REP
Can also check me out on hardwareswap and mechmarket for confirmed swaps.
GOG Key's CAN DO BOTH FOR ONE GAME

• The Beast Inside
  
• Wolfenstein: The New Order
  

Hey, these are the steam games I have available for trade,

• Sniper Elite 4: Deluxe Edition
  
• Amnesia: The Dark Descent + Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (2 in 1)
  

Fight 4 Your Friends Bundle/Humble

• Back 4 Blood
  
• Killing Floor 2: Digital Deluxe Edition
  
• Warhammer: Vermintide 2
  

May 2023 Humble Choice

• Behind The Frame: The Finest Scenery
  
• Bendy and The Dark Revival
  
• Builder Simulator
  
• Operation: Tango
  
• Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition
  
• The Invisible Hand
  
• Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters
  
• Windjammers 2
  

April 2023 Humble Choice

• Founder's Fortune
  
• Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp
  
• Revita
  

Spring mystery bundle 2023/fanatical

• Autonauts
  
• Autonauts vs Piratebots
  
• Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead
  
• Brunch Club
  
• Doodle Derby
  
• Silver Chains
  
• Smoke and Sacrifice
  
• Space Crew: Legendary Edition
  
• Spirit Hunter: NG
  
• The Wild Eight
  

TÜRKIYE-SYRIA EARTHQUAKE RELIEF BUNDLE/Humble

• Alchemist's Castle
  
• Arcade Spirits
  
• Armello
  
• Backbone
  
• Cats and the Other Lives
  
• Cris Tales
  
• Doughlings Arcade
  
• Doughlings Invasion
  
• Frick, Inc.
  
• Hack 'n' Slash
  
• Izmir: An Independence Simulator
  
• Lust from Beyond - M Edition
  
• Orbital Racer
  
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition
  
• Pill Baby
  
• Pixross
  
• Project Chemistry
  
• Quadrata
  
• Rym 9000
  
• Soul Searching
  
• Soulblight
  
• Space Crew: Legendary Edition
  
• Stacking
  
• Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
  
• Sunlight
  
• Stikir
  
• The Amazing American Circus
  
• The Inner World
  
• Ticket to Ride
  
• X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack
  
• Zombie Driver HD
  

I'm on the hunt for a set of irons to best suit my natural swing style. I estimate that for the foreseeable future I will remain a 2-3x per month golfer. I don't have the time to hone and retain fine mechanical changes to my swing. Basically, I think the purpose of lessons will ultimately be wasted by my inability to frequently practice.
Forgive me sounding like a grade A+ doucher, but I have really good (much better than average) swing speed and ball speed. I currently can produce 7 iron ball speeds between 129-136 mph according to recent TrackMan data. I played baseball into college and have pretty good loweupper body swing mechanics. However, I consistently produce a slightly positve angle of attack, especially from my mid irons and up (longer). So even with the plus speed I cannot get the distance one would expect. I hit the ball way too high and with way too much spin (really bad in the stiff Texas wind). This is most apparent with 4-7 iron. My attack angle is a great thing when it comes to my driver (7.5 degrees), but with irons it is killing me mentally to know I am not producing the results the data shows i should be capable of.
What irons out there would help me the most (swing as is) launch the ball lower and with less spin? I realize that some options have really strong lofts, but are made with a very low center of gravity (Titleist t400 for example) to produce high launch. I'm trying to avoid this mistake.
Any educated feedback is very much appreciated!

On my way, pax sends me a "?" as the only communication. I ignored it. I got there, she had a 50lbs (cute as a button) pittie. She proceeded to tell me that I was her 2nd driver, as the first accepted her UberPet ride, got to her, and canceled because she had a dog.
If you don't want to take pets, fine, don't turn on UberPet, and you won't get the requests.
These kinds of drivers give the rest of us a bad reputation.

Inspired by this post last league, I started Crucible with a Glacial Hammer Berserker. The build is awesome. The damage has felt really good and getting started was just as cheap as advertised. I went through a rough patch when getting to red maps because I couldn't handle elemental ailments well, but after adjusting some gear it was fairly smooth sailing again to T16s.
I play fairly casually and am now around the 80-hour mark for the league. I've had a fair amount of luck with drops and I've invested ~8 divines in the build. But, I'm now at a point where I feel stuck and am not sure how to proceed from here.
Here's my character on poe.ninja, which has a PoB import code. Note that it looks strange at first glance because I'm using a timeless jewel for Divine Flesh to stack chaos resistance. It also doesn't appear to show my shield's Crucible tree, which provides shock immunity (and will soon give me another minimum endurance charge).
For mapping, my damage is great. My main issue is how often I'm dying (which I hate...I'd be playing Hardcore if I had more time). I haven't been able to level up past 95 yet because I get wrecked by something every 3-4 maps on average. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me because I've got pretty high EHP, lots of defensive layers, and I'm doing alch-and-go Wandering Path with non-corrupted maps I've carefully chosen the modifiers on. My main problem is random rares/uniques in Delirium and Crucible (I never charge past 60%, but occasionally even that is too much), some Essence monsters, and the occasional map boss (The Eradicator, for example, was rough).
I'm sure some of this is due to me still being bad at the game and not being able to do or recognize certain mechanics. But, I'm just over 1000 hours into Path of Exile now and, up until this point, was comfortable figuring out what killed me and how to adjust the build to compensate. I thought I should be able to use this build to do everything but Ubers and maybe The Feared with around this level of investment. But, now that I'm here, I have realized this might not be the case without a lot more dying and XP loss.
Anyway, I just lucked into a "final boss drops 4 divine orbs" altar yesterday and now have an opportunity to double my investment in the build. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to get out of the local maximum I've found myself in and get to a really comfy place, or if I should be putting that currency toward another character instead now that I've got a decent mapper. I don't really care about ubers, but I would ideally like to finish my atlas. The closest I've been is with my RF Inquisitor last league (couldn't kill Maven, Uber Elder, or The Feared, but I got the rest).
Any help or advice people could give me would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hi,
I am from Houston, Texas. Well, I live just outside of Houston, but people who live near Houston usually say they are from Houston.
Anyway, I am 25 years old, and I was studying medicine overseas. I have permanently returned to the USA to continue my education. I work part time as an uber eats driver. This might be a relatively long post.
Hobbies/Interests: My hobbies are similar to most people, and we don't have to share the same hobbies or interests. - Movies and TV (Sci-fi, horror, and crime) - Exercising, especially running - Food (Thai, Mediterranean, and Indian) - Reading - Boardgames and videogames - Nature-y stuff. Walking outside. - Music (Instrumental, orchestral, and rap). I listen to songs from each genre. - Investing
I want to pickup more hobbies and interests. I would like to learn how to play the piano and violin. I want to learn a new language. I want to do outdoor activities such as hiking and maybe even camping. I have always wanted to learn video effects. It's great if you do one or multiple of these things, so I can learn or participate too. We can pickup a joint hobby too. However, I am a homebody.

• I have no physical requirements because I like people of all sizes and shapes. My tastes vary. However, I do want someone who is healthy. I would like someone who is understanding, open, and versatile among other things. I believe romance and intimacy are vital to a relationship, so I am drawn to physical affection. I love food, so that is one way to get to my heart.
  
• Physical Description: I am 5' 7" ~ ish. I have short black hair right now, but I am looking to grow it out again. My skin is light caramel, and I have dark brown eyes. My body is slim to average, but I would like to think I am fit. I enjoy running, and I like lifting too. I workout at home since I do not have a gym membership. I might sport some stubble, but I am usually clean shaven. My clothing style is atrocious. I usually wear shorts and a shirt. I need to improve my clothing game.
  
• Religion & Politics: I like to call myself a non-resistant nonbeliever, which is similar to agnosticism. I attended a Christian church when I was younger, and my undergraduate school was Catholic. My parents practice Hinduism, so I have some exposure to religion. I am open to anyone regardless of religious affiliation, and I would definitely like to learn. The same applies to politics. I think it is important to be challenged and to grow as a result. It's hard to pinpoint my political stance, but it is neither conservative nor democratic. My political ideology is always evolving.
  
• Matrimony & Kids: I envision a meaningful connection that is built on the premise of transcending the confines of societal expectations of matrimony and children, for I firmly believe that true love and commitment cannot be reduced to a legal contract or the obligation of raising offspring. I do not see myself in matrimony. While some people might find it strange, I believe that a strong and meaningful relationship doesn't require a matrimony certificate. However, I would throw that out the window if the right person asked me for mstrimony. Only Siths deal in absolutes. I prefer to focus on building a connection with someone without the added pressure and expectations of matrimony. I also do not want kids. I value my time and would rather use it to focus on my partner. If anything, I'd consider adoption, but I'm leaning towards no kids. This subreddit does not allow me to use the word m a r r i a g e in my posts. Cmon.
  
• Please message me via DM or PM. No ghosters please as if that will deter them. I'd like to talk regularly to build a connection. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to be ghosted or receive messages from people who only send me one word replies. I might have mentioned too much in this post. You don't have to read everything, and I don't mind repeating myself. I am willing to send a picture to verify. If you have any advice on improving my post, then let me know. Peace out.
  

Doesn't the merchant have the ability to communicate with Uber? Doesn't the customer have the ability to communicate with Uber? If the order was actually canceled, why would Uber send 5, 6, 7 (or more?) drivers?

Everything in my inventory is up for trade. The most valuable items are listed here, the rest you can find in My Inventory

Feel free to Add Me or even better send a Trade Offer. Open for any suggestions: upgrades, downgrades / knives, gloves, skins / stickers, patterns, floats.

All Buyouts are listed in cash value.

