Pictures of persimmon seed weather prediction

So I am an IT major at a university and for one of my classes this semester the final project is a full on CS project. It’s a group project where we must use a framework, API, and library in order to create a web app. Everyone in my group is a little out of there element as we all have very little programming experience and the only two languages that have been taught in this course so far have been HTML and CSS. We are starting JavaScript next week. There are 6 weeks left in the semester and until this project is due. So, we have a lot of research and work ahead of us.
So far, we have decided our app is going to be a single page weather app.
Features we want to include:

• location search bar
• 1 day weather forecast (by hour)
• 7 day weather forecast (by day)
• ability to change units from imperial to metric (temperature, wind speed, time)
• quote of the day (related to weather)
• picture slideshow
• relevant weather news

We are planning on using Reactjs as our framework, Material-UI for our library, and OpenWeatherMap and ZenQuotes.io for our API’s
With our lack of knowledge about how API’s, frameworks, and library’s work, we kind of just picked them based on popularity which I know might end up potentially making us struggle more than helping us.
So the point of my post and where we need advice is really how do we start. We don’t know in what order to do things. We don’t have a project plan. We need some project mapping best practices. We don’t want to do a bunch of work and find out that it all needs to be changed because we started on it before something else. We have begun to read documentation and are figuring out the basis of each technology but we haven’t built or wrote anything yet. Everything seems very overwhelming. From our little research, it seems like a lot of how things are going to be built on the front end is based on what information we can get from the API’s and if we can figure out how to use it. Any pointers are welcome, any web app project planning references are welcome, any encouragement is welcome. I know we’re going to accomplish this project and we’re going to come out the other end much smarter than we are now, we just want to do it as efficient as possible.

I downloaded a solflare wallet. Wrote down the seed phrase, did not take a picture of it.
Neither did I connect the wallet to any apps, only received funds into the wallet.
It’s only on mobile, not connected to the laptop.
Is there any way of getting drained or hacked if I don’t connect to anything and don’t share my seed phrase?
Thanks and hope everyone is having a great day

I've recently been getting that existential despair from AI progress news way more often than you've felt genuinely excited for the possibilities it opens up.
One of my strongest attributes as a creative professional and workload manager is the sheer amount of different tasks I understand, can structure into a larger delivery and even execute at a commercial level, and while I've been told that's valuable in itself considering projections of AI in the workplace, often times I find myself struggling to place myself in that future, to conceptualize just what my work will look like in a couple years. That same struggle makes me feel like I'm trying to catch up to a train that doesn't stop, on foot, with full knowledge that if I don't manage to do it, that dream of rising above the conditions of my upbringing and forging a life of abundance for me, my peers and family are just done, and I'll just have to settle for average. To me, that feels like defeat.
Back in the middle ages, if you looked at a stable boy and took a stab at predicting what the next 20 years of his life would be like, there was a decent chance you'd nail it. Nowadays, I've found myself having to remake and remaster my goals, plans and aspirations way more often than it is remotely comfortable. Reassessing such things is already not the easiest thing in the world, couple that with my tendency to second guess myself when my confidence is low and my current state of genuine workplace burnout and you might get the picture of why Ive developed a tendency for escapism, why my sleep (or lack thereof) is shit and why so, so fucking often I find myself wishing for God to hit pause, for things to just STOP so I can breathe, put myself back together and resume when I'm back on my feet. I don't think I'm alone in this, and the reassurance I seek is one I wish I could give to others, but right now I'm abusing substances (caffeine, THC, Ritalin) just to get through the week and my clinical depression has been threatening to return, so positivity and determination are in short supply. I just wish someone could tell me it'll be okay and how.

With each new installment in the Grand Theft Auto series, Rockstar Games has introduced new gameplay mechanics to keep the franchise fresh and exciting. Here are some possible new features that could be introduced in GTA 6:
Enhanced AI: One of the biggest criticisms of the previous games is that the AI is often too predictable. In GTA 6, we could see more advanced AI that reacts to the player's actions in a more realistic way.
More realistic physics: The physics engine in GTA 5 was already impressive, but there is always room for improvement. We could see more realistic physics in GTA 6 that affect both the player and the environment.
More dynamic weather: GTA 5 had some dynamic weather effects, but they were fairly limited. In GTA 6, we could see a more dynamic weather system that affects the gameplay in more meaningful ways.
Seamless transitions: In previous games, there was often a loading screen when transitioning from one area to another. In GTA 6, we could see more seamless transitions between different areas of the game world.
New minigames: GTA 5 had a variety of fun minigames, such as tennis and golf, but there is always room for more. We could see new minigames in GTA 6 that are even more varied and engaging.
Improved driving mechanics: While the driving mechanics in GTA 5 were already pretty solid, there is always room for improvement. In GTA 6, we could see more realistic driving physics and more customizable vehicles.
Better stealth mechanics: Stealth has never been a strong point of the GTA series, but that could change with GTA 6. We could see more advanced stealth mechanics that allow players to approach missions in different ways.
Dynamic NPC behavior: In previous games, NPCs often had set patterns of behavior that could be easily predicted. In GTA 6, we could see more dynamic NPC behavior that makes the game world feel more alive.
More varied missions: While GTA 5 had a wide variety of missions, some players felt that they were too similar to each other. In GTA 6, we could see even more varied missions that keep the gameplay fresh and exciting.
VR support: With the increasing popularity of virtual reality, it's possible that GTA 6 could include support for VR headsets. This would allow players to fully immerse themselves in the game world and experience it in a whole new way.
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Severe weather is expected in Santa Barbara County tonight into early Thursday morning. The NWS predicts an increased risk for thunderstorms with strong rain, significant wind speeds, lightening, hail, and a remote chance of small and brief tornados or waterspouts.
Take steps to secure items that could be picked up by strong winds and be ready in the event of power outages. If severe weather occurs, people should seek shelter indoors, in the most interior room, away from windows. Remain vigilant and stay alert to changing weather conditions. For the latest weather updates visit https://www.weather.gov/lox/

best bigfoot evidence
apes tend to herd, no one’s seen bigfoots herding. aren't there no solitary apes?
-a child bigfoot- by itself??
are these homeless people?? / who have gone totally nuts and wild long ago- they don’t wear clothes, their haibeards have grown long, theyre dirty, they eat raw meat and plants/ things that they can get their hands on, they don’t like other people coming near them, they spend all their time hiding/scavenging, their skin is used to the weathetemperature, somewhere they have something like a nest they sleep in, or they move at night and sleep during the day for stealth but also for temperature considerations?
21:47- i-evh- indistinct mirage/plasma region in shape of figure?
24:13- could be a pig or two moving around real fast eating apples? Two pigs, one of them’s a calico. One’s in front, facing the camera, head down, eating apples. The second is just behind it and sideways, got its head turned to the side. Pigs move around real fast, blurring the camera. Yes ive seen wild pigs in person lots of times. They’re also nocturnal. They live practically everywhere. You don’t see them in person unless you’re hunting for them. They keep away from people and hide during the day. You wouldn’t believe how fast they move/run, anytime you see them. You’re used to seeing meat pigs on farms, locked up big and lazy. Wild pigs run around real fast and are leaner. They easily outrun humans, no contest, even with the human sprinting. Pig- outta there. Also they tend to move in groups.
25:49- picture so blurry cant make a determination
28:02- possible i-evh, “ghost”. Not a bigfoot photo. A ghost-hunter’s “ghost”. Indistinct cause head is featureless. or something else / person with some type of reflective head covering? if i-evh resembles nearby light a little bit. mix of human figure / nearby streetlight design.
28:48- is arguably a person facing away in a black top and bottom with hoodie. Look how in the upper left photo there appears to be a corner to the head, like the seam in a hoodie produces.
33:25- too blurry
34:59- maybe it is a fake, a human in an ape suit. Stumbles a little bit while turning to look at camera, like a human would’ve done. May have been the director’s only direction: alright come and walk across from here to here, right in the middle turn and look at the camera. The ape is otherwise walking like it’s oblivious to the person- why would it turn in the middle of that and look right at the person? Camera is centered too well on ape. A surprise capture- shouldve been off/shaky at all as person struggles to look back and forth between camera and ape, and as person cant predict what ape will do next. The steadiness of the centered shot seems like camera person knows what to expect and ape was told what to do. Or, maybe it’s a bigfoot, nervously walking away from person. if you look really closely, it does sort of look like it has breasts. if that were a movie suit, it would need to be from a movie that included a scene of lots of apes mixed gender, or a single female ape. otherwise you would expect a standard movie ape suit to be male a la king kong vibe?
35:05- look at how shaky this one is, it seems willfully shaky, as though a created fake. This shot shouldve been steadier if real. Unless theyre shaking excessively from fear?
35:25- could be i-evh plus eah. Had rained earlier- may be affecting atmoshperic static electricity.
37:30- I know there was once a military survival/special forces boot made with a sole that was in the shape of a bare foot, so that you could run through a jungle leaving footprints that looked like natives. The bare foot shape would probably be a little bigger than the person’s actual foot, because it would need to cover the whole sole, so that a tell-tale edge of a shoe would not be visible around it. May have given someone an excuse to go around making bigfoot prints? The very clear picture sort of looks like it was made with this boot because of how clear the indentation is and how it looks flat. i dont know about that side indent. the first one might match but its really too blurry.
The biggest problem with these is that apes and animals all tend to herd in the wild. It doesn’t make sense to see these by themselves over and over again, and the child is the clincher- you really wouldn’t see a child by itself, makes no sense. Where’s its mom? Why isn’t she attacking you? Why isn’t it calling out for her? possible if the group, somewhere, just stays really well hidden, and you only occasionally see strayers.
42:24- well in the lower left that doesnt look like a boot. though then he says, sasquatches do not have an arch in their foot- implying a carved boot sole in the shape of a foot- the one detail you have to leave out is an arch because there isn't enough room in the rubber to carve it. although, evolutionarily, perhaps a non-arched, padded foot could have evolved for a large bipedal ape? i dont know if it makes sense to have a non-arched foot...
46:40- "same individual, same area"- or that's the same hoaxster at work. makes a mold, uses it once. gets a reaction. uses it again a year later, gets another reaction. years later comes back at it again, with a different mold. uses it, gets a reaction. waits about a year, uses it again. gets another reaction. pulls back and waits again. to keep the believability level about right. why do they do it? because then they get to say to themselves every night, "im sasquatch".
46:50: he sure has a lot of these different footprints though.
48:13: still could be one hoaxster. go near campsites, leave big prints, using whatever prop you come up with, and sure enough campers report the big prints. it should be asked, did all of these happen to be found near campsites? an animal that shy of humans wouldn't go near a campsite just to sniff at their food.
in short, i dunno. if they're real though, you should find a group of them living somewhere, hidden in the forest, near where they're spotted. scour the forest with infrared drone or something.

