.
The Terror: The Admiral is killed by the monster as well as bunch of other people. Hickey is up to no good. Crozier is now leader of both ships. There is also a pretty good chance the monster isn't a polar bear.
Stranger Things: Joyce gets more proof that Will is trying contact her from the otherside. Jonathan secret photography thing is found out and His school life becomes much worse. A new body is found.
True Blood: Another murder is linked Jason and drinks an entire vial of vampire blood. He then has to be taken to hospital to deal with never ending erection and it does not end well. Sam is looking pretty fucking shady. Sooky and Bill meet a vampire elder at Fantasia to find evidence to help with her brother Jason's murder case.
​
Show starts at 8:00 PM CDT in PreRec Twitch chat.
​
(All Links Here)
​
Ash vs. The Evil Dead (2015-2018) Ash has spent the last thirty years avoiding responsibility, maturity, and the terrors of the Evil Dead until a Deadite plague threatens to destroy all of mankind and Ash becomes mankind's only hope.
​
S1, E05 "The Host" (25:19)
​
The Walking Dead (2010-2022) Sheriff Deputy Rick Grimes wakes up from a coma to learn the world is in ruins and must lead a group of survivors to stay alive.
​
S1, E04 "Vatos" (44:54)
​
The Strain (2014-2017) A mysterious viral outbreak with hallmarks of an ancient and evil strain of vampirism ravages the city of New York.
​
S1, E04 "It's Not for Everyone" (42:51)
​
The Terror (2018-2019) Supernatural, semihistorical, horror anthology series, where each season is inspired by a different infamous or mysterious real life historical tragedy.
​
S1, E04 "Punished, as a Boy" (47:01)
​
Stranger Things (2016-) When a young boy disappears, his mother, a police chief and his friends must confront terrifying supernatural forces in order to get him back.
​
S1, E04 "Chapter Four: The Body" (49:25)
​
True Blood (2008-2014) Telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse encounters a strange new supernatural world when she meets the mysterious Bill Compton, a southern Louisiana gentleman and vampire.
​
S1, E05 "Sparks Fly Out" (55:17)

We live in a big city and pigeons are inevitable. They're very used to humans so they don't spook easily, they kind of ignore people. And they're everywhere.
Well my little guy fixates on them hard. He crouches low into a very slow crawl, stares and points. It becomes impossible to distract him. Any bird, really, not just pigeons. He then rushes to make them fly away. I don't even know if he's actually trying to catch it or just spook it.
Should I try to discourage this behavior, and if so, how? I have tried with treats he usually loves, which he ignores. Stalking is obviously more rewarding, it is definitely tickling his prey drive deep inside.
Often the bird stalking ends up on the street which is dangerous. Breaking that focus is near impossible even using all the techniques which normally catch his attention.
(He does a modified version of this when he sees dogs he wants to approach, he will lie down on the sidewalk and stare intently, immovable, which can also look scary)
Any suggestions? He's a mixed breed rescue, maybe 9-11 months.

Hello all,
Stumbled upon this game (was not on my radar) when wondering why a certain potato named YouTuber hadn’t uploaded much civ lately.
I played a lot of civ and stellaris but pretty much just for fun and not really meta building or such.
Played my first game yesterday on the starter realm and it looked a lot like the win conditions were all pretty similar and easy enough to achieve is that the general vibe or is it much more difficult later?
Now for some questions though;
I played a custom spell focussed race as my first play through but I’m planning my next one to be a small rat horde, feudal with 5 rat leaders, some chaos domain tomes and some materiam tomes (pretty much just want smaller rats and revelry/chaos)
Assuming I go for 5 cities to match the 5 feudal lords I plan on getting is it best to specialise each city? Focus on say a troop producing city, a research city etc.?
If that’s the case is this also applicable to non feudal races. Is it just categorically better to have say 3 cities and specialise each one towards your main win condition. Gold always, production and recruitment(?) for what I would call a domination victory. Gold, mana, balance between food and production for magic win?
How large of an army do you usually have? I’m used to massive hordes of armies by endgame but yesterday I had like 3 heroes in full stacks each and a support unit that was just essentially a defensive line for my casters.
Thanks for any tips or tricks. Enjoyed playing so far!

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TIL that in 67 C.E, Emperor Nero found a Boy named Sporus Who looked Like his deceased Wife, so he had him Castrated, Put in female attire, and made his entire Court play along with the act
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• einstein_bern

TIL Stanford engineers made a folding origami microscope that costs less than $1 to make. 50,000 microscopes were shipped to 130 countries in 2014 to see what people will do with it
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dataisbeautiful

• tas246

Indy 500 Advertisements vs Racing [OC]
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• safwanadnan19

[OC] Premier League 22/23 table by matchday.
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• giteam

[OC] Some of the top revenue sources for big tech firms
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Cooking

• sdega315

Is cooking your Love Language?
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Rant: I always mess up the food when I’m cooking for larger groups.
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• Adventux

What accidental purchase have you made that in now a regular purchase?
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food

