Casinos near las cruces new mexico

El Paso, Texas

2010.04.22 21:04 deadbob El Paso, Texas

For anything pertaining to the greater El Paso, Texas area. Including Las Cruces, New Mexico and Juarez, Mexico.
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2020.06.14 21:50 BlueCollarLawyer LGBTQelpaso

The LGBTQ+ subreddit for El Paso, West Texas, Las Cruces, Southern New Mexico, and Cd. Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. Post your updates in English or Spanish. Publique sus noticias en español ó ingles.
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2009.10.26 20:22 Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís

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2023.03.22 15:34 Gardenducks Is this a bone fragment or just a rock? Found in Las Cruces New Mexico

Is this a bone fragment or just a rock? Found in Las Cruces New Mexico submitted by Gardenducks to fossilid [link] [comments]


2023.03.22 14:46 IKnowWhatYouDidBill The message still rings true: You have to have hope.

"...And during the few moments that we have left, we want to have just an off-the-cuff chat between you and me - us. We want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand." When Malcolm X took the stand to address the Nation of Islam on banding together to fight against racial discrimination, he began his speech with this quote.
Nearly fifty years ago, a man named Harvey had realized he was gay, and felt deeply that there was a need for change. He was tired of the oppression he faced, he was tired of the system protecting assailants, he was tired of the discrimination. So he fought, and one day he got a call from a young man in Altoona, Pennsylvania. This young man had given up hope and he was prepared to take his own life, until he saw Harvey stand up.
That man was Harvey Milk. In 1975, he stood up to fight for the gay community. He was tired of being told you can't hold this job because you're gay, he was tired of the police turning blind eyes to the murders and beatings of young gay men, he was tired of gay people living in fear of speaking out against their oppressors, he was tired of the John Briggs and Anita Bryants of the world telling our children that they will burn in Hell for who they loved. But most importantly, he was tired of seeing his fellow gay brothers and sisters ending their own lives to escape this discrimination.
"You have to have hope," he said. "Because without hope not only the gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the Us'es will give up." He was speaking not just to the gay community, but all oppressed communities. Not only the gays and the seniors and the blacks, but the trans community. He wanted everyone to know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that their cries for equality and equity were not going to go unanswered. As we face a wave of attacks both physical and legal, we too, need to have hope for our future. Hope is what drove Milk from the cold, dank depths of an unforgiving New York school to the hills of California to get justice for everyone before him, and to protect everyone who would come after him.
You have to have hope; the first openly gay man elected to a major office was Harvey Milk in 1978. In 1992, Althea Garrison was the first (closeted) transwoman to serve in a State Legislature. Claire Elizabeth Hall, elected in 2004 to Commissioner of Lincoln County, Oregon transitioned in 2018 during a term as Commissioner. Victoria Kolakowski became the first transgender person to be elected to Judge of a Superior Court in 2010. The first opnely transgender senator, Sarah McBride was elected to the Delaware State Senate in January, 2021, and while we've won in one state, we have forty-nine more to fight.
You, the person reading this now, you can run. Perhaps not today, perhaps not tomorrow, perhaps not even this decade. But you can run, and you can run, and you can run, together we can fill the City Halls and the State Assemblies and the Senate and the White House. Together we can strike down the destructive legislatures and finally pave the way for trans rights, for our rights, and finally enforce blanket protections for all trans people. "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country."
You have to have hope even when the world seems hopeless. Hope that we will no longer wake up to find that more Briana Gheys and Eden Knights of the world have been killed by the actions of transphobic individuals and incompetent leaders; hope that families will no longer be torn apart by transphobia; that teenagers will no longer be subjected to the dysphoric hell of puberty in the wrong body, that we will no longer be told our right to pursue happiness is a mental disorder. You have to have hope that you will be free to be YOU.
You have to have hope. Hope for a tomorrow when your children's children can live without the fear of being oppressed for who they really are. Hope that together we will raise each other up from this embarrassingly low point in history. In the face of these attacks, LGBTQIA+ legislators in Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington have introduced refuge laws for trans children under attack. California has declared itself a sanctuary to the trans community. And while this is in no way a solution to all of our problems and it will not bring back our fallen martyrs that have had their lives stolen from them, but it is a sign of hope. It is a sign that there is a better tomorrow coming, it's a sign that we are seen and heard.
You have to have hope, because without hope, the teenagers who have been cut off from puberty blockers, the adults who have been told they're not old enough to take their HRT, the trans folks who are threatened on a daily basis with death or systematic oppression begin to question the future. They question if anything will ever improve. They begin to question if they can continue to live, our sisters, our brothers, our fathers and mothers, neighbors, doctors, teachers, our friends; the Us'es, begin to question if they can continue to go on, and often forget their fellow trans comrades are here for them.
You have to have hope. We are not alone, there's over one and a half million of us all over the US. YOU are not alone. You are cared for and loved, even if you were disowned you are loved by your trans siblings, we are no longer a community but a family. We're the graduating members of the Class of Fuck Off, We Made It; we will prevail in the face of adversity. We didn't start this fight, we inherited a war passed down from previous generations of trans people who refused to lay down and accept the discrimination, but in order to keep going, you have to have hope, please, don't lose it. "
submitted by IKnowWhatYouDidBill to ftm [link] [comments]


2023.03.22 14:42 IKnowWhatYouDidBill The message still rings true: You have to have hope.

"...And during the few moments that we have left, we want to have just an off-the-cuff chat between you and me - us. We want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand." When Malcolm X took the stand to address the Nation of Islam on banding together to fight against racial discrimination, he began his speech with this quote.
Nearly fifty years ago, a man named Harvey had realized he was gay, and felt deeply that there was a need for change. He was tired of the oppression he faced, he was tired of the system protecting assailants, he was tired of the discrimination. So he fought, and one day he got a call from a young man in Altoona, Pennsylvania. This young man had given up hope and he was prepared to take his own life, until he saw Harvey stand up.
That man was Harvey Milk. In 1975, he stood up to fight for the gay community. He was tired of being told you can't hold this job because you're gay, he was tired of the police turning blind eyes to the murders and beatings of young gay men, he was tired of gay people living in fear of speaking out against their oppressors, he was tired of the John Briggs and Anita Bryants of the world telling our children that they will burn in Hell for who they loved. But most importantly, he was tired of seeing his fellow gay brothers and sisters ending their own lives to escape this discrimination.
"You have to have hope," he said. "Because without hope not only the gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the Us'es will give up." He was speaking not just to the gay community, but all oppressed communities. Not only the gays and the seniors and the blacks, but the trans community. He wanted everyone to know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that their cries for equality and equity were not going to go unanswered. As we face a wave of attacks both physical and legal, we too, need to have hope for our future. Hope is what drove Milk from the cold, dank depths of an unforgiving New York school to the hills of California to get justice for everyone before him, and to protect everyone who would come after him.
You have to have hope; the first openly gay man elected to a major office was Harvey Milk in 1978. In 1992, Althea Garrison was the first (closeted) transwoman to serve in a State Legislature. Claire Elizabeth Hall, elected in 2004 to Commissioner of Lincoln County, Oregon transitioned in 2018 during a term as Commissioner. Victoria Kolakowski became the first transgender person to be elected to Judge of a Superior Court in 2010. The first opnely transgender senator, Sarah McBride was elected to the Delaware State Senate in January, 2021, and while we've won in one state, we have forty-nine more to fight.
You, the person reading this now, you can run. Perhaps not today, perhaps not tomorrow, perhaps not even this decade. But you can run, and you can run, and you can run, together we can fill the City Halls and the State Assemblies and the Senate and the White House. Together we can strike down the destructive legislatures and finally pave the way for trans rights, for our rights, and finally enforce blanket protections for all trans people. "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country."
You have to have hope even when the world seems hopeless. Hope that we will no longer wake up to find that more Briana Gheys and Eden Knights of the world have been killed by the actions of transphobic individuals and incompetent leaders; hope that families will no longer be torn apart by transphobia; that teenagers will no longer be subjected to the dysphoric hell of puberty in the wrong body, that we will no longer be told our right to pursue happiness is a mental disorder. You have to have hope that you will be free to be YOU.
You have to have hope. Hope for a tomorrow when your children's children can live without the fear of being oppressed for who they really are. Hope that together we will raise each other up from this embarrassingly low point in history. In the face of these attacks, LGBTQIA+ legislators in Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington have introduced refuge laws for trans children under attack. California has declared itself a sanctuary to the trans community. And while this is in no way a solution to all of our problems and it will not bring back our fallen martyrs that have had their lives stolen from them, but it is a sign of hope. It is a sign that there is a better tomorrow coming, it's a sign that we are seen and heard.
You have to have hope, because without hope, the teenagers who have been cut off from puberty blockers, the adults who have been told they're not old enough to take their HRT, the trans folks who are threatened on a daily basis with death or systematic oppression begin to question the future. They question if anything will ever improve. They begin to question if they can continue to live, our sisters, our brothers, our fathers and mothers, neighbors, doctors, teachers, our friends; the Us'es, begin to question if they can continue to go on, and often forget their fellow trans comrades are here for them.
You have to have hope. We are not alone, there's over one and a half million of us all over the US. YOU are not alone. You are cared for and loved, even if you were disowned you are loved by your trans siblings, we are no longer a community but a family. We're the graduating members of the Class of Fuck Off, We Made It; we will prevail in the face of adversity. We didn't start this fight, we inherited a war passed down from previous generations of trans people who refused to lay down and accept the discrimination, but in order to keep going, you have to have hope, please, don't lose it. "
submitted by IKnowWhatYouDidBill to speech [link] [comments]


2023.03.22 14:25 deletedbananadog Medellin VS Mexico City

Hi all!
Planning on travelling over to that end of the world over the next few months. I'm not on any timelines, so would ideally like to stay in either of the cities for a few months.
Who has recently been to both and what are the pros/cons of one vs the other?
From what I can gather:
Medellin (El Poblado specifically):
Mexico City:
Just some guidance on what I like to do; I love to meet new people, both local and foreign. Going out for food/drinks/partying is quite important for me, so good nightlife and bar scene is vital. A good nomad scene with coworkings would be ideal. A city that you don't need a car to get around.
I'm not hell-bent on these cities, but both come up quite regularly as recommendations. I'd love to hear of other cities that would suit!
EDIT: FYI I know these cities have been discussed over recent years, but ideally I'm looking for recommendations based on people's recent experiences with both cities
submitted by deletedbananadog to digitalnomad [link] [comments]


