Community to support contemplation of the Gene Keys, by Richard Rudd. š§¬š ⣠⣠**Unofficial**⣠⣠Topics related to collective spiritual evolution, the I Ching, integration of Human Design also encouraged.
Welcome valiant quitters... If you're ready to cease mind-numbing feeding of the propaganda machine known as Twitter, you are in the right place! Break the habit of tweets and hashtags; let go of ego and start having healthy conversations > 280 characters.
So I wanted to set up Home Assistant on a pi, and after a lot of conversations people have said I should just use a dedicated machine. I have an intel Mac mini and an m1 Mac mini. Docker doesn't work great on the M1 Mac mini AND it doesn't allow usb passthrough. Add to this is that I have 1 toddler and a baby and so I have trouble getting a large chunk of focus time to learn outside of work. So I'm struggling a lot with Docker. I got HAOS up and running just fine on UTM and I was thinking about just running Jellyfin native rather than within a container. I was trying to understand if that puts me at a big disadvantage, and if it'll be a problem to migrate to containers later down the road once I figure things out.
Running Docker just seems like a lot of troubleshooting and trial and error, but running natively they seem to "just work" (though I acknowledge it could be a ticking time bomb down the road).
Since about 30, my hair has gotten thinner. BC pills, stress, pregnancies, hormones, genes, etc. But ever since I started HRT a year ago, I think that my hair is getting better. Could this be possible? I do use sulfate shampoo, use hair masks and eat the foods that 'claim' to help your hair BUT I think it's the HRT..
Coffee-- I've been drinking coffee for a few years now and enjoy a cup or two in the morning. But ever since I got back from vacation, my coffee doesn't taste good anymore. I guess I was drinking really good cuppuccino/coffee and missing it. What coffee do you drink that you enjoy?
I am on a journey to discover the best, most convenient method for iced coffee at home (like a lot of us here lol). Iām not great at time management in the morning. The goal is quick, tasty, and convenient. I could even keep a machine in my office.
Here is what Iāve tried:
-Regular drip coffee maker: hard no. takes a long time to chill or melts the ice. never tastes great. -Pour Over tastes great! took a long time to cool down or melted all of the ice. has anyone made this work without watered down coffee? -Espresso machine Worked pretty well. I bought a cheap one and it was a more involved process than I would prefer lol. Also more milk than coffee with espresso is a downside. -Cold Brew I love cold brew! This is what I do currently. I have perfected my method and can make large batches BUT I am notorious for forgetting to make it and there is no quick option.
Has anyone tried the iced coffee machines? I feel skeptical about them but am tempted. Would love to hear your experiences! Help a girl out š
How do I speed up levelling fishing skill? I'm level 25 and I'm making like 30k xp an hr max with shark scale and pitchin rod of legends. I tried squid fishing, barn fishing, and carrot king fishing.
I tried also uploading this on the forums and it kept saying: You have already replied to this thread, and no one else has replied since.
If Iād only followed my instincts, Iād never have boarded that doomed ship. When the Azure Seastar left port, its passengers were all alive, each with smart phones and watches and tablets, as well as the cruise shipās own communications⦠yet not a single message was sent before it went missing! No distress call.
The fates of over a thousand passengers and crew remain unknown, with only a handful recovered from a lifeboat, days after the Seastar herself vanished. But the coast guardās only statement on the lifeboatās recovery was that āthe passengers did not survive.ā Rumors circulated about a āthermos full of eyeballsā and a āpassenger whose mouth was stuffed full of severed fingersāābut these details have been denounced as lies, sensationalizing and capitalizing on a tragedy.
The
official cause of the Seastarās disappearance is a rogue wave. No survivors. No witnesses.
Wellā¦
one witnessā¦
⦠but perhaps I shouldnāt tell. Better for the world if that ship stay lost forever!
The families of the missing, however, deserve the truth⦠which is why I am posting.
But first, a warningāthe gruesome snippets I recounted above barely scratch the surface of the horror I am about to share, some of which I took part in. I wake screaming every night. I sleep with the lights on. I never enter darkened hallways or stairwells. And I do not
ever shake hands. Although Iāve always had some quirks (the handshake one is an old habit), most of these are fresh, a consequence of my time aboard that doomed cruise ship. I do not intend to gloss over any details, but rather to give a complete accounting, including of my own involvement⦠so be forewarned.
And understand that my story is one of unimaginable horror.
***
To explain what really happened aboard the Seastar, I need to first tell a little about myself. Sorry, I know Iām like a bit of decorative wallpaperājust sort of there. But I
see things.
