I notice in many Latino subreddits online and not just that but the internet as a whole (even outside of Latino culture message boards), there is a narrative that not only is Catholicism dying in Latin America because Rome neglects the poor and due to church scandals revealed in recent year.........
But the Evangelicals are doing the bulk of support towards poor people.
What I don't understand though is why local news and not just national TV but local newspaper in the remote towns or isolated communities not only contradict the claims of Evangelical mass conversions and the poor joining by droves but more often than not the belief is the Catholic Church is the one responsible for aiding after the poor, disabled, jobless, and so on.
In addition much of immigrants from South America in my experience to the USA are pretty devout.
The biggest thing that goes against these claims of Evangelical charity and rapid conversion is the fact that in Mexico Evangelicals are persecuted widely and this persecution in Mexico repeats itself as a pattern across Latin America, even in liberal places like Brazil. Just google it and you'll find plenty of youtube and internet articles esp specifically in Mexico.
My personal experience with Latino Americans also show that conversion to other churches is a pretty big deal, enough for some to be disown, and for others Latino families for it to strain personal relations.
This is not even counting when I visited Guatemala-the place with a Protestant majority in recorded stats-I saw lots of contempt towards Evangelical and not from the standing rich and middle class........ The most aggression was from the poor Roman Catholics including liberal Catholics! That despite the country having a a Protestant majority, there is still lots of bigotry against non-Catholics and conversion could lead to social ostracization, in a few case violence including murder if a local town I visited newspapers recent crime incident is correct.
Hell Evangelicals are seen as big troublemakers even other Guatemalan Protestants including baptists and Calvinists and esp high churches particularly Lutherans and Episcopals also hold negative opinions towards Evangelicals.
So I don't get this narrative so common online and among middle class and intellectual Latino communities that Catholicism destroyed the trust of the masses esp the poor because the Church does a terrible job helping the poor and has covered up scandals in addition to refusing to modernize. My experience with immigrants along with my time in Guatemala and brief vacations to Mexico, Peru, Brazil, and a few other countries I can't remember prove otherwise!
It seems like in reality not only Evangelicals not really advancing but despite what internet message boards and articles in newspapers, journals, and website says they are very fragmented and fight with each other just as equally and on top of that other Protestants such as Lutherans and Anglicans and even Mormons and Jehovah's Witness have been competing directly and stolen former Evangelicals in the region. In addition they don't seem to mention abuses done by certain Evangelical groups that made potential converts turned away and even angered church members to leave back to Rome or other churches (I seen this happened in my stay). As well as the fact Roman Catholicism seems to be holding on even to the poorest of people living in villages and ghettos, some so poor even electricity and running water is not a common thing. It seems from personal experience both with immigrants and over there its the lower middle class and the poor well off enough to have TV and cable who seems to make up the biggest converts. Not necessarily the poor as a whole like internet discussion boards like /asklatinamerica assumes.
The poorest seem to be holding to Catholicism far more viciously than the rest of the social classes from what I seen.
Why the contradiction?

Pictures!
Yeah, this bag is old news now with so many drops happening since, but I'm really digging this Phoenix 2 I recently purchased secondhand.
The Basics:

• 26 Liters
• Clamshell
• VX42 Waterproof Exterior Fabric
• YKK Aquaguard Zippers
• High Visibility Interior
• Separate Laptop Compartment
• Dual Stretch Water Bottle Pockets
• Hydration Bladder Passthrough
• Quick Access++
• Breatheable Back Panel
• Luggage Passthrough

This bag packs almost every feature anyone one could ever ask for, with great style and comfort, and in a size footprint that is manageable to take most places.
The front panel has so much volume that is laid out in a very thoughtful manner. The amount of quick access volume on this bag is unrivaled & with just the right amount of organization to boot. There's a good place for absolutely everything! In addition to the front panel, there's the quick access pocket in front of the harness. The auxillary pocketing on this bag is just perfection, they're all huge and so functional.
There's also a huge laptop compartment that can swallow two large laptops or one large laptop and business papers, man.
I do wish that the laptop compartment was less complex in it's construction as to allow for a larger main compartment. The main compartment feels smaller than my Conceal21 due to the way it's put together here. If the laptop compartment had less volume the main could be bigger, but on days I'm carrying two laptops the larger laptop compartment will be nice, so it's more of a trade-off and not a negative.
Personally, I would still prefer a less overbuilt laptop compartment like The Brown Buffalo ConcealPack has, as it can still carry both of my 14" laptops at the same time, but takes up almost no space from the main compartment when not carrying a laptop, which is pretty often.
Also, I do wish that it was available in mirrored as I prefer to sling my bag from the other shoulder, and when it's facing forward in my passenger seat, the interior mesh pocket zipper is facing opposite of me. This is nitpicking for sure of an excellent bag.
The Phoenix 2 is easily in the top echelon of anything I've ever used.
Stuck a magnapatch on here too for some extra loop.
Cheers!
Other Gear I’ve Tested in case you have questions as to how it compares to another bag.

I'm making a one-shot for some of my long time players that enjoy puzzles and figuring stuff out, so I made an entire dungeon that is a series of challenges/puzzles and each one will hint to a larger puzzle in the last room. In order to solve the last room, they need to look at and think about all the rooms they've done before and the hints they got from each room to put it all together...
The overarching puzzle is extremely adaptable to whatever is in the rest of the rooms, but I need EXACTLY 25 DIFFERENT rooms for it to work... And I've got 19 rooms done and 0 ideas left.
Resources available: Players have no magic. They are limited to non-magical classes and have no magic items. They have basic adventuring gear and I have full control over their starting items, although I'm trying to avoid "use this item for this puzzle" types of things. Generic items, generic puzzles, figure it out.
The dungeon itself has magic and the mechanisms are all black boxes as far as the players are concerned. (aka, how did that door open when we solved the puzzle? Magic. What activated the puzzle? Magic. What spell even causes a door to open when you kill something in a dream? Magic.)
I specifically don't want meaningful combat. For example, there's a room where they will fall asleep and dream of fighting some super high CR enemies. If they die, they wake up and take some psychic damage. They can go back to sleep and try again with full HP. They can kill the enemies by regular old mechanical combat, but if they remember it's a dream and they can lucid dream the enemies are dead, that's also fine. If they figure out some other nonsense to bypass "beat the thing in your nightmare", more power to them.
There's also a room where they are fighting a bunch of enemies... But the door at the far end is open. They just need to get PAST the enemies, not necessarily through them. If they burn a ton of resources on needless fighting... That's their problem to deal with later.
Some of the other rooms I have include: -Convincing a bored immortal person to let them past. The person is locked to the room and can't leave and enjoys having someone to talk to more than being alone in a room. -A magic jar in a room that strongly hints at needing to be filled with blood and requires enough blood to severely weaken them (but the jar will also take any liquid, so dumping your canteens in first will save a ton of HP) -A simple puzzle that requires coordination between them but they're inside of a Silence bubble. (leaving the room, planning, and going back in is OK, but table talk in the room is not) -hit a target at range (They don't have traditional ranged weapons, but it's still mostly 'Roll to attack until you win'... This was bottom of the barrel and will be the first to go if I get extras, but I honestly just need 25.)
​
I scoured this subreddit and several other resources for ideas and I've implemented everything that I have found, but everything I'm getting now is either already added or doesn't quite fit what I want. You're my last hope!

Yesterday I had multiple people ask me to post this, and their comment has 552 likes at the time of me writing this, so I have spent the last day and a half editing, and adding information so it's up to standard. Overall, it has taken me close to a week to make. It probably isn't perfect, but I will edit it if I notice any mistakes. I hope you enjoy ❤
I would like to start this off by saying that this is an incredibly long write-up. This case spans 54 years, and this write-up is over 8650 words long, and is in fact so long that it exceeded the character limit, forcing me to make 2 parts. u/that1guywiththehat has already covered this case, and their write-up is much shorter. I will link it here, and you can check it out if you'd like. They did a fantastic job. 😊
https://www.reddit.com/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/g3wqcc/after_18yearold_annette_craver_vail_vanishes/
Secondly, this write-up borrows EXTENSIVELY from "Gone," a 35,500 word book about the life and crimes of Felix Vail. It contains information that you simply cannot find anywhere else, and I'd estimate that around 80% of this write-up uses it's information. While it's extremely long, being over 4 times the length of this write-up, it is well worth the read. I will also link it here so you can check it out if you'd like.
https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/local/felixvailgone/2016/12/29/felix-vail-gone-one-wife-dead-two-other-missing-jerry-mitchell/95895894/
Now with that out of the way...

PART 1:

MARY HORTON:

​
Born on the 16th of February 1940 to Floyd and Lillie Horton, Mary was popular, beautiful, and well liked. She became homecoming queen at Eunice High School and wrote for the school newspaper. After graduating she began attending McNeese State University where she was so popular that all 5 sororities invited her to join. She eventually chose Chi Omega.
https://www.clarionledger.com/gcdn/-mm-/d313713be82928fb5c54a52348e9f0b6fbe9ca88/c=0-232-3288-4617/local/-/media/2016/12/27/JacksonMS/JacksonMS/636184665129485321-mary-horton-0001.jpg?width=300&height=401&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp(Mary Horton from 1957, as Eunice High School homecoming queen.)
A FATEFUL ENCOUNTER
In 1960 she began dating William Felix Vail Sr, who goes by Felix. He was 6’, slender and in the words of another sorority girl “looked like he’d been touched by heaven.” In her diaries and messages to friends, Mary spoke of being happy and excited. However, not everything was sunshine and rainbows for the young couple.
On June 20th, 1960, Mary confided in a friend “I really do love Felix, but I don’t think that I like him anymore. He really is sweet, but we don’t see eye to eye on things.” She requested that a friend set her up on a date with another man in the hopes that Felix would leave her.
In response to this date, he came to Mary saying he suffered from a disease. She asked what disease he had. He meant Mary.
The 2 had a conversation that Mary described as ‘Felix doing all the talking, and her just listening.’ He told her that he had changed, and she said that she had too.
The 2 began dating again, but Mary continued to see other people. She attended a house party with Kelley McFarland, who afterwards heard that Vail was so angry he ‘wanted to kill him.’ McFarland tracked him down, eventually meeting him in dark woods. The 2 exchanged no blows, and they went their separate ways.
After this incident, Mary described herself as “miserable” and Felix as “jealous”, although she reiterated her love for him. There was reportedly an incident at a pool party where Felix “walked up to Mary and just slapped the heck out of her,” according to Mary’s high school boyfriend Leonard Matt.
Despite everything, Mary continued to defend him, calling him a “wonderful person.”
THE MARRIAGE
On July 1, 1961, in Eunice, Louisiana, Mary Horton and Felix Vail got married.
https://www.clarionledger.com/gcdn/-mm-/3a212b032aef874dfc60297c45f3a63946f5aeee/c=0-304-1765-2658/local/-/media/2016/12/28/JacksonMS/JacksonMS/636185193505145184-1022maryhorton003.JPG?width=300&height=401&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp(Mary Horton in her wedding dress, July 1st, 1961.)
In the fall of that year, Mary began her job as a second-grade teacher at Moss Bluff Elementary School. That December, she found out she was pregnant. Another teacher, Myrtis Quinilty said Felix didn’t want a child.
Her sister-in-law, Sue Jordan, told Mary the only reason Vail believed she wanted to get married was to have a baby, and not because of him. Mary blamed herself, saying “I can see, looking back, from many things I said how they could have been misunderstood.” Mary insisted that the couple were happy but did comment on how unattractive she felt while pregnant, a sentiment that Felix shared.
On their anniversary, Mary gave birth to William Felix Vail Jr, who they called Bill.
https://www.clarionledger.com/gcdn/-mm-/c701d4cdc0e5ff127e79b575a1c137adfa57d585/c=0-0-180-240/local/-/media/2016/12/28/JacksonMS/JacksonMS/636185195986996911-TCLBrd-08-11-2016-ClarionLedger-1-A001-2016-08-10-IMG-636047953682196834-M-1-1-G0FAJ00I-L860703094-IMG-636047953682196834-M-1-1-G0FAJ00I.jpg?width=180&height=240&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp (Mary holding Bill in 1962)
Within a month, Mary suspected that she may be pregnant again. At this time, strange things began to happen in the couple’s apartment. One morning, the couple awoke to find their front door had been removed from its hinges. Another time, they found the front door of their apartment wide open. Nothing was stolen.
Mary began receiving threatening calls. The couple concluded that whoever was calling must be watching them because the caller only ever did it when Felix wasn’t home.
Mary spoke with her mother about divorcing Felix. Her mother, a devout Catholic, urged her daughter to stay and work things out. It would be a fatal mistake.
MARY'S DEATH
On October 28th, 1962, at 7:30pm, Felix Vail drove up to Shell Beach saying that his wife had fallen in the water of the Calcasieu River while they were running trot lines. It took 2 days to find her body, close to where Vail had said she disappeared.
Her funeral was held on October 31st. Vail never paid a cent for it.
On November 4th deputies arrested Vail at work, hauling him to jail and questioning him. He refused to take a lie detector test. The coroner ruled Mary’s death an “accidental drowning,” a sentiment not shared by the officers who found her body, or the community at large. Days later, Vail was released without charge, as the D.A declined to prosecute.
Months later, he picked up his son, Bill, from the Louisiana home of his late wife’s aunt and headed for Mississippi. According to Bill years later, Vail told him that he and Mary were out fishing, that a boat had come by and caused a big wave and knocked her out of the boat. Mary didn’t know how to swim, had no life jacket (despite being afraid of water) and so immediately sank and drowned. He said he had almost died trying to rescue her.
I will go further in depth into Mary’s death further down this write-up when I go through the investigation that followed, decades later. There are more details that I will cover there.
ROBIN SINCLAIR:
In this section I will cover his relationship with a girlfriend between the murders of Mary Horton and Sharon Hensley. Vail was a full-time scumbag and I want to illustrate that, as well as show some of the other lives he’s impacted, and other people he’s hurt. I will be covering multiple instances like this one. If you only want to read about the 3 murder victims, feel free to scroll down, I have them clearly marked for convenience.
AN 11 YEAR AGE GAP AND A DEAD-BEAT DAD
In 1967, Vail met a 17-year-old Robin Sinclair at a bus stop in San Diego. (Vail would have been 28 at this time. Large age gaps will be a theme in this write up.) She was spending the summer there with her sister, and the 2 began dating. When summer break ended, she left without him, returning home to San Francisco.
In October of 1968 while attending an Iron Butterflies concert, Vail appeared again. Sinclair took it as a sign that the 2 belonged together. He had his young son Bill, and the 3 bounced from place to place together. Sinclair would later describe how Bill was poorly looked after, neglected and that Vail would even give the young boy drugs. Bill would later recount his father giving him LSD as a child.
While watching over another couple’s home during the Christmas holidays, she learned she was pregnant and shared the news with Vail. He said, “Well, I don’t think you’re emotionally stable enough to handle the pregnancy.” The next morning, Vail and his young son had vanished. A friend told Sinclair that he went back to Mississippi, that it was time for his son to go to school and that he didn’t want to be with her.
Heartbroken, Sinclair would move in with her parents. In August of 1969 she gave birth to her daughter, who she named Simone. She wrote Vail an angry letter, and 2 months later he showed up on her doorstep. She told him to leave, and that she never wanted to see him again. She never did.

SHARON HENSLEY:

​
Sharon Hensley was born on December 20th, 1948. Growing up in the state capital of Bismarck, North Dakota, she dated football players and belonged to the high school’s 'Demonettes', an award-winning dance team founded by a former Rockette.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT-drYY1YZjqadja6gpHI_j8-zHNTiww7XDLwZ3pq-m&s
(A photo of Sharon Hensley.)
She graduated in 1966, and attended Bismarck Junior College, where she took classes in dance and acting, performing in a play with her older brother, Frank.
In 1967, aged 19, Sharon discovered she was pregnant. Wanting to escape her hometown, she followed her brother Frank and other classmates to San Francisco. After arriving, she stayed in a home for single mothers, where she gave birth to a girl she named “Cherry” after the popular Neil Diamond song. She told friends she wanted to keep the child but was unable to. Two years after leaving for California, Sharon was in jail and her mother, Peggy, headed there with a $5,000 cashier’s check to bail her out. When she returned, Sharon wasn’t with her.
“She said she had lost her daughter,” her younger brother Brian would later say. “She cried almost every night. She was never the same after that.”
MEETING VAIL
While house-sitting in a high-rise apartment, Vail would meet his future girlfriend, Sharon. She was 20, and attractive, having even modeled in her teens. They became friends, and then started a relationship despite the 10-year age gap.
While hitchhiking across California, Vail would confess to Hensley that he had killed Mary, something his son Bill overheard. Because of this, Bill would later go to the police to report his own father for murder. The police at first didn’t believe Bill, but after camping out on the front steps, one detective listened. He told the detective that he was hungry, tired of using the drugs his father gave him, that he wanted to go back to school, live like other kids, and that he had overheard his father admit to killing his mother.
At a beach along the Merced River, police found his father and Hensley, carrying a bag of LSD capsules. Police charged the couple with LSD possession and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Vail received a six-month jail sentence, plus three years’ probation, after pleading guilty to a lesser charge of LSD possession.
California police shared their information with Louisiana authorities. Once again, the district attorney in Lake Charles once again passed on prosecuting Vail for murder. Another fatal mistake.
Bill returned to Mississippi to live with his grandparents, who then gained full custody. On January 23rd, 1971, Vail and Sharon showed up in the driveway. Bill thought Vail was there to kill him, and his grandmother had to reassure him that he was safe.
The father and son eventually sat down and had a talk. Vail told Bill that he didn’t blame him for the time he spent in prison, but instead blamed Sharon, which the young boy found strange because “she had nothing to do with it.”
The family wondered how the couple could even legally be in Mississippi if they were supposed to be on probation in California. They couldn’t. After a visit from the Sheriff, the 2 were smuggled out of town and given enough money to get back to the West Coast.
In the Summer of 1972, the couple appeared unannounced at Sharon’s childhood home in Bismarck. The more the family saw of the couple, the more horrified they became. Sharon wore a mini skirt with no panties and had armpit hair and leg hair "like a man." She had been losing weight and losing clumps of hair.
Her younger brother Brian said it felt like his sister had been brainwashed. If someone asked her a question, “either Felix would answer the question for her, or she would look at Felix while she was giving the answer.”
The couple left then North Dakota and traveled to Mississippi, where they stayed with Vail’s family. On the dairy farm the family owned, they helped paint the home. The couple also sunbathed in the nude, drawing the ire of neighbors.
Peggy Hensley received a telephone call from Sharon, who said she and Vail were heading to New Orleans and then to Miami to make pornographic films. She believed it was a cry for help as “what daughter tells her mother she’s going to do a porno?” Sharon’s parents wanted to travel down to get their daughter back but couldn’t. (The 2 did end up shooting pornographic scenes together, but I won’t get into any of that.)
In early 1973, Sharon called and talked of traveling to South America with Vail, where they would eat natural foods and write a book. It was the last conversation the family would ever have with her. Soon after, she would send her final letter. It contained a photo of her holding a pen, captioned “making travel notes.” It was the last picture ever taken of Sharon Hensley.
https://www.clarionledger.com/gcdn/-mm-/94195697544ea2e63b0b95e33a6de88a8b4f1e2b/c=0-50-399-276/local/-/media/2016/12/28/JacksonMS/JacksonMS/636185487179588030-Sharon-Hensley.jpg?width=399&height=226&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp(The last photo ever taken of Sharon.)
THE DISAPPEARANCE
In March of 1974, Peggy received a letter from Vail, claiming he was in West Florida. He wrote that he last saw Sharon about a year before in Key West, with an Australian couple that was traveling around the world. All he recalled was the first names of the couple (John and Vanessa), who were talking with Sharon about “island hopping around South America, the West Indies, --- Hawaii for a while, maybe a couple of years in the Philippines, then India, Egypt and the Mediterranean islands and coasts. I don’t know which of these (if any) they decided on or in what order.” Peggy didn't believe a word of it.
In the fall of 1975, Vail’s mother wrote to the Hensley family, saying that her son was surprised the family hadn’t heard from Sharon during that time. Interestingly, Vail told his mother the names of the couple that Sharon left with were Frank and Sally, different names than he had given a year earlier. Vail explained to his mother that before Sharon left, she had burned all her identification cards, got new IDs, and declared that she would become a completely different person.
Bill recalled his father mentioning Sharon. “He said she would never bother anyone ever again.” The words upset Bill, who believed his father had just confessed to another murder. “There was not a soul I could tell about it because I had had my experience in court when I was 8, no one would believe me. It would be my word against his, and no one would believe a 13-year-old.”
​
SHARON CAMPBELL:
I want to talk about this relationship because of the egregious age difference. For reference, Campbell is only 4 years older than Vail’s son.
While riding a bus to north Mississippi in 1975, Vail sat next to 17-year-old Sharon Campbell. Despite being literally twice her age, he commented on how fit she looked, saying "he needed someone like her to keep him fit." In spite of this, she felt flattered and shared her telephone number with him. Not long after she got home, Vail appeared in a yellow Volkswagen bug.
Vail said he wanted Campbell to travel with him, and she told him the only way her parents would allow it was if they got married.
On July 24, 1975, they did, honeymooning in Gulf Shores, Alabama.
In court years later, she would tell prosecutors that they never consummated the marriage because “he was unable to obtain an erection.” (This isn’t relevant, I just wanted to include it out of spite because fuck this guy.)
Several weeks later, she went with Vail to visit his relatives in Louisiana. There, she said a niece told her, “You probably need to know that he killed his first wife --- they arrested him. We all believed that he did it, he drowned her out of a boat.”
Campbell didn't believe them, telling herself that he would be in prison if he was a murderer. But as the months passed by, she concluded that he “had no value in the female gender,” and that “he hated women.”
She later traveled with Vail to his parents’ home in Montpelier. While there, he was outdoors working on the Volkswagen and Campbell walked closer without him noticing. He opened a compartment, and she said she saw “sinister, surgical looking saws of all shapes and sizes in a neat formation.” To her, the sight screamed evil. “It scared me. I said, ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’” She left, annulled the marriage, and never looked back. It was likely the best decision she ever made.
After the divorce he would marry a woman named Carolyn in 1977. The relationship would end after he cheated on her with a woman named Alexandra Christianson during a double date. When Carolyn called Vail’s mother and asked her if the behavior surprised her, she simply replied “no.”
After being served the divorce papers, Vail smashed his car into her MGB Sports Car. A month later he would call her saying “I love you.” She did not reciprocate. She would later describe Vail as “mentally deranged.”
​
ALEXANDRA CHRISTIANSON:
Alexandra is the woman Vail cheated on Carolyn with. She eventually got married to him in Mexico after he officially divorced Carolyn. Not long after their marriage, she heard that Vail was cheating on her.
After a motorcycle accident, he came to rest up at her condo in Costa Mesa, where she confronted him about the cheating. He reportedly got agitated and said, “you know my first wife died.” When she replied saying he’d told her she drowned, Vail shot back “I could have saved her, but I chose not to.”
After telling him to leave, she went to have a shower. While in the shower, Vail attacked her, wrapping his hands around her neck. Hearing her screams, Alexandra’s young brother came in, grabbing Vail and forcing him to the ground. Vail then left.
Soon after this, she found out she was pregnant. The child was still-born, and Alexandra was heart-broken. She would later lead important investigators to witnesses that were used in Vail's eventual trial.
In part 2, I will cover Vail's final victim Annette Craver, and the lengths her mother went to to finally secure justice.
Here is Part 2:
MY SOURCES:
https://www.namus.gov/MissingPersons/Case#/8284?nav
https://charleyproject.org/case/annette-michelle-craver-vail
https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/local/felixvailgone/2016/12/29/felix-vail-gone-one-wife-dead-two-other-missing-jerry-mitchell/95895894/
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/5796622/mary-elizabeth-vail
https://charleyproject.org/case/sharon-hensley
https://www.namus.gov/MissingPersons/Case#/20525?nav