2023.03.22 13:47 Shagrrotten The Non-English Language Movie Tournament: Round 1

We have arrived here at the non-English language tournament, FG. This will be a long tournament, as we had nearly 300 movies nominated from all over the world (though as to be expected from the history of cinema the most nominated countries were France, Italy, and Japan), so this will take us over the next few months. As always, the polls will last for one day, so get your votes in and come back tomorrow for the results and the next battle.
Letterboxd list of all the participating movies: https://boxd.it/lOu1o
Results of Round 1
8 1/2 (1963) - Italy (48) beat Martyrs (2008) - France (26), Elevator to the Gallows (1958) - France (11), and The Aviator’s Wife (1981) - France (5)
The Battle of Algiers (1966) - Italy/Algeria (28) beat 3-Iron (2004) - South Korea (7), Embrace of the Serpent (2015) - Colombia (5), and Massacre Time (Tempo di massacro) (1966) - Italy (2)
The 400 Blows (1959) - France (34) beat Memories of Murder (2003) - South Korea (32), Battleship Potemkin (1925) - Russia (21), and Eyes Without a Face (1960) - France (12)
Metropolis (1927) - Germany (51), beat Fanny and Alexander (1982) - Sweden (32), 5 Centimeters Per Second (2007) - Japan (16), and The Bothersome Man (2006) - Norway
Fantastic Planet (1973) - France (23) beat Minari (2020) - USA (16), A Brighter Summer Day (1991) - Taiwan (14), and The Conformist (1970) - Italy (13)
Mirror (1975) - Russia (21) beat Farewell My Concubine (1993) - China (10), The Cranes Are Flying (1957) - Russia (10), and A City of Sadness (1989) - Taiwan (6)
Fists of Fury (1972) - Hong Kong (21) beat A Man Escaped (1956) - France (15), The Cremator (1969) - Czech Republic (9), and Moolaade (2004) - Senegal (5)
My Neighbour Totoro (1988) - Japan (44) beat A Separation (2011) - Iran (22), Fitzcarraldo (1982) - Germany (20), and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) - France (12)
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) - Japan (25) beat The Double Life of Véronique (1991) - Poland (22), A Short Film About Love (1988) - Poland (11), and Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) - India (6)
Night and Fog (1956) - France (14) beat A Very Long Engagement (2004) - France (8), The Emigrants (1971) - Sweden (6), and Girlhood (2014) - France (4)
Nosferatu (1922) - Germany (39) beat Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) - Germany (26), Godzilla (1954) - Japan (24), and The Exterminating Angel (1962) - Mexico (10)
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979) - Germany (36) beat Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) - Germany (21), Goodbye Lenin (2003) - Germany (12), and The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker (2007) - Japan (5)
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009) - Sweden (17), beat All About My Mother (1999) - Spain (16), Grand Illusion (1937) - France (16), and O-bi, O-ba: The End of Civilization (1985) - Poland (3)
Grave of the Fireflies (1988) - Japan (33) beat Amarcord (1973) - Italy (14), One Cut of the Dead (2017) - Japan (10), and The Green Ray (1986) - France (9)
Amelie (2001) - France (79) beat The Handmaiden (2016) - South Korea (40), Only Yesterday (1991) - Japan (10), and Hamlet (1964) - Russia (6)
Harakiri (1962) - Japan (33) beat The Hidden Fortress (1958) - Japan (22), Amour (2012) - Austria (12), and Ordet (1955) - Denmark (10)
Andrei Rublev (1966) - Russia (29) beat The Holy Mountain (1973) - Mexico (26), Headhunters (2011) - Norway (10), and Obsession (1943) - Italy (4)
The Host (2006) - South Korea (30) beat Another Round (2020) - Denmark (29), Hedgehog in the Fog (1975) - Russia (7), and Out 1 (1971) - France (7)
High and Low (1963) - Japan (33) beat The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973) - Poland (10), Pale Flower (1964) - Japan (5), and Any Number Can Win (1963) - France (2)
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) - Mexico (85) beat Apocalypto (2006) - USA (42), Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) - France (19), and The House is Black (1963) - Iran (5)
Parasite (2019) - South Korea (106) beat Holy Motors (2012) - France (16), The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (1959) - Japan (16), and Army of Crime (2009) - France (1)
Hour of the Wolf (1968) - Sweden (16) beat Army of Shadows (1969) - France (13), The Human Condition III: A Soldier’s Prayer (1961) - Japan (9), and Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974) - Japan (3)
The Hunt (2012) - Denmark (42) beat I Saw the Devil (2010) - South Korea (25), Ashes and Diamonds (1958) - Poland (9), and Pater Brown – Das schwarze Schaf (1960) - Germany
Ikiru (1952) - Japan (34) beat The Killer (1989) - Hong Kong (25), Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) - France (10), and Pater Brown – Er kann's nicht lassen (1962) - Germany (4)
The Lives of Others (2006) - Germany (42) beat Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987) - France (27), Pauline at the Beach (1983) - France (11), and Il compagno Don Camillo (1965) - Italy (1)
Il Decameron (1971) - Italy (14) beat Pépé le Moko (1937) - France (13), The Man Without a Past (2002) - Finland (11), and Baahubali 2: The Conclusion 2017) - India (10)
Battle Royale (2000) - Japan (76) beat Persona (1966) - Sweden (36), The New Land (1972) - Sweden (7), and Il ritorno di Don Camillo (1953) - Italy (4)
Beauty and the Beast (1946) - France (19) beat Phoenix (2014) - Germany (14), The Platform (2019) - Spain (11), and In a Year with 13 Moons (1978) - Germany (5)
In the Mood for Love (2000) - Hong Kong (42) beat The Raid (2011) - Indonesia (30), Belle de Jour (1967) - France (16), and Pixote (1980) - Brazil (10)
The Red Balloon (1956) - France (23) beat Playtime (1967) - France (22), Inside (2007) - France (12), and Belle Époque (1992) - Spain (10)
Bicycle Thieves (1948) - Italy (39) beat The Rules of the Game (1939) - France (14), Intouchables (2011) - France (6), and Port of Shadows (1938) - France (2)
Ip Man (2008) - Hong Kong (37) beat The Saragossa Manuscript (1965) - Poland (11), Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (2008) - France (6), and Pratidwandi (a.k.a. The Adversary) (1970) (India) (2)
Princess Mononoke (1997) - Japan (73) beat Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983) - India (47), The Sacrifice (1986) - Sweden (17), and Black Girl (1966) - Senegal (13)
The Seventh Seal (1957) - Sweden (53) beat Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013) - France (18), Jauja (2014) - Argentina (6), and Pushpak (1987) - India (3)
Raise the Red Lantern (1991) - China (28) beat The Skin I Live In (2011) - Spain (23), Bob Le Flambeur (1956) - France (14), and Jean de Florette (1986) - France (6)
Ran (1985) - Japan (32) beat Breathless (1960) - France (14), Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) - Belgium (9), and The Tin Drum (1979) - Germany (2)
Johnny Gaddaar (2007) - India (45) beat Rare Exports - Finland (17), The Turin Horse (2011) - Hungary (15), and Cairo Station (1958) - Egypt (13)
Rashomon (1950) - Japan (37) beat Castle in the Sky (1986) - Japan (23), The Twilight Samurai (2002) - Japan (7), and Joyeux Noël (2005) - France (4)
Raw (2016) - France/Belgium (35) beat Jules and Jim (1962) - France (32), Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) - France (19), and The Ugly Swans (2006) - Russia (3)
The Virgin Spring (1960) - Sweden (25) beat Red Beard (1965) - Japan (20), Katyn (2007) - Poland (4), and Cemetery of Splendour (2015) - Thailand (3)
Rififi (1955) -France (27) beat Kin-dza-dza (1986) - Russia (8), Children of Heaven (1997) - Iran (6), and The Warped Ones (1960) - Japan (3)
Chungking Express (1994) - Hong Kong (25) beat Three Colors: Blue (1993) - Poland/France (24), Roma (2018) - Mexico (18), and L’avventura (1960) - Italy (17)
Cinema Paradiso (1988) - Italy (23) beat Three Colors: Red (1994) - Poland/France (15), Rome, Open City (1945) - Italy (10), and La Belle Noiseuse (1991) - France (6)
City of God (2002) - Brazil (63) beat La Dolce Vita (1960) - Italy (31), Run Lola Run (1998) - Germany(27), and Three Times (2005) - Taiwan (5)
Throne of Blood (1957) - Japan (42) beat La Femme Nikita (1990) - France (25), Cold War (2018) - Poland (14), and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962) - India (5)
Come and See (1985) - Russia (50) beat La Haine (1995) - France (27), Through a Glass Darkly (1961) - Sweden (24), and Samurai Rebellion (1967) - Japan
La Jetee (1962) - France (26) beat Cries and Whispers (1972) - Sweden (19), Sansho the Bailiff (1954) - Japan (18), and Time Regained (1999) - France (3)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) - Taiwan (80) beat La Notte (1961) - Italy (21), Tokyo Godfathers (2003) - Japan (14), and Santa Sangre (1989) - Mexico (13)
Tokyo Story (1953) - Japan (31) beat Satantango (1994) - Hungary (11), La Vie de Bohème (1992) - Finland (5), and Daens (1992) - Belgium (1)
Das Boot (1981) - Germany (47) beat Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001) - India (7), Tokyo Tribe (2014) - Japan (5), and Satya (1998) - India (1)
Scenes from a Marriage (1974) - Sweden (21) beat Day of Wrath (1943) - Denmark (11), Lakshya (2004) - India (6), and Touchez Pas Au Grisbi (1954) - France (4)
Seven Samurai (1954) - Japan (90) beat Train to Busan (2016) - South Korea (51), Death Rides a Horse (1967) - Italy (4), and Landscape in the Mist (1988) - Greece (3)
Sholay (1975) - India (74) disqualified, Troll Hunter (2010) - Norway (36) beat Dekalog (1989) - Poland (33), and L'atalante (1934) - France (17)
Solaris (1972) - Russia (40) beat Delicatessen (1991) - France (22), Late Spring (1949) - Japan (13), and Ugetsu (1953) - Japan (12)
Umberto D. (1952) - Italy (16) beat Le Cercle Rouge (1970) - France (14), Soy Cuba (1964) - Russia (11), and Departures (2008) - Japan (8)
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring (2003) - South Korea (19) beat Victoria (2015) - Germany (9), Le Doulos (1962) - France (5), and Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war (1937) - Germany (4)
Stalker (1979) - Russia (43) beat Le Samourai (1967) - France (16), Der Untergang (2004) - Germany (6), and Viridiana (1961) - Spain/Mexico (5)
View Poll
submitted by Shagrrotten to IMDbFilmGeneral [link] [comments]


2023.03.22 13:30 JoJo-Bizarre-1997 Thought about the Big Five of Asia - which countries can make further push in the FIFA World Cup?

Thought about the Big Five of Asia - which countries can make further push in the FIFA World Cup?
Talk about Asia, I think you know about the Big Five - the five AFC nations to have competed frequently in FIFA World Cup. They are Iran, South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the newcomer Australia. These countries accounted for over 36 FIFA World Cup appearances for Asia (though two of them were originally for Oceania). They are also perceived to be the only forces in Asia that can reckon the World Cup, at least by their merits of performances.
So, dear users, who do you expect to make further push in the FIFA World Cup in the future, for instance 2026 and 2030?
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South Korea

https://preview.redd.it/qq1v55ts7apa1.png?width=560&format=png&auto=webp&s=ddd80b2c3a1a5df196d2e26d7dd92df290f6a28f
With 11 appearances and finished fourth once, South Korea cements as the most and richest records of Asian teams in the FIFA World Cup. The country also won two Asian Cups, all in the inaugural editions.
South Korea has impressed the world with the country's rapid economic development in the aftermath of the Korean War. Back in 1960s, South Korea's GDP/per capita was equal to many Sub-Saharan African countries, and only few decades later, the country has become one of the wealthiest in the world.
This can also be said the same about football, although it was far from easy at the first place. South Korea qualified for the 1954 FIFA World Cup, the first time an Asian country qualified by its merit (Dutch East Indies/Indonesia qualified in 1938 due to Japan's withdrawal). In that World Cup though, South Korea was thrashed by Hungary and Turkey at the group stage. It took the Koreans 32 years later to make its second appearance in Mexico 1986, and has never missed a single edition since. Yet not until 2002, when the World Cup was hosted at home soil, that South Korea would register its first win, a 2-0 win over Poland in their eventual (though controversial) fourth place finish.
Since that World Cup, South Korea has been consistent, though sometimes troublesome, in qualifying to the FIFA World Cup. However, South Korea only replicated the knockout stage feat only two more other times, in 2010 and recent 2022. In both tournaments, South Korea found itself tragically ended by South American opponents, in South Africa, they lost to Uruguay; in Qatar, they lost to Brazil; all in the round of sixteen.
The Asian giant is eager to be better in the next World Cups and, with the expansion to 48 teams starting with 2026 edition, South Korea's route is more open than ever. The country has also been able to export their successful domestic products that gained fames across the globe like Park Ji-sung and recently Son Heung-min. Yet if the country ever wants to repeat the 2002 feat, they will need to work harder to achieve their goals.
Japan

https://preview.redd.it/7zztz62w7apa1.png?width=3500&format=png&auto=webp&s=2bda95da414f6152ae28d92031268da520b2e3fc
Japan's rise is even more fascinating to even neutral watchers. For most of Japan's history in relations with football, the sport was relegated mainly to an amateur status and Japanese public could not care less about football. The main sport in Japan was baseball.
However, some notable events changed the course of Japanese football. First, the introduction of renowned Japanese manga Captain Tsubasa inspired numerous Japanese and even foreign legends to take up the ball. Second, the establishment of the Japan Professional Football League, also known as J.League in 1991, reshaped Japan's relations with football forever. Their impacts are relevant to even today. If in the 1980s, football was still a strange sport for Japanese, then in just only a short span of time since 1991, Japan quickly became the dominant Asian power. The country won four Asian Cup titles, the most, and has never failed to qualify for a World Cup since 1998, Japan's debut.
The rapid rise of Japan as an Asian powerhouse and a consistent World Cup performer stunned everyone about how quick the country could be. Moreover, ever since their hard-fought qualification for the World Cup in 1998, Japan always managed to qualify automatically by finishing in top two. Yet Japan's rise in football was overshadowed by a string of bad luck in the round of sixteen; since Japan's debut in 1998, Japan reached the last sixteen four times, but were all eliminated in agonising fashion to Turkey, Paraguay, Belgium and Croatia.
Nonetheless, the increasing quality of Japanese football has been able to attract European clubs and numerous Japanese players since Hidetoshi Nakata have been able to establish their foothold in Europe. Names like Keisuke Honda, Shinji Kagawa to even now Takehiro Tomiyasu and Kaoru Mitoma are the evidences of Japan's rapid rise and how a good strategy can impact positively in long term. The 2022 FIFA World Cup, a tournament where Japan ran riots with two shock wins over Germany and Spain, embodied this. Unfortunately, with the round of sixteen curse continues to haunt Japanese players, they need to find the way to overcome them if Japan ever wishes to be in the quarter-finals for the first time ever.
Australia

https://preview.redd.it/sn4xvby48apa1.png?width=584&format=png&auto=webp&s=76300883656feef437797e9edd11d8d98473a109
Australia's status has long been a matter of debate. The country is geographically Oceanian, but culturally European. For quite a long time, Australia's football development had been hampered by their geography and OFC membership, a key reason why football isn't Australia's most popular sport for a long time.
Australia made only two entrance to the FIFA World Cup as a member of the OFC, first in 1974 and last in 2006. It was 2006 that Australia finally got acceptance as an AFC member, a wish fulfilled for many Australians, including from their late legend John Warren. Since joining Asia, Australia has become one of the rare Asian sides that can compete in the FIFA World Cup and, also, a new powerhouse of the continent. Australia had also won one Asian Cup in 2015 as the host nation, the only country to win in two separate confederates.
Yet unlike Japan, Australia's rise isn't rapid and quite troubling. As Australia's top league doesn't include promotion and relegation (though debates about it have risen for years), Australia's way of football development has not been maximised. Moreover, despite its status as an Asian powerhouse, many Asians still question if Australia can ever contribute something to Asia. In fact, two recent World Cups saw Australia qualify only by the playoff merits. However, Australia has proven stubborn as a force in the FIFA World Cup. Under Guus Hiddink in 2006, Australia reached the last sixteen for the first time, before being ended by eventual winner Italy. It took 16 years before Graham Arnold, who presided in one of Australia's poorest qualification performances, to repeat it again in Qatar 2022 as the best ever with six points at the group stage, before ended by another eventual winner, Argentina.
Australia is facing a new prospect that could be the game changer to football across the nation. As football is experiencing a resurgence following the World Cup in Qatar, and with the country about to host the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup, the first major senior FIFA event in the nation, Australia will need to capitalise on it as soon as possible. Australians want to see more from their Socceroos, instead of just struggling to qualify by playoffs, as happened with two near death experiences, if they ever want to be in North America and subsequent World Cup.
Saudi Arabia

