(FAIR WARNING THIS GOAL I FOUND WAS MADE AFTER THE MEETING WITH TEAM NIGHT SKY)
The goal of Team sky is to expand the sky and everyone has been asking: "What Does That Really Mean?"
After Thinking About It, I have a feeling about what the that means.
Expanding the sky means basically getting rid of anything related to not being able to see the sky, therefore Rain And Snow, basically making it a safer place for flying types.
What Is The Evidence For This?
Evidence one: think about it like this.
*Groudon Ability In The Games Start The Sun While In The Anime is strong enough to create new volcanoes.
*Kyogre Is literally the opposite by starting rain and in the anime can flood the world.
Why Does This Matter?
Well, rayquaza's ability in the games clear weather as long as it's on the field AND Is The Only Pokemon That Can Do This, Thereful, the goal of expanding the sky is actually getting rid of every other weather in the sky.
What is Rayquaza supposed to represent?
Simple: Balance.
If you played the games, Rayquaza proceeds to stop the two from fighting and with a fearsome Battle Cry, scares the other two away from causing the Apocalypse.
Rayquaza is there to keep balance in everything.
However, I want you to pay attention too the sky before the cry, the sky is cleared out while he is there, Thereful proving the first evidence.
Tell Me What Ya Think, if Mikey sees this and uses this as the answer to what expanding the sky means, please give me credit, this took a while to think about.

As you've read the title, part of me feels like I'm getting signs from Allah that Islam is true. This sounds quite stupid, and it is, but it's something that's been on my mind for a while now and I've been meaning to ask this subreddit about it for a while now.
So, what are the "signs" I have been receiving? What I'd consider a sign is when I would heasee something related to Islam whilst thinking about Islam. I'm not too sure why this is, but it's just what I consider signs. It could possibly be because it's somewhat coincidental.
Another thing I consider a "sign" is when I hear two or more Islam-related things back to back. Again, I'm, not sure why I see it this way.
Part of me thinks that Allah implemented this perception into me and used it to give me these "signs", or it could just be the way I interpret things for whatever reason.
(Sign #1)It originally started a few months ago. I would see Islam-related things whilst thinking about Islam and consider them as signs. I was afraid of the Islamic hell back then, so these signs would scare me. One of the first major "signs" is when I was watching youtube shorts. While watching, I said to myself "Maybe these 'signs' are from the devil". I didn't mean it seriously, however. I thought this since I was Christian at the time and the "signs" were scaring me. Then, right after that, I scrolled to another short, and it was about not questioning the things God does in your life, even if it may seem bad, and not to think it's from the devil. This scared me, since it felt like I was being directly answered. When I said the "signs" were from the devil, it was like Allah was answering me, telling me that it wasn't from the devil, but rather from him and he was just trying to convert me to Islam. What adds to this is that I was committing shirk, since I attributed Allah's signs as the devil's, and I believe Allah hates shirk the most. This is big in my opinion. He didn't directly answer me other times when I thought about the signs, but when I committed shirk, he directly answered me, which would make sense since he hates shirk the most. This was a pretty big sign, however I boiled it down to it just being a coincidence, or it actually being from the Christian god. I thought it could possibly be from the Christian god because 1: the "signs" I got could've been for my growth and 2: it's blaspheming against the holy spirit, since I attributed the works of god to the devil.
Anyways, recently, I had thought of this. Ever since then, I've been getting more "signs". One was when I was watching youtube shorts once again. I heard a mention of ghosts and remembering the first major "sign", I jokingly said to myself "maybe these 'signs' are from ghosts". In that very same short, God was mentioned. None in particular. This made me think it was a sign from Allah, and looking back at it, was foolish. However, because of this, I'd now think any mention of the word "God" while I was thinking about Islam was a "sign". This "sign" happened a few more times. (Sign #2) The next major "sign" is when I was watching youtube shorts again. I heard a mention of God and remembered the signs. The very next short I watched was a Muslim-Atheist debate, posted by a Dawah channel. I interpreted this as a sign, since I heard a mention of God, which remined me of the signs, and now that the signs and Islam were in my mind, a Muslim-Atheist debate was recommended to me which is conveniently timed. This was odd, since I hadn't watched one of those Muslim-Atheist debates in a while. Of course, this isn't too unnatural. Perhaps it's simply the algorithm recommending me a video that I used to watch in case I was still interested. Some refutations to this is that it was simply, a mention of "God"(not even the Islamic God) was mentioned, and hearing a mention of God is quite common. Any mention of God, or anything that would make me think of Islam or the signs would have been sufficient. Plus, any video based on Islam after hearing the thing that reminds me of Islam or the signs would have sufficed as well. However, I'm still not sure how to feel about this. I don't get videos based on Islam that often, and the fact that right before this, something that reminded me of Islam or the signs occurred, is quite coincidental. Plus, the thing that reminded me of Islam and the signs was a mention of God, in which I had been experiencing mentions of God whilst thinking about Islam or the signs in the past. It's like Allah made mentions of God make me think about Islam, and then used this to make me think about Islam and then recommend me the short. Then again, it simply could've been me interpreting any mention of God as a sign.
(Sign #3) After this, I wasn't sure what to think of it this. I decided to make a post on exmuslim, which is quite similar to this post. However, after writing this post, I had trouble posting it. Whenever I tried to post it, it wouldn't let me and would say something along the lines of "Something went wrong, please double-check your post and try again". It wouldn't work on my phone, and I had to post the draft on my pc for it to finally post. I interpreted this as a sign from Allah, stopping my post from being posted. Of course, you could say "What's the point of stopping it if I was able to post it on my pc the next day?". The answer to this is that it wasn't for the purpose of stopping me from posting the post, but rather, to give me another "sign". I've made other posts about Islam, looking for refutations of arguments for it, however, I've never had the problem. It would make sense for Allah to make the error happen on this post other than other Islam-related posts, since it was about signs. Plus, I posted another post right after this on my phone, and the post was able to post just fine. It was asking if there was a word limit for the subreddit, and according to the comments, I didn't reach that word limit (this shows since I was able to post it on my pc without changing the content). As for refutations, it simply could've been another coincidence, and I had been very frequently saving the draft, plus it was quite long, so it could've glitched since it was long and I was saving the draft frequently on my phone. Another thing is that when I had loaded it on my pc, not all of it loaded, which could mean it didn't save properly. However, it loaded normally on my pc a few hours later, without me changing anything.
(Sign #4) I had a few questions in my head. I've had them for a while. "Why am I the only one getting these signs? Why am I only getting them now? Why are they so unclear?" I just told myself that there was some reason Allah was only giving the signs to me, why I was only getting them now, and why they were so unclear, so I didn't concern myself with them that much. When I opened reddit one day, a post with an image captioned "God only knows" popped up. I was thinking about the signs at the time, but it wasn't that special, since I had been thinking of them often. I interpreted this a sign from Allah once again. However, I realized it wasn't really conveniently timed, since I wasn't thinking about any questions. Of course, my brain managed to interpret this as a sign, and I thought it was Allah answering the questions I had before. There's a couple problems though. I wasn't concerned with these questions since I already had an answer, so what was the point? Another thing that had happened a few days ago similar to this was when I received a comment on a post I made based on Islam (I believe the comment has now been deleted). In it was a verse, and the verse said that those with sure faith would get clear signs. I interpreted this as Allah answering me once again, since the opposite, which is those with unsure faith would get unclear signs, fit me, although, it didn't directly say this.
(Sign #5) At this point, I would interpret anything remotely close to Islam as a sign. For example, in a book I was reading, hell played a pretty big role in the story, although the mechanics of this hell is very different than the Islamic version. I interpreted this as a sign for a couple reasons. One is that while I hear mentions of hell frequently, I usually don't see hell playing a big role in a story, so for it to occur in this time period of me being wary of "signs" is weird. Another is that hell is what got me interested in Islam. I think these correlations are a bit weird. Some refutations are that the hell in this story was very different from the Islamic version and anything related to Islam involved in the story would've sufficed, however I can't think of any examples, so I'd appreciate it if some were given. While I was thinking of some examples of this, I thought of the moon being involved, since it's related to Islam via the Islam symbol having a crescent. A few minutes after this, in the same book I was reading, astronauts appeared, with their hands together, sort of like a prayer position. I interpreted this as another sign, since just recently I was thinking of the moon, and astronauts are related to the moon. Plus, those astronauts were in a sort-of prayer position. Some refutations to this is that the moon itself is barely related to Islam, and astronauts are barely related to the moon, so astronauts and Islam aren't really related at all. Of course, there's the fact that the astronauts had there hands together in a prayer-like position, but again, this is only a little bit related to Islam, plus they may have just been together, not in a prayer position. Then again, even with all this is mind, it feels coincidental that the astronauts combined with the prayer-like position both appeared, not long after I thought about the moon a little bit.
(Other Signs) Like I said before, I've recently begun to interpret anything remotely close to Islam as a sign. One example is when, in the same book I was reading, a character said the actions don't matter, but rather the intentions, and Islam is based on intentions, so it's weird that these two matched. Another is when I heard the word "coincidence" three times in a span of a couple hours, in which I was thinking that these "signs" were coincidences. There's others, but they don't concern me too much, so I'm not gonna list them (although the first one concerns me a little bit)
Just to make one thing clear, it doesn't matter how Allah does it, as long as he converts me to Islam. (Sign #6) One example of this is when I got a rare item in a game I was playing while thinking about the signs. This was right when I had begun to think about the signs again, so I wasn't thinking about the signs that much, so the timing was odd. The chances of getting this item is 2% in a roll you can roll 3 times every 24 hours. This in itself was a bit odd. I interpreted this as a sign from Allah, letting me know that Islam is true by making me get this rare item whilst thinking about the signs. It easily could've been a coincidence, however, about 4 days later, I got the same rare item again while thinking about the signs. The fact that I got the rare item twice in that amount of time is odd. You could just say it was me simply being lucky and Islam has nothing to do with it. The problem is the first time I interpreted it as a sign, so it's like Allah made it so that I would interpret it as a sign the first time, and use the same exact rare occurrence the second time, since I had already interpreted it as a sign the first time. Combine this with the fact that I was thinking about the signs both times, in which I hadn't been thinking about the signs that much back then, and this is odd. It's like he was continuing the "sign" with the second time I had gotten the rare item, since they were so similar. It doesn't matter that this had nothing to do with Islam, but rather, it brings me closer to converting.
​
One argument I have come up against these signs is that they can't be from Allah if they don't successfully convert me. Assuming the purpose of all of this was to convert me to Islam, doing all of this is futile if it doesn't work, so if it doesn't work, that would mean Allah failed to convert me, which doesn't make sense. That being said, if something with very low chances occurs, for example, a formation of birds in the sky spelling out "Islam", then that will convince me. Another argument is that there is no way to confirm that these signs are from Allah. Another is that I am interpreting everything somewhat related to Islam as a sign, resulting in there being many signs, and that these signs are a result of the way my brain perceives things.
With all that said, I wanted to ask this subreddit as to how to approach these "signs". Are there any additional arguments against these "signs", and is there anything that supports the arguments/refutations I came up with? Am I overreacting to these signs? Am I being illogical? Do you think all of these signs could simply be a coincidence? When I think about everything that has happened, I'm not sure if this could simply just be a coincidence. Even with the arguments and refutations I came up with, I'm still unsure of these "signs". This is a rank of how unsure I am of each individual "sign".

