(NO WAY I MESSED UP THE WORDING OF THE TITLE AGAIN! Please just ignore it atp😭)
(Also, um.... repost cuz the previous one was kinda messy so if you're seeing this again, please look the other way🙏)
No, this is not a shitpost. I mean it. Genuinely.
Anyways, welcome back to yet another simp post by user 3rachazone! I'm your resident Joshua Hong and Han Jisung simp (I just repeated this word again but it's fine, please ignore <3) and today, I'd like to introduce you to yet another man for whom I fell badly. So badly I ended up scraping my knee in the process.
He is known as the angel of his group, and he is exactly like Joshua in every way possible (I'm starting to wonder if I have a type LMAO). He used to go to church, plays the guitar, never gets angry (his fellow member has seen him mad but never angry), is the epitome of a gentleman and treasures his mother to death (he literally said that if smthg were to happen to him, the last words he’d want her to hear are, “I love you”💔). Oh, and did I mention that he's addicted to cereal?
He is Jacob Bae, the one and only bae (pun intended... I guess?)
Jacob is the lead vocalist of The Boyz and was born in Toronto. Or precisely Mississauga (cuz he’s a big babie who gets triggered if you say the former ashgfcbhj). He had a lot of interest in various activities, particularly sports. Back in school, he'd participate in volleyball, basketball, rep basketball and the like but his interest could never really be sustained in just one. Eventually, he began taking vocal classes in order to become a musician and also tried to learn how to play the guitar but gave up on that too.
He’d planned on taking a year off after graduating high school but before that, auditioned for Loen Entertainment. However, since he wasn't good at dancing, he was rejected. But the company said they'd like to see him again so that was how he found himself learning how to dance in Korea. He disliked that too and called his mom who rebuked him for wanting to give up so easily when it hadn’t even been that long (spoke fax, no print👏 and I thank her for that cuz then her son wouldn’t be who he is today and I wouldn’t have discovered him and consequently wouldn’t have fallen in love with him (/j). To him, however, that’s an entirely different story🤚)
On a srs note, what rlly struck me with this knowledge was the fact that it wasn't the drastic culture change from Canada to Korea that affected Jacob or made him cry (he was actually pretty good at adjusting which again is awe-inspiring). It was the fact that he felt like he wasn't good enough at dancing. But this man worked so hard to hone his skills that he performed Billie Eilish's Bad Guy along with Juyeon, Changmin and Sunwoo on 1Million's YouTube channel which I think is an impressive feat for a non dancer. Not to mention that Changmin himself praised him and said he was proud of him for improving.
Another video I'd like to share with y'all is his cover of Sunroof by Nicky Youre and dazy. As someone who receives their daily dose of serotonin from this song, I think he did full justice to it, though I will admit I wish it was longer xD
Oh, and if this wasn't enough, here's his fancam from Post Malone's I Like You performance. It's such a feel good one, where he's all smiles and vibing to the song but also just slaying hard with those moves, if ya get what I mean? Like he srsly wasn't kidding when he said he was aiming for a spot in TBZ's dance line.
Apart from possessing some real good dancing skills, Jacob also happens to have a really sweet voice. Like everytime I listen to him talk, I find myself immersing in whatever he says. Basically he could talk abt the most mundane thing in the entire universe and he’d still have my full attention. And when he sings, I find myself levitating and asking myself if that's what you hear outside the gates of heaven?
Ladies and gentlemen, presenting Mr. Sweet Voice's cover of 'I.F.L.Y' by Bazzi! (disclaimer: Please exercise caution while watching this video cuz he looks ethereal in this and his visuals might blind you❗️)
Now, now... I could've decided to share the studio version too but there's smthg incredibly serene and delicate abt a man wearing all white and sitting on a bench, playing the guitar among a field of flowers, smiling prettily and singing abt how there's no other girl for him and that the one he likes is the only one for him and that what he's actually trying to say is that he rlly loves her (he’s so cute he replaced the word ‘fucking’ with rlly🫠 and um… more on that later)
Funny story: I made a (former) friend of mine watch this video and after it was over, I couldn't stop giggling like an idiot and was like, "OMG HE'S SOOO GOOD DID YOU SEE HOW MUCH I WAS HYPERVENTILATING???!!"
And she squealed back with equal fervour, "AAHHHHH NO CUZ I WAS TOO BUSY FOCUSING ON HIM!!!" which is, well, understandable lol.
Other song covers of his which I'd highly recommend are: Lifetime by Justin Bieber, Heartbreak Anniversary (with Sangyeon) by Giveon, Wherever You Are by One Ok Rock, and Becoming an Adult by Kim Na-young (listening to this one made me realise how much I'd kill for him to cover Loser by Cheeze😭😭)
He was also nice enough to treat us to his soothing vocals by releasing his mixtape 'Kindle' on his birthday! All the songs are so chill, warm and worth listening to if you had a rough day and just needed to unwind.
On Dive Studios, Jacob admitted that he was pretty unsure of himself in the sense that he had a low self esteem (wanted to shake him badly when he said that while yelling, “SAY THAT AGAIN??? YOUR VOICE GIVES ME COMFORT AND THE WAY YOU DANCE LITERALLY BLOWS ME AWAY YOU DUMBASS WDYM??!!) He claimed that someone would compliment him on his dancing or singing and while he'd thank them, he'd still feel like it wasn't enough. I hope that while he continues to be the best version of himself, he can also pat himself on the back for constantly having shown major improvement.
Another thing which I rlly admire abt him is how he acknowledges that while he’s the type to bottle up his emotions, he also wishes he was allowed to be angry because he doesn’t want to be known as just a ‘kind person’ which I definitely agree with. It can get tiring sometimes, having to constantly live up to a certain image in your group and wanting to break free of it.
On a lighthearted note, he might be one of the few idols that doesn't swear at all! He also has the patience of a saint, considering it's very hard for him to get angry. Even Eric claimed that while he'd seen him mad, he'd never seen him angry. He also shared an anecdote on The Daebak Show where he said that while they were trainees, they took acting lessons. Jacob’s script had a swear word so he told the teacher he couldn’t say it😭
In fact, he himself revealed that the last time he got really pissed off was as a kid because his brother or his cousin had thrown a deck of playing cards at his back due to which he yelled at them and even cursed them out🥴
He never got angry again. And never swore.
And even if he did swear, he'd send a silent prayer, asking for forgiveness until eventually, he stopped doing it entirely. But now he just does it in his head or uses a word that’s similar to the curse word when he wants to be verbal💀
His friendship with Kevin also makes me so envious like fight me idc but there will never be a more iconic duo than them!
Srsly, a friend like Jacob is what everyone needs. He’s so supportive of Kevin, always hyping him up whenever he doubts himself. There was a live where he was playing a game on his computer and Kevin was reading the comments and obviously, there were a few hateful ones telling him to go. Jacob made him stay with that pouty face of his and assured him he wasn’t being a bother :(
Or that one time when a comment asked him, “What does Kevin mean to you?” And he replied with the biggest smile on his face, “He is everything to me!”
Or when Kevin made Eric Nam ask him, “Would you shave off your eyebrows if it could earn Kevin a chance to meet Beyoncé?” and he replied, “It’s one of his biggest dreams and if me looking funny for a few months makes that happen, then… I mean it’s not permanent”.
Which friend does that???😭😭
Anyways, I could come up with more moments of him being the sweetest and softest bean ever but I’ll leave it at that!
Happy birthday, Jacob! Ever since I got into The Boyz, you’ve made me smile with your smile and you’ve healed me with your voice. I hope you’re always healthy and happy and I hope IST can let you release a solo album someday so you can work on (cheesy romantic) songs (because you + them = a deadly combo my heart won’t be able to handle) with the sound you think matches you (I’m talking honeyed airy vocals with an acoustic guitar but you do you, my guy) I’ll be on the sidelines, always cheering you on! I love you loads!💕

https://i.redd.it/74ae26krwk2b1.jpeg
​ SUMMARY Italian-based SMEG is known for its '50s retro-look appliances designed in collaboration with some of the world's top architects. This toaster combines iconic midcentury style with modern features, so you can count on perfect toast or bagels every time. Choose from a selection of luscious colors that match other SMEG appliances for a coordinated collection.
Two extra-wide slots. Six browning levels offer precise control of browning. Backlit chrome knob with four functions: Reheat, Defrost, Cancel, Bagel. Self-centering racks hold toast upright for even browning. Removable stainless-steel crumb tray.
DIMENSIONS & MORE INFO Model #TSF01WHUS. Steel with powder-coated enamel finish that resists scratches, stains and corrosion. Anti-slip feet. Built-in cord wrap for safety. 12 1/4" x 7 3/4" x 7 3/4" high; 5 lb. 4 oz. Slot width: 1 1/4". 950W. This product is intended for use in the United States and Canada and is built to U.S. electrical standards. Made in China.
USE & CARE CARE Wipe clean with damp cloth.
SHIPPING & RETURNS SHIPPING INFORMATION This item will be shipped directly from the manufacturer and is not eligible for rush shipping. Please allow one to two weeks for delivery.
SHIPPING RATES The shipping rate varies depending on your order total and shipping destination. View Shipping Options and Charges.
RETURN POLICY At Williams Sonoma, we take great pride in the quality and craftsmanship of our products. Attention to design, materials, safety and construction are our priority. Upon receipt, please inspect your purchase and notify us of any damage; we will arrange for a prompt replacement.
Within 30 days, you may return most items for a refund of the merchandise value. An original receipt or gift receipt is required for all returns and exchanges. Returns with a gift receipt will be refunded in the form of a Merchandise Credit for the amount indicated on the gift receipt. Returns with original receipt will be refunded in the original form of payment, cash and check refunds over $100 will be issued as a company check (may take 14 business days from time of request). Please note that returned items must be in new condition.
Cutlery returns (knife sets, single knives, cutting boards, knife sharpeners and knife storage) may require extra information and safety instructions. To initiate your return, please contact us at 888.922.4108 or visit us at your local store.
We cannot accept returns on monogrammed, personalized, special-order items, custom upholstery, food or on items damaged through normal wear and tear. Final sale items ending in .97, .98 or .99 cannot be returned. We also cannot accept returns of any food products, which are considered final sale items.
Made to Order and Final Sale Furniture items are non-returnable and cannot be cancelled once the order is placed.
For returns of items purchased from your Williams Sonoma Gift Registry, we will gladly provide a refund or exchange for the merchandise within 90 days of your event or within 90 days of purchase, whichever date is later. View Full Returns Policy.
TOASTED BREAKFAST SANDWICH RECIPE Toast the bread in a toaster and spread the butter on one side of each slice. Top 4 of the slices with the cheese, dividing evenly. Set aside.
In a 12-inch nonstick griddle or fry pan over medium heat, warm the oil. Break 2 eggs into the pan and cook until the whites are set and the edges of the yolks are just beginning to set, 3 to 4 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a plate. Repeat with the remaining 2 eggs.
Place 1 egg on top of each cheese-topped bread slice, followed by 2 bacon slices. Arrange the arugula on top. Cover each sandwich with one of the remaining bread slices, buttered side down. Serve immediately. Serves 4.
See full Toasted Breakfast Sandwich Recipe.