It all started when I was very young (I do promise this is relevant). I didnāt want to swim in the community pool with my brother because the water was cloudy, hiding a shadowy figure in the deep end. I distinctly remember standing at the poolās edge, crying inconsolably while my father urged, āGo on, jump in!ā
My brother set the example, diving down to the bottom of the foggy water. When he came up, a silver dollar glinted in his fingers, which he dropped back into the pool before I could snatch it. āOops! Guess you gotta dive for it!ā He laughed, the sun shimmering off his sunburned shoulders. āCome on, thereās quarters down here, too!ā
Diving for coins was a game we often played, so I plunged in after him, kicking my way down with my eyes squeezed shut. When my hands grazed the rough cement bottom, I patted around.
Silky hair tangled around my fingers like seaweed.
I forced my eyes open against the stinging chlorineāand shrieked.
Wide, empty eyes stared back at me from a bloated face.
When I shot to the surface, wailing about a dead woman in the water, other swimmers looked on, perplexed. My older brother tried to console me and swore there were nothing but coins.
He was correctānot until a week later would a woman drown in that pool, and sink to the bottom of the foggy water while swimmers unwittingly raced laps above her.
***
The next time I
saw was when I threw a tantrum over my grandmotherās armchair. It smelled so bad I grabbed my nose and exclaimed, āEwwww!ā
My parents scolded me for my rudeness. Grandma occasionally struggled with incontinence, so for her chair to stink was, they assumed, the result of an accident. They thought I was exaggerating to make fun of her, but in the sweltering summer, the smell was truly unbearableālike rotting meat and diarrhea and cheap perfume all churned together. I threw such a fit we left, though Grandma insisted on hugging me despite my being an āawful brat.ā Her skin was wrinkled, papery-thin and soft as silk, but despite the uncomfortable warmth of her apartment, her embrace was ice cold.
Less than a week later the call came. My grandmother had been found after a neighborās complaint about the smellā¦
Sheād died in her chair.
***
But when the
seeing really clicked was in my tween years, two separate incidents. The first was after a classmate of my brotherās pulled up in a car reeking of burnt meat, the interior charred and black. He stepped out of the car seeming not to notice that behind him, another version of him remained belted into the front seat, unrecognizable through the char beyond the glint of a gold chain melted into his neck. I burst into hysterical tears and screamed at my brother not to let him drive. The classmate laughed and called me a weirdo.
He crashed later that week.
The second incident began at a school function, where my brother chaperoned me. A man pulled up in the school drop-off zoneāhe was one of the more popular teachers, famous for his yearly pizza parties. In the car with him were two young kids. I canāt remember their names, just that the littlest boy was giggling and clinging to a toy T-rex when he hopped out. My brother and I were asked to help carry the party supplies and drinks from the teacherās car. But the moment I opened the passenger door to grab a box, the reek of fetid pond water made my stomach lurch. I staggered back, clapping a hand to my nose and mouth.
āHey! Everything all right?ā the teacher asked.
My brother, no doubt remembering what happened to his classmate weeks earlier, took me aside.
āC-c-c-c-cold!ā I burst to him. āD-dark! The smell! Like the rot in the bottom of a lakeā¦ā
While I wrung my hands and sniffled, my brother watched the two young kids follow the teacher into the school. He shook my shoulder and said, āHeyāhey, weāre going to save them.ā
āHow? No one ever believes me!ā
ā
I believe you, Hope. Heyā¦ā He gave me a squeeze and looked in my eyes. āāHopeā is the thing with feathersā¦ā
What a dork. That line was from Emily Dickinsonāmy brotherās favorite quote for me for when I was upset. It was corny, but encouraged me.
A few minutes later, we were careening along backwoods roads in the teacherās car. To this day, I donāt know how my brother got the keys. His plan was weād stow the car in a garage for a couple weeks, long enough to outlast the vision, since my predictions always came true within about six days. But it hadnāt occurred to either of us how being
inside the car would affect me. The damp and rot washed over my skin.
COLD. Every hair on my body stood erect, floating as if underwater. I couldnāt breathe⦠gagging on the fetid water, I rolled down my window. Raindrops from outside pelted my face, and something⦠something clicked. A sudden terrible question. When Iād peered into the darkened interior, I hadnāt been able to seeā¦
who was inside the car? āHey,ā my brother said, apparently struck by the same thought. āYouāre not foreseeing
our deaths, are you?ā
I donāt know if it was fate that caused us to fishtail just as he spoke. But also he might have hit something, because there was a bump. All I know is suddenly we were flying, off the road and over the side toward a lake, and then plunging, and I snatched for his hand as the impact slammed us forward into the dashboard. Then the water wasnāt just in my mind. It was
real. It was pouring in through the car window.
