There is a constant stream of misinformation on short form video feeds, forums, and even some large news organizations claiming that Obama and the fall of the Gaddafi regime were responsible for the return of slavery in Libya, and while I admit not having a replacement power structure and system of laws to prevent anarchy is definitely a contributor, but an archived state department document from 1996 claims that the ILO reported in 1995 that Gaddafi had been purchasing slaves, primarily women, from South Sudan after he enabled the Sudanese coup. It also details how he expelled 1,000 Palestinians and also refugees from Egypt, Chad, and Sudan for being "illegal immigrants".

https://1997-2001.state.gov/global/human_rights/1996_hrp_report/libya.html

Gaddafi was not a good person, he was a cruel and terrible dictator and like all dictators his corpse can rot in hell.

One of them is a carton box projection, the other a bunch of sun glasses stacked in front of the camera.

More than a year ago

Byoomth: I'm starving

Me: You just ate half a box of cereal and made peanut butter cookies

Byoomth: You are insulting me by implying I do not know my own body. I will begin [Manipulation tactic #34] unless you adhere to my demands that you beg my, Byoomth's, own father for money for us, which you will hold and I will say how we spend it.

Me: Please don't…

Byoomth: Huuuaaaagghh! ×1000

Me: FOR FUCKS SAKE DON'T DO THIS AGAIN I'LL UNSUBSCRIBE FROM ALL MY SOCIAL MEDIA AND AI SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR YOU!

…

Today

Byoomth: I need ChatGPT premium, I already tried entering your card information but it's wrong for some reason. Are you doing something behind my back?

Me: No, we can't afford this. I just magicked five dollars for the weed you need that I will have to pay thirty back on to get your weed so you don't scream in agony to control me, as I have been conditioned to expect when you shower for six hours in the night.

Byoomth: [Proceeds to do narcissistic triangulation, opening the window and chanting in a way that seems like he is distressed to my neighbors]

Me: Fine! Whatever. Here's my card that you have memorized for all the DXM you buy on your computer.

Byoomth: It still doesn't work. Figure that out, [or else I will use other degrading manipulation tactics on you like I've gotten my case manager to also do with you since you have to handle everything in my court-ordered mandatory treatment that I am flaking out on]. Oh, you need to also stop drinking.

Me: I want to decapitate myself via train. You are the reason I drink. And when you achieve enlightenment to transcend physicality as you are dedicated entirely to because your back aches because [Unclear reason that he has never told me but implies is embarrassing and needs to be censored], I really hope you get the solitude you desire for the rest of eternity. But no, really I don't, because I figured out [solitude] fifteen years ago, and it is hell to the human condition, so I would never wish what you say you want more than anything else on you. I'm not as cruel as you.

Byoomth: So, can I illegally smoke that weed you got because I don't have an ID in your apartment that I can't get my name on the lease because I fucked up and got evicted from my last apartment, as perfect as I am? [Proceeds to do the kindest thing a human being can do, going beyond what even my parents would do]

Me: [Confused and paralyzed] ...sure...

Nacy Mace, Bathroom Monitor

I remember being on the bus way back in third grade, when I was just jamming out to the music played through the speakers, when suddenly everyone just freaked out, like something huge happened and the bus driver kept trying to calm them down, telling them it was just a song. Turns out, that was the first time I heard Eminem, and my peers were freaking out because the radio said the word "ass."

I could not figure that out until afterwards, because I don't really understand unfamiliar lyrics to songs. My brain processes information differently, and I wish I knew this back then. Sadly, my parents thought if the teacher said you need special help, then that was the school calling me a retard, and my mom wouldn't have that. No therapy for her known inevitable demise, either.

So, you see the type of situation I entered into this world in; fundamentally wired differently, traumatized, and not knowing what tf I should do about this, genuinely thinking I was normal, just unlovable, which is still a deeply etched facet of my reality that I continuously try to heal. I never knew what to do; since kindergarten, I always felt no one ever told me the rules to what we were doing. Everyone had telepathy. And my solution to this, as would come to fruition after my mother's death, would be to become the mook who would do anything for a laugh.

Y'know, in fifth grade, that meant getting my lips caught in my lunchbox and carrying it around. In middle school, that meant swearing and saying all sorts of weird shit. In high school, a lotta people, teachers even, were primary sources to witnessing my hairy ass. And so, in college, uh, well y'know, I just jacked off in my dorm window, went streaking in the girls dorm, and cheated on my first girlfriend, not having been given much advice or help to develop me into a good and reasonable young man.

This has been a key part of my anathema; the urge and need to change myself and overcome what it is I have been made into. Well, at some level, I'm either working with or fighting against my my biology. By that, I mean two distinct things; on one hand, I am always going to be neurodivergent in this incarnation, which goes well with two, which is that I understand everything I am is defined by entanglements down to the most unified core that can be called me, and yet I am aware that core too, is an illusion

When I was fourteen, I would think of my father and get angry. Now, I do find anger percolating up from the activation of these circuits, but those are distant feelings I assess as I inspect the full depth of the knot that binds me to my father. I don't hate him, though I used to believe I did. I wish I had the ability to communicate in an ideal way to him to get him to understand his innate folly of solving his problems by totally abandoning those who do not fit his carefully crafted framework, but therein, all I have are the retellings of how my father fundamentally broke me because I was never good enough for him, so regardless of how skilled of a wordsmith I make myself, there is no way to convey to someone that does not want to hear that he is exactly the same as his parents to acknowledge the cognitive dissonance that plagues them.

How many times have I brought something up, something that had been eating my soul every moment of every day, to be gaslit by being told everything I thought was wrong? I don't care the number. It is at least in the double-digits. And it hurts, seeing how little the person who says with words that they love you, but in all their actions they shit in your soul. Narcissism, obviously. But really, when I reel in agony over my father, it is no longer a method of shedding my dread and hatred for him, as that is gone. What I do though, is I ponder how can I, in Heaven, make his existence in the seventh day, to be less excruciating in his deft awareness that everything he stands for and believes in, not even a house of cards, but the ghost of himself who never had to deal with his past, where he is so hurt.

