This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 49%. (I'm a bot)

The special counsel investigating Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election has subpoenaed members of the former president's White House staff believed to be involved in the firing of the administration's top election security expert, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
Trump fired former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Christopher Krebs via Tweet weeks after he - you guessed it - said the election was legitimate.
Sources who spoke to the Times said the special counsel is probing witnesses for information regarding "Loyalty" tests, and efforts within Trump's administration to root out officials whose devotion to Trump was deemed insufficient.
Trump fired Krebs less than two weeks after the 2020 election.
In addition to examining Trump's efforts to undermine the election, Smith has also been tasked with investigating the former president's handling of classified documents following his departure from office.
Rolling Stone reported on Tuesday that Trump has already informed advisers of his plans to purge federal law enforcement agencies of individuals involved in the investigations into his conduct.

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*lightning sfx* You should check out u/Acceptable_Egg5560, NOW! (Seriously, thanks again for doing this with me, you're the best.)
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Memory transcript: Vekna, Venlil Citizen. Date: [Standardized human time] September 19th, 2136
Herd, I forgot how much I hate paperwork.
When we had pinpointed where Unzekep was a couple paws ago, I was eager to get on her trail. Unfortunately, reality just had to get in the way of those ambitions…which is where I find myself now. First was all the speh we had to submit to the Health and Safety Department regarding our “inquiries” into the construction site to find Tagelb. A noble action, no denying that, but it brought up questions about our presence on the site. “Why were we there? Were we associated with a third-party firm? What was the quality of evidence produced for the claim?” Stuff like that, constantly, for almost an entire Paw.
We came clean, sort of. We at least disclosed about us being journalists. My evidence showing money changing paws between that foreman and the previous safety inspector came in handy in our explanation of us looking into corruption. As an additional surprise, many of the workers of the facility came forward with older stories of regulation skirting and site mismanagement. Tagelb even chipped in, providing another perspective of what we witnessed whilst in there. Safe to say, that foreman isn’t going to be in charge of much any time soon.
But did we really need to fill out all of those affidavits??
The second problem was that, due to us revealing that we were journalists, we wouldn’t be able to simply walk up to Unzekep while she was on the job. We had to get a “press permit” that would allow us to walk in the tunnels, which meant more paperwork signing that we agreed to the risk and knew the safety standards and procedures we had to follow while underground. They even made us take a test for that!
Today, though, marked the end of our tedious paperwork and safety waivers. We were finally cleared to go into the system, and the district had promised silence on the matter. Part of me thinks that their willingness to accommodate us is due to not having to pay us like their other safety inspectors. Oh well, at least it’s a way in that doesn’t require cartoonish cover stories. I slide on my satchel and exit my room, waiting for the elevator to arrive at the correct floor so I can board.
After a short wait, I’m granted access, and yet another short wait later, I arrive at the foyer. First-meal would normally be first on the schedule, but today was special. In order to avoid detection by any unwanted eyes, we were due to leave first thing in the Paw, when almost no-one else would be out. After a brief scan of the lobby, I spot Sharnet sitting on a chair with a duffel bag on the ground next to it. I trot over to her, motioning to get her attention.
“Good Paw, Sharnet! You sleep well after all that paperwork?”
Sharnet shuts her holonote off and stows it away in her pack. “Yes, somewhat. I do wish that they would’ve just looked the other way completely, now we’re on their records. If someone’s watching, we’re a dead give-away.”
I sway my ears negatively. “I don’t think they’ll be looking deep in government registries. That would require access, and if they were in the government, chances are they’d have noticed long ago and already fled. To my knowledge, there hasn’t been much movement on the private nor the public transit systems, and none of the Harchen. Trust me, I had the same thought.” I pull out my pad, the tab for the transit logs still logged in with the temporary credentials the district has given us. “Check for yourself.”
Sharnet looks over the information rather inquisitively. “Now that’s interesting.”
I cock my head. “What is?”
“I looked up Unzekep’s home address,” she explains, “and it’s in an apartment building on the edge of town. She doesn’t have a vehicle, so by all rights she should be traveling on public transit. But this shows none of the Harchen have done so. The fact that she isn’t…”
Her sentence falls away as her ears twitch in thought. Now that she’s said it aloud, I realize how strange that is. “That…is odd, actually. You’d think that she would be using the public transit system to get to and from work each Paw.”
Sharnet’s tail swishes against the ground. “Do you remember what Tagleb said about her? He said that she spent a lot of time in the tunnels. Do you think… well, no, there’s a couple possibilities. But…”
As she’s making an appeal to rationality, I realize what she’s implying. “That she’s living in the tunnels. That’s what you were going to say, right?”
She sways her tail in the affirmative. “I don’t want to cast judgment yet. But…if she’s one of the overseers, those tunnels are well out of sight. People could probably survive a raid by hiding in there. Of course, if she isn’t a head, staying in those tunnels might not be her choice.”
I look at Sharnet skeptically. “Not her choice? What reason could someone possibly have to stay down there that isn’t their choice?”
“Well, that safety inspector that the foreman bribed likely didn’t inspect only one site.” Her claws clench against her wool. “In my previous job, there was a time when there was only one person on staff who knew how to maintain and repair the office electronics. The company has them stay on overtime. If she is in a similar situation in the tunnels…”
That’s not a good image to have in my mind. Being one of the only ones repairing equipment and materials that would have otherwise been flagged as a safety danger… My arms and legs are exhausted by just imagining what might be needed. “Oh, Herd, that’d be bad. I’m not certain that’s the case, though, as the District let us have our way with seeing her. They wouldn't do that if they had something to hide.”
Sharnet raises a finger. “If they’re smart.”
I can’t help but give a low whistle to myself at that. “If they’re smart, yeah. Ready to go see how dumb they are?”
Her tail wags in amusement as she rises from her seat. “We can grab a couple to-go salads from the meal bar and head right out, if that’s okay with you.”
“Sure, might as well if we’re going to be spending all day in the sewers.” I follow Sharnet over to the salad bar, and we order some bog-standard salads to go. Nothing fancy, we are on the clock after all. Once we receive our food, Sharnet heads back to grab that duffel bag and we head out, the light of our star bearing down on us as we exit the building.
It isn’t long before a bus comes to pick us up, the driver seemingly surprised to see someone waiting for him at this claw. We board and take our seats, eating our salads as we’re ferried to our next destination. Thankfully, only a single other person is on the bus right now, and they’re too busy with something on their pad to notice us. A public space with no noise, perfect.
As I eat, my mind wanders back to Tagelb. I had meant to go back and see him again last Paw, but paperwork had obviously gotten in the way of that. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m intrigued by the Yotuls’ archaic technology. Steam engines, massive train systems, even rudimentary hydrocarbon combustion engines! I wanted to learn more, but I knew Vekna was only tolerating that in search of our guy. I knew I had to go back to hiding eventually.
The worst part was how I had to hide myself from Tagelb, even if it was less than normal. I heard his views on Predator Disease, and I knew that if I slipped it, that was it. I’d lose yet another friend because I couldn’t keep my Herd-damned mouth shut. I’m determined to keep doing what I’m doing, even if it means hiding myself forever. From Tagelb, from Sharnet, from everybody. Ignorance is bliss, and if nobody knows I’m a monster, it’s a little easier to pretend I’m not for myself.
I’m shaken from my internal lamentations by a paw lightly shaking my shoulder. I glance over at the culprit, finding Sharnet’s gaze. “Are you okay? You went a little wall-eyed while you were eating your salad.”
I look down at my bowl, only to find it empty. I quickly reseal it and feign my innocence yet again. “Hm? Oh, yeah, just thinking about how we’re going to do this. Not an easy task, after all.”
She pulls up the duffel bag she’s been carrying into her lap and zips it open. “Thankfully, these should make it a bit easier.”
Inside are a pair of construction pelts. Visibility vests, gloves, foot coverings, and two helmets. Those… brahking uncomfortable helmets. “Do we really have to wear those?”
I know it’s a dumb question. I read the same procedures as she did. This equipment is a basic requirement for us to go into the tunnels. No matter how much it rubbed up against my ears.
“Yes, I’m sure. We read the same waiver, we signed on the same lines. I’m not a fan either, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices.” She pulls out one of the pelts and hands it to me, retrieving the other for herself. I groan internally at the mere thought of having to wear another helmet. She gives her ears a comforting flick. “These are brand new, so the padding won’t be as worn down as the last helmets were. I don’t know if it will stop the bother, but at the very least it shouldn’t be as bad.”
Small comforts. “I hope so, yeah.” As I look over the helmet, the bus stops and opens its door to our destination. “Industrial center! Next stop, the Intraplanetary Transit Hub!” We stand from our seats and make it off the bus, which unceremoniously closes its doors and leaves us stranded in the dead center of the industrial heart of Sidestar.
The town is centered around maintaining the power plants that comprise the central economy of the District. As a city well within the twilight, power meant life. It allowed the growing houses to keep the local edible vegetation harvest alive, light up the iron ore mining operations in the mountains, and the steam tunnels flowing with heat to fight back against the cold winds from the night side flowing down from the mountains. Those steam and drain tunnels are where a large number of people work. Having to expand and repair sections as their city grows. And Unzekep is currently working on replacing outdated units. Somewhere in there…
I’m pulled from my analysis of the area by Sharnet, who has since applied her pelt. “Come on, put on your uniform so we can get down to where we need to be.” I heed her words and quickly apply my clothing before following Sharnet through the complicated system of tubes and ducts that comprises the ground-level of one of the for-profit geothermal reactors.
Thank the Herd for the 3d map the District had given us access to. According to the schedule, Unzekep should be in the coolwater pump room, replacing the turbines in one of the pumps. Unfortunately, that’s all the way in the basement of the building, accessible to the steam tunnels leading under the rest of the town.
Steam heating the town. And the Feds call the Yotul primitive for using the same principles. I shake the annoyance from my mind as we descend down ladder after ladder, walking across steel catwalks over huge drops for the snowmelt that would occur after the night finished. I can see what all those waivers were about now.
From my map, we should be coming up to the pump room soon. It’s next to this… cargo… elevator… Oh for the Herd’s sake!
Sharnet huffs, panting from the humidity and heat of the underground caverns. “What puddle of Speh left that out of the official map? We could’ve been here a quarter-claw earlier!”
“Beats me, but at least we’re here,” I manage to say, leaning against the wall as it feels like I’m trying to breathe through syrup. “S-Sorry, just need to take a breather for a second. The humidity down here is really messing with me.”
“I understand,” she holds out her tail for a comfort touch, “if you think you’re about to have an attack, don’t hesitate to let me know. Your health is important.”
“Thanks,” I huff. After a few moments of slow breathing, the air managed to become a little more breathable. “Alright, I think I’m good. Are you ready to meet our next in line for Spehlicker of the Hectorotation?”
“If we’re lucky,” she replies before sliding open the doors. Four massive pumps dominate the room. They stand as long and tall as the bus we rode in on. It’s truly impressive to see the power of the planet itself being harnessed through the mechanics of these machines. But… I’m unsure about the noise. It isn’t too loud, Sharnet and I would be able to raise our voices over them without going into full on shouting, but it was a constant high volume I haven’t been around before. It feels…grating.
Thankfully, it’s obvious that we're in the correct room. One of the pumps has a series of curved pieces of metal with a pile of bolts and… a stack of impellers, if I’m remembering the word correctly, laying on the ground. Tools and spares are scattered around the area, a mug of some sort of beverage is on a nearby ledge, wisps of steam still coming from its surface. Wait…wisps of steam…
I place a paw against Sharnet’s chest, to her confusion, as I scan the room for anything out…of…the… There. In the corner, a few splotches of green on an otherwise gray surface. Imperfect camouflage, just like Tagelb had said. As I focus, I can make out an outline of a trembling person, moving in tandem with the spots. She must have heard us approach. I gesture to Sharnet in the direction and she flicks her ears affirmatively.
“You must be very skilled,” she says, staring at the splotches with an eye, “your camouflage is practically seamless.”
As I watch, the splotches increase in their trembling. A voice floats out under the hum of the pumps, barely heard by my ears. “No, no, go away, leave, this is safe, no, please leave, don’t hurt me, no.”
“We are here about Dawn Creek,” I say, “We-
The Harchen shrieks.
The gray walls reveal the colors of a Harchen in distress as she falls to the ground in sobs. It’s difficult to see anything about her, as she curls herself up and pleads. “P-Please! No! I don’t w-want to go back! Don’t m-make me go back!”
Both Sharnet and I had lightly backed away at her shriek, but now we both approached her. Her scale shifts seem almost sluggish, but they do indeed shift. It’s only once I get a better look at her face do I realize what Tagelb was talking about.
Her facial features are slightly flatter, looking almost compressed compared to that of the other two Harchens we’ve run into here. Her forehead is a bit larger than normal, and her neck is slightly shorter. In fact, she herself is shorter than average, if only by a little. Near her temples, four splotches of unchanging green remain constant despite the rest of her shifting form, each an imperfect circle of dull green.
She just keeps sobbing and pleading incoherently as we approach, not even attempting to run. It was like… it’s like she’s given up. This can’t be it, can it? I expected pathetic, but this? This is just sad to watch. But as I do indeed watch, something comes to me. This isn’t fear of getting caught, this is fear of going back.
I remember what I learned about the treatments they used, the drugs they administered, and what Sharnet had said to Tagelb. People with no disease at all. It all clicks together in an instant. This isn’t one of the heads of the Dawn Creek facility.
No.
This is an escapee.
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We're looking at homes in the 750k bracket, and just about every single one of them has a finished basement. I grew up as a very hands on person. Basements are home workshops and messy hobby spaces. Garages are for cars and working on cars. I have a car lift in my garage that i'm taking with me. Attics/sheds are for storage. I hate fully finished basements, yet we've seen exactly 4 houses out over a hundred with unfinished basements in the price bracket and markets we're looking in. Only 2 houses we've seen had tall ceilings in the basement because they were built by the craftsmen for themselves, and they understood the struggle.
I have a bunch of hobbies that i love my current basement for and I'm just annoyed i can't find these types of spaces.

• Home Gym (old school free weights). i deadlift over 500lbs, Dropping dumbells, Moving equipment, etc that will destroy any flooring other than vinyl.
• Finished ceilings rob you of ceiling height, it's impossible to find a basement with enough ceiling height for my equipment. I don't care for team garage gym because basements are more temperate and require less climate control. And because I work on my own hobby cars and want the garage space.
• wood working: you just make a mess, floors will get ruined moving equipment around, wood glue winds up on the floor all the time despite my best efforts.
• I reload (make my own ammo) without getting into the gun debate, some of that equipment is also tall, if you have auto hoppers.
• You lose access to easily running wire. Want to install a new dedicated circuit for your gaming pc that has a 4090 and a 1300k? Want to run cat6? or fiber to the office? good luck unless they did drop ceiling which is about 50/50 chance from what i've seen.

