#which has Go Your Own Way at 401

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That apple top 100 albums list being obvious engagement bait that like 80% of Twitter is falling for is so fucking funny

[positivexcellence]

‘Walker’: Jared Padalecki on ‘Hot & Heavy’ Cordell and Geri, What’s Next With The Jackal

Finally! You’re back. It’s been forever! And we’re still looking for The Jackal?

Jared Padalecki: Yeah. We had a little five-month time lapse just to allow for all the strike stuff, but it’s still the same storyline. We pick up in the same storyline, for sure, with some time passed. Obviously, Cordell and Geri [Odette Annable] are a little more, um, advanced, than they were. [Laughs] Stella’s [Violet Brinson] back to college, and Augie’s [Kale Culley] back to nearing the end of high school. But The Jackal has reared its ugly head once again, and we got to go figure out what’s going on.

And you’ve been going without Cassie for five months, so it’s you and Trey, which is a pretty cool partnership.

Super cool. Yeah, Cassie was on our FBI task force, and she comes back to let us know what she’s been up to and to kind of say, “Hey, there’s something we might need your help on.” We all love her and miss her and are wondering where she stands. Is she going to stay or go? But Trey and James and Walker have been running amuck in her absence. [Laughs]

And how is her return going to change things? She comes back a little different, too.

She does. She’s had a little different experience and has had a taste of what might be available to her. And she has a different set of expectations. Obviously, she’s welcomed back with open arms from our other characters, but it’s sort of like, “Okay, well, we don’t know where she stands.” We want to be respectful of what she wants and what she needs to do, and we all secretly hope that she’s going to stick around.

And we’ve got a full-blown relationship going on with Geri and Cordi. They’re living together. How’s that going?

Yeah, I think it’s going well. They seem to be hot and heavy, and I’m glad that nothing happened in the five months between the wedding and Episode 401 to kind of sideline that. But that’s not to say that something won’t sideline that within Season 4. [Laughs]

Of course! Because he’s taking on this case, dealing with a serial killer, and I’ve watched enough TV and movies to know that when the good guys take on a serial killer, serial killers tend to target the people their pursuers love most.

You’re too good at this, Damian. [Laughs]

So this is putting a target on a lot of people?

Oh, yeah.

And how will Geri factor into this? Because you can’t just have her hanging out at the house. What is she going to get to do?

Well, good point. She has some stuff of her own going on this season that she needs to care of. And let’s just say that Walker has never been the best about admitting what is going on in his head. Probably something that the astute writers have noticed about [me] and just weaved into Cordell. [Laughs] But we certainly see Geri as sort of a grounding force and guiding light who is trying to figure out things like, “Well, these characters seem to be different, and this person isn’t really responding the way I expected or when I expected.” So we kind of see her as the lighthouse that’s saying, “Hey, you seem to have stuff going on.” Meanwhile, she’s also juggling kind of new responsibilities with Augie and Stella. Stella’s an adult and Augie’s almost an adult, so she’s not overbearing by any means, and she’ll always be “Aunt Geri” to some degree, but she’s taken on a lot and is doing it very well.

We see Stella relying on Liam (Keegan Allen) during all the trauma that she’s dealing with following the home invasion. Will Geri help out with that? Because I feel like Stella definitely at this point needs a mom.

Yes, she does. And Stella has a great arc this season. Let’s just say that many times this season, people accuse Stella of being just like her father. [Laughs] Oh, yeah. Stella is great at keeping secrets as well and keeping struggles to herself. So just like Walker has a tough time reaching out for help, we think Stella may have unfortunately learned that from her dad.

And how is Walker going to handle the fact that his daughter has been counting on Liam with all this stuff that’s been going on and he hasn’t been brought into the loop?

I think he understands more. Unlike prior seasons, I think Walker understands that his daughter’s now an adult, even though he doesn’t like it. It’s new for him. He spent 18 years with his daughter as his child, and now he’s kind of a year or two in to his daughter being an adult and able to make her own decisions. She needs to be responsible, and so I think Walker gives Stella a little leeway, hoping that she’ll remain the kind of stalwart that she’s always been. And then I think he realizes that maybe even though she’s surrounded by friends and family who are there for whatever she needs, that maybe she has a little bit too much Cordell Walker inside of her.

And Augie going into the military? This is a big step for a young man, and as much as a father would want his son to follow in those footsteps, it’s also like, this is a very dangerous line that he wants to get involved with.

For sure. Augie is coming into his own and has some ideas. He’s always been the kid who wanted to grow up a little bit too fast. And frankly, with the passing of his mom and his father being a Texas ranger who’s been abducted and had the house broken into and kind of always been in danger, I think he grew up long before the prospect of turning 18. But he wants to prove that he is an adult in his own right and that he has these ideas about how to secure his future. So Walker is trying to walk that line between, “I know you’ve been through a lot, you’ve been through more than most 70 year olds have been through,” and “Let’s tap the brakes, buddy.” And this is not disrespectful. This is my job as a dad, but I think also Walker finds that, because his profession is in law enforcement, sometimes he can come across a bit more harsh than he intends to.

Understandable, since it’s his kid! I will say, at the beginning of the season, this is probably the happiest we’ve seen Cordi. He’s eating a massive amount of steak. He’s in love again. He has put the ghost of his late wife to rest. The kids are growing up, he’s kind of reclaiming his own life again. Can he have this all, can he be happy?

Oh, Damian, you know TV better than that! Hell no. [Laughs]

He can have a lot sometimes and some a lot of times, but one of the things that [showrunner] Anna Fricke and I talked about from the get-go was trying to make sure that this version of Walker was more similar to life than just a TV version of a [person]. We never sought out to go like, “Well, it’s the end of episode, I roundhouse kicked somebody and now everything’s okay. Let’s all high-five!” This is more like, “Well, what did I miss while trying to get the bad guy? Oh, I missed my daughter’s graduation. Oh, I missed her birthday. I missed this. Oh, I didn’t call back my live-in partner that I was supposed to.”

And so there’s no pure win and there is no pure loss. So I think with Walker, though happy now, his life happens in seasons and not like TV seasons. Walker’s had some hard times and now is an easy time, but life is difficult, and Walker finds that out.

Still, it’s nice to see him getting to enjoy being the hero he is more than usual. Especially with Captain James. This season, the drama is his and Cordi gets to be there for him and support him.

Yeah. That is very true, and it’s great. Yeah, I agree all around. I think Walker is going to find out who he is in good times, which he hasn’t had a whole lot of chance to explore yet. And as with anything, if you haven’t had a lot of experience, you might not be as good at it as you would’ve hoped. We’ve all seen that Walker can be great in times of struggle. He’s had some reps in the gym as far as that arena goes. But let’s see who he is when there’s no bad guy to chase right now — especially when that bad guy might be strengthening themselves in preparation for when the Rangers come after them.

Before you go, was there anything that you’ve gotten to do this season that you just are so excited for people to see?

Big time. We’ve had a lot of fun, fun stuff. There’s something, unfortunately it’s the finale, so I can’t talk about it—I’ll call you privately [Laughs]—but I will say, in the first episode, we have a really fun sequence. We got to do a car-chase sequence in the back of a big rig.

And funny behind-the-scenes fact that no one knows about: During the Longhorns playoff game on New Year’s Day, I was walking around barefoot, my brother and his kids were over, and they were all playing and stupidly, I grabbed a piece of pizza and tried to run back to the couch to watch the game and I kicked my coffee table on accident! So I had a broken toe for the first three episodes and before shooting that sequence and for a couple episodes after, I would have to ice my foot, throw a sock on real fast, shove it into my cowboy boot, and run around park garages and throw myself around. Yeah, so that was fun. [Laughs] We laughed about it afterwards, but it was just hard to get the boot on and off.

They couldn’t shoot around the boot?!

I didn’t want to complain. We’d all been out of work for nine months because of the strike and everything. So I was like, I got it. I’m not going to complain about this. The show finally can go on, and I’m going to go like “Ouch, my toe hurts”? No, thank you! [Laughs]

TVInsider

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Why Eru Didn’t Trip Gollum: Providence, Free Will, and Con-creation in The Lord of the Rings—Part 5 of 5

| PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 (this part) |

[Go back to PART 4: Examining the Threads]

Part 5: Re-weaving The Tapestry

Threads of Fate

Peter Jackson was not wrong to be concerned that the implication (true or not) that the Ring was destroyed by accident would not sit well with some portion of his viewers. We yearn for some sense or meaning in the apparent chaos and happenstance of life; that storytelling exists at all may be sufficient evidence of this. Yet it is also true that we shrink in terror at the idea that our actions are not our own, that fate has us in a deterministic grasp. It is such a deterministic force that Plato in his Timaeus called ananke or “material necessity,” a force innate to matter which even his demiurgic God could not overcome.

The characters in The Lord of the Rings seem interested in and aware of some form of mysterious order at work in the world. “Chance,” “luck,” and “happenstance” are repeatedly invoked in the text and often with a wink and a smile: whether it be in Bilbo’s “chance” encounter with the Ring just before the Necromancer is driven from Dol Guldur, “if chance it was” (250), Gandalf’s “chance” meeting with Thorin in Bree which leads to the events of The Hobbit, the “chance” encounter of the three traveling hobbits with Gildor’s elves in the Shire at just such a moment as to save the hobbits from the Black Riders, Tom Bombadil’s fortuitous and life-saving “chance” encounter with the same hobbits in the Old Forest, their “lucky” meeting with Strider in Bree, Boromir and Legolas’s “fortuitous” arrival to Rivendell at just the right time, or the “good fortune” of Gollum’s faulty footing. Yet, amid all this talk of fate and chance and luck we are given constant references to the fate-altering power of free will. 

Choice absolutely does have a real effect on the world of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Bilbo’s choice to extend pity to Gollum may “rule the fate of many” (59); Frodo realizes that he is “free to choose” (401) on the seat of Amon Hen; Faramir chooses not to follow the summons to Rivendell he hears in his dreams, leaving his brother Boromir to do so instead; most importantly, Frodo’s acts of pity enable the destruction of the Ring. This is no deterministic universe. In Middle-earth free will is absolutely real. So how can forces like “fate” and “choice” interact in a coherent way?

In her paper “Providence, Fate, and Chance: Boethian Philosophy in The Lord of the Rings” Kathleen E. Dubs recalls the words of Galadriel in Lothlorien after she has refused Frodo’s offer of the Ring:

They stood for a long while in silence. At length the Lady spoke again. ‘Let us return!’ she said. ‘In the morning you must depart, for now we have chosen, and the tides of fate are flowing.’” These ideas (free will and fate) are not incompatible if we view them in Boethian terms, for free will operates within the order of the universe, fate being merely the earthly manifestation of that order. And here we can see more clearly than before that free will sets that order in motion; Frodo’s and the Lady’s choices have determined the direction of that order, have set the tides flowing. It has not worked in the reverse direction. For ‘determinism’ to be applicable here, it would have to be defined anew. (40)

Perhaps we might say that in Middle-earth when you choose, you are set on a course to your “doom.” These threads of fate, chosen and redirected by acts of free will, are heading towards something, some destination, some “doom,” and if you’ve been paying attention at all, you’ve likely noticed “doom” appearing a lot among these last several thousand words. It is surely no coincidence that the geographical goal of the quest—the setting for the climax of the action of the plot—is a place called The Cracks of Doom inside a mountain called Mount Doom over a magma pool called The Fire of Doom. It is here that many choices shall finally join together to “produce the situation” that ultimately allows the threat of Sauron to be overcome.