Summer is almost here and by all indications it's going to be a scorcher (el nino?)
Anyway - the backyard has no shade and I'm planning on building a pergola. This is a south texas w/ hot summers, mild winters, and not a late of rain (lately).
I've got questions on material selection:

• Posts
  • I'll be building concrete footings for the posts to sit on so there will be nothing buried in the ground.
  • Cedar v PT?
    • It seems like 6x6PT posts have a tendency to twist. Will rough cut cedar twist less? I don't mind paying the cedar tax if they'll remain more true.
  • 6x6x8ft green rough cut cedar at box stores is around $115; specialty lumber yards run $130-$155. None of the stores advertise a grade, just that they're rough cut. Should I expect a big difference in quality? How to tell apart the quality of cedar?
• Beams
  • Cedar is way too expensive. A single 2x10x16 cedar board is $134. #1 PT from a lumber yard is $35. #2 from box store is ~$25. SYP is ~$16. Unfortunately cedar is out of the equation here.
  • How bad will PT look when attached to Cedar? I don't mind waiting a year for it to age/dry out before staining. It seems like PT lumber can be stained to look mildly like cedar. Alternatively - in a few years when everything has aged, how will aged cedar look vs PT? I'm having a really hard time finding comparison pictures.
  • For SYP: Are there any exterior finishes, etc, that will offer some weather protection? I'd rather pay for PT for its longevity so I'm only considering SYP for aesthetics. However, I'm not sure if untreated SYP has a tendency to warp/twist worse than PT.
  • Recap (for beams):
    • SYP: ~$160
    • #1 PT: $301
    • Cedar: ~$1100

