Apologies for the frequency at which this post is appearing, as I have yet to find what I am searching for. I don't believe my standards are excessively high, but perhaps I simply don't have enough time to communicate and would rather arrange a meeting if we seem to be a good match. In any case, let me share my story.
Once upon a time, there was a tall, nerd, and not-much attractive guy pero pwede na who woke up one morning, looked at the sky, and thought, "Well, this sucks." He knew there was only one solution - to turn to the all-knowing oracle of modern dating: T̶i̶n̶d̶e̶r̶ Reddit lol.
With his trusty cup of coffee in hand, he set out to find someone who shared his thirst for knowledge, someone who could keep up with his nerdy quirks, and someone who he could eventually take on 'friendly' dates (whatever that means). He wasn't in a rush to jump into anything too serious too soon, but he knew that someday, he wanted to find someone he could build a meaningful and caring relationship with.
So if you're a fellow lover of coffee, learning, and all things nerdy, this tall drink of water might just be the partner in crime you've been looking for. Dating at times feel like a job hunt doesn't it? So I thought it’d be fun to write it in a mock format just like a resume! LOL

About me

An old soul as older people I spoke with would say, into business and investments, frustrated law student, can drive a fucking 10 wheeler truck (sarcasm towards people looking for someone with wheels), no ex issues or sabit, can provide a certificate of no relationship (kahit wala naman talagang ganon haha).

• I'm 5'10", medium built if that matters, resides in quezon city. I would say that I'm not that much attractive but would consider myself very hygienic.
  
• I'm an INTJ, Aries, if you’re into MBTI and believes in horoscope.
  
• Loves to read self-help books as I love to learn and motivate myself along the way.
  
• I'm the kind of person who doesn't follow the herd blindly, even if it means standing alone in a field of conformity. My principles are like a compass, always pointing me in the right direction, even if it's not the most popular route. In short, I'm not afraid to swim against the current, as long as it's in line with my beliefs.
  
• You could say that my communication style is like a triple-layered cake: serious, meaningful, and sprinkled with a healthy dose of humor. Sure, I may come off as awkward at times, but that's just my way of keeping things interesting. After all, who wants a bland and flavorless conversation when you can have a deliciously complex one? So, if you're looking for someone who can engage in a thoughtful discussion, crack a few jokes, and still leave you with something to ponder, then look no further.
  
• I'm what you might call a clean freak with a creative streak. As someone who's a bit OC (okay, maybe more than a bit), I can't stand to see a messy or cluttered home. But don't worry, I'm not the type to wait around for someone else to do the dirty work. I take pride in noticing when something needs to be done and taking care of it without being asked - it's like a satisfying little victory every time. And when it comes to interior design and home decor, I'm practically a pro. I'm always on the hunt for the latest and greatest tools and gadgets to keep things looking fresh and stylish. So if you're looking for someone to spruce up your space and keep things sparkling clean, I'm your go-to guy.
  
• I'm not in the business of putting people down - unless we're talking about the volume on the stereo (badum-tss!). But seriously, I believe in treating others with kindness and respect, even when it's not the easiest thing to do. After all, life is hard enough without having to deal with someone else's negativity. So let's lift each other up instead of tearing each other down, shall we?
  
• I set feasible goals and actively pursue them.
  

Here's a list of my favorites:

Movies/Series	Music	Places	Activities	Books
Godfather	Radiohead	Paris (not yet)	Cycling	The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday
Sherlock	Eraserheads	Coffee Shops	Painting	How to Win Friends & Influence People
Castaway	Chicago	Cebu	Roadtrips	Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Forrest Gump	Ebe Dancel	Japan	Diving	Start with Why by Simon Sinek
Homeland	Urbandub	Rome (not yet)	Piano	Atomic Habits by James Clear
Before Sunset	Frederic Chopin	Canada	Travelling	How to think like a Roman Emperor
The Office	Eminem	New York (not yet)	Cooking	Letters from Stoic
Big Bang Theory	Dr. Dre	Maldives (not yet)	Film & Photography	48 Laws of Power
Breaking Bad	Elton John	Marrakesh (not yet)	Badminton	The Intelligent Investor

Pros:

• Responsible (Good credit score, no debts, no criminal records, and self-reliant)
  
• Curious type of person, who's ready to listen and craves to learn a lot of things
  
• Doesn't do drugs and is not a heavy drinkealcoholic.
  
• Respects your views and accept healthy criticism.
  
• Actually appreciating the things you'll do for me, and showing it. If you cooked a big dinner, saying thank you is nice. Doing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen is even nicer, and in my opinion, should be the norm. The cook doesn't clean. If someone does something for me, I'll show them that their effort was appreciated instead of just accepting their generosity and then running off back to whatever I'm doing.
  
• Accepts responsibility for one's own actions and does not try to blame everything or everyone else.
  
• Doesn’t play online and computer games
  

My preference:

• Someone who has a strong passion for accurate and comprehensive learning, maintains a normal BMI, and is beautiful and easy on the eyes - I believe that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes (no offense intended towards plus-size women!).
  
• High standards for what she wants and is not afraid to communicate it.
  
• Craves knowledge too. Love and isn't afraid to try new things
  
• Passionate and proud about something they've been working on/have done/are planning to do
  
• Confident about what they want but isn't in-your-face about it.
  

Let's take a break from stressing over the mundane and focus on the important stuff - like what will make us happy for the rest of our lives! Share your thoughts on how we can achieve that and let's get this happiness train moving! Oh, and if you're curious let’s exchange photos first!

I've played a couple of city building challenges and not managed to complete them, either through lack of interest or the difficulty being too high, so I thought I'd have a crack at playing/writing my own variation.
The general rules were that I could only buy the basics from the catalog, anything else had to come from a Sim-owned business, that professions and rewards would only become available when it made sense for my little town's economy, and that I wanted to build up to experiencing everything The Sims 2 and its expansion packs has to offer. I'd play each household for a Sim week to keep all the playable Sims' ages consistent, and I'd make it a little more difficult by playing only the starting neighbourhood families and whoever they marry/move in, no CAS Sims.
Initially there wouldn't be a food store or grocery deliveries so all the Sims have to farm, then whoever can afford a lot first could sell farmed goods. At Business Level 5, wholesale freezers are unlocked and at 10 the Grocery Delivery interaction is unlocked. Other businesses have similar rules.
Here's the story so far (I really should've been making notes from the start):
The Gavigans moved into 1 Beach Crescent, Driftwood, where Nathan took a job as an Adventurer and Mary stayed home to raise Isaiah, write a newspaper column about cleaning, and grow produce. They had a daughter, Amelia. Isaiah is now an adult with the Romance aspiration and wants to WooHoo with 20 different Sims. He owns a small fresh flower shop in the business district. Amelia is a teen with the Fortune aspiration who wants to become a World-Class Ballet Dancer
The Picaso family moved into 2 Beach Crescent, Driftwood, where Jessica briefly worked in Education before being fired for poor performance. Matthew tended the family vegetable plot and wrote a Mechanical column for the local newspaper. They had three children: Alina, James, and Linda. James and Linda are twins. Alina has just grown into an adult with the Family aspiration and wants to Raise 20 Puppies or Kittens. She recently bought a business in the business district where she sells her paintings. James is a Knowledge Sim and wants to become a Criminal Mastermind. Linda is a Romance Sim and wants to become a Celebrity Chef.
The Traveller family moved into 3 Beach Crescent, Driftwood where they farmed. Tina writes editorial pieces for the local newspaper, and Trent has a cooking column. Trent and Trisha had Sabrina together, and then Trent was abducted by aliens and had Rebecca and Zack with Pollintation Technician. Tina is an adult with the Knowledge aspiration and wants to become a Criminal Mastermind, she owns a toy shop in the business district where she started off selling handmade toys but now also sells items from the catalog. Sabrina is a teen with the Pleasure aspiration who wants to become a Celebrity Chef. Rebecca and Zack are children.
The Ramaswami family moved into 4 Beach Crescent, Driftwood, where they farmed and wrote for the local newspaper. Sanjay wrote short stories for the paper, while Priya wrote about styles and fashions. They had two daughters, Cadence and Annabeth, who have taken over their parents' columns in the newspaper. Sanjay got a job in the Science career and is currently a Theorist. His next promotion will make him a Mad Scientist, opening up the Medical career path. Cadence is a Pleasure teen with the desire to become a Game Designer. Since the Gamer career won't be unlocked until someone makes a level 5 Arcade, she's already investing in arcade games for when she leaves school so that she can start her own business. Annabeth is a Fortune teen with the aspiration to become a Prestidigitator.
The Ottomas family moved into 5 Beach Crescent, Driftwood. Grandma Dora supported Peter and Samantha by looking after the children while they worked as teachers. Samantha eventually became the Education Minister, opening up the possibility of going to University for future generations of Sims. Dora is now buried at the Beach Crescent Graveyard after dying of old age.
David finished school and got a job in Oceanography, eventually leaving home and marrying Michelle Tse. They now live at 1, Sand Road and have twin babies Rhett and Link. David reached the top of the Oceanography career, unlocking it for future Sims. He's a Popularity Sim and wants to become a Rock God, something he's unlikely to achieve because there's still no music school. Michelle is a Fortune Sim who wants to become a Business Tycoon. Unfortunately, this career track won't be available until there's a successful business of each of the types required for the challenge: a grocery store, a restaurant, an art gallery, a music school, a dance school, a gym, a disco or nightclub, and an arcade. Michelle currently works as an employee at Isaiah Gavigan's flower shop.
Sharla married Gavin Newson.
Tommy still lives at home with his parents. He's a Pleasure Sim and aspires to become a Celebrity Chef. He started by founding Zippy Eats, a fast food restaurant in the business district. When that reached Level 5, he was able to find a job in the Culinary career track. He's currently a Sous Chef.
Keri and Ray moved to University
The Goodie family moved into 6 Beach Crescent, Driftwood, and adopted the Newson family. After the death of the Goodies from old age and the other siblings moving out, Georgia Newson inherited the large house. She's a Romance Sim with the aspiration to become a Hall of Famer. She owns a gym in the business district and is waiting for it to reach Level 5 before she can enter the Athletic career now that the town's population is high enough to have its own sports team. Herbert and Faith are buried at Beach Crescent Graveyard.
Gavin Newson moved to 1 Beach Lane, where he started growing produce to sell in the Farmer's Market in the business district. He married Sharla Ottomas. Gavin has the Fortune aspiration and wants to become a Business Tycoon. Sharla has the Pleasure aspiration and wants to have 50 Dream Dates, an aspiration she'll have to reconsider now that she's married.
Ginger Newson initially moved with Gavin to 1 Beach Lane, and made toys for him to sell alongside the produce at his grocery store. Eventually, she moved out and started a business selling electronics. She married Weylon Menon and they've had their first child, Norman. Ginger has the Family aspiration and wants to reach her Golden Anniversary. Waylon has a Fortune aspiration and wants to become a Business Tycoon.
Gallagher moved to 5 Beach Lane, opened a fast food restaurant in the business district, and married Ivy Copur. Gallagher's business reached Level 5, allowing him to enter the Culinary career track, he is currently a Restauranteur and wants to be a Celebrity Chef to complete his Romance aspiration. Ivy is a Knowledge Sim who wants to become a Space Pirate, she's nearly there, currently a Dread Pirate. They are preparing for their first baby together.
Garrett moved to 4 Beach Lane and married Sophie. Once the town's population was high enough, Garrett went into the Politics career despite his lifelong dream to become a ballet dancer, hopefully he can still satisfy his Fortune aspirations. Sophie, also a Fortune Sim, has an aspiration to become a Criminal Mastermind. She's currently working as a Con Artist.
Gabriella moved to 6 Beach Lane and founded a dance school in the business district. The dance school is currently Level 5, meaning that one Sim can enter the Dance career. She's a Fortune Sim who wants to become The Law. She's currently working as a Law Firm Receptionist. She's engaged to Orlando Centowski, who has moved in. Orlando is a Family Sim who wants to Marry Off 6 Children.
When the University opened up, the city gained some new playable families:
The Sharpe family: Roxy and Edwin and Roxy's boyfriend Jonah Powers. Since Roxy and Jonah both wanted to pursue more romantic relationships elsewhere, they moved into separate dorms. After getting a bit of life experience, Jonah Powers changed his Romance aspiration from having 20 simultaneous lovers to the Fortune aspiration of becoming a Space Pirate. He now lives at 2, Sand Road with a mortgage to pay off.
Edwin graduated and moved into 3, Sand Road, with a mortgage to pay off. He is a Knowledge Sim who wants to become Head of SCIA. During his studies, he allowed his romantic relationship with Delilah O'Feefe to wane.
Roxy graduated and moved into 4, Sand Road, with a mortgage to pay off. She is a Romance Sim with the lifetime aspiration to WooHoo with 20 different Sims. During her time at University she managed to WooHoo with Kennedy Cox, Victor Copur, Peter Sims, Ocean Huerta, Cristopher Roennigke, Jason Centowski, Jeremy Bui, Luc Grove and Jonah Powers, so she's nearly halfway there!
When Edwin Sharpe decided to focus on his studies, Delilah O'Feefe began a relationship with Mitch Indie. She graduated from University and moved into 5, Sand Road with a mortgage to pay off. She has a Knowledge aspiration to become a Media Magnate, a career path that's open to her since there are correspondents writing for the paper in each of the 7 topics and they all have the maximum skill in their chosen subject. She's waiting for Mitch to graduate.
The Friends household Mitch Indie and Max Flexor.
The Students household Emily Lee and Tom Freshe.
Marla Biggs
The First Year household.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: "the only thing that can defeat a monster is an even bigger monster".
No movie does that line more justice than Wolf (1994).
Jack Nicholson, the protagonist, who is cursed with Lycanthropy, is a good man at heart, who is prepared to suppress his natural instincts & transformations with the use of a talisman.
Unfortunately, his former protege, James Spader, is not only another person with Lycanthropy, but he also happens to be a full blown psychopathic monster.
We already know up to the climax how dangerous Spader's character is, having brutally raped and ripped apart a woman who was his own lover.
Then comes this climactic scene. Poor old Jack is trying his hardest to suppress transforming, barring himself in a cage with his talisman firmly on, and the love of his life (Michelle Pfeiffer) watching over him.
Then Spader gatecrashes the party, in full werewolf form, and makes it perfectly clear exactly what he intends to do to Michelle Pfeiffer (and I think you can figure out for yourself what that is).
As he begins to savagely torment Pfeiffer, Nicholson has finally had enough, and removes the talisman that suppresses his powers. As Spader foolishly attempts to attack Pfeiffer, completely ignorant to Nicholson, Nicholson rapidly undergoes a transformation into a werewolf much nastier and more vicious than Spader's.
And he does not hesitate, within moments of transforming, to show the monstrous Spader who the real alpha of the pack is. Monster vs monster. Old lion against young lion. Only this time, young lion is no match against old lion, and soon the scary monster is reduced into a helpless pathetic coward.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjXXLcbVzeE

So throughout my posts and comments I have already shared a few of mine.
This particular one covers my headcanon on his pre-Hogwarts and summers during his first four years at Hogwarts: https://old.reddit.com/HPfanfiction/comments/13gfgtx/tom_riddle_discovers_his_love_for_reading/
Some other ones that I have:

• Lestrange and Avery were his best friends. Lestrange (the one that was contemporary to Tom's time in Hogwarts) was the closest thing he would ever call a friend. In fact he might have been his first and last true friend, while Avery was mostly what Pettigrew was to James and Sirius. Later in life, when the Death Eaters were formed, the trio wielded almost equal power within the organization. However Tom was the real charismatic leader, while Lestrange was the cautious voice of reason. Avery was pretty much the weak link. When Lestrange realized what direction Tom intended to take the organization in (and refused to listen to his advice) and furthermore saw his children, Rodolphus and Rabastan admiring more Tom's ways than his, he decided to turn informant for the Ministry. This lead to a lot of arrests and even deaths. Lestrange also tried to turn Avery to his side and kick Tom out of the organization, but Avery much more preferred Tom as he saw him as a real leader so he snitched on Lestrange. Upon finding out, Tom was heartbroken and that's the point he became extremely cynical and refused to allow anyone else to get too close to him. He captured Lestrange and brutally tortured him, ripping his tongue out in the process. Then he presented a nearly dead Lestrange to the Death Eaters and said the Aurors did this to him. He convinced his sons to kill him "to put him out of his misery" as a last mocking to his former best friend.
  
• Tom and Dumbledore had a similar relationship as Harry and Snape. Tom perceived Dumbledore as being unfair towards other houses and favoring Gryffindors and while, unlike Snape, Dumbledore never showed direct cruelty or meaness towards Tom, he always kept a close look on him and would often tax even the smallest mistakes he would catch Tom making.
  