All Rivers Lead to Doom

Perhaps we can also conclude that the climax of The Lord of the Rings is described in passive terms by Tolkien because we are meant to view it as the setting of the revelation and working-out of a long-developing pattern, the outcome of which was clear all along. Tolkien says he “did not ‘arrange’ the deliverance in this case: it again follows the logic of the story” (Letters 251) and that “following the logic of the plot, it was clearly inevitable, as an event” (252). 

The actions that take place when Frodo, Sam, and Gollum finally meet their “Doom” are merely the last in a long row of dominoes: most of the necessary actions that would lead to the overthrow of Sauron are in the past, and most of the consequential choices have already been made. We could speculate about where that line of dominoes started. A reasonable place to point to is the moment when Bilbo puts his hand on the Ring “blindly in the dark” (Tolkien, Lord of the Rings 55). However, we could also push it back further to Gandalf’s meeting with Thorin in Bree, or even further still: there’s a lot of “setting up” that Sauron does to himself. The choice to partly incarnate himself in a destructible object made him far more vulnerable, especially as it is an object that engenders in people such overpowering lust for it that they’d do something as unwise as dancing on the edge of a precipice above boiling magma.

As we can see, an important part of this pattern is evil’s propensity towards creating the circumstances of its own self-destruction, a theme so important that Tolkien includes it in his Legendarium’s creation myth. In “Ainulindale,” the first chapter of The Silmarillion, the Ainur are asked to compose and perform a Great Music together, improvising on Themes supplied by Eru. This Music will later become a blueprint of sorts for the universe. When Melkor, Tolkien’s analog to the Christian Lucifer, attempts to disrupt the Music by overpowering the other Ainur with his own repetitive and loud improvisations, Eru admonishes him and warns him that for all he tries to disrupt the Music and make it solely his own, his Discord shall ultimately work against him: “For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined” (17).

Gandalf’s proverb “oft Evil will shall evil mar” (Tolkien, Lord of the Rings 594) expresses a reality that is part of the metaphysical foundation of Tolkien’s Secondary World. It is, therefore, metaphysically and thematically appropriate that Gollum’s lust for the Ring and glee at its return leads to his literal fall. The necessary conscious act of good intent—throwing the Ring in the Fire—was one no one was capable of. As Paul Kocher explains in his early piece of literary criticism of Tolkien’s work, Master of Middle-earth, “The irony of evil is consummated by its doing the good which good could not do” (45).

The sudden revelation of a salvific pattern—created via the weaving together of a fate derived from choices both good and bad—at the moment when all hope seems lost, represents perhaps the perfected mode of eucatastrophe. “Eucatastrophe” is a term Tolkien coined to describe “the happy turn” in fairy-stories (as he defines them), and it first appears in his essay, appropriately titled, On Fairy-stories. On Fairy-stories was written during the early years of Tolkien’s work on The Lord of the Rings and may be considered the conceptual background to the kind of narrative story-telling at work in his epic (Tolkien On Fairy-stories 15). In his description of eucatastrophe Tolkien says “[Eucatastrophe] depends on the whole story which is the setting of the turn, and yet it reflects a glory backwards” (76). This glory is the sudden realization, whether in the mind of the reader or the characters, that those events which had seemed to be chance or luck—especially bad luck—when experienced within the flow of the story, have in fact worked together for their deliverance.

In light of the above, I would argue that the “Eru tripping” interpretation contradicts both the dramatic intention of the scene and the very notion of this “backwards reflecting” eucatastrophe by adding a singular, direct, and unilateral cause for the Ring’s destruction in the very moment before this destruction happens—a cause which, because it is performed directly by Eru in the manner of a miracle, needs have no regard to the long line of causes which precedes it. This same undermining of dramatic intention applies to the interpretation that claims a curse tripped Gollum. Would a curse need a long line of causes behind it to function? In both cases, these other causes are superseded and become unnecessary. Additionally, the passive approach sounds much more like using Discord itself to bring the Music back into accord with the Theme. But if Gollum’s fall is passive in this sense—the end result of many, many choices woven together into fate—then what does Tolkien mean by his comments about the “Writer of the Story?”

Perpetual Production

Just because the cause of Gollum’s fall is passive, just because Eru didn’t “trip” Gollum, does not mean his fall is truly “accidental,” because Eä—the universe and the entire playing out of the events within in it—is conceived, in-text, as a Story or Drama[8]. In his essay “Over the Chasm of Fire,” Stanford Caldecott notes that Sam’s comments after the climax of The Lord of the Rings have a much more literal meaning than Sam may even realize: “‘What a tale we have been in, Mr Frodo, haven’t we? I wish I could hear it told!’ (…) Sam has bridged the gap, and seen their own lives as part of a great tale full of wonder and meaning, that stretches from the beginning of time to its mysterious end” (32). 

When Tolkien uses the words “Writer of the Story” he makes it clear he is not referring to himself (though the humorous comparison may well be on his mind[9]). In this aspect I think the “tripped” interpretation is absolutely correct: “the Writer of the Story” is a reference to Eru. My disagreement comes in what it means for Eru to “take over” the story.

The world of Middle-earth is a pre-Christian one, far more like the fading pagan backdrop of the world in Beowulf than the Christian allegory of Narnia, but Tolkien was also quite devoutly Catholic, his faith a potent and foundational part of his worldview (though it should be noted that to say this is not the same as to say it was the entirety of his worldview or that he was always of one mind on matters of faith and theology). Just as the characters in The Lord of the Rings appear to be aware of some sense of fate at work in the world, many also attribute to that fate a kind of rational intention outside the bounds of mere determinism. As Gandalf says to Frodo regarding Bilbo’s discovery of the Ring: “Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker” (56). This guiding or shepherding—but not controlling—of people and events is Providence. Tolkien repeatedly refers to Providence when describing the events of the climax of The Lord of the Rings.

No account is here taken of ‘grace’ or the enhancement of our powers as instruments of Providence. Frodo was given ‘grace’: first to answer the call (…) and in his endurance of fear and suffering. But grace is not infinite, and for the most part seems in the Divine economy limited to what is sufficient for the accomplishment of the task appointed to one instrument in a pattern of circumstances and other instruments. (454)

Frodo had done what he could and spent himself completely (as an instrument of Providence) and had produced a situation in which the object of his quest could be achieved. (325)

What form Providence takes within Eä is less clear. What or who was “guided” such that Bilbo found the Ring? And in what way? Did Eru “cause” Gandalf to reach Bree at just such a time as to meet Thorin, setting in motion Gandalf’s hunt for a burglar? Or did he “cause” the same for Thorin? Did he make the floor of the goblin tunnels below the mountain crumble under Bilbo, landing him directly in the Ring’s path? Or did he guide Bilbo’s hand “blindly in the dark” until it brushed against cold metal? We cannot say with any certainty. These providential interventions are such that, if they do in fact exist, we do not or cannot see them. We cannot verify them, and in the moment they seem easily attributable to a variety of other causes or merely to “accident.” Unlike The Silmarillion’s explicitly stated and miraculous interventions—the awakening of the Elves or the Drowning of Numenor—we are never told what these providential interventions are or when they take place. We can only, like Gandalf, suspect them, in the way a particularly sharp movie goer might suspect a certain event or turn of phrase was an instance of foreshadowing: we recognize them as making “story-sense.” Thomas Hibbs describes the Eä we are presented with in The Lord of the Rings as a universe in which “individuals can have confidence that there is an order for them to discern and tasks for them to fulfill, since a providential world is one in which human history has the structure of a plot, an intelligible dramatic unity” (178).

Tolkien even wrote an in-universe debate about the very topic of the nature of Eru’s involvement (or lack thereof) in the events of Arda where he makes the nature of Eä as Drama explicit and diegetic. Called “Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth” and appearing in Morgoth’s Ring (the tenth volume of The History of Middle-earth series) this debate between the elven king Finrod and the wise woman Andreth centers around what Tolkien calls “Oinekarmë Eruo (The One’s perpetual production), which might be rendered by ‘God’s management of the Drama’” (329). While nothing in The Lord of the Rings approaches the explicit and diegetic nature of this debate, the early exchange between Gandalf and Frodo mentioned above—Gandalf’s voicing of his suspicion that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring—reproduces to some degree the same opposition of viewpoints. Gandalf ends with the statement “and that may be an encouraging thought,” to which Frodo replies “it is not” (56). Frodo shares Andreth’s cynicism and does not find in the idea the comfort that Gandalf does.[10]

Providence (for Tolkien) is not Miracle

As we have already discussed, some of Eru’s involvements in the Story—the awakening of Elves and Men and the Downfall of Numenor—appear to describe a mode of involvement that is singular, direct, and unilateral and which we might define as “miracle.” In his essay “Conflict and Convergence on Fundamental Matters in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien,” Ralph Wood notes the attributes of Tolkien’s idea of miracles:

But for Tolkien as not for Lewis, miracles are unique acts of God; they are not special demonstrations of what God always does through the operations of nature. There is, in fact, an implicit Thomism at work in Tolkien’s understanding of miracles. As Brian Davies observes, Aquinas “thinks that miracles come about by virtue of the creative activity of God and nothing else. The whole point about them is that nothing subject to God’s providence, i.e. no cause other than God (no secondary cause), is at work in their occurrence” This is not to say that God does violence to the created order, or that he “intervenes” to disrupt its natural processes. On the contrary, St. Thomas insists that God is totally present to every existing thing, so that all events are always the effect of God’s will. Yet miracles are not worked through secondary causes, not even through their divine compression, as Lewis argues: they are brought about by God alone. (325)

This description of miracles as those events which work through no secondary causes is echoed by Purtill in J.R.R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality, and Religion:

By definition miracles are an intervention from outside of ordinary life that cannot be expected, counted on, or prepared for. Unless you take on the impossible task of writing a story from God’s point of view, there is no way in which you can show a miracle as an event following from the characters and circumstances of the story…. (154)

A “miracle” then is not an event that we could say “follows the logic of the plot,” as Tolkien describes the events of the climax of The Lord of the Rings. For Tolkien, miracles are fundamentally unlike the actions of Providence, which holds free choice among rational creatures as sacrosanct and seems to work within Eä almost as an undetectable force of nature. Christin Ivey uses the image of an “underlying current” to describe this force:

With Providence’s active involvement in guiding Frodo’s free will, Tolkien presents Providence not as stoic ‘clock-work God’ but as an underlying current, flowing together the free will choices that determine the earthy derived plan of fate; ultimately leading into compliance with the thematically cohesive divine design. Helen Lasseter concludes: ‘While guiding all events and actions to an ultimate good, Providence never denies creatures their freedom… [Tolkien] shows that the person is integral to a providential world order; yet the person’s inherent limitations, exposed through personal failure and defeat, reveal the constant presence of a higher and greater authority within the world.’ (196)

For Eru to use a miracle rather than the actions of providence it must be necessary to use a miracle rather than the actions of providence. If Gollum was so near to falling, why not let it be that he fell? What does Eru tripping Gollum say that isn’t better said by allowing Gollum’s own glee to destroy the Ring? Gollum’s madness and lust is a better cause dramatically, thematically, and theologically. And if it were as simple as tripping someone into the Fire, why didn’t Eru do so with Sauron just after he made the Ring? There is no reason for it to happen now rather than then. Alternatively, he could have torn the Ring off Frodo’s finger. He could have prevented Sauron’s fall into evil entirely. Or he could have prevented Melkor from singing at the very start, ending evil before it began. But he doesn’t.