We had been knee deep in pig shit for at least three hours when I finally asked Gramps for a story. The old man had been mostly silent that day, save for his grunts of effort while refilling the trough or corralling the hogs in and out of the different pens.
I couldn’t say that I blamed him - helping Uncle Russ on his hog farm was one of the more physically intensive jobs the two of us ever undertook, and we’d just gotten into the worst part. Shoveling shit. Wasn’t much to say anyways and the longer you kept your mouth open, the more you’d start to taste it.
I was shocked Gramps could still put in such a productive day of work in his increasing age - but the truth was, at nearly 70, the old man heaped pounds of manure into the compost pile even faster than I did at 17. Gramps was a large and powerful man, Father Time be damned.
Gramps liked the work though. Good honest labor was all the man had ever known, and he was gonna help his son in law on that farm whether Russ wanted him to lift a finger or not. That’s what men did.
We’d been working ourselves to the bone since sun-up - I never passed on a chance to spend some time with Gramps, and I knew that Uncle Russ would slip me a few bucks for the day, so I’d enthusiastically hopped in the old man’s pickup that morning at 5:00 sharp.
But it had been hours and I was tired and the air stunk. I hoped it was time for a little break.
“Gramps, can we take a load off? Just for a few.”
The old man sighed. He removed his weathered and stained trucker cap - the same one he’d worn my entire life - and used his forearm to wipe the sweat from his liver spotted head.
He plunged his shovel into the stinking and wet pile of manure we were working from as he spoke. “Ah hell, I guess we could use a break.” Thank god, I remember thinking to myself as I did the same with my own shovel and followed the old man over to the large apple tree that loomed over Uncle Russ’s farm.
We couldn’t head inside with our shit stained clothes and there was no point in changing or washing up. We still had a job to finish after our break. Russ had headed into town to grab some supplies and drop off some hogs to a few buyers, but he’d left us a cooler for the day filled with water and some food.
As we took our seats on the shaded but still warm earth beneath the apple tree, Gramps reached deep into the cooler. From it, he withdrew two bottles of water and two ice cold beers. He winked as he tossed me one of each.
I laughed, and we cracked our beer bottles open then clinked them together before taking a nice deep swig. That ice cold swill just hits the body different on a day like that. Really feels like you earned it. The days stayed pretty warm in Vernon, even in the fall. Especially after some hours of hard work. And these sun soaked days with Gramps were the best of times for me. Whether we were sitting on his porch doing a whole lot of nothing, or up to our elbows in stinking shit. I just loved spending time with the old man.
Of course, the real treat any time Gramps and I got together was the stories.
“Hey Gramps, long as we’re sitting here… got a story?” I grinned as I asked the question, couldn’t help myself.
I’ve mentioned before that Gramps always had a story. My grandfather was renowned throughout the town for his ability to weave a colorful and compelling tale.
Thing was though, no matter how outlandish or silly or sometimes scary they got, Gramps’ stories were always true. Comedy, tragedy. Didn’t matter. That was what made them so damn interesting. Whatever the subject matter, this was a recitation of a true event. I trusted the words that came out of that man’s mouth more than I trusted that the sky is blue and that a human being needs to breathe oxygen to survive.
He laughed - it was a mirthful sound, tinged with juuust a hint of annoyance. It was the way he always laughed when I asked the question. We both knew that he loved spinning his yarns as much as I loved listening to them.
Gramps took another swig of his beer, beads of cold sweat running down the sides of the glass bottle. As usual, he was in no hurry to answer. He set the beer down and cracked his aging knuckles, they popped so loud you’d swear the dusty old bones were snapping in two.
“Ah I s’pose it’s the perfect time for it, better’n sittin’ here with our dicks in our hands.” He leaned towards me, thrusting a knobby finger in my direction. “Just one now fuckface,” Gramps warned me sternly. “We’re not gonna piss our whole day away sharin’ stories under the apple tree. Got a job to do.”
I smiled. I always smiled when Gramps used my insulting but still endearing nickname. The kind of nickname you get living in a family of lively hillbillies who all like to drink and horse around a little too much.
Gramps had agreed to a story, just as I’d known he would. Gramps always had a story. He let the moment hang now. Cradled his beer loosely in his hand. He stared off ahead, into the shimmering summer afternoon.
Gramps’ eyes were locked on the hogs. As they rolled in their dirt and sloppily ate from the trough, milled around in their pigpen. Squealin’ and snortin’ the whole time. I always liked the pigs. Didn’t do much like shoveling mountains of poop but the pigs were alright. They were disgusting sure, but they were intelligent creatures. Cute too.
I didn’t much like the thought of Uncle Russ loading some of those pigs up and selling them to the butcher and market. Packing them into the truck and driving them to their doom. It was the way it always was and the way it always would be, I understood that. Just didn’t much comprehend how you could spend your whole life caring for things just to serve them up to a death sentence.
Gramps cleared his throat, disrupting my train of thought. A serious look crossed his face. He kept his eyes locked intently on the frolicking animals. I could already tell by Gramps expression and demeanor that this story wasn’t going to be a comedy.
“Well,” he finally said. “How ‘bout a pig story?”
I leaned toward Gramps, eyes wide with anticipation.
“You ever hear your uncle talk about a bad sow, fuckface?” I nodded. There were many days on Uncle Russ’ farm that I’d heard whispered talks between adults, talks they thought I couldn’t hear. About things like rifles and needing to take a pig behind the shed.
“Well, all that badness started way back when… had to be about forty years ago now by my estimation. When that damned thing showed up the very first time.”
Delmer Wurlick wasn’t a very nice boy. That’s what the adults in town always said about him. To be honest, that was putting it mildly. He was the kind of nasty little punk who left a bag of flaming dog shit on someone’s front porch and laughed as they stomped it out. The type to key cars just for a laugh, prank call old ladies with sex talk and heavy breathing at 2:00 in the morning after stealing their numbers from the church register.
Those were the things that made Delmer not a very nice boy. But the adults in town, they didn’t all know the extent of Delmer’s misdeeds. He wasn’t just a vandal and a punk. He was a killer. He’d started young - squishing bugs a little too enthusiastically and sticking firecrackers in the mouths of frogs he yanked out of the creek. Eyes lighting up as they exploded into wet and slimy chunks of sizzling gore.
At around age fifteen or so, Delmer upgraded to larger animals. Wrapping stray cats in barbed wire, mixing crushed up glass into hunks of raw meat and feeding it to neighborhood dogs.
There was one summer where livestock at various farms all over town fell prey to a mad shooter - a lone gunman in the dark of night firing one right between the eyes of any cow or sheep or goat he could get his hands on.
All the kids in town knew that that was Delmer Wurlick. He’d bragged about taking the rifle once his old man passed out from the gin, and blowing those defenseless critters’ brains out so fast that them and their farmers didn’t know what hit ‘em.
Delmer talked about how they twitched and sputtered even after the life left them. How red chunky ooze bubbled from their pulped and jellified skulls.
Of course Delmer saw no trouble with the law. There was no hard evidence, just a kid talking. And it helps when your alcoholic mess of a dad was once the town sheriff himself, before the jack and the gin and a few too many glassy eyed and slurred speeches at morning roll call did him in. Friends in high places.
So ol’ Delmer pretty much did what he wanted when he wanted. He had a taste for blood and the imagination to indulge.
Hate to say it, but a lot of the kids hung around him anyway. He had this charisma about him, a strange aura that drew you in. There was somethin’ behind his eyes. You didn’t wanna know what it was but you just couldn’t look away.
Didn’t hurt that he’d take groups of kids for a ride in daddy’s caddy. Cruising the streets of Vernon on the nights he wasn’t busy torturing livestock, getting the other kids involved in his car keying and window soaping and all the debauchery.
Things took a turn in the Autumn of ‘53. Bill Wurlick’s good friend Enis was picked up in St. Claire, cruising the streets for a boy to spend the night with. Enis owned a farm just on the outskirts of Vernon, one he’d inherited from his daddy some years back. A middling and not at all spectacular little patch of dirt. Didn’t grow much there. Enis was no green thumb. He had some livestock - a few cows, half empty chicken coop.
Mostly pigs. Wandering, zombified sows and boars that seemed especially apathetic and lethargic. Brought down by the malaise of the place.
With Enis’ looming legal trouble, he turned to his good friend Bill Wurlick to tend to his farm in the meantime. The only man he thought he could trust. Bill Wurlick, gin drunk and not one to rise from his spot on the mangy living room sofa - ‘cept to buy more gin - turned to his son.
So that’s how Delmer Wurlick became the caretaker
For someone like him, this was an all you can eat buffet. Unlimited access to a cadre of defenseless and sickly animals , on secluded farmland where no one would ask any questions.
He’d wake up at dawn each morning and make the 15 minute drive to the farm in Bill’s caddy, snagging a few of his old man’s beers from the fridge on his way out the door.
Once arriving at Enis’ farm, Delmer would get to drinking and begin his “duties.” He planted seeds - half heartedly, tossing them asunder without really looking. Not taking the time to make sure they were distributed properly on the pathetic and wanting earth. Delmer never could get the old and rusting riding mower that sat still in front of Enis’ run down barn to run properly, and so keeping the grass trimmed was permanently checked off of his list of chores rather quickly.
The animals. Delmer was to feed them, provide water. See that their needs were taken care of. The first day or two, Delmer mostly kept his sadism at bay. Hurled handfuls of dry feed at the chicken’s faces. Splashed water at the cows as he filled their drinking trough, yanking on their tails as he left their corral.
There seemed to be some kind of honest attempt by the boy to truly honor his father’s wishes and help out the man’s good friend.
He got bored fast though. Delmer had some kind of insatiable bloodlust. There was something deep within him that needed to see that pain and that hurt.
Maybe it was that pain and hurt were all Delmer Wurlick’d ever known.
When your mother runs off with a band of coke-addled gypsies before you even turn 3 years old. When your cousin takes you into the bathroom only a year or two later at your grandmother’s funeral. When your father is so down in the drink that he cries tears of pure whiskey during those miserable late nights that he leans on your shoulder and asks you for all the answers
What does somebody like that have to offer the world but pain?
On the third day, he crushed one of the chickens to death with a rock. Then took that same rock inside the coop and lifted it up as he could before letting it fall directly onto a waiting cluster of diminutive baby chicks. Delmer licked his lips as the feathers and chunky gore oozed from beneath the stone.