Houses in cheaper brackets are more likely to have unfinished basements. We can't afford new construction. I've considered building an outbuilding, but that's at least another 50-75k expense not to mention time and dealing with zoning, etc.

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 26%. (I'm a bot)

Latvia's foreign minister Edgars Rinkevics was elected as the Baltic country's new president on Wednesday, the first openly gay person to hold the office.
"I will do everything for our country to prosper and be secure," Rinkevics said after the vote in parliament.
Latvia's president is selected by lawmakers and is a largely ceremonial role.
Riga has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine in its efforts to fight Russian aggression, advocating Kyiv's accession to both the EU and NATO. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky congratulated Rinkevics, calling him "a true friend of Ukraine".
"Latvia will be in safe hands during the next four years," the outgoing president Levits said following the election of his successor.
Before becoming foreign minister, Rinkevics worked as a foreign news analyst at the public broadcaster Latvijas Radio and for the defence ministry and president's office.

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Post found in /worldnews.
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This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 46%. (I'm a bot)

The New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she would vote against the debt limit deal on Wednesday night, as the 5 June deadline looms.
On Tuesday, the Hill said the office of one of the most high-profile progressives in the US House confirmed she would not support the controversial agreement to raise the debt ceiling, which was agreed by Republicans under the speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and the Biden White House.
"Some number of progressives, including myself, lean no," Greg Casar, the Progressive caucus whip and a Democrat from Texas, told Axios.
The progressive caucus chair, Pramila Jayapal of Washington, said on a Tuesday press call the bill contained measures progressives were "Seriously concerned about".
"You have to deal with reality in politics," the Tennessee representative Steve Cohen, a progressive caucus member, told Axios, adding that concerns about the bill's contents are "Totally secondary to keeping the world's economy on track".
The compromise announced on Sunday would suspend debt-limit negotiations through 1 January 2025 and raise the US debt limit from $31.4tn. The deal includes changes to federal assistance programs, including new work requirements for food stamps access.

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I am not a recruiter, or the person hiring. The company is not interested in working with recruiters.
An LED lighting manufacturer in the Southwest Houston area is looking for someone to do lighting layout calculations. The person in charge of lighting layout is moving to Canada, so they need to find a replacement within a month. Lighting layout is the process of taking a CAD drawing of a building or construction site and calculating the lighting based off of placement of light fixtures. The software used for this process is called AGI32. A perfect candidate would already be familiar with the software, but most qualified people are able to learn the basics with a few days of training. The company expects to hire someone who does not have experience, since it is a niche product, but would love to hire someone who already has the necessary skills.
Requirements of the position :

• Meticulous individual
• Ability to pick up new skills quickly
• Able to communicate with customers in a friendly and professional manner. Almost all customers speak English.
• Able to work in the office from 8:30AM-5:30PM M-F. This is not a remote position.
• Experience using Windows 10, Google Maps, Microsoft Outlook and Excel

Preferred but not absolutely necessary skills : * Some experience with CAD * Some experience with commercial lighting * Some experience with AGI32
The company plans to begin interviewing immediately and will select a candidate within 2 weeks. If you are interested, send me a PM and I will send you their contact details.
Company offers competitive salary, health insurance, vacation and sick leave, various other benefits.

Please Support this story on nosleep here.
The common consensus on what a curse even is can be ambiguous, so many cultures and ideas reframe and retool to fit the central tenets of their thematic cores. One thing is common amongst all interpretations however, their aim is to cause harm. One might wonder at what point is a curse conceived, not just the rituals and requirements that are needed to conjure a curse. No, what is it that makes up a curse, what feeds it? Some might answer hate or jealousy, and while those might be true for some. For me, the curse I bore and the curses I will bear are made up of one thing. Resentment.
I first noticed its infection one morning while getting dressed for classes. Running my fingers along the slight depression brought out goosebumps. It was slightly tender and if I pressed on it hard it elicited a painful pinch that caused my insides to tangle in panic. Withdrawing my fingers to inspect them I noted a slickness I couldn’t account for. A slight black tint colored my fingertips and I quickly rinsed them under hot water but it did little to wash away the wave of anxiety that had come over me. I tried to push it aside, I had classes, term papers, and tests to worry about. I held out until the middle of my 3rd class, by then all I could think about was the series of horrible and fatal medical implications of the indentation. I ran all the way home, body wracked with shivers, and slammed myself inside my dorm bathroom, stripped off my shirt, and took a good look at it. It had gotten deeper, at least 2 centimeters into my chest now. It was where my sternum was, dead center between my two pectoral muscles. I pushed my finger in and it actually gave some, causing a shudder of agony to blossom and ride through every nerve in my body. I spent the rest of the day researching what I could, some stuff about dietary insufficiencies causing swelling and easily depressed skin, but this was different. The anxiety attacks started then and continued for the next few hours. My roommate walked in during the midst of one and saw my huddled form, trying to breathe. I heard the audible click of his tongue and he left.
3 am neared and I still hadn’t escaped that sinking feeling, the one that feels like an endless plunge towards death, and all the while your lungs struggle to pull enough air to fuel a scream. Drowning in plain sight. I looked desperately through Jake’s things and found a bottle of Benadryl. I washed a couple of them down and waited until my eyelids grew heavy. I was barely able to crawl into bed before I fell into a deep slumber. The dreams it brought were bizarre and vivid. I was wandering through a landscape of abandoned suburbs, going from door to door, looking for one that was the right color. It was late into the night when I finally found it, a dim street lamp casting down an amber spotlight in front of a dilapidated two-story with a red door.
The door opened as I walked up to it, revealing a barren living room lit by a corner lamp that flickered every few seconds. At its center was a cobblestone well, ancient and unnerving. I recognized it. I had seen it countless times. On my worst days, I had dreamt of standing before it, yearning for hope or absolution. I had been silent instead, letting all I could not say seep into it. This inverted well, one that fed on despair instead of dreams, was now vibrating, shifting. Something was rising from its depths to greet me and I was ready for it, yearned for it. Black fluid erupted from its opening, spraying the ceiling and walls and splattering across my face.
Somewhere, a scream was reaching a fever pitch. I looked down and saw that my chest had split open and the black fluid was streaming down in a cascade of pitch. An eye blossomed from the depths of that gaping ravine in my chest. It stared, focused, and recognition flooded into the empty white. From the hole in my chest, something was rising - a realization. The screaming… it had been me the whole time.
I jolted awake, the pain in my chest the first thing to greet me. I heaved to suck in a breath and my senses came alive. Next was the sweat-slick coat that had pooled around me and I turned over to flip on a lamp. Light flooded my vision, but still, I was surrounded by darkness. No, not darkness, but stains. Black ink had seemingly spurted from my chest and splattered my bedding and floor. I ran my finger through it, all along my sternum, but I could not find the indentation, nor a source for the fluid.
I got up in a panic, looking around the room. I was alone, my roommate never having returned, but there was a trail of black ooze. I followed the most prominent streak to a corner. There was a lump there, a polished shiny black orb where the oily ooze seemingly seeped from. My heart thundered as I approached it, I swore I thought I saw it twitch. I was in the middle of my hands and knees crawling towards it when it jerked, moved, and stood.
I fell back on my ass letting out a half yelp, frozen as my gaze locked with it. It was the size of a rabbit, its tar-black skin reflective and polished. It had these beady eyes that were somehow darker than the rest of its body, and it waddled forward on stubby legs no longer than two inches. It had arms too, stubs too, and they reached for me. I was scooting away from its path when it spoke in a pained and squeaky voice as if its anatomy was ill-fitted for human speech, even its grasp of human words was feeble.
“No harm. I’m an ally.”
“What?” I couldn’t help but respond.
“You fed me, so now I repay you?”
“How? In what way? What are you?”
It blinked as if contemplating how to answer my barrage of questions. It didn’t have a mouth, but it spoke regardless. There was distance to its voice, so I was certain that it didn’t speak directly to my mind, but then again I didn’t even think that was possible until now.
“I am grown, don’t know from where, or why. I think I could be a tool or weapon. I eat bad feelings, but I was left with no one around to feed me. Then you came and fed me, for a long time. Now I’m finally strong enough to repay.”
“Repay me how?”
“I have fed on the dark of your heart. I know what it desires, I can take the shape of a curse,” it said
“You’re going to curse me? As repayment?”
“No, that’s not what was in your hearts. Yes, you hated yourself, but you hate others more. I can be the curse you cast on them.”
Something clicked in place and made its way closer to my mind, but didn’t bridge the distance entirely. It spoke, knew that I’d ask it how.
“Pick the kind of curse. I can be misfortune, blindness, madness… even death, a killing curse,” it said.
I reached towards it, even as its body distorted and elongated and reshaped into a foot-long, skinny, jagged oily centipede. I froze but it skittered forward, crawled across the back of my hand, and wrapped around my wrist. It tickled my skin, slick but warm. Almost uncomfortably so.
“Pick the kind of curse you want me to be, and feed me to whom you want to inflict. It’s easy, but curses burn up in daylight if not attached. You’ll have a few hours past dawn before I turn to ash.”
It fell silent afterward as if slumbering, but I couldn’t sleep. I sat in the corner thinking, watching the black stains left by the living curse dry up and evaporate into nothing. I had to look periodically at the oily centipede wrapped around my wrist to remind myself that I wasn’t dreaming, but all it did was convince me that I had careened off the precipice of sanity into some functional hysteria. I sat there until the sun rose, and like a clockwork mechanism, I got dressed and went to class. I was on autopilot, more depersonalized than I had ever felt before I watched myself go through the motions of my life. It should have been a cry for help, you could see it spelled out clearly as day and no one could have missed it. But they did - or rather, they chose to ignore it, because that was what you were supposed to do with people like me. Dull rage set in and it was what I stewed in as the hours ticked by, a building fury that could have blown but only boiled over and settled into dejected acceptance. I was ready to leave it at that, to let myself fade into a shadow like I had my entire life. To give up and crawl away to some recess, never to be found. But the searing pain of dozens of clawed insect legs digging into my flesh brought back presence of mind “Now. Now! Now! NOW!” a voice chirped. I ran into a storage closet, barred the door, and pulled back the sleeve that hid the living curse.
“What is it, are you about to die?”