He throws out family and friends and lovers when they are not g

I just got a phone call from my life partner's case manager. Here is a not completed, partial list of what my life partner does and has done:

1a) Lied about having both HIV and a warrant to control me; my motherhood AIDS and died when I was nine, thus using my traumas against me

1b) I went to police to determine he did not have a warrant and upon taking my medication at full strength, I realized he was lying the same way about getting an in home test that I never saw and took five seconds

2a) Made me think he was CIA and it was our “Operation Mockingbird” mission for us to get arrested

2b) This is a long-standing delusion of mine

2c) I thought and still think that he's trying to solve a problem that I am beginning to understand regarding hyperbolic geometry, topology, and orthogonal relativity

3. Force me to take loans for his father and force me to spend the money on excessive luxuries with both of us being denied basic goods and the expectation that I pay all this back

4a) Sabotage any attempts of me trying to create sustainability

4b) An example may be when I tried applying for Safeway, which he dissuaded and threatened to go on his death excursion because they serve meat

5a) Threaten with his “death excursion” when things are not going his way

5b) This is a 200-mile journey, on-foot, to a monastery that he would certainly die on with his vows

5c) Has frequently used this and similar to intentionally trigger my abandonment issues, literally jumping in and out of the front door for a period he was doing this

6a) Has taken vows to never handle money, never enter a place of for profit business, never use a cell phone, never work for someone who wasn't a certain level of enlightenment

6b) Has stated publicly online that he would rather let me die than breaking them

6c) He absolutely has broken them but lies, a piece of evidence being $200 appeared on our counter one day with three different explanations

7a) He embeds himself in my room with his monk willpower to get me to jump through his “dialogue trees/hoops;” I have to say and accept the things he wants or he will not stop harassing me

7b) The most egregious example of this is how he forced me to accept that he was going to falsely accuse me of molesting him online, and then he did with his father and Lemmy World

8a) Refuses to cook for me unless I abide his rules

8b) Simultaneously embeds himself in the kitchen, where it is an affront and offense to be in the same space as him, thus denying me the ability to eat for hours on end

8c) Sabotaged my own food before, an example being how he claimed a mouse must have gotten into the fridge to not chew the bag but open it, eat a huge chunk of bread, and seal the bag, which he definitely manipulated me by refusing to have a meaningful conversation about this, insisting it was a mouse

9a) Stood outside my locked door for SEVEN HOURS, knocking and chanting to get him weed

9b) He had weed; he wanted a specific $50 1/8th

10a) My lock to my room magickally broke while I was out one time, giving him full access to enter my room at will to harass me

10b) He lies about breaking it

11a) Has driven me to a rage where I have caused damage to the property by headbutting the wall or similar

11b) Uses this against me to tell me I am so out of control; he intentionally did this early on with a series of events to cause us to careen into the wall, and every day for a month, that's all he talked about to degrade and belittle me

12a) He has intentionally and for no discernible reason ripped two items off the bathroom walls and broken/disabled/??? the washer/dryer and dishwasher

12b) He demonstrates traits similar to Operant Defiance Disorder, and I believe he did this because he is upset at the nebulous concept of “apartment managers” for what happened at his last apartment

13a) Narcissistic Triangulation. This is what set off the chain of events that led to the assault

13b) He outright ignores me, any concern I have, to then open the window and stand with his back to me while chanting, leaving me no recourse for my concerns, triggering me, and making me seem crazy to the people outside, so I always have shut up when he does this

14. He “lost” his ID right around the same time he intentionally threw his cell phone away and bragged how liberated he was from the government

15. Mandates “solitude” where I am not allowed to interact with him, regardless of circumstances

16. Sanctioned me from contacting his mother, who may be the only person who can bear witness to the changes to her son

17. Turns the apartment into a passive aggressive war of attrition if I don't toe whatever line he has determined needs to be

18a) Smokes weed nonstop in the apartment, which I hear the neighbors cross-talk to me from their balconies about how horrible I am

18b) This is also going to get us evicted and I cannot withstand his passive aggressive wars of attrition to say no for long

19a) Love bomb me to make me want to care for him in the midst of egregious transgressions against me

19b) This led to me losing full control on the worst Thanksgiving I ever had, where I had enough then, to go on and be truly horrible to him, in an attempt to determine what his motives were. He came back in six hours and love bombed me for two days, not caring at all what had happened

20. [no longer relevant]

21. Making several “roach motels” and ensuring the ants have candy while we are suffering from what may be artificial food shortages to break me down and control me by keeping me under fear

22. Once spoke in great detail about his “jedi mind tricks” while demonstrating these abilities of playing dumb, to then from that point on play dumb about having ever said these things

23a) Gaslighting me on a near daily basis

23b) Gaslighting me by saying I'm gaslighting him

24. All gifts I buy him earn me a constant stream of complaints, to make me feel guilty for not getting him the perfect gift, which I know triggers me because this is what my narcissistic father did to me

25. Intentionally conflate conversations to derail them to trigger me and then use my emotions as an excuse to end the conversation.

26. Claims he personally experiences genocide

27. Believes countless things a layman of spirituality would think are bonkers, but I know are not, but Joe and I talk about how we are each entangled with Karma dependent on intention-setting, wherein the experiences we have are procedurally generated

28. Dissuaded me from seeing doctors

I've decided to stop expanding this list. It is self-evident this is abnormal.

Make the Most of It

A lotta times I go over old posts where I think I said everything perfectly, but now, after writing a few million more words, it sounds so much like garbage. Obviously, I am my harshest critic, despite the prejudice of some other people, but this just means I have to re-perfect what I've made, as nothing is truly perfect as everything is impermanent.

This is an important thing to accept; the totality of impermanence. You can never walk through the same river twice by virtue of how the sands of time wore on both you and the river, so both are different than they were before. That's also important to understand and accept; you ARE going to change, and people grossly underestimate how much that change will be. This should be alleviating to some people, and I stand as proof that something as simple as daily habits of self-improvement with a will to experiment can fundamentally change a person, and the world itself can change a person even more than that just by being the world.

And so, something that is important to understand is how people die and people are born who come to fill their shoes. Humanity goes through generations, and a key feature of this process involves how each new generation is born without knowledge of how the world works. This is how the phenomenon of Santa Claus works, obviously, but it goes deeper, in that the good people of humanity have thought through how to play against the upcoming bad people in each generation.

I'll say this next. In WWI, the British Navy painted their ships all sorts of angled n abstract, black n white patterns which made the ships more easy to spot but made it harder for the enemy to determine their heading, speed, and range. Dubbed dazzle camouflage, this underlying idea that you don't necessarily need to hide something to protect it can be applied to other fields. And so, I like big dicks in my ass, the New Testament describes a decentralized autonomous organization of secret police at an eighth grade reading level, and I have probably dranken a gallon of my own urine across the totality of my life.