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The oil-rich monarchy in West Asia has been able to establish itself a superpower in Asia and three consecutive Asian Cup titles proved it was no joke. Massive oil money has also financed Saudi Arabia's development of infrastructures and this greatly benefited the Kingdom on its path to become a consistent World Cup performer. Saudi Arabia qualified to their maiden appearance in the United States 1994, before doing it again for five other editions.
Yet for all instances of Saudi Arabia's massive wealth, the Kingdom only emerged from the group stage just once, in 1994. This was a phenomenal tournament of Saudi Arabia as Saeed Al-Owairan scored a beautiful goal against already-qualified Belgium to secure a historic shock 1-0 win over the European side, to sit second and reached the knockout stage in their debut. Saudi Arabia had come so close for a second knockout stage appearance in neighbouring Qatar 2022, where the Kingdom wrote one of its greatest chapters, a shock 2-1 win over eventual champions Argentina that, had the Falcons qualified, would have been remembered for decades; unfortunately, Poland and Mexico butchered that hope to condemn the Kingdom to a tragic bottom place exit in what was described as a huge missed opportunity, an exit that Salem Al-Dawsari, the hero against Argentina, bursted to tears for his country's failure, a moment captured by Arab media.
Criticism does run against Saudi Arabia though. Many commentators and even Saudi legends had condemned the government's protectionist policy, which was blamed for Saudi Arabia's failure to advance from their 1994 success. As far as 2002, the worst World Cup in Saudi history, legendary striker Sami Al-Jaber had condemned the government for trying to keep players at home rather than allowing footballers to go abroad. Moreover, there are concerns that Saudi Arabia is now chasing over profits rather than developing youth footballers after their lavish signing of Cristiano Ronaldo.
Whatever happens next to Saudi Arabia is for us to guess. Yet the Kingdom is now facing a daunting prospect of repeating the 1994 feat in 2026 and maybe 2030, ending their knockout drought. This is no easy mission however, as Saudi Arabia is preparing to fix the mess with the 2026 FIFA World Cup on sight with their coach Herve Renard, whose position remains in limbo due to recent attempt by FFF to get him as manager of the French women's team. As a hegemon of Asian football, if Saudi Arabia cannot do well in the next World Cups, its status will be severely damaged.
Iran

https://preview.redd.it/qvljqlbg8apa1.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=20cfa886c040ce11af428ba23bc4d9cf00b437f3
Iran is unique among the Asian powerhouses that is the only one to have never advanced past the group stage in every World Cup competition, yet also being the only Asian team in to have participated, and never, left the World Cup without a point, a fascinating difference considering Iran has played in six World Cups.
Iran is the fourth country in Asia to have played in the FIFA World Cup (fifth if counting Australia), and in their maiden appearance, Iran snatched a point from a 1-1 draw to Scotland. However, it took Iran two decades before returning to the World Cup in 1998, where they gained a historic 2-1 win over nemesis United States. Yet not until Carlos Queiroz's era that Iran finally found stability to take more World Cup participation, as they qualified for three consecutive World Cup since 2014, the first time Iran did so. Still, Iran could only win two other next matches, against Morocco (1-0) and Wales (2-0).
Iran has been unfortunate to be plagued by political turmoil at home. As for the result, Iran had underachieved at senior level, especially since 1979 when the Islamic regime took power from the Shah. The recent 2022 FIFA World Cup, where Iran's current generation reached its golden age, was tragically messed up by nationwide unrest related to the death of Mahsa Amini, is such of an example of how politics beset Iranian football. The Iranian regime is also accused of holding Iranian football potential back due to their constant interference and fear of public uprisings.
Now, Iran is led by a new coach, Ardeshir Ghalenoei, who coached Iran back in the 2007 AFC Asian Cup, and Ghalenoei faces a daunting challenge to help Iran to overcome their group stage curse. However, Iranian football, long beset by political interference and widespread corruption, may have to wait for a longer time to progress from the group stage.
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Can any of them perform better in 2026 or 2030 FIFA World Cup? And if so, how?
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2023.03.22 13:25 tonnie_taller Nevada’s most populous county announces new elections director

The county comprising about three quarters of Nevada’s registered voters announced a new elections director on Tuesday. Lorena Portillo will succeed Joe Gloria, who ran elections in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, for nearly a decade and worked in the elections department since 2020. He had long planned to leave the office after last … Continue reading Nevada’s most populous county announces new elections director
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2023.03.22 11:45 IssaClark Video Poker Classic

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2023.03.22 09:53 drywallLasvegas Best Drywall Repair Services In Las Vegas

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Baseboard molding is something most people don’t consciously notice when they walk into a room, but (much like window trim, door frames, and crown molding) it can have a huge effect on a person’s impression of a space. A room with no trim or molding – or worse, poorly chosen trim or molding – can make a room feel sterile, cluttered, messy, or claustrophobic. However, professionally designed and installed window trim, door frames, and molding can be the little extra that takes your home from ordinary to extraordinary.
Plaster Repair
Plaster is commonly found in older homes in the Las Vegas Henderson Nevada region. The reason is that plaster has many benefits, but it is time consuming and more labor intensive than modern drywall installations. However, if you have plaster walls or ceilings in your home, they can last for decades if treated properly. Unfortunately, over time and through sheer bad circumstance plaster can be damaged and need repairs. Sometimes this will mean a complete removal of the plaster, but often only relatively small repairs are required. Vegas Drywall Repair has been repairing the plaster in San Antonio for years and we have honed our abilities to repair plaster into an expertise that few others possess. We know how to assess the extent of the damage and quickly figure out the best way to repair it. Our customers can count on us to evaluate the least expensive option to reach the desired outcome.
Soundproofing
Are you tired of lying in bed at night listening to the noise of passing cars? Are your ear plugs no match against your television’s surround sound system? Are your rowdy neighbors interfering with your everyday activities? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get a moment’s peace? Vegas Drywall Repair is here to help you say goodbye to all that racket with our soundproofing services. We have provided Las Vegas Henderson Nevada and the surrounding areas with the best soundproofing services for many years. Whether you work from home and require a peaceful environment or whether you simply want a break from your neighbors, you can count on Vegas Drywall Repair.
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2023.03.22 08:03 KNikhil7 Breast Pump Market Size Set to Surge in 2023 as Working Mothers Seek Solutions

Breast Pump Market Size Set to Surge in 2023 as Working Mothers Seek Solutions

Allied Market Research has published a study report with the title Breast Pumps Market Size was Valued at USD 461.10 million in 2020 and is estimated to surpass around USD 890.73 million by 2030, registering a CAGR of 6.8% from 2021 to 2030.

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A breast pump is a mechanical device that is designed to extract milk from a lactating woman's breast. It can be either manual or electric, and it works by creating a vacuum that stimulates the breast to release milk. Breast pumps are commonly used by lactating mothers who want to collect and store their breast milk for later use or to provide their babies with milk when they are not able to breastfeed directly. They can also be used to relieve engorgement or to increase milk supply. Breast pumps come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and they can be purchased or rented depending on the needs of the mother.
𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐩𝐮𝐦𝐩𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭?
Increase in number of working women across the globe, rise in healthcare expenditure by the government, favorable reimbursement scenario, and technological developments in electric breast pumps drive the demand for the global breast pumps market. However, risk of contamination with foreign substances and high pricing of breast pumps impede the market growth. On the other hand, surge in various developmental strategies among the key players, high market potential in untapped developing countries, and development of pipeline products are anticipated to pave the way for multiple opportunities in the industry.
𝐆𝐞𝐭 𝐒𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐏𝐃𝐅 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐅𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/5057
KEY FINDINGS OF THE STUDY
• Depending on product type, the open-system breast pump segment was the highest contributor to the market in 2021.
• According to technology, the electric breast pumps segment was the highest contributor to the market in 2021.
• As per application, the personal use segment was the highest contributor to the market in 2021.
• Region-wise, North America garnered the largest revenue share in 2021, whereas Asia-Pacific is anticipated to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period.
𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐏𝐮𝐦𝐩𝐬 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐬𝐞𝐠𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬, 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠:
By Product Type
• Closed System Breast Pumps • Open System Breast Pumps
By Technology
• Manual Breast Pumps • Electric Breast Pumps
By Application
• Personal Use Pumps • Hospital Grade Pumps
By region, North America, garnered the major share in 2020, contributing to nearly half of the global breast pumps market and is expected to dominate the market during the forecast period. However, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to witness the fastest CAGR of 8.2%. This is due to the rise in infant population, the surge in awareness regarding the importance of breast milk, and increasing employment among women.
𝐓𝐨𝐩 𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐏𝐮𝐦𝐩 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐬
• Ameda, Inc. • Medela AG. • Pigeon Corporation • Koninklijke Philips N.V. • Hygeia Healthcare • Babybelle Asia Ltd. • Linco Baby Merchandise Works Co. Ltd. • Ardo Medical AG. • Albert Manufacturing USA • Willow Innovations, Inc.
𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/5057
Our Market Research Solution Provides You Answer to Below Mentioned Question:
Which are the driving factors responsible for the growth of market? • Which are the roadblock factors of this market? • What are the new opportunities, by which market will grow in coming years? • What are the trends of this market? • Which are main factors responsible for new product launch? • How big is the global & regional market in terms of revenue, sales and production? • How far will the market grow in forecast period in terms of revenue, sales and production? • Which region is dominating the global market and what are the market shares of each region in the overall market in 2022? • How will each segment grow over the forecast period and how much revenue will these segments account for in 2030? • Which region has more opportunities?
By Region Outlook
• North America (U.S., Canada, Mexico) • Europe (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain, Rest of Europe) • Asia-Pacific (Japan, China, India, Rest of Asia-Pacific) • LAMEA (Brazil, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Rest of LAMEA)
Contact Details:
David Correa USA/Canada (Toll-Free): +1-800-792-5285, +1-503-894-6022 [email protected]m
About Us
Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of “Market Research Reports” and “Business Intelligence Solutions.” AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domains.
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2023.03.22 04:57 gnome-de-pluume 43[m4f] #nyc Boston’s longtime Best-of-Breast & Nipple play to in NYC Wed. nite. Want some orgasmic breast play, no reciprocation?

Hi there. The title says it all. I have enjoyed pleasuring dozens of women solely focused on their breasts over the years. Yes, pants on (almost always).
I guess you could say I am a breast-a-holic and have been for years. I get immense pleasure enjoying you as you enjoy me. 😘
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Can you tell that I really enjoy this? I mean, really enjoy this?
About me, who is this joker? I am a 43 year old white male. Longtime divorced. I’m southern European. Think Portugal/Spain. I speak four languages and I am working on my fifth :-) I work in communications and as you can tell, I enjoy writing and playful, verbal banter.
I will be in New York Wednesday night downtown near Wall Street, and WTC. I would love to host you at my funky chic hotel, or someplace mutually agreeable. My focus is on a safe, playful and lighthearted experience. Without exaggeration, I have been doing this for many years and absolutely love it. This is my kink. :)
I hope you enjoyed my post and if you are interested in meeting, send me a hello. I am hoping to meet at least 1 to 2 women tomorrow night, separately or together, is up to you.
I love traveling to new places and meeting new play friends. I have enjoyed doing this in Orlando, Las Vegas, Chicago, Palm Springs, and Maui. NYC? Yes please!
My goal is to have things set up before the evening. I have early drinks and dinner with my boss and would love to be thinking about suckling you the whole time.
And, if you simply just enjoyed my post and maybe got a little bit damp reading it, please let me know, I always love getting feedback. :-)
If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message. Happy to chat about it.
I’m vaccinated and boosted. Duh. You be too.
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2023.03.22 04:19 Sea-Juice1266 New and expanded map proposed for Las Vegas Loop

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2023.03.22 03:34 SomeBiologyMajor AITA for causing my dad to skip work and possibly loose his job.