Against all the evil that hell can conjure.
All the wickedness that mankind can produce…
We will send unto them, Only You.
Rip and Tear
Until it is Done.
-][-
Memory Transcription Subject: Vikam, Venlil Space Corps Officer
Date: [Standardized Human Time] July 2nd, 2136
The ghost signal.
It had started as faint readings that rapidly spread across the entirety of know space, manifesting as a sort of white noise in the background of Federation communications and networks, so weak it could only be picked up by our strongest equipment, and even then it was so barely noticeable that for decades most had written it off as a simple statistical error or calibration issue. Until we noticed it was getting louder. Wherever we went it was always there, as if it were not a signal but rather a reading we were unintentionally picking up, one that had been getting stronger from the moment it had appeared. The signal that over a century ago could only be picked up by the strongest of our communications arrays, was starting to now impact those same arrays, and not just that, but even innocuous things like holopads and other civilian equipment had begun to malfunction at a much higher rate.
At this point the idea of it being a mere software glitch or hardware issue had been long since thrown out, not a single software update, code rewrite, or hardware swap had done a single thing to solve the mystery. But it was ever so slightly stronger in some sectors than others, and with the signals ever increasing strength we have finally been able to tell the relative difference in strength from one sector to another. Now the most concerning thing to me was that the signal was strongest nearest to Venlil Prime.
To say this revelation was worrying would be beyond an understatement, both to our own people and the wider Federation, we sit on both the border with the Arxur and unknown space, the idea that this wasn’t an anomaly but rather an attack or weapon caused even greater panic than we had ever seen before.
If this was the Arxur that would mean that they are in possession of a weapon that could have the potential to cripple our ships and communications, leaving worlds defenseless and unable to even call for help, serving our worlds to them on a platter without even a single shot fired in defense. The idea alone keeps me awake at night, thinking that we could be at the complete mercy of another who would see us dead or enslaved.
However the second option was somehow just as frightening. If it’s not the Arxur, then what is it? Where is it coming from? Is it even coming from a single place? Though I guess that last question did have some kind of answer. A few [years] back the readings spiked to unprecedented levels, causing mass electronic malfunctions across the entire federation before falling back down to a steady level, albeit much higher than ever before. However this time instead of seemingly appearing all at once, the spike seemed to rapidly cascade across space, and by mapping out the miniscule differences in time we could gain a general direction of its source, and that source was far out beyond any known space of both the Arxur and Federation.
Well I guess that’s why I'm here. Or rather why all of us are all the way out here in what might as well be the middle of nowhere on the edge of Venlil space, chasing this ghost signal to find its source, failing that, finding out what it really is.
I don’t like being out here, I don't think any of us do. I don’t know why, but I feel like the longer I stay out here, the more I feel like… like we’re being watched. The further we go into the outer territories the more uneasy I start to feel, and from what I’ve overheard from the rest of the crew, I’m not the only one. Honestly I’d rather be back home right now, the longer I stay out here the worse and worse it's been getting.
I’ve been having… nightmares. Recurring ones, for [months] now. Worlds burning, their surfaces charred and cracked like charcoal, the surface scarred with a symbol glowing a burning red. A five pointed star sitting inside a circle. Each time I fall asleep it’s a different world, Venlil Prime, The Cradle, Mileau, Nishtal, Aafa. I don’t know how I know what world I see given the destruction, it’s like there’s some knowledge planted in the back of my mind telling me what I’m being forced to look at. I wish it ended there, but every time, after witnessing worlds burn, I'm forced down into a ship or put on the surface.
Usually nightmares come from some experience in the real world, an Arxur raid, a predator attack, or simply a horrible accident. I had never thought that a nightmare itself could be a direct source of fear. But those… things, defied all logic. How could life ever evolve on any world to end up like… that, ignoring how such creatures could even develop any technology at all, somehow being more brutal than even the Arxur have ever been, if such an idea was even possible. Every night I am haunted by creatures tearing people apart, worlds burning, and red ships descending on whatever remains.
I’ve obviously developed some form of predator disease, that's the only explanation for why my mind has been spiraling down and down all these [months]. Only the deranged mind of a predator would be consumed by thoughts of nothing but death and destruction night after night. Sometimes when we jump into subspace I swear I can hear whispers. And now I know I’m going crazy because, well, when I look at the ship diagnostics it almost looks like something is shaking the ship while in subspace. Some of our fleet look like they have emerged from subspace with damage to the hull. It’s progressed so far I’m hallucinating.
The impact this has had on my mind has been steadily deteriorating my performance and I’m worried that someone will find out. If that happens I'll lose everything, my life, my herd, my family. Luckily nobody seems to have noticed yet. Still I wonder how long I can keep this ruse going, how long I can convince everyone I’m a normal person.
“Vikam, Anything to report?” The captain of the ‘Steady River’ asked me as he entered the bridge, probably having just woken up given his general lack of tidiness.
“Nothing unusual captain, readings here are only marginally higher, less than point-seven percent, however our long range scanners have picked up surges coming from this system here.” I projected the star map to the captain's display, showing an area several systems away where we had detected a similar pulse to the one from [years] ago, albeit much, much smaller.
“How long ago was this?” The captain perked up near instantly.
“Just over a claw ago it seems.” Apparently this set him off.
“What!? And you didn’t tell me!? If we finally have a solid location on these readings we need to investigate immediately!” One of the techs on the bridge spoke up after the captains’ outburst.
“Umm sir, what if it is the Arxur?”
“If it is, don't you think we need to know!? That’s the entire point of this expedition! Vikam, tell the fleet to prepare to jump. If it is the Arxur, we need to arrive simultaneously so we aren’t sitting alone without help.” The captain gave his orders and I obeyed, coordinating with the other capital ships of the fleet to act as anchors for the smaller ships to follow into subspace.
Our ‘exploration’ fleet was little more than a bunch of warships with science equipment strapped to them. Over 1200 ships split into four search groups, some splitting even further beyond that, would all now reconvene and jump to this system, if it was the Arxur we would need every ship available to beat them back and hopefully capture whatever technology was causing this. Personally I scoffed at the idea that the Arxur could come up with anything that could do this, I doubt they even have the capability of inventing things beyond new torture methods, considering everything they have was given to them. It doesn’t matter, our fleet was reinforced with some of the newest and strongest ships we could build, the Steady River is of a new ‘Heavy Cruiser’ pattern, a fresh off the line Farsul ship with enough armor to take on any Arxur vessel and measuring in at a massive [800 meters]! And we managed to negotiate to buy four of them! And received eight more directly from the Farsul navy! Combining them with the other ships sent as part of the combined search effort, our fleet had 26 capital ships and over 500 cruisers, with the rest of the fleet being filled in by bombers, frigates, corvettes, and patrol craft. I’m pretty confident we can take a few savage reptiles.
“All sub-fleets present, preparing for subspace jump.” a voice called out somewhere on the other side of the bridge as I double checked the fleet registry, ensuring all ships were accounted for and properly linking with their respective capital ships for the aforementioned jump. I began the countdown.
“Synchronization complete, subspace drive spooling up… Preparing to jump in three… two... one… Now.” The stars visible from the viewports rapidly shifted from white to blue, to purple, and then vanished as we entered subspace and the bridge was bathed in light blue.
“All ships have successfully jumped and are in formation. We will arrive at our destination shortly.” I gave a quick update before the tech from before spoke up again.
“Captain, should we prepare for the possibility of the grays showing up?”
“Mm… Yes, pre-charge our weapons and have the crews on alert before we re-enter realspace.”
Uhh, I’m not so sure about that. “Sir, is it wise to jump into an unknown situation with our fleet prepared to attack? There’s still a possibility that an entirely unknown party is responsible for the readings, and to be honest I don’t believe the Arxur are capable of such a thing as this. If they could cripple the entire Federation at once wouldn’t we already be dead?”
“And you’d rather us go in completely undefended? If it’s the grays then we’ll be ready and with greater numbers, if it’s an uncontacted species then they need to be warned of the Arxur and join the Federation as soon as possible, and if it’s simply a natural anomaly, then our actions don’t matter. I’d rather be prepared than caught off guard and served on a plate to those savages, if they even know what plates are.” The captain half ranted towards the crew. Once again the tech from before interjected just as I was going to offer my counterpoints.
“S-sir, what if it's another pred-” he was cut off by the captain laughing.
“It’s what? Other predators? Ha! Need I remind you that not a single predator has ever made it beyond their world without our help. Now tell the weapon crews to be ready.”
I don’t know if it’s my lack of decent sleep, but it almost seems like the captain has been becoming just as irritable and out of it as I am, becoming more and more paranoid about being attacked, and keeping the sensor and weapon crews on near constant alert when searching through systems and the occasional asteroid field.
I switched one of my displays to check our progress, and just as we passed the three quarter mark something strange started to happen.
Shaking. The ship was shaking. And not just a little, it feels like I’m in an atmospheric craft going through a storm but… but this shouldn’t even be possible! Not in space and definitely not in subspace, there’s no precedent for this! There’s no such thing as turbulence in space! I slammed my paw down onto the touchscreen, hoping I hit the right button and rejoicing that I did when the ship's alarm blared and the brace warning went to all compartments. Worse still, it’s not just us.
According to what I’m seeing in the fleet communications, every single ship was experiencing the same instability we were. Some of the smaller ships were taking it so bad that they collided with each other due to the tight formation we flew in, the now wrecks instantly vanishing from subspace in a flash and becoming little more than shrapnel flying through realspace. Is this some kind of attack? People have theorized about subspace weapons but they’ve never gone beyond theories and imagination. What is going on!? If this continues we won’t have a fleet left by the time we arrive!
“S-sir we have to exit subspace right now! Our fleet is literally being torn apart!” I tried to plead with the captain but-
“No! Keep going! Tell all vessels to de-sync from their capital ships and distance themselves, even if it means we have staggered arrivals! We haven’t come all this way just to stop now!”
He’s gone insane, but I transmitted his order. Evidently all the fleet captains had agreed to this as our entire fleet de-synced from each other, but not before we lost several more ships in the process. Many had collided like the unfortunate ones before, and some simply dropped from subspace without any notice, if this was intentional or not I can’t say, but it’s entirely possible whatever is causing this forced them to do so, seeing as our own subspace drive was being pushed to its limits.
I could do nothing but squeeze my eyes shut and push myself as far back into my chair as I could, waiting for this to be over. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear the panic around me as I could imagine everyone else was having a similar response.
A bright flash of white and blue, and then…
Nothing.
Slowly I opened my eyes and saw my computer displaying a message stating our arrival at our destination and the pings indicating the arrival of the others. Raising my head slightly I looked around the bridge and out the viewports. The still panicking crew, the captain heavily breathing and leaning back with his eyes closed, the systems dual stare-
Wait, no. This system is only supposed to have one star, every single scan and map has this system as having a single star. But there, a second one stood, much smaller than the first, and… it looked… wrong. Just wrong. Instead of burning it looked like it was boiling, and had tendrils of red energy splitting off of it, with two much larger ones coming from opposite ends, splitting the void around it in two. I was so caught up in the sight of it, I barely noticed the rest of the fleet arriving, or what’s left of it. We lost over two hundred ships just getting here, either destroyed or dropped out of subspace before arriving.
“What is… what am I looking at here?” The captain, now sitting up straight, spoke everyone's thoughts out loud. “Scan that immediately!”
It’s obvious we’ve found the source of the ghost signal, however being so close to it meant that our equipment which was barely working in the first place, now struggled to even look at that… thing.
Well at least I know my initial judgment was wrong, the anomaly wasn’t a star, or even the size of one, rather it was the size of a small moon. Our sensors mistook it for a star, as it had the full output of one. This relatively tiny object in space was emitting a higher level of energy than the system's own star, but none of the sensors could make any sense of what it was or even the type of energy it was emitting, every sensor we pointed at it was overloaded with errors, but… there were objects… coming through the anomaly.
“Sir I c-can- we can’t make any sense of… what this-” I tried to give some explanation but was cut off by the sensors giving off a very different alert, ship detections, thousands of them. Tens of thousands of them. “C-captain I-I’m picking up something, there’s ships coming f-from that… that thing!”
The entire bridge scrambled to get the equipment back in order as everyone wanted to know what was going on, how anything could survive being near the anomaly that nearly fried our systems, never mind coming directly out of it. Was it even an anomaly in the first place? Had we come across some race that was so advanced that they could literally tear reality as a means of travel? Was our inability to scan it merely a by-product or intentional design? Whatever it was, the energy used was like nothing we had ever seen, or even theorized of.
I pulled up as many sensors and screens as I could to get a look at those ships and-
My heart almost stopped.
I could hear nothing but ringing and my ever increasing heart beat. I feel freezing cold and burning hot all at once. I sunk my claws into my left arm to check I’m not still in a nightmare, I wish I was, but this is real.
All of those ships are real.
Red ships.
Those things, pulled straight from my nightmares, were now bearing down on us. I could do nothing but stare in frozen horror as the automated reports indicated over three thousand ships headed to our direct position. I could do nothing as that same red energy effortlessly lanced through our ships, tearing our already loose formation apart. I could do nothing as every ship fired back in panic, the interference preventing mass communication as the fleet desperately tried to return fire. I could do nothing as-
As a green light quickly overcame the visual sensors, and just as quickly left. The ship I was watching returned to view, now a gutted lifeless wreck, burning green from the inside out. Its strange tentacles that sprouted from the bottom now limply floating in the void alongside the shattered pieces of what remained.
What. Was. That.
The interference must have been greater than I thought, because those red ships were not the only thing out there. Scanning the system as fast as I could, I saw other ships on the other side, facing the anomaly, not the same sinister red, but a pale gray. Massive ships that dwarfed all but the most gargantuan of the crimson attackers. By the stars, even the smallest of those ships was almost as big as a standard cruiser! And those capital ships… they must be at least [2000 meters]!
I would’ve asked why any sane race would build such things, but those red ships varied in size so greatly that many surpassed the gray behemoths, sometimes even more than twice over!
That knocked me out of my stupor, the pale behemoths were holding off tens out thousands of vessels whilst our scanners indicated they possessed a mere five thousand, each firing off green and blue beams alongside endless swarms of missiles and kinetic fire so numerous the red ships couldn’t physically evade.
Plasma and kinetics I understand, although strange that it was bright blue and not the standard white, but that green energy was just as unknowable as the red coming from the anomaly and those damnable nightmare ships. Even their missiles detonated with pulses of green instead of the anti-matter design used by every known race.
What had we walked in on? We had just barged into two forces engaged in one of the largest battles in history, using completely unknown technology, and now one side was protecting us, or at the very least, attacking our attackers.
My hearing was finally coming back to me. “W-WE CAN’T REFORM! FLEET COMMUNICATIONS ARE OVERLOADED!” A tech screamed, a response to an order from the captain I hadn’t heard. Everyone was screaming, the bridge was in utter chaos, and the rest of the fleet was faring no better, hundreds already lost, our fighters and bombers were easily picked off by those cross-ships, and we couldn’t even communicate with how overworked our ship systems were directly after that horrid jump.
We could do little to save ourselves. But there were others who could, and were seemingly setting out to do just that.
Green and blue bolts began to mesh with our white plasma, part of that pale fleet had broken off and were assaulting the red fleet from our right flank, creating a cross of fire, though it was plainly evident that these unknown people were doing most of the work, as our shots went wide or failed to strike through the enemies shields and flowed off their armor like water. Our only true success was taking down those fighters, and a few groups having an unspoken agreement to collectively target some of the relatively smaller enemy vessels, finally destroying them after putting dozens of shots through their thick armor, creating a mosaic of burning dots.
We had no time to cheer, a few dozen out of thousands didn’t mean anything, even with the encroaching pale fleet doing most of the work, fortunately this also meant that the unknown predators started focusing their efforts on them instead of us, giving our ships a small reprieve.
A voice rose above the cacophony of mayhem in the bridge “Sir there’s something coming through comms!” What? I thought-
“I THOUGHT YOU SAID COMMS WERE OFFLINE!?” Exactly what I was thinking, though with less screaming involved.
“They were, but-” He was cut off as static overpowered every noise in the bridge, my console indicating it was a message being broadcasted from the pale fleet. An incredibly distorted voice was barely heard through the static.
“Unknown fl_________re in gr___ danger _____ reactiv________ Anima Fie_______ re-r____ to Al___ Centa___ im___iately. If you __________ any lon____ you___________ apart.”
Alongside the near indecipherable broadcast, came a packet of data that was so heavily encrypted that I don’t think an entire planet's worth of computers trying to decode it could do so in anything less than a decade, but even so, the message was clear, or maybe it’s just what I wanted to hear. Leave.
The pale fleet was now sitting between the red fleet and us, firing off massive energy beams from what I can only assume are spinal cannons like our own, only these ones were shredding through the predators en masse. Now that they were much closer, the pale ships began firing green orbs, moving slower than the beams, but whenever they neared a foe, green arcs of energy shot out and scorched anything they touched, before the orb detonated in a flash of light, sending out one last pulse of lightning to destroy whatever it could before vanishing.
We had little time to admire the artistry and effectiveness of these strange weapons, with the pressure now off our own fleet, every ship began to prepare to jump back to a predetermined fall back point.
Wait- no! That’s insane! We’ll never survive jumping back into subspace!
But it was too late for me to voice my objections, white became blue, blue became purple, and the stars disappeared as we jumped back into the azure abyss that would surely be our death.
Fleet Integrity: Critical
Fleet Cohesion: Critical
Estimated Fleet Losses: 881 / 1229 - 71.6%
Ship Systems: Damaged - Non-Critical
Estimated Crew Loss: 94
Enemy Losses: [ERROR: ENEMY FLEET UNKNOWN]
Allied Losses: [ERROR: ALLIED FLEET UNKNOWN]
-][-
Aaaaannnndd with ten pages, 4000 words, the first chapter is done!
Thank you to everyone who voted in the poll, and I hope this chapter meets your expectations for an intro to Argent Earth, with our first character being just a little guy who’s being endlessly tormented by nightmares now brought to life. Someone get this man a donut.
We see some new Federation ships and an exploration fleet coming up against forces beyond their understanding, and our first look at the ARC navy.
Now for some clarification in case someone didn’t get it so I don’t have to reply in the comments:
The ghost signal - not a real signal, demonic energy interferes with technology but they don’t know that. It’s the interference they’re picking up, which has been slowly increasing as the veil thins and rifts are made. Also a Stellaris reference.
Turbulence - The ‘turbulence’ was their ship's subspace drives and systems malfunctioning because they essentially jumped right on top of a rift without any kind of shielding. To put it in 40K terms, they basically jumped into a warp storm without a gellar field, and got off real lucky.
Demon proof your tech kids. Though that can be hard if you don’t know they exist.
Credit to u/SpacePaladin15 for creating Nature of Predators.
Until next time, Rip and Tear.