• ooglek2

[homemade] Esquites sweet corn salad (Elote derivative)
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[homemade] Lasagna
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[I ate] Canadian Poutine
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A rare 1914 silent film called "The Oath of the Sword" was considered lost forever. A professor rescued it from a vault.
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Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross Scoring 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’
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What’s a movie that you absolutely love but know will never ever get a sequel or reboot?
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How May I Help You?, Jon Silent, Ink and Acrylic, 2023
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Eat your water, Alai Ganuza, oil painting, 2023
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Vineyard, Olga Rodina, Oils, 2023
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Phil Hartman: 25 years after the actor's tragic death, his work still resonates
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George Maharis Dies: ‘Route 66’ & ‘Fantasy Island’ Actor Was 94
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A bittersweet goodbye to ‘Barry’: The cast on the dramatic turns of the hit man comedy
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Somebody went full math at a casino stairwell
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Sandra Bullock wore “the dress” before JLo did.
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Just some finishing touches before we close in the void
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Good kid spots neighbor's dropped wallet in driveway, returns it.
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King Cobra vs. Mongoose
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Ship Is Destroyed By Huge Wave During Coastguard Rescue
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Geological evolution of North America in the last 550 millon years
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The core of this rope is made of diapers
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This green stop sign
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This vehicle had an extra set of wheels that weren’t touching the ground
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interestingasfuck

• Worldly_Platform3586

A full 360 swing
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*Fruit and Vegetable Decomposition Timelapse *
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Dry Squirrel Asks Human for a Drink of Water.
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funny

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Well that mall doesn’t have to mop. The floor is getting done.
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An old Cricket Wireless was turned into a chicken restaurant in possibly the most lazy/ingenious way possible…
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Jesus Christ!
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aww

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What’s this?
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Family of racoons in my yard.
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• BipolarMindAtNotEase

I forgot to lock my dorm room and this cat casually opened the door, climbed into my bed and made herself at home
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So for context I (17F) used to have a best friend (17F) who we will call F. Me and F were like attached at the hip for 3 whole years. We were together all the time, always texting or FaceTiming or hanging at my house. They were my closest friend and I cared for them a ton! Now the summer between freshman and Sophomore year of highschool a guy (18M) we were both good friends with (another one of my best friends who I introduced to F) used me to get over his ex, he knew I really liked him (and was in a bad place in my life) and he used me to try and get over his ex. He ended up admitting it and I was mad. Took a couple days to cool off and gave him another chance. (Probably because he is a huge manipulator.) On October 25th or 26th of 2022 I found out they had been lieing to me for weeks saying they didn't like eachother when really they did and I was upset because 1.) this guy used me- 2.) I started to think recently that he was finally into me for realz, and 3.) They both know I have trust issues. I do not fw lieing. I told them I needed to take some time to think and process because this was alot and they both freaked. Got mad and said I was toxic and a horrible friend for not supporting them. They both cut me off and said I was toxic but when I asked how or what exactly I did they refused to give me any details or explanation. Me and F became friends again because I convinced them to and I tried to become chill with Ex- but after a while of F blowing me off and ignoring me for Ex I was done and said for my mental health I couldn't be friends anymore. I realized they were treating me poorly. That was in February of this year.
Now we both Cosplay and I let them borrow one of my $60-$80 costumes (I forget how much it cost but it was in that price range) and I have been asking for it back since February 12th. And now it's May 29th and I still do not have my stuff back.
I have been very reasonable but they keep saying they were grounded so couldn't get it to me and then I'll see them out at local rock shows and with friends at events and it's like "clearly your not grounded!" I put my foot down and said they NEEDED to give me my costume by June 1st or I was going to contact their parents and now they are being bitchy as if I'm being unreasonable. Edit: would I also been an asshole if I asked for the $14 I gave them like a year ago for art that they never made me?
So, am I the asshole for demanding my (expensive) stuff back?

My boyfriend and I had to break up three days ago after procrastinating for about two months. I could always tell his feelings were genuine, and I've never been treated better. We had the same emotional bandwidth, the same sense of humour, patience and understanding. I could really rely on him. We had to break up because of external factors I won't get into. But honestly, it just feels like I've lost my best friend. These two days, I went out and met new people, I kept myself busy at work all day and I socialised after work with my colleagues. But the minute I entered my room, I broke down. Every single minute, something nice or interesting happens, my first thought is, "damn I have to tell him hahah" and then the realisation hits. It's horrible. I'm in a new city, and ever since I've moved here, he's the only person I've invested in every single hour of the day besides my work. I'm working extra hours to keep my mind off, going on long walks and burying myself in books, but I'm unable to stay alone with my thoughts. I know we did the right thing by breaking up, but I'm scared I'll never find a bond so perfect again. Honestly this fear is secondary, I'm not scared about the future that much. I'm just really really missing him and Idk how to process this break-up.