The events in the Cracks of Doom constitute a providential eucatastrophe, not a miraculous deus ex machina. Eru does not “enter” the story to intervene at the last moment—Eru has been present all along. This is consonant with what we know of how Eru deals with concentrated incarnate evils in the world. Eru does not often jump in with miracles, and when he does it is never to stop atrocities from happening. The destruction of Numenor, for example, does not kill Sauron and does not prevent all the harm the Numenoreans have already done.[11] Eru leaves the stopping of evil to others (and to evil itself).

Providence is not a “change of plan.” Providence is the plan. It is not Eru working alone. It is not “miracle.” Eru may not have tripped Gollum, but he gave Gollum, Frodo, Sam and every other rational being opportunities to make choices which, in concert, produced a situation that led to the Ring’s destruction.

Rending the Web of Story

There is one last important point. The universe of Tolkien’s Legendarium is a teleological one. Providence is leading towards… something, some meaningful end, though those who have never been outside of it are at an epistemological disadvantage when it comes to puzzling out what that end is. While Tolkien never completely formulated an entire eschatology for his Legendarium, he did note one important feature of what would come “after” Eä: a Second Music in which the Children of Eru (Elves and Men) would join the Ainur in song. 

This Music, like the first, is not merely ornamental, or a work in and of and for itself. Like the First Music it is a pattern, a blueprint of things to come, things that will be made Real, and it is a work that humanity will participate in. This hopeful view of eternity—one that is echoed in Tolkien’s allegorical short story “Leaf by Niggle” when the protagonist sees his own creation given material reality after his death—is one that Tolkien appeared (at least at times) to believe was active in the real world. As Tolkien says at the end of On Fairy-stories: “All tales may come true…” (79).

Most importantly, however, is this: this communal art making shared among all the human beings in the world is not something that happens only at The End. The Children of Eru are fundamentally sub-creative beings, art-makers, who are made precisely in order to express the infinite variety of Eru’s infinite Being through their own unique creations. These creations are not limited to what we would traditionally call “art works.” As scriptless actors in the Drama, the very choices of the Children of Eru are their art, their sub-creations, and that makes their very choices infinitely important. In The Flame Imperishable, Jonathan McIntosh thoroughly situates the metaphysical underpinnings of Tolkien’s Secondary World in the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas, including the notion that all human action represents a kind of shared creative activity with the Creator:

In our acts of sub-creation, God has chosen to create through us, as it were, not in the sense that we are made the intermediate agents or instruments of his creation, but in the sense of our sub-creative activity becoming the locus at which God carries on or continues his own work of creation. (…) Human praxis, as it were, is a kind of human poesis, human doing a form of human making, inasmuch as every human action seeks to bring about an alternative state of affairs, and therefore to realize a “secondary world” or reality that is alternative to the one currently realized. (181)

These choices, all adding up to join together as the threads of fate—and more importantly these choices made in fellowship—reflect the Music as it was meant to be: a pluralistic effort of infinite variety. The pity shown to Gollum, for instance, the salvific force which, while not functioning alone, is given special attention in Tolkien’s commentary, is not just pity, but many acts of pity by many different players: pity in fellowship.

So who was responsible for the Ring’s destruction?

In a very real sense, they all were. Everyone whose choices interlocked in order to produce the circumstances at work at the Cracks of Doom, even Sauron, even the Ring, itself, is responsible, to varying degrees, for the Ring’s destruction. It may not be out of line to include in this group even every rational being who had ever lived up to that point. Because that is how The Music, the blueprint of Providence, is meant to work. 

The stories of Tolkien’s Legendarium are conceived as a kind of mythological history of our own world. Tolkien, in fact, introduces himself to us in the prologue to The Lord of the Rings not as author, but as translator of long lost documents recording the events of pre-history. Tolkien wants us to know that we are living in Eä in an Age long after the fall of Sauron and the fading of the Elves, that we are reading a story about a world that is itself a story—and that story happens to be our own. It’s story all the way down. Which means our choices are inviolable, too; Frodo’s agency is also our agency. The web of story is torn asunder, and suddenly we, like hobbits, are forces that shape the universe. It is our choice-making—our art-making!—that expresses the infinite variety of God just as much as Frodo’s does.

If we allow ourselves to step into Tolkien’s Secondary World we may stop for a moment and take him seriously: one day we will sing the Second Music, but even here and even now we are all���already—con-creators with The One. 

And that (may be) an encouraging thought.

Notes in Part 5

8. It should be noted that my intention here is not to explore the moral and ethical questions present in this interpretation of divine beings and their moral duty, or lack thereof, to intervene in the world for the sake of Good, including whether or not this is consonant with the operations of a loving creator, or produces a satisfying or comforting theology. Whether such a “way of things” is Good is its own worthy question (and has been debated for millennia). It may, however, also be a question for which there is no truly satisfying answer.

9. Tolkien is paralleling himself with the Other Writer when he says that he did not “arrange” the action. Perhaps he’s being cheeky: the Other Writer didn’t “arrange” the action either: it “follows the logic of the Other Writer’s story.”

10. In their debate Andreth is of the mind that Eru, if he exists, has little to do with his Children, since Men have no encounters with him or with his regents (the Valar) as the Elves claim they do. Finrod, on the other hand, argues not only for his continual presence but for the goodness of his plans and intentions, a perspective which Andreth, a mortal woman “doomed to die” points out is molded by Finrod’s privileged position as an immortal Elf. It is tempting to see Tolkien in this debate providing a fictional outlet for his own lifelong struggle with the reality of evil and death and the question of how this reality can coexist with a benevolent Creator—that is, his struggle with the Problem of Evil. One wonders if Tolkien is both Finrod and Andreth in this instance, just as one wonders if he is both Gandalf and Frodo.

11. Eru imposes to stop the armada not because they were evil, but because allowing Men access to Valinor was a catastrophic failure of their nature and future purpose.

Works Cited is listed in [PART 1]

[dollsonmain]

I did not sleep at all last night. I even went and laid down in the guest room after That Guy got up where I usually pass right out but I didn't sleep in there, either.

I feel like All the Shit.

Long morning ramble.

Sleeping in a night cap is annoying but it's keeping my ends from being fried for longer. My hair's texture was already chef's kiss, now it's double chef's kiss.

-

That Guy said that he has to run the car tax payment to town on his way home from work today but DO NOT try to walk home if he's not there when I get off work because it's going to be nearly 100F and wait for him to pick me up.

He also said he'll have to start looking for another car, which should have been done a very, very long time ago because I could have been working as soon as Son expressed and demonstrated that I wasn't needed by him anymore. Don't take that the wrong way, I don't mean he said "I don't need you." he said things like he'd like to go to the bus stop by himself and has shown that he can be trusted on his own, etc.

I did intend to get my own car (or a truck), but if he buys one and doesn't expect me to pay for it (though he may expect me to pay for it) that lets me put more into savings for later.

I think That Guy is suddenly aware of how difficult he's made it for me to work all this time, which is interesting because I really did think he did it on purpose and then was blaming me.

He was saying that to drop me off and pick me up at the mail room job he'd only be able to work 4 hours a day. Granted he'd earn more in that four hours than I will in 12 hours even with this moderately big pay rate. And I was like yes, that's why I'd been limiting my job search to positions on your normal route (as he'd demanded), but this job pays much more per hour than any of the others I can do locally and I have experience which makes it more likely I'd get in, so it's worth the extra time and effort in my opinion.

$19.23/hr is THE highest income I've seen locally for almost ANY job, actually... There was one federal job that requires a TS clearance that pays like $65/hr, most are paying around $15 with some management positions offering $17 - $24. The gas station I'm at is actually one of the lowest at $10 though there are some places offering $8.50. Because they can.

He did say he'd thought it was a federal mail position and I'd get the Big Bennies and retirement but I'd just be an employee of Goodwill so not get the USPS packet. I'm not the only one that's been confused by how the job was listed.

The actually bennies:

50% Company-paid Health Insurance After 30 days of employment and begins the first day of the first month after employees’ first 30 days.

Company-paid Life Insurance

Company-paid Long-Term Disability (LTD) and Accidental Death and Dismemberment (AD&D) insurance

Dental Insurance – Guardian Dental

Vision Insurance – Davis Vision

Supplemental Insurances – Colonial Life and Legal Shield

401(k) – The company matches up to 4% of salary and is available for enrollment after six months of employment.

Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

Resource Assistance Program (RAP)

Direct Deposit

Vacation Leave – Twelve days of vacation available after 3 months of employment.

Sick Leave – 6 days that can be used after 30 days of employment.

Personal Days – 3 days that can be used starting on your first day.

Holiday Pay – 8 paid holidays after 30 days of employment.

That's not as good as federal, but is pretty good.

-

It's like he's only just now understanding what telling me to get insurance, which meant getting a job because he won't let the insurance companies look at his finances to prove that I can afford insurance and won't sell a policy to someone with less than $1k in the bank and no income, MEANS.

It means me being even more physically exhausted, in more pain, chores not getting done, falling asleep at the dinner table while eating....

He really did not expect me to throw myself out into the world like i have, and does not seem to have understood just how much of an inconvenience me working would be for him.

Like, he was crunching the numbers because he doesn't want to be thrown into a higher tax bracket even if it means more money coming in overall, but I think I'd be filing separately anyway so I can get back as much as possible without it being on a check in his name.

I wonder if the mail room folks get any sort of tax preparation deals since we're working IN an IRS office... Wouldn't that be nice to be able to say "It's my turn" and go sit down with an IRS prepper and do your taxes in person to be sure they're very correct?

So, I think I mentioned already the hours are 6:30-3 which is kind of nice as I do like getting my day over with early and I'd still be getting up at 3:30 with That Guy anyway so it's not like I'd have to change my sleep schedule at all.