I’ve been a Westjet flyer for many years and I’ve usually had positive experiences with the airline. I’ve spent many thousands of dollars on westjet services and I regularly use my Westjet MasterCard for benefits. However, an experience today has left me questioning the value of whether I should use Westjet airlines moving forward. Here is what happened.
I booked a ticket for my 11 year old son and his 13 year old sister. After I booked it, their mother and I decided that although our older sister can accompany her younger brother as an adult, it would be a good idea to enrol him in the unaccompanied minor program anyway as an extra precaution to help them find their gate and baggage.
I filled out the form for the unaccompanied minor program and indicated that I had already made a booking. Their team emailed me and informed me that I had reversed the steps required to enrol him, and that I would first need to cancel the booking, submit the form, and rebook everything. The problem I had with doing this was that the difference in airfare between when I initially booked it and when I filled the form out was nearly $300 on top of what the unaccompanied minor program fees would be. We exchanged a couple more emails but the care team was not willing to help me. I called Westjet today to try and sort it all out with the special care team and was treated very poorly. The employee I spoke with told me in no uncertain terms that it was all my fault, I should have read the terms and conditions more closely, and that I would be on the hook for all the fees. I tried to be understanding and requested that perhaps I could be offered a voucher or credit for the difference in airfare, but he was quite rude and belligerent and refused to be of any help at all.
I would like you take a moment and ask yourselves if this is fair. Objectively, it does not make sense that a simple reversal in steps should penalize me so steeply. Just because I booked before filling out the form instead of filling out the form before booking does not warrant such mistreatment. I understand that there are procedures in place to streamline services, but such stonewalling without any flexibility at all is quite shocking to me. I would also like to point out that he was approved as an unaccompanied minor less than one year ago. I realize that a new form must be filled out for every trip as a matter of procedure, but I’m just pointing out how absurd the whole thing is when you step back and look at it objectively. I’m basically being fined $300 for booking a ticket before filling out a form.
Terrible. I would not recommend the unaccompanied minor program to anyone with children, and I would not characterize Westjet as an airline that is friendly or helpful when it comes to simple mixups such as this. Everyone I spoke to about it was very condescending. I sent an email to [email protected] to air my grievance.
Rant over.