He withdrew a knife from the kitchen and wandered into the cow pen, casually puffing away on one of Enis’ cigarettes. A small and sickly looking brown calf huddled next to its black and white spotted mother. Delmer slowly ran the blade along its skin as the calf mewled plaintively. Then he turned the knife and started cutting.
He’d hacked the thing to pieces in no time at all, a dark red puddle pooling on the hay beneath them. The mother cow stared at him, expressionless, the entire time.
Delmer wasn’t too concerned about getting rid of the mutilated cow parts. He knew that pigs ate pretty much anything. Taking a sledge hammer from the tool shed, Delmer set about mashing the bits of cow into a more digestible paste. Once he was finished, he scooped the jellified mounds of gristle up with a snow shovel. Deposited heaping helpings into the hogs’ feed trough.
The pigs chowed, snorting and huffing as they hungrily gulped down the chunks of flattened meat. Delmer chuckled as he noticed one exhausted looking sow, pink belly swollen to bursting with a litter of piglets, waddle over to the trough with great effort and try to eat her fill
The threshold was crossed. Delmer’s sickening pastime escalated quickly.
Over the ensuing days, he stabbed and shot and tormented. He’d dunk the chickens in turpentine and take a lighter to their feathers. Drop them into an empty barrel and piss on them to put it out. Twisted a cork screw into the eye of one of the cows, so deep that he couldn’t get a grip to retrieve it. He sliced its neck while it tried to buck him away with its weakened legs.
Delmer’d even invited a few of the local kids over to partake in the booze and the cigs and sometimes yes, even the hurting. Most of them didn’t like it much. Most of them were downright disturbed by it. But the allure of an older boy with ready access to a car and beer and all the tantalizing freedoms of adulthood was hard to pass up. If that freedom meant that the boys and girls had to bash a chicken to death with a fire poker, or slice a pigs snout from its face while it squealed and cried for mercy, many weathered the storm.
The corruption was the part Delmer liked.
Things changed when the sow gave birth. Delmer had watched the fattened pink creature keel over that brisk October day, flatten itself on its side and start breathing frantically. He certainly was excited to see those little piglets.
He hopped on the kitchen phone and called a few of the boys and girls over, telling them he had the beer and the cigs and something they wanted to see.
A small flock of kids had arrived by the time the sow pushed out her first piglet. The soft, squinting thing was covered in a fine layer of fuzz. Its pointed ears pressed backward, a calm expression across its face.
Delmer immediately raised his leg and smashed the piglet in one stomp. He cackled as it exploded into a chunky red mist. The crowd of children looked on, aghast at this display. Cruel and twisted and sick even for Delmer Wurlick.
A boy toward the back vomited, tears streamed down one girl’s face. It suddenly wasn’t so easy to look the other way, or to participate in these atrocities. The adult freedoms, doing what you wanted when you wanted. It was a kind of cage.
The sow seemed to lock its solid black eye on Delmer, and began loudly shrieking as it continued pushing out its litter of newborns. Its body writhed and shook with pain or anxiety or maybe some awareness of what was happening to its kin.
Suddenly, Delmer withdrew a buck knife from his back pocket. He lunged forward and sliced the sow open from neck to ass. The entire contents of its stomach spilled out in a steaming, stinking mess. Purple guts and thick rivers of blood. The rest of the piglets.
Covered in their mother’s gore and introduced to the world via this hellish act.
Delmer’s smile widened as he loomed over the pile of writhing and helpless newborns. His eyes widened as they met one particular pig in the mound of viscera.
Plunging his hands into the mess, Delmer spun around as he withdrew the object of his attention.
Facing the group of neighborhood children, cradled in Delmer’s outstretched hands, was a shaking and blood covered newborn piglet.
It didn’t look like any pig they’d ever seen.
The thing’s eyes bulged out of its head, its snout was basically nonexistent - a receding patch of flesh with two curved holes to breathe. Its mouth hung open wide, wider than a pig’s mouth should. It didn’t look like a pig’s mouth. No, with its broad width and rows of square teeth, it sure as hell looked like a man’s.
On the thing’s head were two pointed, fleshy bulbs. A sobbing boy yelled that they looked like horns.
As the mutated piglet gulped air and clacked its hideous teeth together, the crowd of children went into a frenzy. Many of them sprinted away in fear.
Delmer spun the twisted thing around and stared in its bulbous and swollen eyes. He thought of all the things he’d do to this pitiful creature that should not have been born.
Something happened though, in that moment. Something that even Delmer’s depraved mind couldn’t comprehend.
It spoke.
“You’re going to Hell Delmer. Your soul is going to be raped, your brain replaced with nothing but writhing maggots. You’ll be impaled on the endless and barbed horns of the great one. Forever. Split right down the middle, split in two. An eternity of agony.”
The tiny creature clacked its teeth together maniacally, cackling as it continued, in its garbled and inhuman voice. Delmer was frozen in silence.
“It’s already begun. For eons you’ve been tortured, chewed up and spit out. Forced to relive the evil deeds that placed you here. Your soul is black. Unclean. The kind we love. In that empty world of twisted hills and encroaching dark, you’ll wander and wander. Searching for hope and relief. All you’ll find is torment. We have your mother. Your cousin too.”
The thing’s voice took on an excited lilt as it spoke those last words. A blackened tongue emerged from between its lips, running back and forth across yellowed teeth. Delmer didn’t like to think about his mother or that cousin. He felt his bladder start to lose control.
“They’re suffering too Delmer, that’s all we ever do really. We suffer and we hurt. It’s because of them that the hollow world lives between your ears. We are going to tear your flesh off strip by strip and watch you eat it. You’re a vile creature, just like me. ”
Delmer screamed. He flung the thing to the ground with all his might, and it landed with a wet thud. That didn’t stop it.
It lifted its head and stared at Delmer, that hideous visage glaring up at him from the pile of smashed gore that was once its body.
“You can’t save yourself Delmer. You’re a damned sinner , and sinners reap what they sow!”
The scant few kids who hadn’t had the mental capacity to run watched in abject horror as the bug eyed demon suddenly began rising from the earth. All the mutilated animal parts - the mother pigs guts and the blood slicked bodies of the awful pig creature’s brethren - they coalesced into a terrible form. A mass of viscera in the vague shape of a humanoid.
Delmer screamed as the thing lurched forward, stretching out a long and appendage-like strip of dripping entrails. The wet spot on his jeans grew. In one swift movement, the thing spread itself apart and engulfed Delmer. He was covered head to toe in that horrible mess. Stuck inside of it.
The children could see him, writhing and pushing from inside the thing. Trying futilely to escape.
The pig creature clacked its teeth even more frantically. It suddenly let out a deep and guttural wail, loud enough to split the sky. The movement from within ceased.
It stared at the kids with those bulging, leaking eyes. Wide smile growing so large that it eclipsed its diminutive face, tearing the skin as it opened its mouth again to speak.
“I will come for each and every one of you, come in the night when your parents can’t protect you. I’ll make you feel every ounce of agony that the suffering souls of the endless void have endured for eons. This pain and bloodshed is absolute, and the screaming of tortured children will ring out and echo up to the ebony sky of the hollow world. Delmer doesn’t live here anymore.”
Then, it exploded. Chunks of wet meat flew in every direction, splattering the chicken coop and the barn and the children’s faces.
Mass panic ensured. The children finally dispersed and ran from the farmhouse for the comparative safety of anywhere else on earth. Through their tears and their horror, they screamed a single word.
Devil.
Gramps took a long swig from his beer as I stared at him in disbelief. It was another horror story, a terrible tale of horror and evil. Animal torturers and real life devils.
I had to ask.
“Well… then what happened? What happened with the farm? And to all those kids?”
Gramps signed. “Well, I was already grown and on my own back when this mess first happened. Only really heard about it third hand at the time. Those kids that were there with Delmer Wurlick that day had a real fear in ‘em. Little shits. Got home and told their mommies and daddies everything. Ah, the sheriff cleaned up the mess at Enis’ farm. Burnt the place down not long after. Just didn’t seem like the energy was any good there. All that death and bloodshed.”
I swallowed nervously, saying nothing and allowing Gramps to continue.
“No one much missed Delmer, not even ol’ Bill. Boy’s own father. So I can’t tell you there was a concerted effort to really solve the mystery of whatever bad forces grabbed the little prick that day.”
I could already sense that there was more to this bizarre tale. An epilogue, a postscript.
“But ya see fuckface,” Gramps’ voice sounded tired now. “Ever since that day, every year around October, we see one a’them things.”
My expression must’ve been quizzical, because Gramps clarified
“A bad sow.”
My eyes widened.
“Yep, every autumn a female pig’ll push out a litter, and at least one’a those little bastards’ll have bulgin’ eyes and fleshy horns and rows and rows of square yellow teeth.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “But I mean… what do people do with them?” I asked.
Gramps stared at me like he thought I must’ve been stone stupid to ask that question. “Well, we pull ‘em away from the littler and take ‘em behind the barn and we…” Gramps trailed off, his gaze leaving me to settle on the hogs once again. “We do what we need to do.”
“I think Delmer Wurlick brought the devil to Vernon that day, fuckface. Only, the devil never really left.”
Gramps suddenly stood, stretching his legs and groaning as he straightened his back.
I was still comprehending the insanity of what I’d just heard, and stared up at him from my seated position.
“Folk around here though, we always try our best to keep those things in check. Mind our own and deal with the problems as they come. Delmer Wurlick was just a kid but, I reckon he deserved what he got. If you go lookin’ for hell, eventually the devil’s gonna find you.”
Gramps was still gazing out at the pigs when he realized I was still cemented to the ground. “Well god damn fuckface, hop to it. Story time’s over, got a job to finish.”
I leapt to my feet, nodding. I ran my hand over the back of my neck as we made our way back to the pig pen, back to the shit.
Gramps chuckled under his breath. “A’course,” he said with a devilish wink, “who’s to say folk always find the bad sow in time?”
My heart stopped, skin went pale.
Gramps laughed louder now as he withdrew our shovels from the manure pile and thrust mine into my hand.
I didn’t pay much attention to Gramps or the farm or the stench of shit the rest of that work day though. My mind was elsewhere as we shoveled that stinking slop.
I couldn’t possibly focus on anything but the lone pregnant sow wandering about Uncle Russ’ pens. Pink belly full and protruding.
Sure to soon give birth to a happy and healthy litter of beautiful little piglets.