Throughout my life I’ve had trouble connecting with people due to autism.
I finally found some good friends. They are all in one friends group that met each other at their Christian church.
They invited me to their church groups and I’ve gone with an open mind.
After giving it a shot, I totally do not buy and do not believe in the supernatural aspects of what they discuss. I believe in treating people well and spreading love and good will, but I don’t believe in God or Jesus, or whatever else they discuss that is supernatural and fictional in my opinion.
I did have an open mind throughout this process, so I wouldn’t say I lied to them. It’s just that in the past couple of weeks, I’ve decided that, given all the new information they’ve imparted on me about their faith, I still do not believe in what they believe in. I needed time to process that, but now I feel firm and confident in that decision.
Now I need to figure out what to do with these friendships. I feel they are good friendships but wonder how they would react if I told them I was atheist. If I lose their friendships, it may be a very long time before I find connections like that again. Or do I hide the fact that I’m atheist and go along with their beliefs? After a while though, that may get super tiring for me. Additionally, I live in a very religious city, so even if I venture out to find new friendships, I may end up in the same situation again.
Has anyone else gone through this?

Cross posting with personalfinance to get different opinions.
I’ll try to be brief here while providing detail, but my main question is around how you would handle offloading a home and renovating the new one.
Last year a house in our city came available that we thought would be our dream home, and not necessarily being I love with our old house we jumped on it. We have been lucky in investing in our primary residence over the years, buying and selling at the right moment a couple times. This meant we have a lot of equity in this “dream house”. However for a multitude of reasons we no longer want to live here and want to go back to a more modest home.
About the house - purchased for $810k in august of 2022. Took a 30 year fixed loan @ 5% on $215k, paying ~$1800 a month all in. Equity in theory is around $600k. The market is still fairly strong. Could likely sell for around what we paid for it, maybe a little more, but with realtor fees likely we would take a loss, which we are ok with if it is reasonable. Win some lose some.
Ok time for the question. How would you go about downsizing to a more modest home. Keep in mind the more modest homes likely would require some renovations, which ideally we would not live through while living in the home, but open to the possibility.
Option 1 - put current house on the market. Once sold either try to buy something else right away or rent till the right home comes available and renovations are complete. This is the safest option obviously but I would like to avoid making the family move 2 more times.
Option 2 - get approved for a second mortgage. Once the right modest home is available, purchase with second mortgage and move in. Put current home on the market and hope it sells quickly. If it doesn’t, we would be carrying about $4k-$5k worth of mortgages till it does. This would allow us only to move once but if we needed to renovate we would be living through it.
Option 3 - same as option 2 except we don’t put the current home on the market right away, take a HELOC out and use that cash to finance the renovations on the modest home. Once the project is complete, sell the current home and pay off the outstanding debts. This would be the least obtrusive to the family but that’s a lot of loans and though our income is high, that would stress me out.
Option 4 - something I am not thinking of.
So, how would you suggest going about this?