https://imgur.com/a/aNN3xLG
u/Moose-Maleficent x 2 Thank you so much for the super creative handmade Pi Day card! I adore your heart & am honestly not surprised you wouldn’t exact revenge against Bridezilla hahaha! Yessss I thought of “The Help” too lol!!! I’m also bananas for the insanely awesome Hot Cross Buns card - it’s sooooo my smile & makes me so happy when I look at it!!!! It’s heartbreakingly cute. I’m so happy to have met you & to remember you forevermore as my first recipient (or hopefully soon) of international mail - that’s the most excitement I’ve had in years hahaha!!!!u/thecaledonianrose x 2 OMG this cuuuute kitty birthday card is so sweet!!! I was especially touched by your beautiful words wishing me so many amazing things! What a kind soul you are - THANK YOU so much!!! I also love the fun stickers, the neat-o washi stamp style stickers, the mini thank-you, & the delicious passion flower tea!!! Thank you so much for the super precious Easter card of the bunny & the birds!! This bunny is just a sweetheart with that dreamy expression & smile! I just love the colors & the positive vibes jumping out at me from the card & your sweet thoughts! Yesssss, I’m really happy we sorta have a spring in my state - sadly it doesn’t last long. But I’m so grateful it’s not a billion degrees yet! Thank you also for the ****cuuuuute**** bunny & Easter stickers, the Perfect Peach tea (I’m so jazzed to try it - how perfect is that flavor for Spring?!?!?) & the pretty Flowers Bingo card with the too cute floral bingo mini placemarkers!!! Wishing you the sweetest Spring full of fanciful flowers!u/fightshrubb Thank you so much for the adorable handmade aliens-themed Pi Day card - soooo cute!!! I love your energy!! Also love that you used different fun & bright colors of ink to write! I so hear you with the endless array of craft supplies lol!! To answer your question…I love watercolor!!! I have zero skills & was trying to learn when I happily stumbled upon RAoC so watercolor took a backseat to carding. ;) Hope you had an awesome Pi Day full of pizza discounts haha! ;)u/emptyparkinglot Thanks for the Gauguin postcard with your hilarious observation, “Paul Gauguin was honestly a creep in his personal life but he sure did know how to use color.” Hahaha, right?!? I loved your thoughts on art & appreciate them especially because I have a deep desire to learn more about art & how to articulate artistic concepts. You did that so beautifully with your analysis of Gauguin’s work! Wishing you lots of bliss as you create your own works of art! =)u/o0oiwio0o Thank you for the awesome sassy slanderous card of the Bernadine Bridge over the Vilnia!!! Your handwriting - oh my GORGEOUS!!! It’s so classy! And I have NEVER seen more fun & vibrant punctuation marks!!! I love your style! And the slander about the National Stadium is truly hilarious. I love how you turned the slander into a motivational gem hahaha!!!! I just loved your creative prompt & felt so fortunate to be a recipient of such fresh, fancy slander LOL! I also love the adorable elephant sticker you included. Thank you. =) Wishing you infinite saucy slanderous thoughts because they are so fun & phenomenal!!! =)u/travel4me22 x 2 Thank you for WHAAAAT?!?!? This incredible, gorgeous postcard you upcycled from a Van Gogh paper bag!!!! So creative - I absolutely loooove it!!!! I appreciate your resourcefulness & creativity so much! Thank you for the *beautiful* illustrated card of the strong, powerful women!! The colors are so fun. This card & your kind affirmations are just brimming with so many positive vibes!! I’m also excited you share my thoughts on Helen Keller. Thank you for spreading awesome cheer on International Women’s Day & beyond!u/onlycompletely Thanks for the adorable “Espresso Yourself” postcard!!u/drivingogre Thank you so much for the cute bear doodle postcard with all the fun facts about Disney actors & cats! You have such sweet vibes!!u/TigerLady x 4 Thanks for the adorable bunny & flower Easter card! LOVE the stamp embellishments you included & the cute way you decorated the inside of the card with the cut out words. Thanks also for the hug in the mail “nothing new” card with the awesome passion clouds worksheet & delicious recipe - I’ll definitely try it. :) Thank you for the hilarious 100% organic gangster card! Loved hearing your BFF was about to visit. Hope y’all had a fabulous time together and that y’all will meet up again soon! You asked about my BFF. Thank you - we met at the University of Texas when she was a transfer student & I was a freshman. She boldly came right up to me as I was having lunch alone to ask if she could join me. It was so cool of her to be so brave! She lives hundreds of miles away & the pandemic has made it a pain to get together but we keep in touch. Wishing you a beautiful spring, beautiful friend!u/YuletideWitch Thank you for the adorable vintage Disney World postcard! I’m so sad you shot yourself in the head…I shouldn’t have given that to you as an option for the Macarena prompt. But I shall remember your bravery in the face of dance adversity forevermore! Haha, thank you for indulging me with the silly prompt :)u/royalewithtees Thanks for the awesome “Breaking Bad” postcard - I didn’t know that cool fact about the 62nd element…so awesome!!! Happy to have met someone who has awesome taste in shows like me hahahaha!!! And I LOVE the cool BB decorative stamp!!! Thank you!!u/mickey_is_bored Thank you so much to you & your sweet friends for cheering on complete strangers!!! I wish that back in college, I had the type of friend you & your pals are for carding crafternoons! So precious. Thinking of you & your friend & sending lots of healing vibes. Thanks for spreading cheer :)u/hato_mailing Thank you for the sweet wax seals on the lovely barnacle goose postcard - love the Denmark bird stamp embellishment!u/elliearbus Thank you so much for this AWESOME handmade watercolor card - you are so insanely talented!!! I love it!!!!! I’m a sucker for not only watercolor art, but illustrations of craft supplies so this card is absolutely a terrific treasure for me. It’s just adorable & brimming with energy! Thanks again. Wishing you endless joy as you create your wondrous watercolor work!!u/gillbhai x 2 I’m so happy & relieved I finally found you, my mystery sender! Thank you so much for both of the gorgeous floral cards in my favorite bright colors! The pinks, oranges, & blues are just so cheery & happy! I also love the book rec & the Sharif poetry you wonderfully shared with me. I’ll have to read & re-read it to truly understand all the layers as you & Sharif are so amazingly deep! I would highly recommend the historical fiction book “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles. It’s the best book I’ve read in many years. Wishing you joyous reads & a peaceful rest of 2023. Thank you so much for brightening my day with your lovely thoughts & beautiful cards!!u/RoxanneBarton Thanks for the beautifully-illustrated pen & pencils “Snail Mail Club” postcard - I’m obsessed with illustrated cards & love it so much!!! I have to catch up with SG films too. LOVE your pretty handwriting! =) Wishing you fragrant bouquets of lilacs this spring, sweet friend.u/purpleteasoul x 2 Thanks for the sweet purple floral thank you card - it was my pleasure to send you birthday mail! Thanks also “Welcome book lover…” postcard! Hahaha yes you’re right, I read your postcard from my little nook at the library! Wishing you the best of reads!!u/littlehoneybeebuzz Thanks for the romantic Paris postcard! I love to read in dreary weather. Wishing you sunny skies this spring! =)u/brittybear94 x 2 How cute you are is so apparent from your extraordinarily cute mail!! Thanks so much for the fun RAoC b-day wishes!! I’m madly in LOVE with the cuuuutest little Peanuts “Nuts About You” card, the adorable Cookie Monster sticker, & the incredibly festive colorful RAoC personalized rainbow mail sticker…SO SO cuuute!! Even the envelope was decorated in one thing - CUTE. Thanks for gracing my mailbox with such pretty things!!! =) Wishing you the crunchiest & chewiest of chocolate chip cookies, my cute friend!!!u/Jane_Q Thanks for the lovely illustrated postcard of the Field Tulips in Holland! Even lovelier - how much you wrote on the back of the postcard! OMG my southern sensibilities woulda been smacked too had I gone through the nonsense you described! WTH?!? As Jerry Maguire would say, “These fish have manners.” Seriously whack!! But I was so happy you shared, thank you! Wishing you zero car issues so you never have to deal with mannerless buffoons ever again hahaha!u/OkayFlan Thanks for the sweet “I am Grateful” postcard - I sure am grateful to have met you here & hope you’re having tons of fun with all your cool new card tech supplies!u/falloutboy01 Thank you for the awesome handmade Easter card - the cutout with the hidden lime green layer is sooooo creative & pretty!!! I’m guessing you used Cricut - wow. The effect is amazing.The colors you used complement each other so well, especially for spring! Thanks also for the adorable stickers. Wishing you a splendid spring, kind friend!!u/sunfireninety9 - Thank you for the beautiful Asian art illustration postcard! I LOVE all the neat stamps you used on the card. Wow, that is so neat about the 1991 vintage rose stamp! I’m so sorry to learn the glue tasted icky - but you made so many people happy (including me) with your kind happy mail lol! Wishing you tastier stamps next time haha, maybe cupcake flavored ones? ;)u/feellikebeingajerk x 4 Thanks for the sweet handmade St. Patrick’s Day wishes & the cool President’s Day postcard of Monticello! It’s cool to appreciate our history & I’m glad you’re able to see historical figures through multiple lenses. I’m crazy about the pretty spring-y washi tape you used. Wishing you lots of pretty weather & sunny smiles this spring! THANKS a million for the awesome raspberry pie card & the throwback Holly Hobbie beauty (apologies no pics of these 2 sweeties - they’re elsewhere at the time I’m submitting this) - both of these sweeeeet cards made my day!!!!u/Soleiletta Thank you for the fabulous card from Wednesday Addams - you totally channeled her so awesomely! You should write for the show!! =) I loved the cute Tarot stickers you used to decorate the card. And that handwriting - it’s just glorious!!! It’s somehow both modern & vintage too?!?? Just gorgeous! Thank you for sharing your fun prompt creativity with me. =)u/1398_days Thank you for the pretty pastel thank you card!!! It was my absolute pleasure to think of you on your birthday & I’m so touched it cheered you up! Your kind thank you card lifted my spirits & made me feel super happy! It’s so bright & colorful - just my fave color palette! I sure hope you’ve been having cheerful days since your birthday & that you will remind me when it’s your big day next year for more birthday greetings!! =)u/somedrawer Thanks for the adorable doggie Easter card! Such fun stamps & washi decorations on the card - the baked confectionaries washi is sooo delicious! Love the positive affirmation you wrote: “I am capable of creating positive change in the world.” So uplifting! Here’s one for you: “I am a creator. I create my reality.”u/its_top_secret x 2 Thank you for the sweet Seigensha postcard! And I love your spirit - you wanting to dance no matter what is so inspiring! I also love your willingness to be brave & embellish when no one is watching hahaha! Thank you for the vintage-y shrine postcard with your beautiful handwriting! Love how you would have searched for legendary figures if you had the chance to time travel. =) Wishing you a happy future & past too if you dare to explore haha!u/aepeyc Thank you for the sweet Saint Patrick’s Day greetings with the pretty feather! Wishing you lots of luck not just on the 17th of each year, but each day as well. :)u/missnettiemoore Thank you so much for this GORGEOUS cartoon Saint Patrick’s Day card!!! The sweet smiling critters are so charming!!! I also love the fun fact you wrote: “The odds in finding a 4-leaf clover are about 1 in 10,000.” I had no idea - that’s so mindblowing!!! Thank you for brightening my day with your sweet card. Wishing you a breezy, beautiful spring & that you chance across those rare 4 leaf clovers for lots of luck! =)u/FollowingTheBeat You had me at the exquisite envelope decorated with your precious handmade cherry blossom tree! So pretty. I’m terrible at drawing trees so I’m especially excited by your talent. But that was just the appetizer. I’m in love with this gorgeous pink-themed floral feast of a card!!! Thank you! This card instantly makes me happy with all the bright colors & the pretty sticker you used to decorate it. This card is soooo beautiful, & so are you for including such sweet spring wishes for so many lovely things, including “beauty”! What an awesome wish. Wishing you a spring full of the same love & beautiful birds that serenade you & make you smile!u/RayneKitten Thank you so much for the beautiful postcard to color - it’ll be a joy! I also love the quote. I appreciate your kindness! Wishing you lots of masterpieces!u/PM_me_oak_trees Thank you for the *hilarious* April Fool’s Day card - the teaching English quip is priceless hahaha!!! I also love the awesome motivational quotes & funny jokes you wrote. OMG “I was going to write a time-travel joke, but you did not like it” - rahahahahahahaha! I’m so stealing that one! I really appreciated your creativity in sending “junk mail” - what a neato thing to do! Hope you had a beautiful April Fool’s Day - thanks for making mine special!u/FancyBeadedPlacemat Thank you so much for the potato postcard! I was laughing when I received it because I only tagged potato pals & didn’t request one since merely *looking* at potatoes makes me gain weight LOL! But I was so glad you sent it to me because I had no idea about the fun history fact!!! That’s so cool that Marie Antoinette would wear potato blossoms in her hair!!! So thank you for sharing that awesome historical gem with me!!!u/wabisabi_sf Thank you so much for this perfect postcard TREAT of Julia Child along with the fun facts about her life! It’s just a postcard dream as far as postcards go. I’m nuts for fun illustrations so this is a real treasure. I also love the fun vintage stamps you used. Thanks so much for thinking of me with your wonderful offer & for making me giddy by picking me to receive this scrumptious postcard!! =)u/orangewolpertinger x 2 Thank you for the absolutely precious homemade cards!!!! The cuuuute pink kawaii candy themed card just made me melt!!! I love the combo of black & pink colors along with the pink & red themed scrapbook paper! The fox Saint Patrick’s Day card is soooo adorable too! Love the fun stickers you used to decorate the card! I also love & appreciate the kind stamps you included. You’re also so cute to take that Squishmallow personality quiz hahaha! So you’re Hans the Hedgehog? Although I agree that Hans is cute, he doesn’t hold up a cute candle compared to you & your endless card love!!! Thank you so much for these sweet treats!!! Wishing you lots of love & joy!u/Bowies-solid-speech x 2 I’m so happy I found you, my fabulous obituary mystery sender!!!! I even tried looking for you with a search for “obituary” on Reddit but didn’t find any relevant hits…Reddit is so goofy. I loved your creative, thoughtful obituary so much! You have such a fun brain - thank you for brightening my day with the fake obit hahaha! Your creativity is so very charming!!! I also admired how eager you were to write in depth! I also LOVE the adorable postcard of the critter looking at himself in the mirror. Thank you! The pastel colors & illustration are awesome! I was drawn to it because of one of my favorite Kabir quotes: “But if a mirror ever makes you sad, you should know that it does not know you.” Wishing you lots of joy as you check your beautiful self out in the mirror!!u/Slavkan12 THANK you so much for this gorgeous handmade “Dream Space” postcard that’s so bright & bouncy with the gorgeous array of blooming plants!!! It’s so pretty & makes me ache to have my own “Dream Space”!!! I love how you upcycled the calendar to create it. So cool & creative. But the front of the card isn’t where the magic ends - WOW!! I was **blown away** by your amazing illustration inside the card with the stunning self-portrait & the pretty pink & green plant!!! Your art skills are sublime! I love all the colors you used (such pretty pink hair & I love the color of your shirt). I wish so much I could draw like you but am grateful that even though I can’t, I’m a lucky recipient of this super cool gift!!!! I also love all the festive stickers you included & how you decorated the envelope with the unique bird/owl stickers. =) Thank you so much for this magnificent, magical mail! Wishing you lots of success in your art & beyond, kind friend!u/jules_abroad How did you do it? Never before your gorgeous card would I have ever thought I would have called a card with toilet paper & poop on it “gorgeous”. But that’s what you did with your INSANE TALENT & ADORABLE poop & tp handmade wacky wonderful card!!! I’m honestly in awe even though poop & tp usually make me wanna throw up! I LOVE IT SO SO MUCH hahaha! Thank you for brightening my day with poop of all things! I’m including a highlighted picture of it with the link above. ;) I wish I could draw & watercolor like you do…this is so going in a frame in my future dream home bathroom!! =) Wishing you the softest, squishiest, most cloud-like tp ever, sweet friend!