“Not die, return. Back to the labyrinth. Pick a curse now, feed me to your enemy, before I disappear and all you’ll be left with is ash.”
“And if I haven’t picked anyone? If I don’t want to hurt anyone?”
“Then let me burn in the light, let me go, never visit my well, never feed me again. Move forward from your life, move away from me, and you’ll be free of me”
It could be that easy to rid myself of this wretched thing. I thought about my day, my life, and the people closest to me. I couldn’t let go, not when they had all walked by ashamed or indifferent, or worst of all, fearful. I had done nothing and they feared me.
“I won’t let it go, I can’t. I don’t know what I’ll do, but I can’t move on from this. I can’t give you up, but I can’t choose someone to suffer you.”
“Then eat me.”
I looked at the wriggling centipede confused, black fluid dripping from its body.
“If you eat me, you inflict the curse upon yourself. Not at full potency, but I’ll live until you’re ready to choose. If you hate enough, if you have the resolve, you can cast a shadow of my curse on all who meet your gaze, but you must hurry, my time… fades.”
“I don’t know what to pick. I don’t want to suffer.”
“Then pick the curse that causes the least pain.”
“Which is? I don’t know, pick for me!”
“I am delirium, now eat me, before it’s too late.”
I didn’t notice any change in the curse, except for the small cracks appearing in its carapace and the fraying of its antenna. I hesitated until a large crack formed across its back; at that moment, I hoisted it up and opened my mouth wide, closing my eyes as I lowered it. It did the rest of the work, jerking free of my grip and slithering down my throat with brute force, trailing that oily substance, I gagged, screamed, tears ran and I choked. But once it was down and settled I was alone in that room, nothing different.
Until I stepped out, and it began. A blurring of the world, where every sound was too sharp and grating, every color too vibrant. My head was swelling with immense pressure as it was filled with hundreds of trivial conversations, all spewing from the mouths of every student and professor in this wing. I couldn’t handle it, so I ran, flinging the doors open to the outside.
Except outside wasn’t outside, no, the doors opened up to a hallway I had been trying to forget all my life, framed with pictures of me and my family. I turned, hoping I could reach the living room so I could leave through the front door but what faced me was another room, one I had forgotten about until now. A barred door, walls burned black, stained with soot and char. A sound jolted me back around, the sound of a belt being unbuckled and fabric hitting the floor. Panic rose within me and I felt like I was in free fall, plummeting from astral orbit, through the earth's crust, and straight into the pits of hell. Except I wasn’t. No, I was in my middle school nurse's office. The scent of floor polish and cheap perfume tickled my nose.
“If it hurts you can stop it anytime, you know? Just change your habits, it’s not that hard,”
Ms. Rena, my middle school nurse, was talking to me. I stared into her eyes, and the world quieted and came into focus. They were green, as beautiful as emeralds. I couldn’t help but stare at them every chance I got. They brought forth feelings within me I had never felt before, an awakening. I blinked and they were burning now, bright green flames that sloughed the flesh from her face and I turned away and screamed. The scream pitched, bent, and distorted into a siren, ascending and descending endlessly. I don’t know how long I was caught in its loop but I couldn’t cling onto a single coherent thought longer than a second, as if my mind had been partitioned half a dozen times and all were battling for the sphere of influence that was my perception.
Then clarity, or an illusion of such. In reality, it was only a fleeting break from the delirium, long enough for me to gather my faculties so that the second dive into madness would hurt just that much more. But time was relative here, stretching out longer than it had any right to. The curse was there, in the hallway of my dorm, no longer a centipede but a tall humanoid thing, seemingly made of old motor oil.
“What’s happening? What did you do to me?!” I pleaded.
“You are suffering the curse of delirium. You chose this, remember?” it said, its voice no longer airy and whistling, like a bird’s. Its speech was no longer jilted and tenuous. Now when it spoke, its voice was deep and full of power.
“You said it would be weaker, subdued.”
“This is subdued, I’m a powerful curse after all.”
“What are you? Where do you come from, I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know, I’m searching for the answer myself. I was malnourished for so long that my mind splintered, I suffered my own madness, and I just know bits and pieces now. I know that in the city of Cradle, the word they call me means ‘Demon Seed’. That’s all I know of my identity.”
“I-I didn’t want this,”
“You’ll grow accustomed to it, with time. Not fully, if you could ignore the delirium it wouldn’t be much of a curse. If it’s too much for you to handle, if the pain is unbearable, you can always make it go away.”
“How?”
“Expel me from your body, feed me to someone else, or let the sun take me.”
I exhaled long and slow, and felt the prickling at the corner of my mind. The madness was near, but all I could feel was anger. At the curse, at myself, at the world. I turned away and faced a world of static and incomprehensible whispers, deafening and all-consuming. I collapsed into myself, held my hands to my ears, and balled into the fetal position. It did little to shut out all that was happening, but it did dull it for a moment until a quiet, throaty keening cut through and pierced my mind directly. I imagined a small undying animal having an army knife stab them at consistent intervals, the pace changing periodically so it could never get used to the pain. And then the violence was reflected onto me except there was no perpetrator. An invisible force sliced into the flesh of my sides, my back, until I was ridden with countless wounds. The pain spurred me to crawl forward on all fours, hoping to escape it but it was endless. I was bleeding so much, black blood, my blood was black. I laughed, then cried, and then crawled forward as the stabbings continued, except now the pain had dulled into an ache that still caused my breath to hitch.
I crawled for what seemed like hours, never getting used to the barrage of thoughts, images, and sounds, all the while the stabbing refused to stop. Even after my body had been shredded to ribbons and I had been bled of all its blood it continued, lazily now, as if the invisible force had grown tired but not enough to cease. Then I hit a wall, flesh, thin, like an amniotic sac, and on impulse I pushed through into it, harder and harder until it started to rip. Somewhere someone was breathing heavily, no more than one, with a rising rhythm and intensity, like a panic attack reaching its peak. I struggled forward, trying to break the damn thing, but it would not give. I was exhausted and so collapsed into it as if sleeping, but time passed and sleep did not come. But the end of the breathing did, once it reached a fever pitch. I shifted, realizing the stabbing had stopped, trying to move but then of all times the amniotic sac burst and I fell into whatever lay beyond it.
I was in my dorm room, a break in the madness. I was free for a moment, act, I had to act. Dawn was starting to peek through the window blinds. I stood up and froze, seeing what the rays of light were cast onto. My roommate Jake lay in his bed, naked. A woman just as naked was wrapped around him, body slick with sweat, its scent perfuming the room. He had seen me suffering, in the midst of a panic attack, left me to cope with it alone, and when I hadn’t returned he took the chance not to look for me or tell anyone, instead using it for his own benefit. Anger coursed through my veins, a fresh injection of hate kicking me into action. I opened my mouth and with my pointer finger and thumb reached in, the curse met me halfway and slid into position. I gripped it and pulled it, hand over hand now as a seemingly endless centipede being expelled from my stomach. I looked at the black segmented body, it writhed and moved in such a way that it reminded me a bit of an umbilical cord, and in a way, it was. A curse was being birthed, having grown stronger after I had housed and fed it with my own being. It was time to cut the cord then, I walked over to the pair as I pulled the last of the length free.
The curse popped out like a cork, sending a spray of black fluid across the couple. Droplets of varying sizes landed and stained the woman’s breasts, most of it pooling in between them at her sternum. I stifled a laugh as that’s where I had first gestated this curse. I looked at Jake, the black spray had stained his face, beard, and clavicle, and a particularly large globule resting upon his lower lip. I shifted my gaze to the wriggling centipede before me. It was at least four feet long now and twice its original width.
I shuddered, clarity flooded over me, and at that moment I realized that sometimes clarity was just perspective. I thought I knew suffering, thought I knew what it meant to shuffle through every day dreading that the next day would be more of the same. But the inescapable madness brought a new understanding to me. I could have changed. At any point in time, I could have ended my ostracization. Sure, it was socially imposed, but it was not an incurable delirium. Follow the rules, conform, and you’ll be mostly fine, you can make the hurt stop anytime you want. So why didn’t I, why can’t I now at this very moment? I knew now that it was because it would be a rejection of self, the world goes on and on about how you should be yourself. That in itself was a virtue lauded and held up as one of the most important facets of existence. But now I know what they really meant was “Operate within the constantly shifting parameters of acceptability - fail to adhere, evolve or predict, and you are a threat.” The true self that others reveled in evaded people like me, instead we had to construct a facade we passed off as real in order to thrive.
But so many didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t. How could they? It was all they knew, how could you discard that which defined them, the filter of their reality? I know what I am now, a worm that slinked through grime and lived in darkness, and when others took me and held me to the light, saying, “See, this is how you should be, and why you should be, it’s for the better of everyone,” it didn’t bring me to enlightenment, but to resentment and hate. I knew what I could do to make them see more than just a freak, a threat, but unconsciously I never took the steps because I knew only what it was to exist within the margins, in a periphery. An exile imposed by all, including myself.
I held the curse higher, feeling grateful that I had survived it, suffered it, and was blessed by its clarity. Light streamed in now as the sun crossed the horizon into a bright morning. The curse was still, despite the lethal light upon it. Let it go and move on, or revel in it? I looked back down at the pair, at Jake. He was an acceptable version of me, softly rebellious. Had thoughts, beliefs, mannerisms, and behaviors that neared the boundaries but never crossed them. Scruffy-faced, soft-eyed, short hair spikey and messy but never disheveled, charming in an irreverent way, unassuming cock but he fucked like a jackhammer obviously. An outsider that wasn’t really an outsider, he never was the great other that haunted dreams and fueled paranoia. I held the curse out in front of them and spoke to it.
“Your choice, Demon Seed. Wither in the sun, or choose one to torment. I don’t care which.”
It was still for a moment before diving into Jake's mouth. Silently, effortlessly, it slipped inside him and was gone. I walked out of the room, legs wobbling a bit, I was riding a high I had never felt before.
Jake was dead by the end of the month, he had been institutionalized until he wasn’t and then he stumbled onto train tracks. Rest is history, no body left to bury. His girlfriend, lover, or whatever the fuck was the one to break the news to me. Thought because I was his roommate I cared or at least should care. It was a few weeks later when I felt that sting and oil-slick fluid in my sternum, Demon Seed, the curse had enjoyed itself.
Twice more I’ve birthed a curse, let it choose its victim, let Demon Seed choose its form. He is the shaky finger of tragedy that strikes without cause or rhyme, deliriously pointed at someone, anyone. And I am the great well of resentment that feeds him. We are the what world needs, a calamity, the great other, something to fear, something to hate. And with each glare and impassioned condemnation, the curse grows stronger within me.
TW