Long backstory: I'm [F]15 and I live in an apartment with my mom[42] and recently my dad[39]. My parents split[after moving to st.paul] when I was young and because of my mom and her issues I didn't have a relationship with my father other than spending the night with him, my uncle and his wife and my cousin every few months. Otherwise he was a ghost. When we moved back to my hometown where my family lives when I was 6 or so, my dad and I started to reconnect as much as we could. He was always nonchalant and quiet but very hardworking and usually reliable. I lived with him for a few years when I was 10 to 12 while my mom was really deep in her addiction until she got clean, and things happened and I had to stay with her. During those 2 years dad had a crazy native girlfriend [30 something] and later a crazy stupid girlfriend at the time who was 22. She was completely insufficient in any useful life skills and had previously been in 2 relationships (In the first one she was abusive as she told me and in the second one she was abused). When my father got with her she was about to lose her town boys from her second relationship for doing weed and coke during her pregnancy and since her ex had a felony and domestic charges they were going to be put into foster care. In the end she lost them both because she failed to make a genuine effort to either get clean or keep them, god forbid both at the same time. And convinced dad to get a dog I explicitly told him I did not want and was not going to help take care of. While after all that,,, dad with the scarps scraped together a semi successful restaurant.
Fast forward 7 months she's crashed all 3 of my dad's cars thanks to the weather up here near the border, and got dad sent to prison[She left an unlicensed played white car full of drugs in front of his business and he took the fall because the police said it was in his. Something I was not made aware of until 2 months after my father had disappeared from prison which I did not know about either. But I'll get to that] for what was supposed to be 4 years for an almost federal level drug charge after getting pregnant with him. I was while he was in the process of being detained, told J was going to have a sleepover at my mom's with no further details. And was later told everything[she knew] a week before his trial by my mom. During this time my dad's girlfriend decided to go on a week long trip to Las Vegas and leave the dog she insisted on getting alone in his kennel and texted me to 'take him out', mind you I did not live in the same building as her. I ended up just taking him with me much to my father's dismay because she harassed him non stop about not having the dog anymore. She later brought to Cane corso puppies while dad was in prison with his money, and got kicked out because they didn't have papers for them and it was originally a no pets building. Thankfully for her though she got into the Jeremiah program and had a place to live after, and dad did not get his security deposit back because she let his new puppies pee and poop everywhere, especially my old room which still has most of my stuff because I only packed to have a sleepover at my mom's months prior.
After all that, my dad got out 3 years early on good behavior because they were getting full of actually bad criminals and couldn't hold everyone, and let the small fries free.
So his child with her was born right after he got out, and she got her rights terminated because she was on drugs this entire pregnancy too, and dad has fought tooth and nail to get the rights to have her the past three months she's been alive. My mom thankfully let them both stay here while everything was sorted out legally,, plus it was the only place dad could get her approved to stay at. And she even let his somehow still girlfriend stay there for a bit too even though that is completely illegal because she is supposed to have no contact. After she did drugs in mom's sober apartment and I told mom how much I hate her she refused to let her over anymore, and I have also been taking care of the baby until my mom gets off work after I get home from school everyday while trying to keep my grades up and continue participating in my activities.
Another detail I remembered, One day before dad went to prison she and I got into a fight after most of the bad stuff before he went to prison, and he decided to talk to me instead of her because I was her by talking about the boys she lost to the system. After he hit me multiple times AND I hit her back once, he was present in the room and watched the entire thing. I mean I get I'm not the feminine daughter you wanted but seriously dad?
Anyways I'm working on my grades taking care of my dad's kid for a few hours every day.
On to the AITH part:
Today my mom had a dentist appointment, and my dad had to leave for work at the usual time when I got home from school. I actually skipped school for an unrelated reason but when I got home had to take care of a baby, dad told be mom had an appointment and she wouldn't be back at all today[recently mom's been hanging out with this guy she likes everyday and hour before dad gets home leaving me with the baby an hour after I would prefer to go to sleep for school and an hour longer than before.] That after her appointment she's going to a NA meeting and then going to her friends, and that mom said it was okay for my dad's ex to come over and help me watch the baby while dad was at work.
Now I have often handed her off as soon as I could, and I Am Not The BEST at taking care of her. But mom and dad know how much I hate that woman who is somehow almost ten years older than me with the maturity of a 7th grader.
So I told my father no. Dad said mom said it was okay, and I calmly said I don't care I will not let her in. I can take care of her by myself. Dad proceeded to say "Then I'll stay to let her in." So he went outside.
I assumed he went to work cause he would be late if he didn't leave then and there but just in case I did the chain lock. And who would've guessed 20 minutes later he comes back, unlocks the door and trusts to open it with his girlfriend standing beside him. He knocks when I don't open it and asks me to let them in and she is going to help me while dad is gone. I hesitantly set the baby down in her bassinet and went and unlocked the door and told dad, she is not coming inside here.
Me and dad are for a few minutes, and dad says he won't let me have her here alone" like that's been an issue until now. and I brag that "she hasn't cried since you left 20 something minutes ago and was fine till you made me set her down." He responds "you know earlier this week cos came by because the neighbors complained she was crying all night." I did not know that, and she was a fussy baby either way even when all her needs were met she would cry just cause she could. Especially so when she was with me. But all last week she was terrible for everyone including him and mom. And the fact he had the audacity to say that to me. I rudely told him no, and he said "If you won't let her in then I'll just stay home." Which is a big deal for him because he had to cut his hours when he got temporary custody of her and has been late a lot. But I was angry and would rather drop out of highschool and work to pay dads rent then be in a room with her so I said "do it." All the while her girlfriend stood there dumbfounded saying "I thought I was going to see my baby." Even though she has historically done a worse job than me, and it is straight up completely lose all custody illegal to have her with the baby outside of scheduled visits once of which she had this morning while my as home.
He did it, and right after he said "If you're going to act like an adult I'm going to treat you like an adult." Told me to get out of his face, aka 4 feet away from him in the shared living room and indirectly threatened to hit me if I didn't leave because I'm an “adult” now.
Dad has chosen to ignore my existence, and indirectly disowned me, and refused to let me help him even though his hands are full.
I've been talking to my mom as much as I could be she has only responded to a handful of my messages
It's 6 hours later close too when dad would get off work. And he called his girlfriend to get him food even though I had a pizza[I had to beg my mom to order me because dad was ignoring me and I doubt he would've got me food]and asked if he wanted any to which he ignored me again.
I'm sitting in my room and I've been crying on and off and I really don't know what to do.shoudk I apologize? Would he even listen?
Am I really the AH for making my dad not go to work cause he didn't trust me enough to leave me with his kid.
Sorry for grammatical weeks or confusion. I wrote this entire thing in a Fit of rage and depression because I'm starting to feel like I'm the one in the wrong.
submitted by SomeBiologyMajor to Amitheassholeadvice [link] [comments]


2023.03.22 02:16 BlueSky1357 Tell me to NOT move to NM/ABQ

Hey everyone. More than anywhere else, I would love to live in New Mexico. My hesitations are just that I'm 27 and there not being enough young folk or places to go/cultural events etc. However - I make music and write myself and love open space, nature, and my solitary time- more than anything else. I grew up in England near London; moved to NY in 2014; left NY end of last year. First place I went was New Mexico, where I spent a few weeks. Fell in love with it immediately. The single most beautiful place I've ever been, and I also loved the relaxed, open, unpressured environment. I also want to live in a place that is not 'it' and doesn't have the spotlight on it. Since then, had a 6-month lease in Austin; that ends in May. I don't like Texas much and Austin is alright but not 'it'.
So, I'm back to thinking I should move to Albuquerque. I work remote and make in the mid $50ks, so it's one of the few cities where I could have my own place and live comfortably. I definitely do not have gentrifying money, though I wish I did!
My doubts are just that I should move somewhere bigger, with more young folk and a bigger cultural scene; if I move to New Mexico, maybe I'd get too isolated. Tell me why I shouldn't move to New Mexico. I suspect none of you will convince me, but please do your best.
submitted by BlueSky1357 to NewMexico [link] [comments]


2023.03.21 23:42 Tylersocks03 Recent experiences

While I am new to Reddit, I am not new to being barefoot. If you ask my parents, it was a struggle to keep shoes on my feet.
Now as an adult, I prefer to be unshod as much as possible. Both in high school and college, I learned that bare feet make others uncomfortable, but I never learned or understood why that was. Indeed when I was in my young teens I figured out that if one’s feet appeared covered most people would leave you alone. So I started wearing socks more, since that allowed me to be unshod but not obviously barefoot. But for wearing out socks faster (my parents were generally tolerant of this) i figured this would carry me. And it generally did, though College. High school teachers were not as tolerant, sometimes I was told to put on shoes, sometimes not, and sometimes threatened with discipline. Eventually, I came to prefer socks on my feet when out in public unless there was wet weather, and continued this practice as grew older.
Currently, I am lucky that my boss doesn’t care if i wear shoes around the office or not. However some of my coworkers and newer friends have been less accepting. Some will grumble if we go some place public like a bar, or restaurant or other activity and I only have socks on my feet. I get questions about why can’t I wear shoes like a normal person. Generally my response is an inquiry about why it bothers them. To which I get the response because it’s just weird, unsanitary etc.
Most recently a group my friends went to Las Vegas for the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament. While they have no issues with my preferences, my experiences in the casinos and restaurants were mixed. Some did not care, some asked me to put on shoes. However one casino had security escort me out the door after confronting me while at a table. It was rather disconcerting. The security guard was aggressive and told me that every casino on the strip had the same rule- shoes required. Ironically I was in another casino earlier that night that was operated by the same casino entertainment group and was not bothered by anyone, including security. (I even interacted with security to get directions). Both places I was wearing grey sweats, a hoody and white socks.
I was also asked to put on shoes at one restaurant. Ironically it was a causal restaurant. The nicer restaurants did not seem to care.
Anyway just thought I would share. I wonder if anyone else has had any similar experiences in Vegas?
submitted by Tylersocks03 to barefoot [link] [comments]


2023.03.21 21:42 jetpackblues_ Who was Guadalupe County Jane Doe (1978)? Victim of serial killing duo Ronald Lanphear and Diana Geisinger, whose birth certificate was thrown away

I recently came across this case and it really stuck with me. The last writeup here was 3 years ago, so I figured it's time to bring up this young woman again.
On July 11, 1978, a foreman with the New Mexico Highway Department of Transportation was working along Highway 219, at the junction of I-40 and US Highway 84, when he came across the body of a deceased young adult female. The location is in a remote area of Guadalupe County, New Mexico, about 28 miles west of the city of Santa Rosa.
An autopsy found that she had died between a few hours and a couple day prior, from two .22 caliber gunshot wounds to the back of the head. She was between the ages of 17 and 25, 5'8" tall, and approximately 145 pounds. She had blue eyes and her hair was strawberry blonde. She had had dental care within the last year of her life. In total, she had four fillings and only one wisdom tooth.
Her murder has been connected to serial killing duo Ronald Lanphear and Diana Geisinger, a couple who went on a cross-country killing spree in July 1978. The pair were arrested in October 1978, with Lanphear being sentenced to death after Geisinger testified against him.
The following additional information was provided by Geisinger to authorities after she was arrested:
Geisinger and Lanphear met the victim at rest stop somewhere outside of Perry, Oklahoma around 10pm the night of July 9th or July 10th, 1978. The victim stated that she was 17 years old and was hitchhiking to California to see her mother. The trio rode west together for several hours, briefly conversing about guitars and money (the victim "bragged" about the money she had spent on the new guitar she was carrying with her and on her trip). They stopped along the way at a coffee shop and then a bar.
At some point, Geisinger says she told Lanphear to let the girl out of the car. Some writeups state that this was when the girl asked to use a payphone to call her mother for "her birthday," while others state that the girl made the call when she was first picked up in Oklahoma. Other writeups also take this as meaning that July 11th was the victim's 17th birthday, though I read that as it possibly being the mother's birthday? I wonder if there's a verbatim account from Geisinger out there that would make this more clear?
They drove across a viaduct off the highway, and Geisinger states that she knew at that point that Lanphear was going to murder the girl, though they hadn't discussed it previously. Lanphear got out, opened the passenger door, and asked Geisinger if she wanted out. She said yes, and since she was sitting in the middle and Jane Doe was in the passenger seat, Jane Doe got out of the vehicle first. The girl was then shot in the back of the head by Lanphear and fell to the ground. Lanphear straddled her body and searched her pockets. He then grabbed his gun once more and shot the victim a second time, before rolling her body off a nearby "cliff." However, the area where her body was found is very flat with no visible cliff areas, so I'm guessing she was actually just rolled down the sloping area on the side of the highway.
Geisinger, who was still in the car, was instructed to go through the hitchhiker's belongings. "Drugs and papers" were thrown away. It's unclear what these drugs were and whether they were prescription or recreational. It's also unclear what the papers were, though many reports indicate that the girl was travelling with her birth certificate, and that was definitely one of the trashed items. They kept her guitar, which was later sold, and a coin purse containing $1.50, then drove away, continuing their journey to Las Vegas, Nevada.
If Geisinger's information is accurate, Jane Doe's body was found the same day she was killed, July 11th. Possibly her 17th birthday or her mother's birthday.
Identifying information:
Ruled out: Laurie Amico, Angela Ramsey, Nancy Tharp, Benita Chamberlin, Connie Minchaca
Links:
https://unidentified-awareness.fandom.com/wiki/Guadalupe_County_Jane_Doe_(1978))
https://storiesoftheunsolved.com/2021/04/15/guadalupe-county-jane-doe-1978/
https://www.namus.gov/UnidentifiedPersons/Case#/17089 - *Postmortem warning\*
https://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1497ufnm.html
Last writeup posted 3 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/f3wydj/16_guadalupe_county_jane_doe_guadalupe_county_new/
submitted by jetpackblues_ to UnresolvedMysteries [link] [comments]