• In his first two years Tom was really withdrawn, behaved mostly like at the orphanage. He spent of his time in the library and his classmates found him rather creepy. He was trying to figure out his ancestry but since there were no records of a Riddle family and Marvolo was not a notable man enough to be recorded anywhere, he was getting nowhere. He did however excel in his classes and occasionally helped Avery (who was sort of like Neville and he kind of felt pity for him) with his homework and Avery tried to form an awkward friendship with him. However when the Gryffindors decided to pull a prank on the Slytherin's new chaser, Lestrange by disillusioning a bunch of snakes and hiding them in his Quidditch uniform, Tom Riddle used his Parseltongue to control the snakes (kind of paralleling Harry's reveal in book 2) and chase away the Gryffindor bullies. It was then that he formed a close relationship with Lestrange, after the latter asked him if he was related to the Gaunts. Partially out of interest for the source of information that Lestrange could provide and partially because Lestrange was genuinely a likeable person, Tom developed a close friendship with him. It was also due to the information provided by Lestrange that he was able to track his ancestry to Slytherin.
  
• In the third year, due to unforeseen circumstances, the Qudditch game between Gryffindors vs Slytherins also got switched to the last one to parallel PoA. Tom Riddle, now becoming more outgoing, decides to help the Quidditch team to pull a prank on the Gryffindors. I haven't thought exactly what but likely something to do with hexing brooms. That's when he earns the respect of Nott, Rosier, and Mulciber which are older students in the team.
  
• I have detailed in the link above Tom Riddle's brush with death due to Dragonpox in the link above and how he came to name himself Voldemort as well as his rising interest in defying immortality so I won't bore you again with it. However the Dragonpox epidemics also affects professor Merrythought who is quite old. She has to take a sabbatical year to recover. In turn paralleling the events from OotP, the wife of the first muggleborn head of DMLE is hired as a supply teacher (she's also a Muggleborn). Due to the atrocities committed during WW2, she starts pushing an agenda of Muggle tolerance and using magic to help them. This annoys the purebloods of Slytherin and it is during this time that Tom discovers the Chamber of Secrets. He plans to use the Basilisk to terrify the new professor. After several attacks that fail to chase her out of school, he decides to finally kill her but he accidentally kills Myrtle. This scares Tom and makes him back out of his plan. Still since he already killed someone, may as well try his hand at creating a horcrux. However Myrtle's death does also manage to chase away the supply teacher from the school. This leaves several students without a DADA teacher before the OWLs. In an attempt to fill that demand, Tom starts a study group with his fellow Slytherins where he teaches them dark arts, and paralleling it to Dumbledore's Army, he calls it the Knights of Walpurgis since the study group is started on the night of the 30th of April, as Tom is a huge fan (as I detailed in the link above) of astronomy.
  
• However not all Ministry workers are satisfied with the closing of the Chamber of Secrets case and an over-zealous Auror lingering on, accidentally overhears Tom bragging to his gang about the Chamber of Secrets and how he plans to reopen it again next year. This prompts him to keep a close look on Tom and under the pretense that he thinks a student might have been involved in the murders of the Riddle family, he is reluctantly allowed to return to Hogwarts the next year because of a compelling argument he made to his bosses that he has suspicions a child might have been involved since the Trace got activated despite no known magical child living in Little Hangleton. And since Dumbledore conveniently left the school to get more actively involved in the war against Grindelwald, this Auror replaces him as a Transfigurations teacher. This annoys Tom to no end since he feels the new Transfigurations teacher is hounding him even worse than Dumbledore and he can't afford to reopen the Chamber of Secrets.
  
• Meanwhile Tom learns of a legend that the four founders once saved some goblins from a "sticky situation" and befriended them. At the Hogwarts inauguration, an envoy of goblins came and presented them with four gifts. For Gryffindor it was a sword that would make him as powerful as every enemy he defeated, for Ravenclaw a diadem that retained the wisdom and knowledge of all its wearers and transfer it to the current wearer, for Hufflepuff a cup which when filled with something it would never end (kind of fits the protections in Gringotts) and for Slytherin, who was blind and relying on snakes to guide him, a locket that would allow him to see as far as the soul of humans (hence the eyes within the locket that Harry sees when he opens it). Tom instantly becomes obsessed about possessing this items. Also realizing he has no chance of reopening the Chamber as long as the Auror is within Hogwarts, he will want to leave it as a legacy and thus creating other horcruxes. It is then when he realizes that if he made an object out of each of the founders' relics and the ring he stole from his uncle (which while he didn't know what it was sensed its immense magical power) and becomes fascinated by the idea of splitting his soul in seven. Hence his question for Slughorn.
  
• In the following year, he researches all the relics. He manages to find from Helena what happened to the diadem, learns that the locket stayed with the Gaunts and makes the connection with what Morfin said that his mother stole the locket, learns that the cup also stayed with the descendants of Hufflepuff which are now called the Smiths and learns how to get the sword. So he starts a plot to steal the sorting hat but when he manages, the hat is quick to read his mind and tells him that he'll never be able to make the sword his as Gryffindor left it to the Gryffindor house since he did not have any children and enchanted it so that it will forever remain to the worthy Gryffindors. This prompts Voldemort to drop his plan of making it a horcrux and decide he will in time find another powerful item to use it as a container for his seventh part of the soul.
  

That's it for now. If you have any other headcanons about the lesser known deeds of Tom Riddle, feel free to share. As for me, I have developed a biography for him a while ago, but seeing that I am too old to write fanfiction anymore, feel free to borrow also any of the ideas.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/27/politics/ken-paxton-impeachment-texas-house/index.html
The Texas House of Representatives has voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, an unprecedented move following a legislative probe that faulted the third-term Republican for a years-long pattern of corruption, including abusing his office’s powers, retaliating against whistleblowers and obstructing justice.
Under state law, Paxton is now temporarily suspended from his duties as attorney general and will await a Senate trial.
The vote was 121-23, with two members voting “present.”
“The evidence is substantial. It is alarming and unnerving,” said GOP Rep. Andrew Murr, chair of the General Investigating Committee, during his closing statement following hours of debate. The committee recommended 20 counts of impeachment against Paxton.
Democrat Rep. Harold Dutton was one of the members voting present. He said the impeachment vote had been rushed. “The process by which we’re getting this done seems to be abbreviated to the point that it just encroaches on due process,” said Dutton.
Paxton denied wrongdoing in a Friday news conference, but focused his statements against the impeachment this week on his record as a key opponent of President Joe Biden. Paxton’s office has filed dozens of lawsuits against the Biden administration.
The now-suspended attorney general called the impeachment a “politically motivated sham” in a statement just minutes after the vote.
“The ugly spectacle in the Texas House today confirmed the outrageous impeachment plot against me was never meant to be fair or just,” he said.
Paxton said he was never given a chance to present evidence refuting the findings of an investigation that he abused his office. He has cast House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican who presides over a chamber where his party currently holds 85 seats to Democrats’ 64, as a “liberal.” He continued his attack on Phelan saying, “Phelan’s coalition of Democrats and liberal Republicans is now in lockstep with the Biden Administration, the abortion industry, anti-gun zealots, and woke corporations.”
The Office of the Attorney General issued its own “comprehensive report” about the allegations following the impeachment vote, saying it “unequivocally refutes incorrect testimony” against Paxton. The office also released a report it commissioned from an outside law firm, although the report from Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard and Smith LLP notes it is based only on information and testimony provided by the attorney general’s office.
Republican Governor Greg Abbott can appoint a provisional replacement while Paxton is temporarily suspended. Paxton would be reinstated if he is acquitted at his Senate trial.
The impeachment vote had its origins in an investigation launched in March by the General Investigating Committee of the Texas House after Paxton had asked the legislature to approve $3.3 million in government funds to settle a lawsuit with four whistleblowers who were fired from his office.
That investigation led the committee – a five-member panel investigating corruption in state government – to approve 20 articles of impeachment Thursday, setting up the vote in the full House.
During the debate Saturday, Rep. Charlie Geren, who is a Republican, claimed Paxton had threatened fellow House members.
“I would like to point out that several members of this House, while on the floor of this House doing the state’s business, received telephone calls from General Paxton personally threatening them with political consequences in their next election,” Geren said.
Opponents of the impeachment largely declined to address the allegations against him, instead focusing on the investigation leading up to the proceedings. “I don’t think today is about whether there’s guilt or innocence. It’s about the process,” said Rep. Tony Tinderholt.
“I’m not here to defend Ken Paxton,” Rep. John T. Smithee stated on the floor. He went on to say, “What you’re being asked to do today is to impeach without evidence. It is all rumor. It is all innuendo. It is all speculation.”
Paxton’s impeachment is a stunning rebuke of a Republican official in a state where the GOP controls all levers of state government. Voters in Texas shrugged off the swirling scandals around Paxton last year, handing him a third term in November’s election. Paxton had earlier fought off multiple opponents for the GOP nomination, including Bush family scion George P. Bush, the state land commissioner, whom he easily bested in a runoff.
Paxton has long been a controversial figure who has clashed with Texas legislative leadership. A conservative who has aligned himself with former President Donald Trump, he led a lawsuit in 2020 seeking to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election.
He retains support within the Texas GOP. In a statement Friday, state party chairman Matt Rinaldi blasted Phelan for what he called a “sham impeachment.”
“The voters have supported General Paxton through three elections – and his popularity has only grown despite millions of dollars spent to try to defeat him. Now the Texas House is trying to overturn the election results,” Rinaldi said, adding that he was looking to the “principled leadership” of the Senate to “restore sanity and reason for our state.”
In Texas, no attorney general has ever been impeached and removed from office. The only two elected officials to lose office as a result of impeachment were Gov. James Ferguson in 1917 and District Judge O.P. Carrillo in 1975.
For Paxton to be removed from office, two-thirds of the Texas Senate’s members who are present will have to vote to convict him. His wife, Angela Paxton, is a state senator representing a Dallas-area district.
It’s not yet clear when the Senate, where Republicans have a 19-12 majority over Democrats, will conduct its trial. The state’s legislative session is scheduled to end Monday.
While only the governor can call special sessions once the legislature is out of the biennial regular session, the Texas Constitution states that impeachment is the one issue for which the state House and Senate lawmakers can bring themselves into session without the governor, according to Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University.
Litany of legal trouble
The impeachment proceedings are the latest in a series of legal troubles for Paxton.
CNN has previously reported he was facing an FBI investigation for abuse of office and that Justice Department prosecutors in Washington, DC, took over a corruption investigation into Paxton. He is also under indictment for securities fraud in a separate, unrelated case. Paxton has denied all charges and allegations.
The state House probe came after Paxton had sought to settle a lawsuit with four former employees of the attorney general’s office. Whistleblowers had accused him of using his authority to benefit political friend Nate Paul, a real estate investor who had donated tens of thousands of dollars to Paxton’s campaign. In the settlement, Paxton apologized but did not admit fault or accept liability. He denied wrongdoing and said in a statement he had agreed to the settlement “to put this issue to rest.”
One of the impeachment articles accuses Paxton of using employees of the attorney general’s office to write a legal opinion intended to help Paul avoid the foreclosure sale of properties owned by Paul and his businesses.
It was among a series of articles focused on Paxton’s relationship with Paul, including accusations he hired an outside attorney who issued more than 30 grand jury subpoenas while investigating a “baseless complaint” made by Paul, benefited from Paul hiring a woman with whom Paxton “was having an extramarital affair,” and provided Paul with favorable legal help in exchange for renovations on Paxton’s home.
The articles of impeachment also detail what are described as Paxton’s efforts to cause “protracted” delays in the securities fraud investigation.
And the articles say voters in November did not have a full understanding of Paxton’s legal troubles because he had intentionally obscured the details of the charges he faces.
“Paxton then concealed the facts underlying his criminal charges from voters by causing protracted delay of the trial, which deprived the electorate of its opportunity to make an informed decision when voting for attorney general,” the impeachment articles state.
A wild week
The impeachment of Paxton follows a wild week in which the attorney general accused House Speaker Phelan of presiding over the House chamber while drunk and called for the speaker’s resignation.
On Tuesday, Paxton posted on Twitter a letter to the state House ethics panel, asking for an investigation into Phelan for performing his duties in what Paxton described as “an obviously intoxicated state.”
Paxton’s call for Phelan’s resignation came after video circulated on social media last weekend of Phelan appearing to slur his words as he presided over the House chamber at the end of a late-night session. Paxton did not present any evidence beyond the video clips to support his claim Phelan was drunk.
“It is with profound disappointment that I call on Speaker Dade Phelan to resign at the end of this legislative session,” Paxton said in a statement he posted on Twitter. “Texans were dismayed to witness his performance presiding over the Texas House in a state of apparent debilitating intoxication.”
Less than an hour later, the state House General Investigating Committee revealed it had subpoenaed records from Paxton’s office as part of an investigation Phelan’s office said had started in March. The committee, whose members are appointed by Phelan, voted unanimously Thursday to recommend Paxton’s impeachment.
Phelan’s office said Paxton’s allegation was merely retaliation for the House ethics panel’s probe.
“Mr. Paxton’s statement today amounts to little more than a last-ditch effort to save face,” Phelan communications director Cait Wittman said in a statement Tuesday.
Democratic Rep. Terry Canales said the broader context of last week’s all-day session made clear Phelan “was not under the influence.”
“At that point in the night the House had been in session over 13 hours and we had been doing so for multiple days in a row. We were all exhausted,” Canales said in a statement. “Nevertheless, I had multiple interactions with the speaker throughout the day and that night and I can say unequivocally he was not under the influence.”

(This is my old alt account. I don't want this to be on my main account because people might use it against me on there.)
I cannot enjoy things in a normal way.
In may/June of 2021 there was a period of time where I watched the 1998 cats musical twice a day and I still rewatch it regularly. I can name every character and describe their relationships from the top of my head.
In may of last year I got really obsessed with twenty one pilots. I can recognise every song from the first few seconds.i have lost sleep over them and their music has become a big part of my identity.i was regularly crying myself to sleep while listening to vessel.
Since Wednesday this week my whole world has been revolving around eurovision for some reason, despite jt happening two weeks ago. More specifically luke black (who represented serbia) and jann (who almost represented poland). I'm also currently in the process of ranking every single eurovision song based on how much i like it. (The end goal for that is to determine how much i like each country on average and maybe even make some graphs to show how the quality of the songs they send each year changes.) For the entirety of yesterday I drew fanart of these two and I'm 80% that I've had at least one panic attack over the song gladiator. I went to sleep at 3:30am on Wednesday night because I could not fall asleep and I usually have no trouble falling asleep once I'm in bed.
These aren't the only examples, others include daniel craig's James bond, the shows hannibal and black sails, and deadpool for some reason. Technically the show sherlock has also been an obsession, but I don't like thinking about that show.
This can't be normal. I should be able to think about other things too, right? During these periods my heart feels heavy and i feel like I'm physically frankensteined together with these things. Or maybe having panic attacks over a song because I love it too much is normal? People have asked me if I'm on drugs when I talked about the cats musical

Summerhouse: finished the latest season, WHO ELSE CANT WAIT FOR THE REUNION!? I was truly disappointed in Danielle & honestly all the house mates who took a swing at carols relationship mad disrespectful. He’s probably soooo hurt during this reunion after seeing the show.
Sailing yacht : just finished the latest season n episode, I will always Stan daisy. But is it just me or does it seem no matter what they are jus a shit show in general? They have their charters seem to be hanging by a thread which is making this season hilarious. & can I say I’ve always wanted Colin to hookup with daisy!!!! I adore him!!!
RHOBH season 2 : so glad started from the beginning, I just got done with episode game night! Gosh I hope this brandi (with the leg cast) goes and take a hike she’s really awful but what a hoot that was!! Kim apparently smoking crystal meth - I was deaaaaad lol
VPR reunion part 1: I cannot stand the left 3 chairs … yeah you might here this here first. Lala & James I can promise don’t really care about the “friend” Adrianna, they are LOVING that they basically get a bully & put ppl down free card. & not even Lisa cant say shit about it. They are right & they are wrong, like ohhhh please. James you look almost desperate for attention & lala said a bully comment that has not sit well with her minions. Sorry hun your cheating and James cheating isn’t justified just because it wasn’t your life partner? Honestly THEY annoyed me more than Raquel
OKAY SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS on these opinions OR share yours you are having rn watching whatever it is that you are watching !!!! Don’t be shy!!!!

Defying a last-minute appeal by former President Donald Trump, the Texas House voted overwhelmingly Saturday to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, suspending him from office over allegations of misconduct that included bribery and abuse of office.