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 76%. (I'm a bot)

The European Broadcasting Union is wooing Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov for a splashy TV interview, despite his record of bizarre anti-Ukraine hate speech.
The EBU in Geneva, the same organisation which put on the Eurovision song contest in May, is now aiming for the Lavrov extravaganza to air in June.
The EBU press office told EUobserver on Tuesday: "Eurovision News has sent a request for an interview with the Russian foreign minister as part of our normal journalistic activities as independent public service media".
When asked if ARD, BBC, ITV or any other EBU members had been consulted on the Lavrov invitation, an EBU spokeswoman said: "The Eurovision News Exchange provides content to EBU members who then each decide whether to broadcast or publish it".
The EBU invitation letter pitched the Lavrov show in more gushing terms.
EUobserver emailed several EBU personnel, including in Brussels, Geneva, Jerusalem, and Zurich, to ask how they felt about inviting Lavrov on TV. Nobody wrote back.

Summary Source FAQ Feedback Top keywords: EBU^#1 Lavrov^#2 Russia^#3 interview^#4 members^#5
Post found in /ukraine, /worldnews, /europeanunion and /europe.
NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.

The common consensus on what a curse even is can be ambiguous, so many cultures and ideas reframe and retool to fit the central tenets of their thematic cores. One thing is common amongst all interpretations however, their aim is to cause harm. One might wonder at what point is a curse conceived, not just the rituals and requirements that are needed to conjure a curse. No, what is it that makes up a curse, what feeds it? Some might answer hate or jealousy, and while those might be true for some. For me, the curse I bore and the curses I will bear are made up of one thing. Resentment.
I first noticed its infection one morning while getting dressed for classes. Running my fingers along the slight depression brought out goosebumps. It was slightly tender and if I pressed on it hard it elicited a painful pinch that caused my insides to tangle in panic. Withdrawing my fingers to inspect them I noted a slickness I couldn’t account for. A slight black tint colored my fingertips and I quickly rinsed them under hot water but it did little to wash away the wave of anxiety that had come over me. I tried to push it aside, I had classes, term papers, and tests to worry about. I held out until the middle of my 3rd class, by then all I could think about was the series of horrible and fatal medical implications of the indentation. I ran all the way home, body wracked with shivers, and slammed myself inside my dorm bathroom, stripped off my shirt, and took a good look at it. It had gotten deeper, at least 2 centimeters into my chest now. It was where my sternum was, dead center between my two pectoral muscles. I pushed my finger in and it actually gave some, causing a shudder of agony to blossom and ride through every nerve in my body. I spent the rest of the day researching what I could, some stuff about dietary insufficiencies causing swelling and easily depressed skin, but this was different. The anxiety attacks started then and continued for the next few hours. My roommate walked in during the midst of one and saw my huddled form, trying to breathe. I heard the audible click of his tongue and he left.
3 am neared and I still hadn’t escaped that sinking feeling, the one that feels like an endless plunge towards death, and all the while your lungs struggle to pull enough air to fuel a scream. Drowning in plain sight. I looked desperately through Jake’s things and found a bottle of Benadryl. I washed a couple of them down and waited until my eyelids grew heavy. I was barely able to crawl into bed before I fell into a deep slumber. The dreams it brought were bizarre and vivid. I was wandering through a landscape of abandoned suburbs, going from door to door, looking for one that was the right color. It was late into the night when I finally found it, a dim street lamp casting down an amber spotlight in front of a dilapidated two-story with a red door.
The door opened as I walked up to it, revealing a barren living room lit by a corner lamp that flickered every few seconds. At its center was a cobblestone well, ancient and unnerving. I recognized it. I had seen it countless times. On my worst days, I had dreamt of standing before it, yearning for hope or absolution. I had been silent instead, letting all I could not say seep into it. This inverted well, one that fed on despair instead of dreams, was now vibrating, shifting. Something was rising from its depths to greet me and I was ready for it, yearned for it. Black fluid erupted from its opening, spraying the ceiling and walls and splattering across my face.
Somewhere, a scream was reaching a fever pitch. I looked down and saw that my chest had split open and the black fluid was streaming down in a cascade of pitch. An eye blossomed from the depths of that gaping ravine in my chest. It stared, focused, and recognition flooded into the empty white. From the hole in my chest, something was rising - a realization. The screaming… it had been me the whole time.
I jolted awake, the pain in my chest the first thing to greet me. I heaved to suck in a breath and my senses came alive. Next was the sweat-slick coat that had pooled around me and I turned over to flip on a lamp. Light flooded my vision, but still, I was surrounded by darkness. No, not darkness, but stains. Black ink had seemingly spurted from my chest and splattered my bedding and floor. I ran my finger through it, all along my sternum, but I could not find the indentation, nor a source for the fluid.
I got up in a panic, looking around the room. I was alone, my roommate never having returned, but there was a trail of black ooze. I followed the most prominent streak to a corner. There was a lump there, a polished shiny black orb where the oily ooze seemingly seeped from. My heart thundered as I approached it, I swore I thought I saw it twitch. I was in the middle of my hands and knees crawling towards it when it jerked, moved, and stood.
I fell back on my ass letting out a half yelp, frozen as my gaze locked with it. It was the size of a rabbit, its tar-black skin reflective and polished. It had these beady eyes that were somehow darker than the rest of its body, and it waddled forward on stubby legs no longer than two inches. It had arms too, stubs too, and they reached for me. I was scooting away from its path when it spoke in a pained and squeaky voice as if its anatomy was ill-fitted for human speech, even its grasp of human words was feeble.
“No harm. I’m an ally.”
“What?” I couldn’t help but respond.
“You fed me, so now I repay you?”
“How? In what way? What are you?”
It blinked as if contemplating how to answer my barrage of questions. It didn’t have a mouth, but it spoke regardless. There was distance to its voice, so I was certain that it didn’t speak directly to my mind, but then again I didn’t even think that was possible until now.
“I am grown, don’t know from where, or why. I think I could be a tool or weapon. I eat bad feelings, but I was left with no one around to feed me. Then you came and fed me, for a long time. Now I’m finally strong enough to repay.”
“Repay me how?”
“I have fed on the dark of your heart. I know what it desires, I can take the shape of a curse,” it said
“You’re going to curse me? As repayment?”
“No, that’s not what was in your hearts. Yes, you hated yourself, but you hate others more. I can be the curse you cast on them.”
Something clicked in place and made its way closer to my mind, but didn’t bridge the distance entirely. It spoke, knew that I’d ask it how.
“Pick the kind of curse. I can be misfortune, blindness, madness… even death, a killing curse,” it said.
I reached towards it, even as its body distorted and elongated and reshaped into a foot-long, skinny, jagged oily centipede. I froze but it skittered forward, crawled across the back of my hand, and wrapped around my wrist. It tickled my skin, slick but warm. Almost uncomfortably so.
“Pick the kind of curse you want me to be, and feed me to whom you want to inflict. It’s easy, but curses burn up in daylight if not attached. You’ll have a few hours past dawn before I turn to ash.”
It fell silent afterward as if slumbering, but I couldn’t sleep. I sat in the corner thinking, watching the black stains left by the living curse dry up and evaporate into nothing. I had to look periodically at the oily centipede wrapped around my wrist to remind myself that I wasn’t dreaming, but all it did was convince me that I had careened off the precipice of sanity into some functional hysteria. I sat there until the sun rose, and like a clockwork mechanism, I got dressed and went to class. I was on autopilot, more depersonalized than I had ever felt before I watched myself go through the motions of my life. It should have been a cry for help, you could see it spelled out clearly as day and no one could have missed it. But they did - or rather, they chose to ignore it, because that was what you were supposed to do with people like me. Dull rage set in and it was what I stewed in as the hours ticked by, a building fury that could have blown but only boiled over and settled into dejected acceptance. I was ready to leave it at that, to let myself fade into a shadow like I had my entire life. To give up and crawl away to some recess, never to be found. But the searing pain of dozens of clawed insect legs digging into my flesh brought back presence of mind “Now. Now! Now! NOW!” a voice chirped. I ran into a storage closet, barred the door, and pulled back the sleeve that hid the living curse.
“What is it, are you about to die?”
“Not die, return. Back to the labyrinth. Pick a curse now, feed me to your enemy, before I disappear and all you’ll be left with is ash.”
“And if I haven’t picked anyone? If I don’t want to hurt anyone?”
“Then let me burn in the light, let me go, never visit my well, never feed me again. Move forward from your life, move away from me, and you’ll be free of me”
It could be that easy to rid myself of this wretched thing. I thought about my day, my life, and the people closest to me. I couldn’t let go, not when they had all walked by ashamed or indifferent, or worst of all, fearful. I had done nothing and they feared me.
“I won’t let it go, I can’t. I don’t know what I’ll do, but I can’t move on from this. I can’t give you up, but I can’t choose someone to suffer you.”
“Then eat me.”
I looked at the wriggling centipede confused, black fluid dripping from its body.
“If you eat me, you inflict the curse upon yourself. Not at full potency, but I’ll live until you’re ready to choose. If you hate enough, if you have the resolve, you can cast a shadow of my curse on all who meet your gaze, but you must hurry, my time… fades.”
“I don’t know what to pick. I don’t want to suffer.”
“Then pick the curse that causes the least pain.”
“Which is? I don’t know, pick for me!”
“I am delirium, now eat me, before it’s too late.”
I didn’t notice any change in the curse, except for the small cracks appearing in its carapace and the fraying of its antenna. I hesitated until a large crack formed across its back; at that moment, I hoisted it up and opened my mouth wide, closing my eyes as I lowered it. It did the rest of the work, jerking free of my grip and slithering down my throat with brute force, trailing that oily substance, I gagged, screamed, tears ran and I choked. But once it was down and settled I was alone in that room, nothing different.
Until I stepped out, and it began. A blurring of the world, where every sound was too sharp and grating, every color too vibrant. My head was swelling with immense pressure as it was filled with hundreds of trivial conversations, all spewing from the mouths of every student and professor in this wing. I couldn’t handle it, so I ran, flinging the doors open to the outside.
Except outside wasn’t outside, no, the doors opened up to a hallway I had been trying to forget all my life, framed with pictures of me and my family. I turned, hoping I could reach the living room so I could leave through the front door but what faced me was another room, one I had forgotten about until now. A barred door, walls burned black, stained with soot and char. A sound jolted me back around, the sound of a belt being unbuckled and fabric hitting the floor. Panic rose within me and I felt like I was in free fall, plummeting from astral orbit, through the earth's crust, and straight into the pits of hell. Except I wasn’t. No, I was in my middle school nurse's office. The scent of floor polish and cheap perfume tickled my nose.
“If it hurts you can stop it anytime, you know? Just change your habits, it’s not that hard,”
Ms. Rena, my middle school nurse, was talking to me. I stared into her eyes, and the world quieted and came into focus. They were green, as beautiful as emeralds. I couldn’t help but stare at them every chance I got. They brought forth feelings within me I had never felt before, an awakening. I blinked and they were burning now, bright green flames that sloughed the flesh from her face and I turned away and screamed. The scream pitched, bent, and distorted into a siren, ascending and descending endlessly. I don’t know how long I was caught in its loop but I couldn’t cling onto a single coherent thought longer than a second, as if my mind had been partitioned half a dozen times and all were battling for the sphere of influence that was my perception.
Then clarity, or an illusion of such. In reality, it was only a fleeting break from the delirium, long enough for me to gather my faculties so that the second dive into madness would hurt just that much more. But time was relative here, stretching out longer than it had any right to. The curse was there, in the hallway of my dorm, no longer a centipede but a tall humanoid thing, seemingly made of old motor oil.
“What’s happening? What did you do to me?!” I pleaded.
“You are suffering the curse of delirium. You chose this, remember?” it said, its voice no longer airy and whistling, like a bird’s. Its speech was no longer jilted and tenuous. Now when it spoke, its voice was deep and full of power.
“You said it would be weaker, subdued.”
“This is subdued, I’m a powerful curse after all.”
“What are you? Where do you come from, I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know, I’m searching for the answer myself. I was malnourished for so long that my mind splintered, I suffered my own madness, and I just know bits and pieces now. I know that in the city of Cradle, the word they call me means ‘Demon Seed’. That’s all I know of my identity.”
“I-I didn’t want this,”
“You’ll grow accustomed to it, with time. Not fully, if you could ignore the delirium it wouldn’t be much of a curse. If it’s too much for you to handle, if the pain is unbearable, you can always make it go away.”
“How?”
“Expel me from your body, feed me to someone else, or let the sun take me.”
I exhaled long and slow, and felt the prickling at the corner of my mind. The madness was near, but all I could feel was anger. At the curse, at myself, at the world. I turned away and faced a world of static and incomprehensible whispers, deafening and all-consuming. I collapsed into myself, held my hands to my ears, and balled into the fetal position. It did little to shut out all that was happening, but it did dull it for a moment until a quiet, throaty keening cut through and pierced my mind directly. I imagined a small undying animal having an army knife stab them at consistent intervals, the pace changing periodically so it could never get used to the pain. And then the violence was reflected onto me except there was no perpetrator. An invisible force sliced into the flesh of my sides, my back, until I was ridden with countless wounds. The pain spurred me to crawl forward on all fours, hoping to escape it but it was endless. I was bleeding so much, black blood, my blood was black. I laughed, then cried, and then crawled forward as the stabbings continued, except now the pain had dulled into an ache that still caused my breath to hitch.
I crawled for what seemed like hours, never getting used to the barrage of thoughts, images, and sounds, all the while the stabbing refused to stop. Even after my body had been shredded to ribbons and I had been bled of all its blood it continued, lazily now, as if the invisible force had grown tired but not enough to cease. Then I hit a wall, flesh, thin, like an amniotic sac, and on impulse I pushed through into it, harder and harder until it started to rip. Somewhere someone was breathing heavily, no more than one, with a rising rhythm and intensity, like a panic attack reaching its peak. I struggled forward, trying to break the damn thing, but it would not give. I was exhausted and so collapsed into it as if sleeping, but time passed and sleep did not come. But the end of the breathing did, once it reached a fever pitch. I shifted, realizing the stabbing had stopped, trying to move but then of all times the amniotic sac burst and I fell into whatever lay beyond it.
I was in my dorm room, a break in the madness. I was free for a moment, act, I had to act. Dawn was starting to peek through the window blinds. I stood up and froze, seeing what the rays of light were cast onto. My roommate Jake lay in his bed, naked. A woman just as naked was wrapped around him, body slick with sweat, its scent perfuming the room. He had seen me suffering, in the midst of a panic attack, left me to cope with it alone, and when I hadn’t returned he took the chance not to look for me or tell anyone, instead using it for his own benefit. Anger coursed through my veins, a fresh injection of hate kicking me into action. I opened my mouth and with my pointer finger and thumb reached in, the curse met me halfway and slid into position. I gripped it and pulled it, hand over hand now as a seemingly endless centipede being expelled from my stomach. I looked at the black segmented body, it writhed and moved in such a way that it reminded me a bit of an umbilical cord, and in a way, it was. A curse was being birthed, having grown stronger after I had housed and fed it with my own being. It was time to cut the cord then, I walked over to the pair as I pulled the last of the length free.
The curse popped out like a cork, sending a spray of black fluid across the couple. Droplets of varying sizes landed and stained the woman’s breasts, most of it pooling in between them at her sternum. I stifled a laugh as that’s where I had first gestated this curse. I looked at Jake, the black spray had stained his face, beard, and clavicle, and a particularly large globule resting upon his lower lip. I shifted my gaze to the wriggling centipede before me. It was at least four feet long now and twice its original width.
I shuddered, clarity flooded over me, and at that moment I realized that sometimes clarity was just perspective. I thought I knew suffering, thought I knew what it meant to shuffle through every day dreading that the next day would be more of the same. But the inescapable madness brought a new understanding to me. I could have changed. At any point in time, I could have ended my ostracization. Sure, it was socially imposed, but it was not an incurable delirium. Follow the rules, conform, and you’ll be mostly fine, you can make the hurt stop anytime you want. So why didn’t I, why can’t I now at this very moment? I knew now that it was because it would be a rejection of self, the world goes on and on about how you should be yourself. That in itself was a virtue lauded and held up as one of the most important facets of existence. But now I know what they really meant was “Operate within the constantly shifting parameters of acceptability - fail to adhere, evolve or predict, and you are a threat.” The true self that others reveled in evaded people like me, instead we had to construct a facade we passed off as real in order to thrive.
But so many didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t. How could they? It was all they knew, how could you discard that which defined them, the filter of their reality? I know what I am now, a worm that slinked through grime and lived in darkness, and when others took me and held me to the light, saying, “See, this is how you should be, and why you should be, it’s for the better of everyone,” it didn’t bring me to enlightenment, but to resentment and hate. I knew what I could do to make them see more than just a freak, a threat, but unconsciously I never took the steps because I knew only what it was to exist within the margins, in a periphery. An exile imposed by all, including myself.
I held the curse higher, feeling grateful that I had survived it, suffered it, and was blessed by its clarity. Light streamed in now as the sun crossed the horizon into a bright morning. The curse was still, despite the lethal light upon it. Let it go and move on, or revel in it? I looked back down at the pair, at Jake. He was an acceptable version of me, softly rebellious. Had thoughts, beliefs, mannerisms, and behaviors that neared the boundaries but never crossed them. Scruffy-faced, soft-eyed, short hair spikey and messy but never disheveled, charming in an irreverent way, unassuming cock but he fucked like a jackhammer obviously. An outsider that wasn’t really an outsider, he never was the great other that haunted dreams and fueled paranoia. I held the curse out in front of them and spoke to it.
“Your choice, Demon Seed. Wither in the sun, or choose one to torment. I don’t care which.”
It was still for a moment before diving into Jake's mouth. Silently, effortlessly, it slipped inside him and was gone. I walked out of the room, legs wobbling a bit, I was riding a high I had never felt before.
Jake was dead by the end of the month, he had been institutionalized until he wasn’t and then he stumbled onto train tracks. Rest is history, no body left to bury. His girlfriend, lover, or whatever the fuck was the one to break the news to me. Thought because I was his roommate I cared or at least should care. It was a few weeks later when I felt that sting and oil-slick fluid in my sternum, Demon Seed, the curse had enjoyed itself.
Twice more I’ve birthed a curse, let it choose its victim, let Demon Seed choose its form. He is the shaky finger of tragedy that strikes without cause or rhyme, deliriously pointed at someone, anyone. And I am the great well of resentment that feeds him. We are the what world needs, a calamity, the great other, something to fear, something to hate. And with each glare and impassioned condemnation, the curse grows stronger within me.
TW

What is the absolute lowest amount of money we can build a home for?
Can we build one (in the absolute cheapest way possible - whatever that is) for $100k?
We just bought a farm (120 acres) in the Midwest (20 minutes from a town with a population of 300k). The farm is fenced, but is effectively vacant farmland with no structures. The farm has water, electric, and sewer (all city utilities - run to an old home site that is only a busted foundation).
We spent nearly our entire budget buying the farm and currently live 20 minutes from the farm. We would love to move to the farm, however the only way we could make that work is by building something.
Is it possible to build a 1000-1200 sq ft house for 100k? We would use a contractor wherever possible - this would not be a DIY thing.
This would be our primary residence for the foreseeable future.
For all I care, it could be a 1 bedroom cinder block home. Think 1 bedroom, 1 office, 1 bathroom - cheapest possible construction - but at least a half basement is required (tornados). I am just asking if it is even remotely possible to get this done for $100k?
We could build the house with cash if we stick to right around $100k. We maxed our budget out with the bank, so getting an additional loan for the build is not possible.