(This was written in response to a "what if aliens reduced humankind to 10% of previous population and left them to die" and run with. It was also written to get my juices flowing so I finish my other story. No conscious connection between the two stories, and no (current) plan to go further with this one. IDK, we'll see.)
It had always worked for the aliens before, for countless eons. Wipe out 90% of a primitive population, and its people would die off, leaving other species to eventually arise and take its place. Species more... biddable. Prevent any intelligent life, and the world would be one more safe, tame Galactic Preserve. As it should be.
Sixty-six million stellar orbits ago in local time, the third planet of a nothing G-type star had possessed a thriving ecosystem despite being a deathworld. At the top of the food chain, gargantuan birdlike carnivorous monsters, sea- and river-borne voracious eating machines, and more. The lush, high-oxygen world with its dramatic axial tilt and radically diverse biomes was almost museum-quality in what the evolution of many species could do when they were locked into truly hellish competition. Such a sight had not been seen in living galactic memory, and it terrified many of the members - and this despite no creature having evolved beyond rudimentary tool use.
The solution, simple. A massive comet measuring miles in length was coaxed from its nearby orbit to impact the land mass. The resulting impact darkened the skies, killed most of the plant life, and starved out virtually all life. Only the small, the adaptable, and the hardy did not succumb.
The galactic watchers washed their hands of the world and made a note to avoid it but to return and observe at a later date. Then they promptly forgot the world existed for millions of years.
- _ -
When they returned roughly 70,000 planetary cycles ago, they found that almost all of the megafauna and megaflora of the prior visit had not survived. But what was there still troubled them. Air-breathing, bipedal, tool-using omnivores had arisen in many biomes as the dominant species. Some were dark and furry, some orange-furred, most were arboreal, and some... near-hairless, but clothed in furs, carrying spears and tools. Intelligent, sentient life.
A threat. A quick survey found a supervolcano that, with some prodding, could be made to explode. And the smoudering supervolcano known as 'Toba' to the grunting locals erupted, blackening the skies for years and, as likely would happen, killing off all but the smallest creatures for a second time. This problematic deathworld would learn to be a peaceful uninhabited Galactic Preserve, just as the Galactic Emperor preferred worlds to be outside of the Empire.
And this time they promised themselves to return much, much sooner than their last visit. No scheduling mistakes would be made this time. By the time they left orbit a year later, world population of the fur-clad intelligent bipeds had dropped to less than a thousand. They were finished.
- _ -
When the aliens returned roughly seven hundred planetary solar orbits ago, the horror of their science teams was palpable. Structures visible from orbit? Continent-spanning empires? Cities everywhere? Domestication of wildlife, limited terraforming, farming? STEEL use? And all this from the same creatures who'd been Reduced to one percent of their prior numbers? PREPOSTEROUS!
Someone was meddling with this world. It was the only explanation. Well, the watchers would teach whomever was meddling the error of their ways. They took biological samples, modified a local virus, and sent it down to their densest population areas. Almost immediately, the plague they'd unleashed began to decimate the population. It was well-known in Galactic circles what an unchecked airborne pneumonic plague could do to an advanced society. These primitives, whose streets were sewers and whose medicine was limited to applying parasites to their flesh and murmuring incantations, would not survive such a thing.
Convinced their work was done, they left, but they promised to return within a thousand solar orbits or less. No more chances would be taken with this Preserve World. They would Reduce it as many times as necessary in order to tame it, as they had with so many other worlds.
-_-
Today
The science team thanked their paranoid security officer's admonishment to enter the system in full stealth. They'd thought it was safe. They'd thought they might at worst find a planetary civilization rebuilding again from its Reduction, maybe plying metal tools. They'd predicted a world not much different from the one they'd left behind seven hundred solar orbits ago.
It was what they'd have found if they'd Reduced one of their own colonial worlds and cut it off from all external aid.
But no, this world now had detectable nuclear fission power, a lively orbit full of debris and at least one functioning space station, multiple probes around the solar system, and a vibrant infoweb. They were spacefaring! Synthesizing complex molecules! Harnessed the atom! But how? No Galactic Species had ever evolved so quickly.
And with quick perusal, they did not see any immediate evidence of tampering. No icons to deities recognizable as a Galactic Species. No Galactic technology at all, just basic technology from metallurgy to primitive fission and limited fusion weaponry. Projectile and chemical weaponry, of course, but also limited EM weaponry. They were not yet a threat, but they were on the cusp of actually meeting the Galactic Empire! On their own!
At least they had not yet militarized space. It was not too late.
This, this, abomination could not be permitted. They shifted orbit, moving into the thick cloud of low orbit debris, preparing to planet-crack the world once and for all. This world would simply have to be a write-off.
-_-
The "defunct weather satellite" гибель (gibel) was dormant but functional, waiting in low earth orbit. The fall of the USSR and the destruction of its ground control station and the deaths of several key KGB agents had erased its existence from memory. But its payload remained. Twelve MIRV-capable warheads, stealthed and shielded from detection as best 1980s technology could achieve, waited for orders to fire. Orders that, thankfully, never came.
But Russians being Russians, the design of the craft was paranoid. It could not be allowed to be seized; its existence could not be known to the world, or it would be revealed as a tremendous war crime and intolerable threat. So it had safety precautions.
One of which included requiring a certain coded signal (intended for maintenance) in order to approach it without triggering its proximity safeguards. But it had a second safeguard as well; if it received the wrong signals, AND someone tried to dock with it, it was to remove itself and whomever was docking with it with ALL due force. The intolerable Americans with their computer codes and space shuttle could not be permitted to expose their platform.
The Galactic craft probed the debris field as it neared the Earth, seeking to learn more about this doomed world. And then, wonder of improbable wonders, it nearly collided with the dormant weapons platform.
The probe signals and near-collision triggered safeguard one and two activated, and a nuclear fireball of megaton-proportions obliterated the stealthed (and thus unshielded) alien craft from orbit.