Really enjoyed writing Ashe, but didn't like the title or how short it was and wanted to expand upon it. So I C/Ped the extremely short chapter here, made a lot changes, and resumed where I left off. So this is the new and official Chapter 1\. Changed the title too! Once this goes up, I might just delete* Ashe altogether we'll see. Until then, here's another for you guys. A proper chapter. Longer too. Back on the computer, so that's fun. Enjoy!*
Title subject to change!
Read Ashe here (unless it's gone lol): https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/13mkfre/comment/jkvjcro/?context=3
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The dead stare of a long-disintegrated child looked up at them. Remnants frozen in time as a monument of ruin to the wasteland before her. A lifeless, shattered. Echos of what used to be. It used to beautiful. Maybe in memory, it stays there. Isolated, but perfect. Perhaps, in another lifetime, they could have considered such a sight tragic.
But now? Now, it was simply a byproduct. One of many at that.
Oblivion wondered if it was a form of hypocrisy. To care for their own children, the ones they were responsible for feeding and caring for. The very same children who required the life-filling nutritional energy only essence, only Souls, could provide in sufficient quantity and quality. At least, until they found a long-term alternative. How then, was it fair, that they could stare into the monuments of ash and brimstone without remorse? To sleep well in the void of space as the killed world after world? To render galaxies extinct and universes as little more than drifting debris of dead space?
As it turned out, Oblivion didn't care to find the answer.
In truth, they didn't actually care to answer a question they'd already established an answer for. The thought experiment was simply that. An experiment. Something to do, at best. The attention upkeep for a Living Extinction class such as themself rarely warranted such self-scrutiny, but times could be dull, seeing as the bare minimum of effort that it took to kill planet after planet after planet bore no grief to their heart not any guilt over the lives violently ripped away.
"Yo." A voice cried out. In response, the bored decimator tilted their head up to see their one and only partner hovering above them, floating in the shattered sky just a few feet above. They wondered if it was weird to take note that their friend's feet were remarkably clean. "You okay?"
Oblivion nodded. Their eyes glazed back down at the ashen remains of the child. It's face frozen in fear, their dreams, hopes and ideas dashed away. All so that their own children could have dreams, hopes and ideas on their own. Cataclysm, their partner, drifted down next to the standing red-skinned killer. Both Soul Rippers stood side-by-side amidst a lifeless chunk of what used to be Callus II, a world once renowned for its natural beauty. Destroying it hadn't actual yielded much Soulfood, or essence, as it was already halfway evacuated before their arrival. But once they did arrive, escape was impossible, not that it stopped the local resistance from, well, resisting. No, the planet's destruction was intended to damage moral moreso than it was to yield any form of "economic" bounty. Not that it didn't of course, food was food afterall, but it was an already sparsely populated planet. Since it was strongly suggested that the destruction of Callus II would cause significant unrest, maybe even rebellion in the remaining population centers, Oblivion figured it only fair they do their duty. Hence, another byproduct of a looong list that kept expanding, unlikely to end anytime soon.
"We got new orders from the ladies up top. Wanna guess what?" Oblivion's head tilted up, eyes gleaming with a current of curiosity. She gestured with her hand towards the broken debris scattered about. Of a long-dead world around them.
Cataclysm smirked as she shook her head. "Nah, nothin' too crazy. Got something new this time." She paused. 'Word is... we got allies now. Real, honest folks that wanna, and get this, work with us this time around."
A frown creased the white-haired woman's features. She turned to look at her partner's increasingly grinning expression.
Oblivion asked the obvious question without words. Mute as she was, it'd taken some time for Cataclysm to get a proper read on her partner's flow with any accuracy. Maybe it was because she was one of the not-quite-insignificant few that carried whatever gene caused the highbreds to be amquadsinistrous instead of the standard amquaddextrious. Which, naturally, caused her childhood to be filled with more than a few hiccups when you're a part of a species that heralds 4 arms to 1 torso. But the challenge was welcomed. It allowed her to be the Soul Ripper she is today. Her upper-hand twirled its index finger into a speedy frenzy, purple Vydent energy streaming from the tip into a swirling tight ball barely half the size of her thumb. The casual level of control over her Vydent flow made Cataclysm's partner wonder if it was weird that they noticed that, in addition to her feet, their friend's nails were also very clean.
Oblivion, for her part, remained focused on the current revelation. Confused at their friend's wording more than anything. Vassals that chose submission, to forgo their freedom and independence and live as official dependence of the Highbred Collective was the standard play-by-play. The trade-off, of course, being that in exchange for willingly allowing oneself to live as, essentially, glorified cattle for food and breeding purposes for denizens the Highbred Collective, the said cattle, referred to as thralls, would be legally protected under relatively well-regulated supervision and oversight in order to protect both their privacy and livelihood. The Gyfolten Principle in particular ensured, under extremely strict law and application, that humane treatment be provided in abundance for all enthralled vassals, unless otherwise specified by the vassals themselves. It was one of the very few choices offered to any and all opposition they defeated, excluding special exceptions naturally. The decision to live was choice often preferred, typically over those whose only other option was watch hard-won territories be conquered, captured, destroyed or a mixture of all three.
That was the only form 'allies' her people took. For a species to be able enter an honest partnership with the highbred race was... nearly unheard of.
Only one race had ever managed such a feat, and they were long extinct. The white-haired decimator pointed as her own head in a clawing motion, its question clear.
"Nope, not enthrallment." Cataclysm responded, still grinning even when she popped the 'P'. "Like I said. Full on allyship. Partners even!" The excitement in her voice was evident. Almost infectious. Oblivion's frown only deepened, confusion warring with contemplation before her eyes suddenly widened as the realization hit her. Cataclysm took the moment to mentally pat herself on the back for being able to translate the powerful mute's particular form of communication.
"Yep. There it is. It's aaaallll over your face BeeBee. No thralls, no vassals, no crazy shit. We got ourselves real volunteers this time around. People who wanna actually negotiate and even talk with us. Heh, three guesses as to who just got sattled to provide 'security' for the upcoming 'diplomatic mission'." She used air-quotes. "And the first two don't count."
Oblivion blinked.
Somehow, her partner's smile split her face even wider, a dance of mischievousness flashed through her glowing purple beacons. She slowly started to rise higher into the ruined sky moments later.
"Well! Guess you'll just have to fiiiind out when we get there. Planet we're going to is called 'Earth' by rest of the galaxy. So... ready for a lil' road trip?" /// The journey to Earth was a rather uneventful.
Surrounding her was a comfortable dome of dark red vydent energy, solidified into a comfortable hardlight seat that was easy on the eyes. It surrounded her like those capsules she'd seen on TV, forming both a protective barrier between herself and the vacuum of space as they traveled through FTL. Spacious too. She even had a nice comfy pillow and the 'chair' reclined as high or low as she pleased.
So, while uneventful, it most certainly a comfortable experience.
Pinelock was their assigned Solar Soother, an Energizer whose sole job was to provide speedy and smooth transportation for Decimators like Oblivion and herself when they didn't want to enter FTL themselves. Cataclysm remembered being in such a role eons ago, using her own vydent energy to ferry bigger and better Decimators from star system to star system. It paid decently, but she wasn't in it for the essence. The job was, at best, a luxury afforded for the powerful. Like being a limousine driver for an excessively wealthy businessman. It helped her connect with those powerful killers back in the day, helped her better understand their motivations beyond the barebone necessity of "kill or be killed".
With that thought in mind, the blonde Soul Ripper made a mental reminder to tip their chauffeur when they arrived at Earth as she leaned back into the provided pillow. Just as her eyes closed, she began thinking about her partner.
She remembered feeling incredibly nervous when upon first meeting her. The stories surrounding the then average Soul Ripper, wondering which ones were true and which ones were just hearsay from her various obsessors. Oblivion was a living legend, both inside and out. A genius and warrior both in fact. Back then, Cataclysm admired their tenacity. She read their info-profile. How Oblivion heralded many obsessors in her early days, rising to prominence primarily through utilizing some seriously impressive enthrallment tactics, drowning her would-be killers in a sea of bodies by utilizing some prolific insect race to force them to expend their vydent energy reserves. After that, it was a simple matter of killing off whatever opposition remained, though mercifully chose to personally spare or adopt many of the children of the deceased. All-in-all, it was a typical power story, up until the moment the Red Bastion, the main governing body of Highbred at the time, attempted to recruit her to their cause once she'd grown beyond their means of subjugation. And when their efforts ended in futility, Oblivion remained standing, the Red Bastion did not. Without leadership, the remaining populace moved on, formed their own groups, established a new primary Obelisk of Dominion, and the events were eventually relegated to the history logs. Whatever obsessors didn't try to outright kill the white-haired Soul Ripper decided to become dedicated housewives, pledging their hearts and mind to Oblivion and only her. Which was standard Obsessor behavior. What got her popular was the sheer volume of subsequent Supplicants that followed, asking to join her harem. Oblivion declined, of course, but the aftermath of so many offers are ultimately what rocketed her to the position she has today.
"A relatively bloodless rise to power really." Cataclysm though to herself. "Though I gotta wonder how she felt back then. What made her want to be a Soul Ripper in the first place? And why?" Even today, Cataclysm still didn't know. It was one of the few things she decided she'd have to be okay with never knowing. Over the years, as their bond grew, she thought she had a pretty good grasp on why her partner did what she did back then. But in truth? She still had no clue. And likely never would. What she figured she should know, however, is a little information on the race they were visiting. The humans of planet Earth.
"Speak?" Oblivion's voice gently echoed in the blonde Soul Ripper's mindscape, her voice somehow a whisper carried with all the authority of a command. But it was a genuine question, and Cataclysm was happy to answer honestly. She was a master at filling in the gaps by now. "Well, you just did, but shoot. What's on that mind o' yours?"
It was always an exceptionally rare moment with an even shorter timeframe that Oblivion chose to speak, and even when they did it was always, always through their telepathic connection. So, whenever they did offer to speak, Cataclysm vowed to always make time to truly listen. And as she waited for the powerful decimator to speak their piece, the blonde Soul Ripper also found herself wondering about the new world they would be shortly arriving at. About what made this 'Earth' so special. And most importantly, what made its denizens so different from the rest of the galaxy?
For the first time in a long time, Cataclysm knew she finally had something to look forward to.
​
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Thank you so much for reading, Chapter will be far longer as they progress, haven't quite settled on a word count just yet. When Chapter 2 is up, it will be posted either at the top or the bottom, here. This is really my first real time posting here and, unlike previous unposted projects, I really want to improve my consistency in writing and craft a fun story while doing so. Until then, thank you for reading, please feel free to leave constructive criticism or feedback at your leisure, and I hope you have a great day!
-Highlord V.