KNIVES

★ Butterfly Knife Freehand FN #1, B/O: $2500

★ Butterfly Knife Ultraviolet FT, B/O: $822

★ Butterfly Knife Scorched FT, B/O: $616

⎯

★ Bayonet Tiger Tooth MW #1, B/O: $1300

★ Bayonet Autotronic FN, B/O: $1050

★ Bayonet Tiger Tooth MW, B/O: $629

★ Bayonet Bright Water FT, B/O: $326

★ Bayonet Safari Mesh BS, B/O: $233

⎯

★ Karambit Lore FT, B/O: $1110

★ Karambit Damascus Steel FT, B/O: $840

★ Karambit Freehand MW, B/O: $784

★ Karambit Bright Water MW, B/O: $759

⎯

★ M9 Bayonet Fade FN, B/O: $1801

★ M9 Bayonet Fade FN, B/O: $1801

★ M9 Bayonet Damascus Steel FN, B/O: $751

⎯

★ Nomad Knife Fade FN, B/O: $1156

★ Nomad Knife Slaughter MW, B/O: $544

★ Nomad Knife Blue Steel WW, B/O: $318

⎯

★ Flip Knife Marble Fade FN, B/O: $646

★ Flip Knife Doppler (Phase 4) FN, B/O: $574

★ Flip Knife Gamma Doppler (Phase 1) MW, B/O: $552

★ Flip Knife Case Hardened FT, B/O: $257

★ Flip Knife Freehand FT, B/O: $255

★ StatTrak™ Flip Knife Bright Water FN, B/O: $287

⎯

★ Huntsman Knife Lore FN, B/O: $461

★ Huntsman Knife Gamma Doppler (Phase 4) FN, B/O: $436

★ Huntsman Knife Doppler (Phase 3) FN, B/O: $353

★ Huntsman Knife Autotronic FT, B/O: $212

★ Huntsman Knife Bright Water FT, B/O: $129

★ Huntsman Knife Forest DDPAT MW, B/O: $129

★ Huntsman Knife Forest DDPAT BS, B/O: $123

★ StatTrak™ Huntsman Knife Rust Coat BS, B/O: $127

⎯

★ Bowie Knife Gamma Doppler (Phase 2) FN, B/O: $375

★ Bowie Knife Gamma Doppler (Phase 1) FN, B/O: $363

★ Bowie Knife Tiger Tooth FN, B/O: $269

★ Bowie Knife Crimson Web WW, B/O: $192

★ Bowie Knife Bright Water FN, B/O: $159

★ Bowie Knife Ultraviolet FT, B/O: $126

⎯

★ Stiletto Knife Slaughter FN, B/O: $616

★ Stiletto Knife Crimson Web FT, B/O: $412

★ StatTrak™ Stiletto Knife Night Stripe FT, B/O: $227

⎯

★ Falchion Knife Lore FT, B/O: $214

★ Falchion Knife Autotronic FT, B/O: $192

★ Falchion Knife Scorched WW, B/O: $105

⎯

★ Survival Knife Crimson Web BS, B/O: $216

★ Survival Knife Case Hardened FT, B/O: $198

★ Survival Knife Scorched FT, B/O: $111

⎯

★ Shadow Daggers Fade FN, B/O: $368

★ Shadow Daggers Doppler (Phase 3) FN, B/O: $228

★ Shadow Daggers, B/O: $201

★ Shadow Daggers Damascus Steel FT, B/O: $108

★ Shadow Daggers Ultraviolet FT, B/O: $105

★ Shadow Daggers Black Laminate FT, B/O: $99

★ Shadow Daggers Forest DDPAT FT, B/O: $85

⎯

★ Gut Knife Doppler (Sapphire) MW #1, B/O: $1700

★ Gut Knife Gamma Doppler (Phase 1) FN, B/O: $223

★ Gut Knife Marble Fade FN, B/O: $203

★ Gut Knife Doppler (Phase 2) FN, B/O: $191

★ Gut Knife Case Hardened BS, B/O: $127

⎯

★ Navaja Knife Doppler (Phase 4) FN, B/O: $199

★ Navaja Knife Doppler (Phase 4) FN, B/O: $199

★ Navaja Knife, B/O: $138

★ Navaja Knife Damascus Steel FN, B/O: $111

⎯

★ Classic Knife Urban Masked FT, B/O: $146

★ StatTrak™ Classic Knife Stained BS, B/O: $168

⎯

★ Ursus Knife Doppler (Phase 3) FN, B/O: $476

★ Ursus Knife, B/O: $375

⎯

★ Skeleton Knife, B/O: $1137

★ Talon Knife, B/O: $608

★ Paracord Knife, B/O: $305

★ Survival Knife Forest DDPAT FT, B/O: $97

GLOVES

★ Moto Gloves Transport MW, B/O: $204

★ Moto Gloves Polygon BS, B/O: $142

★ Moto Gloves Blood Pressure BS, B/O: $84

★ Moto Gloves Blood Pressure BS, B/O: $84

★ Moto Gloves 3rd Commando Company BS, B/O: $63

★ Moto Gloves 3rd Commando Company BS, B/O: $63

⎯

★ Specialist Gloves Crimson Kimono WW, B/O: $1215

★ Specialist Gloves Tiger Strike FT, B/O: $672

★ Specialist Gloves Lt. Commander FT, B/O: $305

★ Specialist Gloves Lt. Commander BS, B/O: $140

★ Specialist Gloves Crimson Web BS, B/O: $137

★ Specialist Gloves Buckshot FT, B/O: $75

⎯

★ Driver Gloves Crimson Weave FT, B/O: $359

★ Driver Gloves Imperial Plaid BS, B/O: $229

★ Driver Gloves Overtake BS, B/O: $77

★ Driver Gloves Racing Green FT, B/O: $48

⎯

★ Sport Gloves Omega FT, B/O: $739

★ Sport Gloves Amphibious BS #2, B/O: $733

★ Sport Gloves Arid BS, B/O: $292

⎯

★ Hand Wraps Giraffe MW, B/O: $212

★ Hand Wraps Leather FT, B/O: $160

★ Hand Wraps Desert Shamagh MW, B/O: $101

⎯

★ Broken Fang Gloves Yellow-banded MW, B/O: $185

★ Broken Fang Gloves Needle Point FT, B/O: $67

★ Broken Fang Gloves Needle Point WW, B/O: $59

⎯

★ Hydra Gloves Case Hardened BS, B/O: $65

★ Hydra Gloves Emerald FT, B/O: $65

★ Hydra Gloves Emerald BS, B/O: $62

WEAPONS

AK-47 Case Hardened BS, B/O: $130

AK-47 Bloodsport MW, B/O: $79

AK-47 Fuel Injector BS, B/O: $76

AK-47 Fuel Injector BS, B/O: $76

AK-47 Bloodsport FT, B/O: $70

AK-47 Neon Rider MW, B/O: $60

StatTrak™ AK-47 Aquamarine Revenge FT, B/O: $72

⎯

AWP Fade FN, B/O: $1039

AWP Asiimov FT, B/O: $139

AWP Asiimov FT, B/O: $139

AWP Wildfire MW, B/O: $95

AWP BOOM MW, B/O: $93

AWP BOOM MW, B/O: $93

AWP Duality FN, B/O: $81

AWP Asiimov BS, B/O: $79

AWP Asiimov BS, B/O: $79

AWP Chromatic Aberration FN, B/O: $60

StatTrak™ AWP Hyper Beast FT, B/O: $68

StatTrak™ AWP Hyper Beast FT, B/O: $68

StatTrak™ AWP Electric Hive FT, B/O: $55

⎯

Desert Eagle Blaze FN, B/O: $623

Desert Eagle Emerald Jörmungandr FN, B/O: $241

Desert Eagle Cobalt Disruption FN, B/O: $81

Desert Eagle Cobalt Disruption FN, B/O: $81

Desert Eagle Cobalt Disruption FN, B/O: $81

Desert Eagle Printstream FT, B/O: $54

⎯

M4A1-S Blue Phosphor FN, B/O: $434

StatTrak™ M4A1-S Bright Water MW, B/O: $55

⎯

M4A4 Poseidon FN, B/O: $1465

M4A4 Asiimov BS, B/O: $55

M4A4 Hellfire MW, B/O: $50

⎯

USP-S Kill Confirmed MW, B/O: $72

USP-S Printstream FT, B/O: $69

StatTrak™ USP-S Kill Confirmed FT, B/O: $139

⎯

AUG Flame Jörmungandr FN, B/O: $234

P90 Run and Hide FT, B/O: $147

Five-SeveN Candy Apple FN, B/O: $61

Trade Offer Link - Steam Profile Link - My Inventory

Knives - Bowie Knife, Butterfly Knife, Falchion Knife, Flip Knife, Gut Knife, Huntsman Knife, M9 Bayonet, Bayonet, Karambit, Shadow Daggers, Stiletto Knife, Ursus Knife, Navaja Knife, Talon Knife, Classic Knife, Paracord Knife, Survival Knife, Nomad Knife, Skeleton Knife, Patterns - Gamma Doppler, Doppler (Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3, Phase 4, Black Pearl, Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald), Crimson Web, Lore, Fade, Ultraviolet, Night, Marble Fade (Fire & Ice, Fake FI), Case Hardened (Blue Gem), Autotronic, Slaughter, Black Laminate, Tiger Tooth, Boreal Forest, Scorched, Blue Steel, Vanilla, Damascus Steel, Forest DDPAT, Urban Masked, Freehand, Stained, Bright Water, Safari Mesh, Rust Coat, Gloves - Bloodhound Gloves (Charred, Snakebite, Guerrilla, Bronzed), Driver Gloves (Snow Leopard, King Snake, Crimson Weave, Imperial Plaid, Black Tie, Lunar Weave, Diamondback, Rezan the Red, Overtake, Queen Jaguar, Convoy, Racing Green), Hand Wraps (Cobalt Skulls, CAUTION!, Overprint, Slaughter, Leather, Giraffe, Badlands, Spruce DDPAT, Arboreal, Constrictor, Desert Shamagh, Duct Tape), Moto Gloves (Spearmint, POW!, Cool Mint, Smoke Out, Finish Line, Polygon, Blood Pressure, Turtle, Boom!, Eclipse, 3rd Commando Company, Transport), Specialist Gloves (Crimson Kimono, Tiger Strike, Emerald Web, Field Agent, Marble Fade, Fade, Foundation, Lt. Commander, Crimson Web, Mogul, Forest DDPAT, Buckshot), Sport Gloves (Pandora's Box, Superconductor, Hedge Maze, Vice, Amphibious, Slingshot, Omega, Arid, Big Game, Nocts, Scarlet Shamagh, Bronze Morph), Hydra Gloves (Case Hardened, Emerald, Rattler, Mangrove), Broken Fang Gloves (Jade, Yellow-banded, Unhinged, Needle Point), Pistols - P2000 (Wicked Sick, Ocean Foam, Fire Element, Amber Fade, Corticera, Chainmail, Imperial Dragon, Obsidian, Scorpion, Handgun, Acid Etched), USP-S (Printstream, Kill Confirmed, Whiteout, Road Rash, Owergrowth, The Traitor, Neo-Noir, Dark Water, Orion, Blueprint, Stainless, Caiman, Serum, Monster Mashup, Royal Blue, Ancient Visions, Cortex, Orange Anolis, Ticket To Hell, Black Lotus, Cyrex, Check Engine, Guardian, Purple DDPAT, Torque, Blood Tiger, Flashback, Business Class, Pathfinder, Para Green), Lead Conduit, Glock-18 (Umbral Rabbit, Fade, Candy Apple, Bullet Queen, Synth Leaf, Neo-Noir, Nuclear Garden, Dragon Tatto, Reactor, Pink