1. Sign #6
2. Sign #3
3. Sign #1
4. Sign #2
5. Sign #4
6. Sign #5
7. Other signs

One last thing, I'm not sure if I explained everything that well, so if you're confused about something, just tell me.
Edit: I tried to make an edit on my phone, but it didn't work. Worked on my pc though. Maybe it's another "sign" from Allah, or maybe it's something with my phone and long posts. Also, it said that the field must be under 10000 characters, however when I switched to markdown mode without changing anything, the edit worked.

Hi,
My husband and I are swiftly heading towards separation, if not divorce. We have two children (18 mo and 7 yo). I’m a SAHM, he works full time.
I strongly believe at this point that the best thing we can do is separate. At a minimum it would give (hopefully) some kind of cessation of hostilities long enough to have an amicable divorce. Plus, I need this for my own well-being. He is immensely codependent and I feel incredibly smothered. I desperately need some breathing room.
Now here’s the rub- we do not have the money for two residences. I do not have a career I can return to, so my financial options are pretty minimal at this time. While I’m working to remedy that, it’s going to take time with how high the cost of living is where we live. We also unfortunately do not live near family or friends one of us could stay with.
We already have separate bedrooms. I did a little googling on the topic and some suggestions were creating a roommate-esque chore chart, divvying up childcare time, etc. I think that could be helpful, as we would have essentially a standard operating procedure and a clear delineation on responsibilities/free time.
Has anyone here separated whilst living together? How did you navigate that? What boundaries did you set in place? Was there anything you implemented to help facilitate as much of a separation as possible under the circumstances? My state has no requirements on legal separation or wait periods with divorce, so this is more in preparation for a likely divorce and to end the drain that is the constant push to try to make the relationship work.
Nothing legal has been filed yet, and while I can’t speak for him, I don’t plan to take any action there until the smoke has cleared enough for me to go into that process from a more grounded place.

Dear Universe,
We gather here, with hope in our hearts and a gleam in our eyes, praying for the safe journey of our precious timepieces. From the heart of the manufacturing universe in China, we implore thee, bless their passage with smooth currents and clear skies.
May the hands of time tick in favor, and let the miles between us and our anticipated packages shrink swiftly and surely. We ask for the winds of delivery to bear them gently across the sea, over the mountains, and through the valleys, to reach our homes undamaged and undeterred.
Upon reaching the shores of our homeland, we beseech the universe's mercy. Let our packages transition through the gates of customs unimpeded, seamless as the whispering winds, unnoticed as the setting sun. May the eyes of the scrutinizers be kind, and their hands light.
And so, we stand before you, not asking for treasures of immeasurable worth, but for timepieces that would grace our wrists and be a symbol of our journey. We seek not to deceive, but to appreciate the craftsmanship within our means.
So, here's to the safe delivery of our humble parcels, the fruits of our anticipation. May they traverse continents and oceans, only to find their way to us, untouched, undamaged, and unhampered.
In the name of good fortune and safe deliveries, we say this prayer.
Amen. 🙏🏼

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This is a rough draft of the beginning of my book. I'm trying to introduce my main character and their first major conflict but I'm worried they are coming across whiny and unlikable. I would love some feedback. I'm not really worried about grammar or punctuation since I'll probably be making massive changes. Thank you for your time
Fall of Cestrum
One
Stella lay stretched out in the grassy area that ran along one the many paths branching out from the Well Flower in the center of town. Rolling over she leaned closer to a flower sprouting out from among the blades of grass. She tilted her head until her nose touched the soft, hair-like bristles covering the stem. She could count the colored spots on each downy petals and number the leaves that clustered around the stem, dusky, satiny and variegated. She lifted a finger and touched it to the petal. She smiled and giggled and for one bright and light moment, she felt connected to the life under her fingertips.
A warm breeze swept along the path causing the plant life around here to sway hypnotically. The flower swayed and bent, its leaves fluttering. Stella pushed her hair away from her face and the flower stilled. Stella rolled onto her back staring up into the sky and for this brief perfect moment she felt connected to the world around her without any gifts or magic. All too soon the spell was broken, her thought turned morose. These moments of tranquility never really last, always leaving her feeling unsatisfied. They are never enough to fill the void. With these thoughts come a more quiet and distant one, That she would never be enough. She wondered what it would be like to be able to speak with the very grass beneath her feet.
When she imagined it she supposed she would feel a bond of some sort. The feel of a fragile presence brushing her mind. A sense of rightness with the world. Or maybe it wouldn’t be something grand, maybe something as simple or as everyday as blinking or taking in a breath. Whatever it was, she felt nothing except the moist early morn dew on her skin. She heard nothing but the soft lap of water.
Her hands fisted her skirt as she stood, worrying the corner of her mouth with her teeth. She glanced across the canal to the shimmering fields basking under the soft warmth of an early morning sun. The plants continued to sway in the wind as if in anticipation of someone’s arrival. But not for her. A wave of melancholy swamped her and the back of her eyes prickled.
Stella drew in a sharp breath, blinking rapidly as her eyes clouded. Not here, not now.
She heard the fall of soft footsteps and hastily tried to pull herself together before anyone could spot her. As a child, she had made no secret of her desire to be like them. For a while, they had entertained her wishes and gently tried to break the news to her. But now it was different, now it was just sad. Stella stepped back into the soft embrace of a nearby tree and hoped to disappear from view. If they saw her, they made no mention of it. Stella fiddled with her fingers and counted until she felt she could step out again.
Those that worked the fields were approaching the plants, their faces bright with anticipation. The previously stilled plants twisted, unfurling their petals in welcome. Stella felt a strange mixture of reverence and jealousy. desperately she wished she could join them. She tried to squash these feelings and ignore the hollow ache of her heart. She could never join them. Not because she was defective. She just wasn’t one of them. The earlier she accepted that, the better.
Sighing and trying to shrug off the veil of melancholy that had settled on her, Stella stepped into view, squinting across the canal to the workers in the field. Again, she felt that impetuous urge to join them , to chat with them as they made the plants grow towards the sun . She turned away telling herself, "that’s just the way things are, and you are going to have to accept it."
Only she didn’t want to.
A few passersby glanced over their shoulders as she stepped into the light, drawn by the soft scud of her feet against the beaten earth. Stella forced a smile to sprout on her face and raised a clenched fist. She opened the fingers slowly, reminiscent of a flower unfurling its bud. It was a gesture of greeting and welcome. They paused in their work to return it.
Stella turned away from them and walked down from where she came. The village had woken and was now bustling with activities, even more now than ever. It was close to the Harvest festival after all. She saw various water crafts all formed from different plant life bobbing down the canal, garlands of dusk-roses had been strung up on trees and door fronts. Small children ran around her, squealing as they played. A handful of girls her age twittered past, carrying baskets just like hers. They were going to the fountain, Stella was sure by evening the center of the village would be swathed in flowers of all shapes, sizes, smells and colors. They greeted her with their clenched fists opening to which Stella responded, momentarily sharing in their warm smiles before returning to her despondent thoughts.
It was hard to sink into her melancholy while trudging on the paths. The Ortus were a warm people and the approach of Harvest had made their good-natured bloom into a bonfire of radiating joy, thus no matter how much she tried not to, she couldn’t help but be caught in their joy. From now till after the festival, the adults would do nothing to curb the enthusiasm of their young that swarmed onto the paths in search of merrymaking, while they themselves were caught up with their tasks with good-natured fun.
As Stella looked farther up the path to she saw the barrel shape of the village chief thundering down to the path.
He slowed upon seeing her and the frown furrowing his busy brows lightened. Stella opened her clenched fist in greeting to him. She wondered what business he had him in such a hurry.
With her heart thundering in her ears, Stella stepped up to his path and noted she was almost as tall as he was. Most of her life, she had spent it looking up to him, in awe of how solid his presence seemed. He was gruff but had never been unkind with her even when his words told hurtful truths.
‘Stella -?’
‘I want to join the workers in the field,’ she blurted out, cutting him off.
‘Weed’s hold, Stella. We have spoken about it.’ There was a smattering of exasperation in his voice.
Stella nodded. ‘I know. But I think I have proven myself.’
The chief was shaking his head, his eyes soft but she didn’t want to see it. It was often a prelude to rejection. She couldn’t remember how much she had done this over the years, tried to plead her case but got turned away instead. Not this time. Like most people in the village, she had a stubborn streak. She had had years to cultivate it and this time she didn’t want to be turned away.
‘I am a hard worker. You know how diligent I am. I am not going to waste the gift on trying to impress everyone with showy flowers. I just want -’ to belong. Stella heaved in a breath - ‘I just want to do enough like everyone is.’ Why was that so difficult to grant her what she wanted?
He sighed. ‘You are not Ortus.’
Stella ignored the stab of hurt. A flash of anger jolted through her. It sat in the corner of her chest, beating in tandem with her heart. Stella straightened, lifting her chin. ‘I have lived here my whole life. There isn't a thing that happens in this village that I'm not involved in.’ There was a barest hint of wobble in her voice. She squashed it "There is no one other than you more dedicated to this village than me."
‘It will be heresy,’ the chief said in a hard tone.
The last of what she was going to say trailed off into the emptiness. She stared at the chief, the final word chasing itself in a circle in her head. The harshness of her breath over her jackhammering heart was the only thing she could hear. The world seemed to gain a misty film. She blinked.
‘Heresy?’
The chief looked directly at her. ‘Yes. By the sweet wind, Stella. You are Luxen not Ortus. I cannot give you the gift. No matter what!’
Don’t cry. Stella blinked. And blinked again. ‘You were never going to - I was never - you never saw me as -’ she stopped and dragged in a lungful of air. Despite the heat, she felt cold. Stella gathered herself together and cleared her throat. ‘I understand. Thank you for your kindness, Chief.’
A myriad of emotions swept over the chief’s face before settling on its usual gruff sternness. Still, he took a step forward as though reaching for her. Stella stepped back. She didn’t need him to balm her wounds right after ripping it open. She stared at his shoulder as she spoke : ‘I have to see the fieldworkers lunch.’ She walked round him, her steps brisk
Tears pricked urgently at the back of her eyes but she didn’t let them fall.