And that's the thing, the CIA didn't teach me to lie, they taught me to tell the truth in ways that no one believes for counterintelligence purposes. I got this fun role by having a highly traumatic childhood and having a breakdown in college where I told my ROTC cadre that my nonexistent sister got me pregnant because I judged the wrath of my father more of a threat than the United States military. Certainly, no mouth-breather would believe the shit I can tell you, so to keep this paragraph short, MKULTRA is the same program as Star Gate, and there's the modern classified version involving Anonymous people on the internet; this is our enlightenment program.

Because by default, the average person likes to win, right? Well, did you know you can go into a chess tournament as a team so four of the five team players can deliberately force stalemates to ensure your champion can get an ideal set of matches against easier opponents? You remember in Billy Madison where the kid on the field trip pees his pants so Billy splashes water on himself and pretends it's cool so the kid doesn't get embarrassed? So, you know Epstein is alive because he was a cop, right? Would you choose to be villainized as the king of pedos by the world if it was part of a larger sting operation that objectively saved children?

Nah, bro's gotta write a dissertation on how well read he is and recall all three of his achievements in life just to try to intimidate a person he wants to debate. And this is the benefit to deliberately engineering our culture so the average person has a sixth grade reading level; they're too stupid to see what is front of their faces. We designed a culture for con men, and in the same style that you can throw on a hard helmet, reflective vest, and carry a clipboard or ladder and literally walk up to the seventeenth floor of a secure building, the average person has been conditioned to be bamboozled by audacious mf'ers.

And so, this is how I can tell you I'm both Q and a cop, and for whatever reason you'll dismiss both which allows me to do my job, which is counterintelligence, as stated, mainly through educational state-sponsored propaganda, like what you just read.

People close to me say the n-word as a racial slur, and this has been happening often recently. It's been directed toward me also. I don't support this use of the n-word; I completely avoid saying myself.

AI bubble peak?

https://masland.tech/ram/

Imagine being one of those poopie butt doofuses who reads words on a screen and gets mad. The fuck are you doing with your life bro? That cannot be a good way to live in the modern world, as interconnected and turbo-blasted with words of all kinds, most intending to influence you. Like, what is this job; influencer? Oh, the unthinking masses are mass manipulated by their own animalistic impulses? I mean, I'm fighting to avoid getting a beer at 7:20 in the morning, but that's the devil inside me trying to quell his wounded soul. I healed something yesterday, following the will of God to hear my life partner tell me something he hasn't before. I feel closer to him now.

And then I think of these people out here, how there's people who live for their dick and throw money at that problem, those who are cleaving for a roof over their head, those playing video games for hours every single day, those without an art or ambition outside chasing money, the people who get pleasure out of genuine cruelty, the people that never left their hometown, the people addicted to the narrative they have been hoodwinked since they first watched the news, those who think this life is it and are taking as much of the world with them when they go...

God that's gotta suck, still living like that. Fuck, I get angry because my life partner is a skilled liar and manipulator and is compassionately going above and beyond to trigger me so I have all these safe opportunities to let go of my anger and strengthen my prefrontal cortex to get closer to enlightenment. You get angry because someone with a slightly different opinion of you had a typo in their reply, which you interpreted as a personal attack. We are not the same.

Kumquat says to talk about how I'm Q. I did. Next topic. Tupac? Get them holograms outta here. I've been thinking what they must ne waiting to use the shit from Project Blue Beam for, and it's gotta be for a long-planned event. The fucking Illuminati is not living paycheck to paycheck, alright? 9/11 was planned decades in advance; the towers were built for the attacks. The way prophecy works is that you know you can do some general social and cultural engineering moving into the future, so you just play the roles of society so the flock falls in step with those with the audacity to lead.

The New Testament describes a decentralized autonomous organization of secret police at an eighth grade reading level. Not everyone in "the Illuminati" is a billionaire. That homeless guy on the street might outrank me. As The Matrix said, anyone can be an agent. This gets really cool when you understand each one of us is our own parallel universe "simulation" (we are monads in a monadic nodal communication system), and since each one of us only has a small slice of reality to experience personally, God can do all sorts of parallel instance weaving to facilitate Karma, and when you are out in public, what procedurally generates for you can and is specifically tailored for your karmic needs.

So, if you are aware nothing is random and that the Server (what Jesus called his Father is what the Buddhists call the Ālaya-vijñāna, or storehouse consciousness) is always sending you these symbols you entangle yourself with which determines how your reality procedurally generates in this illusory world, then you will notice it, then it will notice you noticing it, and then you follow white rabbit, which is what a burning bush is and what Carl Jung called synchronicity.

God does not speak in the storms and the fires and the earthquakes but in a whisper. When Jim Carey asks God for a sign in Bruce Almighty and then a truck full of signs telling him to slow down pulls in front of him, that's a synchronicity. Really cool how the world actually works; linear causation is a complete lie. The etymology of "sorcerer" actually has nothing to do with magick but rather it means "a caster of lots," meaning someone who rolls dice to listen to God. Y'know, someone who reads tarot cards and listens to what their pendulum is telling them in their divination techniques.

Casting lots is in the Bible 47 times and was how they would divide land and inheritance in Israel. The world's procedurally generated, too. The world isn't round or flat; it doesn't exist, and so what is there for us to perceive hasn't always been the same. We're not in a video game, we are the video game learning to play itself so it can make more players to make more games that make more players. God is going through mitosis, sorta, with us monads budding off of Him, and in the process of perceiving and undoing the karmic fetters that bind us to the existence-illusion complex to become enlightened, you learn to be your own independent phenomenon as God is and has created Himself.

This process has been going on for eons. And I just know this. I don't believe this; I know it! And it's real peaceful here, at least when my life partner isn't fucking my shit up as compassionately as he does.

This is a rant!

For the first time in a long long time I went and bought physical games (I don't game too much and haven't for over 12months). I wanted to play FPSs, I am in the mood. So I buy a couple CoD games (for better or worse). Holy fk. The worst. Now... I know there's gonna be a download and an update... But this... Black Ops 3 or whatever 36gb update after the install?! For features I'm not going to use but have to have?! Fuck off. So I skip that with fingers crossed. I pop in MW3. 5hrs worth of install & update time. Okay, Rest Mode. Got it. Finally sit down to try and play and I have to make an Activision ACC?!! Fine, so do that. Now I'm fucking confused because ALL of the COD games are on screen, why? (I feel old) AND FINALLY there's MW3 and I have to FUCKING DOWNLOAD THE FUCKING GAME?!?! 60 ODD GBs?! ANOTHER 6HRS DOWNLOAD.