Faction:
Ironblood Kaiserreich (Imperial Federation of Germany)
​
Class:
Ersatz Yorck-class Battlecruiser
​
Background:
In an alternate timeline…
On 29 October 1918, a rebellion broke out amongst the sailors at Wilhelmshaven, with similar unrest breaking out on 3 November 1918 that led to the Kiel mutiny, these events, in which the sailors and workers in both cities began electing workers’ and soldiers’ councils modelled after similar councils of the 1917 October Revolution would be the catalyst that started the German Revolution of 1918-1919. By 7 November, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), specifically the pro-parliamentary Majority SPD (MSPD, to differentiate from the pro-Soviet-styled Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany or USPD) would take charge of the revolution, joining the calls for Wilhelm II to abdicate. Despite the Kaiser’s refusal, Germany’s chancellor, Maximilian von Zähringen, himself the heir to the throne of the Grand Duchy of Baden, would announce that the Kaiser and his son, Crown Prince Wilhelm had already abdicated.
On 9 November, Philipp Shiedemann, the State Secretary under Max von Baden was dining with Friedrich Ebert. As an SPD member was late for the meeting at the restaurant, Philipp Scheidemann would dine directly at the same table as Friedrich Ebert. It was there that both men would receive the news that Karl Leibknecht of the USPD was to announce the establishment of a Soviet Republic. While Shiedemann wanted to maintain the initiative for the MSPD by proclaiming a German Republic instead, he was talked down from doing so by Ebert, citing that the decision must be decided by the constituent assembly. ^\1]) Regardless, Leibknecht would announce the establishment of the Free Socialist Republic of Germany, followed two days later with the signing of the armistice at Compiègne two days later.
The move not to align with the USPD led to a rift between the two wings of the SPD, that would dominate the German Revolution, a fact furthered by Baden and Ebert meeting with General Wilhelm Groener, leader of Germany’s Supreme Army Command. The Baden-Groener Pact, concluded on 10 November, ensured the loyalty of the military and its support against leftist forces, and ensured that the military, limited by the Treaty of Versailles, would remain fully in control by the German officer class. This would prove handy however, as the row between MSPD and USPD deepened when far-leftist groups in the latter broke away to form the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and launch what would become the Spartacist Uprising in January 1919. The uprising was put down by the Freikorps and their leaders were effectively executed, and with the affirmation of Ebert and Baden, those responsible were not court-martialed and the worst offenders suffered lenient sentences, which made the government unpopular with the far-left.
As for the far-right however, while there were still misgivings about the new government, the fact of the matter remained that the monarchy still existed as an official institution, and indeed, many Allied and German leaders, both in support and in opposition to the war, favored transitioning Germany into a full Constitutional Monarchy ^\2]), which would be achieved with the 1919 German Constitution, also known as the Weimar Imperial Constitution. (in reference to the 1871 Constitution also being known as Bismarck’s Imperial Constitution) ^\3]) Although there were considerations to install one of the male sons of Crown Prince Wilhelm to become Kaiser, their young ages (the eldest, another Prince Wilhelm was twelve at the time) and the danger of a regency in such trying times forced the decision to instead put the Crown Prince younger brother, and the Kaiser’s fourth son, Prince August Wilhelm as the new Kaiser, becoming August I of what became known as the German Imperial Federation. ^\4])
The 1920s in Germany would be dominated by the desire to restore the prestige and privileges as to be expected by a European nation, chiefly the withdrawal of Entente troops from the Rhineland. Citing the need to ensure the status quo, the chief negotiator, Gustav Stresemann would negotiate with Britain and France to recognize and abandon its claims to German territory lost during the Great War, in exchange for a loosening of its military restrictions citing the communist threats to the east in the form of Soviet Russia, now the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the communist states that survived from it, the Hungarian Soviet Republic and the People’s Republic of Bulgaria. The result from these negotiations nearly led to a break, as France (itself slowly falling into the grip of far-left politics) not only did not wish to see Germany rearm in any capacity, but was also still keen on trying to detach the Rhineland from Germany (with the far-right even desiring its integration into France) something that had been thwarted by the limited German authorities in the zone as well as by the British who saw an attempt in 1923 and 1925 off, causing financial and diplomatic damage between France and the British. In spite of everything, many of the sides did get something out of the deal in the Treaty of Locarno, with Germany repudiating its claims to lost territories and a loosening of military restrictions in order to assist in seeing off the Communist threat. As part of the Locarno Treaty was a Naval Agreement, ratified by British Parliament and the German Reichstag that would effectively bring Berlin into the Washington Naval Treaty system, setting its maximum tonnage at 35% of the current tonnage in service under the Royal Navy, a move that would anger the French and push them closer to the Soviet Union. ^\5])
One of the results from this was the revival of Germany’s capital ship program, largely left moribund following Germany’s defeat in World War I. Initially, designs were planned for a cruiser with pre-dreadnought-sized main guns to serve as a replacement for the older Braunschweig-class pre-dreadnoughts in order to remain compliant to the old treaty, but with the new naval agreement put in place. The planned ships were canceled and instead development shifted to the construction of a new battlecruiser which was to be laid down by 1929. The design used was to be the old Ersatz Yorck-class design, retaining the 380mm main guns in four twin turrets, as well as her secondaries, twelve 150mm guns in single turrets, but would see the inclusion of Anti-Aircraft armament in the form of 88mm Flak guns in twin turrets and 37mm guns, also in twin turrets. The reasoning for why the Ersatz Yorck design was chosen in a slightly modified form was mainly to avoid stepping on the shells of the British, a design that would largely be viewed as dated by comparison (the original design was completed in 1916, and the planned lead ship was laid down that year, but was never completed due to a shift to U-Boat construction and was ultimately scrapped in 1918) but would serve as a stepping stone towards Germany among equals with the other great powers. The lead ship, which would keep the provisional name as its official name, SMS Yorck, was laid down on 5 February 1929, launched on 19 May 1931 and commissioned on 1 April 1933. SMS Prinz Heinrich (named after the Kaiser’s uncle), originally readopting the old provisional name “Ersatz Scharnhorst” and the second ship in her class would in turn, be laid down on 25 June 1931 at the Kaiserliche Reichsmarinewerft Wilhelmshaven (KRW) shipyard. She was launched on 1 April 1933 and commissioned on 12 November 1934. Heinrich herself would be followed by the third and final ship in that class, SMS Friedrich Barbarossa (formerly “Ersatz Gneisenau”), commissioned on 6 January 1936. ^\6])
Heinrich’s career would be dominated by developments wrought outside of Germany. The French Revolution of 1934 by the French Communist Party and its sympathizers led by Maurice Thorez would see the final repudiation of the Versailles Treaty, and in essence began both a naval arms race between France and Germany (the Dunkerques being developed as a response to Germany’s Hipper-class Heavy Cruisers, which in turn, led to the development of the Scharnhorst-class and later Bismarck-class Battleships) and a diplomatic effort between the forces of democracy against the Communist threat posed by the Soviet Union and the newly established French Commune. This diplomatic effort would see a close friendship, though not a formal alliance between Britain and Germany. The alliance (formally known as the Central European Alliance, though informally known as the Tübingen Accord) however would be with a number of states threatened by the spread of Communism across Europe. The battlecruiser herself would find herself involved in affairs with Spain and their civil war and their participation in non-intervention patrols (in reality, supplying arms to the nationalists in the face of French arms and equipment, and ultimately, upon a near Republican-Communist victory, the withdrawal of the Spanish Nationalists and Carlists from Spain)
Heinrich would spend the second half of 1939 and much of early 1940 on drydock for repairs and refit, during which the Second Great War would begin on 6 October 1939 with the Soviet invasion of Poland, a member of the Tübingen Accord. The French, using their tanks to invade the Low Countries in order to circumvent the Westwall, attempted to catch the Germans by surprise in a move that seem like a reversal of the Schlieffen Plan the Germans used against the French in the last war, but this French thrust was kept at bay, with parts of the Province of Hanover and the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg being captured by the Communards, with one instance seeing the titular Grand Duke, Friedrich August II, captured and swiftly executed for the crime of “being born into a family of tyrants.” Fortunately, Heinrich’s refit was to be completed in Kiel, and therefore, avoided having to be evacuated when Wilhelmshaven fell on 25 May 1940.
Upon Prinz Heinrich’s return to service on 6 June 1940, she would take part in a number of convoy escort operations between Germany and Norway after the northern part of the country was occupied by the Red Army. This would become the Mannheim Project convoys, in which Norway’s facilities specializing in the production of deuterium oxide, better known as heavy water would allow the materials to be shipped to Germany for the development of a nuclear reactor, a means to combat the Bolsheviks. Support for this endeavor would be furthered with Britain’s entry into the war in October 1940, and it would be often times when Heinrich would be joined by Battlecruisers HMS Hood or HMS Renown, two ships of whom Prinz Heinrich was originally designed to counter a quarter-century prior.
On 10 July 1942, one such convoy, Convoy WL 252 would be shadowed by French naval forces, led by French battleship Solidarité ^\7]). Dudley Pound, the First Sea Lord ordered the covering force to engage this force, leading to the Battle of the Celtic Sea. This battle, which featured SMS Prinz Heinrich and HMS Duke of York as well as a number of destroyers and cruisers, saw Prinz Heinrich enter into a gunnery duel with Solidarité. While Duke of York was the one who knocked out the battleship’s superfiring and rear turret, it was Heinrich that knocked out Solidarité’s boiler room, leaving her vulnerable to a pummeling by the allied forces, with the battleship’s attempt to get away thwarted by torpedo hits from German torpedo boat SMS S223, which reduced Solidarité’s speed and allowing the battleships to continue their bombardment until, unable to flee and wracked with so many hits, Solidarité capsized and sank. Though a major surface threat was eliminated, WL 252 would find herself sunk by Soviet bombers.
The tide began to turn on the Comintern in 1943 as the British began their slog into Spain and Germany and their eastern allies began pushing the Soviets back, successfully pushing them out of Poland, with Heinrich taking part in bombardment duties in the Gulf of Riga, and providing fire support for the German aerial attack on the Soviet Baltic Fleet at Leningrad. After another brief refit, Heinrich would be sent to Königsburg to retrieve the dead body of Kaiser August after a Soviet agent successfully assassinated the Kaiser on 20 June 1944, leaving the throne in the hands of his son, Alexander Ferdinand, now Alexander I of Germany. The last major actions Prinz Heinrich would take part in was in the Black Sea, supporting Allied incursions into the Black Sea coast of the Russian Soviet Republic, and was one of the few ships that made it into the Sea of Azov, albeit paying for it with a rocket strike that crippled the ship and would spend the immediate post-war years in drydock. The war ended with a defeat for the Comintern, with the communist governments toppled and some nations winning their independence from the defeated powers.
Rapidly made obsolete by newer big gun ships such as the Victoria Louise-class (originally the O-class) and the advent of aircraft carriers, Prinz Heinrich was decommissioned on 24 April 1949. By the request of Alexander I, she would become a museum ship in Wilhelmshaven, G.D. Oldenburg as part of the Friedrich August Memorial Naval Museum.
^\1]: IOTL, Scheidemann would dine at a separate table from Ebert when he got the news. As a result, Scheidemann, of his own accord, would proclaim the German Republic, effectively ensuring that whatever happened, that the monarchy would be abolished entirely. The events in the paragraph serve as the Point of Divergence.)
^\2]: While the German Empire [and in particular the Kingdom of Prussia] did have a Constitution, the Constitution of 1871, in reality the state was always run as a Semi-Constitutional Monarchy with the Kaiser holding significant power in a system that would be popularly called “Prussian Constitutionalism.”)
^\3]: To define the 1919 German constitution ITTL, it’s the Weimar Constitution of OTL, albeit with the powers attributed to the President of Germany in the OTL Weimar Republic instead being placed in the hands of the Kaiser. In essence, the Kaiser would still retain various powers, while losing a number of powers that the position held under the 1871 Constitution. While I could’ve went with something more akin to the 1949 Constitution and have the Kaiser serve in a more ceremonial capacity from the start, the Weimar Constitution was probably the most democratic in many respects for its age, only undone by the constitutional loopholes that would be expected by a constitution for its time, as well as the various extremist groups hatred for the Republic, chiefly the far-right [and in particular the Nazis] who constantly preached that the Weimar Republic was not created by Germans but was actually imposed upon them as part of the hated Treaty of Versailles.)
^\4]: Prince August Wilhelm is, to put mildly, a fairly controversial figure among the Hohenzollern imperial family. Nicknamed “Auwi,” he was a close personal friend of Hans Georg von Mackensen, a diplomat and eldest son of Field Marshal August von Mackensen, said personal friendship implied to have “pronounced homophillic tendencies.” After the abolishment of the German monarchy, he would join conservative nationalist movements and ultimately the Nazi Party in 1930 against the wishes of his father. August Wilhelm’s adoration of Hitler would play a role in the man’s rise to power come 1933, and it was his hope that Hitler would install him or his son on the vacant throne, a hope that would be dashed after the Enabling Act and would be left in the political wilderness.)
^\5]: IOTL, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement was made in 1935, in part due to Britain seeking to limit German expansion by arms reduction, and Germany hoping for an Anglo-German alliance aimed towards the Soviet Union and France, as well as the former’s guilt over what was seen as harsh terms set on the Germans with Versailles.)
^\6]: If the dates do not sound familiar to anyone, these are the dates that the first, second and third Deutschland-class Panzerschiff/Heavy Cruiser were laid down, launched and/or commissioned, with the Ersatz Yorck, now just the Yorck-class Battlecruisers all but replacing the Deutschlands in this timeline.)
^\7]: Basically Communist Richelieu)
—
Prinz Heinrich is the Tier VII Battleship (Tier VI in World of Warships: Legends) representing the Battlecruiser tech tree in Wargaming’s World of Warships. Heinrich represents the Ersatz Yorck-class Battlecruisers, the final battlecruiser design developed by the German Empire. Originally developed as Mackensen-class Battlecruisers, lessons learned from Jutland saw the gun increased to 380mm, utilizing the same guns as the Bayern-class Battleships. Like the Mackensen-class however, the ships were never laid due to the focus shifting to U-Boat construction, and the ships were canceled upon Germany’s defeat and the abolishment of the monarchy in 1918.
​
Namesake:
Prinz Heinrich is named for Prince Henry of Prussia), the second son of Kaiser Friedrich III and younger brother of Wilhelm II (not to be confused with two other Prince Heinrich of Prussia, one being the brother of Frederick the Great (famously known as the prince considered to take the throne of the United States when that was considered) and another the brother Friedrich Wilhelm II). Henry was a career naval officer, serving for some 45 years in the Kaiserliche Marine. During World War I, he was the commander of Germany’s Baltic Fleet, and while the fleet was considered inferior in means compared to Russia’s Baltic Fleet, was able to keep them on the defensive throughout the war until the 1917 Revolutions. After the war, and with the dissolution of the monarchy, Prince Henry left the navy and would live a largely quiet life until his death in 1929.
Historically, only one ship bore the name Prinz Heinrich, a unique armored cruiser launched in March 1900. She would serve as a scouting force flagship and gunnery training ship before World War I, and would take part in the Raid on Scarborough in 1915, before crew shortages led to her decommissioning in 1916.
​
Rarity:
SSR
​
Stat Spread:
As the last of the Imperial German Battlecruisers, Prinz Heinrich sports superb firepower (S) though suffers from fairly poor HP for a Battlecruiser (B) and an atrocious Anti-Aircraft capability (C). She also carries a fairly excellent torpedo stat (A). Her speed and evasion is about average for a battlecruiser (B).
​
Abilities:

• Eisen und Kohle (Iron and Coal): If this ship is equipped with the Twin 380mm Drh LC/1913 main gun, increase this ship’s crit chance by 10% (30%) and decrease this gun’s dispersion by 3.
• I’m My Own Master Now!: Decrease the loading time of this ship’s main guns by 20% (40%). When this ship fires her main guns, fire a unique barrage with damage based on skill level.
• Let’s Race!: If sortied with an Ironblood Destroyer, increase the Speed and Evasion of all Ironblood Vanguard ships by 3 and 5% (10%) respectively.

