Spring valley apartments euless

Pictures will be in first comment but I had couple of questions if you don’t mind my ignorance. Long story short I’m trying to change my mental health and my surroundings for those things I can change.
We have here in Cairo spring festival (came a little late this year) where I end up buying this small tree.
The gardener told me it can live shade/indoors which was my intention as I live in an apartment. There is a very sunny balcony but i wanted to have it in the living area for more presence.
I was told it’s a Thuja, not sure if that’s correct. Does it really survive indoors? Does it really gets watered every 5 days? Is it in good shape? Is there anything i can make it look/be/take care of it better?
Thank you ^{_^}

This drama is mainly about the events of Season 7/World Championship 7 (WC7), the season of Battlebots that aired in 2023. Big spoilers for the season inbound, including the overall winner, along with spoilers of the outcomes and winners of previous seasons.
I will try my hardest to be unbiased which is hard because I am extremely biased and any attempt to be unbiased could only come across as enlightened centrism. I will simply try to keep the bias to a manageable level.

Battlebots

In case you don't know, Battlebots (well, combat robotics, but Battlebots is the most well-known and publicized event by an order of magnitude) is a... sport? Game? Hobby? Lifestyle? Where the goal is to throw two robots of a comparable weight against each other, with the goal to destroy each other. Battlebots itself is in the heavyweight category, with a 250 lb weight limit per robot. Other popular weight classes (relatively popular - heavyweight is the only televised one) are antweight (1 lb), beetleweight (3 lb), hobbyweight (12 lb), and lightweight (30 lb.) Battlebots itself airs on Discovery, generally with a main season and a spinoff season each year.
If you watched Battlebots back in the late 90s when it was on Comedy Central, you might remember robots that were basically big wedges pushing each other around a square and maybe occasionally taking a bit of armor off. That's not how it is anymore. Bots are destructive, powerful, and great spectacles to watch fight. Seriously, you should watch Battlebots. It's on Discovery+ and HBO Max. If you don't want to spend the money, Norwalk National Havoc Robotics League (NHRL) has competitions every few months that are livestreamed for free on Youtube in the smaller weight classes.
In case it's not clear from the write-up, Battlebots is filmed usually in the fall, and the season airs spring the next year. So all of the events in this write-up occurred over a 2-week period in OctobeNovember 2022, but only were public drama as the episodes aired January-May 2023. Much like any reality/game show, all the builders, production, etc. knew the outcome of the season before anything aired, there's just millions of dollars of NDAs.

The Culture

Something interesting about Battlebots that might surprise those unfamiliar with it is the culture. While teams work as hard as they can to reduce the other robot to splintered scrap in the box, back in the pits everyone is super awesome and nice and kind and helpful - a frequent occurrence is going to the pit of the bot you just took apart and seeing if there is any way you can help with the rebuild.
The classic example is in the 2021 season, when the iconic Witch Doctor's weapon disk kept breaking due to poor quality steel. They were scrambling to find material and resources to machine a new disk, when a ton of teams came together to save their season.
Team Sporkinok (yes, that's a trans Battlebot) lent them their pickup truck, to go pick up steel from a nearby supplier who was found by the captain of Team Blacksmith.
They needed to recreate the failure to figure out was wrong, so Team Shatter (the biggest, strongest hammer-bot in the competition) took their robot to the test box to try and break a disk.
They took the steel to the nearby build space of Team Chomp, who stayed up all night on their waterjet to cut new disks (the new disks worked well, by the way.)
After the season, they still didn't know for sure what the cause was, so they worked with Team Hypershock to create a dummy test robot, modeled after the very durable robot (and future 2022 champs) Tantrum, they could test the old disks on. They then sent the broken disks to a materials science lab run by a friend of the captain of Team Tantrum to perform materials analysis.
Many of these teams had fought Witch Doctor in the past, others would fight them in the future. But that doesn't matter - in robot combat, everyone is friends outside the box.
Right?

Riptide

Every year there are of course rookie bots competing for the first time. Sometimes from veteran teams and builders, such as last year's Blip (from the creators of Tantrum), or this year's RIPperoni, from former members of the teams behind Uppercut and P1, but just as often from new builders, at least new to heavyweight (almost nobody starts out with with the robots that can cost as much as a new car.)
One of these 'new-to-heavyweight' rookies last year was Riptide, captained by Ethan Kurtz (the guy with the "you know I had to do it to em" pose.) Ethan had found a good amount of success previously with the beetleweight Rival, and Riptide was basically Rival writ 80 times bigger. Riptide had a pretty good first season, winning 2 out of their 3 qualifying fights and making it to the quarterfinals before losing to the extremely good SawBlaze.
No real controversy, aside from a false start and early hit on HUGE in their first fight - written off as "I'm fighting a heavyweight on Battlebots for the first time" nerves, no hard feelings from anyone, not even HUGE. They also gave fan-favorite (formerly) indestructible brick Duck! such a bad thrashing that Duck! permanently retired after that fight (Duck! was having a bad year anyway, that fight was just the icing on the cake.)
Their success led to them co-winning Rookie of the Year alongside Glitch, who won an amazing 7 fights in a row, a feat only done before by 3-time championship winner and undisputed GOAT Bite Force (Glitch had to bow out of the tournament because their bot had taken irreparable damage despite the victories, but it's possible they could have extended it even further.) Riptide became well known for Ethan screaming "LET'S GO!" (or sometimes, "LET'S F------ GO"!", giving the censors a bit of a workout and annoying production) after big wins.
So coming into season 8, their sophomore year, hopes are high for Riptide and people want to see this breakout star do well, right? After all, there's no big controversy in their funding or anything, is there?

Stan Kurtz

Stan is the bald dude next to Ethan in the team picture. He's Ethan's dad, and also one of the main sponsors for the team through his company BeCourageous. Where did Stan Kurtz get his money to sponsor a big team? Well, he once had a company named RevitaPOP. RevitaPOP made vitamin B12 lollipops. If you know anything about 'alternative medicine,' this is where you say "oh no."
Stan Kurtz was once upon a time the president of Generation Rescue. Yes, that Generation Rescue, the Jenny McCarthy 'vaccines-cause-autism' one. He was instrumental in getting the 'movement' off the ground in the first place - I even seem to recall seeing a link to a talk he did where he said he was backstage for McCarthy's interview with Larry King, but I'm not about to sift through hours of his horrid talks and speeches to find it.
Stan Kurtz sold lollipops that he claimed cured autism, autism that he and his organization claimed was caused by vaccines. In fact, he claimed they even cured his son Ethan's autism! Remember this when you read about Ethan's behavior - it's not an excuse, but "autistic but prevented from going to any kind of therapy or anything because it would make his dad look like a liar" is certainly an explanation.
Let me divest into opinion for a sec. Stan Kurtz is evil. There is a direct line between the actions of Stan Kurtz promoting vaccine denalism and snake oil cures, and dead children. Fuck Stan Kurtz. Every other problem with Team Riptide could be overlooked if they did not have this dude as their primary sponsor (which necessarily would require replacing Ethan as captain, because you can't separate him from his dad financially.) Okay, back to the writeup.
But put a pin in "Riptide's captain and his dad are antivaxxers" - it's a surprise tool that will help us later.

Riptide in WC7

Fight 1: Glitch

Aside from that, people didn't have that much of an opinion on Riptide going in to WC7 (and even that wasn't too widely known until partway through the season.) Generally, there was a feeling of "let's see if they can keep it up" - often a lot of very promising rookie bots have weak second seasons. They started the season fighting Glitch, to see who was truly better. One hit, weapon-on-weapon, and Glitch fucking died. Upside down, weapon not spinning, no way to self-right.
Team Glitch asked Riptide to hit them again try to flip them back over, maybe knock some life back into the bot. Not an uncommon thing, but sometimes it backfires. Riptide did, launched Glitch across the box, and now Glitch was super-dead. Instant, extremely decisive knockout for Riptide. No drama yet.