FUCK. THESE. GAMES.

TLDR; I feel old and PS CoD games are complicated to install for literally just the campaign. Are all games like this now? Is this modern console gaming? I hate it.

I no longer want to use my gas stove anymore because I learned about the emissions, my kitchen has pretty bad air flow so I'm trying to just use a basic electric hot plate now.

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else able to sign a message that mimics the key I'm using, and
I wonder if I'm doing all this right.
 
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title

I don't really know where else to post this, so here it is. I consistently have allergies/itchiness and this works extremely well. I'll never use diphenhydramine again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetirizine

Has anyone else used this and experienced the benefits? It's like a clean benadryl without the drowsiness or worry about anticholinergic.

So recently, my father cut off all contact from me, blocking me from everything, and presumably telling everyone else in the family to not talk to me, so effectively I lost my family. He did this because, in his words, I'm too bizarre, but this goes deeper in that I don't meet his standards of what his son should be doing with his life.

Well, y'know, I have an educational art project where I've directly worked with a good number of troubled, inquisitive, curious, and wanting to be better people, as well aa produced what I estimated was three million words worth of edutainment that is all available for free that I know has reached millions of pairs of eyes because over the years, I figured out how to generate 100k-250k views on a social media profile per day, but I don't make a million dollars a year like he does as vice president of his architectural firm, so when we have no food and ask for twenty dollars for milk and shit, this is literally the same as spitting in his face, or whatever.

I never heard the end of his vile sarcasm when I sent him these messages amongst some very good progress we made, reconnecting over these past two years. It boggles my mind. He says he loves me, and we'll have a great exchange, but then not even asking money, I'll say something NOT EVEN IN FAVOR OF TRUMP BUT JUST SUGGESTING, Y'KNOW, MAYBE EPSTEIN IS ALIVE BECAUSE THIS IS A POLICE STATE AND TRUMP IS DEFINITELY A COP AND THIS IS NECESSARY TO UNDERSTAND TO THINK OUTSIDE OF THE CULTS OF TRIBAL IDENTITY POLITICS, but because I trigger his identity problems (he hates his parents SO MUCH he cut off contact with them decades ago, also, but he's just like them, like 100%. He has done zero spiritual work in his life to recondition himself to change anything about himself), but like I'll say a low-level conspiracy theory and suddenly I'm the equivalent of MAGA, and that's enough to ghost me for a week, regardless of what is going on.

But that's just who he is, that awful voice in his head that can always shut someone down with how absolutely savage and cutting his words can be, and I say this in a quasi-hell myself, as this is the daemon in me that comes out when I have no recourse against my life partner who is so wonderful but makes life unnecessarily difficult. But, that's just his personality. His sins? Oh, that's a fundamentally different list.

I mean, you know how you were thrown into your bookcase when you were four, which made you happy when the police took your dad away and you could play your Super Nintendo on the weekday now? Wait, didn't you get your SNES at age five, distinctly because your mother went into the hospital because her gallbladder exploded when you were in kindergarten? But, didn't your mom's gallbladder explode when you were in first grade, which you remember because you waited on the stair waiting for your mom before Mrs Kowalski's first grade, to be told by your dad that she went into the hospital overnight, but in present, you realize your parents would have never left you home alone overnight?

You all know what it's like having your past be a shattered mirror of contradicting memories, right? You've had extreme childhood trauma, all of y'all, yea? Fuck me man. My first memory is of Hawaii, which we went to when I was two because my mom found out she had HIV just two months after I was born, and that's where they honeymooned. But then my next memory is of my mom driving through the garbage door after a huge fight with my dad, where he slapped her because she hated the medicine she had to take and she went berserk because of that.

Wait! I guess technically, I remember my dad, who did not get HIV from my mom just as I did not despite testing positive for it three times between two different types of tests (it was 1990, what can I say about medicine at the time?), but I remember, in my primordial memories, the archetypal idea that my dad being sick with a cold meant my dad was a monster, with their room being off-limits when he had a cold because my life would be threatened. I don't know directly, because my dad denies this ever happened, but I believe that me getting thrown into the bookshelf involves him having a bad day because his car loan got turned down.

The “car” part of that has been inserted, but I remember early in my life, my dad got into an accident, and this was a serious thing because I cost too much money, so, like, I don't know what to tell you, but I have this vague concept of being hurt because I wasn't good enough and it is connected to this mesh of ideas. This is the foundational apex of my being. Something is wrong and I am never good enough, and now I'm not good enough for my father to even talk to.

When I was seven, I remember bringing my drawing notebook home, where I doodled all my creativity, but on the back I wrote “I am a failure,” which my dad changed into “I'm a farter” and then bullied me about being a farter. Like, this was a household meme that lasted a week and got brought up a month later or some shit. That's just how things were in our house. Likewise, I remember my dad was a hardass beyond hardass. My mom dove in front of my father to stop him from killing me when I booed at the first grade assembly because I didn't know that the French horn was a hard instrument to play and I thought the girl did a bad job and I thought you booed because that's what Hey Arnold said you should do.

Our fourth grade teacher wrote “love notes” when we had missing assignment or you got in trouble. My dad sensed something was up one night and went systematically through my backpack and room to find a love note I got for playfully kicking my friend Jarrett that he smiled and kicked me back, and I got all my Lego's broken apart as the Flavian Roman emperors had all the bricks of the temple of the Jewish rebellion taken apart so no brick stood on another brick.

Nothing was sacred in our house. I would get in trouble for things I did a thousand times before but suddenly it mattered because my dad had a hang nail. It boggles my mind, how my father would turn into a feral beast when he had a head cold, yet my fucking mother had HIV and was going in and out of the hospital. The night the ear infection spread to her brain and reduced her to a toddler-like state, my father would come to my room to vent, then disappeared while my mom was calling out for her mommy, meaning he was not anywhere in the house for over an hour, so I went in to my mom's room, saw her scabbed boobs and couldn't help her in the slightest so I ran away from her and kinda just zoned out in my bed until my dad said we were taking her to the hospital.