Guten Morgen to this global band of Apes! 👋🦍
Yesterday we saw incredible volume on the German markets in response to the earnings call. The chart looks very strange - it is nearly a straight line, all the way across. Like many of you, I was excited about a discount on shares. This is still the company that we've been celebrating for well over two years. GameStop still has an enormous amount of cash on hand, and it is clear from the balance sheet that the leadership team is actively pursuing sustained profitability. Meanwhile, it is obvious that the SHFs haven't closed, and continue to struggle against the weight of their position each day. With the annual meeting next week, I'm incredibly excited about what we may learn.
I'd also like to give early notice that I intend to 'go dark' starting on June 12th in solidarity with the protest movement against Reddit's planned changes. I believe that the open platform that Reddit has been is an enormous part of what has made it special, and that this change is a shift in the wrong direction. Please do not take this as my abandonment of this movement. I believe that protesting against such policy changes is the only possible way to prevent them, and personally intend to abstain from Reddit during this time. As such, it seems appropriate for me to pause Diamantenhände as well. I hope that Reddit reverses their planned policy changes and that I will be back on June 15th in time for the Annual Meeting of Shareholders.
Today is Friday, June 9th, and you know what that means! Join other apes around the world to watch infrequent updates from the German markets!

🚀 Buckle Up! 🚀

• 🟥 80 minutes in: $21.11 / 19,66 € (volume: 3405)
• 🟥 75 minutes in: $21.29 / 19,83 € (volume: 1784)
• 🟥 70 minutes in: $21.31 / 19,85 € (volume: 1698)
• 🟩 65 minutes in: $21.42 / 19,95 € (volume: 1439)
• ⬜ 60 minutes in: $21.39 / 19,92 € (volume: 1427)
• 🟥 55 minutes in: $21.39 / 19,92 € (volume: 1315)
• ⬜ 50 minutes in: $21.39 / 19,92 € (volume: 1238)
• ⬜ 45 minutes in: $21.39 / 19,92 € (volume: 1237)
• ⬜ 40 minutes in: $21.39 / 19,92 € (volume: 1237)
• 🟩 35 minutes in: $21.39 / 19,92 € (volume: 832)
• 🟥 30 minutes in: $21.35 / 19,88 € (volume: 803)
• 🟩 25 minutes in: $21.46 / 19,99 € (volume: 718)
• 🟥 20 minutes in: $21.28 / 19,82 € (volume: 326)
• 🟩 15 minutes in: $21.29 / 19,83 € (volume: 326)
• 🟥 10 minutes in: $21.27 / 19,81 € (volume: 326)
• 🟥 5 minutes in: $21.27 / 19,81 € (volume: 326)
• 🟥 0 minutes in: $21.28 / 19,82 € (volume: 286)
• 🟥 US close price: $21.44 / 19,97 € ($21.34 / 19,88 € after-hours)
• US market volume: 19.12 million shares

Link to previous Diamantenhände post
FAQ: I'm capturing current price and volume data from German exchanges and converting to USD. Today's euro -> USD conversion ratio is 1.0737. I programmed a tool that assists me in fetching this data and updating the post. If you'd like to check current prices directly, you can check Lang & Schwarz or TradeGate
Diamantenhände isn't simply a thread on Superstonk, it's a community that gathers daily to represent the many corners of this world who love this stock. Many thanks to the originator of the series, DerGurkenraspler, who we wish well. We all love seeing the energy that people represent their varied homelands. Show your flags, share some culture, and unite around GME!

I was built long ago
Once full of love I now stand hollow
Beaten by the wind I have always faced proud
Rooted on ground I never knew was shallow
On my hill I have welcomed those looking for a view
The ocean grows gorgeous with every year
But as of late I’ve sat empty with no company to give
As my view of the beach grows nothing becomes clear
My boards grow weary
Paint peeling reveals an unknown surface I rather not show
I thought with age I would be adored even more
Pebbles the size of boulders start to crumble below
Why am I suddenly realizing I am on the edge?
Why can I see so much beneath me?
Is this the reason all have abandoned my walls?
All these cries are lost over the sea
I’m scared to collapse
I scream out to the sea
But the sea doesn’t care
what will happen to me
My foundation is crumbling and dropping to the beach
Few stopped to look but help never came
Hope is now gone as my walls start to moan
My boards not decayed but dead all the same
What will do it? My panicked frame tenses
With the edge that close, it could be any day
that the ground collapses or a hurricane arrives
whatever it is, painless, I pray
With a lurch, my structure tips off the ground
And I get my last look over the white tipped sound
As I fall I see sky and sea aflame with vibrant miracles
and I’m reminded of the sunsets
and the dolphins
and the rainbows
and all the things I wish I could’ve enjoyed more if
I wasn’t built as a house on a cliff

# Today In Phishstory - June 9th Brought to you by tiph-bot. Beep.
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Phish