2023.03.21 20:20 Strength-InThe-Loins 20 Years Later: Green Zone

Twenty years ago this week, the United States began its blatantly criminal invasion of an unthreatening sovereign state that inevitably turned into a hideous quagmire.
I had joined the United States Marine Corps in the summer of 2001. I was still in boot camp on 9/11, which made for an interesting couple of days. In early 2002 I obtained a two-year leave of absence to ‘serve’ a Mormon mission, and by March of 2003 I was more than a year into being a full-time religious propagandist in Mexico.
The war was big news in Mexico, with public opinion generally running pretty strong against it. Given my history of relentless indoctrination, and my current assignment of telling everyone I saw that they were immorally wrong about everything that mattered, and the fact that I wasn’t allowed to consume any kind of non-religious media material of any kind, I of course took the opposite position.
But I improved with time. I came home in early 2004, and quickly discovered that the war was, at best, very badly managed. But I was back into military service (as a reservist), so I fully expected to end up being deployed to Iraq at some point.
The miserable shitshow that played out across Iraq throughout 2005 and especially 2006 convinced me that the war wasn’t just badly executed but a hopelessly terrible idea from its very beginning, supported by blatant lies and unconscionable manipulation.
When my turn to deploy finally came, in 2009, I was rather conflicted. On the one hand, I clearly understood that the war was immoral and dangerous and I should avoid it at all cost. On the other hand, I was four years into attending college and making no discernible progress towards any of the goals I had set for myself: graduating, choosing a career, getting married, existing as a functional adult. So the choice (and it was a choice: contrary to the contract I thought I’d signed, I was set to be released from service in mid-2008, and so this deployment was entirely optional for me) was fraught. I didn’t want to kill or die for a mistake; but I also didn’t want to dodge what I was sure would be the challenge of a lifetime for a second time; and I also could not say with a straight face that I had anything better to do.
So I went. It didn’t go well , but it went at least as well as I had any right to expect. I never saw anything like combat (shooting flares at a few civilian vehicles was as close as I ever got), was never in danger, and so on. But it was no picnic, either: severe and extended boredom can be just as damaging as actual trauma, and the psychological abuse inherent in military life was constant. And things weren’t entirely safe: my unit had two suicides during the work-up, and given the state of my mental health, I was never all that unlikely to have joined them.
The whole experience did me no immediate good, but as an experience with disillusionment with and escaping from an all-consuming self-admiring institution, it was a pretty decent dry run for my exit from Mormonism a few years later. And, as I had expected, it got me a year’s salary (which was probably the majority of the money I’d made in my life up to that point), and a lifetime of monthly disability payments and free health insurance. So I really can’t say I completely regret it.

The movie I’ve chosen to commemorate this anniversary is Green Zone, because it came out shortly after I came back, and I’d always wanted to see it, and I’d heard that it took an interesting angle on the whole mess, and I’d heard that it was pretty good (which is a rare quality among Iraq War movies, which have, shall we say, a mixed record ). And it’s pretty good, though of course it has some issues.

The best thing about it is how it nails the look and feel of the military occupation. The movie abounds with details large and small that just look exactly right, from US troops driving green Humvees with no doors and unprotected gun turrets* to piles of Pizza-Hut-labeled shipping containers at the airport to one of them carrying around a bottle of chewing-tobacco spit to the use of the then-new Blue Force Tracker technology. Greg Kinnear as the villain of the piece looks exactly like he should, a completely nondescript bureaucrat that would never get a second look at any white-collar office in America, incongruously transplanted into a blood-soaked conflict in an environment where only fools and the extraordinarily pampered (he is both, of course) dress like that. And I didn’t know I needed to see exactly what the Google homepage looked like in 2003, but I did, and the movie delivered.
It’s also a very good look at the culture of the US military; the briefing with Colonel Bethel is pretty spot-on (except for the one guy interrupting to speak the truth; that pretty much never happens). It’s a bit optimistic to assume that a random US military unit would have even one Arabic speaker in it, but the movie makes up for it by having him only know a dialect that’s completely useless in Iraq. The soldier who argues with Damon and tells him that the reasons for going to war don’t matter to him struck me as a perfect distillation of the me-first attitude that the US military explicitly teaches its members: the “My only job is to get home safe” dogma was basically a part of the official training materials, very much to the detriment of accomplishing any particular mission beyond that (and of course no one ever wants to talk about how obviously cowardly and selfish such an attitude is).
The movie also does well with points of view from outside of the US military, namely the absolute terror of being an Iraqi unfortunate enough to fall into US hands during the occupation, and the possibly greater terror of being on the ground when the Americans started bombing or disbanded the Iraqi army and purged the civil service, which this movie treats as an irrefutable sign of the apocalypse. Not that any of that took any great insight to determine in 2010, years after it became clear what US detention was like and how foolish it was to send thousands of unhappy armed men out into the streets with nothing to do, but it’s still good to see it stated so plainly.
One aspect that does not look so good is the trademark Paul Greengrass shaky-cam technique; it’s tolerable in the actual action scenes, which are supposed to be stressful and chaotic, but in the opening scene, in which the ‘action’ mostly involves men walking quickly down crowded hallways,** it really doesn’t work. I do wonder how Greengrass does it; does he plan and rehearse the camera movements, or just have the actors do their thing while someone waves the camera around randomly? One analysis of one of Greengrass’s Bourne movies pointed out that it seems that the camera can’t predict the characters’ movements, which adds to the sense of uncertainty and danger; I wonder how closely Greengrass controls the camera’s ‘random’ movements, and what he thinks he’s saying with them.
There are other moments that fall short of the movie’s best moments of authenticity: Damon’s first scene, in which he explains (over the radio, no less!) where his team is going and what they’ll be doing there is pure Hollywood bullshit; any such explanation would be given (likely multiple times) well before the mission actually started, and the team will try to minimize radio use while out in the field. And that’s not the only moment of clumsy exposition; once that mission fails to find anything of use, Damon laments “That’s the third one in a row,” to a roomful of guys who’ve been on all the same missions and all presumably know exactly how many of them there have been. On that same mission, someone, for some reason, uses a Geiger counter to analyze a suspected chemical weapons site, which…what?
The movie’s second-strongest sympathetic character is a CIA ‘Middle-East expert’ that knows everything he needs to know and that no one listens to. While I don’t doubt that no one important listened to anyone who knew what was going on, the thing-knower being a CIA agent that the CIA chose to send to Baghdad seems unlikely; were there any such thing-knowers left in the CIA in 2003? If so, why would leadership (which was fully behind the WMD hoax) send such an ‘unreliable’ person to such a sensitive post? Surely they knew there was a risk of him doing exactly what he ended up doing, and would have kept him as far from the action as possible.***
And how and why does he have such detailed information at his fingertips about the movements of people that don’t officially concern him? That information would be a closely guarded secret that he has no plausible official need to know. And why the hell does he dare take a very important phone call, which concerns a blatantly illegal operation he’s running off the books, on speaker in a room that’s crowded with god knows who that he very obviously can’t necessarily trust?
Once he makes contact with Damon, he sets up a meeting in the most secure part of the infamous Green Zone, which Damon is somehow able to access with minimal trouble. That strikes me as outrageously implausible; the highest security I ever experienced in Iraq was about 37 levels lower than the Green Zone (where American civilians could expect to live and work in pretty much complete safety), and even there I had to show my dog tags and scan my ID to enter the gym or the chow hall. Green Zone security would emphatically not just wave through any random US military vehicle or personnel that showed up at the gate. Damon would have to show some kind of proof that he belongs there, and since he’s going to an unauthorized meeting with a civilian far outside his chain of command, he just wouldn’t have that, and the gate guards would turn him away.
At that meeting, the CIA guy instructs Damon to get out of uniform, which is wise, but we never find out where Damon gets the civilian clothes and the civilian body armor we see him wearing right after. (I doubt he would have brought civvies with him for his invasion deployment, and even military body armor was pretty hard to come by in Iraq in 2003.) But also I understand why the movie felt it didn’t have time for a deep dive into this question. What it leads to is egregious, though; in the movie’s climactic scene, Damon, dressed in civilian clothes and carrying a clearly non-American weapon he stole from a local, runs through a combat situation involving US troops who spot him from a helicopter…and they somehow assume that he’s an American who’s on their side. What makes them think that? Did all US troops in Iraq in 2003 have implanted RFID chips that all US night-vision scopes could pick out from a distance? (No. No they did not.) Nothing at all that they can see indicates that Damon is American, but even if they knew he was American, he’s actually working against those particular US troops (who are very explicitly there to kill the man that Damon is trying to contact and rescue), and so there’s still no reason to identify him as a ‘friendly.’ This is a most unfortunate misstep, because doing it more realistically (having the US troops not know who Damon is, assume he’s their enemy, and act accordingly) would actually better serve the movie’s general theme of disunity and confusion.
Those same US troops are first seen arriving in a helicopter that suddenly arrives from below the not-very-high high ground that Damon is standing on, which means they must have been flying very low indeed (like, below rooftop level) over a very urban area, which is ridiculous; and without anyone hearing them approach from miles away, which is even more ridiculous.**** But those same US troops also drive around in Humvees at night with their headlights blazing, which is just dumb enough to be real. But what’s way too smart to be real is the timing of that helicopter arrival; Damon apprehends an important individual, and those troops (who are also looking for that person for unrelated reasons) somehow know about that and are able to arrive instantly, which…rather stretches the bounds of plausibility.
There are also some timeline issues, which are bad to have in a movie that is so closely tied to historical events on very specific dates. The invasion began on March 19, as seen in the first scene. Then we skip forward to ‘four weeks later,’ around April 16. The rest of the movie seems to take place over only a few days, and yet prominent plot points include George W. Bush’s (spit) Mission Accomplished speech (which happened on May 1), and the CPA’s dissolution of the Iraqi state apparatus (which happened on May 23). In the movie, those 22 days seem to pass in a matter of hours.
Also, and this is unbelievably petty of me, somewhere in the Green Zone, sometime at least as late as April 16, we catch a glimpse of someone watching a college basketball game (UCLA vs. Oregon, if I’m not mistaken) on TV. The final game of the 2003 NCAA tournament was played on April 7, and didn’t involve either team: Oregon lost to Utah in the first round, and UCLA didn’t even make the tournament, so that game is misplaced in time by at least a month.

Around the time it came out, I heard that this movie was a kind of Inglourious Basterds treatment of the Iraq War. While it’s certainly not NOT that (in that it’s an optimistic fantasy that revises well-known historical events about which there is little cause for optimism), it’s also different in that it doesn’t depart from the historical events nearly as much. There really was a ‘Magellan’ figure in real life, but he was called ‘Curveball,’ and, despite being pretty different from the version in the movie, he had precisely the same effect of being cited in favor of the invasion. In the movie, Magellan is an Iraqi Army officer who secretly meets with Americans to tell them that Iraq has no WMD programs. The Americans then falsely report that he’s told them Iraq has WMDs, and the war machine’s gears start to turn and the Americans plot to kill Magellan so he won’t reveal what he actually told them. In reality, Curveball was an Iraqi exile who actually told the Germans (not the Americans) what the Americans wanted to hear, because he figured it would make his asylum application (he’d fled Iraq after embezzling money from his government employer) easier. I’m not sure why the movie felt the need to change these details; an Iraqi who lies for his own gain is at least as interesting a character as an Iraqi who tells a truth that certain people are determined to disbelieve, and what US intelligence did with Curveball’s obviously flawed reports was hardly any more honest than blatantly telling the world he’d said something he never said.
The movie isn’t really clear what it thinks Damon’s heroism amounts to. He leaks his final report to every news outlet he can think of. Perhaps one of them will publish, but perhaps not. News outlets strive to scoop each other, but sometimes, as the real-life Iraq War amply shows, they collude to cover things up, especially when it’s something as explosive and ‘unpatriotic’ as “The whole reason for this very popular war was a complete lie.” Furthermore, how credible is Damon’s information? It’s based entirely on conversations he says he had with an enemy general who is now dead. No one has any reason to believe these conversations took place, or if they did that the general said what Damon says he said, or if he did that he wasn’t mistaken or lying.
But even if someone does publish, it will make no difference. US troops are already in Baghdad, and the CPA has already taken the plunge that made civil war inevitable. A report (even one whose credibility is bulletproof, which this one very much is not) that the whole war was based on a lie will not change anything, any more than it did in real life when the lack of WMDs and the falsity of the pre-war intelligence became similarly clear on a similar timeline.
In any case, Damon’s Army career is over. He leaked a very sensitive internal document, using an email account under his own name. He might not be guaranteed to go to prison, but he has to be in a shitload of trouble. The Army quietly booting him out and never speaking of this again is the absolute best-case scenario for him.
The movie’s two main sympathetic characters take turns reminding each other to not be naïve, but the movie itself is pretty naïve if it thinks that what we see is a happy ending. Or maybe it’s not meant to be a happy ending, and I’m the one being naïve.
In any case, I was expecting the SF team led by Jason Isaacs to kill Damon and then, upon realizing who he was, hype him up as a hero who gave his life for his country, thus completely obscuring the very unpatriotic truth about what he died doing and why. You know, a slightly worse version of exactly what the real-life Army actually did with the actual case of Pat Tillman.