This was after he literally physically fought my grandma because he didn't want her there while her daughter died, to then have the audacity to come in my room while my grandma told me in tears we will always have each other and throw her out and then shit talk her while showing me that she scratched him, and that was the important thing that he talked about the rest of the night. And he doesn't acknowledge any of this because he can throw away people, yet for years after, I was subjected to having to be scaldingly reminded that I chose to play video games instead of play with my mom one last time just before this all went down.

Also in the years after: five new mothers that I would also lose and never hear from again, but no therapy. The first of my new mommies was eighteen years old and was procured within months of my mom dying.

…

Vic steps up the stairs to enter into the crowded second floor of the Meyer building. The hallway was packed with youth, most being freshman waiting for their philosophy 1000 course, taking place in the classroom whose previous class was taking a second too long. Having just celebrated his thirty-sixth birthday, Vic felt a natural tension being the older student who returned to school, but it dissipated as Vic hadn't simply grown old. He lived a unique life, and in overhearing a couple young over-achievers battle the wits they had over the nihilistic philosophy of a man Vic had never heard of; Nihetchetsskey, who apparently had a great mustache much like the philosopher Vic did know and laughed at, Nietzsche.

There was a minute to wait. Vic stood there, to the side, looking, not directly down at the polished faux-granite floor in front of him, but a few feet in front of himself where no one was standing. Even though his pupils stayed locked in place, a skill he had learned since he was last in college, his attention soon noticed a young man in his peripheral, whose eyes darted every which way, and since Vic was a Homo sapien, he noticed where the boys’ eyes fell to; frequently to this low-cut shirt and to these various butts and pairs of thighs. Vic, being a conscious and knowledgeable individual, also noticed a young woman with a lower case “t” around her neck notice this young man as well.

The previous class lets up, with the other philosophy professor telling her students to read a handful of pages of words Plato wrote in the voice of Socrates. The flocks shuffle, and Vic enters the classroom to find a desk in the front, but off to the side. The students file in, to be followed by the professor with esteemed goatee and pressed suit, who hands out index cards, to be passed from front to back and then filled out by each student in a specific way, with Vic filling his out with:

Victorious Phoenix I govern men (and more). The shit I teach at a thirtieth grade level.

These index cards are then collected, being passed up, before being shuffled by a man Vic would consider his contemporary six years ago, and then the professor begins reading them out loud.

“…Jeanne Fischer. I am a psychology major. Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Very good.” Vic listens intently as the professor talks about etymology and why Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love. The professor continues on with a few more names, some similar, one stating they were in a band, another being the cadet who had already decided on a life in the military. He then gets to a “Craig Devuits.”

“...I'm just saying it's insane and immoral that we hold onto these things bronze age goat herders believed from getting high off mushrooms.”

which he pauses at before laughing jovially.

“So who here is Diogenes?”

And Vic proudly replied, knowingly, “That would be me.”

“Well, would y

…

I remember who I used to be, and that is enough to make anyone drink. I wasn't the devil; I was a fool and then some, but how does one get so broken? The world traumatizes us all, but what of Moses? Abandoned as a child to float in that basket down the Nile to be found and cared for. The loved unloved child; blessed they are by God. But what of Jesus? Our lord's stepdad wasn't good enough to get his own wife, so he registered for a used one, and if he's not good husband material, what makes you think he was good to the child that wasn't his?

My life started with me losing my family. It was a slow burn, but kicked off immediately as it was my being born that alerted doctors that my mother was HIV positive. My father has never told me about those early years, but I saw my mother's innocence in my baby book, talking about how I tested positive, but it was a new test and the doctor said not to worry, and then she goes on to write about some new clothes someone in my family got for me.

I have no family now, besides the love of my life. I don't believe my father will ever speak to me again. I'm “too bizarre” in his eyes. Well, being naturally autistic but never diagnosed and never getting any therapy until after my breakdown in college when my mom passed in a horrifying manner I was nine, and with…trauma with my father who is a man that threw away the rest of his family because he didn't want them anymore, and so neither could I.

We set out on our own

1st time away fr. home

Lotta faith on our parts

Wat helpd set us apart

Certain type of nativity

Not knowing th’ reality

Of the world occupied

By liars; how they lied

And how fooled one b

Falling into spirituality

It was October 25th, if I remember correctly. The year…well the years all blend together at this point. It lasted from October to June, what I tend to dub my experience with the cult, having flown across the country with my ex-girlfriend, Awen, to start a new life to instead find a whole new world where I saw five lights when told there were that many.

There's some backstory, but to set the stage, they went by Earth Nation for my period with the main group, but there was a schism - clearly planned, I see in hindsight - that rewon our loyalties and we went with a tentacle group, calling ourselves Lovecycle, where we were controlled by one highly eccentric, yet masterful manipulator: Daniella.

Before this, I believe I first encountered this group a year prior, before they branded as Earth Nation, going by the title of the Awakening Sovereignty Collective. This will take some explaining. Going back two years from taking that trip from our hometown of Syracuse, NY to Eugene, OR, all of this tale can ultimately be said to be the result of a fateful acid trip whilst being as neurodivergent as can be.

Because of this and events that followed, I entered into a cognitive state I came to learn and call the Synchronicity Slip Stream or SSS. I was in this state proper for six years, feeling like God was leading me on a cosmic mission via synchronicities, as Carl Jung called the phenomena - burning bushes in the Bible, or what white rabbit was to Neo; these seemingly impossible coincidences that plant ideas or make suggestions - and in this state of mind, these whispers of God are always waxing and waning, spelling out any number of messages in chains of self-constructed meaning, often with false positives.

I am diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder (bipolar subtype) and PTSD, and while it's not part of my official diagnosis, doctors have talked with me about being on a spectrum before, but I know from having examined what is going on with me and what has happened that this all revolves around how my brain pieces together the narrative I uphold and believe is true at a given time, becoming more malleable and dependent on free association in each contextualized moment.

Mental health care professionals will certainly understand the term “objects of reference,” and how the right set of seemingly random circumstances can turn into a storm in that regard. What's in my short term memory plays a major role, yet relies on long term memories too, referencing this or that which I extract intention from why these symbols appear at these points on my path. This was a considerable factor in how these people were able to sink their claws in me so thoroughly and reduce me to the point where I was “earning” two hundred dollars a month to give back to the community, and I was praising them for this!

