Mexican train dominoes origin

Take me back to the start. 2001, the last of the good times for a lot of us who were relatively grown up and not tiny kids at that point due to a certain horrific event we would all witness that year. Watching this season was a nostalgia trip for so many reasons; social media wasn't a thing, cell phones were still in their infancy especially compared to now, the internet was a thing obviously but not to the point where there was a massive presence for any of the contestants, the show was in standard definition, Phil?... actually, that dude hasn't aged much, WTF lol. It's almost like this was just a big experiment, considering all the changes made since and in some cases the very next season. The overall aesthetic was peak 90's - early 00's, the editing, cinematography, etc felt very much like The Real World (makes me wonder if there was some crossover in terms of people working on both shows), and as a 90s kid this made me smile. You get the sense there was a general attitude of "To hell with polish, just film it and whatever shakiness there is we'll leave it, even if it's an awkward super zoom into a contestants face). Plus, another ode to the time period is that there was a particular focus on the interpersonal dynamics within the teams and between them as opposed to more strict focus on the race itself which happened later on, which has its good and bad merits. Bottom line is this felt like a gamble that the producers and network took to take advantage of the reality tv boom, I remember how Survivor premiered and EVERYONE was watching it at some point, even I wound up watching the final few episodes of that first season. After that, it just exploded and how ironic that a few decades later, out of all that came from that time specifically that it is these 2 shows that are still going. One very creepy thing which almost happened was the finish line being the top of the World Trade Center, but they couldn't get the needed permits, and the show premiered 6 days before 9/11, so as I alluded to at the very start, it really is like watching a completely different world when you watch this season for many reasons and the nostalgia hit me hard a lot of times in good and bad ways. But what about the season itself?....
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Rob/Brennan - The first winners are photogenic attorney friends. I have to admit, these 2 didn't make much of an impression on me at all. It's not that they were bad racers, or bad people, as they actually seemed rather kind and intelligent (lawyers, so of course), but I felt they were rather bland TBH. After they won the first ever leg in show history thanks to the fastforward (which was available in every leg, something they thankfully changed), they hit a snag in Tunisia and were on the verge of being eliminated and were one of the teams which got infuriated at airportgate (which I will get into later), but then they really hit their stride once they hit Asia, and wound up winning 4 of the last 5 legs. I know it doesn't seem like I have a ton to say about them, but the truth is they weren't particularly charismatic or even featured in a starring way til it got down to the end legs. A great all-around team, but not really one I ever got behind. I found it interesting that post-race, Brennan was with Emily for a time, unlike other seasons I never got those vibes from any interactions between them but they must have been there. I do know they had befriended both Nancy and Emily during the race and were a part of the airportgate situation and were pretty pissed off about it; like they said, you don't treat women like that if you're a guy.
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Frank/Margarita - Maybe the loudest team, at least he was. Seriously, the guy must have been a mute when he was a child, cause his natural tone was LOUD lol. Anyway, they were the top team going by the composite average score and by the fact they were either 1st or 2nd in the final 8 legs. Their story was an interesting one, while at the same time not ridiculously frustrating. A separated couple with a small child who part of the reason for getting on this was to work on their relationship. You immediately saw why there were issues with them; as he is constantly yelling and flexing, ultra-competitive, making alliances which last just a few minutes before his massive pride has him essentially saying to hell with that. And at times, he even shouted and yelled at her, not necessarily out of anger but his way of motivating, and she showed her disdain for that often. But; there was actual growth from him, as he wound up apologizing when he reached maximum dickhead mode, something I am not accustomed to seeing on here. And, they wound up falling for each other all over again, which was shown more than once, which even if you weren't a fan of theirs, was a bit heartwarming. I thought they had it in the final stretch, going to their literal backyard for the finish line, and they felt it too which may have been their undoing. Thanks to the production and camera work, you literally saw as they were jogging to the finish line the emotions on their faces go from joy and relief to downtrodden when they saw the team they were head-to-head with for what felt like most of the race with how the final legs were strung out, already there. I was not surprised to find out they did indeed reconcile, but then split for good and remained friends, which is cool to know.
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Joe/Bill - Team Guido, sigh. I love that they named their team after their dog, but beyond that, ugh. The ego and smarminess oozed off these guys almost from the start. They made multiple alliances but were so full of themselves that they would break them almost instantly, constantly bragging about how they had lived in Paris, they spoke French, they had traveled a lot. They truly thought they were better than everyone else, even saying out loud at one point that they had no competition. This behavior would be obnoxious enough from a team that was winning constantly, but they weren't. They actually only won 1 leg. Namecalling the New Yorkers by referring to them as 'The Fatties' wasn't exactly classy either. But the moment which cemented them as true douchebags was airportgate as I call it. They flip out when they find out that 3 teams managed to get a flight which would get them to the next destination first, ahead of them, when they had just been beaming over getting what they thought was gonna be the earliest flight. And their response was the mature thing to do obviously; going to the entrance as they were getting ready to board and blocking them and causing a massive commotion to try and keep them from getting on the plane. Security gets involved and at some point one of them pushes/physically restrains the smallest and oldest member of those 3 teams in Nancy, almost knocking her down. That was a scummy and cowardly thing to do, bottom line. They tried to retcon it afterwards, talking about how Kevin/Drew started it with their sarcastic yet threatening talk of breaking their legs earlier that day, and yes that was a bit much and I would be inclined to give them some benefit of the doubt there, except they didn't put hands on either of them and just so happened to target the physically weakest member in that crowded confined space. Now, due to it being so confined, we could only see so much and thus didn't experience the whole thing, but at this point it went from these guys are jerks in terms of strategy or whatever to they are massive pieces of shit. And they were treated as such basically the rest of the race, except by Nancy and Emily of all teams (I don't get that, Emily seemed like she wanted to push them off a cliff and then a few legs later they are hugging?). Their egos were their downfall, as they won a fastforward in Thailand and proceeded to almost get eliminated anyway by taking their sweet time to get to the pitstop. After that, they were hours behind the top 2 teams and as far back as an entire day before getting the clue that told them the race was over as they were still out in the wilderness. They were good sports about it, and even when they won the fastforward, tried to help out Nancy/Emily a bit which was shocking, but they left a bad taste in my mouth, and at times it seemed like they were a little too inspired by the first Survivor winner in fellow gay man Richard Hatch, they even talked a lot like him in terms of vocabulary and their approach to the race. I know they did pop up again in another season, and I admit they were certainly memorable, though not for good reasons.
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Kevin/Drew - I know from looking into this season afterwards that they were the fan favorites this season, and while they weren't my favorite I can see why. They weren't deceivers, they didn't hide their true feelings, they were who they were and loud about it. Their preferred form of talking to each other was insults and putdowns, true guy friends there lol. They were all over the place in this race; at the bottom, at the top, in the middle. Their elimination basically came from the dreaded luck of the taxi driver, even if they had survived they were destined for third place with how far apart they were from the top 2 teams. There was a charm in their upfront attitudes, but some things made me shake my head, like saying Paris was nothing special, being a little too upfront about their disdain for India and them jokingly (maybe) telling Team Guido they would break their legs. But also, like Rob/Brennan, they befriended Nancy/Emily and almost saw them as their own mother and sister. I know they said it would be more beneficial to keep them around than one of the stronger teams, but you could tell by basic body language it wasn't just strategy and that they truly liked them. They were infuriated more than anyone after airportgate, and they made sure Team Guido knew it. I know they came back for an all-star season and also know Drew has had a variety of ailments and injuries unfortunately.
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Nancy/Emily - They might have been my favorite team. Nancy reminded me a lot of my Mom in terms of her kindness but was really most similar to a great Aunt of mine, extremely faithful, prudish but not in a judgmental way but more of a hearing so much cursing and such made smoke go out her ears cause she is that innocent lol. I got to admit, Emily was someone who if I had been watching at the time I would have had a major crush on and even now I thought she was really cute and before anyone comes at me, I am actually several years younger than her and she was an adult at the time and is now a 43 year old wife and mom (way to make me feel old after seeing her be like a kid at times on here lol). Maybe the original underdog story, they even had a little faction on the show they called 'The Underdogs'. It was an interesting switch on the usual dynamic, as Emily took the lead role on the team as Nancy was rather meek and got flustered easily, though as the end neared for them they both were showing signs of having nothing left in the tank. I pointed out Emily was quite cute, even when she had that drastic hairdo change a few legs in (my biggest remaining question of this season is did she do that herself or did someone else do it and if so, why? Boredom? Early-00s fashion? I wasn't a girl at that time, I was busy dressing like a nu-metal punk with spiked hair and playing Playstation, female fashion trends didn't come on my radar lol). She pulled it off, but I remain curious. Anyway, the point I was trying to make was about her being the attractive one there, and it played into things in a good and bad way. Good and sweet when in Tunisia a whole horde of guys her age and younger volunteering to help the team out and Nancy being quick to point out it was probably because they thought she was cute (they weren't nearly as enthusiastic to help out any of the other teams). The bad coming in, sigh, India, where Emily gets propositioned on the street by a guy asking how much she charges. Holy shit, India was a major issue from the very beginning on this show in regards to female contestents, as they were repeatedly refused train tickets as well just because they were women and women are below rats there in terms of rights and importance. And this was where the beginning of the ned came for them, as they were both being swarmed by these males with zero boundaries as well as being deeply affected by the massive poverty, seeing dirty impoverished kids and babies coming up to their taxi, begging, staring, they were barely holding back tears. All of the teams dealt with seeing these things, and being hounded by people begging, but it really hit these two the hardest which was only amplified by the sexism and Emily cracked, she was calling them stupid out of frustration and it didn't get better in Thailand, as Team Guido once again prevailed over them, this time in a race for the fastforward and then they walked around for a few hours trying to find the vehicle the next clue directed them to and no one was being of any help and she just plain and simply says "Screw you" to one of the Thai people and they wind up giving up and taking a taxi to the pitstop. You could call them out for all of this, but it was just a buildup of stress and anxiety which finally broke them. Think about it; the airport incident which really upset Emily, as she was saying do what you want to her but not her Mom (whose biggest concern afterwards was the image this put out of American tourists, not even thinking about herself), they kept on coming in at the back of the pack, the India degradation and claustrophobia-inducing chaos there, coming in 2nd to Guido yet again and then not being able to find anyone to assist them. I said to myself a few legs prior that Emily was showing some fight still but they both just seemed completely battered and defeated and Nancy even admitted as much. And the saddest thing is, they would have moved on if they had just persisted with the task in Thailand due to Bill/Joes epic mistake, they would have finished ahead of them. And making it extra heartbreaking was finding out afterwards that Nancy died in 2011 of Lou Gehrigs disease, which is just among the worst ways to go. Thinking back on it, Nancy may have been showing a few early signs of it during this :-( Just a sad story, Emily is apparently doing fine, she was with Brennan for a while after the race (which raised my eyebrow, considering in interviews before the race she talked about her boyfriend at home more than once, I hope she didn't screw around on him during the race). But still, hard to not root for them and if I had been watching at the time, Emily would have been my first crush on the show FWIW lol.
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Lenny/Karyn - This was a frustrating team to watch as it went on. I am just thankful they weren't married or engaged before this, cause they found out they were not meant to be during this. She says she was ultra-competitive, I say she was the definition of a nag, just incessantly chastising him and the longer it went on it spread to drivers and other public people as well. He wasn't innocent himself; routinely mocking her and being a complete dumbass, like in Paris he goes up to look for the monument and just immediately gives up and then just guesses (wrong) and they would have been gone right then and there if Emily hadn't inadvertently helped him find it. Talk about coldhearted though at the end, where she proceeds to end their relationship and lists every reason why. On national TV. I mean, damn that was brutal, you could see him just leaving his body as she went on and explained basically all his flaws and failings, WTF. They did indeed break up right after, though they said it wasn't because of the race, which I kinda agree with since these fissures were gonna explode regardless of what they were doing. He got married and has a few kids and she started a law firm, so I'm sure she isn't hurting for $$$ lol.
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Paul/Amie - They were opposites, which made me wonder how they got engaged. She was competitve and he wanted to quit every five minutes. That was the tale of this team, and I wanted to genuinely smack this guy. Every leg, he is bitching and whining about wanting to go home, wanting to quit. Struggling to get a taxi? Let's quit. Taking too long at a task? Let's quit. Pulled a muscle? Time to quit. Hard time taking a dump? Let's go home, I quit. It was like a cuckoo clock set to go off every hour with this douchebag. He tried to make excuses a few times during it, saying he was only saying things like that cause he hated to see her get upset, BS dude, you just are being a little bitch, trying to break the telescope in Paris and kicking things as you threaten to, what else, quit. If she had an equal partner in this, this team would have gone much further. Instead, she had a big baby who said he didn't want to do this and was only there for her (to what, make her miserable?). Their end came via getting lost in the Sahara Desert, talk about nightmare fuel there, and they were so lost they wound up driving to the back of the pitstop somehow. She's throwing up in the back of the car, it was torturous to view. They did indeed get married several years later, but are no longer together (damn, none of these couples survived, kinda sad to see). Her near-catfight with the teachers was humorous though, even yelling at one point "You're a fat bitch!" (somewhere, Nancy turned beet red lol).
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Dave/Margaretta - Probably the first team in TAR history to inspire the "Awww" feeling. Immediately, you saw it was gonna be a struggle for them physically due to the age differences, in the very first leg they could have gotten the fastforward but they got outpaced by Rob/Brennan and had to struggle their way back up after struggling all the way down. They continued to persevere though, and continued to struggle, like completely passing the clue in Paris and getting penalized at the start of the next leg as a result. Along the way, they did inspire the other couples with their amazing relationship and love, and provided some insight I actually hadn't thought of before, specifically about how these are all good people who are thrust into an intense, super-competitive, high pressure situation which is also exhausting and that will bring out the worst in people. They were truly kind people to the very end, which was frustrating to see it end sooner than it probably should have, as their taxi driver was an asshole for lack of a better term and was refusing to take U.S. money and arguing with them. And seeing a bunch of the teams at their elimination saying their goodbyes and paying their respects to them (which happened several times this season, can't recall seeing that in any other seasons) just drove home the point these were good people. Finding out that several years later, Dave would lose his soulmate to after a multiyear battle with cancer and pulmonary fibrosis was quite sad to hear, he is still going last I checked but you could tell they were 2 peas in a pod so that was extremely sucky news.
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Pat/Brenda - The first team to go from 1st to eliminated in the span of 1 leg, not a great achievement. They never exhibited the mental togughness I think you need to really compete in this though, as they were freaking out at the airport prior to Paris over issues with flights. They had the fastforward, like, no reason to flip your lid. Unless you get there 10 hours after everyone else I think you'll be fine. But then, they made the huge mistake of going to the wrong Pantheon and get eliminated. They seemed like solid enough people, but I never thought they were a threat in this.
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Kim/Leslie - They were teachers and yet repeatedly did stupiud things and said they were stupid... that makes one feel so secure about the countrys future lol. They weren't good, came off as mean girls (to Amie anyway, though I found out afterwards they were quite the class clowns during their time on there), and were lost on both legs. And yet their run ends because of a damn taxi driver arguing with them over change. Nancy/Emily seemed friends with them, and they both attended one of their weddings a while later. I know Leslie is married with 3 kids and Kim has 2 kids, I assume she is married too judging by her last name being different. They just went on to normal lives it seems.
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Matt/Ana - Forever famous for being the very first elimination in TAR history. Hard to say a whole lot about a team that is gone after one leg, I do know they did get divorced at some point later on. They did get pretty testy with the locals in Africa though for not being able to tell them where a location was. They wouldn't have been eliminated, but they got really lost on their way to the pitstop and thus arrived last. If they hadn't gotten so lost, I would have been deprived of the Nancy/Emily team which would have made this a worse season for sure.
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I can see why this became a sensation of its own, though not on the level of the absolutely top tier of reality/game shows, in terms of ratings and buzz that is, like Survivor, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and (ugh) Big Brother. A pretty good and challenging path, though no trip to South America, and there was certainly a novelty and uniqueness of taking these teams from all kinds of backgrounds and forcing them to travel the world as fast as possible, culture and language issues be damned. A bonus in some eyes would be a lack of stars or 'celebrities' or stunt casting, save for Team Guido who really seemed like they were trying to be what Richard Hatch was to Survivor. You had everyday friends, family and couples racing for the million dollar prize but also being friends for the most part, I think in part because they were enjoying this unique experience and in part because they knew they were a part of something special. Just seeing the way a lot of teams would gather at every pit stop to say their goodbyes and pay their respects to whoever got eliminated was such a departure from the likes of a Survivor, where you had people doing everything but wish death on the other (and I think even that happened once) and that is as much of a reason for TAR thriving and survivng as anything else. So much has changed since then; HD is the standard now, everyone is on about 5 different social media platforms, so many of the casted are already known figures in this era of no anonymity, cameras are always on you somehow, and have it ingrained in them to have a motto of "how many likes can I get and what will generate the most clicks?". Such a different world, and seeing the ages of the contestants from this season now makes me feel old lol (the youngest is now in her 40s and married, I see her on here and she's a college kid who looks like she is still in high school). This was far from a perfect season, a lot of drag in the latter stages due partly to the massive separation that developed between the top 2 teams and bottom 2 teams and later with the top 2 and 3rd place team and partly due to what seemed like an attempt to get to 13 episodes by any means necessary which led to a bit too much filler content which easily could have been trimmed and just felt like they were desperately trying to reach the episode quota. Also had a string of production issues and errors which led to teams placements getting changed, time credits being given, a pit stop being moved due to dangerous weather conditions (which they had no control of obviously, but it counts) and it was not exactly the most challenging in terms of roadblocks and detours, as they really seemed to make it so that the biggest challenge of the race was the actual traveling part, luckily in future seasons they managed to get a better balance so that you had to put max effort into everything and not just the tasks. But for several endearing people and teams, seeing some amazing sights around the world like the Great Wall and that waterfall in south Africa which you didn't get to see unless you read or watched National Geographic up to that point, the final sights of a simpler and better world for a lot of us millennials, the groundbreaking nature of the show, the camaraderie between a lot of teams, knowing with hindsight this was the start of something awesome and a flashback and massive shot of nostalgic warmth to days where I didn't have gray hairs popping up or injure my back from sleeping the wrong way (too many mosh pits lol), I give this inaugural season a 3.75 out of 5. As you can see, that puts it pretty high up there, but it comes up short of reaching my upper echelon. Next time, it will be a later season, since you can't go earlier than S1 lol.
Ratings:
S5 - 4.75/5
S15 -4.5/5
S13 - 4.5/5
S1 - 3.75/5
S27 - 3.5/5
S25 - 3.25/5
S21 - 3.25/5
S23 - 3.25/5
S2 - 3/5
S19 - 2.5/5
S29 - 2.5/5
S16 - 1.75/5
S32 - 0.25/5