DDPAT, Twilight Galaxy, Sand Dune, Groundwater, Blue Fissure, Snack Attack, Water Elemental, Brass, Wasteland Rebel, Vogue, Franklin, Royal Legion, Gamma Doppler, Weasel, Steel Disruption, Ironwork, Grinder, High Beam, Moonrise, Oxide Blaze, Bunsen Burner, Clear Polymer, Bunsen Burner, Night), P250 (Re.built, Nuclear Threat, Modern Hunter, Splash, Whiteout, Vino Primo, Mehndi, Asiimov, Visions, Undertow, Cartel, See Ya Later, Gunsmoke, Splash, Digital Architect, Muertos, Red Rock, Bengal Tiger, Crimson Kimono, Wingshot, Metallic DDPAT, Hive, Dark Filigree, Mint Kimono), Five-Seven (Neon Kimono, Berries And Cherries, Fall Hazard, Crimson Blossom, Hyper Beast, Nitro, Fairy Tale, Case Hardened, Copper Galaxy, Angry Mob, Monkey Business, Fowl Play, Anodized Gunmetal, Hot Shot, Retrobution, Boost Protocol), CZ75-Auto (Chalice, Crimson Web, Emerald Quartz, The Fuschia is Now, Nitro, Xiangliu, Yellow Jacket, Victoria, Poison Dart, Syndicate, Eco, Hexane, Pole, Tigris), Tec-9 (Rebel, Terrace, Nuclear Threat, Hades, Rust Leaf, Decimator, Blast From, Orange Murano, Toxic, Fuel Injector, Remote Control, Bamboo Forest, Isaac, Avalanche, Brother, Re-Entry, Blue Titanium, Bamboozle), R8 Revolver (Banana Cannon, Fade, Blaze, Crimson Web, Liama Cannon, Crazy 8, Reboot, Canal Spray, Night, Amber Fade), Desert Eagle (Blaze, Hand Cannon, Fennec Fox, Sunset Storm, Emerald Jörmungandr, Pilot, Hypnotic, Golden Koi, Printstream, Cobalt Disruption, Code Red, Ocean Drive, Midnight Storm, Kumicho Dragon, Crimson Web, Heirloom, Night Heist, Mecha Industries, Night, Conspiracy, Trigger Discipline, Naga, Directive, Light Rail), Dual Berettas (Flora Carnivora, Duelist, Cobra Strike, Black Limba, Emerald, Hemoglobin, Twin Turbo, Marina, Melondrama, Pyre, Retribution, Briar, Dezastre, Royal Consorts, Urban Shock, Dualing Dragons, Panther, Balance), Rifles - Galil (Aqua Terrace, Winter Forest, Chatterbox, Sugar Rush, Pheonix Blacklight, CAUTION!, Orange DDPAT, Cerberus, Dusk Ruins, Eco, Chromatic Aberration, Stone Cold, Tuxedo, Sandstorm, Shattered, Urban Rubble, Rocket Pop, Kami, Crimson Tsunami, Connexion), SCAR-20 (Fragments, Brass, Cyrex, Palm, Splash Jam, Cardiac, Emerald, Crimson Web, Magna Carta, Stone Mosaico, Bloodsport, Enforcer), AWP (Duality, Gungnir, Dragon Lore, Prince, Medusa, Desert Hydra, Fade, Lightning Strike, Oni Taiji, Silk Tiger, Graphite, Chromatic Aberration, Asiimov, Snake Camo, Boom, Containment Breach, Wildfire, Redline, Electric Hive, Hyper Beast, Neo-Noir, Man-o'-war, Pink DDPAT, Corticera, Sun in Leo, Elite Build, Fever Dream, Atheris, Mortis, PAW, Exoskeleton, Worm God, POP AWP, Phobos, Acheron, Pit Viper, Capillary, Safari Mesh), AK-47 (Head Shot, Wild Lotus, Gold Arabesque, X-Ray, Fire Serpent, Hydroponic, Panthera Onca, Case Hardened, Vulcan, Jet Set, Fuel Injector, Bloodsport, Nightwish, First Class, Neon Rider, Asiimov, Red Laminate, Aquamarine Revenge, The Empress, Wasteland Rebel, Jaguar, Black Laminate, Leet Museo, Neon Revolution, Redline, Frontside Misty, Predator, Legion of Anubis, Point Disarray, Orbit Mk01, Blue Laminate, Green Laminate, Emerald Pinstripe, Cartel, Phantom Disruptor, Jungle Spray, Safety Net, Rat Rod, Baroque Purple, Slate, Elite Build, Uncharted, Safari Mesh), FAMAS (Sundown, Prime Conspiracy, Afterimage, Commemoration, Dark Water, Spitfire, Pulse, Eye of Athena, Meltdown, Rapid Eye Move, Roll Cage, Styx, Mecha Industrie, Djinn, ZX Spectron, Valence, Neural Net, Night Borre, Hexne), M4A4 (Temukau, Howl, Poseidon, Asiimov, Daybreak, Hellfire, Zirka, Red DDPAT, Radiation Hazard, Modern Hunter, The Emperor, The Coalition, Bullet Rain, Cyber Security, X-Ray, Dark Blossom, Buzz Kill, In Living Color, Neo-Noir, Desolate Space, 龍王 (Dragon King), Royal Paladin, The Battlestar, Global Offensive, Tooth Fairy, Desert-Strike, Griffin, Evil Daimyo, Spider Lily, Converter), M4A1-S (Emphorosaur-S, Welcome to the Jungle, Imminent Danger, Knight, Hot Rod, Icarus Fell, Blue Phosphor, Printstream, Master Piece, Dark Water, Golden Coil, Bright Water, Player Two, Atomic Alloy, Guardian, Chantico's Fire, Hyper Beast, Mecha Industries, Cyrex, Control Panel, Moss Quartz, Nightmare, Decimator, Leaded Glass, Basilisk, Blood Tiger, Briefing, Night Terror, Nitro, VariCamo, Flashback), SG 553 (Cyberforce, Hazard Pay, Bulldozer, Integrale, Dragon Tech, Ultraviolet, Colony IV, Hypnotic, Cyrex, Candy Apple, Barricade, Pulse), SSG 08 (Death Strike, Sea Calico, Blood in the Water, Orange Filigree, Dragonfire, Big Iron, Bloodshot, Detour, Turbo Peek, Red Stone), AUG (Akihabara Accept, Flame Jörmungandr, Hot Rod, Midnight Lily, Sand Storm, Carved Jade, Wings, Anodized Navy, Death by Puppy, Torque, Bengal Tiger, Chameleon, Fleet Flock, Random Access, Momentum, Syd Mead, Stymphalian, Arctic Wolf, Aristocrat, Navy Murano), G3SG1 (Chronos, Violet Murano, Flux, Demeter, Orange Kimono, The Executioner, Green Apple, Arctic Polar Camo, Contractor), SMGs - P90 (Neoqueen, Astral Jörmungandr, Run and Hide, Emerald Dragon, Cold Blooded, Death by Kitty, Baroque Red, Vent Rush, Blind Spot, Asiimov, Trigon, Sunset Lily, Death Grip, Leather, Nostalgia, Fallout Warning, Tiger Pit, Schermatic, Virus, Shapewood, Glacier Mesh, Shallow Grave, Chopper, Desert Warfare), MAC-10 (Sakkaku, Hot Snakes, Copper Borre, Red Filigree, Gold Brick, Graven, Case Hardened, Stalker, Amber Fade, Neon Rider, Tatter, Curse, Propaganda, Nuclear Garden, Disco Tech, Toybox, Heat, Indigo), UMP-45 (Wild Child, Fade, Blaze, Day Lily, Minotaur's Labyrinth, Crime Scene, Caramel, Bone Pile, Momentum, Primal Saber), MP7 (Teal Blossom, Fade, Nemesis, Whiteout, Asterion, Bloosport, Abyssal Apparition, Full Stop, Special Delivery, Neon Ply, Asterion, Ocean Foam, Powercore, Scorched, Impire), PP-Bizon (Modern Hunter, Rust Coat, Forest Leaves, Antique, High Roller, Blue Streak, Seabird, Judgement of Anubis, Bamboo Print, Embargo, Chemical Green, Coblat Halftone, Fuel Rod, Photic Zone, Irradiated Alert, Carbon Fiber), MP9 (Featherweight, Wild Lily, Pandora's Box, Stained Glass, Bulldozer, Dark Age, Hot Rod, Hypnotic, Hydra, Rose Iron, Music Box, Setting Sun, Food Chain, Airlock, Mount Fuji, Starlight Protector, Ruby Poison Dart, Deadly Poison), MP5-SD (Liquidation, Oxide Oasis, Phosphor, Nitro, Agent, Autumn Twilly), Shotguns, Machineguns - Sawed-Off (Kiss♥Love, First Class, Orange DDPAT, Rust Coat, The Kraken, Devourer, Mosaico, Wasteland Princess, Bamboo Shadow, Copper, Serenity, Limelight, Apocalypto), XM1014 (Frost Borre, Ancient Lore, Red Leather, Elegant Vines, Banana Leaf, Jungle, Urban Perforated, Grassland, Blaze Orange, Heaven Guard, VariCamo Blue, Entombed, XOXO, Seasons, Tranquility, Bone Machine, Incinegator, Teclu Burner, Black Tie, Zombie Offensive, Watchdog), Nova (Baroque Orange, Hyper Beast, Green Apple, Antique, Modern Hunter, Walnut, Forest Leaves, Graphite, Blaze Orange, Rising Skull, Tempest, Bloomstick, Interlock, Quick Sand, Moon in Libra, Clean Polymer, Red Quartz, Toy Soldier), MAG-7 (Insomnia, Cinqueda, Counter Terrace, Prism Terrace, Memento, Chainmail, Hazard, Justice, Bulldozer, Silver, Core Breach, Firestarter, Praetorian, Heat, Hard Water, Monster Call, BI83 Spectrum, SWAG-7), M249 (Humidor, Shipping Forecast, Blizzard Marbleized, Downtown, Jungle DDPAT, Nebula Crusader, Impact Drill, Emerald Poison Dart), Negev (Mjölnir, Anodized Navy, Palm, Power Loader, Bratatat, CaliCamo, Phoenix Stencil, Infrastructure, Boroque Sand), Wear - Factory New (FN), Minimal Wear (MW), Field-Tested (FT), Well-Worn (WW), Battle-Scarred (BS), Stickers Holo/Foil/Gold - Katowice 2014, Krakow 2017, Howling Dawn, Katowice 2015, Crown, London 2018, Cologne 2014, Boston 2018, Atlanta 2017, Cluj-Napoca 2015, DreamHack 2014, King on the Field, Harp of War, Winged Difuser, Cologne 2016, Cologne 2015, MLG Columbus 2016, Katowice 2019, Berlin 2019, RMR 2020, Stockholm 2021, Antwerp 2022, Swag Foil, Flammable foil, Others - Souvenirs, Agents, Pins, Passes, Gifts, Music Kits, Cases, Keys, Capsules, Packages, Patches