First Previous
Advancing with my remaining fully functioning forces, I stop at the first of the four warehouses doors. They were large, about twice my height and three times as wide, and completely made out of some rather dulled plates of steel. I position my two scorpions to face the doors and have the rest of the group form up behind and on the sides of them. Once they are all set up I push the doors open with a heave and quickly rush to the side, giving my scorpions better sight lines.
It is a good thing I did too as they proceeded to fire their beam tails into the poorly lit interior of the warehouse. While the light from the beam faded swiftly, it was long enough for me to see a glimpse of what was inside of the room for a moment. I managed to spot a total of around 10 drones, four of which were scorpions and the rest were a scattered group of spiders. From the looks of it one of the beams managed to hit one of the enemy's scorpions but the rest of them began to give off the familiar humm that my scorpions released just a few moments ago. Realizing what they were about to do I ordered for my drones to break formation and scatter but it unfortunately was too late as 3 beams struck out from the scorpions in the dark, hitting two of my hounds and one of my scorpions.
My four hornets that I brought with me fired off their spikes into the unlit warehouse and from the sudden halt of two of the silhouettes of dark red light coming off from the drones, marking them as MAI's, I would presume that at least a couple of the spikes had found their mark. My hounds were next to act as they all at once rushed into the structure in search of the drones that dared fire upon them and their drones in arms. I ran forward with them, but due to my much greater mass, I only catched up to them after they had begun ravaging a spider drone that was caught out in the open.
The lighting in the warehouse was poor, with only some side windows high on each side of the structure. Thankfully it was enough to see the general contents of the room which was full of crates of various sizes. Seeing a faint glow in one of the said crates I walk up to it and pop the lid open and I find a spider shivering in fear. Looking at it I feel slightly bad for it as it was obviously scared shirtless and was fighting for the wrong person, not that I could do anything about it. Or can I?
I was able to convert that one small drone works to my side so why should it not work on drones too? As I begin reaching down to gently pick up the spider I hear a loud crash followed by the barking of a few of my hounds. I guess it will have to wait. I put the lid of the container on and locked it before rushing over towards the sounds of combat further into the warehouse.
As I pass another pile of containers I find one of my drones stunned against the right wall. Turning to my left I see three of my hounds all teaming up on two of the scorpions. As I start to wonder where the third scorpion is, I dive into the cover of some nearby crates as a beam of energy pierces through the air and hits where I was just a moment ago.
Thankfully more of my drones, in the form of another hound and a hornet, rush forward and reinforce the ongoing brawl. The hornet fires off their spike in the general direction of the one unengaged enemy scorpion but, from the look of it, the scorpion in question managed to duck in time. I really need to find or make a dedicated weapon instead of just picking up whatever it is around at the time.
Sighing as I scoop up a few rebar poles, I take a step back before hurling the pole. Although I am not the greatest javelineer in the universe, through a stroke of divine intervention I managed to impale the scorpion that fired upon me straight in-between their eyes. With that, the engagement has swung into my favor considerably. And just to add salt to the wound, some of the drones the scorpions hit with their stun beam began to regain their control and joined the fight.
Not long after that, the last of the scorpions fell to my hoard of drones and all that was left were the scattered spider drones all across the building. Ordering my drones to capture instead of kill if possible I get a message pop up notifying me that I have defeated the garrison of this outpost. I guess there was nothing else hiding in any of these other warehouses. I wonder what's in them.
I guess this is the perfect time for now, I order a few un-damaged hounds to guard the captured spiders and I send everyone else to get tended by the repair team. With that settled I walk over to the second warehouse and pop open the door revealing much of the same compared to the previous warehouse. Moving over to the third I open up the doors and am greeted with a collection of drone and resource producing equipment. There was a small drone works along with a medium as well and in the corner of the building was a refinery.
If my memory serves me right, the medium drone works need an external power source to function for any extended periods of time. Which means there is something that can generate electricity somewhere. Looking through the doors of the building and to the final warehouse, I could guess where it might be located.
Opening the final door I reveal a generator along with a few small mountains of barrels. Taking a look into the barrels I find a faintly yellow substance residing inside them. Inspecting the generator a description pops up in front of it stating that it was a chemfuel powered generator. I guess that's what is in the barrels. Taking a look at the piles of said barrels, I see that I have a decent supplement of chemfuel which will probably last me for quite a while.
Deciding that I did not need to start up production anytime soon, I left the generator be for now. Walking out of the warehouse, my eyes land on the batch of six spiders. Wait,weren't there seven before? Then I spot the mangled corpses of a spider around a half dozen feet away from the rest of the bunch. Well that explains it.
Stepping towards the imprisoned drones, that were still being dutifully guarded by a couple of hounds, many scuttle as far away as they could before their captors began to growl causing them all to freeze. "Hey guys, I'm not here to hurt you, I'm going to cut you all a deal," A few relax a smidge when they hear me say that I wouldn't hurt them but most still huddled together and looked back with a fair amount of skepticism. "I guess that's fair, I did shut down your scorpion cousins. But that aside, I offer that you can join us or I will let you free on the condition that you give up your ties to my enemy."
I draw a line in the middle of the group, "If you wish to join me then step on the left side, if you wish to be let out into the wilds than move to the right." A pair of drones begin to hesitantly step to the left but are then attacked by 3 their seemingly more zealous brothers and or sisters. I quickly grab the three aggressor and place them away from the group and have my hornets quickly end them.
Once I finish with that I see the remaining spider drones have decided on their fate. The two spiders that decided joining me were better or the threeish options have stepped on the left side and their glowing joints have turned blue that matched the rest of my drones. The last drone had stepped to the left without me noticing and their joints had turned into a neutral gray.
Keeping my word I pick up the gray spider and release them into the wild. Hey, maybe they'll start their own spider colony I jokingly think to myself. I have the turncoat spiders join the others and as they begin to mingle I notice that the turncoat drones are made of a slightly darker metal.
Then a notification pops up stating that I gained a new skill. Expanding the pop up, I see what it was referring to.
"New skill gained: Minor Drone Conversion. Have a 25% chance to successfully convert a captured small drone."
Next
Posts might come in late over the summer due to family outings and such but I'll try to keep this going on my free time if possible.