The vote to adopt the 20 articles of impeachment was 121-23.
The stunning vote came two days after an investigative committee unveiled the articles — and two days before the close of a biennial legislative session that saw significant right-wing victories, including a ban on transgender health care for minors and new restrictions on public universities’ diversity efforts.
The vote revealed substantial divisions within the Republican Party of Texas — the largest, richest and most powerful state GOP party in the United States. Although the party has won every statewide election for a quarter-century and has controlled both houses of the Legislature since 2003, it has deep underlying fissures, many of them exacerbated by Trump’s rise and influence.
Few attorneys general have been as prominent as Paxton, who made a career of suing the Obama and Biden administrations. One of Trump’s closest allies in Texas, along with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Paxton unsuccessfully sued to challenge the 2020 presidential election results in four states.
Attention now shifts to the Texas Senate, which will conduct a trial with senators acting as jurors and designated House members presenting their case as impeachment managers.
Permanently removing Paxton from office and barring him from holding future elected office in Texas would require the support of two-thirds of senators.
Impeachment was supported by 60 Republicans, including Speaker Dade Phelan and all five of the representatives from Collin County — where Paxton and his wife have lived for decades. All 23 votes in opposition came from Republicans.
Afterward, Paxton called the vote “illegal, unethical, and profoundly unjust,” adding that he looked forward to a quick resolution in the Senate.
The move to impeach came less than a week after the House General Investigating Committee revealed that it was investigating Paxton for what members described as a yearslong pattern of misconduct and questionable actions that include bribery, dereliction of duty and obstruction of justice. They presented the case against him Saturday, acknowledging the weight of their actions.
“Today is a very grim and difficult day for this House and for the state of Texas,” Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, a committee member, told House members.
“We have a duty and an obligation to protect the citizens of Texas from elected officials who abuse their office and their powers for personal gain,” Spiller said. “As a body, we should not be complicit in allowing that behavior.”
Paxton supporters criticized the impeachment proceedings as rushed, secretive and based on hearsay accounts of actions taken by Paxton, who they said was not given the opportunity to defend himself to the investigating committee.
“This process is indefensible,” said Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo, who complained that the vote was taking place on a holiday weekend before members had time to conduct a thorough review of the accusations. “It concerns me a lot because today it could be General Paxton, tomorrow it could be you and the next day it could be me.”
Saturday’s vote temporarily removes a controversial but influential Republican figure in Texas and nationally. He has led an office that initiated lawsuits that overturned or blocked major Biden and Obama administration policies, particularly on immigration; sought to reverse Trump’s electoral defeat in 2020; aggressively pursued voter fraud claims; and targeted hospitals that provided gender care to minors.
The Legislature had impeached state officials just twice since 1876 — and never an attorney general — but the House committee members who proposed impeachment argued Saturday that Paxton’s misconduct in office was so egregious that it warranted his removal.
“This gentleman is no longer fit for service or for office,” said committee member Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston. “Either this is going to be the beginning of the end of his criminal reign, or God help us with the harms that will come to all Texans if he's allowed to stay the top cop on the take, if millions of Texans can’t trust us to do the right thing, right here, right now.”
Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, a member of the investigative committee, used his presentation time to criticize Paxton for calling representatives as they worked on the House floor to “personally threaten them with political consequences in the next election” if they supported impeachment.
Speaking against impeachment, Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, called the process “wrong.”
“Don’t end our session this way. Don’t tarnish this institution,” Tinderholt said. “Don’t cheapen the act of impeachment. Don’t undermine the will of the voters. Don’t give Democrats another victory handed to them on a silver platter.”
The vote came as hardline conservatives supportive of Paxton’s aggressive strategy of suing the Biden administration were lining up in support of him. Trump — a close political ally to Paxton — blasted the impeachment proceedings as an attempt to unseat “the most hard working and effective” attorney general and thwart the “large number of American Patriots” who voted for Paxton.
Trump vowed to target any Republican who supported impeaching Paxton, adding after the vote: “What is our Country coming to?” In the evening, he called Abbott “missing in action,” asking followers on his Truth Social network, “Where is the Governor of Texas on his Attorney General’s Impeachment?”
As lawmakers listened to the committee members make their case, Paxton took to social media to boost conservatives who had come to his defense, including Trump, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, and conservative radio host Grant Stinchfield, who tweeted, “Kangaroo Court in Texas.”
About 90 minutes into the debate, the official Twitter account of the Texas attorney general’s office began tweeting at members of the committee to challenge some of the claims being made.
“Please tell the truth,” the agency’s account said.
Under the Texas Constitution, Paxton is suspended from office pending the outcome of the Senate trial. The Senate had recessed before the House voted to impeach, and Patrick, who presides over the Senate, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about a timeline for an impeachment trial.
Because Paxton was impeached while the Legislature was in session, the Texas Constitution requires the Senate to remain in Austin after the regular session ends Monday or set a trial date for the future, with no deadline for a trial spelled out in the law.
The constitution also allows the governor to appoint a provisional replacement. Gov. Greg Abbott had not weighed in on the calls to impeach Paxton and his office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Impeachment represents the greatest political threat to date for Paxton, who has been reelected twice despite a 2015 indictment for felony securities fraud and an ongoing federal investigation into allegations of official misconduct that began in 2020.
The impeachment vote capped a tumultuous week at the Capitol. From Tuesday to Thursday:
Paxton abruptly accused Phelan of presiding over the chamber while drunk and demanded that he resign.
The House General Investigating Committee revealed it had been investigating Paxton in secret since March.
The committee heard a three-hour presentation from its investigators detailing allegations of corruption against the attorney general.
The committee’s three Republicans and two Democrats voted to forward 20 articles of impeachment to the full House.
Paxton, who was comfortably elected to a third term last year, made a rare appearance before assembled reporters Friday to criticize the process, saying he was not given a chance to present favorable evidence. He called impeachment an effort by Democrats and “liberal” Republicans to remove him from office, violating the will of voters and sidelining an effective warrior against Biden administration policies.
“The corrupt politicians in the Texas House are demonstrating that blind loyalty to Speaker Dade Phelan is more important than upholding their oath of office,” Paxton said. He added, “They are showcasing their absolute contempt for the electoral process.”
Many of the articles of impeachment focused on allegations that Paxton had repeatedly abused his powers of office to help a political donor and friend, Austin real estate developer Nate Paul.
In fall 2020, eight top deputies in the attorney general’s office approached federal and state investigators to report their concerns about Paxton’s relationship with Paul.
All eight quit or were fired in the following months, and most of the details of their allegations against Paxton were revealed in a lawsuit by four former executives who claim they were fired — in violation of the Texas Whistleblower Act — in retaliation for reporting Paxton to the authorities. Paxton’s bid to dismiss the lawsuit is awaiting action by the Dallas-based 5th Court of Appeals.
According to the lawsuit, the whistleblowers accused Paxton of engaging in a series of “intense and bizarre” actions to help Paul, including intervening in an open-records case to help Paul gain documents from federal and state investigations into the real estate investor’s businesses. They also accused Paxton of directing his agency to intervene in a lawsuit between Paul and a charity, pushing through a rushed legal opinion to help Paul avoid a pending foreclosure sale on properties and ignoring agency rules to hire an outside lawyer to pursue an investigation helpful to Paul’s businesses.
In return, the whistleblower lawsuit alleged, Paul paid for all or part of a major renovation of a home Paxton owns in Austin. Paul also helped Paxton keep an extramarital affair quiet by employing the woman Paxton had been seeing, the lawsuit said, adding that the attorney general may also have been motivated by a $25,000 contribution Paul made to Paxton’s campaign in 2018.
In their report to the House General Investigating Committee on Wednesday, the panel’s investigators concluded that Paxton may have committed numerous crimes and violated his oath of office.
Investigators said possible felonies included abuse of official capacity by, among other actions, diverting staff time to help Paul at a labor cost of at least $72,000; misuse of official information by possibly helping Paul gain access to investigative documents; and retaliation and official oppression by firing employees who complained of Paxton’s actions to the FBI.
The articles of impeachment accused Paxton of accepting bribes, disregarding his official duties and misapplying public resources to help Paul.
The articles also referred to felony charges of securities fraud, and one felony count of failing to register with state securities officials, that have been pending against Paxton since 2015, months after he took office as attorney general. The fraud charges stem from Paxton’s work in 2011 to solicit investors in Servergy Inc. without disclosing that the McKinney company was paying him for the work.
The impeachment articles also accused Paxton of obstruction of justice by acting to delay the criminal cases with legal challenges and because a Paxton donor pursued legal action that limited the pay to prosecutors in the case, causing further delays “to Paxton’s advantage.”
Taken in total, the accusations showed a pattern of dereliction of duty in violation of the Texas Constitution, Paxton’s oaths of office and state laws against public officials acting against the public’s interest, the impeachment resolution said.
“Paxton engaged in misconduct, private or public, of such character as to indicate his unfitness for office,” the articles said.
An attorney general had never before been impeached by the Legislature, an extraordinary step that lawmakers have reserved for public officials who faced serious allegations of misconduct. Only two Texas officials have been removed from office by Senate conviction, Gov. James Ferguson in 1917 and District Judge O.P. Carrillo in 1975.
If Paxton is to survive, he will need to secure the support of 11 senators. With the 12 Democratic senators likely to support his removal, any votes for acquittal would need to come from the 19 Republican members.
Several Republican senators issued statements Saturday evening warning constituents and others that their role as jurors in the upcoming impeachment trial prohibited them from discussing the case. In a television interview Thursday, Patrick said merely that he believed senators would be responsible jurors and “do their duty.”
A complicating factor is Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, Paxton’s wife. State law requires all senators to attend an impeachment trial, though whether she will recuse herself from voting is unclear.
Paxton’s political base lies in the far-right faction of the Republican Party, where he has positioned himself as a champion of conservative causes and a thorn in the side of Democratic President Joe Biden. Paxton has criticized his opponents as RINOs (Republicans in name only) who “want nothing more than to sabotage our legal challenges to Biden’s extremist agenda by taking me out.”
He also retained the backing of the state Republican Party, led by former state Rep. Matt Rinaldi, who frequently attacks Republicans he considers to be insufficiently conservative. On Friday, Rinaldi said the impeachment was Phelan’s fault for allowing Democrats to have too much influence in the House.
“The impeachment proceedings against the attorney general are but the latest front in the Texas House’s war against Republicans to stop the conservative direction of her state,” Rinaldi said in a statement.
Paxton also has maintained a close relationship with Trump and filed an unsuccessful U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the 2020 presidential election. Paxton also spoke at Trump’s rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, shortly before the president’s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol.
Ken Paxton has plagued Texas for far too long. I'm glad to see a modicum of justice being done.

Starting tomorrow my partner and I will not have a place to go to. We have excommunicated our families due to personal issues and no one being ok with our relationship. I had some savings in the bank, but I got scammed for almost $2k for a rental property that wasn't real. Still working on getting some of that back with the bank, but not sure if it will happen. Currently down to $150 on hand. I've got a job interview next Thursday. My partner starts a new job in Blowing Rock on Tuesday and will be paid weekly. I'm guessing it won't be until the 9th. What are some things we can do to make it to the first pay check? What places can we park the car overnight safely to catch some sleep? Any places we could get some showers? Any tips on food? And if anyone is around the Boone/blowing rock area and could use an extra hand doing some work for some food or a shower, let me know. We will be glad to put in some work for necessacities.

This is the first time I am doing this. Please be gentle.
I (26M) am in a (long distance)relationship with Selena(not her real name of course) for almost a year now. I have known her for 5 years and we had dated for a few months in the past but I broke up with her cause I was unable to picture a future with her.
When we started dating again it was going quite good for the first few months and everything was quite love-dovey and tbh it felt right. She convinced me that we would have a future together and she still love me a lot. It felt like everything was now fitting in place and this time it would last. But things have started to fall apart and I really don't know what to do about it, how to react.
A bit of back story about her - before me she was in a serious relationship with a guy called James. James was also quite serious about her and he gave her all the attention and was always good to her. But she feels she took him for granted and would always fight with him, and he used to beg for her love. She even told about him to her family and they liked him. Since she wasn't able to reciprocate the feelings for him and didn't treat him right, one day he left her.
Now coming back to our relationship, a couple of months back she came to know that James is seeing someone else and apparently he started bad mouthing her. This news got to her family and they started blaming her for losing such a nice guy. All of this I guess is what shook her and right now she is feels low and disappointed in herself. (when all this happened I wasn't aware about it)
During that time I used to talk to her and ask her what is wrong cause she started talking less, stopped expressing her love. She would say sorry and she knows she is doing wrong but asked me to be patient. I told her I understand and I am right here whenever she wants me. But things haven't been improving much, she says she wants to be with me and loves me but to me it doesn't look like she is trying. Her behavior is still the same, most of the time it's just me who tries to initiate a conversation. I asked her if she is losing interest in me and I reassure her that I would understand if that was the case but she says she loves me and wants be with him.
Yesterday we had this conversation again but this time it was her who initiated it. She told me she thinks she is toxic and could never be able to comfort her partner. She doesn't feel comfortable around me cause she thinks if she opens up fully in front of me I will notice the ego, attitude she has and she is only showing the good side of her. She even told me that she doesn't think we have a future cause her family would not approve (I asked her about this before getting together but at that she thought she would be able to convince her family but now after James incident she doesn't think they will agree). She told me again she doesn't want to leave me and hurt me. I kept on trying to convince her that I here to stay for the long run and even if we fight and if we care about each other we both will try our best to make it work. I quoted her this (which I believe in) - "There is no perfect, there will always be struggle. You just have to pick who you want to struggle with". I gave her reassurances and she said she is having this conversation cause she thinks I am a good guy and she doesn't want to lose me.
tbh, at this point I don't know what I am doing wrong and (or) what are the right things that I can do to make things better.
p.s. - It was a long post but it feels a bit better writing it all out.

This is the first time I am doing this. Please be gentle.
I (26M) am in a (long distance)relationship with Selena(not her real name of course) for almost a year now. I have known her for 5 years and we had dated for a few months in the past but I broke up with her cause I was unable to picture a future with her.
When we started dating again it was going quite good for the first few months and everything was quite love-dovey and tbh it felt right. She convinced me that we would have a future together and she still love me a lot. It felt like everything was now fitting in place and this time it would last. But things have started to fall apart and I really don't know what to do about it, how to react.
A bit of back story about her - before me she was in a serious relationship with a guy called James. James was also quite serious about her and he gave her all the attention and was always good to her. But she feels she took him for granted and would always fight with him, and he used to beg for her love. She even told about him to her family and they liked him. Since she wasn't able to reciprocate the feelings for him and didn't treat him right, one day he left her.
Now coming back to our relationship, a couple of months back she came to know that James is seeing someone else and apparently he started bad mouthing her. This news got to her family and they started blaming her for losing such a nice guy. All of this I guess is what shook her and right now she is feels low and disappointed in herself. (when all this happened I wasn't aware about it)
During that time I used to talk to her and ask her what is wrong cause she started talking less, stopped expressing her love. She would say sorry and she knows she is doing wrong but asked me to be patient. I told her I understand and I am right here whenever she wants me. But things haven't been improving much, she says she wants to be with me and loves me but to me it doesn't look like she is trying. Her behaviour is still the same, most of the time it's just me who tries to initiate a conversation. I asked her if she is losing interest in me and I reassure her that I would understand if that was the case but she says she loves me and wants be with him.
Yesterday we had this conversation again but this time it was her who initiated it. She told me she thinks she is toxic and could never be able to comfort her partner. She doesn't feel comfortable around me cause she thinks if she opens up fully in front of me I will notice the ego, attitude she has and she is only showing the good side of her. She even told me that she doesn't think we have a future cause her family would not approve (I asked her about this before getting together but at that she thought she would be able to convince her family but now after James incident she doesn't think they will agree). She told me again she doesn't want to leave me and hurt me. I kept on trying to convince her that I here to stay for the long run and even if we fight and if we care about each other we both will try our best to make it work. I quoted her this (which I believe in) - "There is no perfect, there will always be struggle. You just have to pick who you want to struggle with". I gave her reassurances and she said she is having this conversation cause she thinks I am a good guy and she doesn't want to lose me.
tbh, at this point I don't know what I am doing wrong and (or) what are the right things that I can do to make things better.
p.s. - It was a long post but it feels a bit better writing it all out.