Tampa Kitchen Remodels is your go-to destination for creating your dream kitchen in Tampa, FL, and the surrounding areas. With our expertise in kitchen remodeling, we can transform your outdated or inefficient kitchen into a functional, stylish, and inviting space that suits your lifestyle and enhances the value of your home.
At Tampa Kitchen Remodels, we understand that the kitchen is the heart of your home, and we take pride in delivering exceptional results that exceed your expectations. Our team of experienced designers and contractors works closely with you to understand your unique needs, preferences, and budget. We offer personalized consultations, where we listen to your ideas and provide expert guidance to help you make informed decisions about your kitchen remodel.
​
From custom cabinetry and countertops to innovative storage solutions and state-of-the-art appliances, we handle every aspect of your kitchen remodel with precision and attention to detail. Our skilled craftsmen use high-quality materials and the latest design trends to create a functional and visually appealing kitchen that reflects your personal style.
​
If you're ready to bring your dream kitchen to life, Tampa Kitchen Remodels is here to help. Contact us today to schedule a consultation with our experts. We'll assess your space, discuss your vision, and provide you with a detailed plan and cost estimate. Let us transform your kitchen into the heart of your home.
​
Address:
Tampa, FL, USA
​
Phone:
813-851-2373
​
Email:
[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
​
​
https://tampakitchenremodels.com/

Below are the top headlines we’ve been reporting this whole week on Cyber Security Headlines.
If you’d like to hear and participate in a discussion about them, the CISO Series does a live 20-minute show every Friday at 12:30pm PT/3:30pm ET. Each week we welcome a different cyber practitioner to offer some color to the week's stories. Our guest this week is Rich Greenberg, President, ISSA-LA.
To get involved you can watch live and participate in the discussion on YouTube Live https://youtube.com/live/qxuRqy3ZZFI or you can subscribe to the Cyber Security Headlines podcast and get it into your feed.
Here are some of the stories we plan to cover:
BEC attempts on the rise Microsoft’s latest Cyber Signal report shows that the company detected 35 million business email compromise attempts in the last year, seeing an average of 156,000 attempts per day. This came as part of an overall 38% increase in cybercrime as a service attacks against business email since 2019. These attacks generally don’t target unpatched vulnerabilities. Rather they generally focus on using the sheer volume of email to get victims to accidentally share financial information or otherwise facilitate a transfer of funds. Microsoft observed attackers using multichannel spamming campaigns, including fake 2FA authentication, to eventually wear down victims. (CSO Online)
Industrial sector faced highest number of ransomware attacks in April According to the NCC Group, the volume of ransomware attacks remained at record highs with 352 attacks in April, the second-highest month on record. Lockbit 3.0, BlackCat and BianLian were the top 3 threat actors combining for 58% of overall ransomware activity in April. Meanwhile, ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) provider Cl0p reduced their activity by 98% from March to April, likely due to patches being applied for the GoAnywhere MFT day-zero vulnerability which the group leveraged to exploit a high number of victims in March. North America was the target of half of April’s ransomware activity with 172 attacks (50%) followed by Europe with 85 attacks (24%) and then Asia with 34 attacks (10%). In April, industrials was the most targeted sector accounting for one third of attacks (32%). (Security Magazine)
North Korea-linked APT Lazarus Group targeting vulnerable Microsoft IIS servers Researchers from AhnLab Security Emergency Response Center have researchers reported that the Lazarus APT Group is targeting vulnerable versions of Microsoft IIS servers in a recent wave of malware-based attacks. The attackers leverage the DLL side-loading (T1574.002) technique to execute a malicious DLL (msvcr100.dll) that they have placed in the same folder path as a normal application (Wordconv.exe). Then the library is executed via the Windows IIS web server process. The researchers note a similarity between this DLL technique and another previously used by the Lazarus actors. (Security Affairs)
NIST helps small businesses with cyber readiness When we cover ransomware attacks on this show, often we highlight attacks against large organizations. But in terms of ransomware volume, these represent the exception not the rule. A recent Coveware study found 72% of ransomware attacks impacted organizations with less than 1,000 employees, with 29% hitting those with less than 100. To respond to this reality, the National Institute of Standards and Technology launched the Small Business Cybersecurity Community of Interest, or COI. This aims to provide a two-way street to communicate with small businesses. The COI will provide company reps to provide NIST feedback about cybersecurity issues. These will inform how NIST issues guidance and develops tools specifically for small businesses. (Security Intelligence)
Industrial sector faced highest number of ransomware attacks in April According to the NCC Group, the volume of ransomware attacks remained at record highs with 352 attacks in April, the second-highest month on record. Lockbit 3.0, BlackCat and BianLian were the top 3 threat actors combining for 58% of overall ransomware activity in April. Meanwhile, ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) provider Cl0p reduced their activity by 98% from March to April, likely due to patches being applied for the GoAnywhere MFT day-zero vulnerability which the group leveraged to exploit a high number of victims in March. North America was the target of half of April’s ransomware activity with 172 attacks (50%) followed by Europe with 85 attacks (24%) and then Asia with 34 attacks (10%). In April, industrials was the most targeted sector accounting for one third of attacks (32%). (Security Magazine)
Fake images on Twitter briefly spook the stock market This week a fake photo, some speculate was created using generative AI, surfaced on social media and appeared to show an explosion near the Pentagon. The fake image was shared by several Twitter blue accounts (who paid the $8 blue checkmark fee) including in a post appearing to be associated with Bloomberg News reading, “Large explosion near the Pentagon complex in Washington DC. – initial report.” The false reports were picked up by other media outlets including major Indian network, Republic TV. Just moments after the image began circulating on Twitter, the US stock market took a noticeable dip with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling about 80 points for about four minutes, but fully recovering several minutes later. Similarly, the S&P 500 went from up 0.02% to down 0.15% during the same period before returning to positive. Though the impact was brief, it’s likely that some people lost and gained a lot of money. It’s also noteworthy that the main vector that made it possible for the image to have even a slight (and temporary) impact is use of the faux Twitter blue “verification” checkmark. (Techdirt)
Ransomware gang pulls Philadelphia Inquirer listing after victim questions documents The Cuba ransomware group removed its listing of The Philadelphia Inquirer on its darknet extortion site on Wednesday after the paper cast doubts on the authenticity of documents the criminals provided for download. Cuba claimed to have posted a trove of files stolen from the Inquirer, including "financial documents, correspondence with bank employees, account movements, balance sheets, tax documents, compensation, source code,” but the publisher said that the company had seen no evidence that the information was actually related to the newspaper. (The Record)
TikTok makes progress on Project Texas This project marks TikTok’s attempt to ease US concerns about it sharing user data with China. This would see US user data stored domestically and overseen by the TikTok US Data Security Committee. In an update on this project, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew announced that Oracle began reviewing TikTok’s source code. Chew also said TikTok is “on track” to have all US user data hosted in the US. Oracle data centers are now the default destination for US user data, eventually the company will migrate existing US data there from its Singapore-based servers. (ZDNet)
Google launches GUAC Back in October, Google announced a new open source initiative called Graph for Understanding Artifact Composition, or GUAC, in an effort to strengthen the software supply chain. The company now announced it launched GUAC v0.1. This serves to aggregate software security metadata, mapping it to a standard vocabulary and accessible through a GraphQL interface, as well as an API to develop on and integrate into security tools. The company hopes this will help the software development community in evaluating its security posture with a more holistic view. Google worked with Kusari, Purdue University, Citi, and community members to develop this initial version. (Google)
GDPR is 5 years old, and over 1 million people have asked to be forgotten On the 5th birthday of GDPR, a new study from Surfshark shows that between 2015 to 2021, over 1 million “right to be forgotten” requests to delist certain search results were submitted to Google and Microsoft Bing, from 32 countries. Points from the study show France is in first place with over 255,000 requests; when the Covid-19 pandemic started, “right to be forgotten” cases rose nearly 30%; Estonia had the most requests per 10,000 people, more than 2.5 times higher than average, and 1 in 10 “right to be forgotten” web page delisting requests are crime-related. (Surfshark)