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There's not going to be nearly as much here as there was for Phil Housley. Housley had obvious players he had helped develop. He was in charge of the power play.
Mike Van Ryn managed to coach the AHL's Tucson Roadrunners to the second round in 2018, his lone season as their coach. He's got a reputation for being a strong X's and O's coach.
He's been the Blues assistant in charge of the defense since 2018-19. Oh hey, they won the Cup that year! But...he wasn't really that instrumental in developing 28 year old Alex Pietrangelo. Colton Parayko had a very strong campaign at the age of 25, and has stalled out trajectory-wise since then. Vince Dunn hadn't been consistent, and leveled-up significantly after moving on to Seattle. Krug and Faulk are both the same players they were when they were acquired.
He very specifically did not do the penalty kill or power play. Marc Savard, then Jim Montgomery had power play responsibilities.
Having solid goaltending does tend to alter the view of how the defense is performing, and Gord knows that Jordan Binnington is...let's go with "mercurial". He's doing well, or Ville Husso took his job! The defense looks good! Binnington is a spaz? The defense has the sads. The past season, sans Jim Montgomery helping out, the defense was a veritable Smashing Pumpkins album ("Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" for the younglings).
There's not too much evidence supporting Van Ryn as being a real strong option. He certainly assisted Berube and the Blues to their Cup victory, but that was a veteran-heavy corps that didn't need a lot of direction to coax the best out of them. The difference was they got competent goaltending. The team D being a mess in St. Louis cost Van Ryn and Craig MacTavish their jobs this past season, and I see little reason to add Van Ryn outside of him being a former NHL assistant coach.
If I'm ranking them so far: 1) Phil Housley, 2) (and distant at that) Mike Van Ryn.
The verdict: Pass. They can, and should, do better. Need help on the power play? Get someone who has experience at improving the power play.

so my summer vacation started about a week ago and ive been feeling lonely ever since...like, before the vacation i had purpose (studying for exams) and used to meet up with my friends at school. now, i just go out to the gym to exercise an hour or two a day and for piano lessons which are once a week... my friends all live close to each other and far away from me and they always hang out in places close to them (duh). the problem is that i cant afford going out with them frequently because an uber to there and food and an uber back home will empt my wallet and im still young to get a driving license so im stuck at home alone cuz my parents both work and i dont have any siblings... im trying to work in a department store like sephora (cause i know a lot about fragrances) but the only problem is that im underage (17). i also want to make a simple movie to kill the boredom but who am i going to film it with? myself? got bored of movies and tv shows and even games dont hit the same anymore...any advice on what to do?

TLDR: my wife and i share one car, and have for almost our entire relationship. i want us to each have our own, it’d be more expensive but i think worth it.
backstory: we both grew up in a place where you don’t really ever need a car. whenever i needed one i’d rent, borrow from family or asked for a favor.
we got our first car when her parents sold us theirs, we both put our money together and bought it. because she’s older and has been driving the longest she was naturally the more experienced and confident driver. Point is she drove that car the most. that was 4 years ago.
when we moved cities, she was doing most of the driving. our old car started giving us issues so ended up selling it and buying a new one. new one is under my name, i paid most of the down payment (something like 60/40 split) and we used our old car as a trade also.
a few relevant details: - early on she drove the car the most because her job was outside the house during the pandemic and i WFH for the full year. the next two years i worked a hybrid schedule with most days at home. she now works fully from home as of a year ago.

• I earn almost 3x more and so i pay a larger chunk (2x more on average) of our expenses, including the car note. gas is split kind of evenly but since i drive it more than she does now i end up fueling up frequently

the current city we live in- you must have a car in to get anywhere. we haven’t really made friends here, tried and made coupled friends which kind of fizzled from moving away, different places in life, etc. We’re both trying to make individual friends (and some coupled friends too) and get outside more both together and separately. I’ll add that we are not i a great spot in our relationship- something happened that changed our dynamic and she’s camp i want this to work and i’m not sure it can, still working on it. part of this for me is I want more independence from her and our relationship, we’ve been enmeshed for so long i just never really noticed it. I guess i was happy then.
though it hasn’t been a huge issue yet, i find it annoying to have to check in “do you need the car on X days” or “i’m signing up for this class, when are your games?” to make sure it doesn’t clash, etc. if she makes plans with people it’s either i drop her off or she takes the car and i’m at home, which i don’t really mind but sometimes want the option to do my own thing.
she feels it’s an expense we don’t need though i can afford it just fine, i feel this might be tied to she doesn’t want to spend more on a car that she’s not driving every day. her reply is that if either of us need the car at the same time, one can take an uber or be dropped off.
AITA for wanting separate cars? i feel stuck, how i can talk her into buying her own? i thought of offering to money for her downpayment and pay half her car note as a compromise. —

As the title suggests, my recently purchased ROG phone 6D ultimate is basically garbage for emulators because of the lack of "DRIVER SUPPORT"!?
What the hell?
Even though the benchmarks are better than 8G1? Drivers are what kill it?
Wow.

Rent is killing me.
I will have $50 in my account after I pay rent this month. Payday is soon but electric/wifi/gas cannot wait.
I work, +60 hours a week, but I am struggling financially.
I have been using savings for a while but that is no longer a option.
Anyone have suggestions on side hustles?
Need anything done?
Not asking for a hand out, would not take it.
UbeGrubHub is not a option, my car is not the most fuel efficient, and the tires are on their last leg.

Purtle's Internet Lineup for June 1st, 2023 4:27pm
Pics:

• i’ve been struggling to put this into words for a while but i think a lot of this AI art craze comes down to these guys feeling the joy of being creative for the first time and mistaking it for something much deeper. https://twitter.com/tommgran/status/1663884033674158080
  
• a huge part of the bad vibes you feel...everywhere these days is because every single aspect of our lives is being squeezed by companies shaking us down, and we're reaching a breaking point https://twitter.com/LukePlunkett/status/1664067897629769728
  
• There’s a scene in the Rugrats where to show the passage of time they focus on the house as trees bloom, the sun rises higher, leaves fall off & then it snows. Standard stuff. Then it cuts to Drew greeting Stu saying “crazy weather we’ve had this week.” That, to me, is cinema. https://twitter.com/ComicPrintingUK/status/1663784314977353730
  
• Street Fighter 6 Stuff
  
  • Fans of the classics, rejoice! Behold Outfit 2 for all 18 characters featuring looks for returning fighters from previous games. New characters have their personalities on full display in their own drip. https://twitter.com/StreetFightestatus/1664028982529097728
  • they animated the toes in Street Fighter 6 https://twitter.com/JaqubAjmal/status/1664036058827223043
  • God dayum, Cammy. Yeah, you can definitely see why they had that hand placement in her win pose. https://twitter.com/AmateraTsun69/status/1664031000286953472
  • cammy cheeks god damn https://twitter.com/RainbowMikaFan/status/1664030252882960384
  • juri has her sfv outfit uncensored...and she does this https://twitter.com/jotamide/status/1664072239417815040
  • 4k screenshots of the new Alternate Outfits for Street Fighter 6 [thread] https://twitter.com/Rooflemongestatus/1664091165480591363
  • Dhalsim air pressure https://twitter.com/findyourtechgg/status/1664332604047237120
  • Kazunoko's Cammy 101 https://twitter.com/findyourtechgg/status/1664337167282479104
  • THIS CAMMY ART I UNLOCKED IS INSANE https://twitter.com/UltimaShadowX/status/1664344843730952229

Clips:

• Battlefront 2 is hilarious when you and your boys see a Jedi. everybody get to scattering immediately, not tryna deal with that https://twitter.com/LeanandCuisine/status/1664191521099247619
  
• Rarest M&M? https://clips.twitch.tv/AbnegateFlaccidCoffeeKevinTurtle-xZdJtaR1gHH2UyF-
  
• Twitch CEO managed to hug and punch an anime girl for the first time https://clips.twitch.tv/PeacefulIncredulousChinchillaBleedPurple-eUVOGu-WozpvcABR
  

Videos

• Game Writing is unique [Planning & Game Design] Sakurai [3:40] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssvIEm_2mYM

Articles/News/Other

• Activision Blizzard are sending Cease and desist letters to Call of Duty modders for making private server. They started making them because the official server were unsafe for players as they could get thier accounts stolen, IP address shown and even be sent malware. https://twitter.com/Sin_Salt/status/1663944746312650758
  
• kotaku getting in on the reddit api issue - Reddit is killing the best way to read the site https://twitter.com/Kotaku/status/1664067465670795266
  
• BREAKING: The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a concrete company that wanted to sue a union because a strike cost them money. The 8-1 decision means the company, Glacier Northwest Inc., can sue the union over a strike where truck drivers left wet concrete in their trucks. https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1664287708070461441
  

<< < > >>
Book: Black Canary
Set: 85
Arc: Fletching
 
〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰
 
Oliver ran when he heard her scream. The supersonic sound waves shook the top floor of the building and he didn't even bother to pull on a shirt before he was racing for the spare bedroom.
 
Dinah Lance stood standing near the bed, staring at the empty space with abject horror. Ever so slowly her blue eyes swiveled to pierce him on the spot.
 
He suddenly understood why her former team had been called the Birds of Prey.
 
The woman who looked out at him tilted her head slightly, like a predator who had spotted a small animal. Her mouth twisted in seriousness and Ollie slowly slid into the most defensive position he could assume and offered her a suave smile.
 
“Not a morning person, ey?” The cocky side of him urged him to cross his arms and lean casually against the doorframe, but something in her eyes stopped him from making any unnecessary moves.
 
“Oliver.” Her voice was firm, but clipped. Different from when she had called him and had been so pent up with rage. This was a different beast entirely. “I’m trying to give you a chance to explain, but you are not helping.” Her chin jutted towards the empty bed, her face pale at whatever her eyes beheld.
 