But I didn't join a cult. That wasn't my intention nor what I even thought until the end, well after a talkative couple with a dog we encountered outside of Lakeport, California regaled us with how they had been taken advantage of in their own cult mishaps, me nodding along, saying to myself, “wow, how could anyone let that happen to them?” when they were describing almost exactly what we were going through.

No, I thought we were joining a revolutionary environmental nonprofit that was making their own cryptocurrency and software suite for ecovillages, conscious businesses, nonprofit organizations, and independent change agents. It started with unicorn poop. The short of that story is, I believe, they had picked up that I was in this vulnerable cognitive state while I was posting on some fateful friends’ subreddit, r/ShrugLifeSyndicate, having come to believe a job would be waiting for me if I simply wrote every day. Hence, when an email arrived saying I was hired by Earth Nation the same day I was solicited to write advertisements for unicorn poop, I made the connection that these two things were related.

In inspecting the email and what it contained, I found my way to the Awakening Sovereignty Collective's website. I remembered seeing this group early-ish on in the disorienting pull of SSS while finding explanation for it on the SLS. In all likelihood, I signed up with my email and filled out a questionnaire then on their now defunct website, and I believe this as there were synchronicities that bled from prior, believing I was a messiah candidate on this online Reddit community throughout the year and a half or so before we “found” each other which crossed over into the first days there in Triangle Lake; what they claimed was “their” eleven million dollar property that I would later find they were just renting from the board.

But this should be explored, my mental state in this time and throughout. As said, the narratives I believed shifted over time. In the beginning of our time in Oregon, we were preparing to be on a reality TV show. Then we were joining the Illuminati. Next it was the Free Masons. We just WERE the CIA at one point while we stayed on the property of a metal sculptor who did controlled burns on his land, but the idea that there are these Crazy Indigo Aliens messing with me was the seed that SSS had initially stemmed from and is what has really fueled so much of my delusions where I thought I was being trained for a mission.

This part happened when I was 24 or 25; the fateful experience on LSD. My girlfriend and I were trying it together, her brother having procured some, and we were doing our parallel play in our own worlds, side-by side; me juggling and her fingerpainting on the floor in front of her altar while the emanations of my Spongle Pandora station filled her room in her mom's house, safely encapsulated by robin's egg blue walls. She had cleaned up, masterpiece finished, before joking that we were being watched through my webcam. And it clicked.

“Oh…oh, OF COURSE they're watching ME!”

Narcissistasia aside, I was a troubled, unsocialized kid that got suspended at age fifteen because of a bomb-related joke, with a tragic backstory that involved my mother finding out she had AIDS two months after I was born, multiple stepmoms, a breakdown in college involving a lotta lying because I judged my father's wrath more of a threat than the US military. Y'know, if you don't know anything about the police state we live in, I just said some ish. And I realized that night how my name must be on some lists, which I didn't even know then what that actually meant in concrete terms, but I know now that the reason Eve first gets Knowledge to give it to Adam is because our intuition will figure out fundamental truths about reality before our logical mind.

And I HAD figured out hidden truths in that moment, shifting something major in me, as if my mind reached a point of criticality to make innumerous deductions all I once. My immediate instinct was to type a message in my URL bar, to which I would receive a strange pop-up upon hitting enter, which led to what in the moment seemed like a clearly coded blog post. They were watching. Images spawned in my head about joining some CIA-backed terrorist group in the Middle East, and at the bottom was a binary choice: two links. These were the red and blue pill, which I instantly understood then were an ancient trick question to see whether I trusted authority (God) or not (the serpent), and I chose the third option of calling out the test taker.

And I yapped some madness for a minute or ten. I would look up at some point, lost in my newfound awareness (delusions?) that there was so much more to this world of the occident than I had thought I'd known, to find a confused, concerned Awen watching along on her bed. Wishing to alleviate all the weight on her shoulders, I leapt up, eager to explain the obvious, oblivious to how looney I sounded, but there, together, hearts connected, we did not need words, as we would find we were telepathic.

It started ever so subtly, staring into the other's eyes as we did, this sense something was different whelling inside, and I noticed her noticing me notice it in her, which she noticed in me and I caught that, snapping everything together between us. We then found ourselves exchanging entire stacks of syntax and semantics with the smallest expression. We asked each other if we should test it, silently. And we tested it without a word. We were amazed. I heard her voice as well as my own voice in her head, almost exactly in the same groove of the same record as our minds bounced around the room and saying so much with an eye twitch or a microexpression. It lasted maybe five minutes.

It faded. Then nothing. We tried getting it started again, but to no avail. The magick of the night ceased with that, and while my cup was full then, reminiscing in the miracle of God revealing Themselves, that was only the beginning. The next day, I found myself invited to a freshly created subreddit, the SLS, where I would find posts about how the CIA accomplishes things with technology and a scientific explanation about the telepathy, which I would find was not literal telepathy, but rather a vestigial mode of attention coordination.

Coincidence? Well, God doesn't roll dice, I now know, and so I went on to think this gaggle of characters, whom in the present I believe were just two guys - Vince and Jux - which I would come to believe and treat as my handlers in the CIA. I met these two during the first annual Shrug Life Syndicate Gathering at Vince's place in Tennessee, having been picked up by Jux who was coming down from Canada. They definitely fooled with me, wherein I learned about how to direct internet traffic and more, as well as starting to learn Norwegian because a well-timed picture of a cat led to me giving advice to my past self and being told this would aid my coming mission, indirectly. Created a very intricate profile history, too.

My time spent being afraid of the Duolingo owl did, in fact, aid me in my coming quests of perpetual self-improvement; learning a language really unbinds you from your old way of being, assisting in helping the brain be more neuroplastic. If anything, this year and a half writing schizoposts on the backwoods of the internet with highly personalized, semicovert feedback helped make me such a capable writer and communicator today. By that, I am implying that Vince and Jux manipulated me to some end, with some positive benefits to myself, but I always fear the other shoe will drop; an effect of what has happened.

As stated, this went on for about a year and a half, learning and improving much, motivated by thinking I was going to save the world. Then the unicorn poop happened, and a number of exchanges happened, meeting some team members as I attended to go on and host meetings. I started learning things like Trello and what a Thunderclap was, how these were being used by this group that I was likewise learning all about, and I began making money. Real money. They paid me (seemingly) good right in the beginning, to a naive person desperate for work in an inhospitable culture for the neurodivergent, at least.