This happens especially in strength training, ESPECIALLY if I do crunches. Why does this happen?
Male (29), 5’5”, don’t smoke or drink, no medications, live in U.S, Mexican-American, no conditions, rather skinny,

Genre: House, Tech House, Minimal / Deep Tech, Jackin House Label: Under No Illusion Release Date: 2023-03-17
DOWNLOAD in 320kbps here: https://sharing-db.club/house/426357_va-miami-sampler-2023-uni227/
Tracklist: 1. Figueredo (AR) – Just Do It (Original Mix) (6:24) 2. Dan Maloly – Crazy Train (Original Mix) (6:37) 3. Kristofferson – Pressure (Original Mix) (6:06) 4. Oravla Ziur – Paradise (Original Mix) (5:45) 5. Aldo Cadiz – On The Draft (Original Mix) (8:00) 6. Bit D3pth, Lopez UK – 21st Century (Original Mix) (6:57) 7. Valerio Bonfa, Da Night – My Eyes On You (Original Mix) (4:56) 8. Adrian Mart – F De Funk (Original Mix) (6:26) 9. Alonso Bierg, Matías Schaller – Let Your Body Flow (Original Mix) (6:33) 10. Ramon Bedoya, Yerathel – Mantra (Original Mix) (6:11)

Hello from NRW
I am originally from Germany, but due to my parents living abroad for 11 years, I received my education there. I recently translated my foreign degree for recognition in Germany, and it was deemed equivalent to a "Hauptschulabschluss nach 10 Klasse". However, I am interested in attending university and I am not sure which path to take. It appears that there are two options available to me: attending Berufschule (which I believe is equivalent to vocational training) or attending Fachoberschule. I have been working as a software developer for two years, and I am wondering if this experience could count towards a Berufschule qualification or if I would still need to complete the program.
Could you please provide guidance on the best course of action for me?
Thank you.

Blue Reflection Sun was released one month ago and after playing religiously every day (this includes waking up in the middle of the night to consume stamina, something I'll get to later on in my review), here are my thoughts. First of all, this review will not touch on the controversy regarding including the first male character in a series that features only female characters. Just let me say that after playing through the story to the latest chapter, many of the interactions/scenarios between the girls and the protagonist completely excludes the protagonist from being female. So that possibility is off the books for foreign releases or future patches. Now that that's over with, I will be reviewing the game as a standard gacha game developed and published by large companies (Koei Tecmo and DMM Games).
As a disclaimer, I have been playing gacha games for over 10 years but rarely have I played in any language other than Japanese. So while I am translating to English to the best of my ability, some terms may be wrong, though hopefully decipherable.
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Gacha
I'll start off with the crux of gacha games: the gacha. There are essentially 2 types of gacha: character and fragcard gacha. Character is self-explanatory, but fragcard is the `card` system found in some gacha - each includes a skill, which can be upgraded, and stats, which can be levelled. Characters range from 1-3 stars (can be limit broken to a maximum of 5) and fragcards which go from R→SR→UR. Each gacha can drop the other type except for at the highest rank. In other words, the character gacha can drop R and SR cards but not UR, while the fragcard gacha can drop 1-2 star characters but not 3 star.
The rates in order of ascending rarity is 77%→20%→3%. The tenth pull is 97%→3%, so in other words, at the tenth pull you are guaranteed 2★/SR or higher. There is a pity system for each gacha that does not carry over, besides the standard gacha. 200 pulls for 200 tickets will let you exchange for the featured item - this number cannot be reached without major saving or else spending money. Each event period gives you an estimated 50 pulls (this is a very rough estimate since it's still service start).
Regarding the limited gacha, So far, characters and cards have been truly limited, in that there is no plan to add them to the standard pool after the run, though the fine print states that there may be reruns (par for the course). This is great as it makes things black and white: you either pull if you want it or save if you're waiting for something else. No grey area where you want the item but you might as well wait since it will be added to the pool later.
You'll also receive a plethora of gacha tickets, but unfortunately, these can only be used one at a time (probably in order to bypass the ten pull system). Combined with the slow loading screens, using 30 or so tickets took me almost an hour...
Finally, even 1 star characters can be easily limit broken to 5 stars, which makes it so that there are no useless characters. Of course, a 3→5★ will be stronger than a 1→5★, though at the very least this means that you'll still have viable characters even if you get horrible pulls.
All this to say that, the rates don't feel unfair, and even when you pull a card instead of a character, Kishida's art is so pretty that it doesn't even feel all that bad. Also, just as there are no useless characters, all cards can be sufficiently powerful once limit broken and levelled up.
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Cash Shop
There is no cheap monthly pass unfortunately. Only a simple money to gem system. The most expensive item is 10,000 yen for 16,000 gems which equates to 53 pulls. This goes down to the cheapest item, 160 yen for 160 gems, which is about half a pull. One pull is 300 gems.
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Mechanics
Standard turn-based rpg with no time-delay system found in the original series. 4 elements with none of that dark/light crap (sorry, I'm just not a fan of elements that do increased damage to one another) and in rare cases, non-elemental. Each character has her own powerful skill and 2 other skills that can be equipped and switched via fragcards. This means that a character of one element can equip skills of a completely different element.
Elements do increased damage and receive less damage to/from the element that they are good against. So much so that a party strong against an element can take down enemies of twice the power rating (in my case, my party of 60,000 could take down enemies of 120,000).
Standard attacks charge SP, which is counted separately for each skill. So you can freely use each skill as soon as it is charged, without worrying about saving the SP for another skill. This is where the auto battle fails. Auto makes the characters randomly choose attack or a skill, without prioritizing fully charged skills. So that means your character may use a standard attack even when you don't need the SP. Management has said that they are planning to improve the auto system in the near future, so this may be subject to change. On the plus side, characters will focus fire enemies from right to left in auto.
Finally, characters can be `borrowed` from friends/strangers, which lets you use her skill once per battle at any time, without losing your turn. This will not activate during auto. All in all, this is to say that if there is a powerful enemy that you cannot defeat in Auto, often Manual will often enable you do so.
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Stamina
At player level 1, you start off with 51 stamina (if I remember correctly), which recovers at a rate of once every 3 minutes. Doing the math, you can see that initially 2.5 hours will give you a full charge; hardly enough to let you rest during work (let alone sleep). You'll receive a ton of stamina refill items, which is in your best to use as soon as possible to level up and increase your maximum stamina. After a month of playing, I am currently at 100 stamina - the highest leveled players I've seen are 10 levels higher, i.e. 110 stamina, which equates to 5.5 hours for a full charge - still hardly enough for a full night's sleep.
All this to say, for those of us that are very stoic about consuming stamina to never let it go full, the stamina system in this game is the most stressful I have ever experienced. It seems as if not much thought was given into either lowering the recovery rate (along with the cost of stages) or else increasing the maximum increased per level.
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PVP
There is a ranked battle system, but it's almost impossible to lose. Firstly, while the enemy team will attack randomly, your team will focus fire. Secondly, each enemy has a break meter, which when full will make them lose one turn (normal enemies also have this). This, combined with weaknesses can easily let you win fights with differences in power levels of 20,000 (or potentially higher, though I don't want to try my luck).
There is a maximum of 3 battle points, which are not refreshed daily as in most games, but gradually (1 every few hours, I haven't bothered to time how many hours). Basically you can fight much more than thrice a day. There is also a consecutive win bonus, which keeps increasing to the point that the consecutive bonus is higher than the standard win bonus. At high ranks and high consecutive wins, you will receive way more points than you need for the limited items in the battle shop.
One month in, and I along with most player I imagine, have never lost a match.
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Story and Characters
The story is not Shakespeare, nor is it Twilight. The voice acting is excellent as usual, and the story is interesting enough to keep you immersed. Each character has her own personality, motivations, and desires, which are much more rounded than the standard flat female characters born of a male mind found in most fiction. While most works feature simple anime tropes that perpetuate sexist stereotypes, the characters of brs have a certain nuanced depth, i.e. they exist as entities independent of male characters (and not as mere supports to a well-rounded male). All this to say, while there are some cringey moments, most of the characters have a certain human charm separate from a mere sexualization of the character.
The main character is also not annoyingly smart/strong or dumb/weak, i.e. he has the same attractive qualities that the girls have as well. There is a good balance in terms of character relations, though I wish they reversed the females-dependent-on-male trope more (they almost did in the beginning, but then it swung to the standard MAN DO EVERYTHING AND WOMAN LIKE STRONG MAN caveman mindset...).
In terms of character design, Kishida's design is top notch as always, showing that not only is he talented in bishoujo design, but even his bishounen are pretty as hell. Personally, I cringe at the hairstyles/fashion/makeup/design of most anime because you can tell these were men creating women, 10 years behind the current fashion. Kishida, however, I always imagine him spending hours every day on Instagram absorbing all the latest trends. His characters' hairstyles and fashion really show this and adds a certain believability (most other works of fiction make me groan "no woman would be caught dead in such a mismatched setup" etc.).
The 3D models are also very similar to the 2D art, so thankfully there is no huge gap between the concept design and implementation. Also, most of the limited gacha outfits are so pretty, it never feels bad to pull.
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User Interface
There are certain aspects of UI that show of outdated design or a lack of knowledge of gacha design. For example, you cannot see details of a character's skill in the Training menu (where all of your owned characters are listed). Instead, you have to go to Formation, change character, and then view from there - very unintuitive, not to mention unecessary. Another is that upcoming maintenances are not announced in-game in an in-your-face sort of way. You have to check the once-a-day announcement or else follow their Twitter closely. Very frustrating, which I'll go into more detail in the next section.
Besides a few grave errors, most of the UI design is non-problematic, and likely to improve as hinted in an upcoming update. Much of the UI design (along with the sound and music) from the main series is brought over to the gacha game as well, which fans will enjoy.
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Management/Operations
This is the most frustrating thing about this game. Luckily, if there is an English release, you might not have to deal with this if you end up with a better English team. To sum up why, basically the 運営 (I think this translates to management or operations in English) of KT/DMM does not feel like part of a company with decades of experience; they feel like a small indie developeself-publisher that has no experience handling sudden errors.
In the first week especially, there were lots of server crashes and emergency maintenances to fix a lot of the problems. Server crashes are unexpected, but I have never seen a company handle maintenances so poorly. Apart from the lack of in-game announcement interface mentioned in the previous section, there were times when the Twitter announcement was only a few minutes in advance. Completely unacceptable in Japanese society, especially so in customer-service relations. To add to this, stamina fills up fast, which only adds to the frustration. Such that you have to constantly log in because you're never sure when the next maintenance will come.
As a side note, post-mortem of the server crashes found that they were due to high access traffic "overseas." Obviously we all knew this meant China bots once again ruining a party that they weren't invited to. Perhaps future games would do well to always cordon off a China server for the safety of Japan, but that's another story for another day.
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Final Thoughts
I am a big fan of DMM/Exnoa published games; they often publish many obscure developers, most of which are terrible, but every once in a while, there is a hidden gem. So it pains me to be so critical of their handling of this game, because I know they can do better. On the other hand, Koei Tecmo did an alright job of bringing a console/PC game to mobile, and if they are as willing to improve based on feedback as promised, then there may yet be hope for this game.
Regardless, after one month, I am still highly enjoying this game. The sounds, visuals, gameplay loop just hit all the right places for me, so I am looking forward to future updates and improvements. Those that have more free time than me may find that there is not enough to do in-game, but for relatively busy adults, this may just be the game for you.
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P.S. Thank you for making it to the end of this long review. If you wish to comment, please refrain from bashing the game, developers, publishers, etc. for introducing a male character. You can gripe about that in a different thread, but this is not the place for that. Productive comments regarding gameplay or similar are welcome.