The lady on the phone also cleared up some confusion for me about why the job listing said Goodwill, then IRS, and talking about custodial jobs????

So, I'd be an employee of Goodwill, and Goodwill contracts out those employees to other places, specifically the local Goodwill contracts out to federal and military establishments (the IRS building is on a small National Guard base so I do have to go through a checkpoint and get the car searched which is annoying and I hope I don't have to do that EVERY day, like I hope I get an ID card I just scan and can get in or something...) and their contract has been running so long with this IRS branch that Goodwill's sign is on the building.

The custodial job mention was them pointing anyone that IS severely disabled toward that job instead of the mail room position because the custodial job is slow paced which makes it suitable for people with developmental delays who may need more time to complete a task. But the whole job listing was a mess.

I do need to ask when the next bid is, because I could get hired on, the contract be rebid, and Goodwill lose which would leave me with no work until another contract was picked up, or could also mean a pay cut if they have to undercut another contractor to get the lowest bid and it's good to know what to expect.

She also said that some of the small mail crew, which is about 5 people (to me that is a lot because I'm used to being alone in the mail room) bring in knitting or crochet projects because it's slow now and then. That's generally when I would pick up a broom or a bottle of cleanser but I wouldn't mind crocheting at work :P

Also need to ask about lunch because the work day is exactly 8 hours so unless lunch is paid, I'd not be getting paid for 8 hours of work every day.

-

Anyway I've been feeling the guilt about maybe jumping jobs so soon (my start date would likely be mid August if not a little later), but I also helped find a vendor for something the gas station needed and that helps two people [who aren't me make more money... hm....] so I guess I don't feel too bad.

Manager asked me if I bake because people have been asking for fresh baked goods and I said no, I hate cooking and you can't make me do it, BUT I know that one of Son's classmates' moms bakes and is selling things through the local 7-11 so I'll ask if they'd be interested and they are. They should get in contact with the gas station any day now.

My suggestion is that the baker take some samples to the gas station and go talk to Manager in person, but I'm not the one running the business.

[thrandilf]

while i fully agree with the thesis of your gay best friend mei post (she is often pushed aside in fanworks and her friendship with red son is undersold) but i think you might have gone too far in the opposite direction regarding mk and red sons dynamic?

obviously they dont have as much plot-relevant screentime as mei and red but mk is still important to red son. even disregarding their s1 nemesis dynamic, red son still regularly brings up mk in his conversations with mei during the s3 special, announces his entrance to mk in the mech, and asks about him on meis stream in 401, all of these feel like intentional writing choices to imply he cares about mk (and mei, but thats more implicit with him saying her name and such) more than he lets on

that is to say, i dont think shipping mk and red means someone doesnt value mei and reds dynamic or think its unimportant, just like shipping red and mei doesnt mean disregarding mei and mks bond

i hope this doesnt seem like im trying to pick a fight or anything, i just wanted to put in my 2 cents :v (also tumblr is being shit so sorry if this sent twice)

MK and Red Son are definitely friends, not denying that, but the show doesn't have an interest in developing their specific relationship further past like... halfway through Revenge of the Spider Queen. MK says they should trust him, and from there on out the two banter or work together sometimes, but nothing between them really gets going or more intense

Because after that the majority of the time is spent developing Mei and Red Son's dynamic (which was already starting in S1, 1x08 in particular I'd argue, but it was still minor then).

Her and Red Son constantly get paired up onscreen together in RotSQ, both on the main quest and then in like... every shot possible. The piggyback ride thing is actually a romance trope as well, btw. 3x06 involves everyone, but it's Mei who Red Son touches and has the Samadhi Fire connection with, and even then it's Mei who interacts with Red Son before they leave and she leaves her plushie, and then -insert the special here-. MK comes up in their conversations, as Mei comes up in MK's conversations with Red Son, so that segment's even to me, but then the Samadhi Fire ending is kinda like. Man. That's unique to Mei and Red Son and it got build up. That's something intimate and between just them

Don't get me wrong, I don't think shipping Has to be about who a character values most, because my arospec ass doesn't think that there has to be a One person put above all else. But it often comes across that way in shipping. I guess a fic doesn't have to include people who aren't in the pairing, but it does feel like it skews Mei's importance to MK and Red Son.

TBH, entertaining my own idea of a Most important person, even liking Red Son and Mei together, I think think that MK is more important to Mei than Red Son is, if she had to choose. Frankly I also think both of the boys would pick Mei before each other if they were in a situation where they had to choose, MK as Mei's best friend and Red Son, to me, having Mei as his anchor to the group considering how S3 went. They all matter to each other, but in different ways.

So sure, I don't think shipping automatically means that a dynamic is skewed to exclude or devalue a character, but it sure comes across that way when paired with seemingly ignoring all Red Son and Mei do get together, as well as how often I see people trying to give the Samadhi Fire to anyone but Mei. This is also a fandom where it seems like Lady Bone Demon's nameless male sidekick gets the same amount of content she does, which makes me scratch my head

Like, if Drag-onfruit was m/m, would Red Son and Mei be the rarer pair? Would ppl keep trying to give the fire to anyone else? For me it does read as fandom sexism with a gay hat slapped on. At the very least it's MK/main character bias, even though Mei is the female lead

No one Has to ship anything to be clear, Drag-onfruit isn't canon, but maybe it's because I watched the series all in one go that hitting the end of S3 and imagining going, "Who do I think Red Son is most likely in love with/has the most compelling relationship with? -insert anyone but Mei-" baffles me

I certainly prefer Drag-onfruit where MK is deeply important to both of them, even as a sort of platonic third (1x05 shot down MK and Mei or chimera faster and harder than any other ship known to man for me lmao) and to be fair I rarely engage with Red Son and MK shipping because it isn't my thing for multiple reasons, so maybe there is a lot of stuff out there where she's really given the love and place in their lives that she canonly has and I just don't know it, but the Mei treatment that I see in fandom does seem to be a side effect of said fanon favorite ship which is how I landed on the original post I made about her getting shoved aside to be the sassy bff who's conveniently fanonly a lesbian (for reasons I don't get) so people don't have to consider that she could have a relationship MK doesn't get to have

Maybe I'm a pessimist but this is how I've perceived it. TLDR they're a delightful trio regardless

Thank you for being polite btw, I know this got long winded but I appreciate being able to discuss!

[lloydfrontera]

Lloyd goes to return to Suho right? But how many years was it in Korea the equivalent to the years he spent as Lloyd? Like does he still have his apartment if he is gone and couldn't work? Was his body even in Korea when he first became Lloyd? Like was it in a coma and just a shell, but how will he be able to pay when he has no family there? No way is it like an exchange soul since og!Lloyd was still there until KSH!Lloyd helped him

he does yes! but no time passed in korea. he wakes up the morning after he falls asleep reading "The Knight of Blood and Iron" and possesses the body of Lloyd. it's like he was never gone at all.

also. there's a weird implication in ch 401 of tged that the world lloyd and javier traveled to in the trip to seoul arc was,, not the one lloyd comes from?? or that that version of earth was erased when he came back to his own body? because lloyd goes to check the love lock bridge at namsan tower where he and javier took one of the railings and there's absolutely no trace of it. it never happened apparently.

he also checks the novel he was reading and it's completely unchanged. everything he did, all the years he lived, all the people he met,,, not single change was reflected in the novel.

he goes a little insane thinking it was all dream, which,,, yeah. imagine spending entire years of your life in another world and then waking up back in your own reality where there's nothing indicating anything you did was real. i'd go insane.

which is really weird because! SPOILERS FOR THE SEQUEL the scenario you're talking about is exactly what happens to rakiel!! unlike lloyd who comes back to a world where no time passed and nothing changed at all in the years he was gone nor has any sign of his actions in a previous visit, when rakiel comes back to korea he finds out that not only has time continued to pass back in his own world but that his body is comatose and possessed by a very pissed off crown prince!

and to make things even weirder!! lloyd does go back to seoul in the sequel!! he goes with rakiel!!! and he makes no mention of rakiel's korea being a different version of his own!! which makes no sense because!! as some of you may remember from an old rant from way back when!! rakiel gets isekai'd into "demon sword emperor". which is very specifically not set in the "Knight of Blood and Iron" universe and rather takes place in the alternate version of it that was changed by the changes lloyd made!! and to make things even more confusing!! we get confirmation that in rakiel's world TGED does exist but not as a novel or a comic but rather as something you can watch on tv.

so! let's get this straight!!

forgive my reuse of this i didn't really wanna any more effort into this than i had to

we have the original timeline of kobai, which exists as a novel in suho's world. then suho gets isekai'd into that universe but when he comes back to his own world, no time has passed, he wakes in his own unchanged body, none of the changes he makes are reflected on the novel he read, nor do any of his actions as lloyd in the trip to seoul arc. however, in the sequel lee haneun gets isekai'd into dse, which is set in the tged timeline, where lloyd did make a lot of changes to the kobai timeline. and when rakiel travels to his own world, he finds that time has continued to pass and his body is now possessed by og rakiel, plus we get confirmation that tged does exists in some level in his world. AND when rakiel meets lloyd, they travel to seoul together. rakiel's seoul, where tged and dse exist as fictional works, where lloyd is a fictional character.

is that why their transmigration is so different to one another?? because lloyd's is a fictionalized version to rakiel?? because lloyd's timeline (tged and dse) is a work of fiction to rakiel????

but even if that's true we still have one timeline unaccounted for! what happened to the korea lloyd and javier traveled to?? the one where they stole a railing from?? did it just get erased?? is it a different timeline altogether?? does lloyd even know he's a fictional character to rakiel??

forget the fucking romance this is what those stupid ass side-stories should've focused on i don't need sleep i need answers asdsgfdhgf

now. do i think we were ever meant to examine any of this at this level? no, absolutely not this is what autism does to you, no one else cares. however. bk moon is not the boss of me so i can do whatever i want <3 get under the microscope novelboy 🔫

mmh. this wasn't where i thought this ask was gonna go to. sorry nonnie. it will happen again 😔

[captain-kit-adventuress]

Hang on, the math on this is wrong and so are some of the explanations.

$7.25 x 40 = $290

$290 x 4 = $1,156/month.

Working the original equation backwards yields a typo of $7.85 per hour, which is incorrect.

Not only that, but the three times rent requirement is based on gross income, while the amount of money you actually have to live on (take home) is net income. Net income for hourly individuals is

hourly wage x number of hours worked - taxes - other deductions (insurance, 401(k), etc.) = net income

So they're basing both the 30% requirement and the three times requirement on an amount of money you don't actually have; and it assumes a relatively low average amount of state and local taxes across the country. The problem is, this standard was written nearly a century ago, and American economics have, er, changed a bit since then. State tax amounts vary wildly across the country, so again both rules don't capture things like people who live in high-tax jurisdictions trying to survive on minimum wage, for example, which is going to skew these numbers even more dramatically.