He ran a list of possible scenarios through his mind quickly, trying to understand what magic might be lingering, and what it might be causing her to see.
 
“Dinah, I promise it’s not what it looks like.” The excuse sounded weak even to his ears and he cringed internally. Taken out of context he really did sound like the flippant playboy he was renowned to be.
 
A tense muscle worked in her jaw, and her fingers clenched and unclenched in a tight fist. “How is William Zard dead in the bed not what it looks like.”
 
It was not a question, and Oliver could tell he was quickly running out of time to state his case before the heroine decided that he had gone rogue and crossed the unbreakable line that most heroes refused to cross.
 
“You were placed under a strong illusionary magic. You’ve been out for more than a month. You’re dad's fine. Thinks you're still in Markovia” He winced. “Sorry about lying to him, but I couldn't exactly explain why you would be staying in Oliver Queen's penthouse spare bedroom.” Oliver took a deep breath. “Whatever you’re seeing isn't there, Dinah.”
 
Her eyes flashed with quickfire anger but she took a long moment to look at him as if seeing him for the first time. Dinah blinked, clearing some unreadable emotion from her eyes before turning a glance back to the bed and heaving a deep sigh.
 
He waited.
 
“Can you get me a laptop and a coffee? I have a feeling that isn't the last we’ll hear of William Zard.” She asked quietly, and Oliver watched as the woman became the heroine and piece by piece locked her face down into a mask of neutrality.
 
He could only offer a nod, shifting himself into the Green Arrow mindset and leaving her to become who she needed to be to face the villain.
 
〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰
 
Dinah breathed in and out. Again. Closed her eyes and reopened them. One moment the body of William Zard had been laying on the bed, an arrow through his chest and the next it was gone.
 
Magic, Ollie had said. After everything that had happened…..Dinah breathed again. How long ago was Markovia now? Had everything in Seattle settled down? How was her dad?
 
Her hand itched for her phone, but it was no use messaging her dad now, especially if he thought she was still out of the country. Better to keep him safe, stop him from worrying.
 
And Oliver? Of all people in the world for her to fall under some magic spell around it ended up being him? Dinah resisted the urge to smack her head into the wall repeatedly. She made a habit of appearing strong around men like Oliver Queen. Not someone to be messed with, and she had gone and fallen immediately into a magical coma.
 
“Not your finest moment Di.” She shook her head, clearing it of the wayward thoughts and focusing instead on the issue at hand - William Zard.
 
It was clearer now that she was thinking clearly that it had all been an illusion. But the question was why? She had been mostly out of the spotlight until the vampire incident in Markovia and everything had happened so quickly afterwards it was almost impossible to imagine word spreading that quickly.
 
Ollie cleared his throat behind her, a courtesy gesture made so that he didn't surprise her. The fact that he had enough empathy to do even that was surprising enough.
 
“I only have a spare Lenovo, if that works for you?” He held up the offending piece of machinery and Dinah had to resist shaking her head. The laptop looked brand new, rarely if ever opened. Maybe a sponsored gift for the playboy who already had more technology then he knew what to do with.
 
She decided not to speak, gesturing with her chin to the small glass table at the end of the bed where she’d been sleeping. It was only then that she noticed what she had assumed was a single laptop based on the width was actually two.
 
He gave her a look that was immediately familiar as the ‘don't even think about denying me this’ that she had often offered to others and took his seat silently.
 
Furrowing a brow, Dinah took the laptop and settled into the chair opposite Oliver Queen and began to work.
 
〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰
 
Ollie was not used to being so…..distracted while he was in the guise of the green archer. He thought it would be easy to slip back into the rough edged vigilante around Dinah, since she too, had seemingly slipped into her Black Canary personality as if it was a weapon to be used against him.
 
But then the damned woman would furrow her brows and mumble something under breath and Oliver Queen would find himself snapped out of his brooding reverie and forced to look at her. Every time he did he found himself more and more reluctant to return to being the brooding piece of shit he knew as Green Arrow.
 
It wasn't, after all, the Arrow part of him that had decided to save her.
 
He watched as Dinah’s eyes widened, a sure sign that her magic with technology had worked wonders and she had found exactly what they were searching for.
 
“What is it?” His voice got deeper as he asked the question, forcing himself into the rough-edged disguise to the point where he saw surprise quickly flash in Canary’s eyes.
 
“Zard. He went to the same university my mom did. Studied the same course.” Oliver stared at her blankly. She gave him a pointed look then sighed deeply when it became clear he wasn’t exactly following. “My bet is he was obsessed with her. And when she died and he couldn’t get her ....” Dinah’s voice trailed off, her blue eyes staring off into the middle distance, clearly remembering something from the illusions.
 
“He took you.” There was a strange sense of violence to his voice that snapped the Canary back from wherever in her mind she had traveled. She nodded, her only sign of acknowledgement.
 
Oliver clenched and unclenched his fingers. He was not necessarily a violent man, despite what others thought of him. It was one of the reasons he had chosen arrows as his main source of damage. They were quick, efficient, and wouldn't kill anyone unless shot incorrectly. But the quickfire image of his arrow piercing The Wizard's chest was almost welcome, after all the illusionist had done to Dinah.
 
“How do we track him?” The question hung in the air between them for several seconds while Dinah watched him reign in his anger.
 
“We don’t.” He went to interrupt, but she continued on, silencing him with a look. “We need help. Magical help more precisely.” She bit her lip, obviously running names and ideas through her head. “I think I might know someone. A friend of a friend that I used to work with.” Dinah dug the mobile from her pockets, wincing as she ignored the many calls and texts from her father.
 
“Who?” Oliver didn't like working with others. He had been there. Tried that. It never worked out in his favor.
 
Dinah offered him a quick smile as her fingers blurred across her screen.
 
“Zatanna Zatara.”
 
〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰  
Dinah told Oliver that it would not take the magician long to respond to the text. She had not, however, told the archer that Zatanna’s preferred method of local travel was portal.
 
The two women rarely talked after Dinah left the Prey Birds, but she had kept the magician's number in her cellphone. Just in case. She hadn’t had much hope when everything in San Fran happened, and after, with Markovia the two hadn't exactly had a lot of time to catch up.
 
She huffed a laugh, ignoring the look Ollie gave her. She was damn well allowed to laugh whenever she wanted.
 
As the thought crossed her mind a small golden circle with runes the color of the night sky appeared in the center of the sitting room. Oliver jumped several meters, retrieving a bow and arrow from the heavens knew where as the dark haired young woman stepped through the portal, the last words from her spell echoing in the air as the tear in space closed in on itself.
 
Zatanna surveyed the room quickly, dark eyes coming to rest on Dinah and a large smile spreading on her features. “Canary!” She swept Dinah up into a hug, twirling her around to get a good look at her. “It’s been so long. I always knew you’d end up with….” Her voice faded off as she finally took a moment to look between Dinah and Oliver, a light blush spreading across her features.
 
“Well. I can see I’m here for business and not for a pleasurable catch up.” The other woman gave Dinah a pointed look before turning a tight lipped smile on Oliver who had procured his green mask while the two embraced. “You must be Green Arrow. I’m Zatanna Zatara.”
 
The two shook, which, Dinah supposed, was more than she had bargained for.
 
“What’s up BC?” Zatanna wrinkled her nose after shaking Oliver's hand. “You smell like magic.”
 
Dinah grimaced, sniffing her hand like she would be able to catch the whiff of illusionary magic like Zatanna could. “Do you know of someone called William Zard? Powerful illusionist, studied magic in Tibet.”
 
The other magician's smile disappeared immediately and she nodded slowly. “He disappeared off the scene a few years ago, right about the time….” The young girl's eyes widened. “Right about the time you dropped out of the limelight.”
 
Dinah grimaced. “We think he was obsessed with my mom, and now me.” She hated saying those words aloud. It brought some type of strength to them, giving Zard the power instead of her.
 
Zatanna merely nodded, her mind clearly spinning.
 
“We need to find him.” Oliver offered resolutely, his bow lowered, but the arrow still knocked. It seemed he couldn't help but be wary of the magic user, even though he knew she was on their side. “Any ideas where to look?”
 
Zatanna glided to the door. Her eyes scanning the neon horizon, mumbling something incoherent under her breath before waving her gloved hand over the city-scape in front of her.
 
Magic, Dinah thought, as the large building appeared not even two blocks away, was kinda fucked up when one could hide a 10 story building in the middle of a city.
 
〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰
 
Dinah and Zatanna did not have to wait long for William Zard to try to work his magic. Mirrors greeted them on every surface of the rooftop, reflecting the slightly terrified look in each of their eyes and the thick smoke flowing through the area.
 
A dark laugh echoed from wall to wall, and the mirror in front of them began to change in front of their eyes. Zard’s pointed mustache and beard appeared first, before the dark blue-gray eyes and the rest of the man's lean build until he was before them.
 
Dinah gasped as she was eye to eye with The Wizard from her first night in the Firefly Lounge. Zard wore a long cloak and tophat along with a dark purple vest and black tie with golden clip to complete the ensemble of party magicians.
 
“Ah, the pretty songbird has finally returned to me.” The man in the mirror stepped to one side disappearing from the center mirror and appearing in the one next to Dinah instantly. His voice dropped to a whisper and a phantom finger stroked its way down her arm. “If you think it was good in your dreams, imagine what it will feel like in the real world.”
 
The next instant the mirror shattered. Dinah covered her eyes as the remnants of the lightning-yellow bolt from Zatanna’s hand simmered down to a more bearable midday glow. She shot her a grateful smile. She wasn't sure what she would have done in another moment or two.
 
Afterall, the illusions hadn't been all that bad. Had they?
 
She was saved from having to think about it any further by Ollie’s arrival to the rooftop. The stubborn man had chosen to climb instead of taking the easier, faster, magical method.
 
Zard’s image appeared in another mirror. His jovial demeanor switched for one of menace and anger. The Wizard turned a scorching eye on Dinah, his gaze flicking between her and Oliver. “You think this…..this……arrogant, idiot of a man can replace me? Me?”
 
His laugh this time was deeper, darker. Dinah couldn't help but slide a step closer to Ollie, afraid for the first time in a long time.
 
The move was not lost on William Zard, who offered her a sneer. “You’ve made your choice then. Just like your mother did. And now you’ll pay the same price she did.” As the last word fell from his lips Zard’s mirage multiplied onto every mirrored surface that the rooftop bar had to offer.
 