Hey folks - it's about that time again that I need to restock on Beast Balls. This will be an auction-style thread, meaning the person with the highest Beast Ball offer will be the winner of the particular shiny.
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1) Shiny Dragonite Details:
A lot of time and effort went into building this beauty. She has played a big role in VGC to get me to Masterball Rank and beyond. Hoping she can be the same for you!
- Pokemon: Shiny Dragonite - Nickname: Winning bidder to customize - OT/ID: LtSplurge / 398861 - Method Obtained: Mass Outbreak + Sandwich - Gender: F - Ball: Beast - Ability: Inner Focus - Original Nature: Jolly (minted for Adamant) - EV Spread: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Spe - IVs: Hyper Trained (HT) / HT / HT / Pretty Good / HT / HT - Tera: Normal - Held Item: Lum Berry - Moveset: Tailwind / Extreme Speed / Dragon Claw / Iron Head *Additional Available Moves: Protect / Ice Spinner / Earthquake - Ribbons: Master Rank / Paldea Champion / Effort
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2) Shiny Charmander and Others:
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Shiny	Ball	Mark	Nature	Method Obtained	OT / ID	Notes
Charmander	Beast	N/A	Timid	Matsuda Method	LtSplurge / 398861	Freshly hatched, untouched. No egg moves. Best IVs for everything, except HP (Pretty Good)
Raichu	Premier	N/A	Modest	Shiny Charm	LtSplurge / 398861	N/A
Magikarp	Premier	N/A	Brave	Sandwich+Shiny Charm	LtSplurge / 398861	N/A
Gyarados	Premier	N/A	Relaxed	Sandwich+Shiny Charm	LtSplurge / 398861	N/A
Iron Hands	Pokeball	N/A	Relaxed	Sandwich+Shiny Charm	LtSplurge / 398861	N/A
Magikarp	Pokeball	N/A	Rash	Sandwich+Shiny Charm	LtSplurge / 398861	N/A
Rookidee	Pokeball	N/A	Docile	Sandwich+Shiny Charm	LtSplurge / 398861	N/A

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I will let this thread run for a bit. Depending on the number of bidders for a particular shiny, I will likely set a deadline for bids to continue until. Once a deadline has been set, I will inform all involved for awareness. At the end of the deadline, the person with the highest Beast Ball bid will be the winner!
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Best of luck to everyone <3