The forest was black. Pitch black.
I pounded over the dirt trail, my feet turning my pedals like twin pistons. The bicycle bounced and jolted, shuddering as it rolled across the wooden bridge, rattling my teeth. There was something in the air tonight. A chill.
But it wasn’t the chill of autumn. No, this was the chill of unease. It crawled up my spine carrying the deep-rooted knowledge that something about tonight, something about this trail wasn’t right. It was the unmistakable dread of being watched.
Pursued.
I stood up and rode harder. My lungs burned with every push of the pedals but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to get out of these woods fast. The hospital was twenty minutes away. I just needed to make it there– I was close. So close.
WOMP
A heavy bass sounded behind me, followed by a rush of wind. It pushed against my back, thrusting me forward while buffeting the surrounding forest like a tempest. The trees groaned, their great frames kneeling beneath the force. Branches and leaves ricocheted through the air. I raised an arm to protect my face from the debris, and it was all I could do to keep my balance.
I didn’t know what was happening, but at that moment, it didn’t seem to matter either. All I cared about was getting out of here in one piece– making it to the hospital for her. My sister, Hope. Letting loose a defiant roar, I threw my body into overdrive and the wheels of my bike tore into the dirt like an excavator. Faster, I told myself. Faster dammit!
The bass grew louder. Thunderous. Soon it felt like the whole forest was trembling, like a tornado had snuck up on me in the dead of night. I wanted to turn around, to see what the hell was after me, but I knew if I took my eyes off the road I’d get a one way ticket into a ditch. In this darkness, I was barely able to stay on the path as it was. No, I decided. I had to keep focused. I had to keep moving.
The forest exploded with light.
Not the light of a camera flash, or the light of a bright room. No, this was as if somebody had unchained the sun. I hollered, utterly blinded. My wheel hit what felt like a fallen branch and the next thing I knew I was flying over my handlebars ass-over-teakettle.
I braced myself for a broken arm, maybe worse, but the impact of the ground never came. Instead I felt like I was in limbo, like I’d never finished falling. I couldn’t feel anything beneath me. It was only after the light began to dim and I was able to see the forest that I realized how truly fucked I was.
See, the forest wasn’t where it should have been.
It was beneath me.
Far beneath me.
It was getting further away by the second. Inch by inch, I was being lifted into the sky, carried by a narrow shaft of light.
_____________________________________________
That was a long time ago.
Thirty years, give or take. A lot’s changed since then, but one thing’s remained the same– the nightmares. I couldn’t shake them. I had them every night. That same pursuit, that same blinding light, that same boiling fear that I might never make it back to say goodbye to my older sister.
I used to think it was a coping mechanism, the nightmares. I figured they came at a time when my little teenage brain was positively fried attempting to process the grief of losing a loved one. My therapist seemed to agree. “They’re likely mere mental fiction," she'd say. "An emotional salve to heal a wound the only way your mind could manage.”
For a long time, I thought she was right. She had to be, didn’t she? Two PhDs and twenty years experience dealing with nutjobs like me made her judge and jury. Or so I hoped. But now, as much as it pains me to say, I know better.
I know how wrong she was.
How wrong we both were.
My name is Isaiah Mitchell. I’m the government boogeyman your parents screamed about while watching TV, the man in black. I operate in significant circles. Niche, and highly confidential circles. So when I tell you that something dire happened last night, I don’t mean the stock market dipped a couple percentage points, or that a few tons of oil were dumped into the Pacific ocean.
What I mean is we’re in trouble. Big trouble.
To really drive home how bad this is, I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to break the rules. All of them. I’m going to tell you a story, and at the end of it you can call me a lunatic or you can drink yourself to sleep. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I get this off my chest.
It’s been festering for thirty years.
The story is about you, and it’s about me. It’s about everything, every last aspect of the universe down to its very atoms, and how all of us are facing a horror we can’t begin to imagine. It begins a long time ago, somewhere around the origin of mankind, and it ends with the slow death of reality.
This is the story of the worst night of my life.
_________________________________________
Sometime during my skyward ascent, I lost consciousness. I woke up to find the shaft of light gone– woke up to find all light gone.
“Hello?” I mumbled to the darkness. My hands felt around the environment, and cold metal touched my fingertips. Where was I?
Footsteps met my ears.
“I don’t have any money,” I sputtered, thinking I must have been drugged. People didn’t just float into the sky. It wasn’t a thing. That meant I was hallucinating– and that meant I’d probably been kidnapped by somebody who knew what they were doing.
A heavy bass reverberated behind me. Then, another bass, this tone lower and more drawn-out. This went back and forth half a dozen times, and it struck me that the sounds almost resembled communication. Something akin to morse code.
I rose to my feet on shaking legs. “Please let me go. I won’t tell anybody, I swear!”
Static crackled. Next came the sharp squeal of microphone feedback, followed by the gentle buzz of adjusting frequency. “Communication calibrated. Subject identified: homosapien. Geographic location: Texas. Language model: English.” There was a pause, long enough and silent enough that I could hear my own pulse rushing through my veins. “Can you understand us, human?”
“Y-yes,” I said, squinting into the darkness, thoroughly confused. “Can you turn on the lights?”
“Affirmative.”
With a hum of electricity, a green glow filled the room. I blinked, my eyes adjusting. It appeared that I was inside of a large, very metallic, and very circular chamber. Scattered throughout it were large vats of bubbling liquid, filled with something I couldn’t quite make out.
“Does this illumination suit your visual matrix?” said the digital voice. It was speaking from right behind me.
I wheeled around to face it, and my breath caught in my chest. Standing before me were two massive lizards– no, monsters. I scrambled backwards, colliding against one of the metallic vats. The liquid sloshed against the glass. “What are you?” I gasped.
“We are the Chosen,” one of the monsters said. “We are lifeforms from many galaxies away, and we have come to save humanity.” They both stared at me through two giant eyes, each filled with dozens of pulsing pupils, almost like ink blots.
“I’ve been abducted…” I sputtered, hardly able to breathe. “By aliens. Aliens… are real. I’ve been abducted…”
“Correct, human,” said the other alien. I realized for the first time that one had gray scales, while the other had teal. The gray creature looked at a screen on its right arm, tapping it with a clawed finger. “Readings indicate heightened levels of cortisol and increased adrenal flow. Source: Fight or flight response. Biologically rational, but without logical purpose.” It looked up at me. “You have neither the option to flee us or fight us, so it would be best to initiate a state of relaxation. Will you comply?”
My jaw hung open in disbelief. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to think, so I blurted out the first fear that came to my mind. “A…Are you going to anal probe me? Like the movies?”
The teal gray alien blinked at me, its many pupils dilating. “Negative.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
It pointed to the vat behind me. “We will break down your tissue into usable genetic material, harvesting your DNA in order to achieve human salvation.” Slowly, I turned to look at the vat, and now that I was closer to it, I felt sick to my stomach. Floating inside of it was a human body. Everything from the waist down had already been dissolved, its intestines dangling freely.
“Jesus Christ…” I stuttered.
“There is no cause for concern,” the teal alien said in a cheerful tone. He shuffled across the chamber to a metal console on the far side, his slender fingers tapping at seemingly invisible controls. “Your disappearance will be accounted for by replacing you with a perfect genetic clone, preventing all suspicion and avoiding social disruption.”
“Why… Why are you doing this?” I said.
The gray alien continued to monitor the display on its arm. “Answer previously provided. To achieve human salvation.”
“You’re going to kill me to save humanity?”
“Affirmative.”
The room seemed to spin as I felt my chest tighten. My vision blurred. My ears rang, and my legs began to buckle as I lost all sense of balance. “No,” I said. “This isn’t happening…” I stumbled against the side of a vat, and I looked up to see a woman’s half-dissolved face staring blankly at me. My stomach turned. I shot out an arm to steady myself as I threw up onto the deck.
Rough scales gripped my hand. I turned to see the gray alien holding my wrist, its expression impassive. I struggled. Fought against him. Tears stung my eyes but he was far stronger than I was, and twice my size. He forced my hand into his own, and I felt a frigid sensation spread across my palm. It traveled up my arm. Throughout my entire nervous system.
“What did you…” I mumbled, feeling a pleasant sensation of calm spreading through me.
“You have been provided a minor sedative," the alien explained. "This is unideal. It contains chemical compounds liable to interfere with the cloning process, but your stress response cannot be allowed to persist. Such an imbalance in hormones could lead to a compromised genetic harvest.”
I stared up at the gray alien, and my pulse-pounding fear began to fade away. My heart rate slowed. My ears no longer rang. I looked around the spartan spacecraft, gazed at the floating human corpses and wondered why I’d been so upset to begin with. This wasn’t so bad, was it?
“Cortisol levels reduced,” the gray alien said, once more referring to the readout on his arm. “Adrenal response suppressed. Biometric readings indicate the subject has achieved a suitable state of suggestibility to proceed.”
“Affirmative,” said the teal alien working the console.
I felt like I was drifting through the lake on a warm summer day, like I had a basket of apple pie and not a care in the world. My heart felt full. Happy. I wondered if this was what it’d feel like if my big sister weren’t in the hospital… if Hope weren’t dying.
“Pulse is quickening,” the gray alien said, tapping the monitor on its arm with a frown. “Sedation effect dropping. 98%. 94%. Unacceptable trajectory.”
“Hope,” I sputtered, remembering where I’d been going when they beamed me up. “I can’t die here. I have to get to the hospital and see my sister. She’s sick. She needs me!”
A scaled hand touched my head, and another pulse of cold relaxation washed over me. “Invalid concern,” the alien said. “Clone will be a perfect recreation of you, body and mind. It will retain all memories save for this encounter, allowing it to continue your life uninterrupted. Conclusion: your expiring sibling will receive suitable emotional support prior to decomposition.”
I stared at the gray alien. His rationale felt hollow… but he was right, wasn't he? Would Hope know the difference between me and a clone? "I have a question," I said, in a dreamlike voice. "You said my DNA would help save humanity. How? What are you trying to save us from?"
The teal alien turned from the console to face us, its giant eyes narrowed in such a way that I could tell it wasn’t pleased. “Invalid request. Information too critical to risk dissemination.”
“Rebuttal,” said the gray alien. “Subject is to be cellularly deconstructed. Clone’s memory can be modified. Current biometric readings indicate high levels of emotional discontent, placing likelihood of compromising genetic harvest at 34%. Solution: permit the subject to understand the purpose of its sacrifice, potentially inducing calmness and emotional closure.”
The teal alien turned back to the console. “Rebuttal accepted. Proceed.”
The gray alien looked at me, placed its scaled fingers against my head. “Brace for disorientation, human. You will experience a short period of physical unease and briefly enter a state of hyperstimulation. Then, you will know the truth.”
_______________________________
For a long time, that was as far as the nightmare ever got. The gray alien would tell me that I was about to see the truth of it all, the secret history that justified their widespread abductions and killings, but then I’d wake up.
Every time.
But last night, I saw the dream through. Last night, I woke up in a cold sweat to my phone buzzing on my bedside table. My boss was on the other line. He explained that the air force just took down an unidentified aerial phenomena, which is a more sophisticated way of saying UFO. He said it happened in New Mexico.
The coordinates matched the forest of my youth, the place where my life took a hard-left turn into PTSD. I asked him if he was sure. He told me this wasn’t a fucking Chinese spy balloon, and since I was their closest asset, I needed to be there yesterday.
The line went dead. A few minutes later, a black helicopter descended onto my front lawn to bring me to the crash site. I boarded it in a daze. We took off in the direction of the UAP, and as I watched the sparse lights of the countryside drift by, all I could think about was the dream.
I’d finally remembered the ending. I finally knew the truth of it all– and it was more terrifying than I ever imagined.
___________________________________
The moment the alien touched my head, static shocks rippled through my body. They made me froth at the mouth. Choke. Seize up, and for a little while I thought I might be dying– but then I lost all sense of awareness. I was falling. Out of my body, and out of my mind.
Images flashed before me in quicktime, like a runaway film reel. They were everywhere. Up, down– inside of me. It was as if I were inhabiting moments themselves, so deep inside of them that sight, sound and smell all collapsed in on me like a dying star. I wanted out. I wanted to make it stop, to give my mind a break before it split at the seams and my consciousness spilled out of my skull like a burst watermelon.
But I couldn’t. No, I was strapped in for this ride with no way out.
Slowly, subtly, the images began to change. I began to acclimate. The visual hurricane calmed from a category 5 to a 3, then a 1. No longer was it as though I were experiencing every moment in history simultaneously. Now I was more picky. Certain moments floated to the surface, while others sank to the bottom. Like a sponge, my mind began to absorb everything from quantum physics to the collected discography of Katy Perry, and it was exhilarating.
Knowledge became trivial. If I wanted to learn something it required no more effort than reaching into the pantry of the cosmos, and taking a bite. As I buzzed with this newfound understanding, certain moments began to shimmer more clearly, drawing me toward them. I drifted, curious. Innately, I understood these moments– these fragments of history, were memories passed down by the Vytar. The species of alien I’d been abducted by.
This was what I’d come here for. The truth.
I dove in.
Data assailed me from every direction. Like a crash course in universal history, I quickly learned that the Vytar predated humanity by billions of years. In fact, they’d evolved shortly after the birth of the universe itself. Their evolution was a slow one. Glacial. Compared to human beings, their technological benchmarks were laughable, but they were a persistent bunch.
It took them five hundred million years to discover fire. A billion to discover flight. At two billion years they’d colonized a new planet, and by three had spread across their solar system, terra-forming worlds. At four, their galaxy. Finally, at the edge of their fifth billion year of existence, the Vytar had mastered faster-than-light travel and charted the furthest reaches of the universe.
They had conquered space itself, and in doing so discovered a devastating truth: they were unique. No other life possessed the capacity for intelligence, for sentience in the way that they did.
They were alone.
Worse still, on this final voyage to chart the universe, the Vytar found life on a dead planet. It was not intelligent. Compared to the Vytar, it was insignificant– unable to even formulate thoughts, let alone wage war. But it would crumble their empire. A civilization capable of annihilating whole star systems would find itself undone by a lifeform no larger than a nanometer.
The virus infected the expeditionary crew without their knowledge. Indeed, even after the virus was discovered it was not deemed necessary to quarantine the carriers, and in fact, Vytar would line up in droves to be infected. You see, the virus did something peculiar. It gave the Vytar the one thing that technology had thus far been unable to– biological immortality.
Those who hosted the virus, could not die of age, or even disease. It was celebrated. Lauded.
In the process of conquering the known universe, they had also conquered the greatest foe they ever knew, death itself. But the virus had consequences. The consequences were apparent early on for those who were paying attention, but the upside of infection seemed too great for many to care. And so it was given a free pass. Soon, every Vytar colony was rife with the virus.
It wasn’t until birth rates began to decline that the Vytar recognized they had a problem on their hands. A long-lived species, the Vytar would conduct their birthing ritual at the end of their thousand-year lifespans. They would hatch two to three eggs, and then impart the knowledge of their people onto their young through a process known as Collective Recall. A short time later, the Vytar would expire.
Biological immortality seemed to interrupt this process. Infected Vytar were unable to lay eggs, and as it was estimated over 99% of all Vytar were infected, their population stagnated. Shortly after every Vytar alive possessed the virus. As a species they could no longer procreate– those that remained were all that would ever remain. Their extinction was an inevitability.
Civil unrest erupted across colonies everywhere. A generally peaceful species that evolved beyond inter-colony conflict, the existential horror of knowing they were all that was left drove many to emotional extremes. For the first time in millions of years, war broke out. Galaxies became battlegrounds. Stars were provoked into accelerated collapse, their supernovae burning whole solar systems to ashes.
Quickly, the Vytar population dwindled from quintillions to billions. They shrank from a species who had colonized much of the universe, to one relegated to a single galaxy at the brink of space. It devastated them. In desperation, many turned toward spiritualism for answers that their technology couldn’t provide. Cults began to form. Each claimed its own brand of salvation, but none could compete against the cult of The Chosen.
Their beliefs spread like wildfire. They preached that the Vytar stood alone as the sole sentient lifeforms because they had always been destined to inherit the universe. It was by design. They had been chosen by an omnipotent deity known as The Distant One, a divine being who existed beyond the reaches of ever-expanding universe. They called his domain, The Edge.
According to their scripture, the Vytar had succeeded thus far. They had entered the final phase of The Distant One’s plans, and the virus was proof of that. They had been granted eternal life to prepare them for the unending nirvana that awaited them within The Edge, and their inability to reproduce was a test. If the Vytar species could stop itself from destroying one another, if it could merely hold on until the heat death of the universe, they would be exalted. Should they fail, they would have nothing.
The Chosen’s beliefs became the dominant religion among the remaining Vytar colonies. They ceased warring with one another, trusting that their only path to salvation was through peace. A unified theocratic government was formed, one that instituted strict protocols in an effort to keep its population in line, and prevent further population decline. Those who did not believe, were forced into exile.
One such exile was a scientist called Xox. A brilliant member of the species, he cared little for religious dogma and instead sought to find a path forward using the Vytar’s greatest strength, their technology. Incapable of treating the Vytar’s inability to reproduce, he decided to merely create new life. Sentient. Intelligent. It would inherit the universe in the wake of the Vytar’s eventual demise, and act as the new stewards of creation.
For his experiment, he selected Earth. The planet required no terraforming, possessed a healthy star, and was distant enough from the remaining Vytar colony that he was unlikely to be discovered. It would give time for his lifeforms to incubate. Evolve.
His first attempts were made in his image. These would later be known as dinosaurs– a vast array of reptiles that hosted Vytar DNA. Their evolution was, like the Vytar before them, slow and inefficient, often selecting for poor genes to generate intelligence. Xox became obsessed with accelerating this process. How could he spur evolution forward? Make it faster? More streamlined?
Before he could implement his findings, however, a drifting Vytar drone detected his activity, alerting the homeworld. The Chosen contacted him, demanding an explanation. To create life was to commit the ultimate blasphemy, for that was the exclusive domain of The Distant One. They informed him that an ordinance had been deployed to wipe out his heresy, and that he would be arrested for his crimes.
But Xox fled.
He watched from afar as his greatest work, and perhaps the last hope for a conscious universe, was annihilated by the Vytar strike. Millions of years of work vaporized in the blink of an eye. The Chosen hunted for him tirelessly. Xox moved from world to world, doing his best to stay one step ahead of them until eventually, after a long stretch of time, they gave up the chase. Filled with sorrow, he decided to return to Earth and see what had become of his creation.
What he discovered astonished him.
The planet was flourishing with life, but it wasn’t the life he expected to see. No, his dinosaurs had been thoroughly annihilated, but something new had risen to take their place. Homosapiens. He reasoned that they must have evolved from the mammalian creatures he’d originally created as food for the dinosaurs, but now… they had become so much more.
Xox studied humanity extensively. He learned that they possessed far faster evolutionary cycles than Vytar, and that in the short span of several epochs had developed fragments of language, tribal formations, and tools. Despite it all, a thought haunted him. How long until The Chosen discovered humanity’s existence? How long until they returned to Earth to confirm its destruction had been absolute?
He did not know. That meant he would need to accelerate the process even further– to push human beings toward technologic parity with the Vytar, ensuring their ability to survive. He couldn’t count on always being there for them. The Chosen had nearly captured him once already. No, he would have to approach this problem from a different angle, one that provided humanity the tools necessary to secure its own future.
So it was that Project Runaway was born.
He called it thus because it was meant to be a lifeform experiencing a runaway evolutionary process, one that would allow it to develop in days what took its fellows years. It would be a human male. This would allow it to mate with the existing population and spread its genes, thereby increasing the evolutionary speed of his progeny. Soon, humanity would evolve the tools to stand against the Vytar. To inherit the cosmos.
To create him, Xox abducted thousands of ancient humans. He harvested their DNA, extracting the most useful aspects while discarding the rest, until he had enough to bring The Runaway to life. It emerged from the vat as a twenty-year old male. Xox gave it cursory knowledge of survival, and deployed it to the planet to begin its genetic proliferation.
The Runaway exceeded Xox’s expectations. His evolutionary process didn’t just seem to be accelerated compared to average humans, but it seemed to be accelerating. By the end of his first month, his musculature had evolved to the point that he could grapple large apes. By his second, he could subsist on little more than a handful of berries each week, with no impact to physical or mental performance.
Soon, he could see in total darkness. Then, even the act of breathing became optional. By his first birthday, The Runaway had ceased to age, becoming biologically immortal. Years passed. Decades. The Runaway grew capabilities that Xox could scarcely fathom, possessing the ability to discern the individual atoms making up the world around him. Shortly after, he’d discovered a means to manipulate them. Physics became his plaything. He flew with the birds as easily as he walked, swam fast enough to create boiling waves in his wake.
The Runaway, more and more, was evolving from a man to a god.
But Xox was not concerned. From his distant observations, he found The Runaway to be kind, possessing a high degree of empathy and a gentle nature. To his fellow humans, he appeared perplexing. Some worshiped him, others feared him. An assassin once drove a stone dagger into his heart amidst a crowd of onlookers, and The Runaway embraced his attacker. He ordered his fervent followers to allow the assassin safe passage. “His mind is unwell. He requires love, not hatred, to heal this wound.”
The Runaway, it seemed to Xox, was both a success and a failure. He had little interest in other human beings, likely viewing them as something bordering on a separate species, something akin to undeveloped animals. But he still saw fit to guide them. He helped them grow, advance, and find a sense of common ground that would lead to yet faster development.
To Xox, this was enough.
But as years wore on, and The Runaway became ever more powerful, he retreated further and further from his fellow human beings. He spent long hours in isolation where none could reach them. His hearing had become so advanced, that the only place he could find freedom from the savagery of the world were places where his senses were utterly assaulted. So he would meditate at the bottom of the sea. He would ponder atop the highest, most wind-swept peaks.
It was during this time that The Runaway looked skyward. He began to wonder about what lay beyond this world, and if there were a place he could feel truly at home. More and more, he began to look toward the stars. It was there that he spotted Xox’s spacecraft orbiting Saturn’s outer rings.
So he visited him.
Xox suspected this would happen sooner or later. He calibrated his communicator to greet The Runaway in his archaic human tongue, but was shocked to hear The Runaway respond in the low bass of Vytarian. He told Xox that he had long felt a presence watching him. Xox decided that it would be best to be honest with his creation, informing him of everything– the slow extinction of the Vytarian people, and how humanity was made to inherit the universe in their wake.
The Runaway was quiet for some time. Eventually, he looked at Xox, and a deep sadness spread across his features. “Do you truly fear me so much?”
“Ah,” Xox replied, once again expecting such an outcome. “Your advanced mental processes enable you to parse the thoughts of nearby lifeforms. You are reading my mind. I should clarify that the thoughts you are seeing… those of fear, and anger, are not my own, but merely a part of the collective knowledge passed down by my people. These are their opinions. Their beliefs.”
“They think of me as a monster…?” The Runaway said, eyes downcast.
“They do not think of you at all. I have cut myself off from the Collective Recall for some time, and what you are seeing are merely relics of their religious dogma. They see all created life as a blasphemy. But you… your ability, your potential… yes, I imagine it would be perceived as heresy.”
“And you?” The Runaway asked, brows furrowed as he worked to read the alien’s vast catalog of thoughts.
Xox placed a scaled hand upon the man’s shoulder. “I am a barren lifeform, ravaged by a virus that prevents me from experiencing reproduction. It impedes my biological imperative. It has thrown me, and my people into a vast depression. You ask me what you are to me? You are my legacy.” He blinks warmly. “You are my son.”
__________________________________________
I take a breath, it’s brief. Gasping. The gray Vytar is standing before me, his many pupils pulsing, and I’m suddenly aware that his name is Wor. He’s 70 million years old. Holy. His friend at the console is named Gret, and they’re both members of the Church of the Chosen.
“Did you see?” Wor asks, and he’s no longer using his digital translator. After the thought transference I can understand the Vytarian language, make sense of the various vibrations that previously just seemed like low bass.
“Yes,” I say, leaning forward. “But not everything.” I look up at Wor, and there’s an accusation in my eyes. “There’s more to this story, isn’t there?”
Gret twists his neck at us. His pupils dilate in quick succession, and I recognize it as the Vytarian equivalent to a dog baring its teeth. He’s angry. “You have seen enough, human. You are advised to prepare yourself for genetic deconstruction.”
“Wait!” I shout, and I’m surprised to find my voice rumbling throughout the ship. It’s thunderous. The Vytarian language is a strange one, but powerful, capable of being transmitted across vast distances without proper auditory control. “No,” I say again, this time quieter. “If you want me to do this, then I will… but I have to know it’s worth it. So show me. Prove it to me.”
The Vytar exchange glances. Wor’s pupils shrink– he’s nervous. Concerned. “To show you more may invite mental unease,” he says. “It was my hope that a brief glance at the history, the origin of everything could provide necessary closure to commence the harvest of your DNA.”
“Look,” I say. “I’ve seen a lot. I know that whatever genetic material you’re grabbing off of us is a lot more useful if we’re agreeable. It’s like shooting a scared animal. The meat is tough. It’s a chemical thing– I get that, and I’m telling you that if you show me the rest, I’ll let you do what you need. I’ll play my part.”
“Invalid request,” Gret says. “Sapien requests knowledge beyond its capacity to process.”
I shoot Gret a glare. “It’s him, isn’t it? The Runaway. It’s obvious he’s the source of your fear and this mission to save humanity. I might not have all the details, but just looking at your reactions– it’s gotta be. More than that, I can guess you haven’t had much luck dealing with him.”
Wor and Gret frown at one another. They don’t speak a word, but their expressions say everything I need to know.
“Look at it this way,” I say, getting to my feet. “I’m a human being. On some level, I’m like The Runaway, just less… well, terrifying I guess. But maybe there’s something in these memories, something in his actions or his behaviors that you’re fundamentally misunderstanding. What if I can make sense of that? Isn’t taking that chance worth it?”
The Vytar are quiet. They stare at one another for a long while, and their pupils are exploding and imploding in waves of emotion. Then, Gret turns way. He lets loose a bellow and throws up his arms, cursing Wor and me both.
“What’s his problem?” I mutter.
Wor steps forward hesitantly. He looks back to his companion, but Gret is facing away, hunched over the console in apparent disagreement. “Gret does not wish to harm your mind,” Wor says quietly. “Your story of your sister… this expiring human you call Hope, well, it has moved him. He fears that if I show you the rest of The Runaway’s story it will cause your mind to fracture, shattering your consciousness in such a way that it may not be repaired. There will be no perfect clone. Your sister will find no solace in her dying moments.”
I blink, looking at Gret and feeling awful for judging him so harshly. “But this feels important…” I say, my heart heavy. “This is the fate of humanity, right? The fate of everything.”
Wor nods. “Correct.”
“Then I have to see more,” I say, clenching my fists. “If there’s a chance I can help… Hope would want me to. Besides, I can't imagine it’s bad enough to destroy my damn brain. That’s crazy.”
“Correct again,” Wor says, placing his hands on my temples. “It is much worse than anything you can imagine.”

