Mafs couples still married

For context I drink beer, so that may be the issue. My first bout addicted to alcohol was with vodka, and I had quit for 33 days before drinking again out of boredom. Now I mostly just drink beer, but after a couple nights of 2 beers each I just can't anymore. I can barely eat the entire day, I feel like shit. Only had 24OZ 10%/20 proof and around 12OZ 8%/16 proof (1.5 beers) yet my stomach has still been hurting up until a few minutes ago, so it took 8 hours to recover after waking up despite hydration. I'm not trying to become an alcoholic or anything but I'm just curious, is it impossible to become an alcoholic with beer or do y'all have stomachs and livers made of solid steel?

My wife and I had been so excited to go on our cross-country road trip. We hadn’t ever been to the west coast. We grew up in a rural town in the Midwest, so we have never seen mountains or desert. We made a route before we left so that we could cut through all the differing terrains and catch all the major landmarks. On our way to Vegas though something happened that neither of us can really explain…
We were coming from California after driving down the west coast and had left Reno not that long ago. I saw a city called Hawthorne on the map and wanted to drive through it since Hawthorne Heights is one of my favorite bands (dumb reason, but still). We were driving and just enjoying the scenery and before we knew it, night had fallen upon us, and we were looking to get a hotel. Just outside of Hawthorne we found a campground on a lake, so we decided to camp out instead. I made up a tent and we laid there talking for about an hour until I heard my wife start gently snoring mid conversation. I rolled over and was about to close my eyes when I saw a shadow outside of my tent…
All my sleepiness left my body as I now had enough adrenaline to fight a gorilla pumping though me. I grabbed by trusty Springfield and proceeded to get up super carefully so as not to wake my wife and unzipped the tent. As I walked out, I heard the sound of a child’s giggle and chills went through my body. “Stupid kids,” I thought to myself as I laid back down. I set the gun back next to me and proceeded to slowly drift into the worst sleep I had gotten since we started our trip.
My wife awoke around 7am and proceeded to rouse me as well. She noticed the gun next to me and asked if everything was ok since I normally keep it in my backpack. I told her the events of the night prior and she said the kids were probably just out exploring. I had a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach though that I couldn’t seem to shake but I ignored it. We proceed to make breakfast and then tore down camp to get back on the road. She offered to drive since I looked like I barely slept but I said I was fine and we took off.
About five minutes down the road from our campsite we were about to go through a quaint little town off the lake. I had that same weird felling in the pit of my stomach that I had felt the previous night. I hear my wife scream “There’s a little girl on the side of the road! Stop, she may be hurt!” Everything in my body said not to but my wife was already halfway out of the car while it was still in motion. I pulled over and my wife ran over to the little girl who was sobbing asking for her mommy. I looked for my gun to put in my waistband and I realized it was back in the trunk. My wife was talking to the little girl and asking her where her family is. “We were camping… and I wanted to explore… so I walked away and now I’m lost…” the little girl muttered in between sobs. I close the trunk after getting myself situated and look at my wife. “We should take her back to the campsite and see if we can find her parents.” she said. Reluctantly I agreed, the feeling of uneasiness still weighing heavily on me. “I’ll try to find a number for a non-emergency police line. You get her into the car.” I said to my wife. I looked at the frightened young girl, “You’ll be fine sweety. We will get you back to your family.” I stepped away from the car and pulled out my phone… no service. Being from the Midwest, I always forget about the mountains interfering with cell signal. “I got nothing,” I holler to my wife, “You have any service?” She checks her phone and shakes her head. “Dammit…” I guess we should just drive back up the road and see.
My wife decides to sit in the back with the little girl to try to help keep her calm and we head on our way back to that godforsaken campsite. As we are driving, I hear my wife and the little girl talking about her family and how her mommy and daddy love road trips. My wife got excited and started talking about our trips and favorite locations and a smile creeped on the girl’s face. I’m continuing to drive just listening and some of these stories bringing back happy memories. The girl continues with talking about how her parent’s favorite locations are where there are mountains and how they were from the Midwest. As she said that I felt a chill up my spine that I couldn’t explain. My wife was joyously talking to this little girl not realizing the oddities. I’m wondering at this point if she is enjoying the company of having a child around since we are unable to have one. They continue talking until I pull the car back into the campsite.
My wife gets out and helps the little girl out and says, “Let’s go find your parents.” The little girl gets out of the car and says, “Let’s go Mommy” and grabs my wife’s hand and off they went. I turned around to say something as my wife shut the door. I can only assume my wife didn’t catch what she had said, and they proceed to go towards where the tents were set up. I waited for about 15 minutes before I was concerned. I proceeded to get out of the car and walk over myself and as I did, I ran into a couple leaving with their supplies. I asked them if they had lost a daughter or had seen my wife and they shook their heads and told me they were the last ones to leave the campsite. Now a bit past freaked out, I grabbed my gun out of my waistband and run to the campsite. Nothing to be found anywhere. I yell for my wife and all I hear back is a child’s giggle…

Questions for the group: if you've gone the online route unsuccessfully, or want to try a change or pace by trying to find a potential AP in real life, how have you gone about it?
If you're like me, you're still wearing a ring. So do you chat it up with someone else (whether at a bar, a store, etc.) that also has a ring and keep the conversation innocent until you feel like there may be potential there? Do you approach someone that is ringless and hope they don't mind flirting with someone that may be married?
I'm curious to hear everyone's experiences here.