Fight 2: MaD CatTer

Now on to the second fight. This one was against MaD CatTer, consisting of community college professor Martin Mason (goatee in the middle) and his students. Martin Mason is known for his intentionally cheesebally and over-the-top Macho Man imitation/homage, with lots of pointing at the camera and saying "Oh yeah!" Also by all regards the nicest man on planet Earth and one of the most beloved figures in combat robotics.
Of note is MaD CatTer's driver, Calvin Iba (guy beneath Martin's pointing hand.) Calvin Iba is one of the few builders better known for his smaller robot - his robot Lynx is the winningest beetleweight of all time, with an incredible 11 tournament wins, 8 undefeated, and an overall record of 86-11 as of December 2022 (and several events since then, but I can't find overall fight records of those events.) Now, Lynx is a very similar design to Rival (and therefore Riptide) - Lynx predates Rival by a few months, but the design is relatively generic and common at lower weight classes so it's not exactly plagarism.
This is relevant because Battlebots production tried to stir up drama, painting Calvin as angry that Ethan copied his bot and scaled it up to 250lb before Calvin could himself. For what it's worth Calvin did play into it a bit (he brought Lynx to the fight), but by all regards there aren't really any serious hard feelings about that. "Beater bars" (the weapon style of Riptide/Lynx/Rival) predate all three bots. Worth noting that Rival lost to Lynx in a brutal slugfest in the semifinals match of NHRL a few years ago, so maybe Ethan had a bit of a revenge arc more than anything.
On to the fight. MaD CatTer is a pretty serious bot - not most people's favorite to win it all, but a 'serious contender for semifinals' kind of bot - so nobody knew how this would go. It was back and forth for... about 10 seconds, then Riptide got one good hit and did not let up. MaD CatTer got taken apart like they never had before, left a smoking mess, stuck sideways against the arena wall, knocked out within a minute. Riptide then drove around a bit and punted pieces of MaD CatTer around the box, which got them a warning from the ref for being unsafe and for doing unnecessary damage to perfectly salvageable components of MaD CatTer. The team apologized later for that, saying they wouldn't do it again. Remember that.
Okay, two rapid knockouts against serious bots. Riptide is definitely not suffering from the sophomore curse. But in the post-fight interview, we did get a little taste of Ethan being a bit of a jerk - basically dismissed Calvin/Lynx as worse Riptide, and put his hand over Martin's mouth (without Martin's permission) as a way of saying "shut up wrestler man!" Could have been funny, but it came across as somewhat mean-spirited and Martin clearly was not cool with it (and Martin Mason is not a sore loser - he spends almost every post-fight interview gushing about how good the other robot is, even if MaD CatTer loses.) Production asked Calvin what he thought, and he said (while holding Lynx) "well, I designed this robot to be unbeatable, it's a great robot to base it off of. Good job." Good comeback.

Fight 3: Captain Shrederator

Captain Shrederator is a longtime veteran, being one of the few robots (alongside Witch Doctor, Hypershock, and Lock-Jaw) who has competed in all 7 seasons of the reboot. And they've competed for even longer - under various names and throughout various small tweaks, Captain Shrederator is basically the same robot as Phrizbee, from original Battlebots Season 3.0 in 2001. They're not exactly good by any modern standard, to be honest, but they're fun and an institution of the show. Worth noting that leading up to this fight, Nick Nave (son of Shrederator captain Brian Nave and a member of the team) had been hinting at possible controversy around this fight for a few weeks beforehand on the subreddit, so people were ready for some shit.
So going in, everyone expects Riptide to win. Here's a bot that made MaD CatTer look like a middleweight, versus a team with, at the time, a 6-18 career record. Riptide can't be complacent because even Shrederator can do some damage if you let it (by some metrics, Shrederator may have the most powerful weapon in the competition), but it's their fight to lose. Ethan Kurtz explains his strategy in an interview before the fight - get some big hits that flip Shrederator over. Once they're upside-down, they can't self-right and they'll be counted out. Makes sense, a solid, quick, safe, easy way to win. Well, watch the fight here if you can.
If you can't, I will summarize: It starts off with Shrederator dodging Riptide and spinning up, until eventually Riptide gets a solid hit that breaks a piece of Shrederator's shell off and destabilizes them. One more big hit from Riptide and Shrederator lands upside-down - it's over. Well, no. Riptide then goes in and hits them again before they can be counted out. And again. And again. And again. At this point Shrederator is basically completely dead, but it's still able to spin. Shrederator's team calls over to Riptide "yo, stop it we're dead already." Riptide hits Shrederator again. Riptide's weapon operator tells Ethan to hit him again. And so he does. And one more time, as sparks fly out of Shrederator's pulverized electronics. Riptide leaves Shrederator dead on the floor, as they go and, you guessed it, punt shrapnel around the box. At this point the referee has to physically take the controller from Ethan (while the rest of team Riptide tries to stop the ref.)
Of course this is a KO for Riptide, but in doing so they did around $10,000 worth of extra, unnecessary damage to Shrederator, and almost the entire bot had to be thrown out and rebuilt from spares. Riptide was not apologetic (and in fact later Ethan would gloat to the camera over how Team Shrederator hadn't even tried to rebuild their bot.) No members of Team Riptide helped Shrederator rebuild either, though one did offer. (It wasn't Ethan, Stan, or the weapon operator Sid.)
To say this was controversial to the community would be lying. Controversy requires some argument or debate. There was none - everyone thought Riptide went way too far. Riptide later tried to say "we interpreted their spinning as intent to keep fighting, and we couldn't hear them asking us to stop." Which was seen by most of the community as a load of crap, since Ethan had said to the camera that he didn't need to do those late hits just before the fight, and teams are bantering with each other in fights all the time. Riptide was formally warned by the ref again for this fight.
At this point, the editors I guess realized that controversy sells. In almost every remaining episode of the season, even ones where Riptide didn't fight, they had some clip of Riptide, or Ethan, or something else to rub in "these guys are really mean and have a good bot, wHaT iF tHeY wIn???" Very much a 'whenver Riptide's not on screen, all the other robots should be asking "Where's Riptide?"' situation. It got old very fast (read: instantly.)

Fight 4: Black Dragon

You want to talk about beloved teams, you have to mention Black Dragon. This Brazilian team is known for two things - their plush duck, which they won in a claw machine the first time they came to the US for a competition and have kept as a good luck charm ever since, and their durability - they had gone a near-record 24 matches without ever getting knocked out, winning all of those fights or losing by judge's decision. Leading up to this fight, Battlebots kept having segments showing how Black Dragon had almost surpassed Bite Force for the "most fights without a KO" streak (Bite Force was never KO'd in its entire 4-season career, going 26-1 with 1 lost JD.) Of course, then they had to fight Riptide.
This fight was probably the least controversial Riptide fight of the season - you can watch it here. Riptide went in and did not let up, unrelenting, leading to the Brazilian bot suffering their first ever KO in under a minute. Riptide was actually pretty chill in the post-fight interview, very respectful towards Black Dragon - I guess that ref warning stuck. For now. With that, Riptide advanced to 4-0 in the qualifiers, and ended up securing themselves the #2 overall seed (behind the undefeated Brazilian monster Minotaur, a favorite to win it all every season and the season 3 runner-up.)