Yeah…so I’ve known my partner (bf) since January. We started out as friends and admitted we liked each other a bit after we met on Bumble and started dating since. I’ve met their parents, been over their house to have dinner with them more than once, and both of our friend groups know we are a couple. I’ve even met most of my bfs friends. We are both college students in our 20s and are a gay couple.
They have a lot of friends, one of them being a guy they also happened to match with on Bumble around the same time as we matched. For the sake of this story I’ll name this guy ‘James’. Apparently James and my bf were friends prior to matching on Bumble. I know this bc it’s been implied and bc a few weeks ago, my partner and I were joking stupidly about killing any person who gets any ideas about ruining our relationship. My bf said “hopefully none of my old matches get any ideas, to avoid any murders, or James” but back then I brushed it off as nothing, especially because I am just not the kind of dude to be insecure/insanely jealous and don’t like being a weird controlling bf. I’ve been on the other end of that and guys like that are just weird. But I do remember sort of pausing in the moment.
Anyways, I know they bump into James often because they’re both into the same gaming communities and see each other at different arcades sometimes by chance. I know sometimes they go together in a friend group they all have which is always nice to have, I am genuinely happy they have a cool hobby and made friends out of it. Bf has tried to get me into their community slowly but it’s just not something I’m good at yet. What threw me off today was my partner just came back from being at an arcade with James and a few other friends. My bf texted me “idk why my friends are so gay” and i asked what they meant by that and they said, “we just constantly saying gay shit to each other, I think that just means me and James are best friends”. I haven’t even opened the message because this entire post has been my thought process for a good hour.
Am I being weird and jealous? I know queer friendships are always a bit funny in the sense where you say lots of playful things with your friends. I am also just wondering if I will look stupid denying the coincidences I’ve mentioned. I don’t want to drag this out and get hurt in the future after we’ve been with one another for a while more. I already feel stupid not realizing how close they are and it would make sense to be cheated on or dumped for James since they’ve known each other longer. I have never felt insecure about my relationship until today. Please help lol

Is this a real podcast?
I'm sorry I wasn't I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I'm gonna tell you the truth. When I opened up the first store, I went to Staples and Office Max and all the places you buy back-to-school supplies and I bought them all out of flash drives and I would sell them to people at school. And they're like, "Oh, you're actually doing it, bro. "Like, this is a real deal." So what do you know, I sold out of everything in two weeks. Now what? I have to restock and I'm out of money. And I don't really, I'm like, "I don't really have $100,000 to buy more." So I was like, "Well, okay, I guess I need to go out "and find another investor." I went to a guy who owned a bunch of businesses and I got him to give me a loan for $20,000. So now I had $20,000. I went to a custom packaging company in Los Angeles called AJM Packaging and I said, "Look, I have $20,000 "and this vision to start a video store. "Can you give me a net 90?" And that's like an old business term that I learned years ago that basically means like, we're gonna send you a box of our products, you sell them, and then pay us back in 90 days. So they said, "Sure, we'll give you $20,000 worth of videos." I put together a big press release, and sent it out to like the news stations. (laughs) This was like in the early '90s, okay?
But how did you go from using your LinkedIn to sell a 60-year-old?
No, no, no, no, I didn't sell the videos on LinkedIn. I'm saying I would get orders for $1000, $2000, $3000, $4000, $5000.
So the method was you would identify potential prospects using LinkedIn and just send them an email or message or something.
Yeah, you see on LinkedIn, you'll see, like let's say you have 10 contacts or something like that. It'll say, it'll have in your thing, it'll say they were a third degree connection and you can see what groups they belong to. You can see if you share a lot of similar contacts. So I just email them and say, hey, listen, I've got this promotion. I work at a marketing company and I
think we can help you increase your web presence, grow your business. And people just started signing up and then it went from there.
What was the like, hey, you're not bad at this. Like I should look into this social media thing. (laughs)
Yeah, I mean, when I started my business, I really, I was all over the place. And I'm talking like 2009, like in 2009, I wasn't really doing much more than building social profiles and posting on them and some light engagement. That was really it. But then I realized it's not, just about like, the act of social media. It's not just like creating social media accounts for people. It's about building a brand and being able to reach people and creating an impact and using social media to do that. And so that was the start of that path. And then I just started to get more and more into it. And then I went through the whole like, Facebook page thing, which is a whole other journey. So I did that and then I think it was really 2015, I started investing a lot of money into Facebook ads. And when I first started, I had a lot of success in a very short amount of time. So then I started teaching people how to do that. I launched a product called Fan Page Domination. We did $6 million in sales in the first week, which was amazing. And then from there, my software started taking off. I launched a software called Social Ad Classroom, which was a webinar software for Facebook and YouTube Live. And we had thousands of people buying that at $997. We sold that one for $997. Then I launched Influencer Ignited. So I've got my own Facebook group. I started doing mastermind groups and coaching. I was able to replace my salary with speaking gigs, teaching people on webinars and selling high ticket items. So now we have a software business. I have a team of 11 people that work for me and I have a few other employees for other various things as well. And so all in all, it's been quite the journey to get to this point and it's been a lot of hard work and it's still a lot of hard work. I'm not sure what's gonna happen over the next few years or anything like that, but I'm enjoying the journey, enjoying helping people out. You asked me for a couple of tips and tricks that people can do. And I would say that one of the things that I've found to be really helpful when I'm trying to figure out how to learn something is actually not to jump online and start Googling, but instead to go to YouTube and watch tutorial videos. Because if you're like me and you can see it and hear it, then it clicks a lot better than reading a book. So I started watching YouTube videos. I learned how to code a little bit on YouTube. I learned a little bit of Photoshop on YouTube and a lot of things on YouTube. And then I started this membership, which I learned how to do on YouTube and from other people that were teaching me how to do it. I didn't invent it. I don't own the rights to it. I just started to apply it to a business idea that I had that made sense. And it grew really fast. And then I sold that company last year, December of 2020. And so now I have more free time on my hands. So I started YouTube channel and that's just kind of taken off and I'm really enjoying the podcast because I get to meet great people like you and just share some insights that I've learned along the way. And so yeah, that's kind of been my journey to
this point. That's awesome. So you got the taste of this kind of internet world, digital marketing. You had a passion for technology. You did some internships. You taught yourself some things on YouTube. You created some courses. You've built a big following and now you're monetizing with the podcast, correct?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, so what does the future hold for you and for your business?
Yeah, so I really want to double down on the podcast. I've been doing a lot of interviews and having a lot of fun with that, but I want to take it to the next level. I'm in the process of planning my next level. That is where it is headed right now.
Awesome. So we talked about a lot of things today. What's one thing that you want to leave the audience with? If they were to take away one thing from our conversation today, what would that be?
This is a little bit of a shift in direction of where we've been talking about, but when we were talking about doing a podcast, you asked me, "Why do you want to do a podcast?" And I said, "Well, I want to impact people. "I want to give people a new perspective on life. "I want people to know that they're not alone "and that other people have gone through some of the same things "and have figured it out "and can share their experiences with others "so they don't feel alone." And that's really what I want people to know about me is that you're not alone in this world. And if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're feeling like, "You know what? "This sucks, this coronavirus, COVID stuff sucks," I want you to know that you're not alone. And there are people out there who've gone through the same thing, are going through the same thing, who can help you navigate through it. So if you're going through a difficult time, you're not alone. Reach out to me, I'm happy to talk to you, but also reach out to the people around you who love you and care about you, and just know that there are people out there who care. And if you're going through a good time and things are going great for you, also reach out to people who are struggling and lend a helping hand and help them out, because we're all in this together, and that's how we're going to get through this and make the world a better place.
That's such a powerful message, and I absolutely agree with you. One of the things I love about you is your positive energy. And that positive energy, I'm sure, resonates in everything that you do. So keep that up. And I guess my next question is, how do you stay so positive? What's your secret sauce?
Well, I just have this deep faith in God, and so I know that everything works out for a reason, and there's a bigger plan, and you know, the person who was the biggest failure is the person that gives up. And so I just refuse to give up, and I think of life, you know, like a marathon. I mean, if you're at mile one and you want to quit, how foolish is that? I mean, you don't know how long the race is, but it's not mile one. And so I look at that as my life. I mean, there's no point in quitting because I'm nowhere near the finish line yet. I got a long way to go, so I've got to keep going, and just having that faith in yourself and knowing that if you stick with it long enough, you'll find a way to succeed.
That's amazing. And
I think that positive mindset, and that persistence is one thing that separates you from other people, but also what you say there about your grandfather, it sounds like he was an amazing person.
He was an incredible person, and his name was Cecil Milton Chester. He died when he was 42 years old. And so I was like nine at the time. And so my son's middle name is Milton. It's a family tradition. So my son's name is Ian Milton Boyle. And I know I got him because my grandpa, he was amazing. He had all these stories and he always had a smile on his face. And I would say, you know, I would say, "How are you doing today, Papa?" And he'd say, "Better, better, better." And it didn't matter how he felt. He always said he was better, better, better. And I thought to myself, you know, that was pretty amazing. This guy could be in the worst possible pain ever, and he would still say he's better. And I thought, you know, I'm going to live my life that way. So I did. I decided I'm going to choose to be better, to have a better attitude, to have a better outlook on life, and always try to see the positive in things. And, you know, it's, it's, it's really helped me in my life. So that's, you know, I would say that's my biggest, my biggest learning. And I also say this, you know, I heard a pastor say this a while ago. He said, you know, a lot of times in life, we're looking for the green light. And, you know, we're trying to make sure everything's perfect. We're waiting for things to be perfect. And he says, well, you know, sometimes it's not about a green light, but it's just, you know, a yellow light. Sometimes you just have to get started. And, you know, you might be scared, but you just have to get started and do the work. And it's just like a very simple way of kind of looking at life. Like if we all wait for, you know, our perfect opportunity, we're never gonna get anything done. So I'm always a big believer in just starting. You know, you've gotta just get started.
That's awesome. That's a great way to finish. So what's your favorite entrepreneur story? Now it doesn't have to be the biggest success, but maybe just an entrepreneur that you love what they're doing or you love their business. So this could be someone, you know, it could be somebody local, it could be somebody big, whoever.
I know.
Your turn.
My turn. So, okay. There's a guy named Jeremy Cowart. You heard of Jeremy Cowart?
Yes.
He's a photographer. He's also one of the most successful photographers in the world. He does amazing portraits. I started following him on Instagram maybe five years ago, maybe six, and I was just like, this guy is amazing. And just watching how he transformed. And now he does hotel, motel design and art and stuff like that. But what he did is he set up like a 30 day series, well a 365 day series of photos. And each day he would do a different type of photography. So like one day he would do just shadows, another day he would do, I don't know, just patterns, whatever. He had all these different ideas. But what he was doing is he was posting his photos on Instagram every single day. So that's something that I wanna start doing as well. I actually start tonight
. And so, just to make myself a better photographer and just to challenge myself to look at things differently. And what's happened is now this guy, he's on YouTube, he does a podcast. And so if I do that every day, I'm also gonna get better at communicating with people and talking to people. So what I've found is this has helped me build my confidence to come on the live and do this because I've practiced a lot. I've done 57 of these now. And so, but it's just the practice. It's just the getting in there and doing it and learning from it. And I found that my guests are really grateful and appreciative for it. They really enjoy it. And they're able to get a taste of me as a speaker before they ever get on a call with me. So, I mean, there's just, it's just so valuable to get started. It doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to have everything all together. But it's just the action, the taking the action, you know, and you'll just figure it out along the way. So, those are kind of my tips for people.
Fantastic. Well, we've got some questions from the attendees. So, let's kind of jump into those. I know we're starting to get a little bit short on time. We've got maybe five or 10 minutes left.
Yeah.
So, we'll jump into these. One of the questions that came up is, you know, how long should a course be? And are people willing to watch a long course versus something that's shorter?
You know, we've done it both ways. It really kind of depends. I feel like shorter courses are kind of like the current trend. People want information really quickly. They don't necessarily have a lot of time. They're busy. They're running a business. They've got kids. They've got a lot going on. So, I feel like a lot of people are favoring shorter courses. So, for instance, you know, like a course that's maybe like three to four weeks long. But I do still think that there is a place for longer courses. For instance, you know, with Power Editor, I actually found that people liked the more in-depth 12-week course because they could actually go back, you know, at their own pace and do it. But I would say, you know, 30 days is a great timeframe for a course.
Perfect. And the last question for you is, do you have a favorite Facebook advertising campaign that you've run for yourself or for a client? And if you can share a little bit about the results and why it was your favorite.
Ooh, that's a tough one. There's been so many good campaigns that I've had. I think one of my favorites was working with my husband's business and it was creating a quiz. I actually took my course topic, and we're not gonna talk about what that was, and we turned it into a quiz. And so, with a quiz, what you're able to do is take the top three to five pain points or objections that people have when it comes to purchasing your product or service, and you turn that into a quiz. So, you start the quiz by asking them some questions about their specific problem, what they're going through, what their biggest challenge is, and then you give them three different possible outcomes. And based on their answer, you kind of guide them through the quiz. So, you ask them, "Do you want to work on this problem, "or this problem, or this problem?" And then you can give them a result. And that result is not only valuable to
them because they're getting the solution they're looking for, but it's also very valuable to you because you can start to see what are some of the main reasons people are coming to me, or what are the main objections that they have, and you can take that and then tweak your marketing messaging. And that's a lot of what I did with my program was I would create new ads and I would have a different headline for every different pain point. And then we would run those ads and we would see which ones got the best engagement and then you have that data to go off of and you can say, "Okay, well people are responding better to this messaging or this problem that I can help solve." And then from there you can just dial in your targeting, dial in your messaging, and then that's when you really start to see the massive results. And that's how I was able to turn it into a seven-figure business, which, you know, within the first year and a half was pretty incredible. So that's definitely my favorite strategy. And I still use quizzes to this day. I think they're awesome.
Absolutely. And I really like quizzes. I'm glad you mentioned it because that's one of those things that not a lot of people are using right now, but it can be very effective if you do it right. Like you said, you want to give them a reason to want to engage with it. And by addressing pain points or questions or frustrations, it's a great way to get people to opt into your list as well because they're interested in that topic. So then you can nurture them and build a relationship with them and then make them a customer down the line. So that's a great strategy. Thanks for sharing that. All right, so last question for you. I know you're a super busy guy, but do you have time to listen to podcasts? And if so, are there any that you like to listen to on a regular basis?
I listen to a lot of audio books. I think that's kind of my thing. I've just finished actually an audio book called, "You're Not So Smart." And it's all about the cognitive biases that we have as humans. And it was very fascinating. I was actually thinking about using some of the content to talk about in the next episode of my podcast because I think it would be very helpful for people to hear the different biases that we have. And as humans, we have like 100 different cognitive biases that can really influence our decisions and the way we think about things. And so it was a really good book. So I highly recommend that one. It's called "You're Not So Smart." But yeah, I mean, I love listening to all different kinds of podcasts. I listen to, I don't know, some of the entrepreneurial ones, Amy Porterfield, Brendan Burchard. Sometimes I listen to Joe Rogan. He's not always the best person to listen to, but there are certain episodes that I like. Yeah, I listen to all kinds of podcasts.
Fantastic. You mentioned a few people there that I know of and I've heard some episodes of Joe Rogan. There's some really interesting people that he interviews.
Yeah, yeah.
He's got a great following and he seems like he's really enjoying it.
He does, and that's, I think, why he does it. He just loves to learn from people. So I think that's his main motivation.
Yeah, so is there anything else that you'd like to add before we finish up, Taki? Any other, you know, mistakes or issues that you see people make or things you just want to say before we go?
You know, I think one thing I
would say is that being a good marketer is really about being a good communicator. And it's all about building relationships and connections with people. And the way to do that is to really make sure you're being authentic. You know, there's so much noise on social media and people can spot a fake a mile away. So I think it's just important to be genuine, to be authentic, to show up as yourself and just be a real person. And, you know, people are going to be much more likely to connect with you and resonate with you if you do that.
Yes, it's so true. You know, I think a lot of people try and put up this facade of, you know, that they're perfect and they've got it all together, but people can see right through that. So it's just, it's really refreshing when you meet somebody who's like real and down to earth and just doing their thing. And they're okay with that. So I agree with that for sure. So Megan, where can people go to find you and learn more about your programs?
Yeah, so they can go to Facebook and look me up, Megan Anderson Consulting. My website is meganandersonconsulting.com. They can find me on LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram and Twitter and I'm pretty easy to find. So yeah.
Nice. And then I'll put all those links in the show notes too. But yeah, so definitely follow Megan. She puts out some really great content. So thank you so much for being on the show. It was really great to have you on today.
Thank you so much, Jillian. It was great being here. I really appreciate you inviting me on your show.
Yes, of course. Thank you so much. And I'll talk to you soon.
All right. Sounds good. Thank you.
Thank you. Bye. (upbeat music)
Hey guys, thanks so much for joining me on this episode of the Parent Entrepreneur Success Podcast. I hope you found it super valuable and it's inspired you to take some action to grow your business. If you want to find me on social media, you can find me at Jillian Sedoti at Instagram or jilliansedoti.com. And please, if you like this show, share it with others who you think will benefit and also rate and review so more people can find it. See you next time.