The movie also runs into trouble upon consideration of its moral perspective; movies love the idea of someone going rogue, breaking whatever rules get in the way of ‘doing the right thing,’ as Damon does throughout the movie. But that’s the whole problem with the Iraq War, isn’t it? Government officials decided that brutalizing Iraq was ‘the right thing,’ and they broke any number of rules of humanity and decency (not to mention actual laws) to make it happen. They went rogue exactly as Damon does, so who can really say that he’s right and they’re wrong?
His confrontation with Amy Ryan’s reporter character also struck me as backwards; the movie wants us to see it as Damon, the heroic teller of inconvenient truths, heroically confronting the corrupt and decadent and much more powerful peddler of lies. But it’s really not that at all; she got lied to just as hard as he did, and he’s a heavily armed agent of the state security apparatus upon which her life and safety directly depend. It’s pretty ridiculous to see him as any kind of underdog in that situation.

Some stray observations:
It’s pretty funny that the early scene at the airport shows the blown-up remains of a large cargo plane, given the famous fate of the An-225 in that other, more recent, blatantly criminal invasion of an unthreatening sovereign state that inevitably turns into a hideous quagmire.
I was surprised by how much of the spoken Arabic I understood; I ‘studied’ Arabic for two years in college, and didn’t really get anywhere with it, but there were multiple instances where seeing the English word in the subtitles brought to mind a particular Arabic word that the characters promptly said. (These include ‘ichwan’ for ‘brothers,’ ‘kul il balad’ for ‘the entire country,’ ‘bernamaj’ for ‘program,’ and some others.)
Ben Sliney is in the cast as a random bureaucrat in the background of one of the Green Zone scenes. This is the air-traffic-control official who gave the ground-all-flights order on 9/11, and then legendarily played himself in the movie United 93. This is his only other non-documentary film credit, so I hope he kept his day job.


*By the time I got to Iraq, the Humvees had all been painted desert-tan and heavily armored, but my understanding is that this change did not take hold until like 2007.
**In a manner unfortunately reminiscent of George Bluth Senior ‘running with great intensity.’ Yes, this is foreshadowing. It is inevitable, because despite its ambitions, this movie proves that the definitive Hollywood treatment of the Iraq War is still selected episodes of Arrested Development. (And Generation Kill, which I considered revisiting for this anniversary post.)
***I do enjoy how Kinnear frames the idea of people who know things: they’re ‘dinosaurs’ with heads full of ‘old ideas,’ which sounds like he’s being boldly innovative and courageously resisting hidebound bureaucracies that have outlived their usefulness. But of course the ‘old ideas’ are things like ‘Know what the hell is going on’ and ‘Don’t assume you can simply kill anyone you don’t like,’ and Kinnear’s ‘bold innovations’ are just clueless wishful thinking.
****Movies very often miss this detail, but helicopters are really loud. Almost as loud as gunfire, though of course movies also very often fail to convey how loud gunfire is. It is impossible for a low-flying helicopter to sneak up like that on anyone with functional ears. They’d be drowning out any attempt at conversation before they got within hundreds of yards.
submitted by Strength-InThe-Loins to LookBackInAnger [link] [comments]


2023.03.21 20:18 Sethhann Ashamed of my past behaviour and don't know how to move forward - BPD traits?