Round of 32: Shatter

For those who don't know, Battlebots has a series of qualifying fights (this year, 4 fights per bot) to determine, out of the contenders (50 this year), which 32 get to compete in the tournament for the Giant Nut, and where they will be seeded. As the #2 seed, Riptide got to fight the #31 seed - hammer-bot Shatter, who you saw earlier helping Witch Doctor. Now, let me not mince words - Shatter was fucked. To paraphrase a comment I saw, "If Shatter drives like a god, gets the most perfect hammer shots ever, and in general is the best a hammer has ever looked in the history of hammers... they will still lose." There was no way Shatter could ever, ever win, barring some kind of catastrophic self-induced failure from Riptide. But damn it, Shatter captain Adam Wrigley was sure as hell going to try.
Now, for more info, the bots have rules that govern what you can do. There's a lot, but 2 are relevant - strict 250 lb weight limit, and the tip speed of a spinning weapon cannot exceed 250 mph. Bots are weighed before each fight to confirm the weight limit, and all bots with spinners have to do tip speed tests in the test box. After the weigh-in, you cannot modify or work on your bot in any way without the approval of production and safety. Not for anything. Maybe a sticker if you want.
So when a Shatter team member found Riptide working on their bot in the tunnel leading from the pits just before the fight, questions were had, and team Shatter demanded Riptide be reweighed and tip speed retested (there were rumors in the pits that they were spinning faster than 250mph.) The team later explained they were attaching a plastic hammer to the robot to mimic Shatter (teams doing funny decorative mods to their bot to mimic the other bot is a longstanding tradition.) All evidence seemed to point to that being the case, so nobody thinks they were lying about it, but it still warranted a reweigh. My opinion - that's fine, but tell production. If people think you're going to do something illegal, and you do something legal but in a way that looks illegal, don't be surprised when people think you're doing something illegal.
I will note that the show made a big deal out of how when Riptide was weighed before they were 'caught,' they weighed in at 250 lb, and the re-weighing said they were 248. There was some concern from Shatter about that, not helped by Stan Kurtz being kind of smug back to them. In response to one Shatter member asking "Why is it 248 now and 250 before?", Stan responded "You're right, there's something wrong. We made it lighter." Now, the thing with this is that there are multiple scales, they're not extremely precise, and if anyone has ever worked with industrial scales before you know how easily they come out of calibration. Some builders have said that whether or not the AC was on could add a pound of weight from the airflow. The "250lb" scale was not the same as the "248lb" scale as well. Generally, nobody really thinks there is something up with the weight, but working on the bot post-weigh-in absolutely warrants a reweigh, no matter who it is.
Riptide complained a lot about it, to the point where the word "whiney" comes to mind. You messed up, teams are meant to tell production before they add decorative stuff and you didn't, so you need to be reweighed. You've already pissed people off in the past so don't be surprised when they give you a bit more scrutiny. Take your lumps, apologize, act like adults, and maybe people will give you the benefit of the doubt next time. Instead, there was a lot of "oh boo is me, we're being discriminated against" - a direct quote from Ethan is "their paranoia is affecting our performance, I think it's really uncool that they did this." Granted, if the scale drifted the other way and they had to lose 2lb of armor to satisfy the arbitrary scale drift, I would get it more, but as it is they just look, well, whiney.
At this time, unbeknownst to anyone until they revealed it on a livestream, Team Whyachi (the team behind the powerful flipper Hydra, engine of (self-)destruction Fusion, and Comedy Central-era legend Son of Whyachi, who had the pit next to Riptide, was asked by production to put a spy camera up to make sure everything was above board. Allegedly they also began doing analysis of the audio and video of the actual fights, to make sure teams (read: one team) weren't cheating and spinning faster than the "maximum speed" they did in the test box.
However, aside from the (explainable, acceptable) scale drift, Riptide was not found to be cheating with tip speed or anything else. Shatter accepted this without complaint - they just wanted to be sure. So, that's out of the way. Ethan basically said "they are paranoid and are trying to ruin us so we will crush them" - fair enough, I suppose. Here's the fight (note: this video includes the entire 'weigh-in' drama before the fight if you want to watch it instead of just reading about it.) For what it's worth, Shatter lasted longer than anyone yet against Riptide - almost 2 minutes - but it went the way everyone expected. The most unexpected thing was in the post-fight, where Ethan basically said "Adam is a paranoid loser" (alongside, allegedly, some more personal insults that got cut), then went in for a "sporting" handshake. Unsurprisingly, Adam refused it.
Now, Adam is basically the "union rep" for the builders - he's the guy chosen (by the builders) to represent them when Battlebots is thinking about changing the rules. He is a very widely respected guy and is by all accounts very sporting and nice. So when you've pissed him off enough that he refuses the handshake (only the second refused handshake in modern Battlebots history, as far as I am aware), you know you fucked up. But either way, Riptide is on to the round of 16.

Round of 16: Hypershock

You saw Hypershock earlier. They're quite good - definitely a contender, though generally not going to be anyone's main pick to win it all. This year, they were the #18 seed after a rough set of qualifiers, fighting 2021 champs End Game, 2021 runner-up Whiplash, perennial contender SawBlaze, and the confusingly fast Claw Viper (seriously watch this, look how fast that boy is.) But after a solid win over #15 seed Lucky, they were on to the round of 16.
When I say Hypershock is a fan favorite, I mean they are the fan favorite - between their iconic style, aggressive driving, and captain Will Bales's humor and charisma, it's probably not wrong to say Hypershock is the most popular bot and team around. People love Hypershock, and people don't love Riptide, so this fight had a lot of "save us, O-Will Bales Kenobi, you're our only hope" energy with the community. Leading up to this, Will said in an interview that Riptide was good, but every team can't be good forever, and that someday Ethan will experience, in Will's words, a "humbling event."
But Hypershock wasn't the odds-on favorite here - Will Bales's flashy driving tends to lead to errors, and against something as nasty as Riptide, any error is death. The full fight isn't uploaded, but here's a clip of the post-fight highlight reel. Will started out doing a 'box rush' (charging straight at the other bot as soon as the fight starts), only to attempt to dodge to the side. Unfortunately, this led to him powersliding directly into Riptide's weapon, losing a wheel, and getting flipped over.
Now, the thing with vertical spinners in Battlebots is they spin 'up' - this means that the outer side goes up and the inner side goes down, so you can brace your own bot against the floor and send the other one flying. Now Hypershock is upside down, effectively spinning 'down,' so the energy from hits pushes the other bot down and themselves up. Riptide is spinning 'up' as normal. Both of these are extremely powerful weapons. Both want to send Hypershock into the air. So what happens when they collide? The energy of both weapons goes into sending Hypershock flying up over 25 feet and slamming into the ceiling of the Battlebox. Remember that that thing weighs 250 pounds. To quote Will in the post-fight interview, "nobody has ever been hit like that before." Much to the chagrin of Hydra captain Jake Ewert, who had the goal of being the first-ever bot to send another bot into the ceiling (and came within inches in their fight against Deathroll), Riptide made Battlebots history here.
The rest of the fight goes as expected at this point and Hypershock is KO'd, with Riptide moving into the quarterfinals. Sorry Will, you aren't the humbling event this time.

Quarterfinals: Copperhead

It's the final episode of the season - the quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals are all in one episode. People are spooked because Riptide is a incredible, powerful bot built and driven by shitty people, and nobody wants them to win but they might. But to go any further, they have to beat Copperhead.. This snake-themed bot is probably best known for getting a new captain almost every year, and this year it's Luke Quintal in charge for his first time. They just came off of an insanely dominant upset over 2021 champs End Game.
Luke has said that he was too focused on Copperhead to pay attention to the controversy, so he became aware of it when, leading up to this fight, builders kept coming up to him and whispering in his hear "dude, you have to beat Riptide. You have to beat them. You might be our last hope." He's just a first-year captain/driver, with the oldest bot in the competition (Copperhead has had the same two frames for its entire 4-year career - this is the longest any frame has competed in the history of modern Battlebots without replacement), who's had to have back-to-back fights against rookie of the year Ripperoni, 2018 Most Destructive winner ROTATOЯ, and End Game. No pressure.
Now, people have tried ways to beat Riptide. You can't just tank their hits with a durable bot (Black Dragon.) You can't outdrive them with fancy footwork (Hypershock.) But something nobody has been man insane enough to try is to go weapon-to-weapon on purpose to break Riptide's weapon. Copperhead just went weapon-to-weapon with End Game and broke theirs. Copperhead is durable enough to take those huge hits Riptide deals out. So their strategy is to just go berserk until something breaks. But there's one major plot twist left.
Remember how I said the Kurtzes are anti-vaxxers? Well, the pandemic is still going on. In order to get into the pits, you either had to be double-vaxxed or test negative every day. Well, there's no confirmation that Ethan was or was not vaxxed (but let's be real), but guess what? In the greatest Chekhov's gun in Battlebots history, he tested positive for COVID the day of the Copperhead fight. Riptide is out their driver for their biggest fight ever.
Other builders have confirmed that this was not the first or only time that team members had to miss days due to testing positive, but previous times either 1) did not involve the drivers, or 2) were in the qualifying rounds where fights could be postponed to following days. But neither was the case this time. Now, this is really a shitty situation for Riptide, and I do feel some degree of pity for them - what a thing to happen. But at the same time, lmao.
Riptide has to spend most of the day deciding who would drive the robot in the fight. The first person they ask? Jack Barker, driver of End Game and 2021 world champion. Jack agreed - can you blame him? Riptide is a hell of a bot, probably super fun to drive, and who knows, maybe he could win another Giant Nut. This got as far as Jack driving Riptide around the test box, before Luke found out and was like "hang on, no. He's not on your team. It's not fair that you can just go to the best driver in the pits and ask them to drive for you." Production agreed and hastily made a new rule where the driver has to be a member of the team. This all was not in the episode, and was only revealed by Luke Quintal after the season aired.
Team Riptide then deliberated between the several members of the team who might stand a chance. They eventually decide on team member Felix Jing, who's an award-winning Vex Robotics driver but has never driven a heavyweight before. Felix seemed to be a nice enough guy, and pretty humble. However, in the deliberations over who would drive, they lose time and are unable to replace their damaged weapon from the Hypershock fight.
So the fight. Riptide box rushes Copperhead, and the first weapon-to-weapon sends Copperhead flying. Luke's bot is still going, though, and goes in for another clash. This goes on for a few hits, until a massive hit sends Copperhead flying up and Riptide flying back - but when they come to, Copperhead's weapon is spinning... and Riptide's weapon is cracked down the middle, exactly what Copperhead was aiming for.
Copperhead does not let up and keeps hitting, eventually ripping about a quarter of Riptide's weapon off completely. However, the damage from the last 4 years of fighting added up. Those big hits from Riptide were the final straw - one of Copperhead's two wheels just falls off. Copperhead can still move, just about, on just one wheel, but suddenly this fight got a lot closer. They keep hitting Riptide, but it goes to the judges after the full 3 minutes.
It's a split decision. Battlebots is scored on an 11-point system - 5 points for damage, and 3 each for aggression and control.
All three judges gave Copperhead three damage points to Riptide's two and Riptide two control points to Copperhead's one.
The first judge scored aggression 2-1 for Copperhead. 6-5 Copperhead.
The second judge scored aggression 2-1 for Riptide. 6-5 Riptide.
The third judge scored aggression 2-1 for the winner...
Copperhead!
They did it, they saved the goddamn universe. We will not have to live in a world where the ur-anti-vaxxer and his dickhead kid win Battlebots. Everyone is fucking ecstatic. I cheered. The audience cheered. God probably cheered. And boy, did the pits cheer - some builders have said this was the biggest celebration in the pits they had ever seen. Tim Rackley of Monsoon (big lad with the flag) apparently was picking Luke up and carrying him around the pits cheering. Riptide is out.
It's a pity Ethan wasn't there to experience his 'humbling event' in person, but it happened. He was there on a video call on a tablet - apparently, production did ask him how he felt and he went on a 5-minute rant about how the team was being forced to face jealousy and adversity because they had to get reweighed. The entire rant was cut from the episode that aired. I've seen conflicting reports if he said "if I was there we would have won," but it would be in character if he did.
Team Riptide used their appeal (each team gets one) to ask the judges to re-review the fight - they did (absolutely fair - you have nothing to lose, anyone should appeal in this situation), and as though to rub it in even more, the sole judge who ruled for Riptide changed his mind about Riptide's aggression, giving Copperhead a unanimous JD. The saga of Riptide in WC7 ends here.