​
Personality:
Prinz Heinrich is a woman who is shown to be very confident and inspires such confidence in others. A very sporty individual, she is an avid fan of yachting and formula racing (her namesake also being as such, with the latter having a contest named in his honor, and was the precursor to the German Grand Prix today). As such, she is very skilled in maintenance, both for her rigging and in regards to boats, planes and cars. Though she can talk at length about her interests, she does tend to space out when it comes to other matters.
​
Quotes:

• Acquisition: Guten Tag, Kommandant! My name is Prinz Heinrich, Battlecruiser of the Ironblood. Hey, your port seems big enough to fit a racetrack in!
• Secretary (Idle) 1: It’s so dull and drab here, don’t you wanna cut loose and have fun?
• Secretary (Idle) 2: Heh, I wonder how many other factions have ships that didn’t get built.
• Secretary (Idle) 3: I’ve met the other Prinz Heinrich. I like her a lot, but man, it takes a while to explain things to her.
• Secretary (Touch): Hey, it tickles!!!
• Secretary (Special Touch): Enough! You will treat an Ironblood royal with respect!
• Skill Activation: Time to claim the checkered flag!
• Affinity (Disappointed): If you don’t want to race, then stay off the course!
• Affinity (Stranger): I didn’t have a history, Kommandant. But I don’t care about it. Today, history begins here!
• Affinity (Friendly): When you’re going high speeds, it doesn’t hurt to learn to drift, gotta stay the course, even if you need a little course correct, right?
• Affinity (Like): Whether in battle, out in the open sea or in a grand prix, sometimes you’ve gotta be in it to win it! Hehe, isn’t that right Kommandant?
• Affinity (Love): Life only lasts for a fleeting moment. So why waste time looking to the past and why waste time worrying about the future? As every racer should, seize the moment and live for today, because tomorrow’s another day!
• Oath: I’m glad to hold on to this ring, now come and take my hand, I wanna go drive off into the sunset, just you and me~!
• Sortie (Mackensen): Hey, I’m not joking!
• Sortie (Zeiten): Why do you have to be so cold?
• Sortie (KMS Prinz Heinrich): Woohoo! This is so much fun!!!
• Sortie (Hood): You look so graceful out there on the course, look at you!
• Sortie (Renown and/or Repulse): You two are like birds of a feather, just flocking together~!
• Sortie (Scharnhorst and/or Gneisenau): Nope, don’t look ugly to me!
• Sortie (Alaska): You look like you’re ready to punch someone’s lights out.
• Sortie (Graf Spee): Hey Deutschland, can I keep her?
• Sortie (König): I’ll show you my boat if you show me yours!

​
Design:
Prinz Heinrich is depicted as a woman in her early twenties with short white hair and bright silver, almost supernaturally glowing, eyes. Her attire borrows greatly in its inspiration from that of the Scharnhorst-class designs (in-reference to the design being used as a base for the later Scharnhorst-class Battlecruisers/Battleships) as well as her in-game namesake. A sleeveless white sweater with a black collar (which contains a pair of gold iron cross pins on each side of the collar) that runs down her torso, with detached white sleeves with black cuffs, also sporting gold iron cross pins). Heinrich wears a white skirt with black trim on the hem that runs down to her lower thighs, with white stockings and gray shoes rounding out the attire.
Heinrich’s rigging is in essence, a larger version of Mackensen’s rigging (in reference to the Ersatz Yorck’s being originally ordered as three Mackensen’s) A pair of lifelike, mechanical fish like rigging, one on each side, and each sporting two pairs of 380mm guns, with secondaries lining the side, all in a gothic-styled architecture.
​
A/N:
With the release of Tier VII's Prinz Heinrich, that marks the end of the Imperial German phase of Operation Weissenburg, as the next three ships in the tech tree (of which only Tier VIII & X will be covered in upcoming CC's) are, according to Wargaming's Cinematic Universe, designed in 1944, in the tail end of the Nazi era in Germany...
...except not really, as all three ships were actually paper designs developed during the late Imperial era, specifically various battlecruiser draft designs dated to the early spring of 1918. Shoutout to u/Hamartia_CL08 for doing the historical basis of the PR ships, as he did the basis for the design of one of these BC's, KMS Prinz Rupprecht, who is the Tier IX Tech Tree Battlecruiser. Both KMS Zeiten at Tier VIII and KMS Schlieffen at Tier X also follow this mentality, and I will get to those when we get to their concepts in the coming weeks.
As always, if you want to suggest a ship or retrofit in the future, please leave it in the comments below, you can also reach me via DM's to make your suggestions as well. Now about two years ago, I've covered a Character Concept of ARA General Belgrano, the story of USS Phoenix and her cursed career in Argentina, being on the recieving end as the second post World War warship sunk by a submarine overall and only ship to be sunk by a SSN at that. Well, it's funny how things pan out as we take a look at that self-same sub that fired its torpedoes into history, the third of the Churchill-class SSN's, HMS Conqueror (S48).
Link to the list of ships

In addition to its prowess in electrical contracting, ARS Constructions LLC excels as Commercial Building Contractor Milford, CT. The company has successfully delivered an impressive portfolio of commercial projects, including office complexes, hotels, educational institutions, and industrial facilities.

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 82%. (I'm a bot)

SHENZHEN, China, May 31 - For the ambitious Chinese tech entrepreneur, expanding into the U.S. just keeps getting harder.
There were few major impediments to having a Chinese company that did business in the U.S. from China.
Now, some mainland China tech business owners say they need to go further and gain permanent residency or citizenship abroad to avoid the curbs on and the biases against Chinese companies in the United States.
"The political narrative in Washington DC and in many state capitals is based on the misconception that all Chinese companies are intertwined with and taking direction from the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party," says James McGregor, chairman for Greater China at U.S. communications consultancy APCO Worldwide.
China's State Council of Information Office and foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment on efforts by some entrepreneurs to move abroad or their expressions of disillusionment with China.
Being ambitious in China also often entails cultivating ties with the Chinese Communist Party - a step they are reluctant to take, some of them also said.

Summary Source FAQ Feedback Top keywords: China^#1 Chinese^#2 U.S.^#3 state^#4 company^#5
Post found in /news, /worldnews, /China, /technology, /China and /China_Debate.
NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.

Evil often wears a mask.
John Burke felt his tendon tear. It happened just past the DEAD END sign, an instant after his foot struck the edge of the pothole. His right ankle folded and he went down hard--real hard--on the rough asphalt road.
Mid-summer morning, just outside New Orleans. Nylon jogging shorts and a tank top were no protection against road rash. His right knee hit first, then his hands. The pebble-studded pavement devoured the skin on both then bit into his hip, but he barely felt the hip. Maybe the shorts helped, or maybe by then John was in too much pain to notice.
He lay in the street--thank God cars were rare on Cemetery Road--bleeding, clutching his leg. Everything forgotten except his pain. He could see his ankle already starting to swell, turning purple along the inside. When he tried to flex it a white hot bolt of pain shot up his leg.
This is bad, John thought. Really bad. Doctor Van Dykes, surgery, months of physical therapy...
First thing--get off the street. John rolled onto his left side and had to stop and catch his breath as a wave of nausea washed over him. As the blood ran from his hands and knee where the road had carved away hunks of meat, he watched bright crimson drops splash onto the asphalt.
Hundred-year-old oaks overhung Cemetery Road, their branches draped in gray beards of Spanish moss that shaded the street. A quarter-mile past the DEAD END sign, the road bridged over the Chinchuba River, a slow-paced tributary no more than a couple dozen yards wide. Some mornings, mist drifted off the water's surface and into the woods on both sides of the road, giving the place a surreal look.
A perfect place to jog--run--John Burke didn't like using the "J" word. Jogging was what people did on weekends as they watched their bellies grow. John was a runner. At least four times a week with half-a-dozen races a year.
The nearest house--the only house on Cemetery Road--stood at the end, half a mile away, next to the graveyard for which the road was named. Maybe, just maybe, he could limp there, borrow a phone, call Gail. John looked at his watch, just 7:15. His wife didn't leave until eight. If he could get to a telephone she could pick him up and drive him straight to Doctor Van Dykes' office.
The trip was torture. Taking short hops on his left leg, he could make it only ten or fifteen feet before he had to rest. To rest John had to drop his right foot down and put a little weight on it and that sent waves of pain shooting up his leg. Behind him, he saw a trail of blood like red tears on the ground.
At the end of the road, the pavement gave way to a gravel driveway flanked on either side by two white stone columns. A six-foot, spiked, wrought-iron fence disappeared into the woods on either side. Hinged inside the columns gaped a pair of wrought iron gates. Mounted on the left hand column was a brass plaque with the number 100 etched in black. 100 Cemetery Road.
John paused at the top of the driveway and leaned against one of the gates to catch his breath. The drive descended at a slight grade, curved to the right, then vanished into the woods. He'd run past the driveway hundreds of times but had never actually seen the house or the cemetery. There was always something slightly unsettling about the look of it, something that made him pick up his pace as he ran past.
After a deep breath, he started hopping down the gravel drive, using trees along the way as resting points. The house was a hundred yards past the gate. A big two-story, clapboard construction, that looked run down, almost seedy. It had suffered years of wood rot and badly needed a coat of paint.
The gravel path ended at a two-car garage attached to the right side of the house. Left of the house, on the other side, past a stand of trees, John caught a glimpse of the cemetery. He could just make out a low iron fence and a few gray tombstones.
A wooden porch with a decayed railing spanned the front of the house. The front door was solid wood, without windows.
He leaned against the frame and knocked. A minute passed. John knocked again, this time pounding with the bottom of his fist. At least another half minute went by before he heard slippers shuffling on the floor just inside. The door opened just a crack and a white haired old lady peered out. "Yes," she said, suspicion in her voice.
John held up his right leg, showing his bloody knee and black and blue ankle. Exhausted, he didn't have time to mince words. "I'm hurt. Can I use your phone?"
The old lady looked down at John's leg. A look of concern washed over her face as she threw open the door. "Come in. Oh, my goodness, come in."
John stretched his arms across the doorjamb as he hobbled inside the threshold. "If I can just use the phone, my wife will come pick me up."
"What on earth happened?" she said, leading him through the foyer.
"Twisted my ankle in a pothole."
"Oh, my word," she said, turning to look. "Is it very bad?"
"I think so."
"Come sit down. Let me get you something."
The foyer floor was tile, but he wanted to be careful. "I don't want to get blood on anything."
She shook her head. "Don't be silly. Blood washes right out." The old lady stepped toward John and took hold of his left arm, letting him lean some of his weight on her.
In the den, John was relieved to see a wooden floor. As he dropped onto the sofa, he nodded toward a telephone on an end table. "If I can just use the phone..."
A strange look flashed across the old lady's face, but was gone in an instant as she nodded toward the telephone. "That one doesn't work." She pointed toward a door that looked like it led into the kitchen. "You stay put. I'll call somebody for you in just a second, but first let me get you some water."
John tried to protest, but she was determined. While she was gone, he eyed the room. The den was big, with six bay windows overlooking the woods behind the house. The room was filled with old-fashioned furniture and had a cavernous fireplace at one end, but it also had a worn look, and a smell. A smell John always associated with old age, with his grandfather's house in the last few years before he died.
Next to the dead telephone was a framed black and white photo of a pretty young woman in a riding outfit, posing at what looked like the front gate of a ranch. It was the old lady, much younger and much thinner.
When she came back carrying a tall glass of ice water in one hand, John still had both hands clutching his swelling ankle. He jabbed an elbow toward the photo, more for something to say than anything else. "Is that you?"
She nodded. "My father owned the Rocking R ranch.
The name was familiar. One of the biggest meat suppliers in the state. "Owned?" He stressed the past tense.
She nodded. "After Daddy died, we had to sell. Rising interest rates and the drop in beef prices, we got just pennies on the dollar." She sounded bitter.
For a second she stood quiet and John used the lull to introduce himself and explain how he'd hurt his ankle.
She handed him the glass. "I may have seen you jogging before. Looked like somebody was chasing you."
John thanked her and smiled at the image that popped into his head of this nice old lady lurking in the woods close enough to see the road. As he took a long sip from the glass, he noticed a slightly bitter taste that reminded him why he drank bottled. "You live here alone?"
"No. My husband and I are retired. For forty years we owned Muller and Son funeral home."
"That's where we had the service for my father," John said.
"I'm sorry." She patted his shoulder. "When did he pass?"
He had to think for a second. Time flies. "Two years this past spring," he slurred.
She stared at him with a look of compassion. "Our son would have handled that. We sold the business to him four years ago."
John's head began to spin. The glass slipped from his fingers as he crumpled to the floor. Darkness.
* * *
John Burke cracked his eyes and saw blinding lights. Then felt thumping. Someone was thumping on his chest. He opened his eyes all the way. White light, bright white light. Flat on his back, he tried to raise his hand to shield his eyes but his arm wouldn't move--at least not far. Just a couple inches then something held it. Same thing happened when he tried to use his other hand.
John felt a cold hard floor beneath him--the rough surface of cement--as he rolled onto his side. There was something wrong with his hands. They were trapped at his waist as he tried again to shield his eyes from the blinding light.
More thumping, this time on his left shoulder. He blinked several times to clear his vision. His eyes focused on a bearded, bare-chested, fat man, squatting on the floor next to him. A pair of steel handcuffs clamped on the big man's wrists were fastened to a belt encircling his waist.
"You okay?" the man said.
John just stared at him, realizing the man wasn't just bare-chested, he was completely naked.
"I said, are you okay?" the bearded man asked again.
"Where am I?" John's head felt like it was going to split open.
The naked fat man shrugged. "I don't know."
John looked down at himself and saw that he too was bare-assed, his own wrists handcuffed and bound to his waist by a two-inch wide leather belt. Using his elbow and good knee, John started to snake away from his new acquaintance.
"You can't get away," the man said.
Get away from where?
The pain in his ankle made him stop. He looked around, saw he was in a room maybe thirty feet by thirty feet. Besides him and the fat man, there were four other men in the room. All naked, all handcuffed and belted.
The bearded man hadn't moved. "It's not me you got to be afraid of." He pointed toward the room's only door. "It's the old man."
* * *
The old man had been in four times to bring food. Slop was more like it. He came into the room carrying the thick brown paste in a couple of five-gallon buckets. The stuff tasted like it had a lot of lard in it.
"How long have you been here?" John asked.
The bearded man--Skeeter he called himself--just shrugged. "The old man always keeps the lights on so we can't tell the difference between day and night."
Along one wall was a chest-high trough into which their keeper poured the paste. A second trough along the adjacent wall held water. Like animals, the men stood in front of the troughs, stuck their faces into them, and slurped.
Like everyone else, everything of John's had been taken from him while he was unconscious: shorts, shirt, socks, shoes, and most important, his watch. In addition to belted handcuffs, the other men wore leg irons, essentially a pair of oversized, stainless steel cuffs with a foot-and-a-half of chain between them. But John had been spared that, probably due to the size of his swollen ankle.
Skeeter didn't know why he was here, why any of them were here. "I was just hitchhiking"
"Hitchhiking?"
He nodded. "On the interstate."
"The old man was driving a van. Pulled over and gave me a ride. After a few minutes he reaches into a cooler between the seats and hands me a beer. I'm talking about a sealed up beer. Popped the top on it myself. I took couple of sips, remember thinking it tasted kind of funny, like it got spoiled. Next thing I know I wake up here--like this." Skeeter tugged at his handcuffs, rattling the chain looped through the belt.
During the next several feedings John got pretty much the same story from three of the other four men. All hitchhikers, all picked up by the old man. The fourth guy, the one the others said had been here the longest, didn't talk. Just leaned against the wall in a stupor.
"Something in the food," Skeeter said.
"What do you mean?"
Skeeter patted his gut. "I didn't have this when I got here." He nodded toward the food trough. "And it makes you tired all the time."
* * *
Feedings. That's the only way John Burke had of marking the passage of time. Seemed like they were spaced out evenly, several hours apart, figured maybe three times a day. It was after the seventh feeding that the old man came and took away the guy who wouldn't talk--the sleepy guy.
He came in wearing a full-length plastic apron and carrying an electric cattle prod. He used the prod to shock the sleepy guy in the ass and wake him up, then delivered a couple more jabs to drive him from the room. Just after the door closed behind them, John heard the two bolts shoved into place.
"What the hell was that about?" he asked Skeeter.
"That's the third one I've seen him take."
"Do they come back?"
Skeeter shook his head.
"Where do they go?"
"I don't know. But...I'm afraid my turn's coming."
"I want to get out of here," John said, "and that looks like the only way out."
"Bad as this place is, I got a feeling what's on the other side of that door is a lot worse."
Hungry as he was, John barely ate. A couple things he'd noticed, the other four men were flabby and they slept a lot, especially after a feeding. The food--slop they called it--had to be the reason. The thick brown paste made everyone fat and sleepy. Something in it, some type of sedative, and maybe something else, something that made you want more. John couldn't remember ever being so hungry. Still, he only took a mouthful at each feeding.
And while the others slept, John worked. The leather belt around his waist was buckled at the back and secured with a small padlock. The handcuffs ran through a stainless steel ring in front. He'd tested the steel parts, the buckle, the lock, and the ring, but didn't think there was any hope of attacking them; the only weak spot was the leather itself.
So as soon as the others filled their bellies and nodded off, John would hobble to the drinking trough. He'd found a slightly rough edge at one corner and had begun scraping the belt against it. The belt was thick and the leather tough. The going was slow, but at least it was something. And something was better than nothing.
* * *
Just after the twenty-ninth feeding, that's when the old man came and took Skeeter away. He'd taken two more since that first one, and two new ones had come in. They came in one at a time, three feedings apart, and just like he imagined it had happened to him, the old man dragged them unconscious into the room and left them. They'd each awakened, naked, shackled, and groggy.
Then it was Skeeter's turn. He must have known because as soon as he heard the bolts slip back his face turned white. He backed himself into one of the far corners, trying to put as much distance between himself and the door as he could.
Skeeter had told John he used to be a wrestler, high school and college, back before the drugs and the booze, back before he'd hit the road. Since then he'd ridden his thumb, crisscrossing the country in search of a good time. Skeeter put up the best fight John had seen from any of them, but the belt, the handcuffs, the leg irons, and the cattle prod were just too much. One two-minute round was all the former wrestler had in him. After that, he was lying on the floor in a puddle of his own urine, a blubbering pile of flabby flesh covered in scarlet welts.
The old man grabbed the chain between Skeeter's ankles and dragged him through the door. Helpless, John just watched. The most terrifying thing was the old man's lack of emotion. No spark of evil in those eyes, just the look of a tired man trying to get through another day.
By the thirty-fifth feeding--John figured eleven or twelve days since he arrived--he had managed to saw through almost the entire two-inch leather belt, just an eighth of an inch remained.
Only one other of the original five who were in the room when John woke up was left. The old man came in, wearing his black plastic apron, and carrying the prod. In a minute it was over. He'd prodded the man through the door on hands and knees, the poor bastard doing everything he could to keep from getting shocked. This time only one bolt clicked into place.
For what seemed like an hour John sat in the middle of the room and watched the door, his stomach twisted with fear. Just as exhaustion overtook him and his head started to nod, the bolt shot open and the old man swept back into the room, wielding the cattle prod like a sword. John slid backward against the far wall as the old man's eyes fixed on him. But there was no hatred in them, nor malice as he strode toward John, waving the tip of the prod in a "come here" motion. As the cool wall pressed against John's back, he felt his bladder let go, felt the warm liquid spill down his thighs.
I'm going to die.
(to be continued...)