It’s very clear how much love there is here for a good old G-Shock square. The GW-M5610U specifically gets the most love. I’m sure for most this is the perfect square but coming from a DW-5600E, that I’ve worn every day for the past 3 years, I’m a bit disappointed by the GW-M5610U I acquired a couple weeks ago. Am I the only one out there?
Top reasons for me:
1) Multiband 6. I live in rural New England and it just does not work. I’ve read everything about how the weather can affect it, or the season, or to put it near a West facing window, or to put it on a metal bar, or to use the Clock Wave app…you get the picture. I just want it to work consistently. I was under the impression before I bought the watch that this feature was a game changer and that nightly I’d have a freshly synced watch. Don’t ever have to think about your watch time being “off”. That’s not at all the case. At this point manually adjusting the time on my DW-5600E is less of a headache and quicker to do.
2) The display. I thought the display was going to be a drastic improvement with better sight lines than the DW-5600E. Not at all the case. Looks great when you look at it straight on but completely illegible at any other angle. Not an issue on the DW-5600E, though I will admit it’s “faded” at certain angles. Still completely legible at all angles.
3) The backlight. Thought it sounded cool that there was an improved LED backlight that you could adjust the time for but it looks terrible. Hate how unevenly the light is distributed. Also the white tones? The classic smooth and evenly lit blue/green/teal light from the DW-5600E looks perfect. It’s classic.
With all that being said, the GW-M5610U is twice the price of the DW-5600E. Yes solar is nice but not a game changer for me. I’m sure I’m just nitpicking but I’m going to continue recommending the DW-5600E to people over the GW-M5610U and continue wearing the hell out of it.

Hi friends. I have become addicted to lawn care and my lawn is finally looking better but still a novice. I live in Massachusetts.
This spring I was planning on core aerating, overseeding, and topdressing with compost. However, I noticed that I have some weeds that have developed over the past few weeks with the warm weather we have had. I think it is mostly a mix of crab grass and maybe spurge. I was planning on treating these weeds with tenacity before overseeding. But, the seed I was planning on using from my local nursery is a mixture of TTF and creeping red fescue. I read that tenacity may reduce germination rates with fine fescue.
Should I apply the tenacity now, then plan on overseeding in 2-3 weeks? When you guys core aerate do you remove the cores from the lawn? I have read some differing opinions about this.
Additionally, I have previously top dressed fresh seed with peat moss. In an effort to be more eco-friendly and save some money I was going to use compost. The place I was planning on getting compost from has a few different options.

1. Compost- "made from composted leaves. Lots of earthworms too help make it the best compost in "Massachusetts
   
2. horticultural blend- "one-half compost, one-half loam, this new environmentally-friendly horticultural blend helps amend poor drainage for healthy lawns and plants"
   

Which of these would you guys use?
Do you guys have feedback for compost topdressing or suggestions I should be aware of? Any overseeding knowledge is welcomed!
Thanks in advance!

Welcome back to another year of Pick'Em threads!
This post kicks off our 2023 Pick'Em series, and can be used to discuss your picks for 03/30/2023. If you have any feedback or suggestions on improving the thread further, drop a comment below or message the moderators. There are one or two suggestions from last year I'm trying to build in from last year's proposals, though with the WBC they'll need a couple more weeks (at least) to be ready... :)
Don't forget: picks must be submitted during the twelve-hour window before Noon EDT on game day, you can only make one selection per day, and missed days count as losses, so choose wisely and don't delay!
Games for Thursday, 03/30/2023:

Matchup and Team Records	Probable Pitchers (Season ERA)	Estimated Win Probability
Atlanta Braves (0-0) @ Washington Nationals (0-0)	Max Fried (-) / Patrick Corbin (-)	68% / 32%
San Francisco Giants (0-0) @ New York Yankees (0-0)	Logan Webb (-) / Gerrit Cole (-)	40% / 60%
Baltimore Orioles (0-0) @ Boston Red Sox (0-0)	Kyle Gibson (-) / Corey Kluber (-)	41% / 59%
Milwaukee Brewers (0-0) @ Chicago Cubs (0-0)	Corbin Burnes (-) / Marcus Stroman (-)	54% / 46%
Detroit Tigers (0-0) @ Tampa Bay Rays (0-0)	Eduardo Rodriguez (-) / Shane McClanahan (-)	34% / 66%
Philadelphia Phillies (0-0) @ Texas Rangers (0-0)	Aaron Nola (-) / Jacob deGrom (-)	48% / 52%
Pittsburgh Pirates (0-0) @ Cincinnati Reds (0-0)	Mitch Keller (-) / Hunter Greene (-)	46% / 54%
Colorado Rockies (0-0) @ San Diego Padres (0-0)	German Marquez (-) / Blake Snell (-)	32% / 68%
Toronto Blue Jays (0-0) @ St. Louis Cardinals (0-0)	Alek Manoah (-) / Miles Mikolas (-)	51% / 49%
Minnesota Twins (0-0) @ Kansas City Royals (0-0)	Pablo Lopez (-) / Zack Greinke (-)	56% / 44%
New York Mets (0-0) @ Miami Marlins (0-0)	Max Scherzer (-) / Sandy Alcantara (-)	53% / 47%
Chicago White Sox (0-0) @ Houston Astros (0-0)	Dylan Cease (-) / Framber Valdez (-)	39% / 61%
Los Angeles Angels (0-0) @ Oakland Athletics (0-0)	Shohei Ohtani (-) / Kyle Muller (-)	63% / 37%
Arizona Diamondbacks (0-0) @ Los Angeles Dodgers (0-0)	Zac Gallen (-) / Julio Urias (-)	39% / 61%
Cleveland Guardians (0-0) @ Seattle Mariners (0-0)	Shane Bieber (-) / Luis Castillo (-)	48% / 52%