Aftermath

There was zero drama of any kind for the rest of the season (all 3 fights of it.) All the fights were great, clean fights between respected and respectful teams and robots. Copperhead ended up losing to HUGE in the semi-finals - no surprise or shame there, HUGE is designed to be invincible to bots like Copperhead. HUGE ended up facing the mighty SawBlaze in the finals, and in probably the best finals match in combat robotics history, SawBlaze managed to win a unanimous JD, giving SawBlaze captain Jamison Go the Giant Nut.
Literally zero people were unhappy with this - both Jamison and HUGE captain Jonathan Schultz are some of the nicest, most genuine, humble builders in the sport, and going into the finals it was very much a "no matter who wins we all win" kind of thing. Both bots are also "non-meta" - "meta" being the general form of bot that Hypershock, Riptide, Witch Doctor, Copperhead, etc. are, a compact vertical spinner - seasons 3-6 saw meta bots win both first place and runner-up, so people were excited to see a finals match with something new on both sides.
This was very recent, so no news if Riptide will be invited back next year. I would be shocked if they weren't, though - controversy sells, and regardless of how bad the team is, the robot is a killing machine that makes for incredible spectacles. There is allegedly a "sportsmanship rule" being added next year - it's a pity that something that has gone unspoken for decades has to codified in rules because of the actions of one team, but hopefully it will help. Between unethical sponsors, destroying fan favorite bots, being rude both inside and outside the box, cheating allegations, and a stunning lack of humility, Riptide really checked all the boxes in the 'bad guys' field this year.
I could say "the viewing community is willing to give Riptide one more chance to apologize and redeem themselves" but that would be a lie. For the most part, the subreddit, main Discord, etc. are all sick and tired of ever seeing the team again, and would love nothing more than for some cool, nice builder to hijack the bot so we can have cool robots and cool people. I don't know how the builders feel - I imagine that they're probably not quite as vehemently opposed to the team on average, but there's probably no love lost.
I enjoyed writing this up quite a lot, because it really was a classic "villain defeats the main good guys, but then the underdog comes out of nowhere and saves the day" story. Also Battlebots rules. Feel free to ask me anything about the show, or any bots, or if you want to see some cool bots that I didn't include. And seriously, watch Battlebots, it's so good. Check out /battlebots - it's the off-season, so the shitposts are about to get real good. I'm running out of characters so the collection of miscellaneous facts I originally had stuck on the end of this writeup is going to be in the comments.

Our Towns Big Dam Problem [Part 1]
Do you know how some decisions in life just feel so right? Imagine a nice warm pizza right out of the oven. The pizza is covered in gooey cheese, warm meats, and whatever else will delight the eyes and nose so late into the night. So image, if you will, going out for just the briefest of seconds to enjoy the crisp feel of the fall air on your face. You come back to the apartment building that you, and appropriately 50 or 60 of your neighbors call home, only to find smoke billowing down the halls as you suddenly remember that you turned on the burner, and not the oven to preheat, and the smoke is from that pizza you left on the stove.
If you feel like burrowing down the deepest hole after reading that, just remember that you are not alone. In the last week, I have taken a job at a hydroelectric power station as an operator, which at the time felt like an easy no-brainer decision. The job description was nothing if not a little enticing. There was a hefty sign-on bonus, more money than even I thought I was worth, and housing courtesy of the Corps of Engineers, which consider the aforementioned fire above, I needed pretty badly.
My name is Kate Fugate, I am 24, and in so, so much, debt that I have moved to a small town in the northern Appalachia wilderness hoping to carve out a life here. The town is very small, having a few local stores primary consisting of convenience stores, gas stations, and dollar stores. The town is deeply forested and has recently had the honor of having this vast area be designated a National park. The houses are sandwiched into a sharp valley, consisting of a river, sprawling train tracks, and speckled with bridges of all makes and builds. If you were to come here at night, and I very much doubt you would be here at night, you might also take notice of the emergency room-slash-post office combination with twinkling neon lights. If you plan on staying here for very long, and once again, I doubt it, you should get to know the staff.
The main attraction, and the reason that I am christening this journal, is that as much as I would like to believe otherwise, this place is weird but we will get into that more a bit later. What should be the most prominent feature of the town, the dam, is actually not in town. It is about 15 miles upstream, hidden on an unmarked road nestled in a forgotten corner of the park. This fortress spans the length of the river from hill to hill, and is a huge concrete wall with an office building made of brick and a stunningly massive art -deco window spanning the two floors of this structure neatly tucked off the side like an after thought. There are massive, brilliant flood lights spanning the entire length of the dam and stretching pretty far upstream.
The concept is pretty simple, water goes in, spins turbines, and comes out on the other side, and creates the miracles that we all know and love: electricity. In addition, this place prevents flooding and is an all-around great place for serving the town as an early indicator for fires and other disasters. To make matters even more excruciatingly boring and downright fucking frustrating is that there no cell or internet connections to the dam or the cabin nearby that I get to call home. The formal answer I got back for this pile of fake manure is that the cell tower determined the population to “insignificant” to put a cell tower in this area, which I can almost buy. The sorry excuse for the internet is that the park service determines this spot too high of a national security threat and doesn’t want the risk of Russians destroying the place or something, this reasoning being absolutely shit if you ask me.
In order to still get a tiny shred of civilization, I have to climb a stairway to heaven itself up a fire tower, on a hill to get just enough Wi-Fi to keep some semblance of sanity. And let me tell you, my ass is burning, my tounge is dry, and my lungs are one iota from exploding from the effort, and it is worth it.
My first day here started off with my coworker, Sam, showing up two hours late for our designated meeting. He was dressed in bright white pants and a striped plunging v-neck tiger shirt and I would be lying if I didn’t say my first impression was trying to find a camera crew, because I was just certain that someone was trolling with me. He was average height, approximately 35, black hair, blue eyes, and very well groomed hair, and huge muscular arms and, all-in-all, gave off an energy that he thought he was a very pretty boy.
We shake hands, before he cocks his head and give me a quizzical look, “Hey I noticed on your paperwork, is your name actually —“
I cut him off hard and fast, “Yes, it is. My parents were a bit, well, downright eccentric, alright? Don’t use that name, don’t even remember it alright. Do me a favor and call me Kate, Katie if you prefer.”
He looks a bit taken aback and I feel a shred of remorse for the hostility, “Can do, may name is Samuel Carrington but Sam sounds more approachable if you wouldn’t mind using that.”
We take a quick tour of the facility going into the offices, him quickly pointing out the landlines, emergency switches, exits, ect. He goes over the more technical aspects of the job, but then stops right before going into the turbine room, looks me dead in the eye with more seriousness than I thought was possible.
“There are only a handful of rules you absolutely must follow:
​