It's not that I'm scared of intimacy. It's the opposite. After deconstructing my faith and purity culture for many years it's brought me sexual freedom.
Still yet to do more then making out. But ive had some really great make out session with the current person I'm seeing.
Going on a 7th date and they want to wait for sex. Which is totally valid. They want to wait for a LTR and I'm not sure when they will be ready for that. I mean am I with her? We need more time to figure that out I think
The sexual freedom does make me a bit more hyper sexual maybe. Like a lot of surpressed energy released.
Maybe it's my age or my libido, but I just dont know how people wait till marriage or even months.
Like if I'm married to someone and there is no sex then I have a friend that'll kiss me sometimes. In dating I feel a bit similar. Like we are hanging out a ton, making out, like each other, etc. But not clothes can come off? No sex? Sex is an important part of intimacy with someone.
I am almost struggling with this almost 2 month period with the person I'm seeing. It's not that I want her just for sex. It's that I want that intimacy with her because I like her.
And this feeling that I really want to do it and I'm waiting for her is awkward. And I totally get it and support boundaries. I'm being very open and communicative about her boundaries.
She definitely seems to have a similar sex drive. It's more that she wants to wait.
I'm also thinking in general with relationship if she doesn't work out. Hard for me to even know what makes a good relationship sometimes after leaving what I consider a toxic mindset...
Like you want a best friend you can make out with, have sex with, and eventually build a life with.
At a certain point I just want to get it on or it starts to feel like I'm kissing a friend. Is that weird?
Any advice. Totally cool if it's calling me out on something

This may be a long one but I will try to shorten it down to the most important details. Any names that are shared are changed.
trigger warning, this post contains mention of cheating and suicide.
Everything started in September 2022 when my (23f) maternal grandpa committed suicide. I didn't know this until after he passed, but my maternal grandma, (we'll call her Suzie) had asked him for a divorce a week prior, after being together for over 50 years. Essentially, my grandpa committed suicide because he was a very proud man and didn't think that they could afford two households as they are both retired and lived off savings and social security, but he never left any note so we may never for sure know why. (And before anyone asks, we do know for sure that it was suicide.) My mom (54f) has of course been taking this really hard and the holidays were understandably tough, but we made it through. Now everything that really makes me want to cut my grandma off started at the end of January. When my mom got a TEXT from Suzie telling my mom that she has met someone else (we'll call him Jim) and wants my mom to meet him. Now keep in mind that at this point, my grandpa has only been dead about 4 months. When my mom finally decides to call Suzie to learn more about this man, she is told that Jim is Suzie's high school sweetheart, who got Suzie's contact information from her brother (who passed away 6 years ago). So, my mom, stepdad and I, came to the conclusion that Suzie and Jim were in contact before my grandpa passed away, but this wasn't confirmed at this point. Everything that I've learned has been secondhand from what Suzie has told my mom, and my mom has told me, until Suzie and I got lunch at the beginning of February. I took this time to tell her what my mom hasn't been able to, that Jim could be the best guy in the world, but if Suzie tries to push him on us, we will never be able to accept him. Everyone in Suzie's life has asked her if she is sure about this, and she swears up and down that she is in her right mind. And she told me the same thing when we got lunch.
Flash forward to two week ago, Suzie texts my mom letting her know that she is selling her house and moving to Kansas to be with Jim (she currently lives in Wisconsin and we live only an hour away from her). Suzie had been open about wanting to move to be with him but kept claiming that it wouldn't happen anytime soon, which clearly wasn't the truth. She had already put the house on the market and had an offer. I got lunch with her again last week and asked her (as many others have also asked her), what are you going to do if this doesn't work out? And she will simply state, "move back." With what money?! I also took this opportunity to ask Suzie if she and Jim were in contact before she has asked my grandpa for a divorce. She said yes. I also asked her if she and Jim talked about being together after she was divorced, and she also said yes to that. So it's now confirmed that she was cheating on my grandpa before he died. Now the issue here is that my mom's name was on the deed to their house in the event that something happened to them, so my mom has to sign off on things like offers and closing for the house. A week ago, my mom calls Suzie to talk to her about what to do, and of course, Suzie thinks that my mom should sign a quick claim deed and sign the house completely over to her. But my mom and stepdad were thinking along the lines of taking half the money from the sale and keeping it in the event that Suzie does need to move back. I was witness to this entire conversation, but Suzie didn't know I was there. During this conversation I heard Suzie basically bullying my mom into trying to get what she wants. But the advice I need isn't for that, as my mom at this point has signed the quick claim deed.
Now, I am very protective of my mom, I always have been. And hearing Suzie speak to my mom in that way, to be honest, pissed me off. And I've realized that I don't like the person that Suzie has become. I love her, because she's my grandma and I have many many great memories with her, but I dislike her as a person at this point.
To my question, my stepdad has yet to say anything to Suzie since the news in January and he believes that we all should go complete no-contact with Suzie. And even if we don't, he is going to. He's been saying this for a couple weeks now and he knows that that would put my mom in a hard position but it's what he feels is best. My mom is struggling with it because she just lost her dad and she doesn't want to lose her mom too but she's barely had time to grieve the loss of her dad because Suzie keeps throwing new bullshit her way every month. Now I've come to the conclusion that I don't think I ever want to meet Jim. Someone who can be the third person in a marriage, and still stick around after the other partner takes their own life? I don't care how great he is, I don't think he's a good person. I haven't told Suzie this though. At this point my question is, do I wait to see what Suzie says about me never wanting to meet Jim or do I just go complete no contact regardless? I don't want it to be a forever thing, but I don't know what the best course of action to take is here.
I know this was long, and I know it was a lot of information but I also skipped over A LOT, so if clarification anywhere is needed, please let me know in the comments. I'll try to be as responsive as possible.

I've just recently delved into the world of vinyl over the past couple years and I really love every aspect of it. I guess something I was maybe a little disappointed in was the sound quality of my turntable, which it probably to be expected considering I found it in a thrift store for 25 bucks. I'm sure most people haven't even heard of the brand. It's a Gemini XL-100. It had no stylus so I slapped a AT-VM95C on it and called it a day because it was the cheapest cartage I could find at my local record store. Anyways, all that being said I just ordered an Audio Technica AT-LP120X and I'm pretty excited about it. I feel like I can finally collect records now without apprehension because my turntable sucks. Here's a question I have though for folks who have experience a wide variety of turntables and music formats. How much of a sound quality difference can I really expect? Don't be afraid to tell me the truth. I'm someone who's daily driver cans are the Sennheiser HD 650s and I listen to high resolution flac and 320kbps digital music on various streaming services. I feel like this may be the reason I had an issue with the sound quality in the first place. Can I even expect to have a vinyl experience comparable to high res digital without spending thousands on equipment or will the LP120X finally show me what vinyl "should" sound like (give or take)? I also don't want to dismiss the fact that some of my cleaner and/or newer records do sound ok on the Gemini (then again I do have some brand new ones that sound flat and muffled), but it's still not comparable to any high res digital formats with my 650s.