The once dark gray fog covering them began to shift as each of the Zard’s in the mirror chanted, turning a sickly green color that was already making Dinah choke and splutter. In one smooth motion Ollie grabbed an arrow in each hand, reaching out to shatter each of the mirrors on either side of him.
 
The smoke’s spread slowed, just barely.
 
“Break them.” He ordered, choosing not to think about the way Dinah had moved in front of him. As if she could protect him. As if she needed to protect him.
 
He still watched out of the corner of his eye the way the two women worked together to smash or shatter the remaining mirrors until each and every one had at least a chunk missing out of it, or was in pieces along the rooftop floor.
 
A slow clap echoed from the back of the room and Ollie immediately trained one of his arrows on the emerging William Zard. It was funny, beneath the clothing he looked just like any other love-sick obsessed man. A man with far more to gain than he had to lose.
 
William Zard sketched a slow bow, offering his hands in surrender to placate Ollie before he turned a saccharine smile to Dinah. “My sweet, special Miss Lance.” Dinah flinched, and Ollie tightened his grip on his bow string. The Wizard barely spared him a glance as he continued, taking a step closer to Dinah. “We don’t have to do this. You don't have to do this. Life could be easy. No more fighting, no more fear. Noone you love will ever get hurt because of who you are, or what you do.” At these last words Zard did finally spare a glance for Ollie, his steel eyes seemingly staring into his soul, into the problems he had caused just by simply being Green Arrow.  
The Wizard offered his hand in a flourish to Dinah. The two were so close now that it was clear that any act on Ollie’s or Zatanna’s part would put her in danger as well.
 
Oliver Queen watched the war rage on Dinah’s face. The pain and hurt, determination and guilt. He watched her lift her hand.
 
“Dinah.” Her name left his lips without his bidding, and her blue eyes flicked to his, brimming with some unclear emotion. “Don’t.” He wasn’t sure if he was asking or begging, nor did he care that voice broke on the word.
 
Oliver Queen also wasn’t sure whether his heart broke, or if the hole in his heart mended when Dinah Lance chose not to take The Wizards hand and instead chose to kick William Zard straight in the balls.

Cousin got T-boned by an undocumented driver about a month or two ago. It wasn't a bad hit, but his back has been killing him ever since. He went to the doctor and got an xray for his back, but it came back inconclusive. He has no health insurance and the car is still drivable.
He's scared that using it will cause the rate to increase. In addition, the deductible is 900$ (which I offered to pay).
I'm worried that he's taking his injury lightly and this will cause permanent damage. Especially given that it's been almost 2 months and there's been zero recovery.
What steps can I offer to relieve his fears that using the insurance is worse than not using it.
Edit- A year ago, I cashed out a car and injury claim as I was not at fault in an accident. Used the money and fixed the car myself. Is this possible with an uninsured motorist claim?

I got the phone # of my last Uber driver, and he said he'd take me Saturday morning for 20 dinars. Is this reasonable? Are there any buses that go there?

Public opinion of TriMet's decisions have been pretty mixed, mostly because TriMet's decisions are so convoluted that they can be a real challenge to understand. In reality, Metro and Portlanders need to have a bigger civic conversation about the future of TriMet, looking at the big picture. We have 3 looming existential crises of TriMet to be concerned about that are bigger than revenue dips, crime, or homeless people.
Civic leaders and the public are focused on a quick "fix" for TriMet revenue drops - even though we've seen this coming for a long time, it's very predictable that TriMet's Board of Directors acts at the last minute. Also, very predictably, TriMet's Board opted for a fare increase because over the previous 20 years that's been a go-to answer to every problem (except for that one time they killed Fareless Square). The politically appointed boards of TriMet and Metro lack the unique specialized knowledge of the issues I'll bring up here. If TriMet knows about these larger issues, they're obviously burring it from public view. In the short term, increasing fares is like putting fresh paint on a house that's on fire; in this situation, that paint is HIGHLY flammable.
First - fare hikes as a tactic is a brain-dead move. Just the most utterly stupid and self-sabotaging response to a looming budget shortfall. I'm dwelling on this because it illustrates their terrible decision-making, which is functional proof they have no idea what they're doing. Some of the core reasons for this:

• Increasing fares reduces utilization. Higher cost means fewer people ride, which will decrease the ridership revenue. It will also marginally increase the number of people who won't pay (funny story, some of those who don't pay actually can't afford to). TriMet isn't a monopoly or inelastic service, and plenty of other choices exist that didn't exist 20 years ago: an actual bike share, scooters, electric bikes, UbeLyft, shared vehicles, and more bike paths. Before the pandemic, it was common that I would bus into downtown for work and then take a Lyft home because it wasn't all that expensive, like $8 more than a bus ride - TriMet's price increases make a system that wasn't very competitive simply less compelling.
  
• Across Portland we need to go through a process of austerity and downsizing government. I absolutely support Wheeler putting a pause on rate increases, but for God's sake, we have far too much largesse in every layer of government. If you need to learn what I'm talking about, read my old article on Parks & Rec. So many divisions/agencies have doubled their staff while reducing service levels. It's bonkers. Cutting throats needs to be an imperative. This is because the great majority of public sector employees in Oregon and Portland are incompetent, redundant, and only exist because Oregon and Portland have been reluctant to use automation. And I don't mean the cutting-edge AI stuff, I'm talking about people who still handle business processes as if they're paper forms. I could tell so many stories from my professional experience - but you'll have to take my word for it for now: culling this bureaucracy is the right move, and until there's a significant downsizing, the political class is taking none of the financial crisis or cost of living situation seriously.
  
• TriMet's operating budget/revenue is primarily Payroll Taxes, not passenger revenue. About 20-30% of TriMet's budget comes from people buying fares, whereas the bulk of money TriMet needs comes from payroll taxes that businesses pay directly. Because of this, transit activists (including myself) have been proponents of increasing the payroll taxes marginally to make TriMet free for riders. Of course, fareless transit comes with a wide variety of new and different problems (that's an article for another time). Still, when you understand that only a sliver of revenue comes from fares, increasing the fare simply results in a marginal increase in revenue. The much bigger problem is going to businesses investing outside of Metro, and changing workforces that 1) won't pay payroll taxes reliably, 2) don't need people to go into the office. Think about the longer-term game here: is TriMet's board going to increase fares as utilization drops and payroll taxes continually diminish? (See my point above about how their default answer is "yes" because it's the only politically expedient answer.)
  

Reading comments about the fare hikes, most of the public thinks TriMet is dealing with a safety or utilization issue. Both of these are 100% true: soft-on-crime progressives have wholly obliterated the working class perception of TriMet safety - there are so many different ways this has happened, but we should thank so many people in the media and political class: Ana del Rocio's crying wolf about racism in fare inspections (and the media entertaining it), or Mike Schmidt deinstitutionalizing of the justice system, or Legislature's inability to act on the massive mental health crisis and drug addiction crisis in Oregon. No matter the underlying cause, we have a system where deranged violent mentally ill tweakers can be disruptive on the train, but working-class people face a $250 fine if they can't afford a $2.50 ($2.80) ticket. TriMet is less safe, especially the light rail and bus lines. We could hypothetically talk about various policy and infrastructure changes, such as turnstiles and security guards - but pragmatically, this won't do shit when our society has adopted a philosophy of transforming the urban core into an open-air insane asylum and opened the doors to the prisons. This safety issue is well beyond TriMet's scope, and even if there was consensus among TriMet and Metro to solve this, the entire justice system and Legislature is still broken.

Fare Hikes and Utilization is the Red Herring - Let's talk about TriMet's future

In reality, multiple design choices made decades ago set us up for failure. But we also have to thank brain-dead progressive lunatics and corrupt politicos who have steered our transit decision-making into the ground.
There are three specific issues I'm going to talk about, with each becoming more consequential and disastrous for TriMet:

• Hub and Spoke Design and the need for a redesign of the entire system to fit new commuting/transit patterns
  
• Portland Light Rail's short cars are a capacity problem not worth the price tag to fix
  
• Autonomous vehicles are here, and it's just going to get worse for TriMet
  

The strategic design of TriMet's system is broken, and it's been broken before.

If you looked at a map of TriMet's bus and rail system, you'd see a design pattern often referred to as a "Radial Design" or sometimes a "Hub And Spoke" design. The Hub and Spoke strategy is building our transit system around centralized locations to connect to other routes. For Portland the idea is to go downtown (or sometimes a Park and Ride) where you can connect to your next destination. This is why the majority of bus routes and all the max routes go downtown, to our Transit Mall and Pioneer Square.
Downtown planning was a smart idea in the 1960s when it was coupled with Main Street economic theory and prototype urban development zones - all of this wrapped up in the 1972 Downtown Plan policy. During these decades, the primary economic idea of urban revitalization was that downtown cores could provide better business climates and shopping districts that amplify economic activity synergistically. In other words, packing all the office jobs and luxury shopping in one area is good for workers, business, and civic planning.
All very smart ideas in yester-year, so TriMet became focused on serving the downtown business community myopically. This myopia became so paramount that it was considered illegitimate (actually taboo, borderline illegal) if you used a Park & Ride facility to park and NOT ride downtown. Amanda Fritz once explained that we couldn't expand Barbur Transit Center because that would result in students parking at Barbur Transit Center and riding the bus to PCC Sylvania. This view implies that TriMet exists only to service downtown workers, not the students, not the impoverished mom needing to go to a grocery store.
How does TriMet's hub and spoke design represent its purpose?
Portland's unspoken rule of transit philosophy is that jobs pay for the system (remember, business payroll taxes pay for most of it), so TriMet should be focused on serving people utilizing it for their job - employers pay for it, and they get value out of it. But this is both unspoken (never said aloud) and largely unobserved. The whole idea of TriMet as a social service to serve low-income people, to help impoverished people - well, those ideas were just lukewarm political rhetoric that is tossed out as soon as some Undesirable with tattered clothing reeking of cigarettes gets aboard - then Portlanders jump right back "this is for workers only!" Sadly, there hasn't ever been a public consensus of why TriMet exists because I could equally argue that TriMet's purpose isn't serving the working class; it's actually vehicle emissions reductions - but here, too, reality contradicts that this is the purpose for why we operate TriMet. TriMet's real purpose seems to be "Spend money on lofty capital projects" and if we want to be cynical about it, we can elaborate "…because large capital projects enable grift, embezzlement, and inflating property values for developers."
We haven't always depended upon a hub and spoke design. A great article from Jarrett Walker written in 2010 on his Human Transit blog explains in "The Power and Pleasure of Grids"

Why aren't all frequent networks grids? The competing impulse is the radial network impulse, which says: "We have one downtown. Everyone is going there, so just run everything to there." Most networks start out radial, but some later transition to more of a grid form, often with compromises in which a grid pattern of routes is distorted around downtown so that many parallel routes converge there. You can see this pattern in many cities, Portland for example. Many of the lines extending north and east out of the city center form elements of a grid, but converge on the downtown. Many other major routes (numbered in the 70s in Portland's system) do not go downtown, but instead complete the grid pattern. This balance between grid and radial patterns was carefully constructed in 1982, replacing an old network in which almost all routes went downtown.