1. 1. Treat the equipment well, it is fucking EXPENSIVE and a lot of it is specialized. There is no hydroectric repair store just sitting around the corner.
2. 2. Do not leave the site. I am dead serious about this one. Do. Not. Leave. The. Site. The only time you can leave is if you have someone competent here. I am only here two days a week as I have other obligations with the government, as you know the rest is up to you until we can get more people here.
3. 3. Don‘t turn off the turbines for any reason. There are people downstream that stake their lives on the continual operation of this place.
4. 4. If, for whatever reason, this place can not operate due to exceptional circumstances, or can no longer contain the river you must activate the emergency system. In addition to letting out an alert, it allows for people to know in advance to get to higher ground. This is critical, we are the only thing preventing everyone downstream a brutal watery demise.“

We head continue the turbine room talk about more dull operating procedures and then stop by a small office space.
Sam stops and swings open the door which reveals all of a tiny efficiency apartment. “This is my room while I am here, if you need anything feel free to swing by.” He gives me a wink as I contemplate vomiting on his stupid gold tasseled shoes “We have a cabin for you since no other apartments exist and it was left furnished by my last guy.”
We walk a short gravel path uphill to a small old cabin with a porch. He swings open the door, leaving very little to the imagination. Bed and mattress, fridge, stove, fill nearly all the available space. Right smack in the middle of the table sits a pissed off mostly hairless cat, that jumps off the table gives us a hiss for good measure and runs off into the woods.
“Look, we can probably get rid of that if you want. I have no clue how it got in here, or hey, look at it this way! You already have a built in roommate! Feel free to decorate this place anyway you want, if you want I can go get us some food, and I can help you move in. Tomorrow I can go on a grocery run.”
I open the cabinet to find an assortment of canned oddities left over from the last occupant.
“No, that really won’t be necessary, but thank you so much for the offer.” I say trying to be nice. And then the thought occurred to me that this guy is being perhaps a bit too friendly. “Hey, is it alright if I have some, umm, well, overnight friends over? Very special female friends?” I asked trying to be subtle to see if that would discourage him.
“Well douse me in gasoline and toss me a match. Are you a lesbian? That is so freaking awesome! I love chicks too, how cool is that? I shoulda known what with the flannel and pickup truck.” He says, totally oblivious to my growing acceptance that this guy was mostly harmless, if not a touch stupid. Sam cracks open the fridge, and rapidly shuts it back, as a slightly warm pungent smell swaggers into the room. “Yeah, definitely gonna get some real groceries tomorrow.”
“Yep, that’s me, I’m a super lesbian.” I lie feeling like this statement may come back and haunt me. I turn on the kitchen facet as black water spills out.
Sam looks at it a little concerned, “Might want to let that run for a bit, if it doesn’t clear soon, I’ll look into having it fixed. But look, seriously, if you need any help at all, don’t hesitate to call. This place is pretty spooky and it is easy to get hurt or in trouble out here. I’ve only been here about 3 months and my last coworker got pretty messed up. I liked him pretty well and it is an easy, if not boring job but it can take a toll.” Sam stepped out on the porch shooting a slightly nervous look at the woods before looking back at me.
I waved him out, “It is alright, I’m fine, I can take care of myself. I will see you bright and early in the morning.” Sam nodded at me with me with a warm smile and made the short trek back to the dam.
Night swiftly fell, and I was clutching my stomach off loading the contents into the porcelain alter for a cruel sadistic god. I hadn’t checked the expiration date too closely before downing a can of beef tounge I had found in the cabinets, which in retrospect was such a fuckingly stupid move on my part. I stepped back into the main living area to see just a swift glint of metal, before listening to the “Crash” as my widow was busted in and a hand swiftly unlocked the door from the inside.
“Shit, this is real bad.” My brain thought. As my body tensed for a fight, in walked a figure in a green ranger uniform. The guy was 26-27, 5’11, light brown hair, green eyes, fair skin. He looked absolutely furious but satisfied.
“I got you now, you jackass arsonist.” He says, grabbed me by the arms and tossing me on a stuffed chair hard. I feel a flash of pain on my ass as I land. “Damn, I realllly hope that wasn’t a needle.” I think as jump back up. Now, he looked back at me with with sheer bewilderment in his eyes. “OH shit, oh shit, I am gonna die.” I feel dread sneak into me as scramble looking around.
I take up a knife from the counter and plunge it into his hand. He lets out a yelp and given me a kick to my already twisted stomach. ”This is it.” I think as I land on the ground, and take the chance to grab his leg while it is still in the air. I push forward as he stumbles backwards.
“Wait, but your not -“ he tries to slide out of the cabin but I pull down his socks and bite like a rabid dog, with all the energy I had. I taste a glint of metal. He starts really letting his lungs work now before coming to his senses again and grabs a fire extinguisher off the porch and hits me squarely with it. My vision swiftly faded to white after that.
My next memory has me coming back to consciousness in a hospital room. I am under a blanket with cows on it, and look over to see a shitty thin blue curtain with yellow ducks on it. As I try to piece back my memory, I hear a commotion on the other side of the curtain.
One female voice nearly splitting my ears says, “Are you a dumbass? You look like one to me dumbass. You obviously weren’t thinking, dumbass. God, what a dumbass.”
Another male voice joins in, ”A girl, you beat a harmless girl senseless. And the poor thing was starting the job at the power plant. If you weren’t in already in the hospital, I’d put here, but to be fair that would make Dr. Sanders work harder, and unlike you I actually like the guy.”
An older man wearing a white coat comes in about this time who I presume is the aforementioned individual, gives me the mouth zipping motion, a wink and walks to the other side of the curtain.
“Well, she’s dead. You may as well see your handiwork.” The old doctors says.
A younger voice pipes up, “B-B-But it was an accident. I didn’t mean-“
The curtain flies open to reveal two police officers, a short and slightly heavy male and a tall African American woman. Both looking ready to kill the park ranger in bed with his hand bandaged up. The young man looks at me absolutely horrified. I can’t help but let out a small snicker at the scene.
The white haired doctor cracks up at the look of pure indignation I shoot park ranger.
“She’ll be fine.” He says. The two officers looked a bit more at ease. Dr. Sander then goes on to say after sitting down on the edge of my bed, “You spooked us just a bit there, that one over there” he points to the park ranger, “sprayed you down with a fire extinguisher and caused some temporary asphyxiation.”
The guy piped up, “I am so so so sorry. My name is Reuben, call me Ben. I’m so sorry, I had you mistaken for someone else. I’ll make this up to you. I really really fucked this up. Please don’t hate me,” he says. He was genuine, I fully believed that.
“Glad you said, that Ben, because I’m pretty sure I need a door now. My name is Katie.” I went over and gave him a light smack to the back of the head.
Dr. Sanders gave a puzzled look and picked my chart off the bed, “Wait, isn’t your name -,”.
I stopped him, “Yep, it is, please for the love of all that is holy, just don’t.”
After that, the female officer who’s name I learned was Talia, dropped me back off at the dam the next morning. Sam who had only the vaguest of ideas of what had gone on that night was filled in by Talia of the rest of the details and she quickly leaves afterwards leaving a cloud trail in the gravel.
“Well,” Sam says “I guess this means your leaving.”
“Are you kidding?” I say, “I only just got here.”
Sam cracks a wide smile, “You’re in luck then, I forgot to show you something yesterday.”
We go into the dam, down into the basement under the water level under the turbine rooms. I gasp as I look into the room, it was beautiful. There was a massive window looking out underwater. I could swear for the slightest second though that a fish swam by, displaying three eyes, and a sharp row of teeth. I knew in that moment that this river holds terrible and dark secrets and I had not even dipped toe in them.
This is Katie, signing off, until next time.

Hi all. I'm moving out of my apartment and need to get rid of a large mattress and box spring. Is there a company anyone can recommend? I also need help with cleaning. Is there a cleaning service anyone can recommend? I have a major back problem and can't do it all myself.

Ok, so here is my issue. The squirrels that live around my apartment complex are recking havic on my potted plants that I have out front. I'm so crusted with them I'm at a lose as to what to do to detour them from digging in my plants every day!! Do any of you have any suggestions. I'm really at my wits end with them! ( p.s. I've tried the Irish spring and water sprtiz already) HELP! Before I become a squirrel killer. Lol!

On Wednesday, a group of 18 developers and moderators met with spez and other Reddit staff regarding the upcoming API changes. Call notes were published by Reddit for the RedditModCouncil (here is an authorized public copy) with the action items noted by Reddit.
Several of us believe the officially published meeting notes, while generally following points from the meeting, do not fully express the concerns we shared on the call. Therefore, we would like to add our takeaways and recommendations. Each of these concerns was discussed during the meeting, but some of our recommendations were developed after the call. We are only speaking for ourselves and not for any subreddit or group of users.
Reddit is built as an open platform with a vibrant community of users: content creators, insightful commenters, lurkers, moderators, developers, and more. We don’t want to see that community get broken apart by solvable problems, miscommunication, and harried discussions.