• Bold means the film received at least 1 Oscar nomination (47)
• Bold and italic means the film was only nominated in the Best International Feature category (17)
• Coin means the film won Best International Feature (7)
• Trophy means the film won Best Picture (1)

Year	Palme d'Or	Grand Prix	Jury Prize
1975	Chronicle of the Years of Fire	The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
1976	Taxi Driver	Cría Cuervos 🪢 The Marquise of O
1977	Padre Padrone
1978	The Tree of Wooden Clogs	Bye Bye Monkey 🪢 The Shout
1979	Apocalypse Now 🪢 🪙The Tin Drum🪙	Siberiade
1980	All That Jazz 🪢 Kagemusha	My American Uncle	The Constant Factor
1981	Man of Iron	Light Years Away
1982	Missing 🪢 Yol	The Night of the Shooting Stars
1983	The Ballad of Narayama	Monty Python's The Meaning of Life	Kharij
1984	Paris, Texas	Diary for My Children
1985	When Father Was Away on Business	Birdy	Colonel Redl
1986	The Mission	The Sacrifice	Thérèse
1987	Under the Sun of Satan	Repentance	Shinran: Path to Purity 🪢 Yeelen
1988	Pelle the Conqueror	A World Apart	A Short Film About Killing
1989	Sex, Lies, and Videotape	🪙Cinema Paradiso🪙 🪢 Too Beautiful for You	Jesus of Montreal
1990	Wild at Heart	The Sting of Death 🪢 Tilaï	Hidden Agenda
1991	Barton Fink	La Belle Noiseuse	Europa 🪢 Out of Life
1992	The Best Intentions	The Stolen Children	Dream of Light 🪢 An Independent Life
1993	Farewell My Concubine 🪢 The Piano	Faraway, So Close!	The Puppetmaster 🪢 Raining Stones
1994	Pulp Fiction	🪙Burnt by the Sun🪙 🪢 To Live	La Reine Margot
1995	Underground	Ulysses' Gaze	Don't Forget You're Going to Die 🪢 Carrington
1996	Secrets & Lies	Breaking the Waves	Crash
1997	The Eel 🪢 Taste of Cherry	The Sweet Hereafter	Western
1998	Eternity and a Day	🪙Life Is Beautiful🪙	Class Trip
1999	Rosetta	Humanité	The Letter
2000	Dancer in the Dark	Devils on the Doorstep	Blackboards 🪢 Songs from the Second Floor
2001	The Son's Room	The Piano Teacher
2002	The Pianist	The Man Without a Past	Divine Intervention
2003	Elephant	Distant	At Five in the Afternoon
2004	Fahrenheit 9/11	Oldboy	The Ladykillers 🪢 Tropical Malady
2005	L'Enfant	Broken Flowers	Shanghai Dreams
2006	The Wind That Shakes the Barley	Flanders	Red Road
2007	4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days	The Mourning Forest	Persepolis 🪢 Silent Light
2008	The Class	Gomorrah	Il divo
2009	The White Ribbon	A Prophet	Fish Tank 🪢 Thirst
2010	Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives	Of Gods and Men	A Screaming Man
2011	The Tree of Life	The Kid with a Bike 🪢 Once Upon a Time in Anatolia	Polisse
2012	🪙Amour🪙	Reality	The Angels' Share
2013	Blue Is the Warmest Colour	Inside Llewyn Davis	Like Father, Like Son
2014	Winter Sleep	The Wonders	Goodbye to Language 🪢 Mommy
2015	Dheepan	🪙Son of Saul🪙	The Lobster
2016	I, Daniel Blake	It's Only the End of the World	American Honey
2017	The Square	BPM (Beats per Minute)	Loveless
2018	Shoplifters	BlacKkKlansman	Capernaum
2019	🪙🏆Parasite🏆🪙	Atlantics	Bacurau 🪢 Les Misérables
2021	Titane	Compartment No. 6 🪢 A Hero	Ahed's Knee 🪢 Memoria
2022	Triangle of Sadness	Stars at Noon 🪢 Close	The Eight Mountains 🪢 EO
2023	Anatomy of a Fall	The Zone of Interest	Fallen Leaves

• Bold means the actor received an Oscar nomination (23)
• Bold and italic means the actor was nominated in a non-acting category (1)
• Trophy means the actor won the Oscar (6)

Year	Best Actor	Best Actress
1975	Vittorio Gassman – Scent of a Woman	Valérie Perrine – Lenny
1976	José Luis Gómez – Pascual Duarte	Dominique Sanda – The Inheritance 🪢 Mari Törőcsik – Mrs. Dery Where Are You?
1977	Fernando Rey – Elisa, My Life	Shelley Duvall – 3 Women 🪢 Monique Mercure – J.A. Martin Photographer
1978	🏆Jon Voight – Coming Home🏆	Jill Clayburgh – An Unmarried Woman 🪢 Isabelle Huppert – Violette Nozière
1979	Jack Lemmon – The China Syndrome 🪢 Stefano Madia – Dear Father	🏆Sally Field – Norma Rae🏆 🪢 Eva Mattes – Woyzeck
1980	Michel Piccoli – A Leap in the Dark 🪢 Jack Thompson – Breaker Morant	Anouk Aimée – A Leap in the Dark 🪢 Milena Dravić – Special Treatment 🪢 Carla Gravina – La terrazza
1981	Ugo Tognazzi – Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man 🪢 Ian Holm – Chariots of Fire	Isabelle Adjani – Possession 🪢 Qaurtet 🪢 Elena Solovey – Faktas
1982	Jack Lemmon – Missing	Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak – Another Way
1983	Gian Maria Volonté – The Death of Mario Ricci	Hanna Schygulla – The Story of Piera
1984	Alfredo Landa 🪢 Francisco Rabal – The Holy Innocents	Helen Mirren – Cal
1985	🏆William Hurt – Kiss of the Spider Woman🏆	Norma Aleandro – The Official Story 🪢 Cher – Mask
1986	Michel Blanc – Ménage 🪢 Bob Hoskins – Mona Lisa	Barbara Sukowa – Rosa Luxemburg
1987	Marcello Mastroianni – Dark Eyes	Barbara Hershey – Shy People
1988	Forest Whitaker – Bird	Barbara Hershey 🪢 Jodhi May 🪢 Linda Mvusi – A World Apart
1989	James Spader – Sex, Lies, and Videotape	Meryl Streep – A Cry in the Dark
1990	Gérard Depardieu – Cyrano de Bergerac	Krystyna Janda – Interrogation
1991	John Turturro – Barton Fink 🪢 Samuel L. Jackson – Jungle Fever	Irène Jacob – The Double Life of Veronique
1992	Tim Robbins – The Player	Pernilla August – The Best Intentions
1993	David Thewlis – Naked	🏆Holly Hunter – The Piano🏆
1994	Ge You – To Live	Virna Lisi – La Reine Margot
1995	Jonathan Pryce – Carrington	Helen Mirren – The Madness of King George
1996	Daniel Auteuil 🪢 Pascal Duquenne – The Eighth Day	Brenda Blethyn – Secrets & Lies
1997	Sean Penn – She's So Lovely	Kathy Burke – Nil by Mouth
1998	Peter Mullan – My Name Is Joe	Élodie Bouchez 🪢 Natacha Régnier – The Dreamlife of Angels
1999	Emmanuel Schotté – Humanité	Séverine Caneele – Humanité 🪢 Émilie Dequenne – Rosetta
2000	Tony Leung Chiu-wai – In the Mood for Love	Björk – Dancer in the Dark
2001	Benoît Magimel – The Piano Teacher	Isabelle Huppert – The Piano Teacher
2002	Olivier Gourmet – The Son	Kati Outinen – The Man Without a Past
2003	Muzaffer Özdemir 🪢 Mehmet Emin Toprak – Distant	Marie-Josée Croze – The Barbarian Invasions
2004	Yūya Yagira – Nobody Knows	Maggie Cheung – Clean
2005	Tommy Lee Jones – The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada	Hanna Laslo – Free Zone
2006	Roschdy Zem 🪢 Bernard Blancan 🪢 Jamel Debbouze 🪢 Samy Naceri 🪢 Sami Bouajila – Days of Glory	Carmen Maura 🪢 Lola Dueñas 🪢 Blanca Portillo 🪢 Yohana Cobo 🪢 Chus Lampreave 🪢 Penélope Cruz – Volver
2007	Konstantin Lavronenko – The Banishment	Jeon Do-yeon – Secret Sunshine
2008	Benicio del Toro – Che	Sandra Corveloni – Linha de Passe
2009	🏆Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds🏆	Charlotte Gainsbourg – Antichrist
2010	Javier Bardem – Biutiful 🪢 Elio Germano – Our Life	Juliette Binoche – Certified Copy
2011	🏆Jean Dujardin – The Artist🏆	Kirsten Dunst – Melancholia
2012	Mads Mikkelsen – The Hunt	Cristina Flutur 🪢 Cosmina Stratan – Beyond the Hills
2013	Bruce Dern – Nebraska	Bérénice Bejo – The Past
2014	Timothy Spall – Mr. Turner	Julianne Moore – Maps to the Stars
2015	Vincent Lindon – The Measure of a Man	Emmanuelle Bercot – Mon Roi 🪢 Rooney Mara – Carol
2016	Shahab Hosseini – The Salesman	Jaclyn Jose – Ma' Rosa
2017	Joaquin Phoenix – You Were Never Really Here	Diane Kruger – In the Fade
2018	Marcello Fonte – Dogman	Samal Yeslyamova – Ayka
2019	Antonio Banderas – Pain and Glory	Emily Beecham – Little Joe
2021	Caleb Landry Jones – Nitram	Renate Reinsve – The Worst Person in the World
2022	Song Kang-ho – Broker	Zar Amir Ebrahimi – Holy Spider
2023	Kōji Yakusho – Perfect Days	Merve Dizdar – About Dry Grasses

• Bold means the film received at least 1 Oscar nomination in a corresponding category (9)
• Bold and italic means only the film was nominated, but the awarded filmmaker wasn't (8)
• Coin means the film won Best International Feature (4)

Year	Best Director	Best Screenplay
1975	Michel Brault – Orders 🪢 Costa-Gavras – Special Section
1976	Ettore Scola – Down and Dirty
1977
1978	Nagisa Ōshima – Empire of Passion
1979	Terrence Malick – Days of Heaven
1980		La Terrazza – Furio Scarpelli, Agenore Incrocci, Ettore Scola
1981		🪙Mephisto🪙 – István Szabó
1982	Werner Herzog – Fitzcarraldo	Moonlighting – Jerzy Skolimowski
1983	Robert Bresson – L'Argent 🪢 Andrei Tarkovsky – Nostalgia	Voyage to Cythera – Thanassis Valtinos, Theo Angelopoulos, Tonino Guerra
1984	Bertrand Tavernier – A Sunday in the Country
1985	André Téchiné – Rendez-vous
1986	Martin Scorsese – After Hours
1987	Wim Wenders – Wings of Desire
1988	Fernando Solanas – Sur
1989	Emir Kusturica – Time of the Gypsies
1990	Pavel Lungin – Taxi Blues
1991	Joel Coen – Barton Fink
1992	Robert Altman – The Player
1993	Mike Leigh – Naked
1994	Nanni Moretti – Dear Diary	Dead Tired – Michel Blanc
1995	Mathieu Kassovitz – La Haine
1996	Joel Coen – Fargo	A Self Made Hero – Jacques Audiard, Alain Le Henry
1997	Wong Kar-wai – Happy Together	The Ice Storm – James Schamus
1998	John Boorman – The General	Henry Fool – Hal Hartley
1999	Pedro Almodóvar – All About My Mother	Moloch – Yuri Arabov
2000	Edward Yang – Yi Yi	Nurse Betty – James Flamberg, John C. Richards
2001	Joel Coen – The Man Who Wasn't There 🪢 David Lynch – Mulholland Drive	No Man's Land – Danis Tanović
2002	Paul Thomas Anderson – Punch-Drunk Love 🪢 Im Kwon-taek – Painted Fire	Sweet Sixteen – Paul Laverty
2003	Gus Van Sant – Elephant	🪙The Barbarian Invasions🪙 – Denys Arcand
2004	Tony Gatlif – Exils	Look at Me – Agnès Jaoui, Jean-Pierre Bacri
2005	Michael Haneke – Caché	The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada – Guillermo Arriaga
2006	Alejandro González Iñárritu – Babel	Volver – Pedro Almodóvar
2007	Julian Schnabel – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly	The Edge of Heaven – Fatih Akin
2008	Nuri Bilge Ceylan – Three Monkeys	Lorna's Silence – Jean-Pierre, Luc Dardenne
2009	Brillante Mendoza – Butchered	Spring Fever – Mei Feng
2010	Mathieu Amalric – On Tour	Poetry – Lee Chang-dong
2011	Nicolas Winding Refn – Drive	Footnote – Joseph Cedar
2012	Carlos Reygadas – Post Tenebras Lux	Beyond the Hills – Cristian Mungiu, Tatiana Niculescu Bran
2013	Amat Escalante – Heli	A Touch of Sin – Jia Zhangke
2014	Bennett Miller – Foxcatcher	Leviathan – Andrey Zvyagintsev, Oleg Negin
2015	Hou Hsiao-hsien – The Assassin	Chronic – Michel Franco
2016	Olivier Assayas – Personal Shopper 🪢 Cristian Mungiu – Graduation	🪙The Salesman🪙 – Asghar Farhadi
2017	Sofia Coppola – The Beguiled	The Killing of a Sacred Deer – Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou 🪢 You Were Never Really Here – Lynne Ramsay
2018	Paweł Pawlikowski – Cold War	3 Faces – Jafar Panahi, Nader Saeivar 🪢 Happy as Lazzaro – Alice Rohrwacher
2019	Jean-Pierre 🪢 Luc Dardenne – Young Ahmed	Portrait of a Lady on Fire – Céline Sciamma
2021	Leos Carax – Annette	🪙Drive My Car🪙 – Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Takamasa Oe
2022	Park Chan-wook – Decision to Leave	Boy from Heaven – Tarik Saleh
2023	Tran Anh Hung – The Pot-au-Feu	Monster – Yuji Sakamoto

• Bold means the film received at least 1 Oscar nomination (47)
• Bold and italic means the film was only nominated in the Best International Feature category (17)
• Coin means the film won Best International Feature (7)
• Trophy means the film won Best Picture (1)

Year	Palme d'Or	Grand Prix	Jury Prize
1975	Chronicle of the Years of Fire	The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
1976	Taxi Driver	Cría Cuervos 🪢 The Marquise of O
1977	Padre Padrone
1978	The Tree of Wooden Clogs	Bye Bye Monkey 🪢 The Shout
1979	Apocalypse Now 🪢 🪙The Tin Drum🪙	Siberiade
1980	All That Jazz 🪢 Kagemusha	My American Uncle	The Constant Factor
1981	Man of Iron	Light Years Away
1982	Missing 🪢 Yol	The Night of the Shooting Stars
1983	The Ballad of Narayama	Monty Python's The Meaning of Life	Kharij
1984	Paris, Texas	Diary for My Children
1985	When Father Was Away on Business	Birdy	Colonel Redl
1986	The Mission	The Sacrifice	Thérèse
1987	Under the Sun of Satan	Repentance	Shinran: Path to Purity 🪢 Yeelen
1988	Pelle the Conqueror	A World Apart	A Short Film About Killing
1989	Sex, Lies, and Videotape	🪙Cinema Paradiso🪙 🪢 Too Beautiful for You	Jesus of Montreal
1990	Wild at Heart	The Sting of Death 🪢 Tilaï	Hidden Agenda
1991	Barton Fink	La Belle Noiseuse	Europa 🪢 Out of Life
1992	The Best Intentions	The Stolen Children	Dream of Light 🪢 An Independent Life
1993	Farewell My Concubine 🪢 The Piano	Faraway, So Close!	The Puppetmaster 🪢 Raining Stones
1994	Pulp Fiction	🪙Burnt by the Sun🪙 🪢 To Live	La Reine Margot
1995	Underground	Ulysses' Gaze	Don't Forget You're Going to Die 🪢 Carrington
1996	Secrets & Lies	Breaking the Waves	Crash
1997	The Eel 🪢 Taste of Cherry	The Sweet Hereafter	Western
1998	Eternity and a Day	🪙Life Is Beautiful🪙	Class Trip
1999	Rosetta	Humanité	The Letter
2000	Dancer in the Dark	Devils on the Doorstep	Blackboards 🪢 Songs from the Second Floor
2001	The Son's Room	The Piano Teacher
2002	The Pianist	The Man Without a Past	Divine Intervention
2003	Elephant	Distant	At Five in the Afternoon
2004	Fahrenheit 9/11	Oldboy	The Ladykillers 🪢 Tropical Malady
2005	L'Enfant	Broken Flowers	Shanghai Dreams
2006	The Wind That Shakes the Barley	Flanders	Red Road
2007	4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days	The Mourning Forest	Persepolis 🪢 Silent Light
2008	The Class	Gomorrah	Il divo
2009	The White Ribbon	A Prophet	Fish Tank 🪢 Thirst
2010	Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives	Of Gods and Men	A Screaming Man
2011	The Tree of Life	The Kid with a Bike 🪢 Once Upon a Time in Anatolia	Polisse
2012	🪙Amour🪙	Reality	The Angels' Share
2013	Blue Is the Warmest Colour	Inside Llewyn Davis	Like Father, Like Son
2014	Winter Sleep	The Wonders	Goodbye to Language 🪢 Mommy
2015	Dheepan	🪙Son of Saul🪙	The Lobster
2016	I, Daniel Blake	It's Only the End of the World	American Honey
2017	The Square	BPM (Beats per Minute)	Loveless
2018	Shoplifters	BlacKkKlansman	Capernaum
2019	🪙🏆Parasite🏆🪙	Atlantics	Bacurau 🪢 Les Misérables
2021	Titane	Compartment No. 6 🪢 A Hero	Ahed's Knee 🪢 Memoria
2022	Triangle of Sadness	Stars at Noon 🪢 Close	The Eight Mountains 🪢 EO
2023	Anatomy of a Fall	The Zone of Interest	Fallen Leaves