I fought, flailing. Unbuckled. Floundered through the half-open window. Luckily I was still small enough to get through, swimming up and breaking the surface.
āCory!ā I screamed. ā
CORY!!!ā But I knew already that my brother wasnāt coming upāhis hand had been cold when Iād touched it.
***
Naturally, his death feels like my fault. Oh, in kinder moments I remember that I was a child, and try to forgive myself for letting him get behind that wheel. But for a time, I was driven by the fierce need to atone. I sought desperately to save even
one lifeā¦
ANY life. Iād see a body swaying from a beam in a construction site. Legs dangling from a trunk in the car on the highway ahead of me. A suitcase on sale in a luggage store, dripping blood.
Every time I tried to prevent the death⦠only to fail or worse,
cause it. Each loss drove home more deeply my shame, my failure⦠until eventuallyā¦
I gave up.
I donāt try to prevent the deaths anymore. These days I catch a whiff of that familiar sickly putrid scent, and I leave. I avoid human touch, especially handshakes.
Iāve truly become wallpaper. Able to
see. Powerless to prevent.
My name, incidentally, is Cassandra⦠I changed it because I could no longer bear my birth name. If āHopeā is the thing with feathers, I was an angel of death, harbinger of doom to my brother and others. So instead I call myself after the Greek priestess doomed to foresee the future but never to be believed⦠unable to prevent even one single tragedy.
***
But letās get back to the cruise. The missing passengers. The eyeballs in the thermosāoh, those grisly details! Mind you, once you know you canāt un-know, no matter how much you drink, or smoke, or however you drown your despair. Speaking of drowning, a month ago today, I hit the big 4-O. I celebrated my four decades of life by doing the one thing Iāve done consistently since I was old enoughādrinking away my failures. Every icy grip. Every unheeded warning. And especially the times Iāve well and truly fucked up. Oh yes. Those are the ones that call for some hard forgetting.
I was on my second or seventh drink at my favorite bar when a voice exclaimed, āāEvening, friend!ā
A woman with shimmering purple eyeliner and matching purple hair approached. It was the musician who often played there, Lily Tsuki. To be honest, she was the primary reason I frequented that bar, though weād hardly spoken beyond my occasional compliments about her playing. She slid into the seat next to mine and clinked my glass.
āRoy at the bar told me itās your fortieth. I see you in here once a week, always tipping well and drinking like youāre trying to drown yourself. Someone did something kind for me recently, so Iām trying to pass it onā¦ā She fished a hand into her pocket, and to my surprise produced a gift card for a cruise. I didnāt catch all of her story in the noisy bar, but apparently, one of her admirers was very rich, always offering her gifts verging on inappropriate. After finding out sheād be playing on the Azure Seastar, said admirer sent her the card so she could spoil herself on the cruise. She didnāt feel comfortable accepting, so she gifted it to me. ā⦠Thereās enough on there to cover your fare. Donāt thank meāthank
you, I needed to get rid of it. Enjoy your fortieth, friend!ā
As she handed me the card, her fingers brushed mine.
Warm. Alive.
I mumbled my thanks, cheeks warm. Why? Because she chose me? Blushes! Iām an idiot.
Still, I was glowing, and not just because I was tipsy.
Why not? I thought.
Why not treat myself, this once? The Azure Seastar⦠it sounded like a dream. Iād go see Lily Tsuki play at the piano bar against the backdrop of a glimmering ocean. Iād drink under the stars. Get a tan. Get my sea legs! And every hand would be warm and every breath would taste of the summer breeze!
***
Nine decks (eleven including the crew-only levels). Over a thousand people. Pool, bars, restaurants, lounges, cafĆ©s, spa, cabaretāthe Seastar truly was the Ritz Carlton on the water! I was absolutely giddy! Of course before the luxury came the waitājust like the airport, parking, luggage, ticketing, security. It was as I neared the entrance for ticketing, enjoying the summer breeze, that I caught traces of a sour odor⦠a whiff of decay⦠so faint beneath the car exhaust and the smell of the saltwater that I might have missed it, were I not so attuned to death. At port, it was likely some unfortunate animal packed into a shipping crate and decomposing. Iād even read horror stories of people, trafficked in sealed shipping containers and asphyxiating. That faint whiff made my insides curdle.
Then I was inside the air conditioned terminal, packed with passengersāand inhaling nothing but the blessed AC.
The check in was surprisingly quick. I followed the embarkation signs up the escalator to the terminalās upper level, through the double glass doors, greeted on my right by printed images of pool decks and steaks and wine glasses. On my left, through the enormous paned wall of glass, the Seastar herself loomed. My God, she was enormous!
So many decks! So many balconies!
Then I squinted a little closer. What was that speck? A tiny figure, draped on a railing?