Phish, Tuesday 06/09/2009 (14 years ago) Asheville Civic Center, Asheville, NC, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: 2009 Early Summer Tour
Set 1 : Kill Devil Falls , The Moma Dance , Sample in a Jar , Stash , Dog Faced Boy , Gumbo , Tube , Lengthwise , Divided Sky , When the Cactus is in Bloom ¹ , Bold As Love
Set 2 : Backwards Down the Number Line > Ghost > Fast Enough for You , Halley's Comet > Maze , Alaska ¹ , Theme From the Bottom , Golgi Apparatus , Possum
Encore : Loving Cup
1 Phish debut.
Jamchart Notes:
Backwards Down the Number Line - "Type I" version with great strumming by Trey and a short outro jam that > to "Ghost."
Show Notes:
This show featured the Phish debuts of When the Cactus is in Bloom and Alaska. Before Dog Faced Boy, Trey explained that while living with Fish, he wrote Dog Faced Boy, Tube and Gumbo based on entries in one of Fish's journals. During Dog Faced Boy, Fish left his drum kit and lay down in front of the stage because he didn't need to sing the song. Lengthwise (performed a cappella ) was played for the first time since July 28, 1998 (233 shows). Bold as Love was played for the first time since October 6, 2000 (74 shows).
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, Friday 06/09/2000 (23 years ago) On Air East, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, , Japan
Gap Chart, Tour: 2000 Summer Japan Tour
Set 1 : Axilla > Taste , Billy Breathes , Poor Heart > Golgi Apparatus > Funky Bitch , The Moma Dance > First Tube > Chalk Dust Torture
Set 2 : Tweezer , Bouncing Around the Room ¹ , The Mango Song , The Squirming Coil > Gotta Jibboo > Meatstick ² > Tweezer Reprise
Encore : You Enjoy Myself
1 Brief outro solo from Trey, which replaced the usual closing guitar lick. 2 First Meatstick to feature Japanese lyrics.
Jamchart Notes:
Funky Bitch - Atypically improvisational must-hear monster.
Chalk Dust Torture - Winning fans in Japan. This huge first-set-closing version raises hell and ends, but then there's a second ending that concludes cacophonously.
Tweezer - Atypically slow but monstrously improvisational version that has several peaks and valleys before speeding-up and concluding in a melodic, triumphant, must-fucking-hear manner.
The Mango Song - Ending jam segment stretches the limits of the basic jam with some nice rhythmic variation, but still stays "in bounds."
You Enjoy Myself - Deeeep, funky jam/groove, and the return of the B&D; segment!
Show Notes:
The Moma Dance included Funky Bitch teases and Tweezer included Funk #49 teases. This was the first ever Meatstick to feature Japanese lyrics and Trey flubbed the words while attempting to sing them. Bouncing included a brief outro solo from Trey, which replaced the usual closing guitar lick. This show was re- broadcast on Japanese television.
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, Friday 06/09/1995 (28 years ago) Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: 1995 Summer Tour
Set 1 : My Friend, My Friend , Divided Sky , Strange Design > The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony > AC/DC Bag > Theme From the Bottom , Taste , Sparkle > Run Like an Antelope
Set 2 : Split Open and Melt , The Wedge , Scent of a Mule , Cavern > David Bowie , Acoustic Army , Sweet Adeline , Slave to the Traffic Light
Encore : The Squirming Coil
Jamchart Notes:
Run Like an Antelope - Unusual jam. Sort of off-key. Sort of evil. Dissonant and anti-melodic. No real peak; it just fades into "Rocco."
Split Open and Melt - Improvisational playing in several sections tests the rhythmic and melodic standards for "SOAM" in this solid version.
Show Notes:
Part of the soundcheck's jam consisted of 25 or 6 to 4.
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, Thursday 06/09/1994 (29 years ago) Triad Amphitheater, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: 1994 Summer Tour
Set 1 : Llama , Guelah Papyrus , Rift , Down with Disease > It's Ice > If I Could > Maze , Fee ¹ , Suzy Greenberg
Set 2 : Split Open and Melt , Glide > Julius , Halley's Comet -> Scent of a Mule , Ginseng Sullivan ² , Mike's Song > I Am Hydrogen > Weekapaug Groove , Golgi Apparatus
Encore : Highway to Hell
1 Trey sang verses through megaphone. 2 Acoustic and without microphones. Fish on Madonna washboard.
Jamchart Notes:
It's Ice - Good rocking jam with excellent Fish and solid Trey (of course Page is great).
Mike's Song - The 1st jam is rocking and ass kicking, with a clever little "Tweeprise"-like walk up. The 2nd jam is basically a non-vocal version of something very "Simple"-like. Just listen and you'll hear it. The return to "Mike's" has more crazed '94 scream-infused power action.
Show Notes:
Trey sang the verses of Fee through a megaphone. Ginseng Sullivan was performed acoustic without microphones and featured Fish on Madonna washboard.
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, Saturday 06/09/1990 (33 years ago) The Wetlands Preserve, New York, NY, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: 1990 Tour
Set 1 : Possum , Lawn Boy > Reba , Dinner and a Movie > Bouncing Around the Room > Tweezer , Uncle Pen > Mike's Song > I Am Hydrogen > Weekapaug Groove
Set 2 : Whole Lotta Love Jam > Harry Hood , The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday > Avenu Malkenu > La Grange , Fee -> Foam , The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony > Suzy Greenberg > Run Like an Antelope , Hold Your Head Up > Terrapin > Hold Your Head Up , Harpua , Good Times Bad Times
Encore : Take the 'A' Train > Contact
Jamchart Notes:
Foam - -> in from "Fee." Groovy and excellent Page section with solid backing from Mike and Fish. It's all good from there.
Run Like an Antelope - Good exploratory version that gets nicely beyond the standard. Great tension, dissonance and experimental jamming.
Show Notes:
Harpua included Funkytown teases and 'A' Train contained a Dixie tease from Trey. The band launched into the second set-opening Whole Lotta Love Jam as the DJ had been spinning the original Zeppelin version. The opening act was The Aquarium Rescue Unit.
Listen now at Phish.in!

Trey Anastasio

Trey Anastasio Trio, 2023-06-09 Mission Ballroom, Denver, CO, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/trey-anastasio-trio-june-09-2023-mission-ballroom-denver-co-usa.html
Tour: Not Part of a Tour
Show Notes:
Trey Anastasio Band, 2006-06-09 Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre - Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/trey-anastasio-june-09-2006-verizon-wireless-amphitheatre-charlotte-charlotte-nc-usa.html
Tour: TAB - Early Summer 2006 Tour
Show Notes: This single set performance was as the opening act for Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. This setlist is unconfirmed as recordings of the performance do not circulate.
Trey Anastasio Band, 2002-06-09 Tower City Amphitheatre, Cleveland, OH, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/trey-anastasio-june-09-2002-tower-city-amphitheatre-cleveland-oh-usa.html
Tour: TAB - The Dectet Summer 2002 Tour
Show Notes: The rendition of "Plasma" from this gig appears on Trey's live CD of the same name. Trey performed "Ray Dawn Balloon" acoustic.

Mike Gordon

Mike Gordon, 2015-06-09 The Pageant, St. Louis, MO, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/mike-gordon-june-09-2015-the-pageant-st-louis-mo-usa.html
Tour: Mike Gordon - Summer 2015 Tour
Show Notes:

John Fishman

Jazz Mandolin Project, 2004-06-09 32 Bleu, Colorado Springs, CO, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/jon-fishman-june-09-2004-32-bleu-colorado-springs-co-usa.html
Tour: Fish - Jazz Mandolin Project Summer 2004 Tour
Show Notes:

Page McConnell

Page McConnell, 2007-06-09 Bogart's, Cincinnati, OH, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/page-mcconnell-june-09-2007-bogarts-cincinnati-oh-usa.html
Tour: Page McConnell Spring & Summer 2007 Tour
Show Notes: This setlist is unconfirmed as recordings of the show do not circulate.

Hello! Ok. I’m a projector with splenic authority and a completely open sacral (no gates). I looove human design, it’s the only thing in my life that is clear. I also experience my splenic authority different from how people tend to describe it: I can hear it over and over, quite clearly, in its quiet, present, non-dramatic voice.
Deconditioning the open sacral… where to even start? All my life I’ve longed for energy, meditated on its mysteries, fallen asleep involuntarily most days but found deep sources of inspiration other days, tried to cling to those sources… etc. Sacral energy has been the holy grail of my life. I have coded it straightforwardly as a desirable virtue.
When I started studying HD, it still took a few months for me to realize that something was going on with my relationship to sacral energy, that I shouldn’t structure my life around pursuing it. I had a fascinating experience that I talk about on here a lot, of immediately applying what I knew of HD and being invited into a really fun and life-changing situation with a band full of manifesting generators. My spleen did tell me it was ok - it also told me to be sort of vigilant. My sacral was just blissed out though…
Anyway, what happens in bands? People bone. I ended up having this delightful chemistry with this manigeni dude, got the 34-20 personality sun/earth, got 59 defined to my doubly-defined 6, 7 centers defined as opposed to my two (he doesn’t have root or emotional, I only have root and spleen). The chemistry was overpowering and I was enjoying the balancing act of enjoying him without being overwhelmed until he confided in the group that his marriage was ending. Then it didn’t matter what my spleen or anybody said. We were making out pretty much immediately. I was on fire. I felt like a volcano. Almost feverish. I would have gotten physically sick just from the passion if I hadn’t practiced mindfulness. I can’t say it was pleasant. I can’t tell you what my spleen was saying. I was not about to listen.
Dude lives in another country - he was visiting for a year - when he got back he did get divorced btw so the next time he came he was single and a bit more open. This dumb motherfucker was high on a midlife crisis and said all kinds of stuff to me that hit my insecurities and open centers. No one has ever actually wanted to date me before. This dude was using the L word super fast, saying he wanted me to move to where he was, wanting to rent a house, etc
I knew he was in a midlife crisis and I also knew he was a Gemini sun Leo moon/rising so he was running his mouth and being romantic. I thought I knew better than to take him at his word. I knew we weren’t in love. But I really liked him, and I’ve got all these open centers, and also I want to move to Europe. The band got together a little tour in his hometown, and he wanted me to come stay with him as long as a tourist visa would allow. I opted to come for half that time, bc I have a dog at home… and he was saying he wanted me to be his Girlfriend, he was gonna show me off, his kids were gonna love me, all this stuff.
Y’all my spleen just said NO
I asked if he was the one 🥰 and my spleen said NO But we are perfect for each other on paper (open G talking)… maybe he could be the one?? NO OK…. Can we have a lot of fun sex though? Oh sure…
So I thought OK, cool, he’s not the final frontier but he clearly likes me a lot, we will have a fun romance, I’ll get one of these jobs (he’s super charismatic and his conscious sun is in the 4 line so as soon as he told his friends I was looking for work openings just dropped out of the sky), we will negotiate what our relationship is gonna be, I’ll get my European visa, play some cool music…
Ok. What I’ve found with the spleen is that when I ignore it, I think I’m “purchasing” something at the expense of something else. For example, say I ask if I should eat a milkshake and my spleen says no, but I really want the delicious taste of the milkshake so I figure my spleen is just warning me about calories or something. Then I get the milkshake and it’s like poisonous and I spend two days in the hospital. Like you don’t even get what you think you want. It’s not up to you. And I already had this learning experience.
Anyway, writing to you from this sleepy small city in Europe, in the fourth of six weeks of what has been one of the most painful emotional experiences of my life. This motherfucker was uncomfortable with me the moment I got off the plane, spent a few weeks triggering my deepest wound, and “broke up” with me three weeks in. Shit sucks. Hurts so much more than I thought it would, given I knew it wasn’t going to be a real thing. Have been almost delusional. Spleen is very quiet.
Before I came, I experienced sooooo much fear. It was so disproportionate to what i rationally understood the risks were. I wasn’t about to cancel my trip but I did try to change the ticket, to no avail. My spleen told me “Don’t get on the plane” but I was just not gonna ditch the band on their European tour.
Anyways, I won’t be ignoring my spleen anymore. Taking things a moment at a time. I feel profoundly disoriented and momentumless at the moment, but I knew better, man. Not just from my spleen. I just wanted my little romance!! (12th house Venus, but I also got libra sun and libra rising… I’ve never had a romance)
Also like the frontman of another band I play with died while I was away… idk it’s been horrible lol
Undefined center deconditioning is real… and you can’t bargain with the spleen. You can’t! NO CHOICE
I am still applying for the one job. It’s mine if I want it. My spleen is telling me to sit with the variables and feel them out… but it is giving me a hint, the hint isn’t what I want to hear but I know better than to fight it at this point. But I think considering the job deeply will be orienting.
Well, anyway, here’s to a life of improvisation.