My partner and I (late 20s-30) had a group of almost 40 friends over of mine and our roommates for a housewarming party. The party was such a blast, and everything was amazing right up until the end.
Most of our friends are amazing, respectful and being in our mid-late 20s to 30s, we don't often have too many people not handling their alcohol. At worst, someone would be unable to drive home.
One girl (I'll call her Alice) came with her bf(Nick) is really sweet to me and we're both Russian. At some point I told her my family never saw their parents again since leaving Russia before I was born due to a string of really complicated immigration and documentation issues. They finally became Canadian citizens but after a struggling so much to restart their lives and having to stay put to become citizens, it's not that easy to be able to travel somewhere so far and expensive. Now of course there's a war. I managed to go there once when I was 20 for a month and I visited both grandmothers for a couple hours each. I feel sad sometimes that I'm so far from them and it's not easy to see them. It cost so much money to get the tourist visa, and I was still struggling to get a head start in my career so taking so much time would be difficult to pull off. I've never had enough disposable income until the past couple of years or so.
Back to our party, she knows some of this. After she had a few drinks at that party she approached me and said she owns an apartment in Russia that she has to sell in the same city that my grandmother lives in. She made some offers to visit her in person and set up a web call to give her some company, or alternatively that I could come there but she would only have the apartment through to this summer. The offer is so short notice, with my job I don't get time off very easily but I told her I would really think about it and that I appreciated her bringing it up. I plan to call my grandma and talk to her about the idea, I'm not even sure how she would respond. It's just a difficult thing to know what to do about.
Alice gave me some nice life wisdom which is that you can make money anytime but the life of your grandmother is precious and their days are limited. With that said, risking my work and potentially running into issues with traveling to a country that the US actively tells its citizens and not to go to has many risks that I'm just not fully versed on. I've heard many success stories of people going there, but I've also heard of people having their phone searched and random interrogations, harassment and arrests.
Anyways, whether or not it's going to be realistic for me I still think it's sweet that Alice thought of me. My boyfriend is very opposed to the idea or at least just didn't want to talk about it. I brought it up but she said something and he just stayed silent and didn't respond. So I talked about something else.
Later in the night Alice began to get pretty wasted, and by the end was already acting out in some other ways, she wasn't necessarily being aggressive but she was kind of being pushy and bordering on aggressive with her behavior. She was trying to be funny but it came off as annoying. For instance, I have these decorative sounds panels command strips to my door and another guest accidentally dropped one. I picked it up and placed it back where the tape was but Alice yanked it off and said "Wouldn't it look better here?" And she placed it somewhere where there was no tape so it obviously fell again and I had to pick it up and place it back onto the tape, and she did it again even though people were telling her to stop because there's no tape there. She then went downstairs to the kitchen and another guy and I were weighing popcorn to be able to eyeball how much is serving size looks like lol. It was going fine but she came and tried to do it herself but was too drunk to really figure out how to zero the scale and started putting coffee mugs down and splattering the popcorn everywhere. She got mad at the guys for her own frustration and asked me if she can do pow pow to them. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I quickly learned that she was throwing a popcorn at them. She kept looking at me as if I understood why she was mad at them and that we were both mad at them together. Just from the look on her face I could tell she was gone lol.
One of the guys and I were just laughing hysterically because the situation kept getting more and more absurd, she was managing to spill all sorts of liquids down her face and splattering them around my kitchen and kept throwing popcorn, and when her boyfriend came down to see what's going on she also started throwing the popcorn at him but he just started to pick it up because he saw that I was also cleaning up a bit. She was being a little bit pushy with me even though with the best intentions, but she thought that I understood her anger towards the men and she was kind of getting in my face pointing her finger of me, and then pushing her finger in my chest not realizing she was backing me into my kitchen counter. It did come off as a bit aggressive but again I knew she was just really really drunk.
At one Point she started telling the other guy in the kitchen that he should also go to Russia because he's from Germany and it's so much cheaper and easier for him. He was a bit puzzled because he's never had any reason or desire to go to Russia but he just laughed it off.
My bf then came downstairs and she ran up to him and started telling him about how I should go to Russia and how he should let me. This seemed to really annoy him because he initially responded with quotation mark how do you think that's a good idea with her American passport to go there right now? " She kept pressing on with more reasoning, but he just said "I don't want to discuss this now."
She kept pressing on and at this point was getting pretty in his face, and I was still in the kitchen so I was observing a bit of it but I didn't fully see and hear everything. Well it looks like he snapped, and said if you don't stop this in 5 seconds end apologize, I'm throwing you out of here. If she did not stop and kept persisting with more reasons about why I should go to Russia and just wouldn't let off the topic, and she was getting more and more aggravated and so is he. He began to count down and when she showed no signs of stopping at zero, he physically picked her up, put her over his back and carried her outside where he placed her back on the ground and quickly locked the door.
This caused a huge commotion and she was soon wailing and screaming and began yelling about how he is a nazi, and how he just doesn't understand what it's like to have relatives in the Ukraine and she began crying about the war and her relatives and all the tragedies her family is experiencing. As sad as all of it is it was drunk and nonsensical, and no points was he trying to say anything to dismiss any of these things. It seems she just got very emotional.
Here is where I'm torn though. I understand fully that he snapped and she pressed on when he asked her to stop, and she was definitely acting out and getting progressively more annoying throughout the night. With that said I'm just very upset that I got handled in the way that it did because I feel like it escalated the situation further than it would have. I'm not sure how else he could have handled it since she clearly wasn't listening to him when he was asking her to stop, but I wonder if another choice of words could have been used. She remained outside yelling and screaming for hours and about an hour after the last guests left we heard that they were still somewhere in our townhouse complex. The boyfriend is a very nice friend and the poor guy was feeling very torn too because he's just stuck in the middle of this and he knows neither party will apologize. I'm also feeling sad because I just don't want the first party that we had to end on this note.
I'm just looking for some outside opinions or advice - for instance, are there better ways to handle an unruly guest without severely escalating the situation to something extremely upsetting and distressing for them? And what is the fine line between standing one's ground against annoying behavior versus realizing that the person is just severely intoxicated and also trying to preserve relationships? And what do I even say to them no, do I owe them any apology or do they owe us an apology?