Happy Couples Celebrating the Ceremony of their Dreams with Florida Destination Weddings
Whether the loving couple is hoping for a romantic elopement on the beach at sunset or a lavish oceanside ceremony, FL Destination Weddings has the tools and experience to help clients get hitched without a hitch in Clearwater Beach, Florida.
📷
Florida Destination Weddings offers all-inclusive beach wedding packages tailored to meet the needs of everyone, from couples eloping in Florida to large destination wedding groups and local couples. With more than 30 years of experience helping people build their dream weddings, the company has facilitated countless ceremonies to help happy couples start their lives together.
“At Florida Destination Weddings, we are proud of how easy it is to have a wedding with us here in the great state of Florida,” company founders said. “We only use our own staff, no subcontractors, unlike most of the other wedding companies.”
Planning the perfect beach wedding doesn’t have to take months. With the help of the expert team at FL Destination Weddings, the happy couple can walk down the aisle in just a few days. All packages include a minister and a professional photographer.
Beach wedding packages for every budget and style
From beach elopement packages starting at $399 to all-inclusive Florida beach wedding and mini reception packages at $4,000 and everything in between, FL Destination Weddings has the connections to pull it all off with tasteful elegance. A wedding consultant works with each couple to build their beach wedding package. Whether the couple wants to say their vows alone to the accompaniment of the waves or oceanside in front of all their friends and family, Florida Destination Weddings can make it happen.
“To make your life as stress-free as possible, we come to you, so if you book a beach hotel, villa, condo, or house, we can set up right there on the beach for you,” FL Destination Weddings founders said. “So, all you have to do on the day is relax, get dressed, and walk out to us. We will already be set up and waiting to go.”
📷
Say “I do” with an ocean backdrop
While FL Destination Weddings does travel all over Florida for clients, most weddings take place on Clearwater Beach, which was voted America’s best beach three years in a row. The company employs a team of expertly trained professional wedding photographers with experience shooting thousands of beach weddings. The company’s photographers know how to compose stunning images and keep a strict schedule to ensure the best possible pictures. Photographers also leave copies of the unedited images with the couple before leaving.
Streamlining the beach wedding process
Planning the perfect beach wedding has never been easier. At FL Destination Weddings, merely pay the $250 retainer fee, choose a ceremony, sign the contract, and apply for a marriage license. The company will confirm all plans two weeks before the wedding date, and the balance is due ten days before the ceremony.
“It’s just that easy,” the founders said. “A walk on the beach. We are here to help guide and make planning your dream beach wedding in Florida as easy as possible.”
📷
Conclusion
To learn more about FL Destination Weddings or to book a date, visit the website or connect on social media at Facebook.
Contact Details
Business: FL Destination Weddings
Contact Name: Mike Jones
Contact Email:[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Country: United States
Website: https://www.fldestinationweddings

Hey Everyone!
Let’s go….
Newly Covered Today:

1. Here’s the daily check-in on the status of the SPO Poll. We have surpassed 590 pools voting (as of May 23). https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
2. The Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong has decided to get our hopes up with a proposed regulatory framework for crypto exchanges that could mean more trading for coins like Cardano. https://apps.sfc.hk/edistributionWeb/gateway/EN/news-and-announcements/news/doc?refNo=23PR53
3. Here’s an IOG thread on the latest out of Atala Prism and Self-Sovereign Identity. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1660904360925188097
4. Here’s an IOG article on Cardano native tokens. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1660975383997448193
5. The difference in decentralization between Cardano and Bitcoin is still…laughable. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1660979639907500033
6. Ledger is finally caving (a little) to the backlash. It’s reported that they will focus on open sourcing parts of their code and only release the “Recover” firmware after that open sourcing is finished. https://twitter.com/NFTherdestatus/1661026174779420672

Previously covered, but still interesting:

1. Great thread from a Cardano stake pool operator with a degree in AI comparing the AI adoption curve to that of crypto so far. https://twitter.com/NilsCodes/status/1650556595607310336
2. Grimes has already figured out how to combine AI and crypto. Anyone can use her voice in AI created songs and she will split the royalties 50/50 with them via crypto payments. https://twitter.com/Grimezsz/status/1650531656695009281
3. Cardano projects selling their own tokens into secondary is discussed as a part of project funding. https://twitter.com/RichardMcCrackn/status/1650843810623004672
4. There is also speculation about a single team being behind several projects. https://twitter.com/UnpopularEL/status/1650893382519013383
5. Cardano Whale makes a very good point about the staying power of Cardano in the top ten over half a decade. https://twitter.com/cardano_whale/status/1650922343416360960
6. The CFTC is apparently saying there is no immediate path forward for Binance. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/25/cftc-commissioner-hopes-to-find-path-forward-in-binance-lawsuit.html
7. Binance had this to say. It is bailing on the deal to acquire Voyager assets because of the “hostile and uncertain regulatory climate” in the U.S. https://twitter.com/BinanceUS/status/1650932061866172435
8. Gensler in 2018: “ ¾ of the market are non-securities. It’s just a commodity, a cash crypto.” https://twitter.com/ZK_shark/status/1650689125580668931
9. Charles is talking about GPT + Marlowe! That could be an incredible combination for the production of a large volume of smart contracts underlying useful dApps. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1650996198411759616
10. There are big questions about First Republic Bank possibly falling into receivership and what happens after that. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1650973374053773312
11. The UN Refugee Agency has a Cardano stakepool? https://twitter.com/Padierfind/status/1651301698495733760
12. At least one Cardano DeFi project is using ADA handles to increase transparency on their platform. https://twitter.com/liqwidfinance/status/1651315687648796680
13. Carda Station now has a live builder tool. https://twitter.com/macfoucin/status/1651377194428518401
14. IOG will be hosting a “Hydra for Auctions” Twitter space today on April 27th. https://twitter.com/macfoucin/status/1651377194428518401
15. Cardano 360 is going down today April 27. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1651285307268923396
16. Emurgo will be at Consensus if you find yourself there. https://twitter.com/emurgo_io/status/1651212183689375746
17. It looks like John MacPherson is moving on from the CF. https://twitter.com/John_CF/status/1651398161036869633
18. In May, the Cardano Foundation will hold an on-chain poll of Stakepool Operators as to certain staking parameters and values (K! minFee?). Apparently, Delegators will be able to see an initial poll and then redelegate if they don’t like their pool’s position. https://cardanofoundation.org/en/news/entering-voltaire-on-chain-poll-for-spos/
19. Cardano Summit tickets are now available. https://summit.cardano.org/
20. Paul Grewal and Brian Armstrong of Coinbase have made a video response to the SEC’s Wells Notice. https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1651668247811624960
21. The Gensler Tapes from MIT in 2018 keep getting better and better. In this one he basically states that the SEC has already determined that Ether is not a security. https://twitter.com/ZK_shark/status/1651594738229805056
22. People are noticing how much work has gone into Cardano. https://twitter.com/Flowslikeosmo/status/1652477886971146240
23. Remember, anyone can make a token with any name or image. But, it may be totally unconnected with what it mimics. https://twitter.com/TapTools/status/1652682488446087168
24. Counting First Republic we now have five major bank failures in two months (including Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate, Credit Suisse, and Signature). https://finance.yahoo.com/news/banks-wait-on-us-to-decide-fate-of-first-republic-183757350.html
25. Some believe First Republic is just the next in a line of non-Too Big to Fail bank failures. https://twitter.com/CryptoHayes/status/1652808916898824192
26. Larry Summers (fmr Sec. of Treasury) and Elon Musk have an interesting exchange over the chances of recession (Summers–70%, Elon–already here) and the level of severity (Elon thinks very high if Fed hikes more). https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1652304208060710912
27. The safety of ETH L2 rollups is called into question. https://twitter.com/SoorajKSaju/status/1652774675766755332
28. It’s becoming harder and harder to deny that Cardano has the biggest (actually) liquid staking protocol in all of crypto. https://twitter.com/cardano_whale/status/1653158216963092480
29. Coinbase’s position on Cardano keeps slipping more and more in our favor. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1653240691747880963
30. There is discussion of “false metrics” and Solana. https://twitter.com/Davyegld/status/1653070941306462214
31. Much more of this and we won’t call them banks anymore. They’ll just be called Morgans. Apparently, an exception to the 10% rule. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/business/first-republic-jpmorgan-fdic.html
32. Some are calling this a decision to nationalize the banking sector. https://twitter.com/CryptoHayes/status/1653175131123126272
33. Pretty much everyone seems to see what’s going on here. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1653031538324303872
34. Looks like the fighting over the debt limit is ramping up. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-01/yellen-warns-congress-treasury-may-run-out-of-cash-soon-as-june?leadSource=uverify%20wall
35. Balaji has settled his million dollar bitcoin bet to put us all on notice about the trillions being printed. Here are his thoughts backed up by plentiful references. https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1653449321185169409
36. So much ghostbusting would be needed to clear us out. https://twitter.com/TheOCcryptobro/status/1653527418588774401
37. Charles was on Fox again and discussed a wide range of topics with Maria. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1653571613135196163
38. Coinbase didn’t waste any time in getting their non-US futures platform open. https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1653385513011740672
39. A former SEC Chair in his 90s sees that the current SEC is wrong on crypto. https://twitter.com/ramahluwalia/status/1648134506359009280
40. Rumor is that Pacwest is next on death row. https://twitter.com/CryptoHayes/status/1653403052899192833
41. ADA + Lime Wire. Only asked for 300 retweets…they definitely don’t know us. https://twitter.com/limewire/status/1653834307259998221
42. Token locking. Not a comment on any specific project. But, Is there any good case it’s not really just to artificially drive price up? Obviously also useful to centralize liquidity. https://twitter.com/MatthewPlomin/status/1653773401645826049
43. You can’t say that many of us in Cardano didn’t warn about exactly this. Always the same with these VC coins. https://twitter.com/mr_cata/status/1653788019084734468
44. Caitlin Long points out that both the non-main candidate challengers in the 2024 Presidential race are pro-crypto and anti-CBDC. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1653528247655694336
45. The Fed raised by a quarter point bringing the federal funds rate to 5-5.25%. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/03/live-updates-fed-decision-may-2023.html
46. As predicted PacWest is facing death. https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1653873317110071305The Florida anti-CBDC bill passed both the FL House and the Senate. https://twitter.com/samuelarmes/status/1653761904169320448
47. A sitting US Senator just said that the modern banking system is a sophisticated ponzi scheme. https://twitter.com/BertusMaximus2/status/1653819148596543489
48. Hydra is live on mainnet. https://twitter.com/rom1_pellerin/status/1654185072415723529
49. IOG wants you to know about the advantages of native tokens on Cardano. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1654077799697727488
50. Cardano Movies! https://twitter.com/coc_space/status/1653862307439542275
51. We really need to primary some members of the U.S. Congress. https://twitter.com/BradSherman/status/1653928972026093569
52. Wow! Not surprised at what’s being said here back in November. Just surprised it’s being said publicly. https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1654239504574853120
53. Here’s the longer video of that FDIC meeting for context. http://fdic.windrosemedia.com/index.php?category=Systemic+Resolution+Advisory+Committee
54. Looks like Western Alliance is up next. https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1654133106037739522
55. The weekly development update from IOG is out. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1655248376194105347
56. It’s not hard to make a meme coin on Cardano. https://twitter.com/nmkr_io/status/1654923697885532160
57. Still a crazy amount of mark-to-market losses that haven’t been absorbed by the system. https://twitter.com/BillyM2k/status/1655207860572422144
58. Warren Buffet gives a not too comforting answer to a question about the status of the dollar: “America…we’ve got everything going for us…but…you can’t print money indefinitely as debt.” https://twitter.com/GRDectestatus/1655203348033810439
59. …and then everyone remembered what fee markets look like in busy times. https://twitter.com/CryptoStylesUSA/status/1654711146673479680
60. …same for Bitcoin. https://twitter.com/MatthewPlomin/status/1655320093084057600
61. Cardano hit 94% load. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1655624561789112321
62. he MEV game is getting out of control over on Cardano’s biggest competitor chain. Convince me this shouldn’t just be called “theft” or “fraud”. https://twitter.com/0xNox_eth/status/1655615309695586306
63. Cardano Native Assets are vastly superior to BRC20 and ERC20 tokens. https://twitter.com/TheOCcryptobro/status/1655673557710692352
64. Rumor: SEC is going to make a move against Binance. Will the DOJ also? https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus/status/1655546961968103425
65. At the end of Q3 of last year, 722 banks reported unrealized losses greater than 50% of capital. https://www.federalreserve.gov/supervisionreg/files/board-briefing-on-impact-of-rising-interest-rates-and-supervisory-approach-20230214.pdf
66. Wyoming is inching closer to a state stablecoin. IOG’s significant presence there may turn out to be a huge advantage. https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/05/09/wyoming-stable-token-a-multibillion-dollar-opportunity-as-officials-wrestle-with-how-to-make-it-happen/
67. Paypal disclosed almost $1 billion in customer crypto in its latest 10-Q. https://blockworks.co/news/paypal-discloses-1b-crypto
68. MiCA is shifting the balance of crypto investment to Europe. https://twitter.com/paddi_hansen/status/1655883224726241281
69. Today (May 10) will be a joint hearing of the Agriculture and Financial Services Committees on Crypto. The CLO of Kraken will testify. https://financialservices.house.gov/
70. This is a legit point about centralized L2s: the best ones are called Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance. https://twitter.com/el33th4xostatus/1655845787593502720
71. There’s already a new version of Lace Wallet out. https://twitter.com/lace_io/status/1656347737355608066
72. A nice thread on the many strengths of Cardano. https://twitter.com/TobiasIlskov/status/1656388178369212416
73. Remember, lobster traps are a thing. https://twitter.com/TheCardanoTimes/status/1656064744225120257
74. Today (May 11 at 1pm EST) there will be a Messari Cardano Analyst call with Charles & Frederik. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1656272372452954112
75. I think we all love it when they start making our case for us. https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1656379837823561730
76. Ethereum is lamenting many of its poor design choices that Cardano already fixed. https://twitter.com/moo9000/status/1656215016016683008
77. Drunkenmiller says this is the broadest asset bubble he’s ever even studied let alone seen firsthand and we’ve only had a few soft landings since 1950. https://twitter.com/Stephen_Geigestatus/1656416819312222219
78. Live footage of meme coin investors accepting their ROI. https://twitter.com/KaylerSmithTV/status/1656130092966264834
79. Here’s the Messari call from today with both Fred & Chaz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouUhWwF74MM
80. People really seem to be enjoying the CF’s Blockchain Education Alpha Program. https://twitter.com/andreassosilo/status/1644263843743293451
81. The US Chamber of Commerce brief in the Coinbase case is calling out the SEC for acting “unlawfully”. https://twitter.com/MetaLawMan/status/1656737447756038177
82. About that whole self-custody thing we’ve discussed… https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1656706653801136132
83. The SPO poll on K and minFee starts today (May 15)! You should redelegate if your stake pool doesn’t vote the way you would vote! https://cardanofoundation.org/en/news/entering-voltaire-poll-experiment-live-on-mainnet/
84. There are also a series of forum topics for discussion of the various options in the Cardano.org forums. https://twitter.com/Lovecoach_nic/status/1657700010148896770
85. Coinbase spotlights Empowa! May be the first time they’ve ever given such a spotlight to a Cardano project. Tides are turning. https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1657081243518005254
86. Wow. Leaked “Key Messages” document for the joint committee meeting in the US House last week. Best part: they basically complain about separation of powers in point three. https://twitter.com/EleanorTerrett/status/1656362002577772544
87. Dr. Vanishree Rao on ZK-Rollups. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1657778843854274560
88. Here’s a new Decentralized Identity article from IOG. https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2023/05/11/atala-prism-pioneering-digital-identity-with-decentralized-solutions/
89. There are reasons we’re in a hard capped cryptocurrency like Cardano. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/15/business/argentina-interest-rates-inflation/index.html
90. What is a dRep? This video is for you. There will be additional categories of default dReps that vote abstain or no confidence on every vote. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1658034085401337857
91. The US Dept. of Justice is officially saying they are targeting exchanges. Great. Great. https://www.ft.com/content/5aac457e-cc80-44ae-ac40-9b51d9b601a3
92. Wow! Ledger just made what is possibly the greatest PR blunder in the history of crypto. Trezor will be poppin’ bottles tonight. https://twitter.com/Ledgestatus/1658458714771169282
93. People are claiming that the hysteria is a misunderstanding of cryptography. But, that’s not what’s going on here if Ledger plus one of the other two shard custodians can reconstruct your private key without having to use your private key. https://twitter.com/nimuepool/status/1658517533836574720
94. The Ledger Recover FAQ seems to support this understanding as it suggests you use a brand new device for recovery. https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/9579368109597
95. Wow. Unfortunate timing for this. https://twitter.com/Ledgestatus/1658095051375800321
96. Ken Kodama will be doing a Japanese language interview on CardanoSpot on May 18. https://twitter.com/Emurgo_Ken/status/1658838077136162828
97. The stake pool operator poll on network parameters of K and minPoolCost is live. See the results here. The re-delegation phase will begin on May 25th. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
98. Cornucopias dropped some new in-game footage. As expected, Solace is beautiful. https://youtu.be/j5iwNsQVMDQ?t=1846
99. Wow….the Ledger shards are encrypted with “a master key that is contained in all devices”. Wut? https://twitter.com/P3b7_/status/1658809445965606913
100. Sadly, the Ledger CEO seemed to be denying exactly the above just a day ago. https://twitter.com/_pgauthiestatus/1658508082941403144
101. Here’s why 340 ADA minPoolCost promotes multi-pools. https://twitter.com/ArmySpies/status/1659387255537176581
102. Numbers are emerging on the benefits of K=1000 over K=500. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1659398551917727744
103. Here’s the latest on the Stake Pool Operator poll. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
104. Rep. Tom Emmer is trying to help crypto by cutting crypto assets out of the definition of a “security”. He creates a new non-security asset category called “investment contract asset”. https://twitter.com/GOPMajorityWhip/status/1659291641281146886
105. Prof. Wadler (co-inventor of Cardano’s Plutus) has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society joining the likes of Einstein, Darwin, Hawking, and Isaac Newton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLOm-dWje-M
106. Huge amount of voting for economic self-interest by multi-poolers in the SPO poll. Earlier today (May 21), 84.73% by stake of the vote for K=500, Min Cost 340 ₳ was multi-poolers. Only 15.6% of the vote for K=1000, Min Cost 170 ₳ was multi-poolers. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
107. Large pools also voted heavily for economic self-interest with the K parameter. 70.02% by stake of the vote for K=500, Min Cost 170 ₳ was pools with delegation over 35 million. Only 30.57% of the vote for K=1000, Min Cost 170 ₳ was pools over 35 million. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
108. Apparently Cardano has its own wiki now! Probably better given our previous treatment by the big wiki group. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1660383700243329024
109. Rep. Tom Emmer is getting some reactions on the bill he sponsored with Rep. Soto. https://twitter.com/GOPMajorityWhip/status/1660329932495486977
110. You’re really gonna hold up a debt ceiling deal because you hate crypto so bad? https://twitter.com/gaborgurbacs/status/1660248530135515138
111. Looks like a few big multi-poolers have voted in the poll since yesterday. Pretty easy to predict what they didn’t vote for. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
112. Reports coming in that DCG has defaulted on the payment owed to Genesis. https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus/status/1660671386388504577
113. Ledger Recover would allow governments to confiscate crypto assets by subpoena? Called “not a real concern in the end.” Really? https://twitter.com/TheBTCTherapist/status/1660677064700178436
114. Frederik Gregaard on DeFi and regulation. https://twitter.com/F_Gregaard/status/1660655806709211137
115. Don’t Forget, the May Cardano 360 will be on May 25th. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1660621805017608194