TL;DR:
I’m almost certain after my behaviour over the past two years that I have BPD but have only a diagnosis of ADHD despite telling mental health team.
I had a very upsetting and painful relationship with someone that made me feel really bad about myself. I hit out and had a mental breakdown, no I don’t feel like I can live my life because of who the person is and what they have made up about me on top of my already (true) crazy… I don’t really know what to do because I have really good friends in the city I live in but know that anything I do can and will be cancelled by this person.
oh goddddd, so I have a diagnosis of ADHD and not BPD but I did some crazy shit to someone I dated - so I reckon I do have BPD/ I was suffering from psychosis/ super low self esteem + trauma.
Context:Me - 26F Her 32F (I’ll use R to refer to hr)
I was living in my van at the time, really down and out - low sel esteem felt like i had nothing to offer.
She has a fancy salon on the main st in the area where kinda everyone i know in the city is/ DJs at the radio station across the st from r’s salon. To get anywhere you need to walk past her salon or try to avoid it. She knows all the big names etc and is like semi -famous.
Basically I was going through a bit of a rough time - had been struggling with homelessness for a while and that had gotten me into tricky situations which I didn't realise were probably leaving a mark on me. I hadn't been back in the UK for that long, having lived in Greece working in the camps for a while until covid happened and i experienced burnout and got back into drugs when trying to make new friends since i'd been abroad for so long. I sobered up and sorted myself out a bit and went and lived in my van tree-planting and having a nice time.
Anyways, I wasn't really into dating at that point but had dating apps and got talking to someone. Straight away she was really telling me loads about herself and so I opened up to over messages etc, she'd voice note and send pictures asking me to identify mushrooms she'd picked and asked me my opinions/ knowledge about intellectual topics etc, and basically seemed to have a lot in common with me/ wanted similar things.
We don't meet for a while because I'm flaky and always on the move. We finally meet, she comes to a friends house where i sometimes went when I was in the city (i lived in my van remember) and we take some mushrooms, laugh loads and then go to the club together, as soon as i get there she ignores me completely- but i bump into a friend so spend the night dancing with him.. i tell r I'm going to leave and we chat for a bit and then go outside, I ask if she's attracted to me because I'm confused by our interaction, i like r from our chats and how much we laughed together but then i think that she thinks I'm weird hence why she ignored me in the club- we end up circling each other and then kissing for a while, I go to leave and she grabs me an throws me to the wall and kisses me more (HOT). In the morning she messages me 'you're on my mind this morning'- I find it kinda wild, but like flattering and hot.
Anyways I'm away again and she tries to get me to drive back to the city to fuck a few times when she's drunk/ messages me in the night and gets annoyed when i don't reply 'I want you to talk to me' is what she'd say. I've never experienced anyone being so forward so i find it a bit unnerving but nice.
When we finally have sex it's wild, she strangles me without asking but it just works, she's so intense the most intense lover I've ever had, staring at me like she's going to swallow me whole. she says it's the best sex she's ever had - i don't know how to reply, but it is good. We continue seeing each other and she tells me all about her exes who are badddd, like crazy - 3 turn up at r’s flat over the time we are seeing each other... (and she tells me how she has gotten people cancelled).. We hang out a LOT she keeps telling me she's going to fall in love with me but she can't- can't have a relationship, we chat about what we want and she seems to want everything i want? Land, community.. She comes for a drink with me and my friend and storms out half way through i follow her and she's like I'm sorry and goes to dinner, i wake up to 9minutes worth of voice notes telling me all of these nice things about me but that I'm like damaged goods so maybe we should be friends because she knows she'll fall in love with me and she can't do that.. I'm so confused i message back telling her that everything is telling me to run away but for some reason i can't..
everytime i stay r tells me she's going to fall in love with me over and over again, but that she can't do that and it hurts me so i often stay in the spare room, always awaking to her coming in and clinging to me in the night, the way she holds me feels so good.. it really confuses me, so i become unsure if i should see her, everything feels wierdly dramatic all the time and the sex is crazy, she sends me constant nudes and desires me all the time, asks me to come to her work just to kiss her. Does not stop going on about my appearance and body (I'm like SUPER underweight at that point - sick looking- but i guess muscly from all the manual labour? idk weird she was so into it). But we do have the best times when we're together and i feel so special she covets me in public and invites me to cool fancy events and i feel accepted by like the beautiful people? But then she's also seeing other people, (none like me though, she loves me and it's different...) and makes fun of me for not (ENM) so i try and date other people but she stops me each time. She gets a bit calmer and things feel okay between us, i stay most nights she still pushes and pull but i put it down to her trauma and she tell me she's in love with me. I tell r i need time but she demands that i fuck her hard and lover her during sex. R corners me all the time over the next few weeks and tells me i must feel the same way as it's between two people. I'm obsessed, I love her back, I tell R this but that it feels painful and that shouldn't be what love is. We continue hanging out and it seems okay but it's like I'm waiting for her to do something again, it's incredible in so many ways the way we talk constantly about everything and all the amazing things she says to me.. But I'll catch r out on lies/ she'll do things/ say things that are really mean both to me and to strangers etc.
But then things get hard she has some family stuff and says she can't date me, i of course say that's fine but she messages me every day - i get really sick from living in the van during winter with no heating and end up at my mums (alcoholic) after not seeing her for years, she ghosts me over random stuff then rings me crying saying she loves me and would be with me if stuff was not happening in her life.
I get a bit better and come back to the city in my van sleeping near parks etc, the night i get back i meet my friend (an ex, I'm a lesbian what can i say) who sees my phone flashing and her texts to me, she can't believe that that's how she speaks to me. I ask r if I'll see her tonight, she messages me as I'm parked up a while out the city demanding i come fuck her and leave my dog alone in the van. I feel like shit but then do what she wants the following night after not having slept, our relationship becomes me coming over and cooking for her and fucking her on demand.. At this point I'm barely sleeping each night, waiting for her to message me or up from the cold. one night i say no and that she has no respect for me, the next day I say we need to chat- she's mean over text and is all about what just tell me over text, so i tell her i think she has zero respect for me and it hurts. she brushes it off but later sees me walk past her salon and then ends up coming into the shop where i go with my friend and grabs my hand. Later she sees me again whilst djing (across the road from her salon) and messages me and asks if i like her croptop i tell her ofc she looks amazing, she says she'll come chat to me later. She doesn't so i sleep until she turns up at my van at midnight wrecked. I come out and ask her wtf she is doing but she just grabs me and kisses me and throws me against the park railings and tells me to come to hers so i follow her, we start having sex and i freak out and she tells me she loves me to which i only reply 'sure'. she jumps out of the bed and starts screaming at me to get out if i don't think she loves me, i move to get up but then she presses me down and doesn't let me leave nor does she let me sleep and shakes me trying to get me to talk but I've shut down.
The next day I wake having had one hour sleep feeling terrible. i go down on r and bring her to orgasm she bucks into my nose and i bleed everywhere, a sad trail of red leading to the bathroom.. she sits me on the edge of the bath and cleans me up, we shower together and i watch my blood mix with the water. Later in r’s kitchen she picks me up and sits me on her counter (I'm p tall 5'8 but tinnyyy 47kg and she's 6ft curvy af and strong) and strokes my hair tries to speak to me but i can't hear anything i feel so done and hurt and terrified to lose her, it's like my self worth has become reliant on her because idk she's so powerful in the area i live and is so mean about everyone and if she's not mean about me then maybe I'm not so bad right? I know - bpd right?
Anyways i go to my van and change and r comes in and gives me my stuff that i had at hers i tell her i don't want it and throw it out… I was feeling rejected I guess?.. she's laughing at me an I'm so embarrassed i throw my clothes into the street I'm crazy, feel ridiculous and small and sick and ashamed i want her not to see me like that. She storms off and tells me I'll never see her again if I do that again so I follow her (she wants to go a walk) and she screams at me in public all around the park and i try to calm her. By the time we get back to hers I'm apologising telling her it woulave completely lost my d be a shame to waste our connection and i love her. I have completely lost myself, I'm a different person from when she met me. I have no where to go but go to my friends who tells me she's worried about me and that someone shouldn't be treating me that way. The woman just sends me romantic songs and i tell her i think the other night was inappropriate, she admits that it was and says we can never talk about it again.
I start going crazy- messaging weirdly when she doesn't reply, clingy like, r tells me she doesn't think about me doesn't care about me. I'm not sleeping still and in the morning i tell her that i think she needs therapy etc if she thinks that this is love because it should feel good and it should be an action not just some intense feeling she has and that i am so confused because she treats her friends so nicely and yet the person she is in love with like a dog or an enemy and i think she's amazing but maybe we should be friends if her behaviour doesn't change cause i don't want to lose her.. She is obviously mad with me and tells me she completely fell for me but can't have a relationship (not my point). We were meant to have a date that night as r was going to Mexico the next day but she cancels because of my behaviour.. i ask to go and get my records then so i go to the salon- with her favourite chocz (ikr I'm full psycho at this point) and she's angry but we make out loads in the back street.. she says she'll meet me later, I'm a mess getting ready and think I'll be late so don't get fuel for my van (so no heating), i turn up and she's still working but invites me in i try and wait but my mum keeps ringing saying she's suicidal.. she finally finishes cutting the persons hair 2 hours after i turn up... and we make out loads in the salon, but shes mean, shes hungry so i take her for food she holds my hand down the street and leans her head on my shoulder as she eats i walk her to her car and she tells me that's it i kiss her loads and ask her to drive me back and she agrees I'm trying not to cry as she drops me off and she asks me why do i care so much about it. i kiss her and she drives off. i try and sleep on my friends couch but it's so cold. I message her and joke how she's going to go through all my texts laughing with her business partner - she's like wtf.. (she told me she'd done that with ex partners texts and I'm so paranoid all the time at this point), she tells me something has happened and she has to stop texting i apologise and say i;ll message in the morning...
She's so mad with me still in the morning and the communication is fucked, she's mad i just want to be friends and everything else, but of course, i want to be with her and not just be friends, i'd really do anything. I ask if i can leave her a letter because everything i text is misconstrued. She says yes so i write her a letter telling her how i feel and apologising, i feel like i really love her, she's such a strong character and so interesting and so fierce with so many idiosyncrasies and mad music knowledge and that i want to be in her life in any capacity that i can, i mean it but I'm so so fucked up at this point and i'd had a long term relationship but like it wasn't like this.. the intensity, it was really nice and so loving, but it was very different from this, despite the pain of it no one had ever said such amazing things to me and i'd never had sex like that / so much in common musically etc.... I'm so hurt and just think i should try move on, i go and sleep with someone straight away. the next day she messages me whilst on her way to to the airport, telling me the letter made her cry - because it's sad and that all she wants to do is be in my arms, i tell r i love her and r says she feels the same, but I'm stupid i try and date other people whilst she's in mexico. The stupidest idea, I’m so so mentally ill at this point, not sleeping and pushing my body to the absolute limits at work and to nail the coffin.. start taking street valium to try and sleep.. i tell r about going on dates, i always told her before because i want to be open about that and she encouraged my dating other people (but i have like sexual trauma so it's difficult for me, but i don't mind her dating) she gets jealous of one person i date (a)… A instantly clings on to me and by then myself esteem is so done i think everyone can just take what they want from me and I give it despite a year ago knowing full well I would have ran a million miles from someone like a.. and this is really horrible.. but i wasn't even really attracted to a and i missed and loved the r so badly, but a kept demanding me to come fuck her very similar to the way r did, but obvs I loved r, so I did go an fuck a even when I didn’t want to. Whilst a is in Mexico she sends me highly sexual messages again and of course I'm so hooked, i wake up to voice notes from r telling me she loves me that she wants to do everything with me, to read to her to go travelling, to do all these mad adventurous things etc and that when she gets back she needs to see me straight away and it'll be different this time we'll do sober things etc etc. at this point I'm flat sitting a friends flat so i finally have somewhere to stay - although only for a bit..
R arrives back and I'm so excited to see her, i don't want to fuck up this time and i want to be good for her, she also has regular lovers so maybe it's good that i now have someone else as well.. when r finally gets to the place I'm staying she's two hours late and she's full of mezcal telling me about a half a million property she's going to buy (what about wanting to get land like me). I'm cooking for her and we're making small talk but she just jumps on me and tells me to get into the bedroom so i do. she pushes me on the bed and tries to fuck me (again something i can have problems with cause past trauma) she hurts me so i tell her and she laughs and stops rather than asking what i want. I've never seen her so turned on, like, her clit is SWOLLEN anyways we have a LOT of sex for hours and hours can't stop touching each other telling each other how much we love each other, and i talk about the woman I'm dating and the sex... because i found it interesting because i struggle with casual sex / not having feelings for people who i sleep with but managing to have good sex with that person sometimes without having feelings (fucking for pleasure, as noted smth I struggle wi cause of trauma), i don't really remember chatting about it (she tells me the next day how inappropriate that is).. anyways it feels p fucking magical to be back with r and the next day she sees me running my errands whilst she's in her salon and asks me to get her for her lunch so i do and she comes up to the flat i'm staying in and we make out but then she becomes nasty to me - making fun of my clothes and then asking if i only like her for sex (very confusing as she always jumps on me when i'd much rather go and fucking do smth fun...). She tells me off for talking about a (very fair what a twat I am) and i'm mortified, i apologise so much and tell r maybe i was trying to show off or smth but i don't remember too well because i would never want to hurt her, i'm so desperate to make it work this time.. I move in with my close friend and I stop fawning over her so much, confused by the hot and cold.. I go and stay with people and I text her the same as always but I just seem to annoy her…
R sleeps with someone I know she doesn’t even like and I’m upset - what are we doing to each other!? I try to communicate this but everything I do annoys her, when I’m invited to a cottage with an and her friends I go, just for a night. Whilst there r starts phoning me manically asking to come over and that she needs to sleep next to me, but I tell her I’m out, not where, I should’ve said where I know.. been honest.. r sends loads of messages, I should just go and ring her but for some reason I don’t because I’m so anxious, I just text her I’m so sorry I’m away id love to be with her but we need to start arranging things rather than her expecting me to just drop everything there and then all the time - I honestly thought about driving my big van 2 hours back just to be there for her and I wish I had.. I say I’ll see her as soon as I’m back but it goes on at this place, I hate it I want to be with her.
When I get back the next day I cook r a massive meal and we try and watch a film.. I have no tv and no laptop just a shite iPad. I obviously can’t concentrate on it and it annoys r.. we have sex and she tells me she loves me but I don’t reply, I just stare confused… she says she needs to go and stay in her own bed, I ask if she wants company but she says no, so she goes. But she tells me to come in to the salon on valentines day to get my hair done..
I’m pretty ill at this point again and food isn’t going well with me and just super mentally unstable with everything going on and staking street valium each night.. it’s my pals birthday and I’m so anxious around everyone I get completely black out, take loads of drugs. My dog runs away and she is texting me maniacally I’m on the st tripping balls looking for my dog , I run to the park (past her salon) she sees me and runs out and grabs me I immediately have a panic attack and collapse, her staff bring me water and she comes out and calls my friends who come and get me, she messages me asking if I’m okay. I apologise not realising the gravity of the situation. Later she (rightfully) doesn’t want to talk to me when I try.. I lose my shit, she isn’t going to cut my hair, I accuse her of manipulating me, lying (she was always lying tbh and I knew it but just turned a blind eye) and not loving me, just using me for sex, complete psychotic drool. I don’t remember any of it, I was FULL of Xanax and everything else. I fall asleep and when I wake up I’m sick realising what I did, I ring her trying to apologise, of course she won’t speak to me, so I apologise profusely. She won’t see me again. I get it I’m awful, so awful, but I’m so full of panic.
I accept that she doesn’t want to see me but I get covid and keep filling with panic and sending her apologies ( I think on two occasions) and getting really cruel responses. I then pour my heart out, all romantic, the way she used to talk to me (I know I’m mortified) and she calls me disgusting and to focus on someone else (which hurt because my problem is I struggle with focus on someone because I’m so damn scatty/ avoidant a lot of the time, probs why I fell so hard for her because I couldn’t NOT focus on he be drawn and obsessed with her). I’m terrified of walking my dog certain ways and passing her salon worried she’ll accuse me of stalking because I messaged so many times to apologise.. if I do pass with friends she stares out at me..
But then she comes and talks to me on the street and says she will see me soon (she’d always say this when she sort of ended smth, to tell me it wasn’t really over in her code) so I thought it would be like all the other times she’s be annoyed and mess with other people then call me in crying again. So I message r and suggest a walk - she blocks me. I’m so mentally ill now, can’t go down the street and have panic attacks daily that my life is ruined, hurting someone like that and being so mean and also what she will be saying to people, people look at me differently like I’m mad (she got her ex barred from an art studios, another is seen as an abuser and has called other stalkers/ crazy). It was also (pure vanity) horrifying knowing everyone would think I was this evil crazy person.. so I’d try and stay out of her way but sadly struggle as her salon is on the main Street and I couldn’t keep making my friends walk a different way (they thought I was mad too). I continue seeing a for a 2 weeks but its too much so I ask for space but she then tells me she loves me and it feels too much like what I’d just been through (why am I now creating a new pattern)… I’m so lonely and fucked up and mad and weird that A continually gets back in because my boundaries are so poor and I’m so mentally ill and probably confusing her a lot :(. I go in and out of utter panic and trying to quit the st valium and relapsing. R sees me at gigs and sometimes tries to come up but I always freak out and have a panic attack, she comes out the salon when I walk by and goes smiles and tries to talk to my friends whilst ignoring me..
I go through homelessness again and a puts me up in her big flat she lives in alone (as a friend), but it’s such an odd situation because she keeps trying to initiate sex.. I see the salon shut for ages and get a weird feeling this is months later… July?… Just before R’s birthday.. I decide to message if she’s okay, the message goes through on iMessage so maybe I’m just blocked on WhatsApp idk? No answer.. I’m so manic not sleeping I take loads and loads of valium to try and shut my brain off and down gin, I’m on my own as A has gone away in the massive flat a st away from r’s and a st away from the salon everything is so fucking close.. anyways I go crazy from all the Valiums and somehow convince myself that if I just talk to r and tell her I mean no harm she will stop saying stuff about me and just be normal to me when we bump into each other. I go crazy ring loads. When she answers she goes hysterical screaming at me and laughing hysterically and calling me all these things. She hangs up and I ring and ring and leave nonsense drugged up voice notes like ‘does it make u feel powerful being so mean..’ Etc. I’m such an idiot I feel so bad for acting so odd and traumatised I decide to write to her and give her my favourite book I think about putting it in the post but she lives down the st so I think it’s an acceptable thing to leave it outside. When I get there she’s sat outside with her pals… she sees me and is like ‘hi.. what do you want’ I say I have something for her she just replies ‘sound’ so I give her the book and letters and she bursts out laughing..
I meet someone later (o) and then it turns out r was also trying to fuck them whilst with me and told a bunch of lies.. I go to a gay club with O and as soon as I walk in R is there, she just waves at me and I jump out of my skin. Fuck. I go over and I apologise profusely saying I’m having a manic episode and it’s no excuse (it really is no excuse - I’m aware my behaviour is fucked) but I say can I have a hug and she holds me, when I pull away she grabs me and puts her hand under my top whilst telling me she needs ‘space’ from me tonight and to leave, but that the letter was ‘sweet’. The letter was also like.. asking what the protocol was because I didn’t want to be accused of doing other disrespectful things - I’d been a prick and really shat on her boundaries apologising when she didn’t want to hear from me then going fuckin’ nuts and ringing her months later, but it was also cause I didn’t know if it was bad walking past the salon and how to avoid it or whether I was allowed/ should say hello - we WERE in love? I’ve never had to like idk police myself after being so entwined with someone, them knowing everything about me… and I just felt so ashamed of my actions and selfishly wanted to make up for it even though I knew that the only way to make up for it is to not apologise.. but ye I guess its also my life. R is involved in everything music, fashion, writing.. so I really wanted to be on like semi okay terms, but it was just completely fucked up of me trying to force that on a person and I truly am ashamed and have just been doing so much therapy since.
I did just about get myself on my feet, I got a council flat, got in to do my post grad, was playing music and had a gig lined up (smth I was nervous about again because r is friends with the gig organisers and other musicians involved) and then I had a serious rock climbing accident - smashed my left arm up pretty bad, had a lush two week stay in the hospital, two operations and a bunch of metal plates put in - it was a hard recovery as I’m so active usually and my council flat is like a st away from r’s salon and everyone who knows her in the queer scene and ye I walk out my flat and just get funny looks now because of it.. R did come and talk to me on the st one day after my accident I went to turn away but there was nowhere to go, so, idk it probably looked mental as but I put on my big grin and tried to just feel love and no animosity for her and just tried to chat normally and made a bunch of jokes and also apologised again, said I feel guilty and I think about what I did all the time, she told me to ‘let it go’ and made fun of my cast and chaos, kind of infantilising and kinda treated me like I was gross and bring up stuff that she knew would make me feel awful…
I pulled through my accident and even got a modelling contract with a pretty big agency, got funded to work on a film and started my postgrad.. but then things still happen all the time, a photographer blocks me, guess what, they’re friends with r. Two people working on the film, friends with R and I just feel weird around them, my friends ask me to go to events… r is djing. my best friend starts djing at the radio station r dis at and wants me to get involved but I know I can’t even though I’m friends with the person that runs the radio station. If I were to, r would get me banned and say it was to get to them or smth, which is not true, at this point I wish I could be as far away from them as possible. I’m scared to go and see my favourite musicians play as I always suspect r will be there as we have the same taste… scared to go to certain pubs I always went to.. before I met r I would spend days off at a cafe right by her salon and just read/ catch up on admin.. I’m too nervous now as she’ll again say it’s stalking/ her friends will think that too. My favourite food place was also next to her salon. I literally love the days it’s shut and I can just go down the main st like a normal person, funny thing is that’s the only time I ever see her other ex who is also too scared to go down the main st… it’s been so long now but I’m still crippled with anxiety, I know that she now has a partner so I thought maybe she might idk be full of love and evened out a bit, but she’s still trying to like talk to my friends.. and I know for a fact going around telling people I’m crazy, I tell myself it’s in my head that she’s doing this but then something happens.
I’m so young I just want to be happy, i make new friends and then if they make a move on me I freak out, can’t have sex at all, can’t be intimate. I don’t know when I’ll stop feeling like this. I guess I’m scared I’ll be awful to someone else like I was to R. And I know that my low self-esteem isn’t all due to R at all, if anything she built me up more than anyone else ever had… but I keep putting it on her in my mind and it’s obsessive and fucked up. I own a bit of land with a group of anarchist, working class queers now and we’re building huts to make a community - I’m on disability for my arm and the severity of my ‘ADHD’ and have so much opportunity to just write and try and make something of myself but I’m still so full of panic by the proximity. One of my other best friends good friend is close friends with R and so we can’t hang out together. They are creating a pop up poety/ wine night (I write poetry) so my pal wants me to be there desperately but I know r will be there and her friends who all think I’m an evil crazy bitch from hell. Which, I guess I am, but I’m trying not to be and treating me like shit forever and spreading things on top of the crazy shit I did which are fundamentally not true is just so difficult and makes me feel like I have to move away… I’m pretty sure after all this and my mind letting it continue that I definitely have BPD, all the symptoms are there but my mental health team just think it’s severe ADHD and possibly CPTSD and I just need to stick to my medication regimen (yay stimulants) and stay off of valium - I am!! But idk, everytime I think I’m doing something good I get scared that r will find out and tear it down.. it sucks, I have a lot of love and respect for her and wish I hadn’t done what I did but I did and I can’t change it.. so I guess I deserve it completely. But still, it’s difficult to make something of myself even though I deserve this..
Has anyone had a similar situation? any advice?
submitted by Sethhann to AnxiousAttachment [link] [comments]