Hey all! Thinning out some of my collection. Happy to post pics of anything that you might be interested in. Shipping is $5 for the first game or 2, and then goes up from there.
Also! Feel free to check out my Nintendo games post here:
https://www.reddit.com/GameSale/comments/13n6q9v/usaco_h_nintendo_games_and_consoles_nes_snes_n64/
And my Sega and Xbox games post here:
https://www.reddit.com/GameSale/comments/13dxcl4/usaco_h_sega_and_xbox_games_genesis_dreamcast_og/
PS1 (CIB unless noted)
Army Men: Sarge's Heroes (Disc Only) $5
Army Men: World War - Team Assault $10
ATV: Quad Power Racing $5
Ball Breakers $5
Bowling $3
Brave Fencer Musashi (Case and Disc) $80
Breath of Fire III (PAL) $45
Cool Boarders 3 $5
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back $15
CTR: Crash Team Racing $20
CTR: Crash Team Racing (Disc Only) $10
Dragonball Z: Ultimate Battle 22 (Disc Only) $5
Driver (Sealed) $50
Dune 2000 (Disc Only) $10
Final Fantasy Tactics $80
Final Fantasy VII $45
Final Fantasy VII (Case and Disc) $35
Final Fantasy VIII $20
Final Fantasy Anthology GH (New/Sealed) $45
Final Fantasy Chronicles $40
Frogger $10
Gekido: Urban Fighters (Disc Only) $20
Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko (Disc Only) $10
Gran Turismo $15
Gran Turismo 2 $15
Grand Theft Auto 2 (Disc Only) $5
Gunfighter: The Legend of Jesse James $10
Herc's Adventures $125
IHRA Drag Racing $3
Knockout Kings $5
Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete (Big Box, Jewel case and discs, Hardcover manual, Omake Box w/map and character cards $200
Madden NFL 2004 $10
Metal Gear Solid $45
Metal Gear Solid (Case and Disc) $40
MLB: Pennant Race $3
Monopoly $3
Namco Museum Vol. 1 $5
Namco Museum Vol. 1 (Disc Only) $3
Namco Museum Vol. 3 (Disc Only) $5
Nascar 99 (Disc Only) $3
Need For Speed: High Stakes (Disc Only) $5
Need For Speed: V-Rally $10
Nuclear Strike $10
Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee (Case and Disc) $15
Parappa the Rapper (Disc Only) $50
Parasite Eve $75
Patriotic Pinball $5
Rally Cross 2 $5
Return Fire (Longbox) $45
Road Rash 3D $5
Shockwave Assault (Disc Only) $10
Spec Ops: Covert Assault $5
Spec Ops: Stealth Patrol $3
Spyro: Ripto's Rage (Disc Only) $5
Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi (Disc Only) $5
Street Racer $10
Stuart Little 2 $5
Suikoden II $275
Syphon Filter 2 (Case and Disc) $5
Syphon Filter 3 $15
The Game of Life $10
The King of Fighters '95 (Disc Only) $25
The King of Fighers '99 $20
Thousand Arms (Case, manual, game) $175
TNN Motor Sports: Hardcore 4x4 $3
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear $10
Tomb Raider II $10
Tomb Raider II (Disc Only) $5
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (Disc Only) $5
Triple Play 2000 $5
Vanishing Point (Disc Only) $5
Warhawk (Long Box) $20
World Soccer Winning Eleven '97 (Disc Only) $3
Worms Armageddon (Case and Disc) $15
You Don't Know Jack: Mock 2 (Disc Only) $3
PS2 (CIB unless noted)
Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies (Case and Disc) $5
Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Jet Fusion $10
Alvin and the Chipmunks (Case and Disc) $5
Army Men: Sarge's Heroes 2 (Case and Disc) $10
ATV Offroad Fury 2 (x2) $5
Battle Racing Ignited: Burnout Dominator $10
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat (Disc Only) $4
Black $10
Blitz: The League (Case and Disc) $5
BMX XXX (Case and Disc) $20
Call of Duty 2: Big Red One (Case and Disc) $5
Call of Duty 2: Big Red One (Disc Only) $3
Call of Duty: Finest Hour $5
Call of Duty: Finest Hour (Disc Only) $3
Call of Duty: World at War Final Fronts (Disc Only) $5
Celebrity Deathmatch (Disc Only) $5
Commandos Strike Force (Case and Disc) $5
Contra: Shattered Soldier (Disc Only) $10
Cool Boarders 2001 $5
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon $5
Crazy Taxi $10
Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2 $10
Delta Force: Black Hawk Down $5
Devil May Cry (Demo Disk) (Disc Only) $10
Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening (Special Edition) (Disc Only) $5
Disney Sing It: Pop Hits $3
Dragonball Z: Sagas $15
Duel Masters (Limited Edition) $5
Enter the Matrix (x2) $5
Enthusia: Professional Racing $15
Escape from Monkey Island (Disc Only) $5
Eye Toy Demo Disc (Disc Only) $5
Eye Toy: Operation Spy (Sealed) $5
Eyetoy: Antigrav $3
Fifa 07 (Disc Only) $3
Fight Night 2004 (Disc Only) $3
Ford Mustang: The Legend Lives $3
Gadget Racers $10
Game Shark 2: Official Cheat Codes For Splinter Cell (Disc Only) $20
Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (Case and Disc) $20
God of War (Disc Only) $7
Gran Turismo 3 $3
Grand Theft Auto III $10
Grand Theft Auto III (Disc only) $5
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City $10
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Case and Disc) $5
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (Disc Only) $5
Guitar Hero II (Disc Only) $5
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Disc Only) $5
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith (Disc Only) $4
Heroes of the Pacific $5
Hitman: Contracts (Disc Only) $3
Ico (Disc Only) $10
Jak 3 (Case and Disc) $10
Jax X: Combat Racing $10
Legaia 2: Duel Saga $20
Lego Star Wars: The Video Game (Case and Disc) $5
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events $5
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers $5
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Disc Only) $3
Lord of the RIngs: Return of the King $10
Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter $5
Madden 06 $5
Madden 2005 (Disc Only) $2
Mafia (Disc Only) $5
Max Payne $10
Max Payne (Disc Only) $4
Medal of Honor: Frontline $5
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (Disc Only) $5
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (Disc Only) $7
Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence $45
MLB 2K5 (Disc Only) $2
MLB 2K7 (Sealed) $5
MLB: The Show 08 (Disc Only) $2
MX: World Tour featuring Jamie Little $3
MX: World Tour featuring Jamie Little (Case and Disc) $1
Naruto: Ultimate Ninja (Case and Disc) $5
Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles 2 (Disc Only) $5
Nascar Thunder 2003 $5
NBA 2K2 (Disc Only) $2
NBA Live 06 (Case and Disc) $5
NBA Live 07 $3
NBA Live 2004 $3
NCAA 06: March Madness $5
NCAA Football 2002 (Disc Only) $2
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 $10
Need for Speed: Pro Street $10
NFL Game Day 2003 Demo Disc (Disc Only) $5
NFL Head Coach (Case and Disc) $5
NFL Street (Case and Disc) $10
NHL 2002 (Disc Only) $2
NHL 2004 (Disc Only) $2
Over the Hedge $5
Pirate's of the Caribbean: At World's End (Manual and Disc) $5
Primal DEMO DISC (Disc Only) $10
R: Racing Evolution $10
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 (Case and Disc) $5
Resident Evil Soutbreak: File #2 (Disc Only) $30
Rockband (Disc Only) $3
Rockband Track Pack: Volume 2 (Disc Only) $5
Scooby-Doo! Unmasked (Disc Only) $10
Shrek 2 $10
Shrek the Third $5
Silent Hill 3 $200
Singstar 80s $5
Singstar Pop $5
Singstar Pop Vol. 2 $5
Sled Storm $10
Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (Disc Only) $10
Smuggler's Run $5
Smuggler's Run 2: Hostile Territory $10
Socom: U.S. Navy Seals $5
Socom: U.S. Navy Seals (Case and Disc) $3
Socom: U.S. Navy Seals (Disc Only) $2
Spyhunter $10
Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly $10
Syphon Filter: Omega Strain (Disc Only) $3
Tekken Tag Tournament (Disc Only) $5
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (JAP) $10
The Fast and the Furious $10
The Godfather $15
The Simpsons: Road Rage $10
The Sims $5
The Spongebob Squarepants Movie $10
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003 (Disc Only) $2
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 $5
TimeSplitters $20
TimeSplitters 2 $20
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon $5
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon (Disc Only) $3
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell $5
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 $10
Tony Hawk's Underground $10
Top Gun: Combat Zones (Disc Only) $3
Twisted Metal Black (Disc Only) $7
Up (Case and Disc) $5
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Disc Only) $5
World Championship Poker $3
World Rally Championship (Disc Only) $5
Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions $5
WWE: Smackdown vs Raw 2009 (Disc Only) $3
WWE Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain (Case and Disc) $30
PS3 (CIB unless noted)
Alien: Isoloation (Nostromo Edition) $10
Alpha Protocol (Case and Disc) $7
Assassin's Creed $10
Assassin's Creed II $5
Assassin's Creed III $5
Assassin's Creed IV $5
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood $5
Assassin's Creed: Ezio Trilogy $5
Batman: Arkham Asylum $5
Batman: Arkham City $5
Battlefield 3 $3
Battlefield 3 (Limited Edition) $5
Bioshock $5
Borderlands 2 $5
Call of Duty: Black Ops $10
Call of Duty: Black Ops II (Case and Disc) $10
Call of Duty: Ghosts $5
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare $5
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 $5
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 $5
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 (Ultimate Edition) (Disc only) $10
Dark Sector (Disc only) $3
Dark Souls $10
Demon's Souls (Case and Disc) $20
Dirt $10
Dishonored $5
DJ Hero $5
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Case, Disc, and map) $5
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim $3
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Legendary Edition) $10
Farcry 3 $5
FEAR 2 $10
Fifa 11 $5
Fifa 12 $5
Fifa 2010: World Cup South Africa $5
Final Fantasy XIII $10
Final Fantasy: XIII-2 (Case and Disc) $8
God of War III $10
God of War: Ascension $30
Gran Turismo 5: Prologue (Disc only) $3
Grand Theft Auto IV $10
Grand Theft Auto V $10
Grand Theft Auto V (Disc only) $5
Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock $10
InFamous $10
Killzone 3 $5
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning $10
L.A. Noire $5
Lair $10
Lego: Harry Potter: Years 5-7 $10
Lego: Jurassic World $10
Little Big Planet (Game of the Year Edition) $10
Little Big Planet: Karting $10
Lost Planet 2 $10
Madden 07 $5
Madden 08 $5
Madden 09 $5
Madden 10 $3
Madden 11 $3
Madden 12 $3
Madden 13 $5
Madden 25 $5
Mass Effect 2 (Disc only) $3
Midnight Club: Los Angeles $10
MLB 13: The Show $5
Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe $10
MX vs. ATV: Reflex (Case and Disc) $5
MX vs. ATV: Untamed $10
NBA 2K11 $5
NBA Live 08 (Case and Disc) $3
NBA Street: Homecourt $20
Need For Speed: Carbon $15
Need for Speed: Most Wanted (Case and Disc) $8
Need For Speed: Undercover $10
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare (Case and Disc) $5
Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare $10
Resistance 2 $5
Rockband 2 $5
Saints Row 2 $10
Saints Row 3 $5
Skate 2 $10
Skylanders: Spyro Adventures (Disc only) $5
Sleeping Dogs $5
Sniper: Ghost Warrior $5
Soul Calibur V $10
Sports Champions $3
SSX $10
The Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection $15
The Last of Us $10
The Sims 3 $5
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 $10
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves $5
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception $5
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune $10
White Knight Chronicles (Disc only) $5
PS4 (CIB unless noted)
Battlefield 1 $5
Borderlands 3 $10
Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII $10
Call of Duty: WWII $10
Dark Souls III (Disc Only) $5
Destiny $5
Fallout 4 (Case and Disc) $5
Final Fantasy XV (Disc only) $3
Madden 17 (Case and Disc) $3
Marvel Spider-Man $10
Minecraft (Case and Disc) $15
Minecraft Dungeons: Hero Edition (New/Sealed) $20
NBA 2K16 (Case and Disc) $3
Sniper Elite 3 (Disc only) $4
Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (Case and Disc) $5
The Hunter: Call of the Wild 2019 $20
The Order 1886 $10
Titanfall 2 (Case and Disc) $5
Tropico 5 $10
UFC 3 $5
PSP (CIB unless noted)
Final Fantasy $20
God of War: Chains of Olympus $25
Spider-man 2 (Movie) (Disc only) $5
Steamboy $5