Good day to all, I filed my taxes using Cash App. Been doing it since it released and never had any issues. Still don't. I made a couple errors that needed to be amended. Overnight, they withdrew my initial refund that I owed, $2128.00 for Fed. I was to receive a $278 State return. Today i made the corrections and was told that I owe an additional $726 (line 20 on the tax form says WHAT I OWE and that number is $726) for federal and now owe $395 state. So, upon checking the full amended return, i come across the page where it had me set up my bank account so that I could pay what I owed for federal and then set up my bank for dd for the state. On the amended form I get to the page where I entered in the bank account info for federal and it says $2,854 will be taken from my account. Well, $2,128 of that was already taken from my account. Will they direct debit $2,854? or will they not and I just send in the $726 for federal and the $395 for state via a check with the forms and things will be good? I am very sorry of this is super confusing..I'm trying to get an answer and I call the IRS and get through and then sent to another person where Im told to wait 30-60 minutes only to get disconnected multiple times once I hit 30 minutes.

So to start my girlfriend and I have been living together in the same apartment for about 4 months. This is the most serious relationship the two of us have been in.
I'm going to be moving for my career in a month. This was decided a month ago and I had asked my girlfriend to come with me. Things seemed really good. At the time she was working for a daycare, but told them 2 months in advance about the move resulting in her getting fired, to which I told her she shouldn't have let them know so soon (she was trying to be nice and inform them).
Anyways, we both love each other. We've talked about marriage and kids within the next few years. I didn't think this to be much of a problem until we've been getting into more political arguments. We've had these discussions before, but it seems that as things have gotten more serious, the differences in beliefs and values are causing more and more issues. She's liberal and I'm conservative.
I was always under the impression that despite political differences, you could make relationships work as long as there is mutual respect for the other, but there's a lot that we don't agree on that we're noticing now more than ever. I'm really concerned that if we get married and have kids, we're going to be fighting over the values and beliefs that we end up teaching our kids. It's going to be a constant struggle of who's going to listen to who. She seems to believe that we shouldn't worry about the differences and we'll just figure it out when it comes to that, but I don't think that's the best idea.
I tried to have a conversation last night with her. I was trying to raise my concerns about the future and how our values and beliefs might seep into other things within the relationship e.g. having kids. She was pretty emotional during the conversation and I don't blame her. It definitely came off as a "maybe this isn't going to work" conversation. I know I'm not entirely innocent. A lot of this could have been avoided if we had talked about it earlier on, but we were in that sort of honeymoon phase of not really caring about those things. We should've given it more thought when it initially came up.
We're still together, but the last thing I would want is for us to be unhappy long term. I want to try and make it work because I love her and I also feel somewhat responsible for what's happened, but I also don't know if that's what's best.
I think I'm also a bit exhausted. I'm the financially responsible one in the relationship. I take care of most of the meals, do pretty much all of the cleaning, and am also responsible for giving her rides since she doesn't have a car. It hasn't really weighed that much on me until about a monthish ago. It just kind of feels like I'm doing everything combined with the added troubles we may encounter with our differences down the road.

Preface/TLDR: My arguments below aren't based wholly in some nebulous belief in human goodness.
I accept the shitty realities of human civilisation, even as someone who does try to see the bright side of life.
However, those are by and large evils caused by malicious negligence in some cases, and scrupulous selfish opportunism in other.
Neither of which would be present in a 'kill the normies' plan.
Rich people do not see themselves as a collective in-group, and they are not want to sink God knows how much of their hard earned resources into making an army of Death bots when their collaborators could rat on them at any time and initiate a corporate takeover or monopoly thanks to their no longer existent competition. Or to satisfy some petty personal vendetta. Or get good pr. Or any othe rnumber of immediately gratifying selfish reasons that, while screwing over the majority's loans for global genocide, aould dramatically improve the life of whoever screwed them over.
Rich people are not known for being cooperative team players.
The 'cull the poores' scenario isn't plausible for solely moral reasons. It is just impossible on a technical and logistical level.
To elaborate...
I'm not denying rich are shitty, and I won't deny some places have it bad, or that some rich people WOULD kill the poor if they could.
I just deny the sheer ludicrous scale of what would be needed to formulate, prepare, and execute a 'kill the normies' plan.
It assumes that...

1. Rich people possess the capability to unite, coordinate, and execute this plan simaltaneously

This first hurdle is what really makes it impossible since, even assuming the other points I'll mention are met, the rich would need to operate a collected unified front with perfect synchronicity and no opportunism backstabbing or short sightedness for the plan to work.
If it isn't synchronized, it gives the human race a chance to see the knife being drawn and do something before the rich try to thrust it into us.
If there's backstabbing, namely infighting, it'd Drain their resources AND give us that moment of realization in one. Assuming the plan isn't just killed in its infancy or that they don't mutual kill each other in some sort of wealthy civil war.
If there's incompetence on their end, say they get sloppy and the CIA finds out about the rich illuminati planning on killing us all. Or they recruit Elon Musk and he decides to betray them all so he can stoke his ego by being remembered in history as the man who saved humanity, or they fuck up and their killer robots/AGI become free before the butchery can begin, then they'll just be fucked.
And that'll be it. The moment we find out they tried and failed to kill us all enough people will be pissed off and willing to throw hands that they won't get another shot.

1. All rich people, without exception, are willing and eager to murder all non rich people.

Rich people are disproportionately evil. They are not universally evil.
This is a statistical reality.
Even if there's only 1% out of them all who have working moral compasses and would not be down for the mass genocide, when we're talking about what would need to be a global conspiracy, that's more than enough for one of them to be recruited into the conspiracy, or otherwise learn of it through other means, and utilize their resources and political power to counteract it.
Even if only, as I pointed out with my Elon Musk example, to assert themselves as the neo messiah/s who saved humanity from the other, evil rich people.