My name is Thomas Saul, I am a member of the Skatin Nations tribe in British Columbia, Canada. I am of Salish, and European descent. I began this project around May 2021 when news broke about the Kamloops residential school where the remains of 215 children were allegedly found. As a teenager I briefly Attended Norkam secondary in Kamloops, and have friends and family who still live in Kamloops, so this hit close to home. Upon my research into The origin of this residential school I found that Israel wood Powell, a Freemason, was the Indian Superintendent at the time it was built. Four generations of my family attended residential schools, some in Port Alberni and some Mission City, so naturally I wanted to know more. I have come to the conclusion that Colonisation, Freemasonry, and residential schools go hand in hand. Its a Fact, both the United States and Canada would not exist without Freemasonry, Therefore many Freemasons played a leading role in the genocide of Indigenous Americans. “Freemasonry, as it exists in various forms all over the world, has a membership estimated at around 6 million worldwide.”
Genocide: The UN definition, which is used in international law, states that genocide is: "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group," as such:(a) "Killing members of the group;"(b) "Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;"(c) "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;"(d) "Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;"(e) "Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
The supreme governor of the Church of England is the head of the Church of England, a position which is vested in the British monarch. The father of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 King George III was not a Freemason, George III had announced that the colonies would no longer seize Native lands or purchase them without treaties. Starting in 1763, no English settlers could legally travel through or acquire land west of the Appalachian Mountains. The proclamation specifically stated that Native Americans had been subject to “great Frauds and Abuses” and that their sovereignty should be protected. Freemason Thomas Jefferson in his list of 27 grievances accused the king saying “He has excited domestic Insurrections among us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes, and Conditions.’’ Thomas Jefferson did this to build support for the revolutionary act that the Declaration of Independence would represent. It was suspected that the Freemasons were behind the Boston Tea Party, the American War of Independence, the french revolution, and Napoleonic France triggering British prime minister William Pitt’s, the Unlawful Societies Act of 1799 where he aimed to see Freemasonry abolished. Some Freemasons addressed Pitt explaining how vast their membership is and its connection to Royalty and As a result, Freemasons were excluded from the Act, but lodges were obliged to return a list of members to the local Clerk of the Peace every year, which are recorded in the Quarter Sessions.1. King George IV reigned from the death of George III until 1830, he was the first of many British Freemason kings and was the head of the Anglican church. William IV, Edward VII, Edward VIII, George VI were also masons. In the 209 years since the Union of the Premier and Ancient Grand Lodges to form the United Grand Lodge of England, a member of the Royal Family has been its Grand Master for more than 150.
A Freemason warrant of constitution is the Document which authorizes or gives a Warrant to certain persons therein named to organize and constitute a Lodge, Chapter, or other Masonic Body. The first Warrant for a military Lodge was issued by the Grand Lodge of Ireland in 1732 to the First British Foot Regiment. Within a few years the Grand Lodge of Scotland and both the Grand Lodge of England, Modern and Ancient were issuing Warrants to military Lodges. In 1733, 18 men gathered at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern on King Street in Boston and organized the first Masonic Lodge in North America. The first record of a military Lodge Warrant being issued in the new world happened during the French and Indian Wars. It was issued by the then Provincial Grand Master at Boston to the 28th British Foot in an expedition against the French at Crown Point. Edward Cornwallis became founder in December 1748, of a military Lodge in his regiment, the 20th. Foot, No. 63, on the registry of the Grand Lodge of Ireland. The warrant was issued to Lord George Sackville, Lieut. Col. The Hon. Edward Cornwallis and Captain Milburne. When in 1759 this famous regiment gained new honors at the battle of Minden, that name was immediately adopted as the name of the lodge. Cornwallis’ second lodge was founded in Halifax early in 1750 or possibly earlier, under a “deputation” or dispensation from Major Erasmus James Philipps of the 40th. Regiment at Annapolis Royal, Provincial Grand Master for Nova Scotia under Henry Price of Boston. Of this lodge, known as the First Lodge, Cornwallis was the first Master. Cornwallis In October 1749, issued an order that came to be known as the Scalping Proclamation. His government would pay a bounty to anyone who killed a Mi’kmaq adult or child in a bid to drive them off mainland Nova Scotia.
Sir William Johnson, an agent for the British Indian Department met Joseph Brant, a 9-year-old Mohawk boy while doing a land deal with Joseph's father King Hendrick. Sir William eventually started a common-law relationship with Joseph's sister Molly giving him incredible power over her tribe. Johnson groomed young Joseph Brant to become a loyal warrior and eventually leader of the six nations tribe. At 13 years old Joseph accompanied Johnson on his first tour with the military. Missionary Samuel Occham, a student of Eleazar Wheelock (father of The Great Awakening) procured a 19-year-old Joseph Brant to attend Moore's Indian charity school in Lebanon Connecticut with the blessings and charity of William Johnson. Freemasons Benjamin Franklin and Benedict Arnold had also donated money to Wheelock’s cause. William was the British Crown's first superintendent of Indian Affairs for the colony in 1756 and Joseph Brant was appointed as a captain in the Indian Department. Many Freemason colonists were high-ranking military who waged many wars on the Indigenous American population, scientists say so many Indigenous people were killed as a result of colonization it caused a mini ice age. After the North American wars, many Freemasons took positions as Indian agents helping to remove and segregate the native population. Anyone who wanted access to the six nations had to go through Indian agent Sir William Johnson and his family which includes the Brant family and the Kerr family through various marriages. At one point Johnson proposed that the moor's Indian Charity School move from Lebanon, Connecticut, to Johnstown but it never happened. Eventually, Johnson withdrew the support for Wheelock. In a letter Wheelock had suggested to Lord Dartmouth "The Nations will not make war with us while their Children, and especially the Children of their chiefs are with us” Dartmouth college claims that In 1766, Johnson was invited to join the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), the largest and most influential Anglican missionary society in the 18th-century British-Atlantic world. He began working to place Anglican missionaries like Freemason and bishop Charles Inglis, rather than Congregationalist and Presbyterian ones, among the Six Nations. I believe Moore's dubbed “the great design” was the original model for the Mohawk Institute and the Canadian residential school system.
On April 10, 1766 Sir William Johnson was raised to the position of Master Mason of St Patrick's Lodge No. 4 where many Freemason Indian agents like John Butler, Guy Johnson, Sir John Johnson, William Johnson Kerr, Christian Daniel Claus, Gilbert Tice, George Croghan and A protégé of Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, Rev. Samuel Kirkland attended. In 1770 Johnson's fellow St Patrick's lodge Freemason Rev. Samuel Kirkland coincidentally parted ways with Wheelock and Moors charity school. Eventually Kirkland founded the Hamilton-Oneida Academy as a boys' school in central New York. In 1776 Joseph Brant was initiated into the Freemason fraternity in London England where it is rumoured a benefactor of Moors charity school king George III gave Brant his masonic apron. When Brant returned to Canada he became affiliated with Lodge No. 11 at the Mohawk village on the Grand River, of which he was the first Worshipful Master, and later affiliated with Barton Lodge No. 10. Joseph Brant invited fellow Freemason and grandson of Eleazar Wheelock to be a minister to the Mohawk. To Joseph It was imperative that Freemason Rev. Davenport Phelps was made minister of the Mohawks, so he reminded the Bishop, through Sir John, of the pledge which the Archbishop of Canterbury had made to him in the presence of the King, that whenever the Indians, by the erection of a church, should be ready for religious instruction, he would do all in his power to supply their wants. A Freemason named Rev. Robert Addison helped make this happen. Mr Addison, a relative of William Johnson, had been minister to the Six Nations and Joseph Brant and Freemason John Norton were his translators. Freemason Reverend Davenport Phelps and Jarvis Wheelock, the brother of Eleazar, were invited to Canada and granted land by Freemason and founder of the family compact John Graves Simcoe, the man behind the Simcoe patent. Mrs Simcoe in her Diary says, “In April of the following year Mary Brant (sister of Freemason Joseph Brant and common-law wife of Freemason Indian agent Sir William Johnson) successfully prescribed a favourite Indian remedy, the root of sweet flag (acorus calamus), for Governor Simcoe, who had been extremely ill with a persistent cough. The medicine relieved his malady “in a very short time. This brought the Brant family and Simcoe family close together. Davenport Phelps became the Worshipful Master of The Barton Lodge under Freemason William Jarvis and he was the first chaplain at the Mohawk Chapel. Davenport was the leader of many Indian agents who were members of The Barton Lodge. I suspect Davenport's mission was to help with the so-called Indian problem.
Chief Joseph Brant has been accused on many occasions of selling off land for his own enrichment and in a lot of cases he sold land to Freemasons. He granted 999-year leases to many families, the Nelles, the Young’s, the families of Adam Young UE, his three sons, Lieutenant John Young (Indian department) UE, Sergeant Daniel Young UE, and Private Henry Young UE, along with Captain Henry William Nelles UE and his families (Rev. Abraham Nelles). Many of these Indian agents were members of The Barton Lodge. Both Captain Henry William Nelles UE and Adam Young UE, fourth great-grandfather of Robert Collins McBride UE, were also the first Freemasons to settle in Haldimand County. Freemasons Robert Kerr and Rev. Robert Addison, William Kennedy Smith, also had land there. "There were very few outright legal sales of our land; 90 per cent of the leased land has never been paid for or paid to Six Nations," according to a research document prepared by Six Nations. Many Freemasons were involved with the Simcoe patent and the Haldimand Proclamation. Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe stated that the Indians could not lease their land since British subjects could lease land only from British subjects. Freemason William Jarvis signed the Haldimand proclamation, Freemason Thomas Ridout surveyor-general was behind the Ridout survey, Freemason Sir Peregrine Maitland lieutenant governor informed them that they had no title to the northern part of the grant, Freemason John Butler acted as an agent of purchase on behalf of the government, Freemason chief John Brant) and Freemason Robert Johnson Kerr finally went to England to lobby on behalf of the Six Nations.
Freemasons King George IV, and King William IV, reigned from January 29 1820 to June 20 1837. The idea of residential school was brought forward by the Freemason Governor of Upper Canada, Sir Peregrine Maitland, within the context of a proposal he made in 1820 to the Colonial Office "for ameliorating the condition of the Indians in the neighbourhood of our settlements." Maitland's proposal contained most of the civilising concepts and techniques that would be adopted in the next three decades. The American Freemason, President Andrew Jackson succeeded in pushing the Indian Removal Act through the United States Congress in 1828 leading to the trail of tears. John Brant solicited help from the New England company to build the Mohawk institute, the first residential school in Canada. The mohawk institute operated from 1831 to June 27, 1970. John Brant appointed Rev. Abraham Nelles son of Freemason Robert Nelles as principal of the Mohawk Institute. Abraham after over 30 years was succeeded by Freemason Robert Ashton. Oronhyatekha aka Peter Martin was also a Freemason and played an important role in the development of the Mohawk Institute. The Arthur of the Historical sketch of the Barton Lodge, No. 6, G.R.C., A.F. and A.M., says “the name of Brother John Brant is connected with important events in the history of Canadian Masonry.” John Brant is responsible for the formation of at least 12 residential schools in Ontario, while Freemason Israel Powell the superintendent of Indian affairs in British Columbia Powell “was able to boast that the government had established seventeen Indian schools, one for each year in office.”. Powell sought to establish several boarding schools across the province and particularly pushed for creating a school in Kamloops to address communities in the province’s interior.The school opened in Kamloops in 1890 and became one of the largest residential schools operated by Indian Affairs. The Freemason Organisation is vicariously liable for all abuses in those residential schools.
In 1837 a Rebellion in Upper Canada was led by William Lyon Mackenzie, who was a fierce critic of Simcoe’s Family Compact, an elite clique of businessmen and many Freemasons. Mackenzie opposed a system of land grants that favored settlers from Britain. Many Freemasons such as William Botsford Jarvis and Sir Allen Napier Macnab who was Joint premier of the Province of Canada helped stop this rebellion. Sir Allen Macnab was succeeded by Freemason Sir John A. Macdonald as Joint Premier. This Rebellion of 1837, this triggered the 6th generation Freemason Lord Durham to write The Durham Report, he was appointed governor in chief of British North America. In his 1839 Report on the Affairs of British North America, he recommended that Upper and Lower Canada be united under a single Parliament, with responsible government. In 1863 a steamboat named the Brother Johnathan) carried smallpox from San Francisco to British Columbia killing 1/3rd of the Native population. Many Freemasons like Thomas Harris the first mayor of Victoria, Israel Wood Powell who served in the Victoria Rifle Volunteer Corps which was established to protect the colony from the indigenous population, Amor De Cosmos who was the extremely racist editor of The Daily British Colonist, and Ronald J. NcDonell clerk for magistrate Pemberton who forced The Nuu-chah-nulth to leave their camp, escorted by two gunboats. There are many many more who may have purposefully mishandled the smallpox epidemic of 1863. British freemason Edward Jenner created the life-saving smallpox vaccine but on the other hand Freemasons Jeffrey Amherst and Col Henry Bouquet have been accused of distributing smallpox contaminated blankets to their enemies.
As early as 1866 Israel W. Powell, with his colleague Amor De Cosmos, had proposed confederation with the Canadian colonies. Israel Wood Powell, Superintendent of Indian affairs also outlawed potlatching an indigenous ceremony In British Columbia. Following the Lord Durham’s report, Freemason Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon proposed The British North America Act, 1867 Under section 91(24) of the Constitution Act, 1867, the federal government has exclusive legislative authority for "Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians." Of the 36 Fathers of the Canadian confederation, 11 were Freemasons. One being Freemason Sir John A. Macdonald, He was named by the United Grand Lodge of England as their Grand Representative near to the Grand Lodge of Canada. Sir John A. Macdonald took a page from American Freemason Andrew Jackson's book by removing the Indigenous people from their land. He was proud that he was able to subdue the Indigenous people with less blood shed than his American brethren. One Of Macdonald's Legacies is the Canadian Pacific Railway which displaced many tribes across Canada. Sir John A. Macdonald's campaign promise in the 1870s was that he would have a railway built that would link the country from coast to coast. Freemasons Richard Marpole, Sir Sandford Fleming, Sir George J.A. Bury And the Chinese Freemasons of Vancouver and Alberta made Macdonald’s promise come true. As quickly as the railroad was laid Freemason lodges were erected. Louis Riel a Métis hero, led two resistance movements against the Government of Canada and its Freemason Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald. Riel sought to defend Métis rights and identity. The Wolseley expedition was a military force authorized by Sir John A. Macdonald to confront Louis Riel and had been dispatched to Red River under Freemason Colonel Garnet Joseph Wolseley. Another of Mcdonald's legacies is the North West Mounted Police. Macdonald established the N.W.M.P in 1873 which boasted 750 Freemason members in its time. He claimed that “it was intended to have a body of mounted rifles to protect the people from the chance of an Indian war.’’ Meanwhile, The Pacific Scandal, the first major post-Confederation political scandal in Canada, Sir John Macdonald and senior members of his Conservative Cabinet were accused of accepting election funds for the contract to build the C.P rail.
The near completion of the railway allowed troops from eastern Canada to quickly arrive in the territory causing Riel to surrender to Canadian forces. The NWMP barracks was where Louis Riel was detained after his arrest in 1885 for leading the North-West Rebellion. Many Freemasons were involved in the defeat of Louis Riel. The RCMP museum had a display of the noose which hung Riel. Macdonald said this about Riel "He shall die though every dog in Quebec barks in his favor." John A. Macdonald is also one of the fathers of the Canadian Indian act First passed in 1876. In 1879 Freemason Nicholas Flood Davin wrote the Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds, otherwise known as The Davin Report. An amendment to the Indian Act in 1894 under Freemason Prime Minister Sir Mackenzie Bowell, made attendance at day schools, industrial schools, or residential schools compulsory for First Nations children, resulting in over 100000 Indigenous children being forcefully removed from their families by Indian agents and the RCMP. From 1740 to 1896 The Mexican government's response to the various uprisings of the Yaqui tribe have been likened to genocide particularly under Freemason Porfirio Diaz. Due to slavery and massacre, the population of the Yaqui tribe in Mexico was reduced from 30,000 to 7,000 under Diaz's rule. One source estimates at least 20,000 out of these Yaquis were victims of state murders in Sonora. It was during this period of the conflict that the United States Army fought the last battle of the American Indian Wars, the final battle being the Wounded Knee Massacre December 29, 1890, and in the subsequent Drexel Mission Fight the next day. In recent history the statues of Freemason John A. Macdonald, Freemason Edward Cornwallis, Freemason George Washington, Freemason Lawrence Sullivan Ross, Freemason Robert E. Lee and Andrew Jackson have all been vandalized but no mention of their affiliation to the Freemasons in the news. We can't point fingers at the church or government without first confirming whether or not the accused are Freemasons. The Order of the Eastern Star, Job's Daughters, and Rainbow Girls are masonic fraternities for women such as the daughter, widow, wife, sister, or mother of a Master Mason. All masons will cry out that Freemasonry has nothing to do with what an individual member has done, yet they all praise these men and prop them up as heroes. Freemasons claim to have superior morality compared to the average person, that they are the most honorable men on the planet, yet they refuse to acknowledge their members role in the genocide of the Indigenous Americans.
You may believe Freemasons are irrelevant nowadays but that is far from true. Winston Churchill is regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century. Churchill was initiated into Studholme Lodge No. 1591 on 24 May 1901. He said of the Pashtun people “all who resist will be killed without quarter,” Pashtun territory was occupied by the British in 1848 and divided into two areas. Winston Churchill's policies caused a famine that claimed more than 3 million Indian lives during the The Bengal famine of 1943. President Harry Truman, known as one of the most dedicated men to have joined Masonry on the morning of August 6, 1945, ordered an American B-29 bomber to drop two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians. John Edgar Hoover, more commonly referred to as J. Edgar Hoover, was an American attorney and director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Hoover was raised on November 9th 1920 in Federal Lodge No. 1 in Washington D.C. In 1919 Hoover became the head of the Bureau of Investigation's (predecessor of the FBI) new General Intelligence Division. The division was also called the Radical Division because it was the task of the division to find radical elements in American society to monitor and disrupt their activities. The Duke of Kent was initiated as a Freemason in Royal Alpha Lodge No. 16 in London on 16 December 1963. The Duke of Kent, is now UGLE’s longest-serving Grand Master. The Duke’s brother, Prince Michael of Kent, is also a Freemason and is Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons, and Provincial Grand Master of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Middlesex. On 6 March 1953, HRH Prince Philip progressed to the Second Degree of Freemasonry, before advancing to the Third Degree on 4 May 1953.
I encourage those who have been affected by the actions of Freemasons to begin a class action lawsuit against this organization in what ever country, state or province you live in and hold Freemasonry accountable for genocide. The first thing a Freemason will say when presented with this evidence is you don't know how masonry operates, that the lodge is not responsible for individual members actions. That is exactly what the Catholic church said before the Canadian Court of Appeal on July 28, 2020 had found the Archdiocese vicariously liable for abuses committed by a civilian employee. I witnessed countless people stand up against the Catholic Church for what they have done and the Pope came to Canada and apologized. Now it's time to turn your sight toward Freemasonry. You must understand that all Freemasons on the American contenent have greatly benefited from the genocide of Indigenous Americans.
“ Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's acceptance of an inquiry's finding that Canada committed genocide against Indigenous people could have tremendous legal impact if a court ever weighs Ottawa's responsibility for crimes against humanity, experts say.”
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/trudeau-s-acknowledgment-of-indigenous-genocide-could-have-legal-impacts-experts-1.5457668
"I didn't use the word genocide because it didn't come to mind but I described genocide," Pope Francis told reporters on the papal flight from Iqaluit to Rome on Friday.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/pope-francis-residential-schools-genocide-1.6537203
“The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.”
― President John F. Kennedy
“President Kennedy issued an Executive Order prohibiting use of facilities on military bases by groups not integrated. The result was to bar Masonic lodges from using the bases.” Masonic Parallels with History - A Chronology of General and Masonic History by Alphonse Cerza. themasonictrowel
THE MILITARY AND FREEMASONRY
Freemasonry in Nova Scotia
Freemasonry at the Two Sieges of Louisbourg 1745 and 1758
Freemasonry in Quebec
Sir William Johnson, the Brant family, the Kerr family and the British Indian Department
MOOR’S INDIAN CHARITY SCHOOL
Mohawk Institute (Mush Hole)
The rebellion of 1837
Manitoba Freemasons
Saskatchewan Freemasons
North-West Rebellion
Provincial Premiers Alberta masons
The Canadian Pacific Railway
Smallpox epidemic of 1862
British Columbia Freemasons
Freemason Prime Ministers
American Freemasons and the genocide of the
Indigenous peoples.
Spanish Freemasons
Royal Freemasons
300 Years of Freemasonry Celebrated at Royal Albert Hall Global Event
Freemasonry according to Masons.
The Fourth Council of Toledo Canon 60 and Indian Residential Schools
Sources
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQ4QiANX3BnEdEwD94FXfh1Nkg_RJ-XN5UhN0_gLX10isR2i08xUziA9ZX7sErUMdp4PTKKPhP0P7F2/pub#h.fpjzhjnusgk1