Over the years the grid pattern was neglected in favor of a downtown-focused investment strategy. To a real degree it made practical sense: that's where the jobs were. But again, this is the presumption that TriMet and Mass Transit ought to service workers first, and there's not much consensus on that. But while we can't decide on TriMet's purpose, we can absolutely agree on one important thing: Downtown is dead.
No 5-star hotel is going to fix it. (As of writing, I'm not even convinced that this mafia-connected bamboozle of public fraud will open.) No "tough-on-crime" DA to replace Mike Schmidt, like Nathan Vasquez, will fix downtown. It's not JUST a crime problem: most of the problems we deal with today mirror the problems facing Portland in the 1960s, especially our inability to invest in good infrastructure people actually want to use. That's on top of crime, vandalism, and an unhealthy business ecosystem.
IF we want to maintain TriMet (and that's a big IF, for reasons I'll explain below), then it will be focused on something other than downtown. We need to move back to a grid-design transit system, as this is a much easier way to use transit to get around the city, no matter your destination. If TriMet continues to exist and operate fleets in 20-30 years, this is the only way it exists - because it will just be too inconvenient to ride downtown as a side quest to your destination, especially as we look at 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now.
Of course, we can only transform some parts of the transit infrastructure this way, and there are no uplifting and moving train tracks here. So light rail doesn't have a future in the grid system - but even without the grid system, light rail is doomed.

The fatal flaws of light rail in Portland.

I want to preface this by saying I like light rail as a strategy, it's not a bad system or bad civic investment. I could write another 5,000-word essay on why Seattle did an excellent job with light rail and the specific decisions Portland made wildly incorrectly. In transit advocacy the wacktavists inappropriately categorized skeptics of Portland's light rail as some soft bigotry - as if you're racist if you don't like Portland's light rail - even though, ironically, most light rail systems tend to be built for the preference of white culture and white workers, precisely what happened here in Portland and most cities (but this is all a story for another time).
Portland's light rail system has a capacity problem and has dealt with this capacity problem quietly for the last 20+ years. When you see the capacity problem, you can quickly understand this light rail system won't work in the future. All the other smart cities in the world that designed light rail realized they needed big long trains to move many people. Portland decided to limit the train car length to the size of our city blocks to save construction costs - and this has always been a fatal flaw.
Portland's highest capacity train car is our Type 5, according to Wikipedia it has a seating capacity of 72 and an overall capacity of 186 per train. Let's compare:

• Washington DC has 6-car trains capable of carrying 120 passengers per car, or 720 per train.
  
• Salt Lake City has a 4-car train capable of carrying 230 passengers per car, or 920 per train.
  
• Seattle's Link system has a 3 or 4-car train, each capable of carrying approximately 200 passengers per car, so 600 to 800 per train.
  

Portland's light rail lines have roughly the same people moving capacity as a single lane of a highway, maybe marginally more, maybe marginally less. These other cities have a light rail system that can move the same amount of people as an entire 3-lane highway.
You might suspect that Portland could simply run trains more frequently - but nah, that's impossible because the trains run through the central core of downtown Portland, and they're blocked by the real interfaces with road traffic and bottlenecks. TriMet/PBOT/Metro has offered rosy ideas that we could hypothetically run cars every 90 seconds, 2 minutes, 4 minutes, or 6 minutes (depending upon who you ask) - but these are garbage numbers invented out of thin air. For example, you could stand at Pioneer Courthouse Square at 4:50pm on a Wednesday in 2016 - there was a train opening doors to load passengers, and you could visibly see the next train at Pioneer Place Mall pulling into the station behind. Trains were running at approximately a 3 to 4 minute at peak - but on paper, TriMet will claim anything, as they don't give a shit about lying to the public. But the bigger problem is that trains were full. You might have to wait 90 minutes to find a train that offers a seat. And god forbid you had a bike.
I'm not making this very real capacity problem, Metro even acknowledges:

At the busiest hours of the day, 40 light rail trains must cross the river and traverse downtown – one train every 90 seconds. As the region grows and the demand for light rail increases, the region will need at least 64 MAX trains through downtown every hour, more than one train each minute. Our current system can't support that change.

Suppose you're silly enough to trust government propaganda. In that case, you can read the details of Metro study on this in 2019. If we assumed their numbers added up, it's just fucking impossible to run 62 trains per hour, because passenger loading and unloading can take a full minute (sometimes longer). So unless we want to apply substantial g-forces onto the passengers, the train isn't accelerating out of the stops fast enough. Not to mention how unreliable this whole system would be if a sole tweaker, bike rider, or person with a stroller held up the system for 2 minutes.
This is why the bottom line needs to be upfront about capacity - quoting Metro's study here:

Today MAX is limited to 2-car trains because of the length of downtown city blocks. A tunnel could allow for longer trains if the stations outside the downtown core are retrofitted. In the long-term, this could greatly increase MAX capacity.

Do you see that trick? Build a tunnel, yes - but the entire system has to be retrofitted. Literally every light rail station would need to be redesigned, the lines themselves recalculated for larger heavier trains - and extending platforms at Willow Creek might be simple enough, but how in the living fuck is Metro going to afford to expand the Zoo stop? Doubling the size of that platform would cost $500 million alone.
If the city weren't full of cheap dipshits, we would have elevated or buried our light rail lines in the 1980s or 90s, enabling longer train cars to run. Yes, we all knew back then that it was the best practice not to have light rail running on the street - it's less safe, less reliable, runs slower, and limits train car size. Oops.
Just to keep TriMet's own bullshit inflated utopian vision, it would mean spending another billion dollars just to unfuck downtown, bypass an aging bridge, and potentially allow a marginally higher volume of trains - which again is a band-aid on a mortal wound.
The real buried lede is that to add extra train cars means retrofitting all the stops in the system - that's tens of billions of dollars. You can argue costs, but Metro knows we need to do this. It means shutting down the system for a year or years while construction and retrofits happen. It's fucking outrageous. Is this system worth of people per line worth 20, 30, or 40 billion dollars? Fuck no, it ain't. Again, if we had a raging metropolis of industry and commerce downtown, we could reasonably entertain the idea for a moment - but we don't and never will again.
Some folks might argue that if we kill off the light rail system we'd lose out on all those lucrative Transit Oriented Developments. Originally the public was told that Transit Oriented Development strategy would cause a massive infusion of private investment because the light rail was so damn lucrative and desirable for Richard Florida's Creative Class. Turns out the Creative Class is now called today the Laptop Class, and they don't give a flying fuck about street cars, light rail, or walking scores - because most can't be bothered to put pants on during their "commute" from bed to desk. TOD was all a fantasy illusion from the beginning, as multiple studies about Portland commuters showed that college-educated white folks riding Max were equally comfortable riding their bike as a substitute for the same commute. All of these billions of dollars was to accommodate white fare-weather bikers. So here's my hot take on transit: pave over the rail lines and put in bike lanes, and boy, then you'd have a bike system to give folks like Maus a hardon. But of course, Bike Portland would complain because their focus isn't biking; they exist only to favor all poorly thought utopian transit ideas.
Another group of Max/TOD advocates would claim that TOD is better for disabled and impoverished people. And yeah, there's truth there, but see my entire argument above about the Hub & Spoke design of TriMet being the antithesis of transit as a social service. If you believe that TriMet should serve low-income people, you must advocate for a bus-centric grid design.
But even if you're a die-hard believer in light rail - there's another inevitable reality coming that is the nail in the coffin.

Autonomous vehicles will replace mass transit faster than the automobile replaced the horse.

I work in advanced technology, and the thing about tech is that the public and politicians deny that it's going to be there until the majority of the public finally experiences it. You could say this about personal computers, internet, cloud compute, electric cars, smartphones, distributed ledger (cryptocurrency), AI, and driverless vehicles.
Schrodinger's technology doesn't exist until it's measured in an Apple store or your mother asks you for tech support.
No one thought AI was really real until ChatGPT did their kid's homework, and today most people are coming to terms with the fact that ChatGPT 3.5 could do most people's jobs. And that's not even the most advanced AI, that's the freeware put out by Microsoft, they have paywalls to access the real deal.
In 2018 I rode in my colleague's Tesla in self-driving mode from downtown Portland to Top Golf in Hillsboro. We started our journey at the surface parking lot on the west side of the Morrison Bridge. He used his phone to tell the car to pull out of the parking spot and to pick us up. Then he gave the car the address, and it drove us the entire way without any human input necessary. The only time he provided feedback was to touch the turn signal to pass a slow car on the highway. People think self-driving isn't here - but it is - and it's gotten exponentially better and will continue to do so. People will complain and moan about idealized, utopian, pedantic "level 5" full self-driving, how none of it exists or could exist, as a Tesla passes them on the road and the driver is half asleep.
Of course, Portland and every major city have also thought deeply about self-driving technology, and a few places have implemented self-driving solutions - but so far, none of these are really at scale. Though it will be a short time before cost-conscious cities go all-in.
TriMet kicked around the idea of using an autonomous bus for a leg of the trip of the Southwest Corridor project, connecting a segment of the light rail route to the community college. It was bafflingly stupid and short-sighted to think they could use it in this niche application but that it wouldn't open the floodgates for a hundred different applications that eviscerate TriMet's labor model. The simplest example of autonomous operation would be to operate the light rail systems - because they don't make turns, all we need is an AI vision service to slam on the breaks if necessary - that technology has existed for 20+ years. We could retrofit the entire train system in about 3 to 6 months - replace every Max operator with a security guard, and maybe people would ride the Max again? But I digress.
Let's speculate about the far-future, some 5, 10, or 20 years from now: your transit options will expand significantly. The cost will decrease considerably for services using automated vehicles.
You'll look at your options as:

• Drive to work: fastest, takes $100+ worth of gas a month, but you also need $50+ for insurance and $500+ for the monthly car payment, plus those surprise maintenance and broken windows. Also, do you pay for parking? Pick a number for how much it costs to drive your personally owned and manually operated vehicle to work each month.
  