I’ll try to be brief here while providing detail, but my main question is around how you would handle offloading a home and downsizing.
About us - mid 30’s and married with one kid. Household income $225k in a MCOL city. ~$600k in retirement (Roth, 401k, and brokerage). Absolutely no debt besides the mortgage on the house we want to offload.
Last year a house in our city came available that we thought would be our dream home, and not necessarily being I love with our old house we jumped on it. We have been lucky in investing in our primary residence over the years, buying and selling at the right moment a couple times. This meant we have a lot of equity in this “dream house”. However for a multitude of reasons we no longer want to live here and want to go back to a more modest home.
About the house - purchased for $810k in august of 2022. Took a 30 year fixed loan @ 5% on $215k, paying ~$1800 a month all in. Equity in theory is around $600k. The market is still fairly strong. Could likely sell for around what we paid for it, maybe a little more, but with realtor fees likely we would take a loss, which we are ok with if it is reasonable. Win some lose some.
Ok time for the question. How would you go about downsizing to a more modest home. Keep in mind the more modest homes likely would require some renovations, which ideally we would not live through while living in the home, but open to the possibility.
Option 1 - put current house on the market. Once sold either try to buy something else right away or rent till the right home comes available and renovations are complete. This is the safest option obviously but I would like to avoid making the family more 2 more times.
Option 2 - get approved for a second mortgage. Once the right modest home is available, purchase with second mortgage and move in. Put current home on the market and hope it sells quickly. If it doesn’t, we would be carrying about $4k-$5k worth of mortgages till it does. This would allow us only to move once but if we needed to renovate we would be living through it.
Option 3 - same as option 2 except we don’t put the current home on the market right away, take a HELOC out and use that cash to finance the renovations on the modest home. Once the project is complete, sell the current home and pay off the outstanding debts. This would be the least obtrusive to the family but that’s a lot of loans and though our income is high, that would stress me out.
Option 4 - something I am not thinking of.
So, how would you suggest going about this?
Edit 1 - for clarity on the renovations requirement. Most of the smaller homes in the area we want to be in that are completely renovated would cost more than the equity we are going to pull out of the current home. I am trying to complete this with a paid off home at the end. If we buy a fixer upper and renovate, it would most likely be cheaper than buying an already renovated home