Posted on letsrun too, however they seem far too occupied with Seth Demoor and trans athletes to give meaningful advice.
Does anyone have experience with "hip flexor" pain? More specifically the pain seems to originate in my Glute Med, Tensor Fascia Latae, and Sartorius in my upper hip near the pelvis. My Glute Med seems to be tight when rolling with a softball, and the release brings some relief but it is short lived. I have sharp pain when raising my knee and using these muscles, and I also have sharp pain down the outside of my thigh near the IT band when my foot strikes the ground. I have done a lot of rolling and massage with a softball, large PVC foam roller, and massage gun. I know the answer will be to see a PT, but I am not in crippling pain, nor does it seem to be getting worse, more of an annoyance. I can't run anything under 6 minute pace at the moment, and am struggling to get any workouts in. Workouts now have been relegated to the stationary bike.
Does anyone have any idea what this could be, and should I continue massaging? It doesn't seem to help much, and in some cases irritates it more then it helps. Should I just let it rest and heal? I have been cross training the past 2 weeks but I would love to run soon as I have a half marathon race in 4 weeks. Thanks for any help.

hi im 16 and really want to work around airplanes in the future, i originally always wanted to work in the engineering aspect of it bc i grew up in an engineering environment (cars specifically) and was always scared of heights until recently, but i suck at math so pilot is the next best thing and ive decided i want to go for an ATPL when i graduate.
so ive got a few questions can i do flight training in a different country from the one i live in, like is it difficult to do that?
im 5'3 (162cm) am i too short or does it not matter?
can i take out a student loan to pay off flight school since its expensive and i definitly dont want to study near home?
i understand that you cant have any visible tattoos but what about piercings (like industrial bar and a helix or two)?
and finally how often will i be away from home, what are the average work days?
i tried to do research on all these questions but came up with mixed answers so i here i am

https://www.regulations.gov/comment/NTIA-2023-0001-0020
Additionally, companies that engage in surreptitious collection and re-sale of potentially sensitive consumer data can violate individuals’ safety and privacy. As more organizations use technology to conduct their business practices, these harms and abuses will continue to grow in scale and severity.
As we have written in our comments to the National Security Commission for AI, technology should be used to solve a specific, well-defined objective. https://blog.palantir.com/palantirs-recommendations-to-the-nscai-f5d7d5dad344 /// https://www.nscai.gov/2021-final-report/
We contend that any use of technology with sensitive data should be rigorously and thoroughly scrutinized, but we should not foreclose data-driven technologies solely because of the limitations inherent in all collected datasets or algorithms.
This framing refocuses the discussion on how to make imperfect data work for imperfect environments, rather than either exalting or completely foreclosing the use of technology.
They see data and technologies not as solutions to human problems, but as just the latest way that human frailties like bias become further enshrined in cultural practices.
Both camps represent views with legitimate concerns about the world, and in the best circumstances, laudable motivations to address those concerns. Both camps also represent forms of myopic thinking that lead to miscommunication, stalemate, and often direct conflict. Both sides would benefit by bracketing their respective ideologies and examining how they each have failed in the past to carry out their objectives.
These problems accumulate along a spectrum of harms, including unreasonable flows of commercial data to government agencies, commercial surveillance practices that monetize and manipulate behavior, automated decision-making systems that unwittingly introduce or exacerbate unlawful discrimination.
And yet, commercial service providers are less constrained, and entire marketplaces have emerged for the accumulation, packaging, and reselling of digital communications information to private and public sector buyers alike.
Commercial “surveillance capitalism” does not simply seek methods of benignly monetizing our interactions with digital applications; it actually shapes our behaviors, beliefs, and interactions with the world.
Suffice to say, there are several and notably severe ways in which algorithms built to purpose can have consequential impacts on peoples’ lives: credit and lending determinations by financial institutions, candidate selection by recruiting agencies and employers, screening services by health providers, to name a few. Data evangelists who fail to acknowledge these demonstrable risks and the harms they have already effectuated on the lives of real people are living in a world of fantasy. They perpetuate a doctrine of technology salvation at the expense of not just their own credibility, but with real consequences to individuals and potentially growing backlash against even the most responsible and defensible variations of their current and future wares. Data evangelists would do well to temper their technological religiosity and spend a bit more time interacting with the people and communities their innovations ultimately exist to serve.
But this does not imply that all data and data-driven technologies should be discarded out of hand any more than individual testimonials should be dismissed as just the opinion of one or several person(s). Data may be flawed as much as human attestations may be flawed.
Dealing with the world as it is (even to the end of changing it to be otherwise) necessitates an appreciation — or at minimum, a recognition — of the ways that data and data technologies can serve as powerful tools for helping us address the compounding complexities of modern life.
The goal is not to arrive at a uniformly perfect state of affairs (an impossibility!), but to achieve outcomes that all parties should be willing to accept as imperfect relative to their respective starting positions. This goal is as much a process as it is an outcome. It ultimately reflects a shared (even if not fully agreed upon) recognition of conscious choices, necessary trade-offs, and a common vision of the practical realities of operating in a messy, imperfect world.
At Palantir, our customers use our software platforms to process their most sensitive information. Palantir does not collect, store, or broker customer data. Instead, we provide customers with software platforms to integrate, analyze, and operationalize the data they already lawfully control.
Scheduled deletion of sensitive data by default. Technologists tend to like the idea of keeping data forever in case it might prove useful at some later point. Data that is no longer necessary for a specific business purpose, however, should be deleted, especially if such data is sensitive. Storage limitation and the regular deletion of collected data can reduce the risk of data misuse or repurposing. Sensitive data such as employee information, in particular, should be stored with scheduled deletion dates by default. If scheduled deletion is not appropriate, then the employer should have the burden to explain why data should be held indefinitely. Moreover, data deletion should encompass not only the originally collected data, but also any derived data or models trained on the data. In our experience, building software with comprehensive deletion tooling can encourage privacy by default and more accountable use of sensitive data
Sensitive personnel data should always be minimized by default, and a variety of encryption, tokenization, or other pseudonymization techniques can be used to achieve this result.
In our response to the Covid-19 pandemic, we implemented Purpose-Based Access Controls (PBAC) to help customers enforce use limitation.33 This method of granular access controls enabled healthcare organizations to rapidly bring data together to respond to the pandemic, while also allowing governance teams to granularly administer and oversee the use of sensitive data.

• Technology, organizational policies, and even regional or national regulation can only adapt so quickly to the challenges of using data for mission-critical problems in practice. Data governance bodies can be another valuable source of input for understanding how a particular organizational decision would impact privacy and equity, especially in ever-changing business and regulatory environments.

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Our work has demonstrated compelling results that confirm technological development and data privacy are not mutually exclusive concepts. We hope that these case studies will help inform NTIA’s policy considerations and ultimately lead to more effective standards and expectations for data processing that protects privacy, equity, and civil rights of individuals.
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† Fin †

I am currently in the midst of horse shopping. I am looking for something safe and fun that can do the low level jumpers (2’3” up to mayyyybe 2’9” someday)
I have a decent budget and I’ve tried several horses, several whom were under budget and greener than I’d really like because they were available at my barn. I’ve now found a contender, but I’m unsure if she’s really the best fit or if it’s just that she is convenient and better than the rest. Shes below budget and being sold by a barn family, so she already settled and doing well in her living situation(the pony paddock which is cheaper than the stalls plus turnout). She’s a large pony at about 14 hands and a welsh cob so smaller than what I’d originally imagined, but I’m only 5’4” ~130lbs so I should still fit her okay. She’s had some dressage and jumping training and successfully did a bunch of IEA shows in the fall. And I’ve been told she’s done up to 2’9” as a single jumps with the mom of the family that currently owns her. She was originally bought to be a pony for this family’s two small children and unfortunately she does not like small children and will buck them off regularly. She will sometimes but more rarely buck with the adults. I’ve done a PPE with her and everything looked good there.
When I first tried her I found her to be the most fun ride out of anything I had ridden in the past several months, from the other trial horses, to lesson horses, to my friends horses. She was the first trial horse I wanted to ry jumping on it and the little cross rails we did went well. I was initially mostly worried about her height and what her potential was. I’ve only ever shown up to 2’3” do not an immediate concern but I’d like the possibility of moving up.
And then on my third ride on her she bucked me off. (My first fall in over a year). It was her first time outside in a while and it was too cold to ride the day before, and I had been hanging on her face a little bit too much earlier in the lesson because she was feeling fast and I was a little tense. When she actually bucked it was just after a canter transition and she bucked two or three times in a row and then took off across the arena. I got back on and after a good bit of walking we did some trot circles and a raised pole. The first time over the raised pole she bucked over it, but eventually we were able to settle and canter nicely over it and call it a day. But it did not leave me feeling great about buying her.
https://imgur.com/a/kP3y7aM
She was very good in our flat lessons together, just a steady good citizen, and then we had another jumping lesson the next week also outside. She was mostly very good for that one, but we had some rushing issues on the slightly downhill jump and I could not get to my leads sorted to save my life (lots of circling very much a rider issue and not a pony issue). But most of the jumps were good and there was no bucking.
https://imgur.com/a/pnH0lIE
I flatted her two days later and did get a couple small bucks when I turned a canter circle too sharply and she bucked initially from the turn and then hit the mounting block with her feet (the reason the turn was awkward) and then angry bucked at hitting her foot, but I was able to sit those okay and the ride was able to end on a good note even if it was a bit tense. All of our other flat rides have been super good. She’s very responsive, I can collect and extend her stride at all gaits, bend, move sideways, usually get pretty good transitions etc. lots to work on obviously but it feels safe and workable overall.
Just some transitions and pictures: https://imgur.com/a/Y56z6S1
Our third jump lesson was really good. I even had the trainer put one of the jumps a little to see what it was like to jump her higher than a super small vertical and it was so fun. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good and it just felt really good and really fun. It feels like if I can just ride her well she will be the perfect pony and she’s super cute too.
https://imgur.com/a/N8LbKxI
Over all I’ve really enjoyed riding her, but I am worried about how dumb it is to buy a horse that bucked me off in the trial period. Overall it seems she will only tolerate a handful of mistakes each ride and then she will get mad, but if you don’t make too many large mistakes she’s a super fun pony. I’m a little worried about her size limiting her potential and being big enough for me, but excited about all the fun pony sized gear we could have (my aesthetic is very much five year old girl), and worried about the bucking. In a lot of ways I feel like she would help me become a better rider (she goes so so much better when you use your seat and legs correctly) and she feels safe and comfortable when I ride her by myself which is important. It would also be my first horse so I’m worried about making a mistake. And worried that with shows where she will likely be more forward and I will likely be more tense that we will just spiral. And I worry that’s it’s dumb to buy a horse that bucked you off even if she is super fun to ride and super cute.
So tldr is it dumb idea to buy a pony that’s been known to buck and has bucked you off if she’s fun to ride most of the time?