1. All columns are Away / Home. Records are typically current as-of the time of posting, and do not always contain the matchup results from the day of posting.
2. A bolded matchup means that there is a "Probability of Precipitation" greater than 50% in a non-domed stadium at the time of this post.
3. An italicized matchup means that it is Game 2 of a doubleheader, which for Pick'Em purposes will not be applicable (only Game 1 is counted, but Game 2 is still included above so that you can be aware that pitching management may be different than a non-doubleheader game day).
4. Probable pitchers and stats sourced from mlb.com (via the MLB-StatsAPI); weather data soured from the OpenWeather One Call API.
5. Estimated chance of winning percentages sourced from FiveThirtyEight’s 2023 MLB Game Predictions, an ELO-based, easy to understand ratings system.

Details such as probable pitchers, winning odds, and match certainty are subject to change. Note that a pick for a team in a cancelled game (weather or otherwise) is automatically counted as a correct guess.
View Poll

This post also appears on my blog, but that version has links to my full reviews for everything, as well as the visual card.
My favorite reading challenge is winding down, and for the third consecutive year, I have completed a pair of Bingo cards. I’ll talk more about my themed card in a while (probably after April 1), but today, we’re looking at my first totally unplanned Bingo card. Sure, I went through the recommendation threads last April, because those were a blast, and I planned my themed card, but apart from that, I just read what I read and then checked this week to see if I could make a full card. And perhaps one or two squares are a bit of a stretch, but I did indeed make a full card.
Continuing the bit from the last two years, I have rankings, ratings, mini-reviews, and cliffhanger notes. Do keep in mind that the rankings are just for fun and shouldn’t be taken as gospel. After all, I intentionally excluded anything I rated below 14/20, so the worst of this card is very far from the bottom of my year of reading. And it can be hard to rank books with the exact same score. I have a 20-point scale and not a 50-point scale precisely because sometimes opinions can only get so fine-grained. Ask me again next week, and I may order 16 through 22—or 2 through 5—totally differently.
Anyways, I read some great stuff, let’s get to it:
1. “Falling Off the Edge of the World” by Suzanne Palmer, “Two Spacesuits” by Leonard Richardson, “In the Time of the Telperi Flower” by David-Christopher Galhea, “The Bone Stomach” by Ziawa Jande, “The Empty” by Ray Nayler.
Categories: Short Stories, Published in 2022, Book Club (hard)
Mini-Review: It’s common for Five Short Stories to end up on top of my list because I can just cherry-pick some of my favorites of the year. But all five of these are free—two will be discussed as part of the April 5 session of Fantasy’s Short Fiction Book Club—and I highly recommend checking them out.
Rating: 18/20
Cliff Severity: Short stories may have ambiguous endings, but they don’t tend to end on cliffhangers.
2. The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler.
Categories: Standalone (hard), Published in 2022
Mini-Review: The plot description may sound like Michael Crichton, with an undersea first contact intertwined with high-stakes hacking and an AI-run slave ship, but the storytelling is anything but. It’s extremely contemplative—on the nature of consciousness and of humanity’s treatment of the Other—and written in such a way that it only gets better upon reflection.
Rating: 18/20
Cliff Severity: There’s plenty of uncertainty at the end, but it feels like a story that’s meant to end on some uncertainty and not one that’s waiting for a sequel.
3. Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura, translated by Philip Gabriel.
Categories: Published in 2022, Mental Health (hard), Standalone (hard), Indie Published (hard), Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey (hard), BIPOC Author, Family Matters
Mini-Review: The pacing of a school novel, but without the school, Lonely Castle in the Mirror stars a group of tweens whose individual traumas have kept them out of their local middle school but who find each other in a portal world. A slow read but an easy one, this dives brilliantly into adolescent mental health, making it not just my favorite YA novel of the year, but one of my favorite 2022 novels full stop.
Rating: 18/20
Cliff Severity: Another standalone?
4. Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang
Categories: *Historical SFF, Standalone (hard), Revolutions and Rebellions (hard), BIPOC Author, Published in 2022, Family Matters
Mini-Review: This one is an actual school novel, set in a fantasy Oxford whose translation magic powers the British Empire, and provides an unflinching portrait of colonialism. And as fascinating as the linguistic magic was, the highlight for me was a lead character grappling with a place that has given him his heart’s desire but that will never fully accept him as one of their own—nor will they refrain from using his gifts against his native land.
Rating: 18/20
Cliff Severity: If I keep reading this many standalones, it’s gonna ruin the whole cliff severity bit.
5. Dust and Light by Carol Berg
Categories: Family Matters (hard), Book Club (hard), Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey (hard), Mental Health (hard)
Mini-Review: If you’ve read Carol Berg, you know to expect tight focus on a lead who will go through absolute hell before coming out on the other side. This one sets up a neat puzzle with a lead whose magic art gives him knowledge others would like hidden, and there’s no lack for danger along the way.
Rating: 18/20
Cliff Severity: This is a duology and should be read as such. The cliffhanger isn’t as bad as others I’ve read, but it still sets up a major step into the unknown.
6. Neom by Lavie Tidhar
Categories: Non-human Protagonist, Indie Published (hard), Published in 2022, Mental Health, No Ifs Ands Or Buts
Mini-Review: It’s a short novel that flits through a surprising number of perspective characters, feeling more like mythology in a futuristic context than like a traditional sci-fi (never mind the robot main character). But it’s a beautiful and touching read that deserves more attention.
Rating: 17/20
Cliff Severity: Reads like a standalone, even though there’s at least one other novel (Central Station) and other stories in this universe.
7. She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
Categories: Book Club (hard), Revolutions and Rebellions (hard), Historical SFF (hard), Anti-hero, BIPOC Author, Family Matters
Mini-Review: This is Chinese historical fiction with a thin veneer of magic, but both the magic and the politics are secondary to an exploration of several characters who don’t fit into their culture’s expectations of their gender. It's intensely character-driven and altogether fascinating.
Rating: 17/20
Cliff Severity: This is a duology and leaves plenty to do for the second book, but there’s enough payoff in the first to make it feel worthwhile by itself.
8. Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo
Categories: BIPOC Author, Cool Weapon, Published in 2022, Revolution or Rebellion.
Mini-Review: Traveling companions swap larger-than-life stories during their time on the road. And then they experience some larger-than-life stories. Despite the mortal danger, this feels like a small-scale piece, and it’s a gorgeous one.
Rating: 17/20
Cliff Severity: This is the third book in a novella series that’s explicitly meant to be readable in any order. The main characters carry over, but there’s no cliffhanger.
9. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers
Categories: LGBTQIA List, Book Club (hard), Family Matters, Non-human Protagonist (hard), Mental Health (hard)
Mini-Review: And here is an undoubtedly small-scale piece, as a group of people from various non-human races have to deal with unexpectedly prolonged proximity after an emergency leaves them bunkered down together at a rest stop in space. Recommended for fans of character-driven sci-fi, especially ones who don’t mind the society-scale problems left unresolved while the small-scale problems are addressed.
Rating: 17/20
Cliff Severity: Again, this is part of a series, but many characters come and go—this one feels readable as a standalone.
10. A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow
Categories: Award Finalist, Book Club (hard), Author Uses Initials, Cool Weapon
Mini-Review: How do you rate a very fun, fast-paced fractured fairy tale that you’ll blow through in no time but forget about in a month? It’s hard for me to call this an essential read, but it is so good at what it does, with a lot of humor and a few moments of real poignancy.
Rating: 17/20
Cliff Severity: Another novella series where each is meant to be readable as a standalone.
11. Iron Truth by S.A. Tholin
Categories: Weird Ecology (hard), Self-Published (hard), No Ifs Ands Or Buts, Family Matters.
Mini-Review: This is a giant hunk of epic sci-fi/horroromance, as a woman crash-landed on an inhospitable planet tries to find her brother, while a military leader and his squad seek to retrieve the secrets from a disappeared ship, and an even greater danger lurks underneath it all. This takes some patience, but the payoff is real—a well-deserving winner of the first SPSFC.
Rating: 16/20
Cliff Severity: The main plot resolves, but in a way that asks a whole lot of questions of the sequel.
12. The Last Gifts of the Universe by Rory August
Categories: Self-Published, Published in 2022 (hard), Standalone (hard), Family Matters, Mental Health (hard).
Mini-Review: A fun sci-fi story about excavating dead civilizations—to hopefully find the secrets behind their death—turns into an exploration of grief with a surprisingly touching romantic subplot. Strong (and short!) character-driven space opera.
Rating: 16/20
Cliff Severity: Standalone!
13. City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Categories: Antihero, Standalone (hard), Mental Health (hard), Revolutions and Rebellions (hard), Published in 2022.
Mini-Review: A mosaic novel about a revolution in a weird fantasy city, with a whole host of wildly self-interested characters working at cross-purposes. The writing is engrossing and the politics are fascinating, although there aren’t many characters who are especially sympathetic.
Rating: 16/20
Cliff-Severity: Another standalone!
14. Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
Categories: Wibby Wobbly Timey Wimey (hard), Book Club (hard), Standalone (hard), No Ifs Ands Or Buts (hard), Family Matters (hard), BIPOC Author.
Mini-Review: The tight character focus on a trans violinist running away from home makes this worth the read, as do the lush Californian setting and outstanding descriptions of both music and food. A sci-fi subplot and an ending that’s more than a bit too neat detract from the overall package, but the strengths are enough to make this well worth the read.
Rating: 16/20
Cliff Severity: Another standalone!
15. The Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy, March/April 2023, edited by Sheree Renée Thomas
Categories: Two or More Authors (hard), Five Short Stories (hard)
Mini-Review: 16 stories, along with some poetry and book reviews, and nearly all of them are good. The Black Mirror-like “Piggyback Girl” and the whimsical “The Weremouse of Millicent Bradley Middle School” stand out from the rest, but there are a couple entertaining fairy tales, an excellent piece of sword-and-sorcery, a novelette about a cat buying a dragon, and plenty more fun.
Rating: 15/20
Cliff Severity: More short stories—some of these actually connect to existing universes (including the Neom world), but they’re readable on their own.
16. The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik
Categories: Urban Fantasy, Features Mental Health, Family Matters, Published in 2022.
Mini-Review: Pays off on so many of the seeds planted in the first two books, with more than one absolutely outstanding sequence featuring edge-of-your-seat tension and buckets of thematic depth. But it’s a bit uneven, with a slow and frustrating start and an ending that felt a little too neat. Definitely worth the read for fans of the first two but probably isn’t for anyone who didn’t enjoy A Deadly Education.
Rating: 15/20
Cliff Severity: Last book in a trilogy, so it ends things. You can’t really start here though.
17. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Categories: Published in 2022, Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey, Family Matters
Mini-Review: I expected beautiful prose and excellent character work across all four timelines, and I got good prose and good character work. Some of the pandemic sections felt a hair too on-the-nose, but there was plenty to get me invested. The science fiction elements generally worked fine, though it’s not a book that really breaks new ground on plot. Overall, it’s a solid read, though not one where I totally understand the “best of the year” hype.
Rating: 15/20
Cliff Severity: This is readable as a standalone, but I have been told it is loosely connected to other books in the same world.
18. The Hand of the Sun King by J.T. Greathouse
Categories: Shapeshifters (hard), Author Uses Initials (hard), Family Matters (hard), Award Finalist (hard), Revolutions and Rebellions (hard), Book Club (hard).
Mini-Review: This is structured almost like four related novellas, with each section rising to its own climax before skipping ahead to the next step in the character’s journey. The main character progresses nicely, and there’s enough plot development to make for an intriguing setup, though there’s plenty left to do in the sequel.
Rating: 15/20
Cliff Severity: Another one that makes a lot of progress but leaves lots and lots of work for the second in the duology.
19. Dead Silence by S.A Barnes
Categories: Set in Space, Book Club (hard), Mental Health (hard), Standalone (hard), Published in 2022 (hard), Author Uses Initials, No Ifs Ands Or Buts.
Mini-Review: This promises a haunted house in space and delivers a haunted house in space. Even as a relative horror neophyte, I was able to predict most of the plot, but the atmosphere is good enough to make it a plenty engaging read regardless.
Rating: 15/20
Cliff Severity: Standalone!
20. Dead Star by Simon Kewin
Categories: No Ifs Ands Or Buts, Self-Published, Set in Space (hard), Revolutions or Rebellions (hard), Family Matters.
Mini-Review: This is a fast-paced, planet-hopping adventure about digging into the secret history beyond the sudden and mystifying rise of a small religious sect to galactic hegemony. The villains are a bit over-the-top, and I’d have liked to see more of the story in the first book, but it’s short and very hard to put down.
Rating: 15/20
Cliff Severity: This is the worst cliffhanger on the card. It reaches a waystation on the full trilogy arc, but so many of the driving questions are left for the sequels.
21. Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire
Categories: Revolutions and Rebellions, Book Club (hard), LGBTQIA List, Mental Health (hard).
Mini-Review: It’s a really touching found family story in which a horse-loving intersex protagonist finds a home in the portal world of the Hooflands, but with a rushed and uninspiring revolution filling out the plot. The description of childhood bullying and cultural expectations of femininity calcifying as early as elementary school are all too real and expertly done. And if the ending doesn’t maintain the level of quality, the beginning is still enough to recommend it.
Rating: 15/20
Cliff Severity: Deep into a full series, but I believe it’s meant as an alternate entry point. I’m not sure I buy it as an alternate entry point, but the story is mostly self-contained, with the inevitable connection to the rest of the universe.
22. A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark
Categories: Set in Africa (hard), Urban Fantasy (hard), Shapeshifters (hard), Book Club (hard), Author Uses Initials (hard), BIPOC Author.
Mini-Review: Stunning worldbuilding, mediocre mystery plot. Like many of the 15/20 stories, there’s a five-star element and a three-star element mixed together. Here, the magic-infused, steampunk alt history Cairo is the true star, carrying a mystery that’s otherwise the dashing protagonist jumping from action sequence to action sequence.
Rating: 15/20
Cliff Severity: It’s a detective story in a world where the same detective has other stories. No problem reading it by itself.
23. The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente
Categories: Author Uses Initials, Book Club (hard).
Mini-Review: This is an expansion of an award-winning novelette with a fascinating and unique narrative voice. It takes place on a floating trash island after climate disaster, and like many climate stories, relies heavily on worldbuilding. For me, the worldbuilding wasn’t enough to sustain full power over novella length, but the main character’s narration kept things interesting.
Rating: 15/20
Cliff Severity: This is an expansion of a previous novelette and can easily be read alone.
24. The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
Categories: Cool Weapon, Published in 2022, BIPOC Author, Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey (hard), Shapeshifters, Mental Health (hard), Family Matters (hard), Revolutions and Rebellions (hard).
Mini-Review: Gorgeous prose and a stunningly creative narrative structure buttress a fairly straightforward central story long on violence and…well, long. Unlike some stories higher on my own list, it’s very easy for me to see why some have this as their top story of the year—it takes risks and has a few elements that are absolutely knocked out of the park. But it’s just too long to live on prose and structural experiments alone, and the characters and plot are competently drawn but not quite riveting. Put simply, there’s some exceptional work here, but there are too many slow spots.
Rating: 15/20
Cliff Severity: Standalone!
25. Rose/House by Arkady Martine
Categories: Name in the Title, Standalone (hard), Mental Health (hard), No Ifs Ands Or Buts.
Mini-Review: Apparently I haven’t read many stories with names in them this year, so I have to use the name of an AI house to fill out the card. It hurts me to squeeze out an entry that would’ve easily been top ten in A Desolation Called Peace, but unplanned Bingo can be capricious. At any rate, this one looks like a locked room murder mystery but reads more like a fever dream. It’s a beautiful fever dream with lots of meditation in personhood, but it’s also hard to know just what to take away in the end.
Rating: 14/20
Cliff Severity: Standalone!
Lessons from unplanned Bingo:

• I thought this would be easy, and I suppose I successfully completed the challenge with literally zero advanced planning, so pats on the back for me. But I had to stretch for a couple squares that I noticed in late March hadn’t been obviously filled—particularly Weird Ecology and Name in the Title. I think my choices fit the squares, but I hadn’t noted them down as fits in the immediate aftermath of reading.
• As usual, there were a couple subjective squares that could be filled by seemingly everything. Does anything I read not address mental health and family? Perhaps not. Or perhaps I wasn’t strict enough defining those squares (though my ultimate choices were excellent fits, if I do say so myself).
• On the other hand, I don’t read much urban fantasy, antiheroes, or books with cool weapons. Or a whole lot with shapeshifters, though I was surprised to see them arise more than once. Award Finalist was also tricky, as I read so many books that were currently up for awards—after all, I led the Hugo Readalong and judged for SPSFC—and I had no way of knowing at the time whether they would win.
• Unplanned Bingo didn’t really take away my enjoyment of Bingo. The logic puzzle at the end is fun, but it’s the brainstorming thread at the beginning that makes this my absolute favorite reading challenge.
• In using the same template as my recap post from last year, I was able to notice a few interesting coincidences. For instance, I had an R.F. Kuang novel 4th and my Self-Published square 12th two years running. But in general, my scores were higher this year. Either I’m getting soft with my ratings, or I’m finding more and more good books.