1. Rich people would require the logistics to enact this mass culling.

Hundreds of millions of murder bots don't just pop out of thin air. Unless the rich are using nanotechnology or bioweapons to do the culling, they'd need whole factories producing advanced robots, weapons, munitions, supply chains, ecetera. All of which would be glaringly obvious unless they had some bonkers tech to just completely wipe all evidence of this buildup from the face of the earth. And at that point they might as well use that same tech to just increase their power in the current system and steal from the other rich to become that much richer that much quicker.
Billions of people equals trillions of bullets, trillions of microchips, metrics fucktons of steel and plastic and circuitry and God knows what else. It requires hundreds of factories and dozens of shipping route configurations to transfer materials between them all
And this is all without getting into where the fuck they're storing these murder robots/drones to begin with. You can't exactly hide a fighting force big enough to literally end 90% of the human race in a couple of warehouses. You'd need a whole city's worth of storage at the absolute bare minimum. Assuming they sprang for exclusively compact drones and not the outright terminators lots of people seem to be imagining.

1. Governments would need to do nothing.

I'm not even arguing 'governments will protect the people!' I'm arguing 'If this can be done, the American government and military industrial complex will just do it first.'
Because I can actually buy the American government, for example, hashing out the logistics, the coordination, and enacting the plan with the motive of imperialism and enforcing an authoritarian peace/rule over the planet.
At the least, if the tech existed to just churn out robot armies, en-mass, first world nations would be building up artificial fighting forces with that tech to levels comparable to the rich's secret army of Doom. Armies that would definitely be used to achieve zero casualty precision military campaigns in foreign lands. In regions that had been previously unconquearble due to the death toll, morale tax, and corruption issues in previous attempts at subjugation.
If nothing else, this would be a litmus test and a big red flag to anyone with half a brain and ability to discern the consequences of it.
Especially if it came out that rich people were churning these killer robots out en mass for 'reasons'.
And all this is without asking what happens when some poorer governments who weren't let in on the plan and subverted by the rich (under the logic of 'fuck em, they're poor, who gives a shit') turn out to have secretly squirrels away a few nukes. With which they could enact a forced peace under M.A.D or ruin the days of the perpetrators who caused this shitstorm as a final middle finger.

1. Rich people would actually need to be motivated to do all of this.

Rich people in this scenario are essentially the illuminati, with full control over all governments, the ability to magic up a world ending army out of thin air, and all done in complete cooperation with each other with a single Game of Thrones backstabbing waiting in the rafters.
At that point...why do they need to kill the poor...
Like, what do the actually gain from it?
More land?
More resources?
They can get infinite of both. And could kick anyone they wanted dout of their land at a moment's notice.
To get more money? To rid themselves of the proles?
There are easier ways to do the former now that they basically own the planet from the shadows with their secret army of Doom, and if they kill all the poors then they aren't rich anymore. Their lives literally wouldn't change other than them being on the same level as each other, which when considering all the egomaniacs amongst them...would not end well...
This whole scheme would be more trouble than it'd be worth. Yes, most rich entities are shitty and commit crimes. But, if you'll notice, they haven't exactly been taking over any countries single-handedly as of late. Or trying to overthrow their own nations. Because it's more headache than it's worth. Why risk everything for a plan that wouldn't really personally enrich you all that much.
Cause remember: they all have to share their 'winnings'amongst themselves after rthe normies are dead. And if there's one thing thing the rich hate. It's sharing.

1. They need to be perfectly fair and generous and cordial to each other once all is said and done.

So, 1% of humanity is left alive. All of them rich and whoever else those rich might want to keep around.
They now have to 'divvy the spoils'.
In what world does this not end with them turning on each other at the end so they can 'win more?
They've already illustrated an insanity beyond anything previously demonstrated din the history of the human race. The butchery of the whole species just so they can be the kings of skull mountain.
Except they aren't the kings yet. Oh no, there's still thousands of lesser rich people trying to hog that land and money.
And so, with no more external enemies left to unite them, they'd do what humans have done time and time again in comparable historical situations: turn on one another.
At which point they're liable to just end up wiping each othe Rout.
So even in a scenario where, by some absolute ridiculous miracle they 'win', they've still not won just yet.
And if they've not killed off all the poors. If a few thousand survived through the 8000 separate one-in-a-million chances that occurred throughout the cull of 8 billion, and if the rich deplete themselves enough over their mutual fights with one another, thinking themselves fre eof any other potential threat, then the proles might yet get their win.
So even in the perfect, impossible scenario where they win. The proves have an equal, if not more enjoyable win condition for the aftermath of the global cull.
In conclusion: I don't say this scenario is dumb because I'm a hopeful optimistic who has unwavering faith in human goodness (though I won't deny it either)
It's just not a plausible scenario that's feasible outside of a dystopian sci-fi novel.
If you like theory crafting it, or you enjoy thinking up ways it could happen and debating over them, then you do you.
Just be honest about the fantasy that is this scenario.
It's not going to happen.
And if you really thought it was going to, then you'd be a fool for seeing it coming not actively working on an escape plan so you can be one of the one-in-a-million lucky survivor's who'd slip through the cracks.
That's basically everything I've to say on this.
I await the inevitable responses on how I'm dumb and wrong and I gladly anticipate the voices of those who concur or otherwise have something new to add to the discussion.
(This post is not a personal attack on anyone, just the bad take. It is not meant to insult or denigrate any parties.)

Currently I have a small server that I built a few months ago where I'm running proxmox with TrueNAS Core, Plex, modded minecraft server, and a kemp load balancer acting as a reverse proxy. This server has an i3-12100, 32 GB RAM (Non-ECC), 3 x 4TB WD Red Plus drives in raid 5 for TrueNAS, plus 500GB SSD for VMs running on proxmox. I also have a Dell T710 with two xeon E5645 CPUs and 24GB RAM that is not being utilized at the moment with a single 1TB ssd.
There are a couple issues that I'm looking to solve by utilizing the T710, but I'm not sure the best way to solve the issues, so that's what I'm looking for some help with.
For the minecraft server, I have a VM in Proxmox with 12GB RAM allocated to it, with java set to use 8 as the max. I have minecraft dockerized within the VM using itzg/docker-minecraft-server, so it's very easy to spin up multiple servers and route traffic to each properly, but I currently only have a single modded server (custom modpack with ~250 mods and anywhere from 1-4 concurrent players on at a time) running and that is capping out the 8GB of RAM allocated, and still seems to be hungry for more. I've tried upping the max java RAM to 10GB but that seemed to add instability to the system so I reverted it back to 8. Since it is so easy to spin up new servers with different modpacks, ideally I'd like to be able to spin up 1 or 2 more, maybe a skyblock type modpack and something else, but I can't really do that with the current setup. The server already has large lag spikes and needs to be restarted at least once a day.
For TrueNAS, I have another VM in Proxmox with 12GB of RAM allocated to it. That seems to be running quite well, although it constantly uses as much RAM as it can because of zfs. The issue with this is that, while its running well and seems to be very stable, I know that I should be using ECC memory with zfs to avoid data corruption.
Finally, plex is running as a container on Proxmox. This is also very stable and I have it using the hardware transcoding of the i3-12100, which works great, but the media is added through mapped network shares from TrueNAS. I didn't think this was an issue and there are plenty of guides online how to set that up, but while listening to WAN show the other day, Linus mentioned why this might not be ideal starting at this timestamp, so running Plex through TrueNAS (plugins or jails or something?) might be a better option, although this is something I'm unfamiliar with.
Some solutions that I've thought about:

1. Move TrueNAS to the T170 and run it bare metal, then expand the RAM allocation to the minecraft server on Proxmox.
   1. Pros: Larger amount of RAM allocation for both minecraft and TrueNAS, TrueNAS with ECC memory
   2. Cons: Plex still running with network shares, might still see performance issues with minecraft since its still virtualized
2. Same as 1, except running plex inside TrueNAS for direct drive access
   1. Pros: Same as above plus Plex with direct access to media files
   2. Cons: Same as above plus no hardware transcoding for Plex
3. Move Minecraft to T710 and run "bare metal" (still dockerized), then expand RAM allocation to TrueNAS on proxmox
   1. Pros: Larger amount of RAM allocation for both minecraft and TrueNAS, Minecraft closer to the hardware so potentially less stability issues, and ability to run Plex inside TrueNAS for direct drive access while maintaining hardware transcoding
   2. Cons: No ECC memory for TrueNAS

I'm leaning towards the first solution to maintain hardware transcoding with Plex as well as utilize more RAM for both TrueNAS and minecraft, while also giving ECC memory to TrueNAS, but I want to know other people's thoughts and whether or not I'm missing another solution. TIA!

This is the only place, I can really write this down on. I can't tell anyone that I know in real life, because of my trust issues, and worry that it's going to end in some kind of consequence. Online is the only place I can really tell this to.
What sucks is, I'm really trying. I'm trying to hold through.
I just need to get this out, to write out my thinking, because my parents will see it anywhere else, and I don't want them to see this. Or find any writings/notes on technology or even paper. I had to make a fake email to make this account, to really let it out without her noticing. Or even from someone that I've told, which I haven't, by the way. I'm a 16 year old, who is starting to realize that maybe I was used my whole life. I started to realize that I didn't get to really be a kid. My mom had me at the age of 17, and which I thank her that I'm here, she's done some things, and is still doing some things that's making me feel neglected, or scared to be around her. She's a single mother, so I get that she's stressed out. But she smokes marjuana, and it's heavily illegal in my state, and it's been going on for about 5 years now. I never really had a problem with it until recently. She started letting my 12 year old sister smoke it to 'try new things' and have a 'smoke buddy'. I spoke up to her that I think that's not okay, and that it will make my sisters lungs collapse. She listened.. but she lies. All she does is lie.
It made me think. When I was eleven years old, she had made me do a drug test for her. I didn't think much of it, because well, I didn't want bad things to happen. And she just kept doing it. Once, twice, and recently a third time. I feel used. Because I'm the only one in this household. I'm the only mature one. I make the adult decisions because my mom can't. And my sister is twelve, so she doesn't know better. I only accept it because, if my mom fails those tests, and tests positive for doing that, one: she goes to jail. Two: I have to be sent away with my dad, or with the other half of my family. And my dad doesn't treat me like a daughter. The last time I saw him, was last year, and I've been avoiding him because that last time, he yelled at me that my social anxiety was my fault. Because I wouldn't be social in a party he forced me to go to. I don't want to go with my other half of my family because I don't want to move the school that I'm in. I want to finish Highschool here. And if they get caught, I'm screwed. My sister got caught for smoking it in school a month ago, and that's when I started to realize this. That I'm being used. That my mom is ruining one of her children. My mom comes to me when she needs help with the bills, and money planning, what she should buy, and shouldn't buy. I don't want to talk adult yet, because I'm already so focused on leaving his place, to get into a really nice college far away, and get a fresh start. But I've been SO focused on it, I don't get time to do things I enjoy. I study, I read, I do something productive something to get me out quicker. As a kid, I was thinking this was okay. That this was normal. And I hate how I just now realize it, when I have two years of Highschool left to go.
And ever since my sister got off probation, she smoked. Again. And they've been hanging out since. I barely get to talk to my mom how we used to. I used to tell her everything that goes on, the drama, or even to show her something that I made. But she doesn't give me any attention, and it's caused me to isolate myself even more than I have been, and I just feel like I'm going to shut down any moment now. I've stood up for myself. It just keeps repeating. I'm so tired of leaving the house, trying to get away so I don't have to listen to them have fun, while they don't even make an effort to invite me. It's like my mom uses me for the adult things. I couldn't get to be a kid. I had to be used, I have PTSD from something my mother gave me, because of her actions. She isn't married, so she's had plenty of boyfriends, and two of them have threatened to kill us, and one has attempted to try, but the police showed up before he could lay a hand on us. I had to grow up with an adult-mindset. No way I could be a kid, with that going on. I'm so scared, because she keeps bringing guys home, and I spoke to her about it, but I know she's straight up lying to my face. My dad wasn't here for all my life, only about 3 years total. I've shown hints that I'm not okay, that I just want to feel like I'm welcomed and not safe in the home that I grew up in. I don't want a therapist, not until I move out at the age of 18. I hate that my childhood was ruined, growing up in a bad environment this whole time, and I didn't even realize it until last month.
I just.. don't know what I should do. I do have very caring people in my life, but I can't move with them. I own three cats, and they're allergic. I can't leave them. I don't want to leave my Highschool career smack in the middle. I always told myself "Two more years to go, and you'll be out of there with a fresh new start." But it's just getting worse by the day, and I feel so lonely. I can't tell anyone in real life, because I'm not that close to anyone I know. My social anxiety has gotten worse this past month, and I've had it since 6th grade, and I'm a sophomore at the moment. Locking myself in my room with my cats, or leaving the house when I don't want to hear it from my moms room, that she's having fun with my sister, and not me anymore. Do I just live with this a little longer?