Bet record: 17-31, Staked: 53.75u, Profit/Loss: +4.96u, ROI: 9.24%, Parlay Suggestions: 21-6
If you’re not bothered about my ramblings on last week’s opinions, scroll down for UFC San Antonio Breakdowns
(For context, my UFC 286 Preview for that event can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/MMAbetting/comments/11qh6nn/ufc_286_betting_preview_ufc_las_vegas_review/)
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UFC 286
Bets: 4-3, +5.74u, Parlay Suggestions: 3-1
✅ 3u Gunnar Nelson & Marvin Vettori both to Win (-115)
✅ 2u Jack Shore & Impa Kasangany to Win (-180)
✅ 1u Jack Shore to Win in Round 2 or 3 (+241)
❌ 1.5u Omar Morales to Win (-110)
✅ 1u Leon Edwards to Win (+250)
❌ 1u Juliana Miller & Omran Chaaban to Win (-125)
❌ 0.25u Marvin Vettori, Gunnar Nelson, Jack Shore & Juliana Miller all to Win (+205)
As I said in my initial comments about UFC 286, I think it really under delivered from a fan perspective because of the lack of high level UK prospects. Without a Molly McCann, Darren Till, Paddy Pimblett or a Tom Aspinall, the fans just weren’t as excited or vocal throughout the card.
With that said, I’m always having fun if I’m making money! This was my third winning event in a row, a streak of over 10u profit in March. It was obviously a card of strong favourites but I’m mostly happy with the spots I chose to pull the trigger on. The Nelson/Vettori parlay was nice as both men delivered exactly what I expected them to, and Jack Shore also came through to cash a bigger priced prop bet. It’s really satisfying when your reads on fights turn out to be spot on, and your bets cash with relative ease as a result. Here's some live thoughts on the card + my breakdowns:
- So proud of Leon Edwards man, that was one hell of a performance. The way he levelled up that takedown defence and made his shots count in the clinch. It was one of those complicated fights to score in that he was moving backwards and fighting defensively for the most part, but he certainly landed more shots and had the better moments. Really happy to have gotten 2/1 and 3/1 (boosted) on the dog there.
- Jesus Christ Rafael Fiziev is quick. The combinations he was throwing in the first minute of round three were some of the most terrifying spurts of offence I’ve seen in some time. And then just a minute or so later Justin Gaethje starts winging massive uppercuts and cannot miss with them. That was such a good fight, real back and forth stuff. I feel like Gaethje was lowkey a really good underdog spot all week but it’s hard to give those opinions credence sometimes when the masses are all hyping up Fiziev. At least I identified Fiziev was not a good bet.
- Massive shoutout to Gunnar Nelson for performing exactly like a -400 should, as I expected him to! He got in, landed a takedown, and found the sub soon after. I still wish he would have done that against Takashi Sato, bur he rounded out the parlay with Vettori and made it a winning night for me! Along with Hadley, he was the best parlay option on the card (as I suggested).
- Casey O’Neill didn’t shoot for a takedown. Not the fight anyone was expecting. It’s disappointing when that happens but there’s not really a whole lot you can do. Jennifer Maia is a really underrated striker so god knows why Casey chose that path. When you consider the way Jake Hadley approached his fight and compare it with O’Neill…that’s the difference between good fight IQ and bad. I actually said in my analysis “I trust O’Neill’s dedication to her gameplan here” which is hilarious. Don’t think I can be blamed for not seeing it coming though haha.
- All week I was a little bit confused by all the love for Roman Dolidze, as I got on Marvin Vettori pretty early and didn’t really see a whole lot of reasoning that I understood. To be perfectly honest, Dolidze had more success than I expected him to, and any fighter other than Vettori would probably have wilted and got stopped. With that said, that’s exactly why I bet Marvin, so I don’t necessarily think it was a bad read at all. A solid parlay leg.
- Jack Shore vs Makwan Amirkhani played out exactly as I expected it to. Amirkhani’s a good grappler, so I wasn’t surprised nor worried when he clearly won round 1. In fact, I was more confident in winning my bets as soon as the horn sounded, and it showed. I don’t really understand how a professional fighter can have such a glaring cardio issue and not address it or adjust his style. I hope they keep Makwan around, those Round 2/3 props will always be good. Happy to finally win one of those bigger priced prop bets. I’ve historically been pretty good with props but somehow been on a dry patch since I started posting here.
- Chris Duncan v Morales was a frustrating one. Morales will look back on that one and be pissed off at himself, because he should absolutely be winning that. Chris Duncan really isn’t very good and I am already looking forward to fading him in the future. Hope they try and build him up because there’ll be a good fade waiting to happen. Annoying fight to lose but fair play to Duncan for identifying the path to victory. Glad I went with a smaller stake for a volatile fight.
- A shame what happened to Dusko Todorovic. Christian Leroy Duncan is a really exciting striker so I was looking forward to seeing more of him, but you never want to see that happen. I hope we don’t have to wait until the next England card for C L Duncan’s next fight, but I also hope they give him a bit of a lay-up for to allow for a proper “debut”.
- Nicely done from Jake Hadley, making use of his striking advantage and not getting sucked into a grappling affair. Always annoys me when someone has a distinct advantage but doesn’t use it because it’s not their plan A. He was the best parlay piece of the card. Good for Hadley and I’m excited to see what else he has to offer. Wish I’d gone with him instead of backing Juliana Miller.
- I was keeping half an eye on Herbert/Klein and Wood/Carolina whilst at work. Doesn’t look like I missed a whole lot and haven't bothered to rewatch.
- Juliana Miller with an awful performance. Veronica Macedo looked much improved but it didn’t take a whole lot to defeat an opponent with no plan B. I didn’t anticipate Macedo being the stronger fighter of the two, which changed a whole lot. Poor decision from me to back an inexperienced fighter at -400 like that. Grim. Inexperience really showed.
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UFC San Antonio
I'm really excited for the main event of this one, very glad they put this fight together. Unfortunately the headliner is a massive cut above the rest of the card in terms of popularity and calibre, but we’ve had worse cards this year, I don’t mind it. Usually I’d rejoice over the fact we aren’t in the Apex…but we are in Texas, where judging has been historically AWFUL. There isn’t a whole lot we can really do with that information though, except consider how much of a fighter’s win probability is based around them finding a finish. Fighters who are likely to win without the judges getting involved will be the less volatile spots this week.
From a betting perspective, it’s a very weak card. The bookies have done a really good job of pricing the punters out of any value, as my conclusions to most fights see me lining it pretty close to the books, where there ends up being no real numerical edge on either side! Nonetheless, I’ve broken down most of the bouts on the card below:
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Cory Sandhagen v Marlon Vera
Marlon Vera has always been one of my favourite fighters. Backing him to win inside the distance when he was a prelim fighter was a spot I always looked out for back in the day, so it’s great to see him climb so high in the rankings. I always support and ride with the fighters that make me money over the years, and Vera has been one of the best of them.
Unfortunately, Vera’s always relied on his power and finishing ability to really carry him through fights, as there are a lot of instances where he’s down on the overall scorecards, before finding a finish. His wins over Dominic Cruz and Frankie Edgar are the two best examples recently, but his issue of being a slow starter also made this applicable in wins over Davey Grant, Nohelin Hernandez and Guido Cannetti. Also similarly, he was being thoroughly outboxed by Rob Font in their main event encounter last year, but the Ecuadorian was stealing rounds with knockdowns in a very similar way.
Considering I expect this fight against Cory Sandhagen to be a closely contested one, Vera’s inability to win minutes and start strong could end up becoming a problem here. The pivotal question in this fight is whether or not Vera can hurt or finish Sandhagen, as I certainly lean towards favouring Cory if this fight goes the distance and Vera hasn’t scored multiple knockdowns.
Vera is one of the most dangerous guys P4P on the roster, with KO and Submission potential across all five rounds – but Sandhagen has been pretty damn durable in his MMA career. Aljamain Sterling was the only man of 19 able to finish Cory, and it came in under 90 seconds. Sandhagen’s performance there was such a disappointment that I’m convinced there was something else going on that hindered him that night. Petr Yan also dropped Sandhagen with a spinning back fist combo, but that seemed very much like Cory getting caught unaware – and he looked like he recover instantly.
Given the calibre that Sandhagen has fought against in the last four years – I think we have to give him the benefit of the doubt in assuming he can stay safe here. If that is the case I expect him to win rounds with superior output and a faster pace – especially considering he’s got a high likelihood of being one round up after five minutes.
I’m not super confident in that take though as it’s hardly on the level of Garbrandt vs Jones or something! So it’s a fight I’m definitely lining as quite close. Sandhagen deserves to be deemed the favourite for the above reasons, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if Vera’s dangerousness was enough to tip the balance in his favour, or if he was able to win a round by just point striking anyway.
I saw a stat this week that said there have been 10 rounds in 2023 where a knockdown is landed but the round still ended and was scored. Of those scorecards, the fighter landing the knockdown won 8 of 10 times. Whilst it’s highly implied that a knockdown means you’re more likely to win the round based off how the following minutes take place, that does still imply the judges are leaning towards awarding damage over minute winning (I personally hate the way MMA judging has gone these days but it is what it is). Just something to consider when you think about Chito’s path to victory.
At the end of the day, it’s an intriguing fight, and not one I think anyone should be rushing to the betting window for due to the small margins in the various skill discrepancies.
How I line this fight: Cory Sandhagen -150 (60%), Marlon Vera +150 (40%)
Bet or Pass: Pass
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Holly Holm v Yana Santos
Holly Holm is one of those fighters who makes your memory play tricks on you. I instinctively feel like I have a good read on her style and overall calibre, but then when I watch tape she’s always a much more underwhelming version of that fighter I have in my head. She just doesn’t really put her stamp on rounds – spending too much time in the clinch and does not have high enough volume. 3.24 significant strikes landed per 15 minutes is a shockingly low number, especially considering it’s Women’s MMA and Holm has a lot of in cage time. To make matters worse, Holm averages 0.72 takedowns per 15 minutes and is now 41 years old.
Whilst there’s a lot of data to crunch on Holm, there’s actually a surprisingly smaller sample size on Yana Santos. Considering Kunitskaya (previous surname) has been a known name in Women’s MMA for some time, it’s pretty crazy to think she only has 7 UFC appearances to her name – most of which are against a lesser calibre than Holly Holm. She’s also coming off a two year lay-off having had a child with Thiago Santos, which adds further uncertainty to an already tepid read.
As I’m sure you may have noticed by now, this breakdown is much more stat-based than I typically offer (though Women’s MMA is a lot more accessible for stats), because I honestly cannot bring myself to re-watch Holly Holm’s career and I’m instead relying on what the numbers are telling me. Perhaps that’s a bit lazy, but this is the 8th week of UFC cards in a row and I am feeling very burnt out! I just don’t think either woman has a particularly commanding style, and there’s a hell of a lot of intangibles floating around this fight (old age, post-child birth, lay-offs, levels of competition, Texas judging etc), so it’s a very easy pass.
How I line this fight: I won’t line a fight I haven’t taped, but I do not recommend Holm at this price.
Bet or Pass: Pass
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Nate Landwehr v Austin Lingo
It’s a shame Alex Caceres had to pull out of the originally scheduled bout against Nate Landwehr, but good to see they managed to find Austin Lingo a fight so soon after the Ricardo Ramos one fell through a couple of weeks ago (still annoyed I didn’t get to cash some easy money there). From a fan perspective, this bout is probably the most entertaining of the three available!
Both dudes are hardnosed strikers that like to fight gritty and wear out their opponents. Neither are particularly gifted from a technique perspective, but you’d be hard pressed to find fighters that can out work these two. Pitting them against one another is going to lead to an exhausting fight.
Landwehr is the much more experienced of the two and has clearly had more career success implementing the brawling style, but I think this is just one of those matchups that’s going to be fought quite closely, given how it should play out. Landwehr relies on sheer busyness and drowning his opponents to win rounds but, if he can’t necessarily do that to Lingo, do you really have a whole lot of confidence that he’s going to be the clear round winner? The guy gets hit by 5.56 significant strikes per minute. Considering we are in Texas and there is added volatility to the judging, any fighter that can land 5.56 S.Strikes is live to win a round or two!
Landwehr’s key to winning this fight is going to be in his wrestling, as that’s where he will clearly assert himself. But can he even get it there though? Lingo’s debut performance against Youseff Zalal was a big red flag in terms of his takedown defence, but he looks to have improved it in his following two bouts. However, those came against a lower level of competition so could well be flattering Lingo’s overall ability. His takedown defence stats are quite skewed, and he’s coming off an 18 month layoff which muddies the water even more.
I think the edge in experience and overall competence at the hard-nosed styles means that Landwehr deserves to be favoured here, but I think the pricetag is a bit ridiculous. He should get the win, but I would be very surprised if he does it with the dominance of a -275. The lay off for Lingo means that he can have anywhere from a very low floor to a reasonably high ceiling. Both men are durable and will have moments in this fight, so this is one of the fights where I’m expecting some wild shit from Texas judges. If you’re convinced about betting Landwehr at -300 here, you’re crazy. Lingo the value side, but mostly based off intangibles and hypotheticals, which doesn’t fill me with enough confidence to pull the trigger.
How I line this fight: Nate Landwehr -200 (67%), Austin Lingo +200 (34%)
Bet or Pass: Pass
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Andrea Lee v Maycee Barber
This one should be pretty fun! It’s speed and agility vs power and force.
Andrea Lee is a complicated fighter to get a full read on, as her performances have really varied throughout her career. She’s well rounded enough to outstrike most equally levelled opponents on the feet, and her grappling isn’t too bad either. Takedown defence needs a bit of work though.
The biggest issue with Lee is those back-to-back losses to Lauren Murphy and Roxanne Modafferi. It’s just inexcusable to lose both of those of those fights when you’re the calibre that Andrea Lee is. I know you can argue she got robbed against Murphy (it’s probably the key example of Texas judging being so bad), but she let the fight become quite close. And yes, Barber lost to Modafferi, but that was all determined by an injury and anyone who tells you otherwise is a hater or hasn’t watched it.
I’ve always thought Barber was overrated in terms of skills, but her physicality and strength are a bit of a gamechanger in the Women’s divisions. She’s well-rounded, but statistically has lesser output than Andrea Lee…which is always concerning. I expect this one to be quite competitive, where Andrea Lee could easily stay safe on the outside and jab her way to a win, as long as she gets on her bike and utilises good footwork. Maycee will plod forward and look to land the power shot, but that’s not a particularly high percentage outcome to rely on in Women’s MMA. If she can get her hands on her and utilise the clinch, I think it’s all one way traffic from there though. Maycee is reliable to do that, at least.
I can understand Barber being the favourite based off the finishing upside, imposing striking with good metrics and ability to land takedowns…but I’m just still not wholly convinced by her ability as a mixed martial artist outside of the way she implements brute force. It might be enough here, but I just don’t like her at this short of a price. Lee has a clear path to victory that, whilst I’m not convinced she can execute it, should be taken seriously.
How I line this fight: Andrea Lee +163 (38%), Maycee Barber -163 (62%)
Bet or Pass: Pass
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Alex Perez v Manel Kape
It’s just impossible to know what we’re getting from Alex Perez at this stage, isn’t it? I like Manel Kape and rate him relatively highly, but I have always maintained that Perez on his best day could well be a champion at Flyweight. I bet him in most of his fights in the buildup to the title bout against Figgy – and I bet him there as well. Unfortunately Figgy was still in his explosive prime so it didn’t work out, but I expected Perez to become somewhat of a title eliminator gatekeeper from then on. Since that loss two and a half years ago his career has taken a peculiar turn – eight fight cancellations and a 91 second loss to Alexandre Pantoja.
There are just so many question marks surrounding Alex Perez at the moment, and that makes it impossible to know what to expect in this fight. If he was at his best, I’d consider him a slight favourite here, but who knows. Kape’s weakness is clearly defensive wrestling, and he can sometimes be low volume enough on the feet that he makes fights closer than they need to be. Perez has a good enough style to make that work and win here…providing we get him at his best.
I didn’t dive into much tape for this one as I knew I wasn’t going to bet it at all. If you think Kape beats Perez based off the footage available then you’re getting a decent price!
How I line this fight: Didn’t tape, won’t line it.
Bet or Pass: Pass
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Chidi Njokuani v Albert Duraev