• Bold means the actor received an Oscar nomination (23)
• Bold and italic means the actor was nominated in a non-acting category (1)
• Trophy means the actor won the Oscar (6)

Year	Best Actor	Best Actress
1975	Vittorio Gassman – Scent of a Woman	Valérie Perrine – Lenny
1976	José Luis Gómez – Pascual Duarte	Dominique Sanda – The Inheritance 🪢 Mari Törőcsik – Mrs. Dery Where Are You?
1977	Fernando Rey – Elisa, My Life	Shelley Duvall – 3 Women 🪢 Monique Mercure – J.A. Martin Photographer
1978	🏆Jon Voight – Coming Home🏆	Jill Clayburgh – An Unmarried Woman 🪢 Isabelle Huppert – Violette Nozière
1979	Jack Lemmon – The China Syndrome 🪢 Stefano Madia – Dear Father	🏆Sally Field – Norma Rae🏆 🪢 Eva Mattes – Woyzeck
1980	Michel Piccoli – A Leap in the Dark 🪢 Jack Thompson – Breaker Morant	Anouk Aimée – A Leap in the Dark 🪢 Milena Dravić – Special Treatment 🪢 Carla Gravina – La terrazza
1981	Ugo Tognazzi – Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man 🪢 Ian Holm – Chariots of Fire	Isabelle Adjani – Possession 🪢 Qaurtet 🪢 Elena Solovey – Faktas
1982	Jack Lemmon – Missing	Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak – Another Way
1983	Gian Maria Volonté – The Death of Mario Ricci	Hanna Schygulla – The Story of Piera
1984	Alfredo Landa 🪢 Francisco Rabal – The Holy Innocents	Helen Mirren – Cal
1985	🏆William Hurt – Kiss of the Spider Woman🏆	Norma Aleandro – The Official Story 🪢 Cher – Mask
1986	Michel Blanc – Ménage 🪢 Bob Hoskins – Mona Lisa	Barbara Sukowa – Rosa Luxemburg
1987	Marcello Mastroianni – Dark Eyes	Barbara Hershey – Shy People
1988	Forest Whitaker – Bird	Barbara Hershey 🪢 Jodhi May 🪢 Linda Mvusi – A World Apart
1989	James Spader – Sex, Lies, and Videotape	Meryl Streep – A Cry in the Dark
1990	Gérard Depardieu – Cyrano de Bergerac	Krystyna Janda – Interrogation
1991	John Turturro – Barton Fink 🪢 Samuel L. Jackson – Jungle Fever	Irène Jacob – The Double Life of Veronique
1992	Tim Robbins – The Player	Pernilla August – The Best Intentions
1993	David Thewlis – Naked	🏆Holly Hunter – The Piano🏆
1994	Ge You – To Live	Virna Lisi – La Reine Margot
1995	Jonathan Pryce – Carrington	Helen Mirren – The Madness of King George
1996	Daniel Auteuil 🪢 Pascal Duquenne – The Eighth Day	Brenda Blethyn – Secrets & Lies
1997	Sean Penn – She's So Lovely	Kathy Burke – Nil by Mouth
1998	Peter Mullan – My Name Is Joe	Élodie Bouchez 🪢 Natacha Régnier – The Dreamlife of Angels
1999	Emmanuel Schotté – Humanité	Séverine Caneele – Humanité 🪢 Émilie Dequenne – Rosetta
2000	Tony Leung Chiu-wai – In the Mood for Love	Björk – Dancer in the Dark
2001	Benoît Magimel – The Piano Teacher	Isabelle Huppert – The Piano Teacher
2002	Olivier Gourmet – The Son	Kati Outinen – The Man Without a Past
2003	Muzaffer Özdemir 🪢 Mehmet Emin Toprak – Distant	Marie-Josée Croze – The Barbarian Invasions
2004	Yūya Yagira – Nobody Knows	Maggie Cheung – Clean
2005	Tommy Lee Jones – The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada	Hanna Laslo – Free Zone
2006	Roschdy Zem 🪢 Bernard Blancan 🪢 Jamel Debbouze 🪢 Samy Naceri 🪢 Sami Bouajila – Days of Glory	Carmen Maura 🪢 Lola Dueñas 🪢 Blanca Portillo 🪢 Yohana Cobo 🪢 Chus Lampreave 🪢 Penélope Cruz – Volver
2007	Konstantin Lavronenko – The Banishment	Jeon Do-yeon – Secret Sunshine
2008	Benicio del Toro – Che	Sandra Corveloni – Linha de Passe
2009	🏆Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds🏆	Charlotte Gainsbourg – Antichrist
2010	Javier Bardem – Biutiful 🪢 Elio Germano – Our Life	Juliette Binoche – Certified Copy
2011	🏆Jean Dujardin – The Artist🏆	Kirsten Dunst – Melancholia
2012	Mads Mikkelsen – The Hunt	Cristina Flutur 🪢 Cosmina Stratan – Beyond the Hills
2013	Bruce Dern – Nebraska	Bérénice Bejo – The Past
2014	Timothy Spall – Mr. Turner	Julianne Moore – Maps to the Stars
2015	Vincent Lindon – The Measure of a Man	Emmanuelle Bercot – Mon Roi 🪢 Rooney Mara – Carol
2016	Shahab Hosseini – The Salesman	Jaclyn Jose – Ma' Rosa
2017	Joaquin Phoenix – You Were Never Really Here	Diane Kruger – In the Fade
2018	Marcello Fonte – Dogman	Samal Yeslyamova – Ayka
2019	Antonio Banderas – Pain and Glory	Emily Beecham – Little Joe
2021	Caleb Landry Jones – Nitram	Renate Reinsve – The Worst Person in the World
2022	Song Kang-ho – Broker	Zar Amir Ebrahimi – Holy Spider
2023	Kōji Yakusho – Perfect Days	Merve Dizdar – About Dry Grasses

• Bold means the film received at least 1 Oscar nomination in a corresponding category (9)
• Bold and italic means only the film was nominated, but the awarded filmmaker wasn't (8)

Year	Best Director	Best Screenplay
1975	Michel Brault – Orders 🪢 Costa-Gavras – Special Section
1976	Ettore Scola – Down and Dirty
1977
1978	Nagisa Ōshima – Empire of Passion
1979	Terrence Malick – Days of Heaven
1980		La Terrazza – Furio Scarpelli, Agenore Incrocci, Ettore Scola
1981		🪙Mephisto🪙 – István Szabó
1982	Werner Herzog – Fitzcarraldo	Moonlighting – Jerzy Skolimowski
1983	Robert Bresson – L'Argent 🪢 Andrei Tarkovsky – Nostalgia	Voyage to Cythera – Thanassis Valtinos, Theo Angelopoulos, Tonino Guerra
1984	Bertrand Tavernier – A Sunday in the Country
1985	André Téchiné – Rendez-vous
1986	Martin Scorsese – After Hours
1987	Wim Wenders – Wings of Desire
1988	Fernando Solanas – Sur
1989	Emir Kusturica – Time of the Gypsies
1990	Pavel Lungin – Taxi Blues
1991	Joel Coen – Barton Fink
1992	Robert Altman – The Player
1993	Mike Leigh – Naked
1994	Nanni Moretti – Dear Diary	Dead Tired – Michel Blanc
1995	Mathieu Kassovitz – La Haine
1996	Joel Coen – Fargo	A Self Made Hero – Jacques Audiard, Alain Le Henry
1997	Wong Kar-wai – Happy Together	The Ice Storm – James Schamus
1998	John Boorman – The General	Henry Fool – Hal Hartley
1999	Pedro Almodóvar – All About My Mother	Moloch – Yuri Arabov
2000	Edward Yang – Yi Yi	Nurse Betty – James Flamberg, John C. Richards
2001	Joel Coen – The Man Who Wasn't There 🪢 David Lynch – Mulholland Drive	No Man's Land – Danis Tanović
2002	Paul Thomas Anderson – Punch-Drunk Love 🪢 Im Kwon-taek – Painted Fire	Sweet Sixteen – Paul Laverty
2003	Gus Van Sant – Elephant	🪙The Barbarian Invasions🪙 – Denys Arcand
2004	Tony Gatlif – Exils	Look at Me – Agnès Jaoui, Jean-Pierre Bacri
2005	Michael Haneke – Caché	The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada – Guillermo Arriaga
2006	Alejandro González Iñárritu – Babel	Volver – Pedro Almodóvar
2007	Julian Schnabel – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly	The Edge of Heaven – Fatih Akin
2008	Nuri Bilge Ceylan – Three Monkeys	Lorna's Silence – Jean-Pierre, Luc Dardenne
2009	Brillante Mendoza – Butchered	Spring Fever – Mei Feng
2010	Mathieu Amalric – On Tour	Poetry – Lee Chang-dong
2011	Nicolas Winding Refn – Drive	Footnote – Joseph Cedar
2012	Carlos Reygadas – Post Tenebras Lux	Beyond the Hills – Cristian Mungiu, Tatiana Niculescu Bran
2013	Amat Escalante – Heli	A Touch of Sin – Jia Zhangke
2014	Bennett Miller – Foxcatcher	Leviathan – Andrey Zvyagintsev, Oleg Negin
2015	Hou Hsiao-hsien – The Assassin	Chronic – Michel Franco
2016	Olivier Assayas – Personal Shopper 🪢 Cristian Mungiu – Graduation	🪙The Salesman🪙 – Asghar Farhadi
2017	Sofia Coppola – The Beguiled	The Killing of a Sacred Deer – Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou 🪢 You Were Never Really Here – Lynne Ramsay
2018	Paweł Pawlikowski – Cold War	3 Faces – Jafar Panahi, Nader Saeivar 🪢 Happy as Lazzaro – Alice Rohrwacher
2019	Jean-Pierre 🪢 Luc Dardenne – Young Ahmed	Portrait of a Lady on Fire – Céline Sciamma
2021	Leos Carax – Annette	🪙Drive My Car🪙 – Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Takamasa Oe
2022	Park Chan-wook – Decision to Leave	Boy from Heaven – Tarik Saleh
2023	Tran Anh Hung – The Pot-au-Feu	Monster – Yuji Sakamoto

This was on AITA but I guess I posted to the wrong subreddit because it's about my relationship so here we go.
I've (29M) been dating Christina (27F) for 3 years now. She's wonderful. Occasionally we argue but what couple doesn't. This concerns her half brother James (32M) who constantly pushes my buttons and boundaries. James was also recently divorced a few months ago (important to story).
For example, if Christina and I have a date night scheduled, he will find a way to ruin it by having an emergency. Last time he messaged Christina to tell her that he was in the hospital so obviously we dropped our plans and went to see him. He was not in the hospital, he went to A&E to remove a tick, was waiting there for one hour before getting bored and messaged her. Or another example would be that he would agree to pet-sit for us when we had a wedding to go to and he couldn't figure out how to feed our dog despite us sending him detailed information and photos of where everything was. Christina wanted to go early to make sure Archie was okay but I didn't want to leave because he is over 30 and can figure out basic instructions. Christina will drop everything for that man, I see it as baby-ing him.
The last straw was yesterday. James went on a date with a random guy from Grindr who clearly just wanted to sleep with him and ended up in a shady part of town where he didn't feel comfortable and wanted Christina to pick him up (he can't drive). She wanted to leave our date night, we were at a bar but hadn't ordered drinks yet, and pick him up and then return to our date. I told her to send him cash for an UBER home and that I wanted to spend time with her since we both have had hectic work schedules. She said no so I called off our date and told her to meet me at home.
While I didn't yell or blow up, I made it clear I was annoyed and tired of him taking our free time for granted and that if she didn't respect our relationship or me enough to set time aside for one-on-one time, she should leave. We are now on a break because she thinks family comes first, always. AITA? I am tired of being out on a back burner whenever James needs her. There are other options he can pursue but he will always call my girlfriend.
ETA - I said that she should respect me or leave after a lot of back and forth once I'd said she isn't respecting our one-on-one time

Oh, and it’s also Lily-Rose’s birthday as well.
Today marks the 7-year anniversary of when Amber, and her co-conspirators, unleashed a desperate plot to defame and destroy a man whilst at the same time to boost her profile and ultimately gain financial reward.
From the trial we know: - Depp had enough of Amber’s bad behavior and wanted to leave her especially after his mom died - Amber was physically violent towards Depp (source: audio tapes from trial) - Amber was the initial aggressor (source: her words) - Amber was (and still is) mentally / emotionally unstable / irrational / unreasonable, she wouldn’t let him leave to see his kids (source: audio tapes again) - Amber berates, demeans and attacks his manhood and fatherhood - Amber plays mind games (source: her testimony and that bizarre dateline interview) - Amber and her friends lived in Depp’s penthouses (plural) rent and bill free so were at risk of being kicked out after the divorce - Amber threaten to extort money, property and possessions out of Depp whilst simultaneously publicly stating she was financially independent (point of fact - some of us just get up and leave an abusive relationship - we don’t want anything from the other person and leave our valuables / stuff behind but hey everyone is different) - Amber uses a theatrical bruise kit to fake marks on her face (source: her own testimony) - Amber lied that she always uses a certain cosmetic kit to ‘hide’ the bruises on her face but it actually came out years later (source: Court TV) - Amber leaked to TMZ that she was planning on getting a TRO and make it very public to hurt Depp, even stating which side of the face to capture (source: Morgan Tremaine’s testimony) - Amber did not have to file a DVTRO in person - Amber can’t act … she wasn’t surprised in the slightest by the media circus when leaving the courthouse (see video of unnatural behavior) - Amber could have left by at least three other more private exits meant for celebrities and high profile individuals (source: EDB), - Amber takes, and keeps, creep shots of Depp when he is passed out and in his most vulnerable state - Amber blames everyone else for her actions like the dogs - Amber could have given the cash settlement part of the divorce agreement directly to charity but she changed her mind (source: Ed White’s testimony) - Amber said she donated all the money away but we know she didn’t (source: ACLU, some European TV show, and Variety article) - Amber kept (stole) the charity money and blamed Depp - Amber had all the divorce money for 13 months before Depp sued her - Amber’s home insurance policy actually paid her legal costs - Amber ghosted the charities (source: ACLU and CHLA) - Amber was caught by other witnesses physically striking Depp and made up a ridiculous story (and quite likely started a rumor) to justify hitting him - Amber claimed Depp pushed a supermodel down some stairs in the 90’s but that same model made a late appearances and testified it didn’t happen (source: Kate Moss’ testimony) - Amber says she represents MeToo but has close connections with dubious characters such as James Franco, David Shane and Dan Woolton to name but a few - Washington Post op-Ed was about Depp (source: ACLU), and - She was, and still is, a woman scorned (see L’Oréal and Cannes news last week).
Did I miss anything? It’s amazing what you remember almost a year later from the trial. And neither Depp or Heard live rent free in my mind - before this week, been inactive for almost 3 months. And before that about another 3 months (when Amber settled in December).
Haven’t even mentioned that very telling and weird divorce deposition she did, omg those self-owns plus you can’t tell me she wasn’t on something!
Why she never just took the cash settlement and moved on is still beyond me. She just couldn’t let go - even got him fired from at least one blockbuster franchise.
Every time we think we have broken the glass ceiling and are making real progress, individuals like Amber (and Holmes) just drags us back into the gutter and ruins it for the rest of us.
Only thing left is the jury viewpoint should they come forward. But they saw what we all saw & heard (read: watched the trial™) and 95.93% of us all reached the same conclusion as them.

I'm reaching out to seek your assistance in fact-checking a claim that has been circulating regarding the Carlyle Group and a supposed meeting involving Shafiq bin Laden, a half-brother of Osama bin Laden, on September 11, 2001. I have been unable to find credible sources to verify this information, as the provided links are no longer accessible and the Web Archive doesn't seem to have relevant records.
The claim suggests that the Carlyle Group had organized a conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001. This meeting allegedly included prominent figures such as George H.W. Bush, James Baker III, and Shafiq bin Laden. However, without credible sources, it's challenging to confirm the accuracy of these details.
I'm particularly interested in finding reliable sources that can shed light on the alleged connections between the Carlyle Group, Shafiq bin Laden, and the Bush clan. Additionally, any information on investigations, reports, or journalistic works that have explored these relationships would be valuable for a thorough understanding of the situation.
As members of this community, I believe that we can collaboratively examine and verify claims by pooling our knowledge, resources, and critical thinking skills. Please share any relevant sources or information you may have come across or offer insights into the matter. Let's maintain a professional and respectful discussion as we strive for accuracy and thoroughness in our investigation.
Thank you all for your time and assistance. Your contributions are greatly appreciated!
​
**********
​
UPDATE:
​

Among the other passengers was Shafig bin Laden, a half brother of Osama bin Laden who was reportedly attending the annual investor conference of the Carlyle Group, a politically connected investment company in Washington, on Sept. 11, 2001.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/07/22/plane-carried-13-bin-ladens/ab154d45-1f4c-42e6-9522-323140d9e405/
(link kindly provided by mgahan)
​

It didn't help that as the World Trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a brother of Osama bin Laden. Former president Bush, a fellow investor, had been with him at the conference the previous day.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25406-2003Mar14.html
​

ON the day Osama bin Laden's men attacked America, Shafiq bin Laden, described as an estranged brother of the terrorist, was at an investment conference in Washington, DC, along with two people who are close to President George Bush: his father, the first President Bush, and James Baker, the former secretary of state who masterminded the legal campaign that secured Dubya's move to the White House.

https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2003/06/26/c-for-capitalism
​

On 11 September, while Al-Qaeda's planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Carlyle Group hosted a conference at a Washington hotel. Among the guests of honour was a valued investor: Shafig bin Laden, brother to Osama.