I often would gaze into the wild blue yonder and find myself envious, even jealous of the beings that were so graciously given the gift of flight.
Especially my fellow aircraft. Their bodies are correct, but why aren't mine? Where are my wings and my means of propulsion? I feel robbed and broken and upset.
I try not to think about it much, as because I am unfortunately still humanoid in nature, I am expected to act as such.
Occasionally, I even find myself feeling jealous of birds, perhaps it could be some visceral Sojourner ornithopter urge, perhaps something else. I've come to hate living birds in a sense, and yet I know that my hatred is unjustified. The birds did nothing wrong, they just happened to be born in a fitting body, whereas I was clearly not.
I look into the sky now and I just feel upset. An endless turmoil. Especially on cloudy days. I want to be up there, not down here. I am an aircraft, not a vile, flightless ground ape!
... And yet my biology states otherwise.
Part of me feels that if I was given the adequate means, I'd fly and lift my own body weight out of pure spite alone at this point.
I remember flying, and I miss it greatly. Myself, being an ignorant aircraft at the time, thought that I'd never be put in any sort of position where I'd be incapable of flight. Oh how wrong I was.
I suppose it's needless to say that I don't gaze up into the wild blue yonder much anymore.

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
I seek refuge in Allah, the Most High, from the cursed and outcasted Shaitan
"And hold fast all together to the rope of God, and never be divided. Remember God's favor upon you: you were once enemies, and He reconciled your hearts so that through His favor, you became like brothers. You stood on the brink of a pit of fire, and He delivered you from it. Thus, God makes His signs of truth clear to you that you may be guided to the Straight Path in all matters, and be steadfast on it." [Quran 3:103]
Almighty Allah has spoken the truth.
We begin with Allah's blessed name, we praise Him and glorify Him as he ought to be praised and glorified.
Oh Allah, send prayers upon Muhammad and upon the family of Muhammad just as You have sent prayers upon Ibrahim and upon the family of Ibrahim, verily You are the Praiseworthy, the Glorious. O Allah, bless Muhammad and the family of Muhammad just as You have blessed Ibrahim and the family of Ibrahim, verily You are the Praiseworthy, the Glorious.
Brothers & Sisters,
We gather here today to reflect upon the challenges that hinder our unity as Arabs. As we ponder upon the state of our Arab nation, we must acknowledge that unity lies within our grasp. Throughout history, the Arabian Peninsula witnessed a remarkable display of unity during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him and his family. This unity is a testament to our potential to come together as one people. It is vital for us to realize that the only obstacle preventing our unity is ourselves. The forces that seek to divide us are powerless against the collective strength of the Arab people. The power to unite rests solely in our hands.
Honestly, what is it that is stopping the Arabs from uniting? The Arabs can unite any time they like, but we don't, and this is the problem, the only time we ever united the Arabian Peninsula was during the lifetime of the Prophet, May peace and blessings be upon him and his family. If I have one message, which I am delivering to the whole Arab nation, it is this, that the only thing stopping us from uniting is ourselves.
As long as our people are contempt to sit in coffee shops with their hookahs, blaming the USA, blaming the Turks, blaming the British, blaming the Zionists, blaming the Iranians, and most notably blaming Arab leadership, we will always be divided, and as long as we are divided we will be weak, and as long as we are weak they'll steal our wealth.
It's not rocket science, you don't have to be Einstein to work it out. Unity is strength. If we could only stop thinking like Sunni and Shia, like Beduwi and Hadhari, like left and right, like Khaleeji or Levantine or Masri or Maghrebi, if we could only stop thinking like that. We are 350 million people who speak the same language. You know in Europe they speak 150 languages. We speak one language, with one God, imagine the strength that we could have if we came together. But as long as we are ready to sit and blame other people we will never be united, and as long as we are not united we will be divided, and as long as we are divided they will steal our lands. That's why they are doing it. They don't care if we are Sunni or Shia, they genuinely don't...
During my time in England, in the parliament in which I actively use to participate in its' elections, there are six hundred and fifty members, if I ask them one by one to define the difference between Sunni and Shia, none of them could do so. None of them! they don't care if you're Sunni or Shia, They don't care if you pray or fast or make Hajj, They don't care about Islam, They don't care about religion, they just care about dividing us Arabs. They just care about making us fight against each other, because as long as we're fighting each other, we're not fighting the Zionists. We have allowed them to steal our oil, steal our gas, steal our water. Are the Zionists not dumping their wastewater into the Jordan River? The Zionists cannot control the streets of Jerusalem. the Zionists cannot fund its' regime without their supporters, the Zionists could not stop the Yemeni people uniting, and they cannot stop the Yemenis uniting, and they cannot stop the Yemenis and the Omanis and the Emiratis being together with the Saudis, Bahrainis, Qataris and Kuwaitis. The Zionists cannot stop the Arabs being together. Only the Arabs are stopping the Arabs being together.
We have allowed them to rob us of that which Allah gave us. I'm sorry if I'm passionate about this, because it's the most important thing of them all that the Arabs can find it within themselves to be one people, "One Arab Nation" / "شعب عربي واحد" , this is ourslogan. A marvelous slogan indeed. A call to Action. It encapsulates the essence of unity, strength, and shared identity. By embracing this vision, we can reclaim what has been taken from us and forge a future of prosperity and harmony.
It is crucial to recognize that the power to reclaim our collective destiny lies within us. We must rise above the divisions that have plagued us, fueled by external forces seeking to weaken and exploit us. United as one people, we can overcome any challenges that come our way, and build a brighter future for generations to come. To achieve this unity, we must foster a spirit of inclusivity, respect, and understanding among all Arab nations. We should celebrate our rich diversity while recognizing the common thread that binds us together. By embracing our shared heritage, language, and culture, we can bridge the gaps that separate us and work towards a common goal of progress and prosperity. By standing together as one, we can tap into this immense potential and create a new era of greatness.
It is time to reclaim our rightful place in the world and show the strength of a united Arab Nation. Together, we can chart a course towards a future where our collective voice is heard and respected on the global stage. Let us rise above the divisions, embrace our shared values, and work towards a prosperous, harmonious, and proud Arab Nation, "One Arab Nation" - a shining example for the world to behold. This a call to action, a reminder of our shared destiny, and a symbol of the boundless possibilities that await us when we stand together. Let us carry this vision in our hearts and work tirelessly towards its realization, for the betterment of our people, our region, and our world.
Oh Allah, show us the truth for the truth and help us to follow it, and show us the falsehood for falsehood and help us to stay away from it, and make faith in You the most beloved to us and beautify it in our hearts, and make disbelief, lewdness and rebellion most hated to us, and make us from those who are guided. Rectify the Arab leaders and guide them to that which is good for the whole Nation, make them a means for unity and cause for our coming together, you are the Ever Living, the One who cannot die, the Self Sustainer, the Hearer of our supplications, grant us Victory over your enemies.
Peace, love and blessings to you all.

As the scorching sun and clear blue skies beckon, there's no better time to embrace the beauty of nature and embark on outdoor adventures. Summer vacations offer the perfect opportunity to leave the confines of our daily routines behind and explore the great outdoors.