1. We don't believe enough effort and time has been given to the discussion and negotiation between Reddit and third-party apps and the schedule for these changes is not reasonable. We would like greater effort to find a solution that preserves the openness of Reddit, the utility of non-official implementations (and that utility includes, but is not limited to accessibility and mod tools), while addressing Reddit's concerns about costs being pushed entirely to Reddit and the lack of control around the ads being served with some third-party apps.
   
2. The value of content creators, moderator labor, and Reddit's developer community needs to be considered alongside the costs of supporting the API and third-party apps. In our meeting, it was expressed multiple times how valuable we are, but this does not seem to have factored into any decisions about the API or third-party apps. The potential cost to Reddit of all of this labor is orders of magnitude higher than any of the costs that seem to be behind Reddit's decision-making on the API.
   It's encouraging that Reddit is trying to improve moderation and accessibility in the official app. However, given past experience with these efforts and recognizing that independent developers have the freedom to solve community problems in ways that official software has been unable to replicate, Reddit should be making it easier for everyone to support their communities. That means supporting third-party apps, external APIs, and devvit.
   
3. Moderating on Reddit is challenging. Moderators are being told to strap on ankle weights when they are already running uphill. Reddit should not be making it more difficult to moderate healthy communities by forcing us into closed ecosystems and this abusive pattern of springing detrimental changes on moderators and their communities needs to stop.
   
4. Regarding Apollo, we think it's a mistake to focus this discussion on Apollo; all third-party apps need to be part of the discussion. But since Apollo was such a large part of the discussion, our takeaways were:
   
   • There was a lot of focus on Apollo's higher API cost compared to other apps. We're not the right group to address that, but it should have been brought to Apollo earlier and we find it hard to believe this is not a solvable issue. Reddit and Apollo should be working together to solve this rather than the current adversarial thing that is happening.
   • We haven't been privy to discussions between Apollo and Reddit, but it seems possible that spez has not received an accurate telling of the history of these discussions for one reason or another. An in-person discussion at a higher level of the company may be beneficial.
5. There was also some discussion about how to better support accessibility in Reddit development. We are concerned that without dedicated and empowered individuals and teams to handle accessibility, it will continue to fall by the wayside.
   
6. We believe the protests that some communities are planning are different from previous protests. The rug is being pulled out on users, developers, moderators, and communities.
   

Finally, we're just a group of concerned developers and moderators. We can't commit subreddits to do or not do anything. We're not even sure if communities where we moderate will or will not be participating in any protest. If there's a blackout or other protest, we think it's primarily a consequence of the way this has been handled and a failure to address these concerns.
Respectfully,

• Lil_SpazJoekp
• WolfThawra
• YourResidentFeral
• bleeding-paryl
• creesch
• dequeued
• epicmindwarp
• eritbh
• itsthejoker
• shiruken

(names sorted lexicographically)

Photos of the currently assembly, and one with a working balance wheel.
Hi folks, thought I'd take apart my old seiko 5 that had a balance wheel mangled from a previous repair attempt.
I got the balance wheel assembly out and was hoping to put a new spring in, but I managed to loose both of these bronze pins from the assembly- my understanding is that the replacement spring needs to be loaded into both of these bronze pins, however the replacements I've seen on ebay have only one pin that you insert into one of the two available forks (and its likely glued down, maybe?). Whats the other pin for, and how can I fix this situation Im in? Thanks for helping me keep things out of the trash :)

Is there such thing as a table/desk clamp mount for iPhone/iPad that uses MagSafe instead of those spring loaded pull apart brackets that hold your device in place? I use my phone or iPad in bed to watch movies/ videos frequently. I had a mount clamped to my headboard that brought the device above my face, but so far I’ve been through 3 of the best rated options on Amazon and all have broke (2 of them the part that broke was the pull apart bracket).
I can’t help but wonder why I can’t find something similar that uses MagSafe magnets to hold the device in place on the mount instead of brackets.
Any leads?
P.S: my problem will be solved once apple vision pro finally drops.

Cat
​
Life was good on the farm. I noticed there were fewer animals in the stable and the granary was emptied and bagged. The bags and tools were loaded into the wagons. The chickens and geese were caught and put in cages. Many things were brought from the house including my sister and her kittens.
​
In the morning the remaining animals were hitched to the wagons. The children caught the puppies and loaded them onto the wagons. The wagons left followed by the momma dog and a few others. The only ones left, besides me, was Scrounge and his mongrel pack. I still had plenty of mice and grasshoppers to eat, but there was no one to fill Scrounge's bowl. Hunting for me was easier, fewer places for the mice to hide and they had to move around more to find food.
​
Scrounge and his pack had to hunt for their own food, then fight to keep it. When one of them started to hunt me, he was discouraged with one swipe across his nose. The day came when the whole pack caught me coming back to the barn from the watering trough. I couldn't make it back to the barn, so I ran to the leaning tree next to the woodlot. Traveling from tree to tree, I only stopped to eat a small bird I caught while the hungry dogs watched. When it started to get dark, I let the dogs see me going back toward the barn. I didn't go back because I knew it would not be safe there for as long as the pack was there.
​
After it was fully dark, I quietly went away from the farm and into the hills beyond. I could have gone down to the river, but I knew there were plenty of wild cats and foxes there. Hunting as I traveled, I was looking for a new home. One day as I was traveling along some blown down trees toward a spring, I heard something in the valley below. It was Scrounge and the pack fighting over the remains of a hare that I had killed the evening before. They must have abandoned the farm or had been run off. I got a good drink and started up the path on the side of a hill. The hill became a cliff and the path led to a cave. The cliff there was too sheer to climb up or down. If they find me in the cave, they won't be able to see me very well.

(Edit: so I can't change the title but that was a lie that was never told, it's 5Mil clicks I have no idea where I got 1 billion from, lol.) I've had my controller for a little under 1 year. Mainly play rocket league and that is what I was trying to play today in the new season. I made it to my 5/10 ranked matches and 1 minute in, I stopped being able to jump. (A is my jump button) Then I noticed it was turning and got stuck, so I took it apart just to find out why it wasn't working and I now feel like I've wasted 80$ on a controller that was supposed to last longer than this and I only got to avoid having to spend 70-80 on a new controller just because the old one got stick drift. 25$+tax for a new stick beats a new controllers pricing any day.
​
Cheap Finish
Cheap mold work
Cheap plastic
Not worth 180usd because of this one fault
I can't change my keybindings because I use literally every button. I may be able to get around this by learning to use the back buttons but that's a challenge as they feel so awkward to use when I do try to use them instead but I also know little to nothing about mapping this thing but anyways.I did love this controller at first but it was a waste of money just to be lied too about how long the buttons would last. All because they went cheap on one crucial part of the controllers functions. Had I known this before buying it I wouldn't have. I have to try to make peace with this regret now as I try to save up for another controller IF there is no way to get the buttons replaced. I tried to glue it back in place and while I can get the screw-hole back in a functional position the button will not click nor pop back into place after being pressed.
​
In short I now don't have an A button on a $180 controller all because the makers thought it'd be okay to make just 1 part cheaply. Whatever happened to springs and silicon? Is that not cheap yet durable? (Yeah yeah the magnets would have influence on springs but honestly I think there are too many magnets on them I don't like the magnetic grips, normal rubber or something would be perfectly fine so long as I don't need to pay for a whole new controller every time a button or stick got ruined.)