~Army of Spies

Hey Everyone!
Let’s go….
Newly Covered Today:

1. Looks like a few big multi-poolers have voted in the poll since yesterday. Pretty easy to predict what they didn’t vote for. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
2. Reports coming in that DCG has defaulted on the payment owed to Genesis. https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus/status/1660671386388504577
3. Ledger Recover would allow governments to confiscate crypto assets by subpoena? Called “not a real concern in the end.” Really? https://twitter.com/TheBTCTherapist/status/1660677064700178436
4. Frederik Gregaard on DeFi and regulation. https://twitter.com/F_Gregaard/status/1660655806709211137
5. Don’t Forget, the May Cardano 360 will be on May 25th. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1660621805017608194

Previously covered, but still interesting:

1. Great thread from a Cardano stake pool operator with a degree in AI comparing the AI adoption curve to that of crypto so far. https://twitter.com/NilsCodes/status/1650556595607310336
2. Grimes has already figured out how to combine AI and crypto. Anyone can use her voice in AI created songs and she will split the royalties 50/50 with them via crypto payments. https://twitter.com/Grimezsz/status/1650531656695009281
3. Cardano projects selling their own tokens into secondary is discussed as a part of project funding. https://twitter.com/RichardMcCrackn/status/1650843810623004672
4. There is also speculation about a single team being behind several projects. https://twitter.com/UnpopularEL/status/1650893382519013383
5. Cardano Whale makes a very good point about the staying power of Cardano in the top ten over half a decade. https://twitter.com/cardano_whale/status/1650922343416360960
6. The CFTC is apparently saying there is no immediate path forward for Binance. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/25/cftc-commissioner-hopes-to-find-path-forward-in-binance-lawsuit.html
7. Binance had this to say. It is bailing on the deal to acquire Voyager assets because of the “hostile and uncertain regulatory climate” in the U.S. https://twitter.com/BinanceUS/status/1650932061866172435
8. Gensler in 2018: “ ¾ of the market are non-securities. It’s just a commodity, a cash crypto.” https://twitter.com/ZK_shark/status/1650689125580668931
9. Charles is talking about GPT + Marlowe! That could be an incredible combination for the production of a large volume of smart contracts underlying useful dApps. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1650996198411759616
10. There are big questions about First Republic Bank possibly falling into receivership and what happens after that. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1650973374053773312
11. The UN Refugee Agency has a Cardano stakepool? https://twitter.com/Padierfind/status/1651301698495733760
12. At least one Cardano DeFi project is using ADA handles to increase transparency on their platform. https://twitter.com/liqwidfinance/status/1651315687648796680
13. Carda Station now has a live builder tool. https://twitter.com/macfoucin/status/1651377194428518401
14. IOG will be hosting a “Hydra for Auctions” Twitter space today on April 27th. https://twitter.com/macfoucin/status/1651377194428518401
15. Cardano 360 is going down today April 27. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1651285307268923396
16. Emurgo will be at Consensus if you find yourself there. https://twitter.com/emurgo_io/status/1651212183689375746
17. It looks like John MacPherson is moving on from the CF. https://twitter.com/John_CF/status/1651398161036869633
18. In May, the Cardano Foundation will hold an on-chain poll of Stakepool Operators as to certain staking parameters and values (K! minFee?). Apparently, Delegators will be able to see an initial poll and then redelegate if they don’t like their pool’s position. https://cardanofoundation.org/en/news/entering-voltaire-on-chain-poll-for-spos/
19. Cardano Summit tickets are now available. https://summit.cardano.org/
20. Paul Grewal and Brian Armstrong of Coinbase have made a video response to the SEC’s Wells Notice. https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1651668247811624960
21. The Gensler Tapes from MIT in 2018 keep getting better and better. In this one he basically states that the SEC has already determined that Ether is not a security. https://twitter.com/ZK_shark/status/1651594738229805056
22. People are noticing how much work has gone into Cardano. https://twitter.com/Flowslikeosmo/status/1652477886971146240
23. Remember, anyone can make a token with any name or image. But, it may be totally unconnected with what it mimics. https://twitter.com/TapTools/status/1652682488446087168
24. Counting First Republic we now have five major bank failures in two months (including Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate, Credit Suisse, and Signature). https://finance.yahoo.com/news/banks-wait-on-us-to-decide-fate-of-first-republic-183757350.html
25. Some believe First Republic is just the next in a line of non-Too Big to Fail bank failures. https://twitter.com/CryptoHayes/status/1652808916898824192
26. Larry Summers (fmr Sec. of Treasury) and Elon Musk have an interesting exchange over the chances of recession (Summers–70%, Elon–already here) and the level of severity (Elon thinks very high if Fed hikes more). https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1652304208060710912
27. The safety of ETH L2 rollups is called into question. https://twitter.com/SoorajKSaju/status/1652774675766755332
28. It’s becoming harder and harder to deny that Cardano has the biggest (actually) liquid staking protocol in all of crypto. https://twitter.com/cardano_whale/status/1653158216963092480
29. Coinbase’s position on Cardano keeps slipping more and more in our favor. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1653240691747880963
30. There is discussion of “false metrics” and Solana. https://twitter.com/Davyegld/status/1653070941306462214
31. Much more of this and we won’t call them banks anymore. They’ll just be called Morgans. Apparently, an exception to the 10% rule. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/business/first-republic-jpmorgan-fdic.html
32. Some are calling this a decision to nationalize the banking sector. https://twitter.com/CryptoHayes/status/1653175131123126272
33. Pretty much everyone seems to see what’s going on here. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1653031538324303872
34. Looks like the fighting over the debt limit is ramping up. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-01/yellen-warns-congress-treasury-may-run-out-of-cash-soon-as-june?leadSource=uverify%20wall
35. Balaji has settled his million dollar bitcoin bet to put us all on notice about the trillions being printed. Here are his thoughts backed up by plentiful references. https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1653449321185169409
36. So much ghostbusting would be needed to clear us out. https://twitter.com/TheOCcryptobro/status/1653527418588774401
37. Charles was on Fox again and discussed a wide range of topics with Maria. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1653571613135196163
38. Coinbase didn’t waste any time in getting their non-US futures platform open. https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1653385513011740672
39. A former SEC Chair in his 90s sees that the current SEC is wrong on crypto. https://twitter.com/ramahluwalia/status/1648134506359009280
40. Rumor is that Pacwest is next on death row. https://twitter.com/CryptoHayes/status/1653403052899192833
41. ADA + Lime Wire. Only asked for 300 retweets…they definitely don’t know us. https://twitter.com/limewire/status/1653834307259998221
42. Token locking. Not a comment on any specific project. But, Is there any good case it’s not really just to artificially drive price up? Obviously also useful to centralize liquidity. https://twitter.com/MatthewPlomin/status/1653773401645826049
43. You can’t say that many of us in Cardano didn’t warn about exactly this. Always the same with these VC coins. https://twitter.com/mr_cata/status/1653788019084734468
44. Caitlin Long points out that both the non-main candidate challengers in the 2024 Presidential race are pro-crypto and anti-CBDC. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1653528247655694336
45. The Fed raised by a quarter point bringing the federal funds rate to 5-5.25%. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/03/live-updates-fed-decision-may-2023.html
46. As predicted PacWest is facing death. https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1653873317110071305The Florida anti-CBDC bill passed both the FL House and the Senate. https://twitter.com/samuelarmes/status/1653761904169320448
47. A sitting US Senator just said that the modern banking system is a sophisticated ponzi scheme. https://twitter.com/BertusMaximus2/status/1653819148596543489
48. Hydra is live on mainnet. https://twitter.com/rom1_pellerin/status/1654185072415723529
49. IOG wants you to know about the advantages of native tokens on Cardano. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1654077799697727488
50. Cardano Movies! https://twitter.com/coc_space/status/1653862307439542275
51. We really need to primary some members of the U.S. Congress. https://twitter.com/BradSherman/status/1653928972026093569
52. Wow! Not surprised at what’s being said here back in November. Just surprised it’s being said publicly. https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1654239504574853120
53. Here’s the longer video of that FDIC meeting for context. http://fdic.windrosemedia.com/index.php?category=Systemic+Resolution+Advisory+Committee
54. Looks like Western Alliance is up next. https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1654133106037739522
55. The weekly development update from IOG is out. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1655248376194105347
56. It’s not hard to make a meme coin on Cardano. https://twitter.com/nmkr_io/status/1654923697885532160
57. Still a crazy amount of mark-to-market losses that haven’t been absorbed by the system. https://twitter.com/BillyM2k/status/1655207860572422144
58. Warren Buffet gives a not too comforting answer to a question about the status of the dollar: “America…we’ve got everything going for us…but…you can’t print money indefinitely as debt.” https://twitter.com/GRDectestatus/1655203348033810439
59. …and then everyone remembered what fee markets look like in busy times. https://twitter.com/CryptoStylesUSA/status/1654711146673479680
60. …same for Bitcoin. https://twitter.com/MatthewPlomin/status/1655320093084057600
61. Cardano hit 94% load. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1655624561789112321
62. he MEV game is getting out of control over on Cardano’s biggest competitor chain. Convince me this shouldn’t just be called “theft” or “fraud”. https://twitter.com/0xNox_eth/status/1655615309695586306
63. Cardano Native Assets are vastly superior to BRC20 and ERC20 tokens. https://twitter.com/TheOCcryptobro/status/1655673557710692352
64. Rumor: SEC is going to make a move against Binance. Will the DOJ also? https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus/status/1655546961968103425
65. At the end of Q3 of last year, 722 banks reported unrealized losses greater than 50% of capital. https://www.federalreserve.gov/supervisionreg/files/board-briefing-on-impact-of-rising-interest-rates-and-supervisory-approach-20230214.pdf
66. Wyoming is inching closer to a state stablecoin. IOG’s significant presence there may turn out to be a huge advantage. https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/05/09/wyoming-stable-token-a-multibillion-dollar-opportunity-as-officials-wrestle-with-how-to-make-it-happen/
67. Paypal disclosed almost $1 billion in customer crypto in its latest 10-Q. https://blockworks.co/news/paypal-discloses-1b-crypto
68. MiCA is shifting the balance of crypto investment to Europe. https://twitter.com/paddi_hansen/status/1655883224726241281
69. Today (May 10) will be a joint hearing of the Agriculture and Financial Services Committees on Crypto. The CLO of Kraken will testify. https://financialservices.house.gov/
70. This is a legit point about centralized L2s: the best ones are called Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance. https://twitter.com/el33th4xostatus/1655845787593502720
71. There’s already a new version of Lace Wallet out. https://twitter.com/lace_io/status/1656347737355608066
72. A nice thread on the many strengths of Cardano. https://twitter.com/TobiasIlskov/status/1656388178369212416
73. Remember, lobster traps are a thing. https://twitter.com/TheCardanoTimes/status/1656064744225120257
74. Today (May 11 at 1pm EST) there will be a Messari Cardano Analyst call with Charles & Frederik. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1656272372452954112
75. I think we all love it when they start making our case for us. https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1656379837823561730
76. Ethereum is lamenting many of its poor design choices that Cardano already fixed. https://twitter.com/moo9000/status/1656215016016683008
77. Drunkenmiller says this is the broadest asset bubble he’s ever even studied let alone seen firsthand and we’ve only had a few soft landings since 1950. https://twitter.com/Stephen_Geigestatus/1656416819312222219
78. Live footage of meme coin investors accepting their ROI. https://twitter.com/KaylerSmithTV/status/1656130092966264834
79. Here’s the Messari call from today with both Fred & Chaz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouUhWwF74MM
80. People really seem to be enjoying the CF’s Blockchain Education Alpha Program. https://twitter.com/andreassosilo/status/1644263843743293451
81. The US Chamber of Commerce brief in the Coinbase case is calling out the SEC for acting “unlawfully”. https://twitter.com/MetaLawMan/status/1656737447756038177
82. About that whole self-custody thing we’ve discussed… https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1656706653801136132
83. The SPO poll on K and minFee starts today (May 15)! You should redelegate if your stake pool doesn’t vote the way you would vote! https://cardanofoundation.org/en/news/entering-voltaire-poll-experiment-live-on-mainnet/
84. There are also a series of forum topics for discussion of the various options in the Cardano.org forums. https://twitter.com/Lovecoach_nic/status/1657700010148896770
85. Coinbase spotlights Empowa! May be the first time they’ve ever given such a spotlight to a Cardano project. Tides are turning. https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1657081243518005254
86. Wow. Leaked “Key Messages” document for the joint committee meeting in the US House last week. Best part: they basically complain about separation of powers in point three. https://twitter.com/EleanorTerrett/status/1656362002577772544
87. Dr. Vanishree Rao on ZK-Rollups. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1657778843854274560
88. Here’s a new Decentralized Identity article from IOG. https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2023/05/11/atala-prism-pioneering-digital-identity-with-decentralized-solutions/
89. There are reasons we’re in a hard capped cryptocurrency like Cardano. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/15/business/argentina-interest-rates-inflation/index.html
90. What is a dRep? This video is for you. There will be additional categories of default dReps that vote abstain or no confidence on every vote. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1658034085401337857
91. The US Dept. of Justice is officially saying they are targeting exchanges. Great. Great. https://www.ft.com/content/5aac457e-cc80-44ae-ac40-9b51d9b601a3
92. Wow! Ledger just made what is possibly the greatest PR blunder in the history of crypto. Trezor will be poppin’ bottles tonight. https://twitter.com/Ledgestatus/1658458714771169282
93. People are claiming that the hysteria is a misunderstanding of cryptography. But, that’s not what’s going on here if Ledger plus one of the other two shard custodians can reconstruct your private key without having to use your private key. https://twitter.com/nimuepool/status/1658517533836574720
94. The Ledger Recover FAQ seems to support this understanding as it suggests you use a brand new device for recovery. https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/9579368109597
95. Wow. Unfortunate timing for this. https://twitter.com/Ledgestatus/1658095051375800321
96. Ken Kodama will be doing a Japanese language interview on CardanoSpot on May 18. https://twitter.com/Emurgo_Ken/status/1658838077136162828
97. The stake pool operator poll on network parameters of K and minPoolCost is live. See the results here. The re-delegation phase will begin on May 25th. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
98. Cornucopias dropped some new in-game footage. As expected, Solace is beautiful. https://youtu.be/j5iwNsQVMDQ?t=1846
99. Wow….the Ledger shards are encrypted with “a master key that is contained in all devices”. Wut? https://twitter.com/P3b7_/status/1658809445965606913
100. Sadly, the Ledger CEO seemed to be denying exactly the above just a day ago. https://twitter.com/_pgauthiestatus/1658508082941403144
101. Here’s why 340 ADA minPoolCost promotes multi-pools. https://twitter.com/ArmySpies/status/1659387255537176581
102. Numbers are emerging on the benefits of K=1000 over K=500. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1659398551917727744
103. Here’s the latest on the Stake Pool Operator poll. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
104. Rep. Tom Emmer is trying to help crypto by cutting crypto assets out of the definition of a “security”. He creates a new non-security asset category called “investment contract asset”. https://twitter.com/GOPMajorityWhip/status/1659291641281146886
105. Prof. Wadler (co-inventor of Cardano’s Plutus) has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society joining the likes of Einstein, Darwin, Hawking, and Isaac Newton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLOm-dWje-M
106. Huge amount of voting for economic self-interest by multi-poolers in the SPO poll. Earlier today (May 21), 84.73% by stake of the vote for K=500, Min Cost 340 ₳ was multi-poolers. Only 15.6% of the vote for K=1000, Min Cost 170 ₳ was multi-poolers. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
107. Large pools also voted heavily for economic self-interest with the K parameter. 70.02% by stake of the vote for K=500, Min Cost 170 ₳ was pools with delegation over 35 million. Only 30.57% of the vote for K=1000, Min Cost 170 ₳ was pools over 35 million. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
108. Apparently Cardano has its own wiki now! Probably better given our previous treatment by the big wiki group. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1660383700243329024
109. Rep. Tom Emmer is getting some reactions on the bill he sponsored with Rep. Soto. https://twitter.com/GOPMajorityWhip/status/1660329932495486977
110. You’re really gonna hold up a debt ceiling deal because you hate crypto so bad? https://twitter.com/gaborgurbacs/status/1660248530135515138