hello everyone! hope you’re having a great shift, with no shitty staff compulsively disrespecting you…
so, here the thing… i’m quite conflicted on this. i got hired as a dishie last week, in a restaurant-pizzeria in the central square of a small italian town. it was nice at the start, had a few back issues the first days, fortunately my body immediately caught up and adapted to the workload (on busy days i finish at 3AM) and i’m getting confortable with the tasks assigned.
but things are gradually getting worse, and it’s not the work per se, but the environment. to put it bluntly: they treat me like shit, and the kitchen is so small i even doubt if its legal. i have a sarcastic, chronically frustrated boss that criticizes EVERYTHING i’m doing, even if it’s completely correct, adding jokes and offering impossibile and impractical solutions to those imaginary issues. i’m quite speedy on dishes: few scrubs, clean, then inside the dishwasher. the issue starts at the end of the evening: as i said, the kitchen is incredibly small. i have to pile up stuff in the most creative of ways to make them fit (and still be hygenical), and even though i have a second sink with ANOTHER table to fit extra stuff, i’m unable to use them as they’re close to the oven as my boss, which is also the cook, absolutely loses his shit if i do, considering that his oven is completely CRAMPED behind my postation and he’d risk smashing everything while putting pizza in it. i cannot put stuff in that sink either as he needs it to “wash his hands”. this means i have to do glasses after every customer left, when they piled up completely covering ALL kitchen surfaces, even the exterior area employees use for a quick smoke. this takes me quite a lot of time. then, there comes the kitchenware, which the boss absolutely REFUSES to put in the dishwasher to save water, meaning i have to spend at least 1 hour and a half cleaning it trying to avoid a possibile health hazard, as they’re not properly sanitized by the machine. it is by this time that the asshole starts to comment about how slow i am, even using shitty sarcastic jokes (AKA me being sure this is all spotless to avoid calling the hospital the next night) while completely ignoring how im actually really fast when i have a dishwashing machine (as i should). this is only a small fraction of how this impossibly small kitchen handicaps me, as many more countless issues are constantly arising….is this normal? am i just a noob?
(also, forgot to mention i’m also doing assistant chef work and waiter, but i guess it’s part of the work and its actually enjoyable)

My car got hit in the parking lot behind my house in September by a DoorDasher. It took until mid-March to determine who would pay for the repairs because of DoorDash having their own insurance. Long story short, I got my car into a repair shop on May 3rd while having the insurance of the person who hit me (Allstate) pay. The body shop estimated the repairs to be $5500 and Allstate only gave me $3500 when doing the initial over-the-phone quote. The repair manager told me that the repairs would take about a month and that they have a hard time dealing with Allstate because "they don't like paying".
The body shop started the repair without having all of the money required (I don't know if this is normal but I find this weird). Once they tore the car down they set a final estimate of $7500. Quite a jump so I was interested to see how this played out, especially after hearing about a week or two before the above quote.
Got an email today that they are putting the car back together just about a month later and it should be done next week. Great news except for the fact that they are short $1700... So the repair is about to be done, they've already received at least two supplements from Allstate, but I can't get my car until it's paid in full. I asked what they are going to do to get the money and he said that they will send a final bill to Allstate in hopes of getting the $1700. Sounds like a stretch to me. So I proceeded to ask, what if Allstate simply won't pay more or it takes forever to get the extra money? He said that I can pay the $1700 and go after them for it. Now I'm not the smartest, but if the body shop themself can't get the money, how am I supposed to?
Some side notes, this was my preferred shop and I've done some reading on here and saw that since I picked it this happens because of the shop being an ass or whatever. You don't need to spell that all out. However, Allstate offered to repair it here when they gave me the over-the-phone estimate. I don't know if I filled something out saying this was my preferred and that's why they put it but I feel like if they don't want to deal with this shop they wouldn't have done that.
So now I come to you and ask, what should I do here? Wait it out and assume it'll be okay or what? I was already screwed dealing with insurance for months because of DoorDash and now this is just the saga that never ends.

Hey guys I got a 2021 road glide special and I’m having a really hard time with back pain while riding I’ve been through 3 seats now and I think I got my butt pain taken care of finally (stock,low reach seat,hammock) now on the hammock seat and it seems better then the other two but still the back pain is just horrible for me even on short riding like 15-30min rides. It’s lower back pain and it’s very intense. Any one have any good ideas what I can do to ease up on it? Crazy thing is im only 21 5,11 235ibs 29-30” inseam

Won tickets off radio. People we knew backed out with a better spot and gave us theirs. Seats are in the Mezz section

Our Xterras have very thin door panels, you can hear just how thin if you tap on the outside of the door. Sounds hollow and tinny, and makes bass rattle.
This makes for inferior sound and a noisier ride than necessary.
I was already opening up my door panels to replace the drivers window motor and replace a speaker, so I took advantage of the access to add some Dynamat Extreme to the interior of the door panels.
Adding the dynamat is very easy process. Just remove the plastic interior panel (3 bolts), pull up the vapor barrier, and you’ll see how much bare, thin sheet metal there is. Stick the dynamat on the bare meter locations, put the door back together, and you’re done.
The results are astounding. Even with factory speakers, your sound will be much better, and road noise will decrease dramatically. It also improves thermal insulation, making your AC more efficient.
If you ever have occasion to open the door panels, spend the extra for sound deadening. Cost me $80 to do all 4 doors.

So this happened about 2 weeks ago the day before my 18th.
I was running my first game as dm with my mates from school my younger brothers and the family friend i go to larp with (names changed for obvious reasons) ash- the shifter gunslinger (17,m) Garn the human bloodhunter (17,m) kilrrs the tiefling rouge sorcerer(17,m) Gerard the human fighter (29,m) mido the elf fighter (12,m) harith the kalashter bard cleric (15,m. 8 years old in game) robin the tortle monk rouge (17,m) suit case "the great" the Goliath wizard and finnaly me the DM (17 at the time now 18, m) The main players that cause all of the stupidity were ronin, Harith, and Garn
The game was set in eberron and started in a tavern. The players started talking to the bar keep then ronin instantly went to persuade the bar keep into giving him free booze (failed) then got suitcase to do it and he rolled a Nat 20, free alcohol for the night for everyone, a bit later harith says he is compatible with elfs. To progress the story I send in the messanger that delivers a letter to the part asking them to go to the capital city of the area to meet someone, kilrrs asked to kill him, I obviously said no, the players wait untill morning to start their journey to the capital in which they have to pass through a town on the way.
On the way to the town the players are jumped by bandits, basic combat starts, then at the end Ronin and Harith ask to take 2 of the bandits as slaves. In new cyre Harrith and ronin try to sell their slaves harrith successeds in selling his slave to a farmer but ronin fails so decides to keep him and named him boba fett (because it was a boba fett lego minifig) so in the level up I made a character sheet for boba.
Garn goes to the blacksmith to sell the armour and weapons the had gotten and the blacksmith offered 10gp under the value (350gp) for the armour and weapons from 7 bandits he and the bar keep argue while ronin messes around in the store with boba fett, on the way out (after being kicked out by the blacksmith) ronin successeds a stealth check and steals a rapier from the store, they give it to kilrrs to sell to the blacksmith who offers 3 gold and they can take it or leave it as he wants to close for the night, kilrrs keeps arguing and not leaving and then attempts an attack fails so the black smith throws molten metal at him.
Suitcase left because he didn't feel like playing and dnd wasn't fir him (it was his first time playing and he hadn't done much)
Not much happens until the capital where they meet steadler the guy who asked for them (steadler is a green half orc) the players and him have a friendly chat he gives them their mission and they are off. The mission was to slay a beast in the seven caves and bring him one of its teeth as proof.
Gerard left to go home because he had had a long day that started at 5am and it was about 10pm at this time (5 hours in)
Now the reason you are here
The players get to the seven caves and are meet with another party fleeing after failing to slay the beast, the players enter and standing before them is a white dragon (who I heavily nerfrd to give them an easier time) the dragon bellows out "more challengers or just fast food" (a line I am very proud of) and the battle commences after the dragon leaps off of its throne of bones and courses.
I have ronin and Kilrrs roll to see which way we go (it is easier for me if I have the player closest to me on my left and right roll and then we go in a circle going that players direction as it is easier to keep track of who we are up to) Ronin wins the roll so he is up first he baits the dragon with boba then goes in for an attack, his attack is successful hits then we are onto Harith's turn, he makes himself look like a female white dragon and successeds the deception roll and then seduces the dragon, I flip a coin and ask him what he beats on he beats heads, it lands on tails, he gets topped by the dragon, we are all in hysterics at this point.
My yonger brother mido leaves as he is tiered and normally is in bed 2 hours ago
The battle continues and the dragon is distracted so can do nothing, but I have it separate the party with an ice wall, the players attack the dragon with it being to distracted to do anything, it gets to below half health and flees the gave with harith and is still going at it out side the players chase the dragon and their trapped team mate outside and kill the dragon with Ash doing the final blow with his peperbox blowing up the dragons throat. The players are rewarded with sacks filled with gold and gems from the dragons lair, harrith says because he sacrificed the most for the party so he should get more the whole party was already going up 2 levels so I ask if he wants more gold and gems or an extra level, he goes for more gold and gems.
We finnished off the session on an airship on the way back to steadler with the dragon tooth and the ship crew attacking the party.
But this was some how not the weirdest session of dnd we have had that was with kilrrs harith and I in hariths campaign, that is a story for another time
Tl;Dr bard successfully seduces dragon and gets topped

Hey everyone. I'm new to the community, but am an avid listener of Ezra's podcast. The reason I am posting this is because of recent developments in the topic of UAP (formerly known as UFO's). Please reference this article from The Debrief for more context. I hope the Ezra or the show runners see this and dig in. Thanks!
https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-retrieved-non-human-craft/
Hello Ezra and team,
Timeye13 here, reaching out from a very windy Golden Gate Heights in San Francisco CA. First, I want to acknowledge you and your staff for the excellent work relating to the ongoing development and wide proliferation of consumer facing LLM (and other) AI's. Your segments have spearheaded a conversation that is timely and necessary to understanding the broader implications of these tools and how uncertain the future truly is at this moment. I hope you continue the work as the subject continues to develop. I also enjoyed listening to your talks with Dan Savage and Rick Ruben. If Rick did an audio book reading of "Goodnight Moon" I'd likely listen to it nightly. The primary reason for this message is to draw your collective attention to recent developments that, in my opinion, merit much more exploration and reporting: the reality, ubiquity and acknowledgement of encounters with UAP or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon (historically labeled as UFO's). Since 2017, when Leslie Kean, Ralph Blumenthal, and Helena Cooper at the NYT's published an article about the DoD's AATIP program along with the 3 gun camera videos from Navy fighter pilots (Gimbal, Tic Tac, and Go-Fast: provided by Christopher Mellon) the public has become aware of government interest in this phenomenon. Primarily, how it relates to security concerns and threat scenarios within the IC and DoD. I won't rehash this story further, as there was a wide array of coverage pertaining to these events, specifically through the lens of military, defense and national security. There were some notable follow up pieces on the topic from Gideon Lewis-Krauss of The New Yorker, and 60 Minutes in the spring of 2021, as well as the first congressional hearing on UAP in 50 years in the Spring of 2022 (which can safely be categorized as political theater). Don't get me wrong, these were all important efforts, and groundbreaking when you consider the historical and ongoing stigma of this subject going back 75+ years. But there have been many remarkable developments since then...such as:

• Top tier academics have come out and stated they are creating viable, peer reviewed methodology for studying this phenomenon. Most notably, Avi Loeb from Harvard (Galileo Project), and Garry Nolan from Stanford (Analysis on recovered "Meta Materials") have made some amazing and outright fantastical claims around what this could represent.
• Last year, The Congress and the Biden admin passed a piece of legislation buried in the FY23 NDAA outlining the direction and processes to pursue the topic: a fully funded office via the DIA (AARO the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) to further assess the reality and implications of UAP. This legislation, sponsored by both republicans and democrats, is quite astonishing to say the least. A few stipulations- 1. It calls for all gov documents on the UFO/UAP topic to be up cycled to this office dating back to 1945 (there's a thread to pull, what happened in 1945? hint- Jaques Vallee knows). 2. It provides sweeping whistleblower protections for current or former government or contractor personnel who have information relating to government sponsored UAP initiatives or UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering programs. Please see Christopher Mellon's blog post for more details on the contents of this unprecedented UAP legislation package.
• Scientific groups such as UAPx and the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies have both thrown their hats in the ring and are developing best practices for the study of this phenomenon, with some amazing results thus far. Many of the data points suggest our model of physics remains incomplete or misunderstood (that's quite the sentence, I know).
• Entrepreneurship and private enterprise is also playing a key role in the initial study and analysis of anomalous happenings. There is a focus on multiple domains, including: near earth orbit/space, all levels of our atmosphere, and within our oceans. One example, Enigma Labs, is spinning up a data repository for sightings and experiences that will eventually be equipped with modern AI and machine learning tools to separate signals from noise, look for patterns, and exploit capabilities for commercial use. According to many other business and tech leaders here in Silicon Valley, the appetite for making strategic investments into studying and exploiting this phenomenon is robust.

(There is a lot to unpack in this subject. This is basic surface level information) "What's the point of it all, Tim?" you might ask: well...if there is substantial interest from the US government (including Congress and the Executive branch), current and former US DoD and IC representatives, leading minds in academia from premier universities, multidisciplinary scientific bodies and think tanks, and private enterprise, WHERE IS THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA?! There is there there. Why aren't there journalists here here? Where are the leaders in journalism who took a journalistic oath to pull the threads that need to be pulled, follow the facts where they lead, and shine light into the darkness on the public's behalf? (That was only slightly preachy, right?) My point is, outside of a handful of reporters who do short segments on this topic, there isn't a single American investigative journalist with the bonafides of a Murray MAder, or Bob Woodward, or Carl Bernstein, or Ida Tarbell, etc etc, who have had the courage to follow the mountain of leads relating to this subject. Ross Coulthart in Australia is the only notable reporter who is actively pursuing this story. Surely, this has the implications to be the biggest story of all time, right? So where are the reporters? Where are you and your colleagues? Conspiracy theories aside (of which there are many), the heaps of anecdotal evidence is there. The physical evidence is lacking, which is a total understatement. The actions of the aforementioned groups should be evidence enough to motivate some big names in journalism to do their job. It takes courage to wade through decades of stigma and ridicule. I'd like to see more risks in this direction, and I think your team is well equipped to handle it. This might sound sensational, because it is in fact, very sensational. In my opinion, the only way to reveal whether that sensation is merited or not is to disinfect it with sunlight. What could be more interesting than to discover that the world we inhabit is a much much bigger place than we once thought, and that maybe non-human intelligence is not only something we're close to creating, but the universe has already iterated, and shipped it. Thank you for reading, whoever you are. I love the show and will continue listening. In keeping with show tradition I'll sign off by leaving you with my 3 book recommendations on the topic:

1. American Cosmic: UFO's, Religion, and Technology- By Diana Walsh-Pasulka
2. UFO's: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials go on the Record- By Leslie Kean
3. In Plain Sight: An Investigation into UFO's and Impossible Science- Ross Coulthart

Maybe consider having a conversation with Dr Sean Kirkpatrick, former AWSAP director Dr Colm Kelleher, former UAP Task Force Director Jay Stratton, Sen Kirsten Gillabrand, Sen Marco Rubio, Rep Matt Gallagher, former Deputy Secretary for Defense and Intelligence Christopher Mellon, former AATIP Director Luis Elizondo, Leslie Kean, Dr Garry Nolan, Jaques Vallee, Avi Loeb, Dr Eric Davis, Diana Walsh-Puslka, Ross Coulthart, etc. Good places to start.
Best,
Timeye13

*Preface: I was laid off in December and I'm looking for a new position :)*
I wrote a ThreadPool library using C++14 that offers some UI advantages over existing ThreadPool implementations. Here is the link, and the README explains the usage syntax & some engineering concepts in detail. https://github.com/Saswatm123/ThreadPool/
One engineering concept that I wanted to talk about that went into this is the concept of function pointers to functions with default arguments. It is widely believed that function pointers can be called just like regular functions - which they cannot. If we have the following code:

include

void func(int i) { std::cout << i << std::endl; }
int main() { void(*fptr)(int) = func; fptr(0);

return 0; 

}
Then this code runs as expected. However, this changes if we add default arguments to our function, as follows:

include

void func(int i, bool verbose = false) { std::cout << i << std::endl; }
int main() { void(*fptr)(int, bool) = func; fptr(0);

return 0; 

}
This is where the difference between a function call and a function pointer call lies.
This gives us a compilation error, since the function signature of `func` tells the compiler that there should be two arguments. However, we know the last one should be optional. Getting around this with just the information provided above (a function pointer & the argument information) is widely believed to not be possible without creating another function/lambda to get around this issue (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76351178/when-calling-a-function-through-a-function-pointer-why-is-it-that-default-argum). However, I've found another, easier way to get around this, which allows for added user simplicity, since the user doesn't have to create extra function bindings/lambdas/etc. This is crucial in thread pooling applications such as mine, because std::function is rather slow comparatively.
This is a rather non-trivial process, so I will start with a simple solution and build up to the final solution.
In order to get around this, the first step is to perform a `reinterpret_cast` from the type of the function pointer we have to the type of the function pointer that leaves out the default arguments that aren't provided.
Here is a simple example:

include

void func(int i, bool verbose = false) { std::cout << i << std::endl; }
int main() {

void(*fptr)(int) = reinterpret_cast(func); fptr(0); return 0; 

}
This gets us around the compiler, which now sees nothing wrong with this function call. This call works exactly as expected, too, with the default argument filling in as expected.
This raises some problems, however. How do we know, in general, the types of the arguments passed in, the types of the non default arguments (& default arguments that we choose to supply), and the type of the function?
We use template metaprogramming to solve these issues.
In order to know the type of the function to cast to, we need to know the *return type of the function*, and the *parameter types of the non-defaults*. In `impl/bound_function.tpp`,
we have a chunk of code that looks like this:
template auto make_bound_function(ReturnType(func)(ParamTypes...), ArgumentFwdTypes&&... args) { auto shortened_function = shorten_function_paramlist(func, std::forward(args)...); return BoundFunction(shortened_function, std::forward(args)...); }
that we can call like this:
// Assume function "func" from previous code snippets is still in scope make_bound_function(func, 0)
to return an object that, when called, returns `func(0, verbose = false)`. Since the first argument passed into `make_bound_function` is the function in question,
we can deduce the *return type of the function*, as well as the *entire expected parameter list* of the function, including the default arguments. The second argument is a variadic argument pack,
containing everything we would like to pass into our function, with variadic type pack `ArgumentFwdTypes...`. It is important to note that the parameter types the function
expects, and the argument types we pass in are not always the same, whether it is due to user error, expected type-casting, or leaving out default arguments.
This means that, as an issue of safety, we should preserve the original parameter types for the arguments we know. How do we know which parameters we should keep, then?
Default arguments come at the end of a parameter list. This means that if we take the size of our passed in argument pack, including defaults that we have passed in manually, refer to this size as some number `N`, and pick the first
`N` elements of our parameter type list, we can get the (non-default or default but manually passed in) expected types of our function, while also preserving the original type info! We can then use
this "shortened parameter pack" to perform a `reinterpret_cast` to our expected function pointer type. The code for this is written in `impl/func_tools.hpp`, and
the important part of it is shown below:
// This function assists shorten_function_paramlist, which is the public-facing function. template ReturnType(_shorten_function_paramlist_impl(TypeHolder, ReturnType(function)(ParamTypes...), ArgTypes&&... args) )(TruncatedParamTypes...) { return reinterpret_cast)(TruncatedParamTypes...)>(function); }
template auto shorten_function_paramlist(ReturnType(function)(ParamTypes...), ArgTypes&&... args) { return _shorten_function_paramlist_impl( typename FirstNTypes::type(), function, std::forward(args)... ); }
There are many pieces of code used in the code snippet above, such as `FirstNTypes<...>`, that are not defined in the snippet (for brevity), but can be viewed at `impl/func_tools.hpp`.
By using this code above, we can take in our function `func` from the earlier code snippets, which has the signature `void(*)(int, bool)`, pass in the argument
list `0 (or any int)`, then since there is only one type in our passed in arguments, we select the first argument in the original parameter list, which is `(int)`,
to get our final type, `void(*)(int)`! We can now call this with our original arguments, and the defaults get filled in automatically. We can even include the defaults
if we want, since this just increases the number of arguments we take from the front, and leaves the rest alone! The full logic chain to learn how to wrangle with
everything I mentioned above can be found starting with the function `make_bound_function` in `impl/bound_function.tpp` - just follow the function calls &
template metaprogramming code from there.
Thank you for coming to my ted talk, and hopefully the next poor C++ programmer that looks up "function pointer default arguments", like I did, now can use this as a real solution rather than just finding 50+ stackoverflow comments talking about how it's impossible :)