I was in a relationship when I was barely 19 years old. The guy was about 24 or 25 years old. Right from the start he was insanely jealous and always thought that I liked his roommate. He said the most despicable, subhuman trash things to me. He would text me multiple times in the early morning or late night and say that "I was trash", "I was a whore", "I would never amount to anything", "that I'm a loser" and that "I would be stuck at the place that we worked at for the rest of my life" (meaning that I would never have a substantial job).
I remember we had sex at his house and afterwards he ran to the bathroom to throw up. I asked him if he was ok and he said that I disgusted him so much that he had to throw up. This was while I was still naked on his bed. He lived with other guys who we all worked together with and made me keep it a secret that we were seeing each other. I wasn't allowed to go over to his house if anyone else was home. He would also tell me to come over and when I knocked on his door, he pretended like he wasn't home (this was probably 4 or 5 times). We would also hook up in our cars after our shift at work and didn't tell anyone about it. I was only 19 and I was starved for any kind of attention and any kind of scraps he was willing to throw on the ground for me. My self-esteem and self-worth plummeted and I remember crying everyday. He would call me fat, say that I wore too much makeup and would ask why I didn't act like the other girls or why I was such a whore and why couldn't I be a good person like so and so. I mean I was and I still am a good person. My point is that these attacks were unprovoked and out of the blue. I order food to go and he said that I was so fat in front of my co-workers.
His attacks would be about anything and everything. He would taunt me and ask why don't I go suck so and so's dick because I was such a whore. He made up lies and told me that he told everyone at work that I was a whore and that I would suck them off if they asked me to. He spread rumors about me and talked shit about me to anyone that would listen. He told me that he told our coworkers that they could pay me and I would fuck them. This would make me very self-conscious that everyone that I worked with knew or that he said that. I was very self aware that everyone was potentially judging me or that they heard this rumor from him. Even though he lied and didn't actually tell anyone this. It made me very paranoid and anxious.
He also came up with this notion that he had to teach me how to be a good person and that I needed to be rehabilitated and then we would be happy together. I was so weak and so broken down that I eventually believed all of his lies that I was a whore, I'm, not worth anything, that I have no self-value. He continued to treat me horribly and degrade me every and any chance he got.
A traumatic event happened to me- which I'm not going to disclose, but everyone at work found out about it. He abandoned me and thought that I lied about the whole incident. He asked me questions about it not because he cared but because he thought I was lying about the whole ordeal. At this point in time I felt very alone, because he isolated me from my friends and family. During this time he also made it his mission to sleep with all of my co-workers. He ended up sleeping with 5 or 6 of my co-workers maybe more and he slept with my best friend. She eventually told me that they slept together. It wasn't like we worked in a major corporation or anything like that. It was a restaurant and we were all very close.
One day he freaked out about the change in uniform and ran out to his car and quit his job. I followed him outside and asked him to please come back in. He said that he was leaving to Palm Springs to stay with his mom while he found another place to live. He told me that he wanted me to come with him but I was such a whore that he could never fathom taking me anywhere to meet his mother or even speak to his mother.
Over the next couple of years we kept in touch and he would still continue to text me horrible things. He would come into my work when he knew I was working and would bring his new girlfriend with him. They eventually broke up and we got back together. The cycle continued and at this time I was drinking heavily and was pretty much addicted to prescription pills. His texts continued to be more and more harsh and I felt like a shell of a person, that I would never be happy again. It turns out he was in another relationship with this girl I worked with. We both did not like each other so we never talked to each other at work. Which is why he started dating her because he knew we would never speak. We eventually talked to each other in the bathroom and we both found out we were seeing the same guy. He told me that he couldn't hang out with me on valentines day because he had plans with his brothers but he was really with her. At this point, I was freaking done I had enough and I really thought I was going to end my own life if I stayed with him. I couldn't see a way out of this and I was over consumed with fear, sadness, guilt, and loneliness.
After we broke up my self-worth was very low. I had a lot of promiscuous sex which I don't regret but it's not in my character to do it. It was kinda like, "well you called me a whore this whole time so I'm going to show you how much of a whore I can be". I was always looking for someone to give me self-worth and to make myself feel better. Because of this relationship, I developed severe anxiety where I couldn't leave my house because his words affected my life so much. Some days I couldn't leave my bed or my house or even get ready in the morning. I rarely went and saw anyone and I didn't really trust anyone. I deleted all of my social media, because I was so anxious that he was going to find my social media accounts and continue to harass me.
After a lot of therapy and after graduating law school I decided to look him up or to see what he was doing with his life. I found out that he killed a beautiful young girl while he was driving drunk on the wrong side of the freeway. He has a jury trial coming up in the end of July.
I cannot believe someone I was so close to or so intimate with had the capability to do something like this. And yet I feel guilty. It's fucking with my head. I feel like for some fucking reason this is all my fault. I know this sounds insane. I've never been arrested or had a DUI or anything like that. I'm also thinking well if we were still together would this even happen? I don't know how to break this cycle of thinking or how to move forward. Idk if I should write him a letter and hope that he apologizes to me for all the hurt and trauma he put me through? I feel as if I've never had closure. Any advice would be amazing. Thank you so much for reading my very long rant and thoughts.
​
Please be nice, I cannot take someone ripping me apart especially with my vulnerability that I have expressed in this post.
TLDR: Emotional trauma from a relationship when I was 19. Now I found out that the guy is potentially going to prison for the rest of his life or a very long time. Idk what to do.

I want to get a discussion going to see other Artist views as to when someone goes from beginner to an experienced Artist.
I've (29F) been doing some self reflecting as I work on creating my first collection of original art to release towards the end of summer. Really it all comes down to me trying to figure out price for my pieces that has triggered this thought process as I try to factor in my experience level. I'm going to dive in to my personal experience through out my life, but want to hear other people's perspectives.
I come from a long line of unknown but skilled Artist . My mom's an artist if many crafts (painting, sewing , woodworking , baking etc) her dad's an Artist, my grandma on my dad side was an artist, cousins etc. It goes back to the 1700s. I began really considering Art as a profession as early as my Freshman year in Highschool, and had completed college courses by the end of my junior year. After graduation I was Accepted in to a local Art collage but couldn't afford it or decide which Art I wanted to focus on. I really enjoyed concept art and wanted to become an illustrator for dungeons and Dragons or game design but couldn't get my self to commit to the school. So from 2012- 2018 I worked a regular 9-5 and would work on character concepts and some other spring of the moment artworks through out the years. It wasn't until I was on maternity leave for my first born that I started to do Simple watercolor portraits and opened up my first shop. I have activily been selling watercolor commissions, and landscapes, religious works and Ornaments with my artwork on them since then and have a fairly successful Etsy shop, but have never sold originals.
In January I created my first floral abstract piece for my home and I really love it. I havent worked with acrylic since 2011, I kinda hated working with the medium and avoided it as much as possible. In February We welcomed our third Child and since then I've been decided to step back from commissions and my usual style to work on a collection inspired by the painting I made in January and have since made some beautiful pieces, but have run into a road block.
Thanks to my mom I have been drawing and painting from a very young age, but also due to being around so many creatives I have heard the phrase "oh I could do that" and "that's so simple" (we're also very cynical people, I grew up apart of the peanut gallery lol ) that I think I might have become desensitized to the actual skill and talent that goes into creating art. Seeing colors, techniques and application of art has become so much apart of me that I don't see it as a skill, but as something that anyone can do. It wasn't until the other night while talking with my husband that he brought to light his views as an non painting/ drawing artist (he is a musician though) the thoughts and feelings he has when looking at my work and the skill I put into it. I was flabbergasted. He spoke about my use of color and how I understand ways to bring out emotion etc. To me I'm just doing what I think looks good, but realistically it's from years of studying, practicing and applying the things I've learned for over a decade. With that said, because I am working in a medium that I don't work with often, I don't feel like an experienced Artist and with it being abstract, I also battle with "why would anyone spend xx on something anyone can do" and I'm trying to overcome these intrusive thoughts and I want to hear other Artists experiences and views
When did you consider yourself experienced. Was it after x amount of sales, money or years?
Do you consider the time you spent in your youth dabbling in any and all art styles apart of your experience/education?
Do you feel like formal education vs self taught changes the level of experience?
When switch styles or mediums do you decrease your value? (I charge over $200 for a 8x10"watercolor portrait but feel bad even considering $75 for a 24x36" acrylic abstract- I've been looking into other Artists with similar mediums or styles to compare their prices, but I can't help but think "how long have them been working on this style" "how much did they charge for their first collection" etc. Its silly but Id feel bad jumping in with my first collection and putting $1000 on a large piece , like I need to earn the reputation to be able to charge that much.)
I'm eager to read everyone else's thoughts and experiences!
How do you ignore the peanut gallery

Hello! I’d like general advice about moving on and re-establishing my relationship or choosing to end it.
My partner (26M) and I (24F) have been living together for 3 years, though we’ve been together for 5. My partner lost his job at the beginning of the year and has been struggling with finding a career in general since then. He was able to find another job 2 months ago but has since then quit, and is now planning on restructuring his career in general, including possibly going back to school and taking some entry level positions in a different field.
He was contributing 60% to all of our shared expenses while I was contributing 40% since I earn significantly less (70k vs 40k) and send a portion of my pay to help support my parents. I took a 2 year gap from college to help support my parents as one lost their job and the other was going through chemo. I planned to return to college last spring but my plans were delayed due to our situation. We resigned the lease when he accepted his previous job offer but now I am committed to paying this lease with little help for another 10 months or with him pulling from savings.
The only sustainable solution to this is that he returns home, where he won’t have to worry about paying bills. I unfortunately don’t have that privilege as my parents live in a small apartment that doesn’t have any spare space as it is.
I am holding a lot of resentment towards him for the decisions we’ve made and I keep feeling that we are holding each other back. I love him and the life we’ve created so much, but I don’t know how to move forward, as I feel drained and disappointed. I feel I’ve made sacrifices to make this work but he couldn’t, and I feel selfish for asking him to.
Is it reparable?