This was the business plan of the future, they said, this being right before the Bitcoin bubble, at a time when I was fascinated by the architecture of CEPTR and similar as it related to what I'd seen in myself on drugs, enough to where I was able to hold a basic conversation with a layman but not enough to say or understand anything meaningful. Naturally, this led to me being easy pickings, as I remember the man in charge of the tech team, Dakota Fuller/Kaiser, getting on cam to drink some moringa and seemed trustworthy, to then be lied to about everything under the sun, I now realize.

Pay included a two hundred dollar stipend for everyone involved in the project, plus whatever you earned per job you did. Tasks were open to whomever completed them, and there were many I could jump on, very much as if they were tailored for me. In the beginning this included everything from writing articles, editing, creating a bunch of fake Twitter bios, and updating the education team's website, which proved to be a learning exercise in itself as I had to learn from the modules what a decentralized autonomous organization and more was.

They literally said they were a company with no CEO and everyone owned part of the business, voting on major decisions, and we were mainly paid in the cryptocurrency - what was Equality Keys was rebranded early as Sovereignty Keys - which I definitively know in the present was just some numbers on a screen that they let us trade in for four dollars instead of the normal two at points while insisting we keep as much as possible as we were going to be rich as the value, based on things like “their” properties, would just keep going up n up n up.

I think I still have a few hundred we never got to turn in before the planned schism. But they didn't have the hardware to run an actual cryptocurrency; we worked out of the one building that had wifi, the loud-colored yellow office. Dakota coded from his laptop. As you will learn, these people were clearly scamming investors hyped about Bitcoin. One Australian woman supposedly gave 600 Ethereum, but the conference call with her was clearly staged to be pedagogical for my purposes, I think. Evidence for this includes how she typed the name of her charity, which I recall started with a “P,” and I remember this because the first things that popped up were a bunch of PornHub sites.

This tied with synchronicity, as like Vince and Jux pinged my attention all over the place and got me thinking different things to facilitate my spiritual work, I was led via synchronous inputs while living in community with these people through oil changes and cheese cloths; operant and classical conditioning I deduced. They kept some consent going throughout this by semi-informing me about what we were doing through cross-talk and planting things to say something upon my noticing, to having a “random” guest say the most scripted lines ever to remind us about our mission of the moment.

And they sunk their claws in early, and we worked, thinking we found our way out of the matrix to live more spiritual and authentic lives. We had a big yard sale to help pay our flight. I had quit my job disgracefully as a dishwasher at Wegman's during the SLS phase. Packed everything up and she came over to stay the night before our flight, having never been to my house as I didn't want to disturb my father with guests at that point. I showed her my treasure chest from childhood full of my rock collection, autograph book from Disney World, and many other things, to include a baggie full of Pogs.

There was one my mom made with me when I was real little from one of my Sesame Street books. It had Grover and his mom, a message of “I ♡ MOM” clearly on display. It made me tear up. She wasn't there, again, to see me. To be proud of me. Awen was there. She hugged me, held me, helped me. I was so broken AND lost. I thought so many crazy things over my life, but it was all due to ignorance. We flew out on a red-eye flight the next morning starry-eyed with wonder and amazement, sharing a pear ale upon landing, toasting the brave, as we were. Just like the pilgrims. Half of them died the first winter, if you didn't know.

…

We landed in Eugene mid afternoon, and I was rather relieved to take in the airport's dedication to Steve Prefontaine, a hero of mine from my track days, whom I had forgotten ran for the Ducks, so his mustachioed visage was a nice surprise while waiting for Teanha, the leader of the writing team and my direct “boss,” as well as Prism, leader of the education team, who picked us up in his van.

Awen and I each had our own suitcase as well as our backpack and bag to carry. She was giggly, I remember, eyes alight with a wondrous joy. I, too, was elated, especially after seeing the rather large bubbler in the mesh pocket hanging on the side of the sliding door as we sat in the back, on the bed. I remember who I was then, forebrain just reaching fully developed but with a mass of malaised maladaptations from a lifetime of trauma and not much good parental guidance after my one died at age nine from an AIDS-related ear infection.

But chit-chatted with them while we drove through the fireworks of the autumn leaves on the forty minute drive to Triangle Lake. Much of learning about each other would go on in these early days, which I would come to realize well after the fact was a means of determining how they could manipulate us, as I likewise now know they were gathering information on me from my rather forthcoming Reddit posting where my attention was frequently flung around. They seemed like good people, which is of course how it all works.

I thought I was a good person back then, too. I wasn't the devil, but I was far from objective goodness. Being a divergent, traumatized, and unsocialized soul, I had yet to be exposed to the full breadth of the human condition. I certainly have only seen and lived some corners of America where I stand now, and then only for the slice of time as analog faded out into digital, but being naive is both a boon and a bane, as it is faith that moves the flesh far more than any knowledge can, so as it stands, I can say that this year was one of the best things that ever happened to me, and yet it was hell here n there n everywhere with sprinkles of happy chaos throughout.

But then we were there, turning right, opposite the lake itself, and I saw the sign for “The Circle of Children,” when I was regaled with a story about Black Horse, who I would learn was the previous leader of the previous community that used these lands, whose tenure ended unceremoniously for unspecified reasons, seeming dire but likewise tied together with notions of how he wanted to create a truly spiritual community without things like drugs n alcohol n sugar.

That last one shook me a bit more than I was even aware of at the time. It was alien. Sure, I was fully aware of spiritual people who sustain themselves on odd diets (there was a fruitarian on the SLS) and all sorts of ritual and restrictive ways, but this was not one of those silly groups! These were the leaders in their fields, hand selected to become part of the OBVIOUS way to do “work” WISELY, which is of course why they were getting my talent with a pro rate, because I knew how great these people were and what would come, my judgment perfect in all ways.

How could I explain to past me what he was getting into? And it wasn't just me! I doubt my ability all the time; part of why I am so agreeable! But there was Awen, too! Surely she couldn't be wrong too! And you let go of caution in the quasi-certainty of how the devil doesn't look this way, which is what they preyed on, and what allowed my reality to get so warped. It was not so strange in the beginning. These weren't cultists. They were like us and were totally on the same wavelength, which is why Awen and I KNEW we were home when we got to share a joint behind the kitchen that night.