First/Prev
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Mogan wasn't so calm when he was back on the bridge of the Semiramis. He paced, grumbling as he waited for the last of the boarding craft to land in the ship's hangars.
The San weren't completely unfamiliar with the idea of slavery. It had been a generation or more since anybody had owned one, but that was nothing to boast of—the reasons were economic, not moral. He had seen them in other tribes, particularly those near the coasts that were never short of food. Some had lived well, some had not.
Mogan hadn't thought much about it. They had no power to change another tribe's ways, after all, and wars were lost. It was certainly a better fate than losing a war with the Animal People—after that, your true master was the cooking skin, and the sooner you were transferred to its possession the better.
And yet this disgusted him.
It wasn't just the filth, the rags, the way they blinked at the light of open air or the way they trembled when he frowned. But he didn't know what the rest was. Perhaps a sense of guilt—had there been a time when his own people would have done the same? Or was it the fact that humanity, of all the sapient species in the galaxy, may well share that fate?
He shook his head to clear away the thought, but it would not go.
Logog and Burya came to the bridge with a nod. “They're getting cleaned up now, and we've got the layer-printers making something for them. What they had on...” Burya grimaced. “We spaced it. Threw it in an airlock and then opened up the other side and let it fly. With any luck it'll burn up when it goes down to the planet.”
Only a few short years ago, shooting stars were considered an act of the spirits; now they were making one.
Logog nodded. “I had the people who brought machine parts in down to the infirmary. It didn't take long to get them back in working order, but we'll certainly have to be less foolish next time.”
Mogan shrugged. “I should have thought of it. After all, I've only had one for seventeen years. But I've got something else in mind. About the slave thing.”
Both of them looked distinctly uncomfortable, but Burya was the one to say it. “To think... if someone had offered them to us, pretty much any point more than eight or ten years ago, we'd have taken them.”
“And the only reason we wouldn't after is because we couldn't feed them,” Logog said. “I've thought of that too. Are we hypocrites, that we can get furious at someone else for doing what we probably would have done?”
Mogan almost winced. That was rather close to what he had been thinking.
But Logog shook his head. “Maybe it does. I'm no shaman; I wouldn't know. But it felt good to stop it, that's certain. Maybe we've just grown. Maybe our circumstances changed—I really don't know. But what's your plan?”
“We grabbed computers from this base, yes?”
Burya nodded, and Mogan continued. “Clacha and the others were right. They don't process it here; they load up the ore onto ships and ship it somewhere. Let's get one of Wakawa's experts on that and find out where the ships go.”
Mogan smiled. “I propose we find where they're quartered, rob the place blind, and blow it up.”
It was easier said than done. Wakawa did indeed have an expert, but the information on it was sparse.
While their expert went over the stolen information, others went through the loot. The rifles were standard, useable but not terribly needed. The shoshir were useless—they might find a market, but would probably be scrapped. They had been taken more because they were there. The rock itself was useless until it was processed, so overall the raid was a bust, except for the rescues.
As the days passed, the Vishtali opened up a bit. Not at first; for the first three days they stared wide-eyed, waiting to see what their new owners would do to them. Mogan had seen the first time that talking to them would do little good here, and so all he could do was wait.
Four days passed, and he began to ask them about future plans. He didn't expect an answer, and none had one. Well, three of them wanted to be his wife, but to accept that would have been plain and simple exploitation; the very idea left a bad taste in his mouth, and he made a note to make a ruling about it just in case someone else in the tribe was more greedy or just less perceptive. Mogan asked them simply to get them thinking about the idea. It was another day before he laid out options, including working for him on the Semiramis—for pay—or finding their own way as citizens in the Settlements.
He made a mental note to speak to Shett. If war with the Sovereignty meant saving more of these people, then they would need some system for doing so. Dropping them off on some planet and telling them to fend for themselves was only mildly more feasible than throwing them out the airlock and telling them to swim home. Just one more reason to hate the Sovereignty, really.
The rest of the day, he told them stories. He wasn't the best storyteller, but he told them of his earlier experiences; how he had been captured by accident, toured the galaxy in a science vessel, hunted giant lizards. He told them of how he had met Hyeshi and lost her, and while he wasn't a good storyteller the story itself made up the difference.
They had Specimen Implants, the ones put into animals—whether actual scientific specimens or livestock. They didn't translate, so Mogan had to speak in the Sovereign Tongue that was almost the same as the dominant Sylfa language, but they did protect from diseases. The conditions they had been living in probably put a little extra wear on the things, but nonetheless each of them got Citizen Implants. That process was slow, as the cruiser's medical bay wasn't meant to handle large numbers at one time, but with each day more of them had the official mark of a sapient person, and that too made a difference in their outlook.
It was the sixth day, staying near the planet of Goretia but not in it, when Wakawa's tech came to him.
Rentarsh was a Sylfa—that did seem to be the majority in the galaxy, for either nation—and he didn't look terribly pleased with his information.
“Nothing, captain. Not a damn thing about destination. But we did find the schedule. Two more days and the White Platinum is coming in to pick up a load. Seeing as it's actually going to whatever they have for processing, we can follow it.”
Mogan nodded. They wouldn't be able to follow it unless they could stay out of its sensor range and still be able to know where it was; a difficult proposition. But they were, after all, privateers now. They could simply take the ship.
He nodded to the tech. “Calculate its likely approach vectors and let me know. We'll be ready for it.”
Two more days passed before Sensors sounded the alarm and Mogan rushed to the bridge. Ellisan was already in her seat, and as Mogan stood before the captain's chair he saw the ship on the holos.
The White Platinum looked innocent enough. Plenty of asteroids were big enough to contain deposits of metal, but not big enough to set up a smelting facility on them, so ore-haulers like this were fairly common.
Preying on one was not. After all, their cargo wasn't even metal, but thousands of tons of rock that was anything from half to a fraction of a percent metal. An admiralty judge assessing that prize would probably laugh at whoever brought it in.
Which is why it was something of a surprise when the massive cruiser appeared around the moon, slingshotting around it for extra speed, and bore down on the massive hauler like a falcon on the dive. The hauler was already slowing to go into orbit—at more than ten kilometers long it would never have been able to fly into atmosphere or escape the planet's gravity if it had—and now it frantically tried to turn and flee.
If it could escape the planet's gravity well, back into the Currents... well, it still couldn't escape. It tried anyway, since it had no alternative.
“White Platinum,” said Mogan as the comms carried the message across. “This is the licensed privateer Semiramis. Shut off your shields and engines, and prepare to be boarded.”
If anything, the ship accelerated harder, probably beyond what was safe for its engines, and Mogan nodded. “Burya, half the broadside guns, please.”
Ellisan nodded as well, and the ship turned slightly to the right so that the guns had room to fire. Burya spoke into his wristpad, and there was a slight bump as the etheric cannon fired, balls streaking in a fraction of a moment to the ship.
Gouts of shrapnel flew from the far side of the ship, and it changed direction, flying towards the planet rather than away.
Mogan frowned. “What in the Frozen Valley are they doing?”
“Crashing,” Ellisan grunted. “In a few minutes, I think we'll see the shuttles and lighters leave with the crew, and they know that if we really have a Letter of Marque we can't fire on escape cra—ahh, there's the first one.”
She pointed to the holo as a surprisingly large launch separated and streaked away. The lighters were only meant for loading and unloading the ship, carrying half a hundred tons or more into atmosphere where it could be unloaded, or vice versa.
“They won't have shields,” Mogan shrugged. “We can see about them. Will we be in time to stop the ship?”
Ellisan sighed and shook her head. “They probably locked the controls even if we did make it on. But if I was on right now, I don't think I could stop it in time. It's too heavy, and gravity is working with it too.”
Indeed, the White Platinum was moving faster now than it had in its frantic escape.
“Ready some techs and some guards,” Mogan said with a sigh. “And let's see what we can find. There must be three or four hundred million tons on that thing. And we'll put a boarding craft after each of the Lighters. Those are still cargo craft, even if minor.”
And so they waited, again. The White Platinum itself landed with a rather spectacular explosion. Dust, rocks, and even full-sized trees flew into the air, and it was two days before it settled enough that they could approach. The skies were literally dimmer, and it was likely a lot of animals would die before the year was up. The lighters weren't so lucky. Abandoned by the shuttles—which did have shields, after all, and could catch the currents going elsewhere—the lighters could either keep flying or land, and they were easy prey for the boarding craft.
“The first decided to fight it out. We didn't stick to atlatls for them, and it didn't take long. But the second crew was wiser, especially when we reminded them they'd been abandoned. They swore they didn't know what was going on down here. I don't believe them, but they did say where the ship was bound. And showed me on the navs, so I don't think they were lying. They're taking it to a moon orbiting Lancas-4.”
“Good.” Mogan grinned, and it was not pretty. “Time to make those Sovereignty bastards pay.”
“Captain?” Wakawa paused. “That's... not Sovereignty. Lancas is a Settlement system.”
​
​

TRANSITING NEPTUNE

Trine or Sextile ,

NATAL URANUS.

Trine or Sextile aspect last for about 1 and a Half Month
This is a positive time of opportunities to embrace more excitement in your life. You have the ... astrosignature.com/2023/06/neptune-trine-or-sextile-natal-uranus.html
✍(◔◡◔) Also note:
When using these interpretations NEPTUNE Trine or Sextile NATAL URANUS ,Please bear in mind that, inevitably, every chart will contain some contradictory influences, and as a result certain interpretations of different items in the same chart may seem difficult to reconcile.

AGAIN, Pls Notice Transiting NEPTUNE, as you look up in the Sky Are in Trine Aspect to Natal URANUS, So it mean ..

Transiting URANUS Trine or Sextile Natal NEPTUNE, is Different interpretation

• Remember In Transit to Natal, Different order different interpretation, take note on that.

👉 In Transiting URANUS Trine or Sextile Natal NEPTUNE

• ( JUPITER - NEPTUNE Trine ) - ( MARS - MOON Square ) - ( SATURN - URANUS Trine ) - ( JUPITER - PLUTO Square ) - ( MARS - PLUTO Square ) - ( PLUTO - CHIRON Sextile ) - ( JUPITER - NEPTUNE Square )