I need some MAJOR help and it may be that I just need help pushing this truck over a cliff. I'll give you the backstory first but, I'm having a hell of a time getting the timing to work. I'll explain in detail below.
Backstory:
My 2007 truck dropped a rod a blew holes in the block. I had the bright idea of swapping in a 2009 Eagle Hemi into the truck along with everything needed to have the VVT and SRV systems working.
I found a 2009 engine for a reasonable price. I tore it apart to make sure everything was good and found it had a bad cam due to a lifter dying and chewing it up. So great time to put a better cam in. Here is a list of EXACTLY what I did.
- Cleaned the block and removed all of the carbon from the cylinders. I did not remove the crankshaft, rods, or pistons.
- Installed a cam from a VVT, MDS, 6.4L
- Replaced 4 of the lifters
- Replaced all of the valve springs with Enginetech ERV1451 springs. I made sure to remove the old seat/spacer and only use the 1mm shim packaged with the springs.
- Replaced the PCM with a PCM from a 2009 Ram 1500
- Added wiring for the SRV
- Added wiring for the VVT
- Replaced the VVT Solenoid
- Replaced the timing chain, crank sprocket, chain tensioner, and the chain guide
- Installed an oil pump from a Hellcat motor
- Extended the wiring on the IAT, ETC and the MAP sensor connector.
- Changed the connector on the cam shaft sensor from the '07 version to the 09' version
There were other issues but, nothing that I think would be relevant to this issue.
Results:
The motor ran fine at first. Or at least it seemed to while parked. I let it idle to operating temp to just make sure everything was working.
The next day I started it up and drove it. It went into limp mode and wouldn't shift into high gear or rev above 3000 RPM. I parked it for a bit and cleared the PCM. When I started it again it stayed out of Limp mode. When I drove it was fine for a few feet and then a loud whine and loss of power. Every time I pushed on the gas it would whine and lose power. I can only describe it as a transmission that was slipping out of gear. I stopped and checked everything. After that it drove fine but only in Limp mode. I figured it was because I had cleared the LP counters. I chalked it up to a temporary transmission issue.
Reading the codes I was getting a ton of codes for crank/cam issues. I replaced both the cam sensor and crank sensor with car quest sensors from Advance and attempted to have the PCM relearn them. The truck would immediately go into limp once started. I then bought NTK sensors and tried them. Same problems. I rechecked the wiring, pulled the intake and checked the VVT solenoid, and double checked the oil. No change. At this point I can drive the truck but not over 55mph and it won't shift into high gear as it's obviously in limp mode. My next thought was to reinstall the original cam sensor. I got different codes but, I noticed I could get it to stay out of limp mode for a bit. Revving it past 3000 and everything sounded good and then that loud whine and immediately into limp mode. So now I know the whine is not the transmission but, I'm completely at a loss as to what it is.
Here is a better summary with what I was seeing on the scan tool.
First Start after rebuild old crankshaft sensor and old camshaft sensor:
- Multiple codes for crankshaft/camshaft. Squeal at higher RPMs with loss of power and immediate limp mode.
New CarQuest Camshaft and Crankshaft sensors installed:
- Limp mode on start
- P0344 and P0340 codes
- Cam Sync = No Sync
- Cam/Crank Difference = 30° (This value will only change at startup and doesn't not change while running it does bounce around 29° and 32°. One time it went to 8L)
New NTK Camshaft and Crankshaft sensors installed:
- Limp mode on start
- P0344 and P0340 codes
- Cam Sync = No Sync
- Cam/Crank Difference = 30°
New Crankshaft Sensor original Camshaft Sensor:
- Limp mode after running for a few minutes
- P0016 set at start
- Cam Sync = Synced
- Cam/Crank Difference = 30° ( With the original sensor this value will change while idling but, not by much)
- While not in limp mode I can rev over 3000 RPM at which point it will randomly let out a loud squeal and drop RPMs. This happened in idle.
Does anyone have any ideas on what to look for?
Any ideas on the load high pitched noise that randomly happens over 3000 RPM?
Any thoughts on checking timing without pulling the timing cover?
Can a VVT sprocket go bad?
I have ordered a new Mopar camshaft sensor to see if that helps. I am trying to avoid taking the timing cover off but, I think I'm going to have too. I'm going to try and stick a borescope in the hole for the camshaft sensor to see if I can see anything wrong with the timing chain and sprockets.

I need some MAJOR help and it may be that I just need help pushing this truck over a cliff. I'll give you the backstory first but, I'm having a hell of a time getting the timing to work. I'll explain in detail below.
Backstory:
My 2007 truck dropped a rod a blew holes in the block. I had the bright idea of swapping in a 2009 Eagle Hemi into the truck along with everything needed to have the VVT and SRV systems working.
I found a 2009 engine for a reasonable price. I tore it apart to make sure everything was good and found it had a bad cam due to a lifter dying and chewing it up. So great time to put a better cam in. Here is a list of EXACTLY what I did.
- Cleaned the block and removed all of the carbon from the cylinders. I did not remove the crankshaft, rods, or pistons.
- Installed a cam from a VVT, MDS, 6.4L
- Replaced 4 of the lifters
- Replaced all of the valve springs with Enginetech ERV1451 springs. I made sure to remove the old seat/spacer and only use the 1mm shim packaged with the springs.
- Replaced the PCM with a PCM from a 2009 Ram 1500
- Added wiring for the SRV
- Added wiring for the VVT
- Replaced the VVT Solenoid
- Replaced the timing chain, crank sprocket, chain tensioner, and the chain guide
- Installed an oil pump from a Hellcat motor
- Extended the wiring on the IAT, ETC and the MAP sensor connector.
- Changed the connector on the cam shaft sensor from the '07 version to the 09' version
There were other issues but, nothing that I think would be relevant to this issue.
Results:
The motor ran fine at first. Or at least it seemed to while parked. I let it idle to operating temp to just make sure everything was working.
The next day I started it up and drove it. It went into limp mode and wouldn't shift into high gear or rev above 3000 RPM. I parked it for a bit and cleared the PCM. When I started it again it stayed out of Limp mode. When I drove it was fine for a few feet and then a loud whine and loss of power. Every time I pushed on the gas it would whine and lose power. I can only describe it as a transmission that was slipping out of gear. I stopped and checked everything. After that it drove fine but only in Limp mode. I figured it was because I had cleared the LP counters. I chalked it up to a temporary transmission issue.
Reading the codes I was getting a ton of codes for crank/cam issues. I replaced both the cam sensor and crank sensor with car quest sensors from Advance and attempted to have the PCM relearn them. The truck would immediately go into limp once started. I then bought NTK sensors and tried them. Same problems. I rechecked the wiring, pulled the intake and checked the VVT solenoid, and double checked the oil. No change. At this point I can drive the truck but not over 55mph and it won't shift into high gear as it's obviously in limp mode. My next thought was to reinstall the original cam sensor. I got different codes but, I noticed I could get it to stay out of limp mode for a bit. Revving it past 3000 and everything sounded good and then that loud whine and immediately into limp mode. So now I know the whine is not the transmission but, I'm completely at a loss as to what it is.
Here is a better summary with what I was seeing on the scan tool.
First Start after rebuild old crankshaft sensor and old camshaft sensor:
- Multiple codes for crankshaft/camshaft. Squeal at higher RPMs with loss of power and immediate limp mode.
New CarQuest Camshaft and Crankshaft sensors installed:
- Limp mode on start
- P0344 and P0340 codes
- Cam Sync = No Sync
- Cam/Crank Difference = 30° (This value will only change at startup and doesn't not change while running it does bounce around 29° and 32°. One time it went to 8L)
New NTK Camshaft and Crankshaft sensors installed:
- Limp mode on start
- P0344 and P0340 codes
- Cam Sync = No Sync
- Cam/Crank Difference = 30°
New Crankshaft Sensor original Camshaft Sensor:
- Limp mode after running for a few minutes
- P0016 set at start
- Cam Sync = Synced
- Cam/Crank Difference = 30° ( With the original sensor this value will change while idling but, not by much)
- While not in limp mode I can rev over 3000 RPM at which point it will randomly let out a loud squeal and drop RPMs. This happened in idle.
Does anyone have any ideas on what to look for?
Any ideas on the load high pitched noise that randomly happens over 3000 RPM?
Any thoughts on checking timing without pulling the timing cover?
Can a VVT sprocket go bad?
I have ordered a new Mopar camshaft sensor to see if that helps. I am trying to avoid taking the timing cover off but, I think I'm going to have too. I'm going to try and stick a borescope in the hole for the camshaft sensor to see if I can see anything wrong with the timing chain and sprockets.