If we assume an individual Federal tax rate of 12% and a state tax rate of 5% (state tax rates are often more complicated but for simplicity's sake), that makes it, assuming a pay period is one week

$7.25 x 40 x 52 = $15,080 gross pay

$15,080 x 12% = $1,809.60 annual Fed tax

$15,080 x 5% = $754 annual state tax

$1,809.60 + $754 = $2,563.60 total annual tax

$2,563.60 ÷ 52 = $49.30 annual tax allotted to one pay period

$7.25 x 40 = $290 weekly gross pay

$290 – $49.30 = $240.70 net (take home) pay

I'm not assuming any health insurance or 401(k) for simplicity's sake, and I'm assuming all income is taxable, even though that's generally not true, because the way our tax system generally works is that you get it back after the tax year is over, so it doesn't make sense to include it as monthly income when you don't see it as such.

So what you actually earn in a month is $962.80. If you multiply that by 12 months, you get an annual net income of $11,553.60.

If we take 30% as the rent guideline for net income, which is more reasonable as it is the amount that actually is deposited into your bank account, rent that is 30% of your monthly net income should be no higher than $288.84 per month, assuming no other income whatsoever. Even if we still went by the gross income standard, 30% of single-job minimum wage is $348.

I don't know when the original tweet was posted, but the most reliable source I could find showed the median rent (different from average) in 2022 being over $2k per month. So if we take that as our guide, someone would have to work at minimum three full-time jobs at $7.25 per hour and would barely make rent. So realistically, we're looking at a single person maybe having to work four minimum wage jobs, all at 40 hours per week, just to reliably be able to afford to survive.

What you may have noticed from all of this is that working four full-time jobs is not actually physically possible. Hell, working two full-time jobs is not really physically possible, and it certainly shouldn't be a requirement. Rents and other living costs are not becoming unliveable, they are wildly unliveable already at minimum wage. As you can see, they're not even survival wages. $15 an hour minimum wage isn't even close to being liveable in most places, either, it's something closer to $25 an hour now because we've been having the "debate" for so long.

The problem has been here for decades; it's just now starting to creep up to people who would otherwise be middle class without rich people greed. And to remind everyone, a good working definition of middle class is comfortable. If you don't have disposable income, or you don't have much of it, if you're living paycheck-to-paycheck, if you're one flat tire away from total catastrophe (even if you own a home), you are not middle class.

Friendly reminder that a lot of people used to be able to meet that definition, with spouses and children, on a single income. A single income can't even support one person in most cases today.

[paypant]

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Knowing what a Solo 401k it is important, and how you can benefit from using this retirement plan. The Solo 401(k) Plan was created by Congress primarily for the self-employed. It offers many of the same features as other retirement plans, such as a Traditional IRA or SEP IRA. Still, it has some additional benefits that make it especially attractive. In particular, the Solo 401(k) offers two significant benefits: Self-employed individuals can contribute up to $52,000 per year to the Solo 401(k), which is tax-deductible; and The account grows on a deferred tax basis until account withdrawals begin at age 59½. The most significant benefit is that there are no income limitations on who can contribute and deduct their contributions. You can open and fund a Solo 401(k) even if you have no employees or only one employee.

Frequently Asked Questions

What banks offer Solo 401k? Several banks offer Solo 401k plans, and the list grows yearly. You're lucky to bank with U.S Bank, Wells Fargo, or Charles Schwab. These banks all offer excellent Solo 401k plans. Because you're self-employed and not part of a company, a Solo 401k can be useful for retirement. If you bank with one of these companies and open an IRA CD (or CD- ladder), you can save for retirement and watch your money grow over time -- tax-free. Can I put rental income in a 401k? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that it depends on the context. When discussing income from investments, a 401k is an investment like anything else. So if you can put your rental income in a 401k, why not leave it there? However, there are tax implications to consider. Depending on your circumstances, you may be subject to taxes on the income as soon as it's received. Keeping your rental income outside the 401k until you've paid the taxes makes more sense if this is the case. In addition, if your employer offers matching funds for your 401k but does not offer anything for Roth IRA contributions (which your rental income would likely go towards), you'll want to keep your Roth contributions separate until after you've maximized the match in your 401k. The bottom line: Yes, you can put your rental income into a 401k. And depending on your situation, it might make sense to do so. But there are some additional factors to consider beyond whether it's allowed. Is real estate a better investment than 401k? Whether you believe real estate should be a big part of your investment portfolio depends on several factors, including the amount of money you have to invest, what kind of investor you are, and your goals for retirement. "Real estate is an excellent long-term investment," says Melissa Padgett, a financial planner in the greater Chicago area. Looking at the numbers, it becomes clear that investing in real estate can help you build wealth over time and achieve your long-term financial goals. Many people put at least some of their money into residential property, with most saying they bought their home. They liked living there as they did because they saw it as a good investment. For example, if you're buying a home that will become your primary residence, and you plan to live there for the next 30 years or more and think it's likely that housing prices will continue to rise during that period, then buying a home could make sense for you. On the other hand, if you think prices will level off or even fall when you plan to live in the property, then buying may not be such a good idea. Should I max out 401k or save for House? Should I max out my 401k or save for a house? That's a great question, and there's no correct answer. You have to consider many factors only relevant to you and your situation. But if you're looking for some solid advice, here are the main points to consider: How long do you plan on working? The longer you work, the more likely it is that 401k contributions will pay off for you. If you plan to leave the workforce in 5 years or less, your best bet might be to start saving for your house now. If you plan on staying employed for another 20 years, then funding your 401k makes more sense. How much can you contribute? The maximum amount allowed in 2019 is $19,000 (up from $18,500).  If you can put that much away this year, it makes sense. If not, you should consider how much you can realistically save towards a house per year. You might be able to contribute substantially more than $19K per year. What kind of interest rate do you get on your 401k? A 401k is an investment account with an associated interest rate that fluctuates depending on the market. At what age should you pay off your mortgage? The idea of paying off your mortgage as soon as possible is common. The logic is that you'll have more money freed up to invest in other things if you're not making monthly payments on a large loan. However, by the time you reach retirement age, you'll be able to borrow from your 401(k) if you need the money for an emergency, so the benefit of paying off your mortgage early may not be worth giving up the money you could've been investing all those years. The actual decision is whether or not to pay off your house during your working life. You should only do so if you're comfortable with having no home purchase protection and possibly missing out on other investments that could help boost your retirement savings. Is it wise to pay off your house? You've probably heard the advice to pay off your mortgage early, but is it r a good idea? Paying off your home loan can seem like a pretty sweet deal. It means you're free from the monthly payments, which is a big load off your mind in itself. You also have the satisfaction of knowing you've got nothing to pay. If it were that simple, though, you'd probably be hearing from people who had been paying their mortgages for years and years with no end in sight. For one thing, it's not possible to do. Suppose you're in an area where house prices are skyrocketing. It's a great idea to liquidate your equity into cash and invest elsewhere, where it will grow faster than any interest you could earn on a mortgage. And if your job requires a lot of travel or you can't commit to living in one place for at least seven years, then it may not be feasible either. But even if those issues aren't in play, there are still some questions you might want to ask yourself before diving right into paying off your house.

Summary

A solo 401(k) is a great way to save for retirement if you run your own business. You can contribute up to $55,000 each to the plan as an employer. In addition, employees can contribute up to $18,500 a year if they're under 50 or $24,500 if they're 50 or over. And unlike other retirement plans that limit which investments you can use (like IRAs), there are no restrictions on the investment options available in a solo 401(k). You'll also want to think about how much money you need when it comes time for retirement—and whether or not you should invest some of it now so there will be more income. Research has shown that people who start saving early tend to have more giant nest eggs than those who do not (even when controlling for age). The earlier one starts saving for retirement and investing their money wisely, the longer their savings will have time to grow and compound—and therefore, more cash at the end of their lives. Solo 401(k) has many benefits but can also be complicated to set up and manage. If you're considering investing in one, ensure your financial advisor is a certified solo 401(k) specialist or has extensive experience with these plans. An excellent place to start is by looking for an advisor who has worked with clients like yourself—someone who knows what's essential when planning for retirement and how best to meet those goals. Read the full article

[anthonybialy]

Retiring Social Security

Ensuring retirement is as miserable as working years is government’s gift to elders.  All involved parties seem a bit too happy about it.  The ultimate entitlement is ultimately bankrupting the nation they claim to love.  It’s America, by the way.

An unwieldy tax that can’t cover unfathomable debt needed to dollop out a monthly pittance that keeps allegedly free people reliant upon a government unable to do anything worthwhile with seized funds is helpful for illustrating how dreadful everything coerced is.  Try to retain this information before retirement.

It’s different when Washington assured them an allowance.  Erstwhile whippersnappers behaved their best and earned their driveway shoveling money.  Empty lockboxes shouldn’t be a surprise, yet paranoid Woodstock attendees are shocked that their stashes got raided.

It’s adorable to think they were not only pledged something by the government but that it will be fulfilled.  They paid in and can’t believe they won’t be paid out.  Asking what contract they signed will only infuriate them.  Darth Vader didn’t change terms as arbitrarily as your government.  At least he was upfront about joining the Dark Side.

This particular generation of quitters due to age doing the opposite of caring for the next in that very selfless manner for which they’re renowned.  A lousy example to avoid is only so valuable.  Rebelling against self-involved parasites is inadvertently the best parenting.  Brats have to strike out on their own after their oh so responsible parents blew tuition money on whatever Eagles were presently on tour.

All-time Boomer Donald Trump promises to keep sustaining Social Security if he seduces his way into a second con job as part of his endless commitment to preserving conservatism.  The alleged retirement program is no worse investment than his real estate portfolio.  Social Security is as foolish as buying his costly rotgut vodka.  Peddling Mister Boston quality at Stoli prices shows why Trump is so eager to get rehired for his government job.  Someone who makes alleged fortunes disappear naturally embrace the geezer dole.

A gullible government fan is going to be president either by retaining, re-seizing, or swooping in to the presidency.  We have so many options.  By contrast, people who want to work hard have no chance at avoiding apocalyptic debt all to enable stocking up on Werther’s.  Another postponement of paying America’s credit card bill will surely drive down interest.

The worst part of pretending the Financial Grim Reaper isn’t making PayPal requests is how much better finances will be for all involved after the meltdown.  Removing the payroll tax will compensate for far more than the meager checks on the way, especially since the amounts are rapidly dwindling to zero.  And that’s before inflation.

Try buying groceries with a pledge.  Your rulers offer the opposite of a guarantee despite what they’ve claimed.  I can’t believe arbiters of laws are able to disregard the very standards they impose on reality.

This would be a good time to start noticing patterns.  An even better time is about half a century ago.  Investing faith in politicians is supposed to be reassuring, according to seduced enrollees who thought they were investing in a 401(k).   Play cards with anyone who presumes government wouldn’t break a law, much less a promise.