~Army of Spies

Dear friends,
Due to my job, I have the opportunity to work remotely from Italy for approximately 6 to 8 months per year. However, I must confess that my quest for information about Italian cities has left me more confused than before! Therefore, I would greatly appreciate your assistance in finding the ideal city for me and my partner.
Here are some details about us:
Our salary: 5,000 euros.
We have a lovely cat who will be joining us on this adventure.
Both my partner and I work remotely for companies based in Germany.
Now, let's discuss our preferences for the ideal city:

• Sunny weather: We long for a place with vibrant sunshine to counterbalance the often gloomy and gray skies of Berlin.
  
• Proximity to the beach: It would be wonderful to live in a city close to the coast, allowing us to enjoy the beauty of the sea whenever we desire.
  
• Accessible airport: Since we frequently travel, having a well-connected airport nearby would be convenient for our adventures. one hour away from any international airport
  
• Gyms: prediabetics here. :)
  
• Coffee: As coffee enthusiasts, we seek a city with a vibrant coffee culture and cozy cafes to enjoy our daily dose of caffeine.
  
• Restaurants: While we appreciate Italian cuisine, we also enjoy exploring diverse culinary experiences, so a city with a variety of international restaurants would be ideal.
  
• Pollution levels: Considering the impact of pollution on our well-being, we prefer a city with low pollution levels, especially, as covid destroy my lungs
  

Let me provide a glimpse into our simple lifestyle:

1. Working from home or shared office spaces.
2. Indulging in the pleasure of trying different coffee shops and restaurants.
3. Exploring museums and immersing ourselves in art and culture.
4. Reconnecting with nature through visits to parks, water bodies, and mountains.
5. Engaging in hobbies that bring joy and laughter.(woodworking, dancing, helping people in needs, cultivating veggies, cooking)
6. Regular gym sessions to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
7. Enjoying bike rides to explore new places and the freedom of driving our car to random destinations.
8. Cherishing the tranquility of a peaceful living environment while being conveniently close to cafes, pubs, and restaurants.

To help with communication, we are fluent in English, German, French, and Romanian, but unfortunately, we currently have zero knowledge of the Italian language. However, we are committed to learning at least A2/B1 Italian before making the move.
While we are aware that every country has its challenges, we believe that with proper preparation, we can overcome them. Our requirements revolve around registration, setting up bank accounts, and navigating the healthcare system. Besides these practical aspects, our lives are fairly uncomplicated.
Thank you in advance for your guidance and support in finding the perfect city that fulfills our desires and aspirations.
Cheers!
EDIT cities recommended by users:

City	Pop	Sunny	Rent 3	Crime	Pollution	Coffee	Rest	Airport	Beach	Living
Rome	2,873,494	220	€2,000	50.78	Moderate	1245	2798	Yes	No	€2,800
Naples	959,188	250	€1,500	57.96	Moderate	903	1865	Yes	Yes	€2,100
Milan	1,396,059	190	€2,500	49.34	High	1792	3256	Yes	No	€3,200
Trieste	204,338	230	€1,200	35.42	Low	501	988	Yes	No	€2,000
Catania	313,110	280	€1,200	51.98	Moderate	725	1476	Yes	Yes	€1,800
Chieti	51,733	230	€800	26.17	Low	189	401	No	No	€1,500
Pescara	119,217	230	€1,000	40.79	Moderate	388	865	No	Yes	€1,700
Livorno	157,058	230	€1,300	45.62	Moderate	269	589	Yes	Yes	€2,200
Cagliari	155,532	300	€1,200	44.95	Low	416	832	Yes	Yes	€1,900
Viareggio	64,849	230	€1,500	33.79	Moderate	145	336	No	Yes	€2,100
Genoa	583,601	220	€1,100	42.15	Moderate	648	1241	Yes	Yes	€2,300

Manhwa Historical-Fantasy (royalty) 1. Daughter of the emperor-224 2. Youngest princess-71 3. I belong to house castiello- 120.5 4. I didn’t mean to seduce the male lead-34 5. It Looks Like I’ve Fallen into the World of a Reverse Harem Game- 61 6. The Villainous Princess Wants to Live in a Cookie House- 43 7. The Twin Siblings’ New Life- 102 8. I BECAME THE MALE LEAD’S ADOPTED DAUGHTER- 50 9. How to Be a Dark Hero’s Daughter- 29 (did not complete coz boring) 10. The Archmage’s Daughter - Chapter 20(not completely read) 11. I Only Came To Find My Dad- 33 12. My Three Tyrant Brothers- 45 13. I Am The Precious Daughter Of The Greatest Villain In The Fantasy World- 40.5 14. I’m Worried that My Brother is Too Gentle- 26 15. I Became the Ugly Lady- 53 (amazing) 16. I Became The Wife Of The Monstrous Crown Prince- 66 (completed cute baby couple) 17. The princess is evil- 84 18. Limited time princess- 30 (dropped) 19. Seduce the villains father- 77.5 (60 chp fav-kiss scene) 20. My husband hides his beauty- 67 21. A Villain Is a Good Match for a Tyrant- 81 22. Beatrice- 74 23. Why are you doing this, my Duke!?- 70 (dropped: extended the story and made it boring) 24. The Princess Imprints a Traitor- 43 25. I Raised the Beast Well- 61 26. Empress of Another World- 28 (dropped: no idea who says wat and a bit confusing) 27. The Duchess' 50 Tea Recipes- 52 (dropped: not much romance, mostly about tea) 28. This Is An Obvious Fraudulent Marriage- 93 29. Father, I Don’T Want To Get Married!- 53.5 30. I’ll Just Live on as a Villainess-38 31. Charming and the Beast- 33 (paused) 32. Lady baby- 160 33. Charlotte and her 5 disciples- 40 34. The precious sister of the villainess grand duke- 41 35. A Stepmother’s Märchen - 57 36. I became the villain's mother- 56 37. Villainess is destined to die- 60 38. Kill the villainess- 39.5 39. Yeon Lok Heun- 50 (dropped: mostly action not focused on romance) 40. La Dolce Vita di Adelaide- 85 41. Miss Not-So Sidekick- 152 (most hilarious one) 42. The Tyrant's Only Perfumer- 30 (paused) 43. Aidin- 4 (dropped: too serious) 44. A Way To Protect The Lovable You- 45 45. Living As The Emperor's Fiancé- 17 (dropped: the girl looks 12 and the guy looks 20) 46. How to Get My Husband on My Side- 26 47. An Unseemly Lady- 36 (season one completed) 48. Monster duchess and the contract princess- 93 49. I Became the Hero's Mom- 32 50. The Flower Dance And The Wind Song- 55 (dropped) 51. Priscilla’s marriage request- 31 (first impression was bad but it got better) 52. Evil knight- 22 53. The Princess Pretends to Be Crazy- 31 54. Starting From Today, I’M A Princess?- 16 55. Gave Birth to a Villain's Child- 39 56. A Trivial Extra in a Dating Sim-24 57. Today the Villainess has Fun Again- 33 58. The Strongest Characters in the World are Obsessed With Me- 29 59. Under the oak tree- 21 ( dropped: FL too naive😭😭 not my style) 60. Honey, I'm Going on Strike- 31 61. Am I the Daughter?- 66 62. If You Touch My Little Brother, You’re All Dead- 41 63. Villains are destined to die- 66 64. My father is a tyrant- 30 65. Who made me princess?- 104 66. Kill the villainess- 26.5 67. Actually I was the real one- 80 68. Villainess reverses the hourglass-104 69. Am i the daughter?-37 70. Lady baby- 127 71. Remarried empress- 82 72. Eleskar- 28 (dropped: too depressing, it gave a glimpse of hope every chp has the intimacy and stress. Rn I want sumthn relaxing.😭😭) 73. The youngest princess- 71 74. Into the light once again- 46 75. First, Let's Hide My Younger Brother- 47 76. He’s a Supporting Character but I Love Him Anyway- 28 77. The Love King and His Ornamental Wife- 31 78. I'm Stanning The Prince- 63 79. Extras Don’T Want To Be Overly Obsessed - 21 (paused: I thought it reverse harem it was her wit her two brothers) 80. The Symbiotic Relationship Between the Rabbit and the Black Panther- 44 81. The Fake Princess' OP Bunny- 50 82. I Became a Maid in a TL Novel- 47 83. The Duchess with an Empty Soul- 92 84. Crimson Karma- 115 85. Anyone Can Become a Villainess- 98 86. Please Throw Me Away- 72 87. The Way to Protect the Female Lead's Older Brother- 35 88. A Stepmother's Märchen- 77 89. Somehow I Raised A Prince- 15 90. When the Villainess Loves- 64 91. The Villain Discovered My Identity- 70 92. The Tyrant’s Guardian is an Evil Witch- 65 93. Cinderella Wasn't Me- 52 94. The reason she lives as a villainess- 32 95. Asmodian’s Contract- 59 (season one: end) 96. Recording Hall- 56 97. Leylin Of Turin- 26 (OMG ML SO FREKIN HOT AND CUTE I COULD LITERALLY LET HIM STEP ON ME) 98. Please, Let Me Return Home- 78 99. The Reason Why Ophelia Can’t Get Away From The Duke- 18 (dropped: it’s scary bruh) 100. The Antagonist’S Pet- 29 (dropped: not my type, I find it boring) {continuation in comments}

What will you be doing with this PC? Be as specific as possible, and include specific games or programs you will be using.