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserve2002/jun/16/features.magazine57
​
Damn, I hate these conspiracy theories.

Hello! I have been sitting on top of this since a year, and now is the perfect time to voice it out. Enough is enough! I have been on the lookout for this dreaded group since years, and even though I covered this group largely before, it is essential to cover rest of the elements I could not give space to in my previous expose writeups, due to lack of ample evidence and sheer amounts of writing that does not allow enough space for one particular group.
This Canadian (yes, took time to know that) group of trolls is nothing significant today, thanks to largely efforts of people dishing out ample evidence about them, but they tend to fabricate way too much lies in a concerted manner across Reddit, 4chan, YouTube comments and the like, all while simultaneously fabricating boogeymen cabals that apparently attack them. Today, even Louis Rossmann has felt the wrath.
It is critically important to trace and decode the patterns of their workings and Kiwifarms-like behaviour on internet, and I see this group as the next big threat to privacy community, simply because they have been persistent and think they are unstoppable.
My aim is to try to stay objective throughout as much as I can. I also want to mention that this is a lore that basically nobody other than me has tracked in this depth (arguably Techlore has enough material), and nobody else carries a record of these events in this manner to date.

WHY IS DANIEL MICAY'S BEHAVIOUR SO WEIRD?

I have been more curious than anyone else, trying to decode his behaviour psychologically to the best of my capabilities and experience on internet by myself. This person is claimed to be either mentally ill or narcissistic by various people, as of now. But I do not think he is simply narcissistic, because he consciously and responsibly knows very well what he does. As I show you screenshots of DivestOS incident, you will know why.

EVENTS

I will describe events in a chronological order since last year's "criticism of ... 4 years of evidence" magnum opus I wrote, making this the 5th year of "security" entities in FOSS community continuing to engage in awkward behaviours and exploiting the lack of expertise of ordinary folks who skim through various privacy communities. I recommend going through this first if you want to know everything about the backstory about privacy community's related issues. (https://old.reddit.com/privatelife/comments/ug9qnc/writeup_criticism_of_rprivacyguides_grapheneos/)

HOW IS GRAPHENEOS AN EMBARGO GOOGLE PARTNER FOR SECURITY PATCHES?

I read a couple of years ago somewhere, GrapheneOS describing how they are an embargo security partner. However, I cannot find those reddit comments anymore, so the next best option is a tweet from August 2022 by the horse's mouth. One person alone building monthly patches for years for supported Pixels compared to Google Inc seems like quite an impossibly tall order to me.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220829223401/https://twitter.com/GrapheneOS/status/1564322206414524420#m

(MAY 2022) MICAY CLAIMED HOW I WAS PAID BY CHINESE GOVERNMENT TO SPREAD LIES AND DESTROY PRIVACY COMMUNITY, PRIVACYGUIDES HEAD ENDORSES SAID CLAIM

Exactly one day after I published the 4 year criticism magnum opus on May 1 2022, what I see on the afternoon of May 2 2022 is this.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220502064114/https://old.reddit.com/PrivacyGuides/comments/uged1y/is_grapheneos_actually_good_or_just_hype/
One long thesis with zero citations. Hubris. This guy loves to talk about character assassination after pissing off people, and when he gets civilly criticised, this happens.
You can remove the archive.org part (https://old.reddit.com/PrivacyGuides/comments/uged1y/is_grapheneos_actually_good_or_just_hype/) and check currently how Jonah Aragon, head of PrivacyGuides, fully endorses these claims, and to this day, has a shared moderator (mbananasynergy) with GrapheneOS subreddit (earlier it was B0risGrishenk0/Tommy_tran whose new alt is Privsec_dev). You may also check how after a year, the post mostly has [deleted] users and comments, all being GrapheneOS sockpuppets and harassers abusing pseudonymity offered by Reddit. These are the people that scream everyday how sockpuppet harassment occurs to them.
He did this on Twitter as well. http://web.archive.org/web/20220820001954/https://twitter.com/GrapheneOS/status/1560729241364340737
In the tweets down the chain, he says:

That person is a tankie who supports authoritarian governments and peddles lies for them [...] It might as well be official CCP propaganda too.

Is there any problem with liking certain countries that you hate, because of geopolitical preferences and news media propaganda? How xenophobe can you be, to think Indians/Asians must like same geopolitical narratives as Canadians/Westerners? I do not believe in Western nationalist tropes, and I think it is fair for everyone to have this freedom.

HOW GRAPHENEOS WITCH HUNTS ANY OF ITS CRITICS

Here is the moderation list of GrapheneOS. https://i.imgur.com/nZDeBG6.jpg Here is it, straight from the horse's mouth. https://i.imgur.com/nhepoMJ.jpg

(JUNE 2022) LEMMY RCMP THREAT FIASCO REVISIT

There has been a recent incident from late April 2023 (a month ago) where Daniel Micay claimed he has faced a swatting attempt (attempt to raid house and murder), and a certain CP and gore spammer flooded GrapheneOS chatrooms with this type of nasty troll content, but in one month, he has NOT provided any evidence. Moreover, he claimed Royal Canadian Metropolitan Police (RCMP) is investigating this matter, and then proceeded to lockdown the GrapheneOS Off-Topic Matrix chatroom (place of claimed incident) for sometime.
For context in follow up, Lemmy is a free and open source federated Reddit alternative, that is fully federated with Mastodon, Twitter's free and open rival.
This faux threatening using Canadian police's credentials reminded me of a very similar incident that I faced at Lemmy from two moderators (akc3n from GrapheneOS and dngray from PrivacyGuides) on behalf of Micay. I am the moderator of c/privacy at Lemmy, and this was their failed attempt at trying to rage bait me into reacting hastily, causing administration to revoke my moderation powers, so that GrapheneOS trolls could make Lemmy their next place of habitat, something I protect Lemmy from.
https://archive.ph/acy2h
During this incident, due to the chaos that the tag team of GrapheneOS and PrivacyGuides (remember they still have shared moderator after Tommy?) caused, one Lemmy administrator warned me, because they got scared about the name of police being involved. Tommy_Tran/Privsec_dev proceeded to get me banned from Lemmy c/privacy's Matrix chatroom by tag teaming with dngray (PrivacyGuides moderator) to bait the moderator of that Matrix chatroom in believing I was the troll. Tommy took over soon enough and changed the room into some Windows/GrapheneOS Security crap, and later the moderator of Matrix chatroom itself moved off of Lemmy.ml (Lemmy's main instance) onto Lemmy.ca (coincidentally a Canadian instance). I do not know if these Canadians are friends or just fellow countrymen, but what they did was insanely evil. (Instances are like separate websites that can still operate like they are the same forum/website.)
Screenshot of c/privacy Matrix room takeover and trolling behind my back, knowing what they have pulled off: https://i.imgur.com/PoTiANo.jpg

(JANUARY 2023) akc3n, GRAPHENEOS MOD, CLAIMS THAT WITCH HUNTING CRITICS' ACCOUNTS IS "BRAND REPUTATION AND COMPETITOR ANALYSIS" AND TOMMY BEING A XENOPHOBE

Another horse and his mouth. N-n-neighhh!!! Since Reddit made API paid and Pushshift archival service has said goodbye forever, I can only show you the thread with barely any comments leftover as proof combined with the screenshot I preserved from back then.
Tommy loves Micay so much, he started to accuse me of being a Chinese government shill in exactly the same way Micay did in May 2022.
Now a ghost town of comments: (https://old.reddit.com/deapple/comments/10dxzdb)
Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/q2OefBw.jpg (see the blue highlighted portion at the very end, at about 20% height from below)

DIVESTOS DEVELOPER BANNING ME ON MICAY'S ORDERS OTHERWISE HE WILL INITIATE A SOCIAL MEDIA HARASSMENT CAMPAIGN AGAINST DIVESTOS

Yes, this happened, and this is my favourite part as far as everything GrapheneOS head/mods have done to date. As dramatic as it sounds, Micay in realtime, in DivestOS' XMPP chatroom, was accusing me of the typical "harassment ringleader campaign" BS, and ordered DivestOS/Mull developer (these are his aliases) SubZer0Carnage/Tad/SkewedZeppelin that if I was not banned immediately, DivestOS and him would face social media targeted campaign and DivestOS will have to forcibly pull off any borrowed GrapheneOS code. DivestOS developer dusted his hands off me, since he does not like me apparently for liking some closed source software and he benefits off of the crybully. Also, unlike the crybully, I have never harassed or harmed anyone because I have a moral conscience to not be an abusive asshole on internet, so he will face no issues on my end.
Screenshot 1: https://i.imgur.com/Al65uTZ.jpg
Screenshot 2 continuation: https://i.imgur.com/mT8W9pa.jpg

TOMMY AND ANUPRITA/RANDOMHYDROSOL SHOWCASING THEIR LOVE FOR GOOGLE/APPLE/MICROSOFT SPYWARE

See, the point is Google and Apple are spyware/ad companies at the end of the day, and it does not matter if you need to use their services due to necessity. The technicality of it does not change, and people simply make privacy compromises for convenience or out of necessity. I do not have anything against that. What I am against though is this weaseling being done in privacy community, knowing people want to prevent privacy abuse from corporations and governments.
I use Windows (and Linux) daily according to how I laid it out in my computing guide in a very private and secure manner. I understand the use cases of common people extremely well, even better than just about all of privacy community, having been a Windows user all my life and daily driving Linux exclusively since 6 years (now dual boot).
These specimens come and evangelically claim how Google and Apple do not spy on people, and how "degoogling" is a nonsensical concept. The reality is, basically all of these peoples' knowledge other than Micay and DivestOS dev, is as good or worse than a first year sophomore computer science student. They mostly parrot the typical points that they formulate based upon things they would hear in their own little world of shitty security blogs, reddit and whatever proficionados like Micay and developers at XDA would blabber about, creating reductionist notions in their head they can just preach around.
Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/bUdVCpH.jpg

GRAPHENEOS ALTS CLAIM CELLEBRITE KITS CANNOT EXFILTRATE DATA FROM PIXELS ON YOUTUBE COMMENTS

I do not know enough to be able to browse every YouTube comment section of every tech related video made on custom ROMs on phones, but what I know is Luke Smith is fairly popular among Western youngsters regarding tech topics. He is a more extreme version of Mental Outlaw, for those that are clueless.
When I saw this, I was astounded. Cellebrite is an Israeli cybersecurity company whose phone exfiltrating kits cost upwards of $1 million, and are only purchasable for government agencies like TSA, police and forensic departments. This company purchases 0day vulnerabilities in commonly used smartphone apps which allows them to run their phone hacking government nexus. How are these GrapheneOS people buying million dollar kits when Micay only has one desktop computer for his GrapheneOS ROM binary compilation? The answer is - it is a lie attempted to be spread like rumour.
One would think, why would anyone be concerned about going this far? I am usually the person who people try to follow on, since I pose good questions regarding a lot of things. In this case, the question would be: if GrapheneOS claims bootloader lock security for protection against Evil Maid and other bootloader attacks, is it secure against phone hacking kits at airports or against state actors? Has GrapheneOS' security ever been vetted independently? Since regular Joe on the street is not a proficionado, would it be okay to ensure selling claims of such extreme security of GrapheneOS is battle tested? People started asking these questions that always went unanswered. You get the idea.
Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/woNxPhx.jpg

DOZENS OF GRAPHENEOS ALTS SPAMMING "PIXEL 6A $299" ON PRIVACY SUBREDDITS AND 4CHAN PRIVACY CLOSES OFF ALL AOSP ROM DISCUSSION POST BRIGADING

If you go to any of the 4Chan archives for /g/ board, and search "graphene" or "pixel", you will find both of these mentioned together many times, which is a very interesting phenomenon. This is known as astroturfing. Here is a compilation of /g/ comments from the last 6 months. https://i.imgur.com/G6P1c9n.jpg
privacy suffered the same and sheltered Micay against all criticism until last month when Micay accused privacy moderators of sheltering claimed CP/gore spammer and swatter, followed by a lot of vote manipulation and sockpuppet brigading, leading to privacy shutting down all discussions relating to any specific AOSP custom ROMs. https://old.reddit.com/privacy/comments/130y6uz/android_based_operating_systems/

MICAY'S CLAIMS OF CP/GORE SPAM ON HIS CHATROOM, AND CLAIM OF ATTEMPTED SWATTING (HOUSE RAID MURDER)

This is the spiciest part for most people in the know about this, and it has been one whole month since the claims. However, neither local Canadian news media has reported anything on something that would be as significant as swatting a software developer, nor has he presented evidence upon being asked by numerous users. Upon being asked, Micay has either ghosted or banned people, or accused them of being complicit in his self-proclaimed attempted murder.
What he is doing here is using psychological trickery of dead cat strategy, creating a loop of "mysterious" act that only he and his 2-3 moderator friends know about but have, upon being repeatedly requested by dozens, denied to give a shred of evidence, and has attempted to use this dirty sensationalist act to gain sympathy. He has also utilised the effect, until now, of relying on the goldfish attention span of masses regarding world events, so that people forget questioning his shocking claims and think his gospel is the immortalised truth.
Moreover, he has a history of never giving any evidence for his claims he has made over the years. Techlore and I have noted and documented this dozens of times at this point, and one Reddit user involved with using GrapheneOS undertook the effort to do this as well. https://old.reddit.com/u_lo________________ol/comments/1314x2x/_/
In the past 24 hours, after Rossmann's video came out, Micay announced that not just is he claiming to step down as developer of GrapheneOS, but that "police know about the swatting situation and are preventing it happening again". How did it go from blocking and ghosting dozens of people upon asking for evidence, to a month later claiming "oh all is good I am quitting social media have a nice day"? Is everyone this gullible? Is there no course of action, or no accountability to present evidence publicly (let alone block users asking) for the duration of an entire month? Nobody is asking for CP material, and evidence of such incident could have easily been shown. Micay engages on social media almost everyday, in a terminally online manner. The reality is, he is escaping accountability after failing to get sympathy from baseless sensationalist claims. Dead cat strategy works until it does not, and people hate being taken as fools for long enough.
EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS REQUIRE EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE.
STOP BELIEVING STRANGERS SAYING ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET.
BEING EMPATHETIC DOES NOT MEAN YOU NEED TO TAKE EVERYTHING AT FACE VALUE.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230527063653/https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1662212232506388481#m

COMPARING LEMMY FIASCO FROM LAST YEAR WITH CURRENT EVIDENCE-LESS CP/GORE SPAMMING AND SWATTING CLAIMS

The incident that happened with me from June 2022, in a nutshell, is faux RCMP (Canadian police) threats in order to sensationalise and scare off me and Lemmy's admins into thinking I was onto some serious wrongdoings, creating an image of things that never happened or never will happen. The exact same scare off tactics happened with Micay's fresh claims in late April 2023, which constitutes psychological manipulation of privacy and Android community users to gain attention at all costs. Bad PR is good PR, and good PR is great PR.

LOOKING AT u/lo________________ol's COMPILATION POST OF MICAY'S NUMEROUS EVIDENCE-LESS CLAIMS IN THE PAST

This is the compilation post. https://old.reddit.com/u_lo________________ol/comments/1314x2x/_/
The only ever real conflict that materialised enough into a spat, where I did support Micay, was when CopperheadOS CEO James Donaldson and him had their catfight going on, and when Donaldson asked me in DMs to harass Micay in an organised manner. I protected Micay. https://i.imgur.com/hujn4P1.jpg
Coming to basically every single claim Micay has made about me, Techlore, CalyxOS, F-Droid, Bromite, FlorisBoard developers/heads and so on... Micay has NEVER EVER provided proof justifying his claims. That is right, NEVER, not in a single case. All he has ever done, is scream and shout sensationally, utilising dead cat strategy over the years. There does exist a reason for why he has done all this, which I will elaborate on in a section below.