It apparently needs to be said that a federal retirement plan embodies to opposite of conservatism.  The same sort of people who think Trump is a fearless truth-teller act like the payment they get is the one small-government exception.

Like with money disappearing faster than it’s replaced, the description has no effect on the outcome.  Calling an ultimate income shift the emblematic liberal program is the furthest thing from a compliment possible.  Calling it conservative because you’re forced to pay in is as sad as pretending the charlatan who tells them what they want to hear is the last honest man.

But that’s my money.  Sure, it’s not technically.  Regardless, the cash commandeering program results in one temporarily giant then quickly dwindling pile.  Aspiring retirees think the revenue ripoff applies to everything except what checks arrive in their particular mailboxes.  An newfangled internet money transfer could be stolen, claim old-timers who let Washington steal at will.

It’s not just that the government failed to invest for you.  They let it sit there in their federal style until they needed to subsidize industries in vulnerable congresspeople’s districts three seconds later.  It’s not that nice to have an emblematic example of how not to save.

Some people rely on a ripoff, so the fleecing can’t be halted.  We couldn’t phase out the three-card monte table or anything so future doomed participants can skip playing.  The radical notion of letting people decide to keep their money is not presently law, and nothing is more important than precedent.

Oh, it’s just dooming the nation.  Illustrating the perilous folly of waiting to avoid aiming the tires toward the cliff means the edge approaches.  Careening is FDR’s old New Deal bad deal.  Overreach in response to panic naturally worsened the outlook, but maybe cutting the brakes will get us there faster.

Weening off the addiction will get harder the longer the wait is before hitting rock bottom.  Handout junkies are just like anyone else hooked on something that sounds appealing but ultimately harms.  Those in question crave something as pernicious, namely the idea that their needs will be met by the most negligent caretaker imaginable.

Doing something useful with money from work sounds like more work.  But the opportunity to choose is better than letting federal deadbeats mooch from the pile.  Alleged beneficiaries could take what was seized from them and invest it.  Look up what a mutual fund is.  Heck: deposit the same sum in a bank.  Unlike your alleged federal rainy day fund, you’ll actually have access to it no matter the weather.

The sum in question will only decrease in value if one particular senior citizen who doubles as executive continues to try to make everyone rich by handing out dough.  We could’ve learned a lesson.  Many people did.  Sadly, it’s the wrong one.  The urge to exclaim “Gimme!” is always strong even though we all know deep down nothing is free.

Naming something doesn’t make it adhere to the words, which confuses liberals who wonder why acting didn’t give them affordable care.  East Germany wasn’t democratic, while we’re at it.

The retirement Ponzi scheme is supposed to provide security as indicated by the name.  Aside from doing the precise opposite for America and its retirees, it’s done so.  Buying private label saltines is nobody’s dream for the personal post-work era.  A program that’s insecure and antisocial.  Being forced to mingle with others is bad enough, and doing so with paychecks makes it even worse.

[preconstruction-info]

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[dollar2host]

Common WordPress Errors and How to Fix Them

There is no denying the strength of the WordPress program. On the other hand, there is a 100% chance that you will experience some technical difficulties at some point. These WordPress problems can be frustrating and waste time that could be better spent doing anything else.

You will be able to fix the majority of these errors on your own, which is good news. If you are familiar with the most common WordPress errors and the primary factors that contribute to them, you should be able to resolve the majority of the problems that exist on your website.

In this article, we will demonstrate several useful methods that you can use to get started. After that, we will discuss the most typical WordPress Errors and demonstrate how to correct each one. Let's get going!

The Most Frequent WordPress Errors and How To Repair Them

The following is a helpful guide that will walk you through fixing the most frequent WordPress errors.

1. The terrifying white screen WordPress that precedes death:

The white screen WordPress is exactly what it sounds like a screen that is completely blank and devoid of any distinguishing features. It is possible that an error message will appear every so often.

The white screen WordPress problem may typically be traced back to one of two sources: either plugins or themes. There is a possibility that this will result in compatibility errors, preventing you from accessing your site.

However, in addition to those suggested causes, there are also a number of others. You can find a comprehensive list of potential causes and helpful solutions in the post that we have written on repairing the WordPress "white screen WordPress."

2. 400 Error: [ WordPress 404 page]

Four hundred faults can manifest in a variety of guises, ranging from 400 to 499. However, each of these problems is an HTTP client fault. As a result, it is typically possible to identify them as being caused by a communication problem with your server.

There are numerous solutions available, depending on the client's error code. A number of the particular error codes, including the 401 error and the 403 disallowed error, each have multiple potential resolutions.

3. Internal server error

These 500 faults can be a little bit of a head-scratcher. You are only told the title of the situation, which is that your server has collapsed. You are rarely given any further information outside the title.

Because of this lack of specificity, resolving an internal server problem typically involves performing certain debugging steps. The good news is that most of the time, it can be fixed by taking a few specific actions in the right order. To walk you through the process, we have compiled a guide on the 500 internal server errors.

4. A problem with the memory limit

Errors related to memory limits can typically be tracked down to the hosting provider. In most cases, the quantity of server RAM that is available to you is predetermined by the plan that you have purchased. You'll encounter this error if you go over the limit that's been set.

As demonstrated for fixing HTTP image upload errors, the simplest way to fix the problem is to raise the RAM limit for PHP. On the other hand, if you consistently encounter this memory limit problem, you should think about increasing your hosting plan in order to free up more memory.

5. There Was a Problem Establishing the Connection to The Database

In order for your WordPress site to function correctly, it is necessary for it to establish a connection with the MySQL database. Both you and your users will be unable to access your dashboard, and they will not be able to read your material. To our relief, the solution to this problem is not overly complicated. First, make sure that your database credentials are correct. You can also attempt the following methods to fix the database connection error if everything is configured properly.

6. You Have Exceeded the Maximum Allowed Size of Uploaded Files.

Your WordPress site has its own individual upload limit, which is established based on a number of different variables. If you attempt to upload a file that is larger than this limit, you will see a warning indicating that the upload failed. You can view your limit by heading to the Media menu and selecting the Add New option.

You can increase the size of your uploads by modifying the php.ini file on your server. Having said that, this will not be applicable to all hosting plans. As a result of this, we strongly suggest getting in touch with your web hosting provider or, alternatively, simply compressing your photographs.

7. Exceeded the Maximum Allotted Amount of Time

When your website processes data, it will often do so with an upper limit on the amount of time the execution can take.

8. The Automatic Update Did Not Work.

Keeping your WordPress site up to date with the most recent technologies may be accomplished in a hands-off manner with automatic updates. However, there is a possibility that this process could fail, which would result in a WordPress website that is broken. In the event that this occurs, the most effective option is to manually update your website. You should also consider taking a few precautionary measures to ensure that you are upgrading WordPress in a secure manner.

9. There Was a Problem Writing the File to the Disc.

After attempting to upload media files, the error "Upload: Failed to write file to disc" is likely to appear on your screen. If you run a site that is heavy on photos, this can be an extremely frustrating issue. In most cases, these two factors are the primary contributors:

Incorrect permissions assigned to the File.

A problem with the server.

You may get started by checking to see if the permissions on your files are set up correctly. If it doesn't work, you might want to try getting in touch with your host.

10. A problem occurred during the secure connection

When the configuration of your server is incorrect, your secure connection will fail to establish. As a direct consequence of this, your website is unable to establish a connection with WordPress.org. This may prevent you from upgrading the essential files on your system. These WordPress problems do not have a fix that you can implement on your own, unfortunately. There are situations in which all you have to do is wait for a few minutes for it to go away on its own. In the event that the issue does not fix itself, you can communicate directly with your host.

11. Error 521 reported by Cloudflare:

Cloudflare is a robust web security service that also has the ability to boost your website's load time. However, there is a possibility that the Cloudflare service will be unable to connect to your server at times. This causes an error with the code 521.

To resolve this issue, check to be that your server is online and operational. The next thing you should do is examine whether or not your firewall is preventing Cloudflare's IP ranges from being accessed. In addition, you are free to get in touch with your host at any time for assistance.

12. Access to the specified file type or page is denied:

Because of security concerns, WordPress does not support the uploading of some types of files. This stops hackers from gaining unauthorized access to your data, which is the case the majority of the time. On the other hand, this may prohibit users from posting things that aren't malicious. You can use a free plugin like File Upload kinds to customize your website so that it will allow the upload of various file kinds.

13. Syntactical problems in WordPress

When there is a problem with the structure of your code, this can lead to syntax errors. It is quite improbable that this will occur on its own. In all likelihood, it will take place in any of these two scenarios. You have just recently uploaded some custom code to your website, and one of those lines of code contains a syntax mistake. Perhaps you made a typing error by accident. You may have installed a new plugin or theme, which resulted in a problem with the syntax. In most cases, the syntax error will identify the specific File and line that is the source of the problem, which you may then utilize to troubleshoot the issue. If you still aren't able to figure it out, reverting any recent code changes or installing any new plugins or themes is a smart initial step to take. You can also activate the debug mode in WordPress, which will assist you in locating the source of the issue.

14. Invalid SSL messages

A website can be protected in a way that is both straightforward and efficient by installing an SSL certificate. In point of fact, the vast majority of reputable hosts provide these services at no cost. Despite this, the procedure can be difficult, and it is possible that you will encounter a variety of WordPress errors along the way.

The most effective method for avoiding them is to ensure that your certificate is initially configured appropriately. You can accomplish this by utilizing the built-in SSL certificate installer tool that most hosts make available to their customers. In addition to that.

Check that you have implemented HTTPS correctly on your WordPress site by configuring it properly.

Be sure to renew your SSL certificate if your server doesn't already do it automatically nevertheless, the majority of hosts will perform this task for you automatically.

If you are still experiencing problems with the SSL certificate provided by your host, you should think about contacting customer care.

18. A Database that is corrupted:

Your WordPress website will not be able to use a file that has become corrupted because it cannot read it. This may result in an error that reads "Error Establishing Database Connection" or other hiccups in the system. Restoring a previous version of your website is going to be the simplest solution to this problem. After that, everything on your website should work normally.

Conclusion:

WordPress mistakes can take many forms and look very different from one another. Some of them might not even be that bothersome, but others might completely destroy your website. Fortunately, being aware of the most common causes can help you better prepare for any eventuality.

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[raganandhersurveys]

6/26/23~ 5000 question survey(401-500) {CXX}

401. Some say that high school is the best time of your life. Was that true for you?

~hmmm i wouldn’t necessarily say it was the best part of my life but i definitely see where people get that from. i liked high school a lot and overall i look back on it with fond memories 

402. What do you find yourself encouraging others to try?

~styles i think would fit them. there are a lot of people that refuse to wear certain things because they think they look bad in it but honestly, i see the opposite; i think trying new clothing is really cool 

403. Which is better: Mel Brooks or Woody Allen?

~i’m not super familiar with either 

404. When was the last time you were up all night?

~i rarely stay up all night but a few weeks ago i stayed up late watching movies 

405. __ is life. The rest is just details. Fill in the blank. 