**Day 2: Unveiling the Reglazing Process: A Comprehensive Overview**
​
Welcome back to our blog series on reglazing! In yesterday's article, we discussed the importance of professional expertise when it comes to reglazing and why DIY kits often fall short. Today, we'll delve deeper into the reglazing process, providing you with a comprehensive overview of each step involved. So let's get started!
​
**Step 1: Surface Preparation**
The first and perhaps the most crucial step in the reglazing process is surface preparation. The existing surface, whether it's a bathtub, sink, or tile, needs to be thoroughly cleaned and stripped of any dirt, grime, soap scum, or old coatings. This is typically done using specialized cleaners and abrasives to ensure that the new coating will adhere properly to the surface.
​
**Step 2: Repairs and Patching**
Once the surface is clean, any damages such as cracks, chips, or holes are repaired. These repairs help ensure a smooth and even surface, preventing any imperfections from showing through the new coating. Professional reglazers have the expertise to fix these issues effectively, using suitable materials that are compatible with the surface being reglazed.
​
**Step 3: Masking and Ventilation**
Before applying the reglazing materials, the surrounding areas that do not require reglazing, such as fixtures and walls, are carefully masked off to protect them from overspray. Additionally, proper ventilation is established to ensure the safety of the reglazing professionals and to minimize any odors or fumes that may be produced during the process.
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**Step 4: Tricks of the trade**
Now there are many ways to etch your tub. Sandpaper, liquid compound, spray formula. But etching is crucial. Think about a piece of wood that you don't sand, how well does that paint adhere? After etching there is more extremely crucial step that Elite Refinishing does that ensures that our coating will last for years to come. Can't share everything. Call us see why we are the best.
​
**Step 5: Application of the New Coating**
Now comes the exciting part – applying the new coating. Reglazing professionals use high-quality coatings specifically designed for each surface type, such as porcelain, fiberglass, or ceramic. The coating is skillfully sprayed onto the surface using professional-grade equipment, ensuring a smooth, even, and durable finish. Multiple coats may be applied to achieve the desired results.
​
**Step 6: Curing and Drying**
Once the new coating is applied, it needs time to cure and dry. This process can take anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days, depending on the type of coating used. During this time, it's crucial to avoid using the reglazed surface to allow the coating to fully harden and achieve its maximum durability.
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And there you have it – a comprehensive overview of the reglazing process! As you can see, reglazing is a complex and intricate process that requires expertise and specialized equipment. Attempting to reglaze on your own with a DIY kit may not yield the same professional results and could potentially lead to costly mistakes.
​
By hiring a professional reglazing service, you can have confidence in knowing that your surfaces will be treated with the utmost care and expertise. Not only will they ensure a beautiful and long-lasting finish, but they will also save you time, effort, and the frustration of tackling a challenging project on your own.
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In our next article, we will explore: The Importance of Surface Preparation: The Foundation of Reglazing Success. Stay tuned for more insights into why it's worth investing in the expertise of reglazing professionals.