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 36%. (I'm a bot)

In response to Russia imposing restrictions on the number of German officials on its territory, Germany has revoked the licences of four of the five Russian consulates in Germany.
Details: A spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin announced that Germany is responding to Russia's reduction of the total number of employees of German diplomatic missions and other organisations, such as the Goethe Institute, to 350 people, by revoking the licences of most of the Russian consulates.
He said the Russian side had been informed of the decision on 31 May, and Moscow had been asked to finally wind down the operations of these consulates by 31 December 2023.
At the same time, Germany has been closing its three consulates in Russia - in Kaliningrad, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk - since November.
Moscow made its decision most likely in response to attempts by the German government to get rid of Russian intelligence officers disguised as diplomats.
When a double-digit number of employees left Germany in April, the Russian Foreign Ministry described Berlin's actions as "Hostile" and warned Germany there would be consequences.

Summary Source FAQ Feedback Top keywords: Germany^#1 Russian^#2 decision^#3 German^#4 Russia^#5
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This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 72%. (I'm a bot)

White men seeking to join the Royal Air Force were described as "Useless white male pilots" in leaked emails that expose the pressure placed on recruitment officers to improve diversity.
The revelations appear to contrast with repeated assurances by Air Chief Marshal Wigston that well-intentioned efforts to improve diversity did not discriminate against white men, two informed defence sources said.
Sky News first revealed last August that Group Captain Elizabeth Nicholl, the then head of RAF recruitment, had resigned in protest at what she, according to defence sources, deemed to be an "Unlawful order" effectively to pause the selection of white male recruits onto training courses in favour of women and ethnic minorities to hit "Impossible" diversity targets.
"He continued:"I noted that the boards have recently been predominantly white male heavy, if we don't have enough BAME and female to board then we need to make the decision to pause boarding and seek more BAME and female from the RF. "I don't really need to see loads of useless white male pilots, lets [sic] get a [sic] focussed as possible, I am more than happy to reduce boarding if needed to have a balanced BAME/female/Male board."
Another email sent the following day by the same squadron leader to a more senior member of the recruitment team, entitled "BOARDING PROFILE UPDATE", suggested a struggle to hit diversity targets.
These efforts included the cancellation of boards that only comprised white men.

Summary Source FAQ Feedback Top keywords: board^#1 female^#2 White^#3 RAF^#4 BAME^#5
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The mercenary chief has also repeatedly accused Russia's Defense Ministry of refusing to provide his forces with sufficient ammunition during operations in eastern Ukraine.
In 2019, Macron had courted controversy by saying that NATO had become "Braindead" - comments made three years into former US President Donald Trump's term in office when the alliance had appeared rather more fragile and long before Russia's actions in Ukraine helped galvanize the group.
Russian administrators in Ukraine's eastern region of Luhansk said at least five people were killed and 19 wounded in a nighttime bombardment that they blamed on Ukraine.
Russia, Ukraine evade watchdog's rules for protecting Zaporizhzhia plant.
Ukraine is working with BAE to produce weapons: Zelenskyy.
Ukraine is collaborating with major British defense company BAE Systems to set up a Ukrainian weapons production unit, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

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Post found in /worldnews.
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Hello new/returning player! Whether you're considering buying or you've just installed it and don't know where to start, there's a good chance you have some questions about the game. I've been playing pretty much since launch, and since the Discord imploded and the in-game tutorial kinda sucks, I figured this would be a good place to put together a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know about Railroads Online. Feel free to scroll through the headings to find what you're looking for!
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Is it worth the money?
Railroads Online is exactly what it says on the tin and exactly what you see in the trailer. There are railroads, they are online, and you do have complete freedom to build your own railroad in a sandbox environment. If that's your cup of tea, try it! Steam's refund policy allows you to refund the game if you have less than 2 hours played and you've owned it for less than 2 weeks, so even if you don't like it when you start, you have a safety net. That said, this game is in early access. And, the regularly-updated branch is a beta to the early access, so it is seriously lacking polish in certain areas. This game is physics-based, and that can take a toll on performance for trains longer than a dozen cars, and the Beta branch reportedly has some people's GPUs on their knees. Updates also regularly introduce bugs, ranging from mildly amusing to make-sure-you-back-up-your-save-file. For some people that sort of thing is understandably not worth $35, while for others it gives the game character. I've gotten close to 10 hours of playtime for every dollar I spent on it, so obviously I'd be inclined to say it's worth it, but everybody's experience will be different.
​
Note: The following guide is geared towards the Beta version of the game. This version has the most features, looks the best, and receives regular updates, though there are a number of known performance and stability issues. The majority of it still applies to both versions of the game regardless, though the largest changes have been to track laying.

Getting Started

Warning: Remember, this is Railroads Online. There is no "offline" mode, strictly speaking, but you can drag the "player limit" slider down to 1. If you're going to play with other people, use a password. If you ever forget to, and someone comes in and undoes all of your hard work, you will never forget again. You have been warned!
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Your first railroad
So, you've launched the game! Congratulations! Now what? Well, it's probably good to get yourself oriented first.
The game spawns you in on the spawning platform. The three tracks you've spawned next to are permanent, and they are where new equipment spawns when you purchase it. You are given Betsy, a flatcar, and $2000 for free, and the rest is left up to you.
Before you run any trains, you'll need to build some track to run them on. Take care here, because there is no edit tool; if you build something, the only way to change it is to delete sections and rebuild. Measure twice, cut once, and make it look nice the first time so you don't have to redo it later. Or something.
Press G to bring up the majority of your sandbox tools: Track Construction, Facilities, Locomotives (the shop), Demolish, Rerail, and Logging, plus the Respawn button. I will cover all of these tools in time, but for now, all you need to be familiar with are the Track Construction tab, the Demolish tool, and the Logging tool.
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Track Construction
Track laying in this game has been... fucky... for a long time. It's a LOT better now than it used to be, but I still recommend downloading RROx (Railroads Online Extended) and using the fast sprint cheat when you're building. It will save you hours (not to mention the other features it offers).
First of all, everything in this game except for rolling stock is FREE! Go nuts! Want to triple-track the main? You can! Want to fill the entire southern half of the map with water towers? Your call! Fun first, safety third. Anyway:
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In the Track Construction menu, you will be greeted by a bunch of track options. Feel free to place them wherever to get an idea of what they are.
The first row is, of course, 3 foot narrow-gauge rail. The I, II, and III varieties are identical except for the amount of ballast. I has some, II has a bit more, and III has a lot. On cliff faces, too much ballast can cause ugly clipping, so it's best to use tier I when you can and step it up if it's too short. The game will not let you place a node if the spline is not supported by ground or some other structure at every point.
The default building mode is spline mode. Click once to place the first node, and click somewhere else to place the second node. Boom! You've placed your first track segment. If you click on the ground, it will face whatever direction your UI currently says it's facing, but if you click on another piece of track it will do its best to connect to the other node as smoothly as possible. This can result in some janky turns if you're not careful, so keep that in mind. There are keybinds to rotate the endpoints to face the direction you want them to. Track will not snap to another track unless you see the glowing chain link icon above it. If you don't see it at first, walk around a little, staring at the desired connection point until you trigger the hitbox.
The other building mode is circle mode. It does what it says on the tin– your track will follow a circular arc with the radius you specify. Use smaller segments if you can, because for some reason the angles get weird if you try to do more than 90° in a single segment. In this mode, you can snap to existing track on your first click, but it will not snap to another track for your second click because it only cares about following the circle. This build mode is useful for a number of reasons, not least of which being the ability to see what your maximum turning radius is. A 30 meter radius is the minimum, but on your main line you should aim to stay above 60-100 meters to avoid derailments at high speeds.
Next in the menu: switches. If you know what trains are, you probably know what switches are. In RRO, if a switch is pointing one way, and you come in from the other, it will automatically align with you to let you through, unless A.) you are in a handcart, or B.) it is the 3-way stub switch. Also note that they are not perfect mirror images of each other (not sure how they managed to mess that up but oh well), which may cause problems when creating complex structures like yards.
The 90° crossover piece is your friend when designing parallel tracks. You can chain them together to ensure equal spacing, matching angles, or you can simply use them as placeholder nodes to snap your track to if you need to delete part of it. Two crossover pieces are far enough apart for two trains to pass each other comfortably, so it's handy for smoothing your double-tracks, if you choose to build them. The 45° crossover piece is also good, for when you want a spacer piece that's slightly longer than the 90°, or if you don't want your simple wyes to be a hundred feet across. (Still waiting on that 10° crossover, Astragon.)
Turntables are what you expect them to be. The plain Turntable I is small enough to fit in some tight spaces like yards, but a lot of locomotives will only fit on Turntable II. Turntables have historically been a bit buggy, particularly if you reload a save while something is on it, so be wary.
The bumper is a bumper. 'Nuff said.
Embankments are ballast without the rail. They're nice as decoration around the base of certain structures, or as filler in between the tracks in yards, or as ballast for bumpers and crossovers. You can also access a similar trackless version of the stone wall by using its drop-down menu.
Bridges and stone walls work exactly the same as ballast track: they will not allow you to place a node if the spline is not supported everywhere. However, there is a workaround for this: nodes can be supported by ballast. If you use small enough segments, 3 Ft Rail III can be used to cross gaps using just the previous segment's ballast as support. If you fill the gap with ballast, you can place your bridge on top of it, and then remove the ballast later. You can pretty it up with some stone walls as supports, if you want to.
​
And that's everything currently in the Track Construction menu! The Engine Shed and the Coaling Tower also have small pieces of track, but they are kept in the Facilities menu.
Note: You can make it to pretty much every industry in the game with less than a 3% grade. In real life, this is considered pretty steep, but in-game you can get away with even steeper track if you can't be bothered to work out the best path.
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Demolish Tool
The demolish tool is delightfully simple. It deletes things! By default, it only deletes rail, but that can be changed with the drop-down menu. Be very careful using the "All" option-- you could accidentally delete your rolling stock.
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The Logging Tool
The logging tool will probably be your second most-used tool, right after track construction, because everywhere you want to place track, there are trees in the way. You can click almost anywhere on the tree to remove it, and it does this for free, but you might have trouble removing a tree if the bottom two-thirds of it are buried in ballast. If spam-clicking feels tedious, you can hold down the mouse button until the saw finds a part of the trunk that it likes.
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That should be everything you need to know to build your first railway!
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Industries