~that is a lot for me to wrap my head around lmmfao 

406. Are people too complex and different to be categorized? 

~yes; also morally i don’t agree with that 

407. Is it good to have pride in your own race or does that separate people from each other because it makes them think of everyone else as 'outsiders'?

~you can be proud of who you are and still love people who are different than you. i really wish people would grasp that concept. we are literally all humans and no one is better than anyone else 

408. What fictional story would you like to live through? 

~i watch and read such dark shit i don’t think i would ever choose something that i’m super into. but going to hogwarts would be pretty cool

409. Are cats or dogs smarter? 

~depends on the task at hand 

410. Have you ever guessed someone's password and broken into their diary?

~yes but like not to look in it. when i was a kid everyone’s password diary password was their crush's birthdate LMMFAO so it was really just to see if i was right 

411. What teacher, if any, has effected you the most in your life?

~i think one reason i never like hated school was because i had a lot of good teachers throughout it. i had the same english teacher for junior and senior year and i adored her. i also loved my sophomore history teacher and my 7th grade english teacher. all of those people wrote my teacher recommendations for college and wrote me like super sweet messages in my yearbooks 

412. Are you more easily bored or excited?

~excited haha

413. What's the bravest or most daring thing you have ever done? 

~this was the first thing to come to my mind lmao; when i went to summer camp when i was like 12 i volunteered to climb the super super high out door rock climbing wall that was in the woods; it had just opened and I was the first girl to make it to the top :) that made me feel really good 

 414. "What's the point of robbery when nothing is worth taking?" (- Adam Ant) 

~the thrill? 

 415. If your man or woman served you breakfast in bed as a treat what would you want?

~hmmm chocolate chip waffles and iced coffee

416. What do you do only when you are upset? 

~hug a stuffed animal lol lol 

 417. What's the oddest CD in your collection?

~i don’t really think i have CD collection anymore 

418. What's the best diary name you ever saw?

~hmm idk 

419. What would your friends be surprised to learn about you?

~i actually like having some alone time lmao

420. Who owes you an apology?

~i don’t wanna go there LMAO

421. Who deserves an apology from you?

~i hope no one right now 

422. How would you like to treat your kids differently from the way your parents treated you? 

~yes and no; i love my parents but i don’t feel like i can be open with them about things. i want my kids to feel like if something is ever wrong they can come to me. i never felt like i could depend on my mom ever so i definitely want my kids to feel like they can depend on me 

423. Which do you like best: 60's, 70's or 80's fashion? 

~ooooh alll of it but the 70′s especially 

424. What is the worst pick up line ever used on you?

~idk i haven’t experienced that in a long time 

425. Of the following, which word best describes you: inventive, kinetic (energetic), light-hearted, mature

~mature 

426. Do you own a record player? Do you use it? 

~my dad does and i use his when i’m at home but i don’t own one personally 

427. How easily do you make friends?

~pretty easy i guess but i keep my circle small and tight so i find that a lot of people don’t really wanna get to that point 

428. What is the difference between having character and being a character?

~having character is being unique and having a good personality overall where as i think being a character means you’re funny

429. Are there any animals you flat out refuse to touch? 

~a poisonous dart frog :) or a great white shark 

430. Do you care about your weight?

~only mine and i obsess over it 

431. Did you/will you go to the prom? 

~nooooooo plz don’t get me started I was a covid highschool victim :(((((((((( i have vowed to give my children the most for prom one day just so i can vicariously live through them LMAO

432. Have you ever wanted to date twins?

~lol no 

433. What one thing would you change about high school if you could?

~i would have embraced who i really was more; i was trying to be someone i wasn’t for sooooo long. i also would have tried harder my senior year

434. If you came with a warning label, what would it say?

~will attach to you if too close

435. Are you artistic and creative?

~eh

436. What were you (probably) doing on this date last year?

~i cheated and looked at my snapchat memories. i went to tj.maxx with my best friend 

437. What are you obsessed with? 

~my boyfriend 

438. What was the last compliment you received? 

~”you’re gonna be a great mom one day” 

439. Do you have any brothers or sisters? 

~i have one sister

440. Who would you like to be alone with right now? 

~my boyfriend LMAO

441. Do you push people away when you really want them to come closer?

~not usually 

442. Is a prenuptial agreement necessary or does it take the romance and trust out of marriage? 

~i think that is a choice that others shouldn’t have an opinion on LOL. if for example i married jacob i trust him and know he is good with money so i wouldn’t get one. but i don’t think it takes the romance out of a relationship if you choose to get one

443. Do you lie your way out of things? 

~not usually

444. Are you better at talking or listening?

~i’ve been told i’m a good listener

445. What will only happen to you once in this lifetime? 

~graduating highschool 

446. Know of any conspiracy theories you think might be credible? 

~the government LMAO not tryna be that person but like i know there is so much bs 

447 What are the most beautiful words that have ever been spoken to you?

~anything my grandma has said 

448. If it were legal would you own a human slave (race unimportant)? 

~LMAO NO!

449. Have you ever read your own writing at a poetry reading? 

~i have not

 450. What is one simple thing that gives you the happy shivers?

 ~thinking about future plans i have 

451. What do you do for exercise? 

~depends on the day. tomorrow i want to do some core exercises so i’ll just use the machines at the gym that help with that and do some yoga mat workouts 

452. Would you rather have a strict teacher with a sense of humor or a lenient teacher that doesn't teach?

~strict teacher with a sense of humor; anything is better than a teacher that doesn't teach 

453. If you ever have a baby what might you want to name it? 

~depends! i have a whole list of baby names LMAO. but my top for boy names is ryder and for girls juliette.

454. If you won free tickets to a concert from a radio show and had to choose between Inxs, Poison, Blondie and Moby, which would you choose? 

~blondie is the only one of those i’m familiar with 

455. Are you a good cook?

~i’m ok ig 

 456. Do you prefer when things come with no assembly required, even if they are a bit more expensive? 

~i guess so 

457. Start a sentence with the words: what if

~what if i was rich 

458. Are you more spontaneous and unpredictable or loyal and routine?

~i think you can be spontaneous and loyal LMAO

 459. What is the highest number you can count to in your head? 

~maybe a million

 460. How do you go about losing weight? 

~i workout :) i try to eat healthy but that doesn’t happen often lol

461. Do you have street smarts?

~probably not

462. Do you have a lot of common sense?

~i’d like to think so

463. What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?

~strawberry or cookie dough or reeces 

 464. What's your favorite movie that involves dancing?

~dirty dancing

 465. Would you ever want to become a guest on a talk show? If yes what would the show's theme be?

~if i had an interesting enough life to warrant being on one lmao

466. Do you like the way you look naked?

~i’m fine with it LMAO

467. Have you ever dissected an animal?

~at school :/

468. Who do you know who is brilliant?

~quite a few. jacob’s mom is super smart 

469. Who do you know who is dull? 

~i can’t think of someone specifically

470. Do you ever think about time travel? 

~yes! i would love to do it

471. What is one interesting fact you know?

~i can’t really think of one rn

472. Do you talk to yourself? 

~oh my god all the time

 Do you talk to your pets?

~^

473. Do you believe that humankind has a future in space (will we live there some day)? 

~i think so

474. Would you rather wear clothes that you don’t mind getting dirty or more delicate outfits? 

~i don’t tend to get my clothes too dirty. so i’m good with either. i like wearing delicate things to bed because it makes me feel cute 

475. How do you 'live life to the fullest'? 

~i’m working on that LMAO

476. Are you sloppy or a neat freak?

~i’m pretty neat

477. Would you rather have a trunk full of nickels or half a trunk full of dimes?

~dimes

478. What is the worst mistake you've ever made? 

~i try to not dwell on that and frankly idek what i would say

 479. Are you in good health? 

~yes

\ 480. Are you patriotic? 

~yes :)

Let's play fact or crap. Is it a fact? Or is it crap?: 481-500 481. 

The greenhouse effect is bad for your health~ fact

 482. There are about as many molecules of air in one breath as there are hairs on your head~ fact

483. The Miss America pageant started out as a contest in which people decorated wheel chairs and one chair was judged the prettiest~ crap

 484. To remove a tattoo a physician can place a small balloon under the skin, which is inflated so that the tattooed skin gradually stretches. Then they cut the stretched skin away~ i feel like crap but i wouldn’t be surprised if it was true

 485. Cock fighting is a sexual sport~ crap

486. It is the warmest time of the day during the hour that the sun is the highest in the sky~ fact

487. Certain scientists specialize in studying cow farts~ fact; aren’t they bad for the planet

488. The brilliant colors (reds, oranges, yellows) across the sky that we get from sunsets are caused mainly by pollution~ i feel like that’s fact :(

 489. In Grimm's original fairy tale, Rapunzel is pregnant~ fact? 

 490. Dracula was the first movie about a vampire~ fact

491. The inventors of Corn Flakes, the Kellogg brothers, ran a school for delinquent youth~ fact; that is one of those things that is so random that i remember hearing in a documentary

 492. "Kemo Sabe" means "soggy shrub" in Navajo~ crap

493. Sir Thomas Crapper invented the toilet~ crap haha

494. The Earl of Sandwich invented the Sandwich~ fact. 

495. Some Chinese alchemists were trying to invent an immortality medicine and accidentally invented gunpowder instead~ that sounds right

 496. The human body is made of about 99% water~ i don’t think it’s that much so crap

497. Bubble gum contains rubber~ crap

 498 This survey to the zero power = 0~ fact 

499. Most lipstick contains fish scales~ crap

500. There are 86401 seconds in day~ fact

[brexiiton]

"Unprecedented" wave of fake threats at schools causes terror

SAREEN HABESHIAN, APRIL 23 2023

Illustration: Eniolda Odetunde/Axios

"Swatting" calls - fake reports of shooting or bombs that draw an onslaught of SWAT teams and cause schools to lockdown - are rising nationwide. The big picture: Although there are no casualties or injuries in such incidents, the psychological impacts on children can be immense.

"Swatting" is the act of placing a fake emergency call to 911, who often dispatch SWAT teams to potentially violent situations.

While the FBI has not shared data about the number of swatting incidents, the agency said in an emailed statement that they're "aware of the continued threats being made."

"The FBI takes swatting very seriously," the agency said. "These threats put innocent people at risk and cause significant fear in the community."

By the numbers: The Educator's School Safety Network, a nonprofit, has recorded 401 false reports so far this school year, according to operations director Amanda Klinger.

Practically no state has been spared: The National Association of School Resource Officers, which tracks news reports of swatting incidents, has documented such reports across 42 states, plus Washington, D.C. since September.

Many of the calls are computer generated, making it easy for bad actors to call-in dozens of fake threats in a short period of time.