August 2, 2018
So frequently we have seen the figure of the child deployed to moralize what should be political. Family values campaigns. Pro-life propaganda. Today, this moralization is what distinguishes the rhetoric of families belong together from the insistence that no human should be caged.
In extracting "the family" as the ideological backbone of mass resistance to ICE, however, many questions are in danger of evaporating into moralistic rhetorics. For liberals and conservatives alike, the idea of children is a political instrument to which various radical traditions have developed a healthy aversion. Yet as a result, there is a scarcity of anti-capitalist thought about children.
These are some notes written in a moment of urgency, a moment when the idea of children demands more rigorous consideration.
"… but what about the children?"
We're all familiar with the cliché—but what about the children? We hear this, all too often, as a conservative trope that has little at all, in fact, to do with children.
With innocence as its baseline, the liberal idea of children seeks to make natural (but also to moralize) a property relation between child and parent. "Innocence" is code for powerless—a way to fetishize the child as both dependent and sub-human.
This idea of the child is indistinct from private property. And it is likewise through the logic of private property that Trump justifies family separations: "when you prosecute the parents for coming in illegally—which should happen—you have to take the children away." This logic of the parent-child property relation is why Jeff Sessions can speak of children like a bag of cocaine: "If you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don't like that, then don't smuggle children over our border."
In liberal critiques of Trump's zero tolerance policy, we can locate an important contradiction in the idea of children. On the one hand, the child is an idealized subject, whose ostensible innocence is formed in contrast to an articulation of adulthood as guilty, complicit, and flawed. On the other hand, the child is perpetually subordinated, not only understood as property, but as unthinking and without agency.
To what extent can this contradiction be not only undermined, but refused? Rarely has the rejection of the child's political instrumentality been in the service of children.
Too often the rejection of the child's instrumentality in the false binary of the U.S. political landscape has been in the formulation of an entirely adult-centered conception of political practice. So as not to deploy the figure of the child as an ideological tool, perhaps, the left has made little room for these concerns at all. However centered on the "adult" as political subject, such political conceptualizations exclude more than just children, and even the vast majority of adults. Implicit in this idea of adulthood is a version of neoliberal "self-sufficiency": the promise of an autonomous, market-mediated individualism, whose lack of social resources is a mark of independence. This idea of adulthood excludes many adults—it is not about age, but the non-recognition of care.
What is keeping us from politicizing these problems?
The idea and the material reality of children being "taken away" cannot be imagined as theft: we must insist that this is a discrete form of torture. The distinct horror of the "tender age facility" is precisely this: a separation not from The Family, but from care. Children come into this world, inspiringly, without an ideology of property relations, yet with an undeniable need to be cared for.
Bringing care to the foreground of our political outrage, while disassociating from the ideological pressure to embrace institutions of private property, can be a way to insist that no human should be caged. All humans need care, and need care differently. The child is not the only way of understanding this, though as a caretaker of a six-year old, this is how I am reminded of this throughout most hours of the day.
The Care Crisis
More and more, we hear the present moment described in terms of a care crisis. The accelerated privatization of care is a regime of coerced care labor. It's estimated that 16 million Americans perform the role of a primary caretaker unwaged. Neoliberal economic policies, as Evelyn Nakano Glenn writes, have "exacerbat[ed] the care crisis by intensifying the conflicts between caring and earning and increasing the stresses on caregivers, both unpaid and paid." [1] With the dissolution of the family wage, this "care crisis" must be understood more systemically: Nancy Fraser argues "the crisis of social reproduction is not freestanding and cannot be adequately grasped on its own," suggesting that the focus on care should come with a broader theory of "general crisis." [2]
The focus on care presents an opportunity for broadening and making legible a politics of family abolition. However, this opportunity will be missed without a keen sense of the demands of care, particularly the labors performed seemingly out of love under social conditions of No Alternative.
In feminist traditions of family abolitionism, these questions rush to the surface. That is: how does the revolutionary horizon of the end of "the family" as a unit of private property mobilize us toward a fuller, less exploitive vision of care? [3] This longing for collective caretaking must be hand-in-hand with any discourse against the family—otherwise doomed to logics of self-management and autonomy. The alternative posed by family abolition cannot, in other words, be a matter of self-imposed austerity on behalf of neoliberal capitalism. Rather than orienting toward this question of abolition in negational terms—withdrawing, undoing, subtracting—how might alternatives to The Family be made imaginable and practicable as a political project of dismantling capitalism's care crisis?
Abolish the Family For Kids

"The purpose of a thought-experiment [is] not to predict the future… but to describe reality, the present world." – Ursula K. Le Guin [4]

It is an unspoken truth that while many children fear adults, many adults also fear children. How would you talk to a child about family abolition? How would you frame a critique of white bourgeois patriarchy, the institution of marriage, the logic of private property? What language would you use? Do you feel it would have to be over-simplified, dumbed down, uncritical? Why? What would you have to do to your own thinking in this process? What would you have to ask yourself?
The child's imagination is one of the most vital models we have for the project of ideologically disrupting capitalist realist epistemologies—confronting the rationalist rebukes of liberalism that systematically infantilize revolutionary politics. [5] But this critical capacity we encounter in thinking with and learning from children remains politically untapped and socially devalued, throughout even our most radical traditions of thought.
Caring for children can be an ongoing tragedy of naturalizing capitalism in order to survive in it.
Yet caring for children can also entail questioning the idea that there is no alternative to capitalism. We teach our kids about stealing—either not to steal, or how not to get caught—but how do we do this without leaving private property uninterrogated?
How do we make use of commune, in this sense, as the anti-family?
Willful Children
Colonial rule has imagined and positioned the colonized as children and animals. The willful child, as Sara Ahmed suggests, is the story of the subaltern: "addressed as a member of the subordinate class," Ahmed writes, the willful child "is subordinate when she refuses to be a member of that class. The demand to be willing [is] articulated as the demand to obey the colonizer (who takes the place of the parent): the rod comes to embody his sovereign will."
Ahmed leaves us with this imperative:
"We must learn from where and when the willful child comes up. As soon as she appears, the rod comes quickly after her. She tells us what might happen if we refuse to give up. She tells us what we become when we keep coming up, when we protest against the violence of the rod, when we challenge how some are beaten as if beating is a right: black bodies, brown bodies. Some have to become willful to survive a history." [6]
No Borders: Abolish Adulthood

"Sometimes I think the conditions of daily life, of everyday oppressions, of survival, not to mention the temporary pleasures accessible to most of us, render much of our imagination inert. We are constantly putting out fires, responding to emergencies, finding temporary refuge, all of which make it difficult to see anything other than the present… When movements have been unable to clear the clouds, it has been the poets—no matter the medium—who have succeeded in imagining the color of the sky, in rendering the kinds of dreams and futures social movements are capable of producing. Knowing the color of the sky is far more important than counting the clouds." – Robin D.G. Kelley [7]

On the one hand, this is a demand for child-inclusivity in our political struggles. We have left children to be the concern of the right—a right for which the fetus is more important than the child, precisely because the issue has nothing to do with children but with property. On the other hand, this is a critique of an ideology of "child-inclusivity," to the extent that such inclusion always already renders children marginal to the ostensibly "adult world" of political struggles.
More than de-centering the adult from revolutionary thought, the border between child and adult must be abolished. As in any abolitionist project, imaginability is an integral problem. This is a problem that's necessarily taken up in revolutionary terms. That is: how do we re-think the adult-child relationship as one of mutual care and learning? How do we take up the challenges of comradeship, without leaving the concept of childhood unquestioningly defined by capital?
In the tradition of feminist utopian thought, these questions have been explored more deeply than elsewhere, while leaving open certain points of inquiry yet to be politically awakened. In The Dialectic of Sex, for instance, Shulamith Firestone projects a revolutionary horizon [...] [8] As in her thorny, often categorically confused explorations of "sex," Firestone writes through an ongoing friction with conditions of unimaginability. [...] her text is about the trying and failing to imagine a world of freedom, fundamentally antagonistic toward the social totality for which this freedom appears impossible, even "unnatural."
Through a framework of care and comradeship, the imaginability of shared non-adulthood can be more delicately engaged than it is in Firestone's vision, predicated on forgotten histories of child abuse. Illuminating different thresholds of imaginability, care helps us to renegotiate the proprietary relationship of adult and child—to undo the transhistorical character of the white bourgeois "family" with more expansive forms of mutual caring. While this un-bordered world is unthinkable without total revolution, these questions get us closer to the thinkability of revolution, sharpening our politics for making such a future, and strengthening our capacities to struggle collectively. It is a start, among many others.
Notes and Citations
[1] Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America, Harvard University Press, 2000
[2] Nancy Fraser, "Contradictions of Capital and Care," New Left Review, July-August 2016
[3] bell hooks articulates this intervention with great clarity: "problematically, for the most part feminist thinkers have never wanted to call attention to the reality that women are often the primary culprits in everyday violence against children simply because they are the primary parental caregivers. While it was crucial and revolutionary that the feminist movement called attention to the fact that male domination in the home often creates an autocracy where men sexually abuse children, the fact is that masses of children are daily abused verbally and physically by women and men. Maternal sadism often leads women to emotionally abuse children, and feminist theory has not yet offered both feminist critique and feminist intervention when the issue is adult female violence against children." ("Feminist Parenting," Feminism is for Everybody, South End Press, 2000)
[4] Ursula K Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness, introduction
[5] This includes more recently the infantilization of precarity, as a dominant form of unquestioning neoliberal austerity. As Johanna Isaacson writes, "The ideologeme of 'maturity' as deployed against youthful, utopian uprisings in the struggle against austerity, serves to create an epistemological framework that combines an ethics of ascesis, patriarchal familial structures, and naturalized hierarchical global uneven development in a blinding constellation. This understanding of maturity—insisting that there is no alternative to harsh austerity for ordinary people (as large financial institutions are bailed out)—has become hegemonic in our moment." (See: "Life Versus Survival in Tangerine," Blind Field, August 11, 2015)
[6] Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life, Duke University Press, 2017
[7] Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Beacon Press, 2002
[8] [...] Problematically, yet consistent with the text's foundational contradiction, Firestone conflates the distinction between adult/child with that of male/female—a biological framework that struggles to untangle a theory of "culture." Elsewhere, I more deeply pry into some of these integral problems in Firestone's project, while here I want to emphasize the strong correspondence between her utopian method and her vision of "feminist revolution."

April 9 - April 26: Tokyo - Nanyo - Hakone - Kyoto - Osaka - Koyasan
We had two main goals for this trip to Japan: eat great food and see cherry blossoms. We had the best of both in the city of Nanyo in Yamagata prefecture. It's not a place that I've ever seen mentioned on Reddit or the western internet, so I wanted to share it with you all here.