I matched with this guy on a dating app and we talked for approx 1.5 weeks. His family was visiting for a week and he couldn't see me yet because of that...but he did say he wants to meet and we scheduled a time. I think I got frustrated and fed up so I said I felt like a penpal and disconnected. He sent me pictures of him holding a flower to cheer me up and say to give me another chance. When we were planning to meet, he suggested to meet somewhere close to his part of town/neighborhood...that made me frustrated because I was afraid he is trying to imply hooking up afterwards. Also I was already in a bad energy towards him because we texted for so long and he couldn't even make some time to see me with his family in town. On his text messages, he was really love-bombey and futurized things like "maybe we'll make a power couple", that he is looking for a serious relationship and wouldn't be talking to me if he was looking for a short fling, and that he will step it up to prove himself to me, etc. Anyways when we met in person, I think I was still stuck in that moody energy but he explained to me he rarely sees his biological parents because he is adopted. But I think I kept judging him for telling me the types of drugs he does and I also kept roasting him. The date was only 2 hours. He walked me to my car and we said Goodbye. The next day when I texted him he said that I was cute and pretty physically, but he doesn't see us in a relationship and didn't want me to spend more time and energy on him. He praised me for my personality and said take care and let him know if I need anything from him. When I asked why, he was like there is nothing you need to change, but I just didn't have the strong feelings like a tingly feeling when I really like someone. I felt that the connection was misunderstood and that I came off too strong and was frustrated in him early on, which showed on our first date. Do you think there is still a chance I can ask him for a second chance or I pretty much ruined it? He seems like a guy that has a very kind spirit and humble, and during the date he asked me a lot of questions, he's really inquisitive. I think my insecurities got the best of me and I had doubts initially since he was so love bombey and said things that girls like to hear. But now I feel really sad and I miss him a lot still.

Hey,
i am in my process of starting HRT. It will probably still be a couple of months until I start. I have thought about it quite a bunch and want the changes T can give me.
What I am still a bit concerned about is the thought of going through puberty while I am in a challenging and demanding place in my life already. I have a small child, other people that rely on me and will have to look for a new job very soon. I am worried about mood swings, being horny all the time, being more sensitive than I am already right now - just in general worried about being emotionally unstable.
My biggest worry is interaction with people around me...mostly my child, who is in kindergarten age and can be a lot. But also other adults around me. I dont want to be a huge idiot who makes the life of the people close to me harder. And to not have enough time to process all of the changes mentally, because my life is so busy.
I would be interested in hearing other peoples storys about this...Especially with children around, but also challenging "adult stuff" in general. How to be an adult during puberty is my question, I guess. :-D
Thanks! :-)

Me and my best friend Alex have known eachother since 6th grade (we're in our senior year of highschool now) I spend more time at his house than I do my own and his mom calls me the daughter she never had (he only has 1 brother) we've been through alot together and he really is my bestfriend. But when Junior year hit rumors started to spread that we were secretly dating. I came out as a lesbian my freshman year of highschool and it has been no secret and very well known to everyone. But lately people have been saying that I lied to cover up that we are dating which is just stupid. Me and Alex would laugh about these rumors until it got really awkward. Someone made an account about couples at our school and the first video that went virial was about me and Alex and everyone in the comments seemed to agree that we were a cute couple. Me and Alex don't do anything coupley at all. Alot of people on the streets assume we are twins because we even look similar. But people will still look at us and say we belong together just because we are both laughing at the same thing or sitting on the same couch at a party, or basically just existing as two people who love eachother platonically. It is disgusting and people will evaluate our every move as reasons we should be together that we ended up growing apart because it seemed like no matter what we did together people would point and say we are soulmates. And it affected our relationships with girls we actually wanted to get with. So we decided it was for the best if we stopped talking. I miss my best friend so much. I miss going to his house every day after school, I miss him coming over on the weekends. I miss texting him every time i was invited to go somewhere to see if he wanted to tag along. I miss walking into his house and giving his mom and brother a hug because they were my second family. But we stopped doing all of that because society thinks it is absolutely insane that we are not madly in love and not secretly sleeping with eachother. I will forever hate the kids in the school who drove us apart and I will never understand why so suddenly everyone thought we belonged together. If you ship two people who are very clearly just friends. Fuck. You.

I matched with this guy on a dating app and we talked for approx 1.5 weeks. His family was visiting for a week and he couldn't see me yet because of that...but he did say he wants to meet and we scheduled a time. I think I got frustrated and fed up so I said I felt like a penpal and disconnected. He sent me pictures of him holding a flower to cheer me up and say to give me another chance. When we were planning to meet, he suggested to meet somewhere close to his part of town/neighborhood...that made me frustrated because I was afraid he is trying to imply hooking up afterwards. Also I was already in a bad energy towards him because we texted for so long and he couldn't even make some time to see me with his family in town. On his text messages, he was really love-bombey and futurized things like "maybe we'll make a power couple", that he is looking for a serious relationship and wouldn't be talking to me if he was looking for a short fling, and that he will step it up to prove himself to me, etc. Anyways when we met in person, I think I was still stuck in that moody energy but he explained to me he rarely sees his biological parents because he is adopted. But I think I kept judging him for telling me the types of drugs he does and I also kept roasting him. The date was only 2 hours. He walked me to my car and we said Goodbye. The next day when I texted him he said that I was cute and pretty physically, but he doesn't see us in a relationship and didn't want me to spend more time and energy on him. He praised me for my personality and said take care and let him know if I need anything from him. When I asked why, he was like there is nothing you need to change, but I just didn't have the strong feelings like a tingly feeling when I really like someone. I felt that the connection was misunderstood and that I came off too strong and was frustrated in him early on, which showed on our first date. Do you think there is still a chance I can ask him for a second chance or I pretty much ruined it? He seems like a guy that has a very kind spirit and humble, and during the date he asked me a lot of questions, he's really inquisitive. I think my insecurities got the best of me and I had doubts initially since he was so love bombey and said things that girls like to hear. But now I feel really sad and I miss him a lot still.