Mostly gaming, but I'd also like to be able to do some entry level production work if I ever decide to try music or graphic design. FL Studio or Blender, that kind of thing. I've also considered giving game development a try as well so I'd like to be able to run engines like Unreal, Unity, Godot, etc. without any issues.
For games, I tend to play a lot of CPU heavy games like Satisfactory, Factorio, open world games like Red Dead Redemption 2 or Cyperpunk 2077, and emulators like Ryujinx or CEMU. I need maximum CPU performance and the GPU is a somewhat lower priority.

What is your maximum budget before rebates/shipping/taxes?

I would say around $2000 but technically I have an unlimited budget. I'm big on value so ideally a build with a good price-to-performance ratio would be best. As an example, I would be okay with buying expensive high end stuff like an R7 7800X3D and equivalent or lesser GPU, but not something crazy like an RTX 4090 or an i9-13900KS. I want as much performance as possible but within reason, if that makes any sense.

When do you plan on building/buying the PC? Note: beyond a week or two from today means any build you receive will be out of date when you want to buy.

It depends on what is possible right now. I'd like to upgrade very soon, but I'm willing to wait if I can get better value later. I'm also big on "future-proofing", I want my PC to consistently meet my criteria for at least five years before an upgrade is needed and I'd prefer to upgrade as few parts as possible down the line. Particularly the motherboard since that would entail rebuilding the whole PC. I am willing to spend more to avoid this, if it's possible. I know we can't see into the future so I just want to make the best decision I can right now.

What, exactly, do you need included in the budget? (ToweOS/monitokeyboard/mouse/etc)

Only the major components, really. My biggest concerns here are compatibility and performance, nothing fancy. The GPU, the CPU, the motherboard, the RAM, the monitor, and the PSU. It all needs to work together also all has to fit inside a Fractal North case which I have already pre-selected for this build and have sitting in my closet waiting for parts.

Which country (and state/province) will you be purchasing the parts in? If you're in US, do you have access to a Microcenter location?

US West. Not privileged enough to live near a Microcenter, though it would be sick.

If reusing any parts (including monitor(s)/keyboard/mouse/etc), what parts will you be reusing? Brands and models are appreciated.

I've got a headset, mic, mouse, keyboard, mousepad, controllers, and a new case. Everything else will need to be replaced.

Will you be overclocking? If yes, are you interested in overclocking right away, or down the line? CPU and/or GPU?

No. I want the PC to meet my criteria out of the box and stay that way up until my next upgrade in about five years or so.

Are there any specific features or items you want/need in the build? (ex: SSD, large amount of storage or a RAID setup, CUDA or OpenCL support, etc)

Seems like DLSS is a requirement to get good performance these days so an NVIDIA GPU will probably be a hard requirement. Games are also getting stupidly big so a fat SSD is also probably necessary. So long as I can take advantage of new gaming features like DLSS then that's all I really care about right now.

What type of network connectivity do you need? (Wired and/or WiFi) If WiFi is needed and you would like to find the fastest match for your wireless router, please list any specifics.

Ethernet, but I'd like wifi as a backup. I am willing to sacrifice wifi capability for increased value or other features.

Do you have any specific case preferences (Size like ITX/microATX/mid-towefull-tower, styles, colors, window or not, LED lighting, etc), or a particular color theme preference for the components?

I have a white Fractal North. White and black components are both fine so long as there is a balance of the two colors.

Do you need a copy of Windows included in the budget? If you do need one included, do you have a preference?

I don't want Windows 11 but it looks like I won't have any choice going forward so yes I will need a copy.

Extra info or particulars:

If it helps, here it my current build:
PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel Core i7-6700K 4 GHz Quad-Core Processor	Purchased For $325.00
CPU Cooler	be quiet! Pure Rock 51.7 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler	Purchased For $53.99
Thermal Compound	ARCTIC MX-4 4 g Thermal Paste	Purchased For $6.99
Motherboard	MSI Z170A SLI PLUS ATX LGA1151 Motherboard	Purchased For $145.98
Memory	G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 CL15 Memory	Purchased For $84.99
Storage	Intel 600p 512 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	Purchased For $179.99
Storage	Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive	Purchased For $49.99
Video Card	MSI GAMING X GeForce GTX 1080 8 GB Video Card	Purchased For $679.04
Case	Phanteks Eclipse P400S ATX Mid Tower Case	Purchased For $69.99
Power Supply	EVGA SuperNOVA 650 G2 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	Purchased For $99.99
Monitor	ViewSonic XG2401 23.6" 1920 x 1080 144 Hz Monitor	Purchased For $249.99
Monitor	MSI Optix MAG251RX 24.5" 1920 x 1080 240 Hz Monitor	Purchased For $368.99
Keyboard	Cooler Master MasterKeys Pro S RGB Wired Standard Keyboard	Purchased For $129.99
Mouse	Cooler Master Xornet II Wired Optical Mouse	Purchased For $26.78
Headphones	Sennheiser HD 598 Headphones	Purchased For $149.98
Custom	Antlion Audio ModMic Attachable Boom Microphone - Noise Cancelling with Mute Switch	Purchased For $54.99
Custom	Microsoft Xbox One Controller + Cable for Windows	Purchased For $41.99
Custom	Windows 10 Education (64-bit)	Purchased For $0.00
Custom	LG GP60NB50	Purchased For $25.99
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$2744.65

This was built in 2016 and was targeting 120+ FPS at High to Max settings at 1080p. I want my new build to be basically the same but now at 1440p. As you can see I made a mistake when I was building my current rig: I have mismatched an i7-6700K with a GTX 1080, resulting in a CPU bottleneck which is becoming increasingly problematic. This is why I want my next build to focus on maximum performance in CPU-intensive scenarios such as simulation heavy games or open worlds. Basically any instance in which I could potentially be CPU-bound I want my CPU to crush that game with ease. No more CPU bottlenecks, I don't want to make the same mistake twice.
I would also like to reiterate my desire for future-proofing. My current build has lasted seven years because I carefully chose components to stretch out its performance for as long as possible (obviously excluding the CPU which I was mislead into believing was a good match for the GTX 1080). I would like my current build to last as long as possible, at least another five years and I'd prefer to not have to upgrade the motherboard at that time though I understand there is no way to know what chipsets will look like in five years.
Other than that it's just a standard high end gaming PC. I want to upgrade but I'm not even certain if now is a good time, given the current state of the industry. I am aware the hardware market is not great right now and I am sensing a lot of uncertainty. Honestly some frank advice would probably be more beneficial than a parts list, but if you think a current PC can meet my criteria then a parts list would be appreciated.

New Music Friday is the weekly thread dedicated to cataloging all the Album/EP releases that came out this week, including non-subreddit relevant releases. This is also a great place to discuss these albums, or bring to attention other albums released this week.

❓ "this seems intriguing after a cursory look"
⭐ "im interested in this for one reason or another"
❤️ "ive been waiting for weeks, months/i'm absolutely in love with this"

⭐ Mandy, Indiana - i've seen a way
Label: Fire Talk
Genre: Post-Industrial, Dance-Punk, EBM
bar italia - Tracey Denim
Label: Matador
Genre: Slacker Rock, Indie Rock, Post-Punk
Hannah Jadagu - Aperture
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Pop, Singesongwriter
Alex Lahey - The Answer Is Always Yes
Label: Liberation
Genre: Indie Rock
⭐ Mega Bog - End of Everything
Label: Mexican Summer
Genre: Synthpop, Art Pop
💙 Sleep Token - Take Me Back To Eden
Label: Spinefarm
Genre: Alternative Metal, Art Pop, Alternative R&B, Post-Metal
❓ PONY - Velveteen
Label: Take This to Heart
Genre: Power Pop, Alternative Rock
❓ Khanate - To Be Cruel
Label: Sacred Bones
Genre: Drone Metal, Avant-Garde Metal
Sufjan Stevens - Reflections
Label: Asthmatic Kitty
Genre: Modern Classical, Ballet
Horse Jumper of Love - Heartbreak Rules
Label: Run for Cover
Genre: Slowcore, Singer-songwriter
Temps - PARTY GATOR PURGATORY
Label: Bella Union
Genre: Experimental Hip Hop, Art Pop
The Murlocs - Calm Ya Farm
Label: ATO
Genre: Blues Rock, Folk Rock, Alt-Country
Alpha Maid & Mica Levi - spresso (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Noise Rock, Stoner Metal
Sweet Pork - Sweet Pork (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Pop
FIDLAR - Don’t Fuck With Vol. 02 (archival) (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Garage Punk, Indie Rock
Karen Took The Kids - Career Pulp (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Chunes in the Garage
Foals - Life Is Dub (RMXs)
Label: Warner
Genre: Electronic, Dub
❓ ASBEST - Cyanide
Label: A Tree in a Field
Genre: Post-Punk, Noise Rock
Tinariwen - Amatssou
Label: Wedge
Genre: Tishoumaren
Tanlines - The Big Mess
Label: Merge
Genre: Synthpop, Indietronica
❓ Pozi - Smiling Pools
Label: Prah
Genre: Post-Punk, Art Punk
Opus Kink - My Eyes, Brother! (EP)
Label: Nice Swan
Genre: Art Punk, Post-Punk, Jazz-Rock
Cathedral Bells - Everything at Once
Label: n/a
Genre: Dream Pop, Ethereal Wave
Daddy's Beemer - Tangles
Label: n/a
Genre: Rock
Andy Bell (of Ride) & Masal - Tidal Love Numbers (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Ambient, Neo-Psychedelia
❓ Gavial - VOR
Label: n/a
Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Power Blues
Surf Rock Is Dead - drama ~ but chill (EP)
Label: Born Losers
Genre: Indie Rock
Helvetia - Everybody Come On Man
Label: n/a
Genre: Slacker Rock, Indie Rock
❓ La Femme - Paris-Hawaï
Label: n/a
Genre: Ambient Pop, Hawaiian Music, Neo-Psychedelia
Dan Croll - Fools
Label: Communion
Genre: Indie Pop, Singer-songwriter
GracieHorse - L.A. Shit
Label: Wharf Cat
Genre: Indie Rock
Paper Bee - Thaw, Freeze, Thaw
Label: Get Better
Genre: Emo, Punk Rock
Allie Crow Buckley - Utopian Fantasy
Label: Nettwerk
Genre: Singer-songwriter, Chamber Pop
❓ Califone - Villagers
Label: Jealous Butcher
Genre: Alt-Country, Psychedelic Folk, Folk Rock
Jealous of the Birds - Hinterland
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Pop, Indie Folk, Indie Rock
Lauren Early - Don't Take My Dream Away
Label: Danger Collective
Genre: Indie Pop, Art Punk
Foyer Red - Yarn the Hours Away
Label: Carpark
Genre: Art Rock, Math Pop
salami rose joe louis - Akousmatikous
Label: Brainfeeder
Genre: Neo-Psychedelia, Ambient Pop, Nu Jazz
Leith Ross - To Learn
Label: n/a
Genre: Singer-songwriter, Indie Folk
Khruangbin & Friends - Live at Stubb’s
Label: Dead Oceans
Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Funk, Lounge
Blue Mena - Multi Adolescence
Label: n/a
Genre: Art Pop
❓ Stella Rose - Eyes Of Glass
Label: KRO
Genre: Alternative Rock, Gothic Rock
❓ Leaving Laurel - when the quiet comes
Label: Anjunadeep
Genre: Ambient House, Progressive House
Thee Oh Sees - Live at LEVITATION (2012)
Label: Reverberation Appreciation
Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Garage Punk
Summer Salt - Campanita
Label: Wax Bodega
Genre: Indie Pop, Indie Surf
The Parlor - You Are Love And I Am You
Label: n/a
Genre: Neo-Psychedelia, Dream Pop
❓ The Telescopes - Of Tomorrow
Label: n/a
Genre: Shoegaze, Space Rock Revival, Noise Rock
Estee Nack - Nacksaw Jim Duggan
Label: Griselda
Genre: East Coast HIp Hop, Gangsta Rap, Drumless
Cobra Man - New Paradise I (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Pop, Hypnagogic Pop
Mavi Phoenix - biggest asshole in the room
Label: n/a
Genre: Hip Hop/Rap
The Cavves - Settle Down in a Guest Bedroom
Label: n/a
Genre: Indie Rock, Surf Rock
❓ Lucy From The Internet - Lucy From The Internet
Label: n/a
Genre: Pop
J Navarro & The Traitors - All Of Us Or None
Label: n/a
Genre: Ska
❓ Sir Chloe - I Am The Dog
Label: Atlantic
Genre: Indie Rock
Dev Hynes - The Master Gardener (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Label: Milan
Genre: Film Soundtrack
Eli Keszler - LIVE
Label: n/a
Genre: Free Improvisation, Avant-Garde Jazz
Dylan Conrique - pieces (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Pop
Paul Simon - Seven Psalms
Label: Owl
Genre: Singer-songwriter, Chamber Folk
Shy Martin - Late Night Thoughts
Label: n/a
Genre: Pop
Summer Walker - CLEAR 2: SOFT LIFE EP
Label: LVRN
Genre: Neo-Soul, Contemporary R&B
Lewis Capaldi - Broken by Desire to be Heavenly Sent.
Label: Universal
Genre: Adult Contemporary, Singer-songwriter
❓ KAYTRAMINÉ, Aminé, KAYTRANADA - KAYTRAMINÉ
Label: n/a
Genre: West Coast Hip Hop, Pop Rap, Neo-Soul
Kesha - Gag Order
Label: RCA
Genre: Alt-Pop, Electronic, Singer-songwriter
OmenXIII - Sorry,
Label: n/a
Genre: Cloud Rap, Trap, Emo Rap
Thirstin Howl the 3rd - Thoughts Skillustrated
Label: n/a
Genre: East Coast Hip Hop, Boom Bap
Steel Banglez - The Playlist
Label: n/a
Genre: Hip Hop
Smoke DZA - Worldwide Smoke Sessions, Vol. 2
Label: n/a
Genre: East Coast Hip Hop, Hardcore Hip Hop, Trap
Sharc & Pi’erre Bourne - Sharc Wave
Label: n/a
Genre: Trap
Belly - Mumble Rap 2
Label: XO
Genre: Trap, Pop Rap, Hip Hop, Alternative R&B
K.A.A.N. - Ignorance Is Bliss
Label: n/a
Genre: Conscious Hip Hop, East Coast Hip Hop, Pop Rap
6ix - 6ixtape
Label: n/a
Genre: Hip Hop/Rap
❤️ The Ocean - Holocene
Label: Pelagic
Genre: Progressive Metal, Post-Metal, Electronic
Blindfolded and Led to the Woods - Rejecting Obliteration
Label: Prosthetic
Genre: Technical Death Metal, Dissonant Death Metal
⭐ GOZU - Remedy
Label: Metal Blade
Genre: Stoner Metal, Psychedelic Rock, Grunge
Frozen Soul - Glacial Domination
Label: Century Media
Genre: Death Metal
Yes - Mirror to the Sky
Label: InsideOut America
Genre: Progressive Rock, Symphonic Prog
Ghost - Phantomime (covers EP)
Label: Loma Vista
Genre: Hard Rock, AOR, Pop Rock
Charonyx - Persistent Soul (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Thrash Metal, Heavy Metal
THE END OF SIX THOUSAND YEARS - S/T (EP)
Label: n/a
Genre: Melodic Death Metal
❓ Henget - Beyond North Star
Label: Season of Mist
Genre: Avant-Garde Metal
Heretoir - Wastelands (EP)
Label: AOP
Genre: Blackgaze, Post-Metal
❓ Last Rizla - Noise Without Decay
Label: Venerate
Genre: Noise Rock, Sludge Metal
Magick Touch - Cakes & Coffins
Label: Edged Circle
Genre: Hard Rock, Heavy Metal