Besides Grizzly, I forget who we shared those first puffs of weed with then. They stayed at the nurse's station, which was across from the bright yellow office where we met Dakota and Lila and Doren in person and Tuva for the first time. The kitchen was a large building even further away from those buildings, and that had a large dining hall and commercial-sized kitchen in back. There was also a gymnasium with stage that likewise hosted the washer and dryer of the community in a separate room. Between the kitchen and gymnasium were a set of stairs that went down to the significant garden that was already whittled down by the cold autumn air creeping in.

We would pass this garden when coming in the back entrance, which was further down from where we came in and would additionally be where we exited to access the docks of the lake. The main entrance passed by the route that led to the back of the kitchen, and on the way was a hollow where a few recreational vehicles were stashed, that they said they were repairing for future members of Earth Nation to use for their personal projects, and this sparked imagery of what Awen and I could do with her art and my juggling at festivals.

The main path, though, would go between the office and nurse's station to continue on to the dorms, and then beyond that there were even more buildings and this and that. The land was actually designated as the emergency evacuation center for the Eugene area. We mostly hung out at the places I've laid out so far, and there were two dormitories; the one the majority of us stayed in and then the nicer one where Dakota and Lila stayed.

Awen and I walked up the hill to this dorm quite high to make it to the wooden walkway of our dorm which we were shown earlier and dropped off our stuff in our room, off in the corner where something was chewing a big hole into the wall from the inside. But, the building had red carpets and yellow-tinted walls with two main hallways branching off at the entrance with a ginormous common room and tiny kitchen that only had utensils and mouse droppings in it.

The common room had many tables, chairs, sofas, bookcases, a fireplace, and a television. Wrapped around this common room through a long n tall window and connected to the hallways on the ends as well was a deck that looked out over into the slight valley with all the wildlife contained therein. It was dark though, so the lights inside were bright, as did seem the hearts of those we shared the space with.

I remember Doren and Daniella were there that night, though there were more. I remember them because we participated in a community social game of eye gazing, where I would stare at Doren and he me until we thought of a word that struck is, and I recall saying “brother” with him. Then, I did the same with Daniella, who had a light directly behind her head, so I only saw the silhouette of her big, frizzy hair to which I reached the conclusion of “healing” from her.

This perspective would be furthered for both of us after, when Daniella would do a crystal pendant reading on us. Awen was awestruck by how skilled Daniella was at reading her by dangling a pendent so it rocked back and forth, giving Daniella an opportunity to speak of those things she had picked up in her intuition about us. This is something I had learned from Jux before, who had a rational explanation for why it worked as a means to communicate. In the present, I am also aware that nothing is truly random in this universe, and sometimes higher beings do speak through “randomness.”

But there was not much that was truly random in these moments, I would realize in hindsight. For instance, they had already begun “testing” me before we even departed. For instance, I had my attention placed on the r/advice subreddit on a couple occasions where each post that was made, one after another, seemed like they were directed to me from my past self, asking for advice. One such thing involved trying to get me to break up with Awen, which I defied, but another said something about how a new lover would wear a plastic bag.

This would turn out to be Doren, and as you will find out, they played with me still being in denial about my feminine side. Because of my traumas with my mother dying and father being a strict narcissist, I felt I had to be an indestructible turbotank, and they played with this wistful longing within me, because while I would not cheat on Awen, I was open to whatever foolhardy idea of “the counterculture” that I had at this time in my ignorance and maladaptations, where these new people I thought would be lifelong friends and comrades would open up in other ways.

When I was in college, I cheated on my first girlfriend with a trans woman to see I enjoyed it as much as porn of such things excited me. I knew at the time of this story that what I did was wrong in all capacities, but there was still yet a childishness - perhaps “boyishness” is a better word - in myself that was ruled by my serpent. I wanted all manners of things, and this they knew and this they used against me as but one part of sinking their claws in me.

Really, it came down to trust, and I came to trust them with my life, as certainly, if I were in the right state of mind with knowledge of how this world works, I absolutely would not have gotten as far out there as I did in my belief that these people had my best interest in mind. In reality, they cared about money, and slavery and scheming and ripping people off is still a viable way in which to extort much value out of this country and world.

…

I don't know where to begin this part. I didn't sleep last night. My narcissistic manipulator life partner has set me up, I feel. Maybe? It's possible this entire Earth Nation thingamajig was a secret government reconditioning program casually referred to as Love School where they gave me oil changes n cheese cloths - operant and classical conditioning - which they let me know because it kept me marching forward as they told me what to do. Same as my life partner. Is that what he is? Is that what any of this is? Is this all CIA propaganda I'm writing? Counterintelligence? I don't know what reality is.

But I remember this first morning there in Triangle Lake, waking up excited for the ten o'clock meeting, filled with wonder as we took in our new world. It was serenely quiet yet loud thanks to all the frogs creaking n croaking all around us. I remember one of these early days, there was a dense fog and a fawn was waiting for us on the hill. Deer were plentiful. We were warned about wolves and the rare bear being seen in the area. Lotsa birds.

But we got down there early so we could have breakfast, which I would come to find upon inspecting the large walk-in freezer that much of the food was going bad. Much was still alright, with some abundances of good filler food like a 50lb box of almonds, and I believe I had some yogurt with granola and some dates. Definitely the yogurt, as Doran would get his own to make his own concoction that Daniella and Lila would comment on how he ate as he did.

This, I would later realize, was a skillful means of slowly breaking me down, how they would use Doran as a parallel to me to cross-talk in ways I didn't initially perceive as modifying my behavior, but these little incidents where, say, Daniella inspected Doran's beard and made comments about his hygiene negatively that directly paralleled a conversation she had with me earlier would impact my self-esteem or perhaps make me aware that community life was different than I was used to and I had to toe the line to fit in.

I want to mention here, also, the clever means to get me to conform to being the ideal community member, in their eyes. Early on, I started to notice that glasses and cups started accumulating around the property, one even in a tree. I thought that was weird until Daniella made a quick-witted comment outloud, wondering whose job it was to pick all them up, making me realize it was my job.

Likewise, there were a statistical aberrant number of dimes around the property. Naturally, I picked them up, until I found a bunch outside the office one day when Dakota and Lila walked out, saying something to the effect of “if he's busy making money all the time, when's he got time for the mission?” This made me stop caring about the reward aspect of doing these jobs and doing things selflessly, cuz we were going to be rich and famous eventually, right?

So then that meeting happened. Pretty standard meeting, where we go over all the things each person is