**Day 2: Unveiling the Reglazing Process: A Comprehensive Overview**
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Welcome back to our blog series on reglazing! In yesterday's article, we discussed the importance of professional expertise when it comes to reglazing and why DIY kits often fall short. Today, we'll delve deeper into the reglazing process, providing you with a comprehensive overview of each step involved. So let's get started!
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**Step 1: Surface Preparation**
The first and perhaps the most crucial step in the reglazing process is surface preparation. The existing surface, whether it's a bathtub, sink, or tile, needs to be thoroughly cleaned and stripped of any dirt, grime, soap scum, or old coatings. This is typically done using specialized cleaners and abrasives to ensure that the new coating will adhere properly to the surface.
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**Step 2: Repairs and Patching**
Once the surface is clean, any damages such as cracks, chips, or holes are repaired. These repairs help ensure a smooth and even surface, preventing any imperfections from showing through the new coating. Professional reglazers have the expertise to fix these issues effectively, using suitable materials that are compatible with the surface being reglazed.
​
**Step 3: Masking and Ventilation**
Before applying the reglazing materials, the surrounding areas that do not require reglazing, such as fixtures and walls, are carefully masked off to protect them from overspray. Additionally, proper ventilation is established to ensure the safety of the reglazing professionals and to minimize any odors or fumes that may be produced during the process.
​
**Step 4: Tricks of the trade**
Now there are many ways to etch your tub. Sandpaper, liquid compound, spray formula. But etching is crucial. Think about a piece of wood that you don't sand, how well does that paint adhere? After etching there is more extremely crucial step that Elite Refinishing does that ensures that our coating will last for years to come. Can't share everything. Call us see why we are the best.
​
**Step 5: Application of the New Coating**
Now comes the exciting part – applying the new coating. Reglazing professionals use high-quality coatings specifically designed for each surface type, such as porcelain, fiberglass, or ceramic. The coating is skillfully sprayed onto the surface using professional-grade equipment, ensuring a smooth, even, and durable finish. Multiple coats may be applied to achieve the desired results.
​
**Step 6: Curing and Drying**
Once the new coating is applied, it needs time to cure and dry. This process can take anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days, depending on the type of coating used. During this time, it's crucial to avoid using the reglazed surface to allow the coating to fully harden and achieve its maximum durability.
​
And there you have it – a comprehensive overview of the reglazing process! As you can see, reglazing is a complex and intricate process that requires expertise and specialized equipment. Attempting to reglaze on your own with a DIY kit may not yield the same professional results and could potentially lead to costly mistakes.
​
By hiring a professional reglazing service, you can have confidence in knowing that your surfaces will be treated with the utmost care and expertise. Not only will they ensure a beautiful and long-lasting finish, but they will also save you time, effort, and the frustration of tackling a challenging project on your own.
​
In our next article, we will explore: The Importance of Surface Preparation: The Foundation of Reglazing Success. Stay tuned for more insights into why it's worth investing in the expertise of reglazing professionals.

Mindset Pharma Inc. (CSE: MSET) (OTCQB: MSSTF) a drug discovery company developing novel, optimized, next-generation psychedelic and non-psychedelic medications to treat neuropsychiatric and neurological disorders with unmet medical needs, today announced that it has filed two international patent applications under the Patent Coorperation Treaty (“PCT”) for the protection of certain of Mindset’s non-hallucinogenic novel non-tryptamine compounds known as “Family 6.”
The filings are based on pre-clinical studies and provide Mindset with preliminary freedom to operate for all claimed drug candidates from Family 6.
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"By applying Mindset’s innovative drug discovery and development platform on novel psychedelic-inspired non-hallucinogenic drug candidates, we have begun to see results. We believe that this class of drugs may have the potential to treat a substantially wider patient population including fragile population groups such as children or geriatric patients.
Additionally, by reducing or removing the psychedelic effect, in-clinic supervision should not be necessary, in turn reducing cost and improving convenience of these treatment options. The pre-clinical study results underpinning the candidates identified in these patent applications are highly promising.
Work performed on these novel non-tryptamine candidates, which included in-vitro screening, and ADME (absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion), along with in vivo studies, indicates 5-HT2A serotonin receptor activation without the cardinal in vivo signs of a hallucinogenic effect."
-James Lanthier, CEO of Mindset Pharma

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About Mindset Pharma Inc.
Mindset Pharma Inc. is a drug discovery and development company focused on creating optimized and patentable best-in-class innovative next-generation psychedelic medicines to treat neurological and psychiatric disorders with unmet needs. Mindset was established in order to develop next-generation pharmaceutical assets that leverage the breakthrough therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs. Mindset is developing several novel families of next-generation psychedelic compounds, as well as an innovative process to chemically synthesize psilocybins in addition to its own proprietary compounds.
The company has a co-development agreement with the McQuade Center for Strategic Research and Development, a member of the Otsuka Pharmaceuticals family of companies, covering multiple drug development programs.