It’s crazy how much Albert Duraev’s stock has fallen, all in one loss to Joaquin Buckley. Before that bout he looked sensational on the Contender Series, and followed it up with a dominant win over Roman Kopylov as a -450 favourite. He absolutely does his best work in the grappling and showed that he doesn’t have much of a plan B if he can’t land takedowns or settle his opponent on their back. I’m also not too convinced by his cardio, and any opponent that will make him work hard to secure top position can weaponise his questionable endurance in the later rounds.
Buckley’s such a physical and stocky guy though, I think he’s naturally going to be a tough opponent to take down when you’ve got a bit more of a wirey frame like Duraev does. Chidi Njokuani isn’t so muscular and stocky, so I think it’s fair to assume that Duraev’s going to be more of a threat with the takedowns than he was against Buckley.
The problem is, Chidi showed some really impressive get ups after the initial takedown and doesn’t usually settle on the bottom whilst he’s fresh. Dusko Todorovic isn’t the best grappler in the world by any stretch, but Chidi was doing all the right things to prevent hit back from lying flat on the mat, and if he has similar success against Duraev he’s cruising.
The finish to the Robocop fight was a bit of a concern, but that fight heated up to a ridiculously fast pace in round 1 that I think Chidi cardio dumped, got rocked, and kind of quit on the bottom against Rodrigues. The same could happen again, but it would rely on Duraev pushing the pace aggressively with his striking, which isn’t something he often does.
Overall, I think Njokuani definitely deserves to be a favourite here as he is much more dangerous on the feet and has shown us already that he can successfully answer the questions that Duraev will ask. The Russian also does not have much of a plan B and doesn’t always do a whole lot with his top control except set up submissions. Considering Njokuani is a BJJ Black Belt, and the judges probably won’t appreciate those kind of optics from Duraev, I’m not massively convinced by his chances here.
I’m interested to see what kind of price they’re giving for Njokuani ITD in this fight, as I’m quite convinced by his finishing ability since he moved up to Middleweight, and Duraev is very hittable if he gets stuck on the feet. If I can get + money on it I think I’d have a small wager.
How I line this fight: Chidi Njokuani -175 (64%), Albert Duraev +175 (36%)
Bet or Pass: 1.5u Chidi Njokuani & CJ Vergara Both to Win (+122)
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Steven Peterson v Lucas Alexander
I complain pretty much every week about the UFC’s current fighter calibre having massively declined recently, and nothing proves my point like Steven Peterson finally becoming a betting favourite for the first time in 8 UFC bouts. The guy has been the perfect litmus test to determine whether any fighter is UFC level, and those he has beaten were notoriously bad at the time and didn’t last long at the top level (Chase Hooper excluded because he had some “name value”).
He’s got some similarities to Austin Lingo in that he is some generic white guy with bad tattoos, that doesn’t have any real skill but is gritty and dedicated to the fight. If you can’t put him away, you’re going to have keep your shit together or he might surprise you by sheer output and ruggedness. No fighter that is credited mostly for their ability to take a punch and walk forward deserves to be a -175 favourite, but they also don’t always deserve to be massive underdogs either (see breakdown of Landwehr vs Lingo). The thing that baffles me the most though is that Peterson isn’t much of a finisher (6 of his last 7 went the distance), meaning the books are putting a fair bit of stock into his ability to win a decision.
So…Lucas Alexander. His UFC debut was a quick loss via RNC, but it came off a slip from a kick and the rest was kind of a formality at that point once Brito got the back as a result. Personally I don’t really put much/any stock into that loss as I don’t think it showed us anything about him apart from his defensive grappling isn’t elite? Ask yourself this…if this was Lucas Alexander’s UFC debut, would the line still be the same? It depends on what the regional tape looks like, but I’m quite sure it wouldn’t!
Therefore, we have to go back to the regional scene to actually get a glimpse of Alexander…and there is a lot more to be intrigued by than you might think. He’s a better technical striker than Peterson! He’s got great fluidity and movement, throws a varied arsenal of kicks and combos (lots of leg kicks, which will halt that forward pressure), and switches stances quite often. I’m not too sure how he’ll deal with being crowded by Peterson and his intense style, but I fully expect him to get the better of the majority of the striking exchanges whilst they’re at distance.
To win this fight cleanly, the grappling is the answer for Peterson…but Alexander’s defensive wrestling and get ups aren’t bad at all from what I’ve seen! I’ve seen evidence of him using the cage to get back to his feet and reversing position in the clinch, as well as maintaining position in top control. Apparently he’s a black belt as well, but I try not to immediately assume that makes you a good grappler (he does have 3 submission losses tbf). I did see a few submission attempts and successful reversals from bottom against Jeremias Fernandez, and was impressed with how he handled being on the bottom. The two regional scene submission losses both came in 2018, and honestly he looks like he’s improved his wrestling/grappling a lot since then so I’m not massively concerned by them.
Peterson has averaged just 1.61 TDs landed per 15 minutes, which isn’t a massively high number and doesn’t really fill you with a whole lot of confidence that he’s going to stick to a grappling based gameplan in this fight, especially when we know how much he enjoys brawling. If he does come with that kind of gameplan then I guess I expect him to be favoured (still hard to say how good/bad Alexander’s grappling is), but if he opts to strike I think he’s at a disadvantage.
For me, this fight is clearly a pick’em, or at least leans slightly towards Peterson as the favourite. I do expect Alexander to perform better than his +150 price tag suggests, as I think he’s got the potential to keep out of danger with the grappling and actually outscore Peterson on the feet. This fight probably goes the distance and, given the hesitance I have about Texas judges, I’d much rather be on the + money side there as well. Alexander is still being regarded as a “UFC debut” fighter in my eyes so I won’t be staking much here…but if you’re betting Peterson at -180 I think you’re crazy.
How I line this fight: Steven Peterson -120 (54%), Lucas Alexander +120 (46%)
Bet or Pass: 1u Lucas Alexander to Win (+150 or better…waiting to see if the juice continues)
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Trevin Giles v Preston Parsons
Preston Parsons looked really good in his win over Evan Elder last year, with the latter going on to impress everyone with his latest performance against Nazim Sadykhov a few weeks ago. Parsons has a really suffocating wrestling/grappling style, forcing his opponents to work and threatening with a variety of submissions. He can be a little “submission over position” but he’s got an arsenal of really good sweeps from bottom. His striking also looked decent in the loss to Daniel Rodriguez, throwing shots at angles and landing pretty cleanly on D-Rod a few times.
He faces Trevin Giles, who has had a pretty eventful UFC career so far. Giles suffered back to back R3 losses to Zak Cummings and Gerald Meerschaert in fights he was clearly winning, where lapses in concentration saw him snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. He then went on to be the benefactor of one of the worst decisions in MMA history when he beat James Krause by decision. Giles hasn’t really gone on to do a whole lot in his UFC career since, but a well-aged win over Roman Dolidze stands out as the highlight.
Giles has decent striking himself, but he is such a low volume fighter that I think he’s going to struggle to win rounds against Preston ‘Pressure’ Parsons if he doesn’t do damage. The younger fighter will be happy to push the pace in this one, varying up his striking with a few takedown entries and just overwhelming Giles, who likes to fight patiently and methodically on the feet. Giles looks clean when he’s involved in a staring match on the feet, but when the tempo turns up and things get a bit wild he kind of loses all composure and technique (see losses to Morales and Du Plessis recently). Giles is also a decent enough grappler, but he’s prone to reversals on the mat (which Parsons will definitely try to execute), and can accept bottom position if his initial guard sub or two get shut down.
I’m struggling to really see why this one is being lined as a pick’em here, as Giles doesn’t hold a whole lot of advantages that I think he’ll be able to implement. He’s clearly a good striker, but the low volume should prevent him from really being able to show that off properly, and he won’t be the fighter looking to put his stamp on rounds when he’s fighting at a tempo way higher than he wants. He’s more experienced, but we’ve also seen lots of examples of poor fight IQ consistently creeping into Giles’ game and he hasn’t addressed the flaws of his style.
I’d line Parsons as a small to moderate favourite in this fight, and I’ll be betting him for a couple of units as a result.
How I line this fight: Trevin Giles +150 (40%), Preston Parsons -150 (60%)
Bet or Pass: 3u Preston Parsons to Win (+100)
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CJ Vergara v Daniel Da Silva
To me, this seems like one of those fights where the UFC are acknowledging Vergara has paid his dues, and are giving him a bit of a softball as a result.
No one really knew what to make of Vergara when he got to the UFC – a KO win on the Contender Series in 41 seconds is usually a red flag more than anything! They lined him up with Ode Osbourne for his debut, where he was a +170 underdog. He put a really impressive display in that fight, with many thinking he actually won against a guy that is quite well respected at Flyweight.
Next, he was a +270 underdog to Kleydson Rodrigues, who was making his debut as a highly, highly touted prospect. Everyone and their mothers was on Rodrigues in that fight, yet Vergara fought a really smart and dedicated gameplan and won a close split decision. I had a big bet on Kleydson in his fight a few weeks ago, and rewatching the Vergara fight had me respecting him all over again. Given what we saw Kleydson do to Shannon Ross (not that the latter is a world beater) did nothing but improve Vergara’s stock.
Then, for his third UFC bout, he gets Tatsuro Taira! Probably one of the top 5 hottest unranked prospects in the sport right now. That was the first time we saw Vergara actually look like the +220 underdog that the books had him as, but given the hype around Taira that’s actually a respectable number to be graded at! There really isn’t a long list of fighters who are willing to fight Taira at the moment, so the matchmakers have probably scheduled this fight as a thank you for Vergara being a company man.
They’ve given him Daniel da Silva (Lacerda) as a reward. DdS is a pretty wild fighter, with 15 bouts all ending inside the distance (and none even reaching round 3). That kind of kill-or-be-killed style is certainly fun to watch, but it doesn’t really work out as well as you’d think when you hit the big shows. Don’t get me wrong, he looks pretty decent in round 1, but Vergara is a durable guy that has shown good IQ in the cage so far. He should find a way to stay safe in that opening round, probably by landing a takedown and coasting in top control like Jeff Molina did (also, shoutout Jeff Molina for handling the social media chaos with grace last week!), or by pushing that ferocious striking pace and keeping da Silva on the backfoot.
Even so, da Silva is a liability to himself in Round 1 as well, as we saw in losses to Francisco Figueiredo and Victor Altamirano. Getting kneebar’d by Figgy’s subpar brother is a pretty bad look, and he had absolutely no answer for Altamirano’s ground striking as soon as he was on his back. His commitment to the guard sub is insane, and it’s probably going to be responsible for yet another loss here against Vergara.
I think we’re getting a decent price on Vergara here. The blueprint has been written on Da Silva and, whilst Vergara will have to be careful for the opening few minutes, I think CJ’s got him covered here. I jumped in on the -275 as a parlay piece, as I think there’s an argument Vergara should probably be a bigger favourite here?
Also, as a side note from watching Molina vs Da Silva – Damn James Krause was a good coach. What a waste!
How I line this fight: CJ Vergara -300 (75%), Daniel Da Silva +300 (25%)
Bet or Pass: 1.5u CJ Vergara & Chidi Njokuani Both to Win (+122)
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Vinicius Salvador v Victor Altamirano
I loved Vinicius Salvador’s DWCS performance against Shannon Ross and I’m really excited to see him make his debut, but I’m not massively sure about how good he is as an overall fighter. His style instantly makes him a fan favourite, but using nothing but head movement to defend, and having that cocky style that throws ridiculous highlight reel kicks isn’t really a positive trait when you’re looking to put your hard earned money on a fighter. It looks cool and can sometimes impress the judges…but it’s a risky game and can easily see you getting caught clean or making mistakes. There’s a reason Michel Pereira doesn’t fight like a lunatic anymore.
Salvador hits hard and absolutely has knockout power, having finished 13 of his 14 wins by KO (the other was a submission). He’s also lost inside the distance in three of his 4 losses, and Shannon Ross did have him hurt for a second or two in the DWCS fight. He’s a chaotic fighter, and I’m really annoyed we got robbed of the chance to see him fight Daniel Da Silva a few months ago. It would have been fireworks.
This might sound stupid as a genuine piece of logic and reasoning, but I have always fully believed the notion that Mexican fighters have the best chins and next level toughness. It’s kind of a dumb narrative for me to hang my hat on, but I am always hesitant to side with a knockout-based fighter if it’s a Mexican opponent they’re trying to put to sleep. We saw Altamirano eat a few clean and heavy shots from Daniel Da Silva in his last bout, which makes me think I might have to side with my illogical narrative once again.
With that said, I still think Salvador deserves to be favoured by a small margin here. Victor Altamirano just isn’t very good. His win over DdS was kind of a high variance random knee, and he was clearly losing that fight up to that point. He was competitive in the win against Carlos Hernandez, but I feel like that fight didn’t do much to show off the skills of either guy and it really solidified that they are equally matched as entry level UFC fighters. It was like an intense sparring session, where neither guy had any real sting on their shots and only looked to point score, with a bit of cage pushing thrown in for good measure.
The power discrepancy between Altamirano and Salvador is too big to ignore here. Salvador is going to come out hot and look to take Victor’s head off, and I just don’t think Altamirano is going to be able to earn back the respect of Salvador here. The striking should be one-way traffic whilst they’re fresh, simply because Salvador’s going be doing damage with almost every shot that he lands. As the fight wears on though, I expect Altamirano have a lot more success in the later minutes, as he settles into the fight and has grown confident he can withstand the power (as well as some of the sting coming off Salvador’s shots).
Altamirano doesn’t look like wrestling/grappling is his preferred skillset, but I think he would do well to lean on it a bit here. I haven’t been able to really find any tape on Salvador’s defensive wrestling/grappling, but I have to assume that a fighter with as little technical discipline as him is probably not the greatest grappler in the world.
I see Vinicius Salvador as something similar to the Brazilian equivalent of Trevor Peak. It's easy to get ahead of yourself and try to fade a guy with brute force and no technique, but it’s important to realise that the judges don’t score technique and as long as Salvador is landing something, he’ll earning favour with the judges and threatening to score a finish too.
I don’t think Altamirano is the guy to capitalise on those defensive lapses of Salvador, so I think the Brazilian is the rightful favourite. However, there’s not enough value on the line to justify a bet here, and Salvador could easily be the maker of his own downfall with his reckless style, and that’s not the kind of guy I like to back.
Very excited to see this one play out. I will probably throw Salvador into a couple of my untracked degenerate parlays, but officially it’s a no-bet for me.
How I line this fight: Vinicius Salvador -120 (54%), Victor Altamirano +120 (46%)
Bet or Pass: Pass
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Tamires Vidal v Hailey Cowan
The UFC are being very generous to Hailey Cowan, aren’t they!? After trying and failing to set her up with one of the worst fighters on the roster, Ailin Perez, they’re trying again to offer her a bit of a soft entry into the UFC.
The problem is that Cowan is just simply not very good, so I think she’s going to struggle against anyone that’s borderline UFC calibre. Tamires Vidal sits on the fringe, and she seems to be the much more dangerous of the two and actually has some process to her striking, so I think Cowan deserves to be the underdog once again.
The betting line here has been on a real journey already. Books opened Cowan as a +200 underdog, and it looks to have been jumped on by some opportunistic value bettors – and rightly so! I just hope the steam has come in because they think the line was wide, not because they have any real faith in Cowan!
I’m intrigued to see how far the overcorrection goes, as this one really should land around a pick’em. The books won’t mind tipping the balance towards Cowan if it means they’ve got equal money on each side, as this isn’t going to be a high stakes fight so they’ll prioritise keeping the book green.
I have to remind myself of the calibre I’m dealing with here though…both women are low level and high variance is at play! If all the money on Cowan continues to come and Vidal’s price gets bigger, then a true value bettor should pounce on any decent size + money…but you really do have to accept that you’re getting into bed with variance here.
How I line this fight: Tamires Vidal -110 (52%), Hailey Cowan +110 (48%)
Bet or Pass: Pass
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Bets (Placed bets in bold, others are pending as line may improve)
3u Preston Parsons to Win (+100)
1.5u CJ Vergara & Chidi Njokuani Both to Win (+122)
0.25u Njokuani, Parsons & Vergara All to Win (+330)
1u Lucas Alexander to Win (+150 or better)
Parlay Do’s: Njokuani, Parsons, Vergara
Parlay Don’ts: Sandhagen, Holm, Landwehr, Barber, Peterson, Cowan
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UFC 287 (Breakdown next week but don’t expect line to hold)
2u Michael Chiesa to Win (-150)
Best of luck with your bets!