In Railroads Online, your objective is money. Moneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoney. But u/Embite, I hear you ask, how do I GET money? Well, I'm glad you asked! The answer is industries.
There are 9 industries in RRO, which you can see on the map: the Smelter, the Sawmill, the Logging Camp, the Freight Depot, the Iron Ore Mine, the Oil Field, the Ironworks, the Refinery, and the Coal Mine.
Each industry has inputs and outputs. For example, the Logging Camp has two output platforms: one for logs and one for cordwood. To load a car with the output, simply position your railcar where the crane drops the cargo and click the crane to start loading. For some outputs like the iron mine, there's a chute instead of a crane, but it's the same idea. When you unload a car, the cargo teleports to the side you clicked on, so make sure you're standing on the platform that you want to deliver to.
The inputs and outputs for each industry is listed in the table below.
​

Location	Input	Output
Freight Depot	Anything	Nothing
Logging Camp	Nothing	Logs, Cordwood
Sawmill	Logs	Beams, Lumber
Iron Ore Mine	Beams, Lumber	Iron Ore
Smelter	Iron Ore, Cordwood	Raw Iron, Rails
Coal Mine	Beams, Rails	Coal
Ironworks	Lumber, Raw Iron, Coal	Steel Pipes, Tools
Oil Field	Beams, Steel Pipes, Tools	Crude Oil
Refinery	Lumber, Steel Pipes, Crude Oil	Oil Barrel

You should notice a few things:

1. Logging Camp has no inputs. This is where the supply chain of RRO starts. The lumberjacks do all of their work for free, and they will never run out of logs, or cordwood.
2. Freight Depot (the big warehouse near spawn) has no outputs. This is where you can return to sell whatever products you've collected and turn them in for straight cash. You get the same amount of money regardless of which buyer you send cargo to, so it's recommended that you try to deliver to another industry whenever possible, since you get money AND more cargo to sell, rather than just the money. If all you need is money though, the Freight Depot is where to go.
3. There is a clear progression from one industry to the next. I've ordered the table so that once you've connected to one industry in the list, your railroad will have access to all of the cargo needed for the next industry down.

While it's best to try and deliver to new industries whenever possible, sometimes (especially early on) you will simply run out of money for all the new railcars you need to haul the stuff. For the early game, my best suggestion is to run beams from the sawmill straight to the freight depot. Stake flats (which carry beams) are among the cheapest rolling stock, and each carload is worth $72, compared to $60 for a flatcar of logs. You only need 3 beams per car, so it's fast to load and unload. While cordwood is also easy to do, with each carload worth $80, each flat is much more expensive to buy, and each car carries 8 units of cordwood, making the loading time much longer. Plus, many more industries use stake flats than the cordwood flats, so you will be investing in the future of your railroad as you go.
Another way to make money in RRO is via Firewood Depots and Coaling Towers, which brings us to the next available construction tool,
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Facilities
Facilities are buildings you place down yourself to facilitate the management of your railway. At the top of the menu are the Sand House, the Firewood Depot, and the Coaling Tower. They're very self-explanatory: The Sand House contains sand to refill your locomotive's sander, the Firewood Depot is where you restock on firewood, and the Coaling Tower is where you restock on coal. The Sand House is, as far as I can tell, unimplemented as of 5/29/2023, but the others are very important. In RRO, you need to produce the fuel that runs your railroad.
Firewood Depots are easy to stock, not least of all because they spawn in full of firewood, in case you run out in the middle of nowhere. To refill a Firewood Depot that has been exhausted, you simply unload any form of wooden cargo (logs, lumber, beams, or cordwood) onto the side of the platform that doesn't have firewood on it. When designing your yards, it's always smart to make space for a firewood depot, because the platforms are spaced far apart and most locomotives in RRO run on firewood.
Coaling towers do not spawn in stocked with coal, and coal is not available until about half of the map is connected by your railroad, so coal-fired locomotives will be a late-game commodity. Once you have access to them, though, they are restocked in much the same way as firewood depots.
Water towers are also important. Without water, your trains have no steam, so place these wherever they're convenient. They refill slowly on their own.
Engine sheds are purely cosmetic in this game, since the locomotives don't require servicing or shelter. They are, however, available in a variety of nice paint schemes, and a roundhouse is a great way to spruce up any boring-looking switching yards.
The last facility is the Telegraph Office, which is the most convenient structure in the game. Wherever on the map you place one, your map will be updated with a brown box with a T in it. Clicking his box allows you to teleport to any telegraph office from anywhere else in the game, saving you a lot of walking between industries and yards.
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Locomotives (the shop), and Companies
The shop is where you use your hard-earned money to buy locomotives and rolling stock. You can check your funds in-game by pressing P. The "tier" of an item is the level your player needs to be in order to purchase it. Your level increases every time you deliver cargo to an industry. When other players join your game, they can join your company by pressing Tab and clicking "Join Company" next to your name. When they do this, any delivery they make will count as a delivery for you, not them, which increases your money and XP much faster than doing it all alone. Employment is forgotten when the player relogs.
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Rerailing
Rerailing is finicky. Basically, you click "rerail," spam LMB on whatever you're trying to rerail until its name appears in the UI, and then walk around looking at track until it appears where you want it to. You can flip it around with LMB, and then drop it with RMB. Rerailing on switches currently seems to be a little broken.
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Respawning
This option will send you back to the spawn yard if you ever manage to get stuck. It was more useful before telegraph offices were added, and most of the gamebreaking ways to get stuck have been patched, but if you want to use it you simply click and hold until you respawn.
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Trains!!!!!!1!1!!!

Now, with a line of track connecting your spawning yard with the logging camp, you're ready to finally fire up your Porter 0-4-0 and run some trains! In case you're new to operating a steam locomotive, here's a quick rundown of the controls:
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Controls
First, open up the firebox and throw a few logs on the fire. Pick up logs with LMB, look at the firebox until the UI displays its temperature in the top left, and throw with RMB. You can throw logs back onto the pile if you picked up too many (you can hold up to 5 at once). Now you have to wait for the fire to heat up, which then makes the boiler heat up, and then you will finally see the dial on your pressure gauge increase. Once you've got pressure, you can move the locomotive.
The big lever above the firebox is the regulator, aka the throttle. It basically controls how fast your built-up steam enters the cylinder, or in other words, how much power you're sending to the piston, and by extension, the wheels.
The lever coming out of the floor is the reverser (or the Johnson bar), which controls at what point in the cylinder's stroke steam is allowed to enter the chamber. All the way forward means that steam comes in anytime it would push the wheels forward, and all the way back means that steam comes in anytime it would push the wheels backwards. In between, it controls whether the steam flow is constant, or if it comes in short bursts. Or, at least, that's how it works in real life. IRL you can achieve more efficient steam usage by setting the reverser bar near the middle and letting the regulator stay open; however, in RRO, as far as I can tell it simply multiplies the % the regulator is open and the % that the reverser is set and uses that number as the "go amount." So, for all intents and purposes, the reverser is just another regulator (in RRO).
The lever to the right of that is the brake. Betsy (i.e. the Porter 0-4-0) has a mechanical brake, meaning it applies braking force as long as you have it on. In some locomotives, though, the brakes are powered by a steam-powered compressor, which you need to activate yourself via a valve somewhere, or else your brakes will have no effect.
The whistle and the bell do as you expect. There is another handle which opens the cylinder cocks, which as of 5/29/2023 is purely cosmetic, as are the sanders. IRL, cylinder cocks are used to blow condensed water out of the cylinders, and sanders are used for extra traction in slippery conditions.
Finally, most locomotives have lamps that you can turn on and off with LMB, or by using the steam-powered generator, if it has one.
And that's pretty much it! Different locomotives have different features, and levers are often in slightly different places, but they all operate on the same general principles. Locomotives are also often specialized for a particular job. For example, engines like the Eureka are specialized for high speeds with low power, while engines with shorter wheel bases like the D&RGW Class 48 are specialized for sharp turns and yardwork, while the geared locomotives like shays and heislers are specialized for steep tracks in mountainous terrain. You can find a number of resources online to find statistics for each of the different RRO locomotives.
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Coupling
The 3 foot narrow-gauge railway in RRO uses what is called "Link and pin" coupling, which uses, unsurprisingly, links and pins. To couple two cars together, you need enough space to fit a link between them. Press LMB to insert a link in the coupler. Only one car should have a link. Once the link is in place, push the cars together and use RMB to place a pin in both couplers. Et voila! Your train is now longer.
Tender locomotives have unique couplers. First of all, instead of a link, tenders are connected to the cab by a drawbar. Press LMB on the tender, then back up the locomotive and use RMB to hitch it to the drawbar with a pin. For locomotives with cowcatchers, the front is outfitted with a drawbar as well, which can be extended and retracted with LMB. This link is weaker than the usual link-and-pin, so only use this for short, slow trips or yardwork.
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External Tools

While straight-up modding RRO is currently very difficult, there do exist certain external tools to help provide you with a more enjoyable experience with a game that is, at times, excessively grindy.
RROx
RROx, or Railroads Online Extended, is by far the most useful RRO extension I've come across. It offers a real-time minimap (that maps your rail lines for you!), remote control of locomotives, cranes, and switches, unrestricted teleporting, cheats like free money, fast-sprint and flight, as well as optional access to all of these features for other RROx users that join your game. It even provides everything necessary to create a plugin of your own, if you're so inclined.
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Railroad Studio
railroad.studio is a free online save file editor for RRO. With it you can replace trees, rename/repaint locomotives and rolling stock, delete track, cheat in money, etc. Currently the go-to save editor.
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Technical Bits

Just some extra technical bits that are worth knowing:

• A lot of the game's files are stored in your AppData/Local folder under the name arr, a name inherited from the devs' previous game, American Railroads.
• Your save files are stored in %localappdata%\arr\Saved\SaveGames.
• A number of config settings are stored in plaintext .ini files in arSaved/Config/Windows, where you can edit settings like the maximum view distance beyond what is usually allowed. The maximum setting typically allowed is 3, but I've increased this to 10 without any notable performance drop. Nevertheless, edit settings beyond supported values at your own risk. The game needs to be restarted for settings changed in this way to take effect.

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Miscellaneous Tips

• All controls can be rebound in the controls menu.
• You can change your POV with V, and you can lean left and right with R and T.
• If you prefer to drive with the GUI instead of in first person, you may have an easier time finding the button prompt by standing in front of the locomotive rather than inside it.
• Placing a switch, then a 45° on the turnout, and finally another switch so that the straight edge is parallel with your first switch, creates two lanes that are far enough apart to fit the switch's lever on the inside.
• If you back far enough away, track and ballast hitboxes will despawn and let you place things inside of them.
• There is a large, flat plateau northeast of the smelter that is a convenient place for a yard connecting the smelter, iron mine, and coal mine.
• There is a lot of space for a yard just over the hill west of the freight depot.
• The un-deletable track southeast of the spawning track is for the shop.
• The game keeps a list of every tree you've cut down and uses this to load the map, which (allegedly) makes the game take longer to load if you cut more trees than you need to. Use a save file editor like railroad.studio to replace missing trees.
• The walkway on Bridges II is always on your left as you build it.
• You can snap track to turntables if you rotate it to where you want the connection to be.
• Firewood depots only replenish the piles if every pile is missing at least 5 logs.
• If you're strapped for cash, loading a car with logs and then immediately unloading that car to a firewood depot on the other side is fast, easy money. This is pretty cheaty though, so you might as well save yourself some time and just use a save file editor.
• A switch's turnout is about 10 degrees.
• Locomotives don't respond to changes in the controls until a 1-second timer counts down. The timer resets every time you make a change, but letting go (releasing left-click) applies the change immediately.

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That's pretty much everything I've got. I hope that this guide has been of use to you! If I forgot something, got something wrong, or you have an idea for how to improve this guide, feel free to leave it as a comment below. Happy railroading!

Hey there, I apologize for the longer read, but I am looking for some career advice or guidance for those that have been involved in the CRE for some time (development experience is a plus). To give some brief context, I recently got a role as a development project manager with a GC in my area. Previously, I was in the residential RE mortgage space for a little over 5 years - I saw the writing on the wall in regards to career growth in that space and wanted to try something different. Met with a local GC in the area last year and politely bugged him every 2ish weeks on wanting to come on board to help him with his development opportunities.
The GC I have ended up working with is very successful on the construction side of the equation and is wanting to move into the development space to ultimately feed the GC side, capitalize on the additional earnings a developer can incur and eventually expand. I was brought on to help streamline this process and ultimately take the busy work off the owners plate while he manages / runs the GC work day to day.
So far, what this work has looked like for me in my 2 month tenure here (we had 4 active PSA's in place):

• Reviewing / updating proformas
• Calling local municipalities (we work several different states, ranging from FL to NY) and understanding their process to develop / uncover soft cost not accounted for
• Updating, informing, and consulting with all parties involved in the process (engineers, architects, legal counsel)
• Additional minuscule task, such as tracking critical dates and ordering reports / scoping out potential new opportunities for our client / meeting with brokers

So this is where I ultimately need guidance. I am not sure if I am in the right place if I want career growth and really just need someone to provide some insight on best way to utilize my time because currently I am all over the place with anxiety. Some key contributing factors to my stress are:

• Compensation: In my short time here, during my due diligence process, I have uncovered many unaccounted for cost that have made almost all (4) of our active deals cost prohibitive (about $600k cost uncovered total between them). I get a smaller salary (roughly half of what I made at my old job) but a majority of my earnings come from bonus of these deals getting developed, built, and sold. So that completely eliminated that earning potential (but also proves my worth in a way). I was promised a certain % of these deals and was told we would, at bare minimum, average 4 a year, which seems unrealistic at this point
  
• Mentorship: My current boss is not in the office much or is too busy managing the GC work that time for council or guidance is VERY limited - a lot of what I have done so far is by asking dumb questions, utilizing resources online and figure it out as I go approach. I have been trying to network with local players in the meantime to better my understanding.
  
• Education - Plays into the point above, newer company and lack of understanding of the development process OR lack of time to help me. I am going to propose the company covering some educational courses for me to take to "better the development team" but ultimately make me a better tool if this happens to not work out. Looking into the CCIM development track and A.CRE financial modeling course. But currently, it is pretty much non-existent.
  

So ultimately - I am all over the place. Really just looking for advise, guidance or reassurance. Any thoughts are appreciated.