Years ago, around the time that Volo's guide came out, a buddy of mine offered to run a one-shot that was supposed to be the setup to the campaign he was going to publish.
The setup was basically "You wake up, fully naked, chained to a wall with a bunch of people you don't recognize. You are told that you have five minutes (or some similar number) to escape this compound. Good luck. The chains release you. Roll initiative."
The session mostly consisted of splitting up and rushing around a fairly large complex, fully confused, scrambling to grab whatever gear we could find, entirely in initiative, sometimes meeting up, trading objects, teaming up to fight the occasional monster. Kind of like an in-initiative escape room. There were cool special rooms, some interesting, a couple of homebrew rules for standard action attunement, just so people could use the magic items in the game.
It was far and away one of the most engaging sessions of D&D I've ever had. We don't really game with the guy who wrote it any more, but we still occasionally enthuse about that session, and the couple of times we re-ran it to playtest it for him.
I'd like to recapture that excitement, so I want to make a spiritual successor to that dungeon, and I'm looking for ideas.
In a session that takes place entirely in initiative, where the party is expected to split up and explore, what fun interactables and items might you include? Why is the party in such a hurry? What homebrew rules might you include to help streamline things? (Like how far you can hear someone yelling in these echoey rooms?)

I matched with this guy on a dating app and we talked for approx 1.5 weeks. His family was visiting for a week and he couldn't see me yet because of that...but he did say he wants to meet and we scheduled a time. I think I got frustrated and fed up so I said I felt like a penpal and disconnected. He sent me pictures of him holding a flower to cheer me up and say to give me another chance. When we were planning to meet, he suggested to meet somewhere close to his part of town/neighborhood...that made me frustrated because I was afraid he is trying to imply hooking up afterwards. Also I was already in a bad energy towards him because we texted for so long and he couldn't even make some time to see me with his family in town. On his text messages, he was really love-bombey and futurized things like "maybe we'll make a power couple", that he is looking for a serious relationship and wouldn't be talking to me if he was looking for a short fling, and that he will step it up to prove himself to me, etc. Anyways when we met in person, I think I was still stuck in that moody energy but he explained to me he rarely sees his biological parents because he is adopted. But I think I kept judging him for telling me the types of drugs he does and I also kept roasting him. The date was only 2 hours. He walked me to my car and we said Goodbye. The next day when I texted him he said that I was cute and pretty physically, but he doesn't see us in a relationship and didn't want me to spend more time and energy on him. He praised me for my personality and said take care and let him know if I need anything from him. When I asked why, he was like there is nothing you need to change, but I just didn't have the strong feelings like a tingly feeling when I really like someone. I felt that the connection was misunderstood and that I came off too strong and was frustrated in him early on, which showed on our first date. Do you think there is still a chance I can ask him for a second chance or I pretty much ruined it? He seems like a guy that has a very kind spirit and humble, and during the date he asked me a lot of questions, he's really inquisitive. I think my insecurities got the best of me and I had doubts initially since he was so love bombey and said things that girls like to hear. But now I feel really sad and I miss him a lot still.

I matched with this guy on a dating app and we talked for approx 1.5 weeks. His family was visiting for a week and he couldn't see me yet because of that...but he did say he wants to meet and we scheduled a time. I think I got frustrated and fed up so I said I felt like a penpal and disconnected. He sent me pictures of him holding a flower to cheer me up and say to give me another chance. When we were planning to meet, he suggested to meet somewhere close to his part of town/neighborhood...that made me frustrated because I was afraid he is trying to imply hooking up afterwards. Also I was already in a bad energy towards him because we texted for so long and he couldn't even make some time to see me with his family in town. On his text messages, he was really love-bombey and futurized things like "maybe we'll make a power couple", that he is looking for a serious relationship and wouldn't be talking to me if he was looking for a short fling, and that he will step it up to prove himself to me, etc. Anyways when we met in person, I think I was still stuck in that moody energy but he explained to me he rarely sees his biological parents because he is adopted. But I think I kept judging him for telling me the types of drugs he does and I also kept roasting him. The date was only 2 hours. He walked me to my car and we said Goodbye. The next day when I texted him he said that I was cute and pretty physically, but he doesn't see us in a relationship and didn't want me to spend more time and energy on him. He praised me for my personality and said take care and let him know if I need anything from him. When I asked why, he was like there is nothing you need to change, but I just didn't have the strong feelings like a tingly feeling when I really like someone. I felt that the connection was misunderstood and that I came off too strong and was frustrated in him early on, which showed on our first date. Do you think there is still a chance I can ask him for a second chance or I pretty much ruined it? He seems like a guy that has a very kind spirit and humble, and during the date he asked me a lot of questions, he's really inquisitive. I think my insecurities got the best of me and I had doubts initially since he was so love bombey and said things that girls like to hear. But now I feel really sad and I miss him a lot still.

Hey all, bit of an odd post that I am making right now because I am genuinely at my wits end.
It's pretty self explanatory based on what you read in the title. Basically, I have had a fear of driving for a while. My parents (god bless their souls) have supported me through the past little while when I need to get to places that require a car. However, as I am transitioning out of my early 20's, I am finding it more unbelievable that my fear has still not gone away. I have done practice sessions, basic driving around parking lots, but that's about it. I have gotten my beginner license a couple of times. Each time, I want to be consistent enough to just practice like people say, but that fear is so, so prevalent. This fear leads to procrastination of me booking driving lessons, therefore putting off what I should have done a long time ago. And the cycle continues. It probably stems from the fact that I was in a car accident not too long ago. I have a lot of anxiety dreams about driving that affect my mental state, too. I just have so much fear of panicking and swerving and making a mistake that ruins my life.
I want to overcome this fear so bad, as not being able to drive contributes to so much insecurity, especially given my current age where I see kids I knew growing up when I was a teenager, get their license. It feels humiliating and I feel incapable as a person. I don't want to have to rely on people because of my own fears. I want to overcome it. But I have no idea how to overcome it. I was hoping I could post here and someone else can share their experience or give some advice on how I can deal with this.
Thank you for reading. If this is not the subreddit to be posting in, please let me know. I will post elsewhere if there is a more suitable subreddit for what I am asking.