• Autonomous vehicle service: price TBA, but think of how much an Uber costs when you don't have to pay the driver, you don't have to pay for gas. An Uber that runs for $20 today would likely be $10 or less. So, to and from work 20 times a month, $200. $300? Ok, let's just say it's $400 a month. It's still all cheaper than owning a car and driving it to work. No parking fees, and it picks you up quickly enough that it's not a nuisance.
  
• Mass Transit: $150 per month, but ugghhh it's slow, it smells like piss, a guy jacked off in your hair, and you can't schedule a meeting for the first 30 minutes of your anticipated workday in case you miss a connection - and it breaks so often the government actively hides the reliability data from the public and media.
  

Just a few years into this future we'll see a brand new trend, one that already exists: a shared autonomous vehicle like a privately operated bus. For example, Uber Bus - it already exists as a commuter option in some cities, it's just not autonomous yet. The significant benefit of an autonomous bus is that these shared vehicles will utilize HOV lanes very commonly, and commuting in an autonomous vehicle will be as fast as driving to work in your manually operated car while also being less expensive.
Simultaneously automobile accidents in autonomous vehicles will be virtually non-existent, and insurance companies will start to increase prices on vehicles that lack AI/smart assisted safety driving features. Public leaders will see the value of creating lanes of traffic on highways dedicated explicitly to autonomous vehicles so that they can drive at much higher speeds than manually operated traffic. Oregon won't lead the way here, but wait until Texas or one of the Crazy States greenlights a speed limit differential, and self-driving vehicles have a speed limit of 90, 120, or 150 miles per hour. You might think "accidents would be terrible and deadly" but there will be fewer accidents in the autonomous lane than in manual lanes. At this point, it will be WAY faster to take an autonomous vehicle to your work.
Purchasing power of consumers will decrease while the cost of vehicles will increase (especially autonomous vehicles), making ownership of any vehicle less likely. Frankly, the great majority of people won't know how to drive and will never learn to - just like how young people today don't know how to use manual transmission. However, fleets of autonomous vehicles owned by companies like Tesla, Uber, and Lyft will benefit from scale and keep their autonomous bus fleets operating at low cost. This will lead to a trend where fewer and fewer people will own an automobile, and fewer people even bother learning how to drive or paying the enormous insurance cost.... while also depending upon automobiles more than we do today.
Eventually, in the distant future, manually driven vehicles will be prohibited in urban areas as some reckless relic from a bygone era.
Cities and public bodies don't have to be cut out of this system if they act responsibly. For example, cities could start a data brokering exchange where commuters provide their commuting data (i.e., pick-up point, destination, arrival time). The government uses either a privatized fleet or a publicly owned fleet of autonomous vehicles to move as many people as possible as often as possible. Sort of a publicly run car-pool list - or a hyper-responsive bus fleet that runs for the exact passengers going to exact locations. A big problem companies like Uber, Lyft, and Tesla will have is that they'll lack market saturation to optimize commuting routes - they'll be able to win unique rides, but the best way they can achieve the lowest cost service model is these super predictable and timely commuter riders. The more data points and riders, the more optimization they can achieve. These companies can look at the data for as many people as possible and bid for as many routes as possible - optimizing for convenience, time, energy usage, emissions, etc. The public will voluntarily participate if this is optimized to get the cheapest ride possible. If the government doesn't do this, the private sector will eventually.
As a parallel, no one today even considers how Metro runs garbage collection. No one cares. And if you didn't like Metro's trash service, if you needed a better service for unique needs, you go procure that on your own. Likewise, you wouldn't care about the quality of the commuting trip as long as it's up to some minimal standards of your class expectations, it's reliable, nearly as quick as driving your own vehicle, and it seems reasonably affordable.
If the public ran this data exchange, fees could subsidize lower-income riders. This is a theory on what a TriMet like system or mass transit system could look like in a primarily autonomous world where most people don't own their own or drive an automobile.
This system would be far from perfect, opening up all sorts of problems around mobility. However, it's hard to see how autonomous vehicles will not obliterate the value proposition of mass transit.

Another narrative on the same story.

As the working class moves to autonomous vehicles, transit agencies will collect fewer and fewer fares - prices and taxes will rise, creating a cycle of failure. As a result, some cities will make buses self-driving to cut costs. It could start with Tokyo, Shanghai, Oslo, et al. Again, it's unlikely that Portland or Oregon will be the first movers on this, but when cities start laying off hundreds of mass transit operators and cutting fares to practically nothing, there will be substantial public pressure to mimic locally. It will be inhumane, it will be illiberal, to make those impoverished bus-riding single mothers pay premiums. As most of the fleet becomes autonomous, responsive, and disconnected from labor costs, the next question arises: why do we still operate bus routes? Why big buses instead of smaller and nimble vehicles?
This alternative story/perspective leads to the same outcome: we figure out where people are going and when they need to get there - then dispatch the appropriate amount of vehicles to move that exact number of people as efficiently as possible.
But our local government getting its act together on all this is outside the world of possibility.
In a practical sense, we're going to see history repeat itself. Portland's mass transit history is about private and public entities over-extending themselves, getting too deep in debt on a flawed and outdated idea. As a result, the system collapses into consolidation or liquidation. Following this historical pattern, TriMet/Metro won't respond to changing conditions fast enough, and laughably stupid ideas like cranking up taxes or increasing ridership fares will continue to be the only option until the media finally acknowledges these groups are insolvent. I just hope we don't spend tens of billions of dollars propping up this zombie system before we can soberly realize that we made some mistakes and these vanity-laden projects 20 and 30 years ago need to die.
You see, the biggest flaw with TriMet isn't the design, it needs to be outpaced by technology, it's that the people making decisions at TriMet and Metro are going to make the politically expedient decisions, not the right decisions. They won't redesign, and they won't leverage technology for cost savings, so this charade will just get going along until the media simply declares they're insolvent.
Back to fares for a second - the media happily reprints TriMet's horseshit take about "The higher fares will bring in an estimated $4.9 million in annual revenue starting next year, the report says." Just sort of amazing to me there's no skepticism about this number - but most spectacular is no media considerations about alternative solutions. For example, I could tell TriMet how to save $9,548,091 next year - a useless program primarily utilized by white middle-class folks who own alternative methods of transport - and this would inconvenience way less transit-dependent people than raising fares. But, that's off the table - we're not even developing a decision matrix for when we kill the blackhole of money known as WES.

This could have easily been a book but I’ll try to be vague.
It’s long overdue but I finely ended things with my gf. It’s been a two year long rollercoaster of misery, misplaced anger, humiliation and …dog semen.
I won’t elaborate too much on ups and downs of our relationship (that’s whole another story) but the final straw was her saying that if she had to choose saving human life or a dog she would have chosen a dog, thousand times over, even if it were my son’s.
Dog runs this house.
I should have known this the very minute I stepped inside my gf’s tiny two bed apartment. Filthy couch with throw covering up dog filth from when poor little pooper had “an accident”. Dog necessities everywhere, not one, not two but 5 dog beds including a crusty old pillow on which the shit beast relieves itself 🤢
This miserable creature was literally allowed to do whatever it please. Jump on furniture, on her bed, scratching itself on a wall leading to her apartment, leaving brown trail of dog filth. It would follow her around the apartment, always begging for treats. Whenever someone was in the kitchen, it would climb up on a couch backrest, nearly falling off or it and literally with its face in the cooking pots. Hair and dander everywhere and shitty asshole on where humans would later sit down. It’s a smartest and most intelligent dog on Earth (and handsomest one of course) only whenever it’s cleaning time and she starts vacuuming, it would flip a switch in his pigeon brain and it would start humping the Dyson. All humans have urges am I right?
My gf allowed this behaviour and let it finish itself off on a aforementioned crusty old pillow. That obnoxious creature would after walk around the apartment with his thing still dripping cum.
Going walkies was always stressful for me as she kept refusing to leash her dog. She would ger told off by passers by almost daily as her dog would always get in someone’s way on walk or bicycle paths or it would run up to other dogs even without the other owner’s consent. She would blatantly allow her dog to invade people’s personal space, piss and shit where “no dog toilet” signs were up, on communal lawns or next to children’s playground and would argue with anyone who would reprimand her. How dare you!
Going somewhere with a car wasn’t any different. This neurotic dog was allowed to roam freely around the car without harness. It would maybe sit on the back seat for 1.5 minutes before deciding it likes it more in the front, on a drivers knees. It’s illegal here to be holding a dog on drivers knees while driving l, at highway speeds especially, but law doesn’t apply to my dog, right? We’re special. Gangway! Fido behind the wheel.
Same goes to leash laws in and around forests, my doggo loves animals and wouldn’t hurt a fly. Why wouldn’t it be allowed to play with them? It’s favourite thing is digging up rodents holes. Bonus points for finding a nest and manage to kill few. Those damn instincts. Everyone is allowed to have a hobby.
You can’t own a dog if you’re not an animal lover and an activist yourself. And by animals you mean your dog, of course. After all you single handily saved this gods creature from an evil puppy mill. You’ve taken it from its birth mom to your tiny apartment to keep it for your amusement, ehm friendship. You’ve given it shelter, fed it human food (because of its special dietary needs and multiple food allergies). You’ve pumped it with meds because of its genetic disorders from birth. You’ve called it family member and everyone who says or thinks differently is a dog hater and you showed him the doors. You’ve kept pushing people visiting your house to worship it by petting and letting it lick them, it loves you and is happy to see you, see. You’ve corrected everyone who dared calling it a DOG.
Yeah nah, I’m good

I (35 female) have been best friends with “mariah” (33 female) since we were in elementary school. Around a year ago she started dating this new guy and things were starting to turn serious. New guy lives in a neighborhood that is known for violence and regularly on the news. Mariah does not have a drivers license so whenever we went anywhere I picked her up and took her home etc, prior to new guy. When she told me they were getting engaged I mentioned to her I was not comfortable driving to that neighborhood in the future when they get married. Her response was, “Trust me I don’t like the neighborhood either…” fast forward to after they’re married and she asks if I’m able to hang out. I agree and ask her to Uber (she Ubers to and from work) to the mall where we can meet. I told her I would send her money to cover the Uber rides. I can tell through conversations that she is upset with me. We finally meet up and she is telling me how I’m being irrational for not wanting to go to her neighborhood. I told her that since I wasn’t comfortable driving out there I would cover her Uber rides when we do hang out. We haven’t gotten together since then and I feel like she is still mad at me. AITA for not wanting to drive to a dangerous neighborhood?