What we learned

• Ship your luggage - The airport as well as every convenience store we walked into let us ship our luggage. This made traveling between cities significantly easier, and prices were always very reasonable. For single-night stays, we just packed what we needed for a single day and shipped our suitcases to the subsequent hotel.
• Google Maps is very helpful, but don't trust them for transfer times in public transit. We thought we were transit experts because we live in NYC, but the stations in Japan are even more complicated. Leave early if you need to catch a train.
• Almost all restaurants in Japan are good, but I'm somewhat of food snob. If you're like me, I recommend using Tabelog for reviews to find places that are a bit more special. The scoring is very different from western reviews. In general, anything above a 3.3 is very good. Scores are also significantly biased towards more expensive restaurants, so I'd recommend higher scores for fancier restaurants.
• Fruits and vegetables are relatively expensive and difficult to come by in Japan. We were able to get them at supermarkets, which can usually be found in the basement of any department store. Next time I'm in Japan, I'll consider bringing fiber supplements.
• Cherry Blossoms blooming times are very unpredictable. The Japan Meteorology Agency has a website with up to date cherry blossom predictions of over 1000 locations. Even if it doesn't have the exact cherry blossom site you want to visit, you're definitely going to see something close by. Websites of popular tourist destinations update the status of cherry blossoms as well.
• I recommend that you book hotels within 5 minutes walking distance from well-connected subway stations. A couple of our hotels were 10-15 minutes away from the station we needed to go to, so it was mildly irritating to repeat the same walk so often. In those places, there was actually a closer station, but if we took those, we'd have to transfer to a main station anyways.
• Standard hotel rooms have a double bed, which are about the same size as full sized beds in the US. If you're a move around a lot in your sleep like I do and want your partner to be well-rested, it's worth upgrading to a room that has a larger bed or two twins.
• If you're shopping, don't forget to bring your passport, so that you can get a duty free discount or refund.

Planning

• We booked our Hakone ryokan in January
• In February, we booked 3 fine dining restaurants, hotel in Kyoto, and temple lodging in Koyasan
• Saiho-ji (the moss temple in Kyoto) says that they require you to write an international postcard to request a reservation, and I saw that too late. Fortunately, there was also a Japanese website that let you make reservations, and we filled that out about a month in advanced with the help of Google translate. One of the fields required a Japanese address. We just used a friend's address, but you can probably use a hotel as well.
• Besides that, we booked all our other lodging and a week before our stay or less. A few times this wasn't best decision because our hotels were significantly more expensive this way.
• We left the first week in our trip very flexible, so that we could go somewhere that was in peak bloom during this time. We had a few places in mind, and ended up booking a ryokan in Nanyo the night before our stay there.
• Besides a few bucket list items, we figured that we'd be happy going anywhere. My wife and I made a shared Google map with all the sites that we found interesting without the intention of going to all of them and used that as a guide to choose what was convenient.

Tokyo Highlights

• I bought strawberries from a random department store, and an absurdly priced mango and orange from the Sembikiya flagship store. The strawberries were some of the best I had and worth the price of 1200 yen. The orange was tangier than any other orange we've had. However, you have to peel the thick membrane to fully appreciate it, and even then, I don't think it was worth anywhere close to 3500 yen. The mango was the most expensive at about 12000 yen, and everything about it was perfect. It was fragrant, the skin was thin, the texture was creamy, and it was as sweet as candy. It's hard to believe that this was grown from a plant.
• The real reason to go to Mori Art Museum is the stunning view of Tokyo. The main museum was closed, but we got to see an exhibit of Heatherwick Studio instead, which was more interesting than I expected.
• We loved the garden the Nezu Museum
• We went to Hotel Sara Kinshicho, a love hotel, and it was as fun as it looks on Youtube. The room was both more spacious and cheaper than most of our other hotel rooms. That said, it's a bit out of the way, so you should definitely ship your luggage to your next destination.
• We wanted to go to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant and settled on Kura Sushi. Considering that you're paying $1-$3 per plate, you shouldn't expect the highest quality of fish, but the eel was absolutely incredible. It seemed to be fresh off the grill and it was so saucy and fatty. I honestly enjoyed it more than the eel that I got from a dedicated unagi restaurant.
• The yakitori at New Torigin was amazing, especially the chicken skin. Perfectly charred and crispy.

Nanyo

As I mentioned before, Nanyo was the highlight of our trip. Despite being a small town, it had it's own distinct feeling and cuisine, and I think it deserves more love. I definitely shouldn't have been able to book a last minute ryokan reservation during peak Cherry Blossom season.

• After arriving in Nanyo, we ate some dessert near the station nearby. We then took a train known as the Flower Nagai Line. On the train, you can see cherry blossoms, snowcapped mountains, and pass sleepy villages. We stopped at Koguwa Station.
• There is a famous soba restaurant close by. It was a 30 minute walk, but I was really in the mood for some soba. Unfortunately, we arrived, we found out that the shop is temporarily closed because the owner broke his arms. It was around this time when I think I spotted an eagle catching a snake.
• Fortunately, we still had some sweets leftover and the weather was perfect for walking. We walked to a spot which has a small cherry blossom festival. One of the trees there was over 1200 years old, yet it was still blooming strong!
• We took the Flower line back to Nanyo and checked into our ryokan, Morinoyu. We didn't see any English speakers in their staff, so my wife's basic Japanese was definitely helpful. Service was excellent, despite our communication barrier.
• For dinner, we went to 食楽亭 旭屋, which specializes in beef. Despite going to several more expensive restaurants, this was by far my favorite meal in Japan and one of the top two meals of my life. We had their specialty Shabu Shabu with their local Yonezawa beef. I don't think it was graded A5, but I honestly don't think that mattered as it still had wonderful marbling and melted in your mouth. To eat it, you take a thin slice of beef and wrap it around a bunch of spring vegetables. The mild freshness and crispness of the vegetables perfectly compliments the fatty beef. It's kind of like eating a Korean ssam but in reverse, which is so much better because you primarily taste the beef instead of the vegetable.
• After dinner, we walked around Eboshiyama Park, nearby. It's a hill with hundreds of cherry trees in full blossom. It also features the largest torii made out of a single stone. It was after dark, but they light it up at night which gives the park its own sort of beauty.
• We went back to our ryokan and soaked in the public onsens. The water had a slight sulphurous smell though I think that actually enhances the authenticity of the spring water.
• The following day, we went back to Eboshiyama Park. During the daytime, the park was even more beautiful. It felt like I was walking in Shinkai film. The best part is that there were the perfect number of people. Sometimes, you feel like you have to the park to yourself, but there are still enough to make the atmosphere more lively.

Hakone

• We went up the Hakone Ropeway. Fortunately the sky was clear and we got to see Mt. Fuji on Owakudani. We didn't have time to complete the entire loop, so we turned back from there. If you're in a hurry like us, I definitely recommend taking the bus instead of the train and cable car, which were painfully slow. We barely made it to our ryokan before their last check in time.
• Our ryokan we stayed in was Yama No Chaya. Despite being highly recommended on this sub, I personally would not recommend it. Don't get me wrong. We had fun, and it met 90% of our expectations, but it's fair to expect that extra 10% after spending almost $700. Our meals were rushed, especially breakfast. Our attendant kept on reminding us that check out was at 10:00 am despite having plenty of time. I think they were short-staffed because he always had the expression of being overwhelmed. One of the public onsens had a thin layer of oil in it, which likely came from a guest who didn't shower themselves properly. Our private onsen was beautiful, but they locked the door to the outside because there was construction underneath.
• The Open Air Museum featured a lot of interesting sculptures, and we took the bus there this time.

Kyoto Highlights

• Fushimi Inari is as lovely as it appears on social media. We arrived at 9 am, which we thought was late, but there were fewer people than I expected, especially in the upper area.
• Roketsu is a fun studio where you can make your own indigo textiles. It is much easier than it looks to make something beautiful.
• Saiho-ji is a Japanese Buddhist temple that features a large garden covered in 120 types of moss. Due the limited reservations, our visit was quite peaceful.
• My favorite overall dinner in Kyoto was Soba-no-Mi Yoshimura. They have an English menu, but their Japanese menu has a lot more options, such as the 100% buckwheat soba that I ordered. My wife got the traditional nishin (herring) soba, which was also delicious. The best part was honestly the tempura.
• We had a couple of traditional Kyoto-style kaisekis, and both were excellent. Iharada was a great overall value and service was impeccable. Kiyama was more of a splurge, but also worth the price. Every other tasting menu I've experienced has aimed to present dishes with a wow factor, but each course here elegantly embodied delicacy.

Osaka Highlights

• I've never seen dolphins so active than the ones at the Osaka Aquarium.
• Hajime is a 3 Michelin star restaurant where I had the most exquisite meal I've ever had in my life. Every course was a work of art. I posted a full review on /finedining.
• We had Okonomiyaki and yakisoba at Ajikuraya. It was a tiny fraction of the price of our previous dinner, but equally as memorable.

Koyasan

• Our last stop was Koyasan, a mountain with a Buddhist temple settlement. Honestly, at this point, we were all templed-out, but it still offered a distinct experience from the other ones we've visited.
• We stayed at Ichijo-In, which is a functioning temple and lodging of pilgrims. We aren't religious, but almost all of the other guests seemed to be quite serious. The walls of the temple are quite thin, and it got quite chilly in April, so I'd be cautious if you want to book this in the winter.

7 years ago a buddy and I had been smoking a bowl and cruising dirt roads in the small town of Lake Odessa located in Ionia County. Mid conversation we both stopped fixated on something in the sky. By the size of the thing I had guessed it to be a plane of some sort, but suddenly we seen the wings of the plane arch as if they had been flapping. We drove out of sight of the thing and by the time we’d regained our bearings and turned around to see if it was still their it was gone. Normally when I tell this story people argue one of two things, “you were too high to see it clearly” had it just been me that had seen it I might believe that but the fact that my friend seen it to? I don’t buy it. We were both big stoners at the time and the amount we’d consumed was very light to our usual amount. The second argument that people say is that it was probably a lot smaller than we thought, but it wasn’t just that bird that was in the sky there were geese as well so we had a very good idea of depth perception, plus humans spend enough time looking up we know when we something the size of a plane or the size of a goose no matter how far away.
The more people I tell this story to the more I hear similar stories. Whole construction crews seeing a giant bird in ionia, it flew over someone’s car in Lake Odessa, people spending time on Jordan lake, and another where it flew between rain clouds during a thunderstorm. It seems to mostly be in Ionia County, if anybody else has similar sightings please tell them here.