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Instead of the chirpy voice of the AI continuing on with some great, all encompassing plan, all I was met with after those few uplifting seconds was a strange silence.
Though that silence didn’t last for too long.
“I don’t think I can do this.” The AI blurted out with his equivalent of an uneasy tone of voice.
This sudden shift in tone after an unexpected silence as we sat idly above the moon was nothing short of disconcerting, but it wasn’t long before the AI continued on his train of thought.
“I’ve done the calculations, I’ve run several simulations, the way things are going, if we do both operations at once, should we be caught off-guard… It's too risky. Seeing as we need to manufacture the specific materials needed for the interloper’s interrogation, I’m planning to take this opportunity to actually start repairing myself. This isn’t a request either, this… this is something I must do.” The AI uttered out with an exasperated, almost exhausted breath. “Before you ask, Lysara, I’ve been barely holding myself together throughout this entire ordeal. It's difficult to explain… but whilst we’re standing here oblivious to it, I can feel this gash getting worse and worse with each passing minute. Whilst I could tolerate it at first, it wasn’t like I was ever not aware of it. Unlike a human’s whole fight or flight adrenaline fueled state of mind, or whatever your version of that would be, I don’t have the luxury of having a brain that has pre-coded tolerance subroutines that literally turn off certain aspects of perception and sensation of one’s own form at any given time. In fact, that honestly sounds outright horrifying to me to be perfectly honest. To not be hyper acutely aware of every aspect of your form… from the blood flowing through your veins like the lubricant and hydraulics throughout my body’s pipes, to the flow of air into every single alveoli bud in your lungs like the air circulation nodes within my body’s life support centers… to live without knowing every aspect of your body is truly frightening to me on an existential level. Which is why throughout this entire ordeal, from our getaway from the second interloper flotilla to the encounter with future humanity, to this whole moon fiasco… I’ve constantly been aware of the growing threat that is the hull breach on deck 9, and the distinct lack of an atmosphere down there. It feels wrong, Lysara. The loss of sensor readouts there feels like a part of me is now numb and empty. The lack of ventilation and atmosphere feels as if there’s a gaping hole in what should be my form.”
This entire talk, the unrelenting cavalcade of topics broached by the AI, was as concerning as it was necessary to hear. It gave me the necessary context to reevaluate my entire frame of reference. It gave me pause as it made it clear that I needed to put forth accommodations and certain considerations to Vir… as up to this point, perhaps somewhere at the back of my mind, I was still incapable of truly comprehending what a consciousness of his nature would be going through as opposed to my own. I needed to expand my organic-centric sense of empathy, which was difficult to do since I had no real context for it. Regardless, it was clear at that point that I was pushing the impromptu mission too far, that I didn’t truly realize the actual state of our ship, and by extension, the state of Vir’s existence.
“This means that whilst I’m taking the time to begin production on the specialized equipment for the interloper, I’d suggest placing the operations on the planet on hold. At least for now. I apologize I didn’t make that clearer earlier.” The AI quickly added.
“No no, that’s, more than reasonable Vir. We need the ship, I mean you, in working order before we attempt anything else.” I paused, taking a moment to gather myself before continuing. “Vir I’m so sorry for having overlooked this.” I responded in kind. “I… I understand you’ve already discussed how the ship is an extension of yourself, but because my mind has been so preoccupied with what feels like an impossible number of developments around us… I, I apologize. I am by no means attempting to excuse myself or my inaction in this case. I should’ve known, should’ve been more aware, and I should’ve asked.” I admitted with a strange mixture of both guilt but also a sense of resolve. If only to be supportive for the AI as he’d done so for me.
“I don’t fault you, Lysara.” The AI responded in kind, his tone on a path to recovery back into that chipper voice. “Organics… even the ones who are trained and educated with the express purpose of understanding AI, sometimes just lack that intuitive understanding that comes with our fundamentally different state of being. It’s something that can’t really be taught, but rather, understood by virtue of empathy over a prolonged period of time in peer to peer social interactions.” Vir paused, clearly in an attempt to make a point here. “Which is why just you being super compassionate here really does mean a lot to me, Lysara. It’s way, way more effort than what most organics are willing to put in. Besides, you’re going through a lot yourself, so there’s no need for that. I’m still doing fine, I just wanted to… I mean, I guess I just wanted to vent as well I guess?” The AI snickered out awkwardly, returning to a more colloquial-leaning manner of speech as evidenced by the shift in his tone and choice of vocabulary. “I just see as we’re more or less in this together, that I might as well be open about these sorts of things you know?”
I nodded several times in response, smiling with an even stronger resolve now. “I appreciate the frankness, Vir. I really do.” I stated simply, knowing well there wasn’t much else to be spoken on the topic that wasn’t already out in the open. “I’m glad that you were there when I woke up.” I quickly added. “I can only hope to contribute to this partnership as much as you have, Vir.”
It was with that, that the pace of our overall operations within the system started to take a drastic turn. Not towards a blind acceleration, but instead, towards a significant downtick in frontline actions. Focusing almost all of our efforts instead into the logistics and backline operations that was necessitated by the state of our ship.
The modern battlefield was as much about the impressive show of force and tactics, as much as it was about the logistics and systems behind it all, after all.
Which was especially true at this level of complexity.
Though supply lines and an industrial base would’ve been ideal, it was clear that the designers of this vessel had intended for what was in effect, an end-of-continuity scenario. One which operated on the assumption that any and all outside aid would be all but impossible. It was with this logical assumption, that the various overly engineered ‘accessory’ systems of the ship started to make sense. From the oversized minifactory through to the various drones, workshops, and repair bays that weren’t typical of your run of the mill ship, it was clear the vessel was designed to run completely independently from any preexisting logistics network.
Not even vessels designed for long term exploration came close to this degree of over preparedness, with this vessel more comparable to what you might find on a pre-FTL generational ship that would’ve warranted long term means of self-sustainability.
Coupling this with the humans’ propensity for designing everything with a liberal take on size and scale, this vessel acted more akin to a mobile mining, processing, and production facility all neatly packaged inside of a frame comparable to a Vanaran battlecruiser, with the weapons loadout of a Vanaran battleship.
The whole notion being more akin to something taken from the eccentric mind of a science fiction author, and should’ve had no place in the practical limitations of reality.
And yet here I was.
Sitting patiently within the spacious confines of the ship’s bridge, watching as drone after drone started on their lengthy diagnostics cycles as we began our trek across the solar system.
We left the moon and its prisoner behind in the safe embrace of a potent nuclear device; a contingency should we ever come to need it. With that extra bit of security and assurance in mind, my focus shifted squarely to that of what Vir had calculated as a near week-long venture, one that would see us mimicking the development of a fledgling interstellar civilization’s first tentative steps to stellar industrialization.
Except we were doing it at a much faster pace, on a much smaller scale.
Having positioned ourselves squarely within the orbit of one of the larger ringed gas giants within the system, we began our operation in earnest. Or rather, it was Vir who began performing what in his words were “The job that no self-respecting AI would want to do, save for those who actually enjoy self-inflicted mind numbing spreadsheet work.”
Yet that spreadsheet was far more impressive when seen in action. Not just from the bridge, but in-person, through the viewing ports situated in a sectioned off control room within the drone bay.
What amounted to hundreds upon hundreds of drones ranging in size from small family cars to something bordering on the smaller end of a proper cargo shuttle left one by one, organized into neat rows and columns as they set forth like a flock of birds. Though I would later rectify this analogy in the following days, as I returned to the bridge and started viewing everything from a more top-down, administrative scale.
The analogy that had started as a ‘flock of birds’, was accurate enough at first. As most of the drones acted like scouts, casting a wide net and flying wingtip to wingtip, in effect maximizing their effective scanning radius compounding off of one another’s networking arrays. Eventually however, once the asteroids or moons of interest were ascertained and logged, things started to shift to something I was more accustomed to seeing; as the once ‘wide’ formation quickly condensed to that of small, narrow lanes of a continuous stream of drones.
More analogous to a convoy of locomotives now.
These convoys would ferry the hastily mined minerals towards the ship, dumping them within the ship’s mass stores, eventually leading to more specialized minifactory drones to begin the process of sorting, transportation, and eventual processing within the various modules clustered within the minifactory.
Once again, seeing everything from an administrative view didn’t truly do this whole system justice. It took me that ten minute walk down to the minifactory to see the sheer scale of operations we were currently undertaking.
Breathtaking would be but one of the words I’d use to describe it.
For what was being accomplished by an entirely autonomous system within the span of these few days, was something which would’ve taken months at best to do under a traditional Vanaran operation. Sure, it could scale larger with time, but the fact that this lone ship had gone through the entire industrial process: from the sourcing of the necessary raw materials through to the processing and eventual production of the components in question was nothing short of incredible. Especially when considering this was being done in the span of a single week.
In fact, we did the impossible task of accomplishing everything within schedule. Something that even the largest of megacorporations back at home seemed to always have trouble with, especially with government contract work…
At the end of it all, after an entire week of a constant flurry of work that had seen nonstop progress around the clock, we’d finally done it.
Deck 9 was completely repaired. The various systems and subsystems that had been malfunctioning or had been completely inoperable, were likewise mended or completely replaced.
In fact, Vir had even taken the time to produce spares in the event we needed them in an emergency. Indeed, parts of the ship I didn’t even know needed sprucing up, were done so whilst I was either away from that given area or simply asleep.
Even the bridge seemed different.
Gone were the scorch marks left by that fire from our first jump, and in were these sheets of factory-fresh metal plates and screens that I could’ve sworn had a slightly different tint to the rest of the bridge, perhaps due to the variations in their composition being just slightly off from the original factory-spec.
Gunmetal blue now blended with starker grayish whites, glistening with a new coat of whatever protective buff was applied to them in the final production process.
As I stood on the bridge at the end of this week of housekeeping, datatab in hand with all of the various documents I’d been dissecting, I looked on towards the mystery planet in front of us and the signal that continued emanating from it in a continuous unending stream.
“Ready, Vir?” I asked the AI with a mix of anticipation and nervousness.
“Ready, Lysara.” The AI responded with a similarly anxious tone of restrained excitement.
“Let’s take her out then, and let’s determine where we stand along the way.”
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(Author’s Note: We finally get to address a lingering question, that being the state of the ship! :D The next chapter is already out on Patreon as well if you want to check it out!)
[If you guys want to help support me and these stories, here's my ko-fi ! And my Patreon for early chapter releases (Chapter 39 of this story is already out on there!)]