Where to watch Scream VI: As of now, the only way to watch Scream VI is to head to a theater when it releases on Friday, March 10. You can find a local showing on Fandango. Otherwise, you’ll just have to wait for it to become available to rent or buy on digital platforms like Vudu, Peacock, Apple and YouTube, or become available to stream on Paramount Plus.
Watch Now: Scream VI Online Free
Watch Now: Scream VI Online Free
"What's your favorite scary movie?" the original Scream killer infamously questions Drew Barrymore's Casey Becker over the phone, his voice equally throaty and flirty. "You have to have a favorite, what comes to mind?" he continues, prompting the teen to reveal her top-tier horror flick (it's Halloween) before threatening her life.
This memorably haunting 199VI scene (which doesn't end well for Casey) jumpstarted the campy, bloody, beloved franchise we know today.
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Directed by Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, the Scream franchise's sixth installment — aptly titled Scream VI — will hit U.S. theaters on March 10, 2023. The highly-anticipated film will see Ghostface terrorize New York City, as the four survivors of the latest Ghostface slayings "leave Woodsboro behind and start a fresh chapter" in the Big Apple.
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Starring Jenna Ortega (Wednesday), Hayden Panettiere (Nashville), Samara Weaving (Ready or Not), Courteney Cox (Friends), Mason Gooding (Booksmart), Jasmin Savoy Brown (Yellowjackets), and Melissa Barrera (Vida), among others, Scream VI is said to be "potentially a hundred times gorier" than its 2022 predecessor, according to the latter star.
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While diehard Scream stans will likely dash to the theaters on Friday, casual viewers may prefer to experience the wrath of Ghostface from the comfort of their living room sofas. So, will the meta-slasher be available for streaming?
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If you're wondering when and where you'll be able to watch the film today, you can check out our guide below. We also added our predictions for when you'll be able to stream Scream VI online at home.
When Does the Scream VI Movie Come Out?
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Scream VI officially hits theaters on March 10, 2023. But you can catch early screenings as soon as Thursday, March 9.
Following its release in theaters, the film will be available to stream on Paramount Plus. Expect the movie to hit the streamer 45 days after its theatrical run, which should be sometime in April. it's most likely that Paramount Plus will be the main platform that will stream Scream VI.
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Will Scream VI be on Netflix?
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No, Scream VI will not be available on Netflix — at least not anytime soon, since it will be heading straight to Peacock after its theatrical release. In the meantime, you’ll just have to wait for it to become available on the NBCUniversal-owned streaming platform.
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Is Scream VI streaming on HBO Max?
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No, Scream VI will not be on HBO Max since it’s not a Warner Bros. movie. While the company previously released its movies on HBO Max and in theaters on the same day, they have since stopped and have implemented a 45-day window between the theatrical release and streaming release.
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Is Scream VI Available Streaming on Paramount Plus
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At the time of writing, there is no official streaming release date for Scream VI. However, if we look back at the gap between Scream (2022) hitting movie theaters, before becoming available to stream on Paramount Plus, we can make some guesses as to when it will be up for streaming.
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Scream (2022) was released on January 14, before arriving on Paramount Plus on March 8. This means there were 53 days between the big screen release, and the streaming release. The film was also available to buy digitally a week before it landed on Paramount Plus, on March 1. With that in mind, we can expect Scream VI to be available to stream on Paramount Plus around May 2, 2023.
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Paramount Pictures has said in the past, however, that most of their films will be available to stream exclusively on Paramount Plus after a 45-day theatrical window. If this is the case for Scream VI, it may arrive earlier than expected, on or around April 24, 2023.
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Is Scream VI streaming on Prime Video?
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Amazon Prime Video subscribers might be disappointed because ‘Scream VI’ is not a part of the streaming giant’s library. Alternatively, you have the option to turn to similar films using your subscription, including ‘Smile,' 'Bram Stoker's Dracula,' 'Let the Right One In.’
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The bad news is that the movie is not likely to come to Prime Video. Paramount Pictures movies used to head to Amazon Prime Video about a year after the theatrical release, but that’s changed with a lot of movies recently. Instead of heading to Prime Video, they’ve gone to Paramount+.
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Is Scream VI Available On Hulu?
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Viewers are saying that they want to view the new movie Scream VI on Hulu. Unfortunately, this is not possible since Hulu currently does not offer any of the free episodes of this series streaming at this time. It will be exclusive to the MTV channel, which you get by subscribing to cable or satellite TV services. You will not be able to watch it on Hulu or any other free streaming service.
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Is Scream VI Streaming Online?
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Well, not right now. In terms of the streaming release, Scream VI will most likely follow the 45-day theatrical window before being available to stream online. Due to Amazon's multi-billion dollar acquisition of MGM (the franchise's production company), it's most likely that Prime Video will be the main platform that will stream Scream VI.

Im honestly jealous of anyone who got to read it in high school because it definitely resonates with how I felt (and still feel) around that time. I picked it up on my own recently and man it’s crazy to think this was written in the 1930s. Huxley is a mad man ! I feel it goes to show how long there’s been people that can get this picture from just taking a step back and observing the dystopian future we all may be heading to. As far back as 1932 this book was able to predict how desensitized society as a whole has become to things like death and sex. Especially right now with a bunch of kids wandering around with the access of the whole internet in their pockets and babies being raised on screens. It was heartwarming to read and see that I’m not the only one that sees shit that way but also scary as hell that someone 91 years ago was able to put it together so perfectly. Cheers everyone, if ya read this far im glad you give a shit !

To preface, a ton of people want RDR3 to be a prequel, but a lot of people also don’t. The arguments against it, which I support, are that we already know how everything goes so they can’t re-contextualize things the way 2 did because in 1 we know so little about the gang’s days before the game, and that it just wouldn’t be that interesting.
But I think they could pull off a prequel in a way that wouldn’t be redundant or uneventful, and this is why I think the protagonist of a third game should be…
Uncle.
The reasons why I think his character can perfectly be set up as the protagonist of the third game follow, but I’ll get the most obvious one out of the way
We don’t even know his real name. And for the entire duration of the game until the end of the final chapter, they do not reveal this. So the entire game we’ll think we’re just playing as a completely new character with no correlation to the story of the first 2 games, and throughout the game we only get subtle hints as to who this new character actually is.
Which leads into my next point, all we know about him is the vague stories of his past that he tells throughout the game that never really matter at all in the bigger picture. Beating up 6 Englishman in a bar, becoming some sort of national hero in Africa, being the “one shot kid” that he was bragging about to Arthur and others. They could subtly hint at who he is throughout the game without making it obvious and only in retrospect it makes sense. Have the bar fight with the Englishman just happen as a random occurrence with no one making a big deal about it, at one point you kill multiple men with a single shot and without throwing it in your face, that’s where his nickname originates, maybe at some point in the story you get hit really hard in the back and that’s where he got his lUmBAgO from, but it only becomes a big deal when he gets older. So much they could do to subtly hint at who he really is without giving it away abruptly. And some argue that if we did play as another gang member that never appears or is even mentioned in 2, it would just never make sense for continuity. But if we play as Uncle we won’t have that to worry about and the same problem wouldn’t occur, because of my next point.
And a common argument against playing as any other gang member present in 1/2 is that we know their stories. Lenny, Sean, Javier etc we know didn’t have much of a life outside of the gang, but Uncle did from what we know. He’s the oldest member by a decent margin and he could’ve had an entire life outside of the gang that we’re yet to see. The game could just end with him joining the gang. And it could also tie into the theme of redemption which is what the game would need. Maybe joining was some kind of new beginning for him after his story which we never saw. He has over Lenny’s entire lifetime of his own story to work with which involved much much more than just the gang. I think it would also be refreshing if not for the third time in a row, we die at the end of the game or before the epilogue. And just imagine the shock of finding out you were Uncle the entire time, and hearing Dutch/Hosea or young Arthur’s voice out of nowhere. I trust R* could give us a story that doesn’t feel redundant or predictable as another prequel while completely reinventing the character.
And his story would take place at the height of the Wild West, which I think is a plus.
That’s all I’ve got
What do you think of Uncle as a main character, in his prime before gang life?