My heart dropped to my toes.
Something was horribly wrong.
The figure, small against the massive width of the ship⦠had no face. Only a torso and most of its arms. It had been decapitated, and dried blood spattered the rail.
My footsteps slowed. I pressed against the glass, eyes rapidly roving the rest of the ship. Was it just oneā¦? One incidence of violence, orā¦
Perhaps I wasnāt seeing correctly. It was a stunt. A practical joke. A mannequin. I needed to get closer. I hurried along the terminal, joining the line out to the gangplank.
The bowl of the sky had turned deep purple, the sun lowering toward the horizon, and in the Seastarās deep shadow, the temperature dropped. A sudden chill gripped me as I trotted out onto the gangplank. I sniffed. Sniffed again, more deeply.
Rot. The same putrid odor Iād caught outside. A passenger ahead of me noticed me grabbing my nose, and remarked, āNot used to that ocean smell?ā I did not respond, because now that I was close enough to see the ship more clearly, I noticed⦠cracked glass⦠broken panes in the sliding glass doors of the cabinsā¦
no! I gasped, sinking to my knees, and the passenger kindly leaned to help me up. As her hand seized mineāit was
cold. I jerked back so fast I actually collapsed into the passengers behind usāa mother and her daughter.
āOh!ā exclaimed the mother.
My hand brushed the daughterās bare arm.
Cold. āAre you okay?ā asked the daughter, a child of about twelve.
I crawled back from her, and another person, an elderly gentleman, leaned down to help me up, his hand on my elbow.
Cold! āMiss?ā he asked. āMissāā But I bolted, barely hearing their cries as I launched myself back toward the terminal. No no no no no no no noāmy eyes watered and my belly bunched into knots and my heart lurched into my throat and oh God oh Godāthe
ship! The whole. Entire. Ship. It was⦠dark⦠windows broken⦠Not a single light shining in the interior, and spatters of blood here and there visible on its decks and balconies⦠But worst of all was the smell. I hadnāt even entered the ship yet and already I knew,
knew, in the way only
I can know, that the smell wasnāt just one body or two. Not if I could detect it all the way out on the gangplank. All the way at the entrance to the terminal. For the whiff of putrefaction to have spread so far, the source was something
massive. A colossal pile of decomposing bodies like a herd of dead elephants.
That ship⦠no one on that ship was going to make it backā¦
As I entered the terminal with its blessed filtered air and the windows between me and the ship, I turned and looked at the line stretching behind me. Passengers laughing. Chatting. Dressed in their finest. Flirting. Teasing. Buzzing with excitement. Old and young couples. Children.
Everyone on this ship is going to die⦠... and Iām the only one who knows⦠I have bifold doors that cover my laundry machines. They've been scraping the floor and scratching it. I recently noticed that the bottom pin was not in the bottom slot. I managed to take off the door and the only way I could get the door back on and into the slot was shrink the length of the bottom pin a bit.
That fixed the door alignment in it's slots but the bottom is still scraping the floor. I'm not sure how to go about preventing it further other than maybe taking the door off again and sanding down the bottom of the door. Would this work?
Hello everyone, So I'm planning on buying a new computer and can't decide between the two choices mentioned in the title. I will be using the new computer mainly as a developer (mostly machine learning) so I need something performant and these are the best I could find where I am. The price is basically the same (2% difference) So what do you think I should buy: MSI CREATORPRO M16: 16" QHD screen - Intel Core i7-12700H processor, up to 4.7 Ghz, 24 MB cache - 32 GB memory - 1 TB SSD disk - RTX A3000 graphics card, 12 GB of dedicated GDDR6 memory - Wifi - Bluetooth - 1x USB 3.2 Type C - 2x USB Typ-A - HDMI - Card reader - 720p webcam - Windows 11 Pro - White backlit keyboard - Fingerprints - 1 year warranty APPLE MACBOOK PRO M1 (2021): 16" Liquid Retina XDR screen (3456 x 2234 pixels) - Processor: Apple M1 Pro (10-core CPU / 16-core GPU / 16-core Neural Engine) - Operating system: MacOS Monterey - RAM memory: 16 GB - Hard drive: 1TB SSD - Graphics Card: Intel HD Graphics with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3x Thunderbolt 4/USB-C, 1 X HDMI, Headphones (3.5mm Female Jack) - Colour: Space Gray - Warranty: 1 year
A trade option that hasnāt been discussed. Think this makes more sense than going for dame in my eyes. Garland is in that same 20-35 player tier as JB and may compliment Tatum more.
Would definitely flip brogdon at that point
(Hypothetical and highly unlikely obviously, but always fun to fire up the trade machine)