A VERY COMMON OCCURRENCE OF "$299 PIXEL 6A" COMMENTS ON PRIVACY SUBREDDITS

privacy has now purged comments of these Graphene/Pixel zealots, but there was a certain phenomenon that started after the Black Friday/Christmas sale regarding how financially "accessible" Pixels were, leading these single origin sockpuppets and astroturfers to spam comments with this theme in every "phone recommendation" post/thread. After the Black Friday sales ended, they went ahead and started recommending Swappa/Craigslist used handsets over anything else, with the idea that if you do not buy Pixel, you might as well be directly streamed 24/7 live to 3 letter spook agents. How much more elitist, misleading and toxic can one be when trying to improve privacy of average people?
Collage: https://i.imgur.com/Q1wIIfS.jpg

GRAPHENEOS MATRIX CHAT TELLING PEOPLE TO FLY TO OTHER COUNTRIES TO GET A PIXEL IF NOT AVAILABLE DOMESTICALLY

It is known among Google Pixel buyers and USA/Canada phone buyers, that Pixels have extremely limited availability by country. The amount of mental gymnastics required for someone to tell they need to travel by airplane to other countries to get one specific phone, if they want to have any privacy and security on a phone, forces me to say this - you need medical assistance. When a community goes ahead to do this, what will be your reaction? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Here you go. https://i.imgur.com/Yv9nvxy.jpg

PRIVACYGUIDES PROTECTS AND PETS GRAPHENEOS MODS/HEADS INTENTIONALLY, UPON QUESTIONING YOU GET MUTED OR SILENCED

Tommy was originally made the moderator of PrivacyGuides (PG) exactly one day after he published the "false privacy prophet" post on me (https://archive.is/7wKJW), a post that had no evidence, and trended for an entire month at PG. This person has been a key member and friend of GrapheneOS mods and Micay himself. He thoroughly ensured that Micay's personal grudge based ideas were echoed through PG, and fellow mods like dngray, trai_dep and Jonah fully supported this. akc3n, a fellow GrapheneOS moderator, was always active in threads with them, essentially heavily controlling participation of users at every level. This sounds as ridiculous to me as it does to you, and to this day (May 27 2023), mbananasynergy is a shared moderator between GrapheneOS and PG. You might wonder, the subheading above has still not been addressed. How did I get silenced? Read below.
The exchange between Jonah Aragon and me. https://old.reddit.com/u_lo________________ol/comments/1314x2x/why_did_i_do_this/ji36hbs/#c

REDDIT MAKING ITS API ACCESS PAID, CAUSING PUSHSHIFT ARCHIVAL SERVICE TO COLLAPSE, LEADING TO RAMPANT SOCKPUPPET ABUSE AND HEADACHE FOR MODERATION

Reddit's decision to cripple Pushshift's archival service is intentional. It allows to generate negativity and drama, which will lead to more internet traffic like how Elon Musk loves the new "town square" Twitter. More internet traffic translates to more value when Reddit becomes public entity for shareholders. This causes a nerve busting headache for sitewide moderation, and everyone knows it.
GrapheneOS, as demonstrated and as observed by basically everyone, is extremely formidable at sockpuppet trolling and witch hunting of critics. The definition of a "critic" for them is anyone who does not worship GrapheneOS. Period. Louis Rossmann sees how this makes sense, and so does everyone else. Refer to the "HOW GRAPHENEOS WITCH HUNTS ANY OF ITS CRITICS" section above.

UTTER IGNORANCE AND FAILURE OF PRIVACY COMMUNITY TO SELF POLICE SUCH ELEMENTS

A little angry rant on privacy community as a whole
Privacy community seriously is pathetic in keeping people accountable and vetting the products/tools and their developers, for all the vigilante preaching that goes on in here. It took me to create privatelife and bring some change, and I do not know how much change has been brought about. People just want to look good, nobody cares about actual democracy and putting in the effort to maintain it. Everyone wants their hands clean, expecting others to do the watchdog job, and nobody ends up standing in the crowd. I am from India and I should care zilch about privacy community filled with "democratic westerners" not standing up for themselves, and living like sheep in a dictatorship of some FOSS, corporate and closed source developers/entities. Why do people want to dust their hands off of everything like X or Y incident has nothing to do with them? Where did the concept of solidarity go? Why does nobody want to hold people accountable for being assholes?
/rant

LOUIS ROSSMANN FACES THE MUSIC (COMPLICIT IN ATTEMPTED MURDER) FROM DANIEL MICAY FOR CALLING HIS REPULSIVE INTERNET BEHAVIOUR "INFORMATIVE AND UNFORTUNATE"

Rossmann came out yesterday with a descriptive video with a screen recording of his chat with Micay, where Micay accused him of all that he has gone to accuse literally everyone under the sun during the past month, and folks like me during the past few years. Some reddit users have been targeted with the same, and found solace in talking to me and whatever I have documented on Micay and his acolytes, among other topics and groups.
Rossmann's video on uninstalling GrapheneOS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl1x1Dy-ej4
The video is gaining attention because of how much goodwill Rossmann's deeds towards Apple repairing and Right to Repair movement has garnered over the past 10-15 years. And he is a good person. My only disappointment with him has been missing the mark on, and being silent on GrapheneOS all this while. I get his reasons of benevolence towards FOSS projects, but we need to be stricter about social conduct. Nothing excuses being a horrible person, as far as civil discourse goes.

SO, WHY IS MICAY'S BEHAVIOUR SO WEIRD? A LITTLE MORE CONTEXT AND AN ATTEMPT TO SEE WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO HIM...

More than almost anyone else, I have been interested in why he turned out like this. I will preface this by saying I do not fully believe he is autistic, and even if he is, it does not explain this kind of "me versus the world" impulsive behaviour.
Last year, sometime after he wrote that "paid Chinese government agent" comment on me, I decided to try to genuinely sympathise with him for one more time and see his response.
https://old.reddit.com/privatelife/comments/ws96wx/_/ikzipwf/ (feel free to read with context https://old.reddit.com/privatelife/comments/ws96wx/_/ikzipwf?context=10)
He went silent on me and stopped attacking me. Considering I have documented his behaviour for a few years, I have a well supported conjecture that is better than "BPD/schizo".
Originally, Micay made the memory allocation hardening patch for Linux kernel, but never got a fulfilling wealthy life or career out of it, considering how many of his years later went down quarrelling with CopperheadOS' Donaldson. He quit Copperhead organisation to maintain his fork under the name of GrapheneOS, which is a free open source project. Lack of success in life is the first condition fulfilled.
The second part of this consists of many smaller parts.
I noted last year how in the below reddit thread/screenshot, Daniel Micay and madaidan argue together against Firefox. Before the Tor Project mailing list happened in August 2019, the whole anti-Firefox sentiment mysteriously used to not exist in GrapheneOS community. This is probably the first instance of Micay's resentment towards a large FOSS project.
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2019-August/013995.html
https://www.unddit.com/firefox/comments/gokcis/firefox_is_insecure_refuted/
Screenshot: https://i.postimg.cc/1P0cfmjX/Firefox-insecure-refuted.jpg
For context, I would ideally advise to read through the "criticism... 4 year evidence" writeup, but an easier way to go through this is knowing about madaidan and his "toilet paper" (I did not call it that) blog attacking FOSS projects' security while simultaneously recommending the antithesis of privacy - Windows, MacOS, Google Chrome et al.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210929053611/https://old.reddit.com/linux/comments/pwi1l9/thoughts_about_an_article_talking_about_the/
https://web.archive.org/web/20220111035527/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25590079
https://archive.is/zxS72
This is one part of how Micay started to become an isolated toxic person developing hate for FOSS projects for others not conforming to his ideas of how things should be done. This was also the first moment where he took a step towards the Google Big Tech black hole.
Slowly, however, he started to attract the "security zealots" in privacy and FOSS community. What happened here is explained by Dunbar's number, which says a human can only form relationships with 148 people. This number falls to a maximum of 30-50 if you are not particularly extroverted or prefer a smaller group. All of the "security zealots" found some comfort together, creating a loosely linked group where everyone can unite with certain talking points, regarding bashing Linux/Firefox security, preferring Big Tech obscure security products and services, and allowing to normalise the various toxic behaviours everyone individually bears, in the name of "oh IT security people are just bad at social skills". I can count these 15-20 people which allows me to be a bit more confident in what has happened.
People do not know much about this, but Micay used to fantasise replacing Linux kernel with Google's Fuchsia microkernel, a... Google project, because Linux is insecure and trashy. The issue here is that while he did work on Linux kernel patch in the past, he does not anymore, because he has started to develop resentment against any FOSS projects that are not fully conformant with his ways. Linux simply never gave him the success. Micay is apparently entitled to get the fruits, not realising individual work on Linux is largely a communistic effort. Free open source movement is by design democratic and for the community/society first.
Sometime ago, someone informed me of Micay (alias thestingestrcat) creating drama with Bromite (on which their Vanadium browser fork is based) and FlorisBoard projects. They labelled those project maintainers with very bad, false epithets, like "you will be tied to a group engaging in Kiwi Farms level abuse and tolerating neo-nazis". Well too bad, witch hunting people is what you people admittedly do and call it market research.
https://github.com/bromite/bromite/pull/2102#issuecomment-1155760155
https://github.com/bromite/bromite/issues/2141
http://web.archive.org/web/20220803142758/https://github.com/florisboard/florisboard/issues/1921
I should not need to elaborate on GrapheneOS' attitude towards Techlore (he has 2 videos on it) and CalyxOS (again Techlore partially covers CalyxOS).
GrapheneOS members, Micay and his friends like Wonderfall have attacked F-Droid in the name of security, only to push using Google Play Store that annihilates all privacy of people. Google Play Services gather every possible metric about your phone which includes sensor, location, IP address, telephone number, IMEI and so on every 7 minutes. Just to be fair, Apple does the same things and is far worse. This theme of evangelising Google products at the cost of bashing all other projects is a thumb rule for GrapheneOS community.
https://forum.f-droid.org/t/what-are-the-issues-fdroid-have-about-security/17520
Micay finding solace among his "security zealot" friends allowed him to go unchecked and grow into a very malicious person, targeting FOSS projects, individuals, organisations and privacy communities with a lot of sockpuppet trolling, vote manipulation, dishonesty, normalising horrific social etiquette, demonising and witch hunting any and all people that do not worship GrapheneOS. It is borderline criminal and is a surprise to me how people are okay with someone like him. I have two explanations for this - either the ones okay with this themselves share some of these behaviours, or they themselves use GrapheneOS and due to sunk cost fallacy and/or fear of Micay personally targeting them, they either defend him or keep their mouths intentionally shut. An insignificant number of people accept him merely because of benevolence towards FOSS projects IMHO.

FINAL WORD

The problem is not Daniel Micay. The problem is this kind of mindset that has been able to breed and flourish in society. Today, this Micay might go. Tomorrow, another Micay will come under a different name or even this very person under an alias. Privacy community needs to stop being such selfish and individualistic. People need to stop procrastinating or avoiding vetting of these people. I understand tools and code is hard to vet, but people behind the projects can absolutely be vetted. Giving space to elements like these toxic "security zealots" in tech is not bravery or benevolence, it is stupidity and disgustingly selfish. This is precisely why rulebooks like Code Of Conduct have become increasingly popular. We need to give people and projects the boot from society that do not follow Code Of Conduct, and especially pretentious groups like GrapheneOS (https://web.archive.org/web/20230521023428/https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/11-grapheneos-code-of-conduct) that pretend to have civil rules but do the exact opposite to everyone that disagrees with them.
Since enough people may not have understood this, I will repeat it, as I end this text file with some internet rules.
EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS REQUIRE EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE.
STOP BELIEVING STRANGERS SAYING ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET.
BEING EMPATHETIC DOES NOT MEAN YOU NEED TO TAKE EVERYTHING AT FACE VALUE.

Greetings my severed heads. Like many of you I discovered the show, ate it up, read the Lexington Letter and am on a personal campaign to tell every person I know about it.
Having that said, I have also taken the next logical step, which is to peruse the subreddit ad nauseam, and doing that, I noticed one of the pivotal questions around here revolves around wondering why innies are the way they are, i.e. why someone like Helena would be as defiant as little Helly. I think it makes a lot of sense to compare them with children—that is to say, the innies are a reflection of who the outie was during childhood, before trauma set it and life events shaped and matured the personality. I’m going to go over the MDR staff to show you what I mean.
Let’s start with our protagonist Mark S. Mark’s innie is thoughtful, law-abiding, supportive and congenial, a real example of what Lumon wants their Severed staff to be like. We know outside Mark is very different: he’s cynical, jaded, melancholic and struggling to deal with the death of his wife by drinking. But, what was he like as a child? His relationship with his sister, Devon is a big clue. She’s his closest friend and confidante, and despite the snark he burns her with on occasion, he’s clearly always there for her, down to being present for the birth of his niece despite his utter dislike of his brother-in-law Ricken. One of the inside jokes that the actors came up with on set was the “M’Lady/M’Lord” exchange. I will take the liberty to read into things here and take this as a sign that their relationship has been strong since childhood, perhaps even one of camaraderie. The same kind of dorky, servile attitude we see in Mark S as an innie.
Then, let’s talk about Dylan. We only get a couple of glimpses into Dylan’s home life and are informed—thanks Milchick—that he has three children. But, we do get to see a lot of him as an innie. Sardonic, deadpan and spirited, Dylan is particularly proud of his achievements at Lumon, somehow touting them as better than they are. This is, again, an attitude that many kids have. I’m talking the more competitive ones who long to assert themselves by being dismissive yet motivated at the same time. There’s also something fiercely protective about Dylan, who selflessly sacrifices himself to let the others experience their outie lives. He has those hidden depths, perhaps he was one of the most loyal kids around, but you had to win him over first.
Irv is really fun to think about. Like Helly, he seems to lead a polar opposite lifestyle than his innie and is a bit of a recluse. We see him painting the same corridor everyday while blasting “The Ace of Spades.” I’m going to gloss over the goo or the idea that his memories are fusing and focus on personality. Irv’s innie is rigorous, sociable, a little old-fashioned and rigid but always polite. We see here the child of old times, where not following the rules had, perhaps, different and more dire consequences. He appears to be the most dedicated Keirian (is that a thing?) in the office, like a well-read little nerd, and that’s not hard to imagine, especially if he had a military background which further enforced this tendency to be rather obedient and well-behaved. We don’t see much, if any, of Irv in the break room because he doesn’t break the rules (get it? The break room breaks you). He’s from a time where children were seen and not heard. As a consequence, his outie is, instead, eager to let himself go on a canvas.
Now, Helly. Helly R is our audience surrogate, but she’s even more rebellious and steadfast than most. Her first few days consist of multiple attempts to escape as well as threats of bodily harm and violence towards her outie. Despite this, she’s paid special attention to and always brought back. That’s because her outie is none other than Helena Eagan, daughter of Jame, current Lumon CEO who has voluntarily decided to undergo severance. There is a battle of wills. Just as Helly is unwilling to work, Helena is unwilling to give up working. They’re both immature from that standpoint—recall Helena’s video to Helly also threatening torture in return. But, Helena appears to be controlled, poised and even a little entitled (okay, very entitled and pretentious). This is an opposite Irv situation. She was a child who had a natural rebellious streak. This quote particularly clued me in: “So, one of the things you learn growing up as an Eagan is that the workers are our family. And I remember being confused about that as a kid, because I thought that meant I had a few hundred thousand literal brothers and sisters scattered around the world. But as I grew older, I learned that it’s about shared ideals.” So, as a child, Helly didn’t care much for the intrinsic bond that brings family together (just as she states she doesn’t want to belong to Mark S’ family early on). This might be a reach, but she had to learn this, meaning originally she believed workers to be separate and potentially below her, just as she sees the rest of them on the first day. As a child, she focused on the parental, genealogical bond that is family rather than the feelings behind it. This is even more telling: “My dad used to make me recite the nine Core Principles before bed every night, which I can’t say I always did happily. Sorry, Dad,” what is she apologizing for here? What was the extent of her unruliness? I profoundly believe Helena was a lot more resistant to her family’s legacy when she was young, which is why her motivation for taking a Severed job is “because it’s awesome” or, that’s what she says. There is no calling or servile behavior. The possibility that this goes farther than Helena simply wishing to win over herself lingers. Perhaps, she has been persuaded to do this as a PR stunt through potential ties with Angelo Arteta’s campaign and to reinvent herself as some sort of holier-than-thou Eagan after a problematic past. Again, this is just a theory, but I don’t see Helly as Helena’s polar opposite. I see her as her starting point, her natural state.
I won’t babble on any further, but one of the things I look forward to the most in shows is characterization and character growth. I don’t know how much of MDR’s OG team will stay in the Severed floor next season, but it will be very interesting to see them ‘grow’ into their ouitie selves, or maybe to see the adult outies recognize their work selves as nothing more than a child and revert back to that state. I think part of that psychological mindfuck is what did Petey’s consciousness in. He had the memories of a child and those of an adult sharing the same head, and that’s just not compatible if he kept triggering the ‘child’ timeline that wasn’t his actual infancy.
Just a theory, but I thought I’d share.