I'm M(24). To provide some context, my mother always dreamed of having a daughter. During the pregnancy that gave birth to me, it was actually a twin pregnancy, and the initial discovery was that there would be a girl. However, due to complications, one of us died, and I survived. My parents already had a son, and my mother had envisioned having a pair of children. When only I survived, I feel that it created a certain resentment within her. Unlike my father, who always loved me and never left my side, my mother hardly spent time with me, always prioritizing my older brother. When I lost my father in a tragic accident (for which she blames me), things only got worse. I was just a 3/4-year-old child, and now, without my father, I was treated as inferior both by my mother and my brother and stepfather, enduring various psychological abuses.
These things only got worse over time because the only moments when I was truly treated as a son were when I achieved good grades in school and my mother could boast to others. But over time, this situation made me feel sad, causing me to put more and more pressure on myself and leading to burnout in high school itself. After graduating, thanks to a friend, I found a job and moved out of my parents' house. Just over a year later, my mother's health declined, and I decided to move back in with her to take care of her. It was a big mistake. I only wanted her to feel proud of me, and I thought that by helping her, she would finally recognize me. I quit my job and moved back in with her since she couldn't work, and my stepfather needed to provide for the household income. During that time, I focused entirely on her needs and my studies, but even when I helped her with her physical limitations, she remained cold. However, I believed that things could improve with time.
Once she recovered, I ended up staying here. My parents always had poor eating habits. For example, my stepfather has an entirely childish palate, primarily consuming bread, instant noodles, and chocolate cereal. He barely eats real meals like rice and beans, and my mother follows suit. During this time, I always tried to change their eating habits. Despite growing up with this eating routine, I sought to take care of my health when I lived alone and didn't want to stop doing so. However, when I returned and tried to convince them, I was ridiculed and ended up succumbing to the pressure, reverting to that routine. It was a big mistake on my part, but again, I just wanted to receive my parents' love.
During this period, I faced numerous problems in my relationship, where my girlfriend cheated on me just when I was considering proposing to her, which completely devastated me. I spent a lot of time sitting in front of the computer or lying down, which, combined with my eating routine and constant psychological abuse (yes, it didn't stop), now focused on the fact that I didn't have a job and didn't want to pursue the college degree they wanted me to pursue. I was sinking deeper and deeper into despair.
After a year, my best friend returned from a trip and discovered my situation. He started forcibly taking me out of the house to provide me with non-toxic environments and encouraged me to seek treatment. During the treatment, I decided once again that I wanted to change my eating habits and establish a good exercise routine. But with my ADHD, those who have it know how difficult it is to find motivation to do things. So, I asked my family for help again, but they only ridiculed my requests. Whenever I tried to do it on my own, I received comments saying that I wouldn't be able to, which demotivated me quickly and plunged me back into days of sadness. I really wanted to leave, but I couldn't find a job at all, and all the money I had saved during that year of work ran out. I was completely dependent on my parents, and it was a nightmare for me.
In this year of 2023, my friend returned to live in my city, and it was through him that I met the woman I am currently dating, who is an incredible person and has given me motivation and strength to fight against my depression. I owe a lot to them. But as not everything is rosy, I recently experienced health problems, and after some tests, there is a strong suspicion of diabetes. I have a family predisposition to it, and that was one of the main reasons why I wanted to change my family's eating habits and routines because I was concerned not only about myself but also about them. Even though this year I did my best by exercising and eating much less than what we have here, it was I who was diagnosed with diabetes. They continue with their routines and are in such good health that it only affects me even more. I know that all of this is also my fault, and that is one of my biggest regrets. I could have changed, but in the end, all I wanted was to be loved by someone who probably didn't even want me to exist. My girlfriend and friends have been providing me with a lot of psychological support, and I am very grateful to them because if it depended on my family, I would probably die. Even with the diagnosis, when I asked them for help, they told me to find a place of my own where I could eat whatever I wanted.
Thank you for reading. I really needed to vent about all this, which I have been keeping inside me for days. I know that there were some parts that may have seemed unclear, but I left out many traumas, problems, etc., that have occurred throughout my life, either because they are extremely personal or because they are not relevant at this moment.

Attention all graduates and Providence enthusiasts! We have some amazing updates to share with you. Graduate Providence, the iconic hotel located in the heart of the city, is now offering special discounts exclusively for recent graduates. Treat yourself to a luxurious stay at our beautiful hotel as you celebrate your accomplishments and embark on new adventures.
Whether you're a local graduate looking for a staycation or visiting Providence for a graduation ceremony, Graduate Providence is the perfect place to create lasting memories. Enjoy our stylish accommodations, exceptional amenities, and convenient access to the city's vibrant attractions and dining scene.
To make your experience even more memorable, we're offering personalized graduation packages that include special perks such as welcome gifts, complimentary breakfast, and discounted rates for extended stays. Just mention the promo code 'GRADPROV' when making your reservation.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to celebrate your graduation in style. Visit our website or call our friendly staff to book your stay today. Congratulations to all the graduates out there, and we look forward to hosting you at Graduate Providence! 🎓🎉