"Very often, an probably in this case, they are foreign actors," New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said after 36 New York schools were targeted in March. "These are computer-generated calls originating in foreign lands that are trying to cause disruption."

"The incredible uptick in intentional false reports ... is something that educators have really struggled to contend with this year," Klinger said.

The Educator's School Safety Network provides professional development training to educators, she explained, and getting people to prepare "is really the biggest first step."

The includes beefing up communication capabilities, going through evacuation procedures and having discussions with faculty and staff. "It doesn't have to be very scary," Klinger added.

Between the lines: The psychological impacts of hoax shooting calls can be daunting.

"I think whether there's a real shooting or pretend shooting, it's terrifying and people don't feel safe," said Dr. Adelaide Robb, chief of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Children's National Hospital in D.C.

The mental health impacts on students can go either of two ways, she explained.

"The kids who aren't that scared and who stopped paying attentional to any threats may start to ignore things from their own peer group on the Internet," Robb said. Then if there's a real threat, they may discount it because there have been so many false alarms, she added.

"There's another group of kids who may be more anxious to begin with, who become more and more fearful," Robb said. "And for some of those children then, it doesn't feel safe to go to school anymore."

The bottom line: School is supposed to be a place where students can feel safe.

"To not feel safe in school makes one of the most important parts of a child's life very difficult," Robb said.

"You can't learn when you're in terror," she continued. "If you can't go into school and sit down in the classroom, and listen and learn because you're too scared somebody's going to come in with a gun, it makes the entire progress of your life difficult."

Research of a recent swatting incident showed serious mental health costs, Klinger said.

"No one was in danger. No one was injured, and that's fantastic," she explained. "But you can't discount that there was a period of time where people thought they might die."

Be smart: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on the FBI earlier this month to launch an investigation into the "latest unprecedented wave" of swatting calls.

"It's our job as the adults in their life to help in school, to make people feel safe, to make it a gun free zone," Robb said. "So that going to school is about learning and making friends - not worrying about what's the next bad thing that's going to happen."

Editor's note: This story was originally published on April 21.

[entrepreneurshipsecrets]

5 Ways to Fund Your Small Business or Startup

The beginning of your business or startup should be one of the most exciting moments of an entrepreneur’s life. The chance to be a business owner and take care of matters in one’s own hands can be rewarding. But taking care of a business alone requires a lot of responsibility and ensuring that all the Ts are crossed and the Is are dotted. And that also includes finding a reliable source of money in order to get a small business off the ground. To start off on the right foot, here are five ways to fund your startup or small business.

Getting a Small Business Loan

If you want to maintain control of your business but don’t have the funds to start, getting a loan is a good option to go with. But first, you have to get approved first. You have to demonstrate to lenders that you have a business plan, expense sheets, and what your financial projections are going to be for the next five years. Shop around at the credit unions with small business loans in your area to see which one works best for your financial vision.

Looking at SBA-Guaranteed Loans

SBA (Small Business Administration) loans are provided to those businesses that banks consider too high-risk to invest in. If you find that you might not be eligible for regular loans, you might be able to be approved for an SBA-guaranteed loan. Visit the SBA website to see if you can be approved for one of their loans.

Using Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is the process of obtaining funds from a large number of people. These people should not be confused with investors, since they don’t receive a share of the ownership of the business. Nor do they expect to receive a financial return on their money. What crowdfunders do expect to receive is some kind of gift as thanks for their contribution to the company’s funds. Crowdfunding works well for creative projects as well as high-tech products.

Consider Self-Funding

This is also known as bootstrapping and involves you leveraging your own resources in order to start and support your own business. It can come in the form of funds from family and friends, money in your saving account, or tapping into your 401(k) to get started. Control of the business is retained through self-funding, but all of the risks are assumed by you and you alone. And that means that you have to keep a careful eye on all of your spending and where your money is going.

Obtaining Venture Capital from Investors

Investors can provide you with the funding you need to start your business by offering capital investments. These are offered in exchange for ownership shares as well as having an active role in the company. Venture capital is much different from traditional financing since it focuses on high-growth companies, invests capital in return for equity instead of debt, has a longer investment horizon, and takes higher risks for potential higher returns. Most, if not all, venture capitalists will want a seat on the board of directors. There’s no need to go through the process of starting your new business alone. Getting some financial help can set you on the right path towards success. Speak to your local financial advisor to see if there’s any help you need. Photo by Shane on Unsplash Read the full article

[wellfell]

 ❛ i don't fall . ❜  she mumbles . she does — falls hard enough to break bones , hits the walls and trees until they make her bleed . but all of them do , they have to yet reach levi’s level of perfection and precision . and how old was levi himself anyway ? how many years did they all have to go to be as wise as the old assholes that sleep in the inner wall ? they hit the walls and roofs until their bones break and they pray because at least it's not titan teeth breaking their bones . akina didn't even remember that titans ate humans – when the colossal titan broke the first wall , when squad 401 met the titans for the first time . she remembers watching in horror as the first titan reached for a fairly young lady , and lifted her to its open mouth . akina and jean were less experienced with them , despite learning about their diet and their ways , just seeing them this close had made kids from inner walls freeze .

 she remembers standing behind a wall with a trembling hand on her chest , her heart in her mouth and tears in her eyes . remembers moving only when she heard a little boy call her , ‘ miss soldier ! miss soldier ! ‘ , remembers being so scared but knowing she isn't allowed to let the boy be eaten like that young woman . the titan's chopped off hand was cooling off on the ground and the boy was crying in her shoulder , thanking her with his little trembling voice . akina won't be as unbothered as mikasa , knows that's what's getting her higher in the eyes of the higher ups but akina was simply , undoubtedly , helplessly , human .

 and at some point , you have to accept the fact that the little girl in you has to be murdered . eren’s smile doesn't suit him this time , she lets him push her spear away and steps away to give him room . jean keeps saying eren’s eyes are frog big , she mindlessly thinks they're haunting . like a monster trying to improvise , look at you without wanting to crush your bones in his hands . . she does take his hand though . but doesn't lift him , instead lowers her own form . one of akina's knees press on the dirt , then the other . her shoulders are narrow , slumped and the spear rests by her thigh . she doesn't know much about what he was before he came here , nothing beyond the suicidal bastard title and his eagerness to start fights left and right with the very wrong kind of people . one day he's going to die under levi’s kicks and it'll be well deserved , she thinks . but he had to be just a boy to join the ranks . akina realized the scouts were not different from the others inside the wall , choosing to wear a horse or a rose behind their uniforms and pretend to guard the town . she realized the ones with wings on their backs can't go back even if they want to . wonders if jean would , wonders if eren has ever wanted to .

 shifting slightly , looking down at her hands as her long , calloused fingers pick the dirt off the scratch on her palm . ❛ . . um . i was thinking – ❜  the same fingers raise to push her hair behind her ears . an action too pristine for the state she's in , the last traces of the sina brat that would cry over a ruined dress for two days . ❛ i was going to see my family mansion tomorrow in sina . i think my family left it– ❜  died ? left ? they didn't even write her a letter , she hopes they'll be kinder to anita . ❛ i think i'm asked to sell it or something . ❜  levi gave her the letter with a snort , mumbling something about the rich brats and their stupid little marble mansions . akina didn't care much about her old house but there was something that actually worried her ; well , three actually . ❛ we have triplet tigers in our mansion . ❜  ones that tried to eat her when she was nine , a white scar rests on her stomach which she's sure nobody has seen before . thankfully . smaller titans with sharper teeth , angry , hungry , her father tried to sell the tigers many times but nobody in all three walls had seen nor possessed animals like these . she tries to smile , lets sunlight pour into one brown eye from her left . ❛ i was wondering if you'd like to come with me . i – i asked a few people and they all said no . i don't want to go alone . ❜  she doesn't even know how much the house or the tigers cost , she doesn't want to get rid of anything , she wants someone to stand by her so the house doesn't eat her up . or the tigers , eren’s glares remind her of them sometimes .

 ❛ . . we don't have to stay much . we could leave tonight , and come back tomorrow evening . ❜

Eren's inhale isn't sharp, though it would be justifiable if it were. Sucking in air as a way to gasp, wouldn't it make sense? It's not a pleasant question to hear, especially not with that look in her eyes.

She's careful. Eren doesn't know enough about her background to determine why or how, what she's learned at home, and what she's learned out here. But he knows she's careful. He knows she isn't half as foolish as everyone had assumed a spoiled brat from Sina to be.

Sometimes he wonders if she'd leaned into it, initially, into what people murmured about her, or into the way boys would stare as she walked by, twice as beautiful as Mikasa, and half as scary.

Akina is unfair.

His features twist as he inhales, calmly. His chest rises. Her makeshift weapon goes along with it. The more he looks up at her, the less he feels like fighting her off.

Sometimes it catches up to him, a terrible thought. Wouldn't it be easier to give up? He doesn't remember what options he has outside of being what he is.

When Akina looks at him and refuses to not meet his eyes, refuses to not eventually come back, refuses to not indulge him with his attempts at play-pretend of a life and age he no longer gets to have, does she look at him and see him as a monster?

And does she know of anything else he could be, at this point?

Beyond a symbol, beyond a weapon, beyond something more abstract than he is, and more concrete than he feels?

"Why would I be catching you?" he tries to smile that usual confident smile, the one he accompanies with declarations of faith and belief, ambition and dreams, the one that had probably helped Jean coin the 'suicidal bastard' title he still wears too comfortably on his back.

"I'm guessing because you fell? Or because I'd have to carry you somewhere?"

There are endless plains, at times. Outside, actually outside, as well, he muses. The world can't change that drastically, right? Sure, there's the ocean of water, and somewhere else one made of sand, but there'll probably be plains for a long while before they reach anything else.

Nowhere to shoot a hook into.

"I'd try to be gentle," he says in the end, and doesn't meet her eyes. He can't figure out how to get the smile to work, so he gives up on it. He pushes her spear away as he makes to sit up, a sigh heavy enough to inherited from an ancient line.

He runs his hand through his hair briefly.

It seems pointless, sometimes.

All he does, while out here, is wait for the next time he's useful. Why does he bother? Aren't there more important things to attend to?

He extends his hand, expecting Akina to lift him up, gaze unimpressed, at least not quite stern.

"I wouldn't hurt you," a pause. She's beautiful, framed by the setting light. She always is. He doesn't care much for it, beauty is subjective and means little, except getting women into trouble if they're in the wrong district, or slip into the wrong criminal hands - or even inside military ranks, he's heard.

But she is.

She's beautiful for the way she overpowers him because he lets her, for the way she won't run away from him, or asking in the first place.

"I won't lose control again," he continues, quieter, half a statement, half a plea to be believed. "I haven't in a while. I wouldn't start again while holding you."

Because not even whatever fucked up fire is eating his brain alive inside his skull, he hopes - hopes, doesn't know, he hopes - would weaken when faced with the reality of accidentally hurting one of the few keeping him sane enough to face it.