2023.03.21 18:52 nostone3241 The connection between Freemasonry, Indian residential schools, the Indian wars, the Indian removal act, the Indian act and the Indians-as-Israelites theory.

My name is Thomas Saul, I am a member of the Skatin Nations tribe in British Columbia, Canada. I am of Salish, and European descent. I began this project around May 2021 when news broke about the Kamloops residential school where the remains of 215 children were allegedly found. As a teenager I briefly Attended Norkam secondary in Kamloops, and have friends and family who still live in Kamloops, so this hit close to home. Upon my research into The origin of this residential school I found that Israel wood Powell, a Freemason, was the Indian Superintendent at the time it was built. Four generations of my family attended residential schools, some in Port Alberni and some Mission City, so naturally I wanted to know more. I have come to the conclusion that Colonisation, Freemasonry, and residential schools go hand in hand. Its a Fact, both the United States and Canada would not exist without Freemasonry, Therefore many Freemasons played a leading role in the genocide of Indigenous Americans. “Freemasonry, as it exists in various forms all over the world, has a membership estimated at around 6 million worldwide.”
Genocide: The UN definition, which is used in international law, states that genocide is: "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group," as such:(a) "Killing members of the group;"(b) "Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;"(c) "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;"(d) "Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;"(e) "Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
The supreme governor of the Church of England is the head of the Church of England, a position which is vested in the British monarch. The father of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 King George III was not a Freemason, George III had announced that the colonies would no longer seize Native lands or purchase them without treaties. Starting in 1763, no English settlers could legally travel through or acquire land west of the Appalachian Mountains. The proclamation specifically stated that Native Americans had been subject to “great Frauds and Abuses” and that their sovereignty should be protected. Freemason Thomas Jefferson in his list of 27 grievances accused the king saying “He has excited domestic Insurrections among us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes, and Conditions.’’ Thomas Jefferson did this to build support for the revolutionary act that the Declaration of Independence would represent. It was suspected that the Freemasons were behind the Boston Tea Party, the American War of Independence, the french revolution, and Napoleonic France triggering British prime minister William Pitt’s, the Unlawful Societies Act of 1799 where he aimed to see Freemasonry abolished. Some Freemasons addressed Pitt explaining how vast their membership is and its connection to Royalty and As a result, Freemasons were excluded from the Act, but lodges were obliged to return a list of members to the local Clerk of the Peace every year, which are recorded in the Quarter Sessions.1. King George IV reigned from the death of George III until 1830, he was the first of many British Freemason kings and was the head of the Anglican church. William IV, Edward VII, Edward VIII, George VI were also masons. In the 209 years since the Union of the Premier and Ancient Grand Lodges to form the United Grand Lodge of England, a member of the Royal Family has been its Grand Master for more than 150.
A Freemason warrant of constitution is the Document which authorizes or gives a Warrant to certain persons therein named to organize and constitute a Lodge, Chapter, or other Masonic Body. The first Warrant for a military Lodge was issued by the Grand Lodge of Ireland in 1732 to the First British Foot Regiment. Within a few years the Grand Lodge of Scotland and both the Grand Lodge of England, Modern and Ancient were issuing Warrants to military Lodges. In 1733, 18 men gathered at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern on King Street in Boston and organized the first Masonic Lodge in North America. The first record of a military Lodge Warrant being issued in the new world happened during the French and Indian Wars. It was issued by the then Provincial Grand Master at Boston to the 28th British Foot in an expedition against the French at Crown Point. Edward Cornwallis became founder in December 1748, of a military Lodge in his regiment, the 20th. Foot, No. 63, on the registry of the Grand Lodge of Ireland. The warrant was issued to Lord George Sackville, Lieut. Col. The Hon. Edward Cornwallis and Captain Milburne. When in 1759 this famous regiment gained new honors at the battle of Minden, that name was immediately adopted as the name of the lodge. Cornwallis’ second lodge was founded in Halifax early in 1750 or possibly earlier, under a “deputation” or dispensation from Major Erasmus James Philipps of the 40th. Regiment at Annapolis Royal, Provincial Grand Master for Nova Scotia under Henry Price of Boston. Of this lodge, known as the First Lodge, Cornwallis was the first Master. Cornwallis In October 1749, issued an order that came to be known as the Scalping Proclamation. His government would pay a bounty to anyone who killed a Mi’kmaq adult or child in a bid to drive them off mainland Nova Scotia.
Sir William Johnson, an agent for the British Indian Department met Joseph Brant, a 9-year-old Mohawk boy while doing a land deal with Joseph's father King Hendrick. Sir William eventually started a common-law relationship with Joseph's sister Molly giving him incredible power over her tribe. Johnson groomed young Joseph Brant to become a loyal warrior and eventually leader of the six nations tribe. At 13 years old Joseph accompanied Johnson on his first tour with the military. Missionary Samuel Occham, a student of Eleazar Wheelock (father of The Great Awakening) procured a 19-year-old Joseph Brant to attend Moore's Indian charity school in Lebanon Connecticut with the blessings and charity of William Johnson. Freemasons Benjamin Franklin and Benedict Arnold had also donated money to Wheelock’s cause. William was the British Crown's first superintendent of Indian Affairs for the colony in 1756 and Joseph Brant was appointed as a captain in the Indian Department. Many Freemason colonists were high-ranking military who waged many wars on the Indigenous American population, scientists say so many Indigenous people were killed as a result of colonization it caused a mini ice age. After the North American wars, many Freemasons took positions as Indian agents helping to remove and segregate the native population. Anyone who wanted access to the six nations had to go through Indian agent Sir William Johnson and his family which includes the Brant family and the Kerr family through various marriages. At one point Johnson proposed that the moor's Indian Charity School move from Lebanon, Connecticut, to Johnstown but it never happened. Eventually, Johnson withdrew the support for Wheelock. In a letter Wheelock had suggested to Lord Dartmouth "The Nations will not make war with us while their Children, and especially the Children of their chiefs are with us” Dartmouth college claims that In 1766, Johnson was invited to join the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), the largest and most influential Anglican missionary society in the 18th-century British-Atlantic world. He began working to place Anglican missionaries like Freemason and bishop Charles Inglis, rather than Congregationalist and Presbyterian ones, among the Six Nations. I believe Moore's dubbed “the great design” was the original model for the Mohawk Institute and the Canadian residential school system.
On April 10, 1766 Sir William Johnson was raised to the position of Master Mason of St Patrick's Lodge No. 4 where many Freemason Indian agents like John Butler, Guy Johnson, Sir John Johnson, William Johnson Kerr, Christian Daniel Claus, Gilbert Tice, George Croghan and A protégé of Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, Rev. Samuel Kirkland attended. In 1770 Johnson's fellow St Patrick's lodge Freemason Rev. Samuel Kirkland coincidentally parted ways with Wheelock and Moors charity school. Eventually Kirkland founded the Hamilton-Oneida Academy as a boys' school in central New York. In 1776 Joseph Brant was initiated into the Freemason fraternity in London England where it is rumoured a benefactor of Moors charity school king George III gave Brant his masonic apron. When Brant returned to Canada he became affiliated with Lodge No. 11 at the Mohawk village on the Grand River, of which he was the first Worshipful Master, and later affiliated with Barton Lodge No. 10. Joseph Brant invited fellow Freemason and grandson of Eleazar Wheelock to be a minister to the Mohawk. To Joseph It was imperative that Freemason Rev. Davenport Phelps was made minister of the Mohawks, so he reminded the Bishop, through Sir John, of the pledge which the Archbishop of Canterbury had made to him in the presence of the King, that whenever the Indians, by the erection of a church, should be ready for religious instruction, he would do all in his power to supply their wants. A Freemason named Rev. Robert Addison helped make this happen. Mr Addison, a relative of William Johnson, had been minister to the Six Nations and Joseph Brant and Freemason John Norton were his translators. Freemason Reverend Davenport Phelps and Jarvis Wheelock, the brother of Eleazar, were invited to Canada and granted land by Freemason and founder of the family compact John Graves Simcoe, the man behind the Simcoe patent. Mrs Simcoe in her Diary says, “In April of the following year Mary Brant (sister of Freemason Joseph Brant and common-law wife of Freemason Indian agent Sir William Johnson) successfully prescribed a favourite Indian remedy, the root of sweet flag (acorus calamus), for Governor Simcoe, who had been extremely ill with a persistent cough. The medicine relieved his malady “in a very short time. This brought the Brant family and Simcoe family close together. Davenport Phelps became the Worshipful Master of The Barton Lodge under Freemason William Jarvis and he was the first chaplain at the Mohawk Chapel. Davenport was the leader of many Indian agents who were members of The Barton Lodge. I suspect Davenport's mission was to help with the so-called Indian problem.
Chief Joseph Brant has been accused on many occasions of selling off land for his own enrichment and in a lot of cases he sold land to Freemasons. He granted 999-year leases to many families, the Nelles, the Young’s, the families of Adam Young UE, his three sons, Lieutenant John Young (Indian department) UE, Sergeant Daniel Young UE, and Private Henry Young UE, along with Captain Henry William Nelles UE and his families (Rev. Abraham Nelles). Many of these Indian agents were members of The Barton Lodge. Both Captain Henry William Nelles UE and Adam Young UE, fourth great-grandfather of Robert Collins McBride UE, were also the first Freemasons to settle in Haldimand County. Freemasons Robert Kerr and Rev. Robert Addison, William Kennedy Smith, also had land there. "There were very few outright legal sales of our land; 90 per cent of the leased land has never been paid for or paid to Six Nations," according to a research document prepared by Six Nations. Many Freemasons were involved with the Simcoe patent and the Haldimand Proclamation. Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe stated that the Indians could not lease their land since British subjects could lease land only from British subjects. Freemason William Jarvis signed the Haldimand proclamation, Freemason Thomas Ridout surveyor-general was behind the Ridout survey, Freemason Sir Peregrine Maitland lieutenant governor informed them that they had no title to the northern part of the grant, Freemason John Butler acted as an agent of purchase on behalf of the government, Freemason chief John Brant) and Freemason Robert Johnson Kerr finally went to England to lobby on behalf of the Six Nations.
Freemasons King George IV, and King William IV, reigned from January 29 1820 to June 20 1837. The idea of residential school was brought forward by the Freemason Governor of Upper Canada, Sir Peregrine Maitland, within the context of a proposal he made in 1820 to the Colonial Office "for ameliorating the condition of the Indians in the neighbourhood of our settlements." Maitland's proposal contained most of the civilising concepts and techniques that would be adopted in the next three decades. The American Freemason, President Andrew Jackson succeeded in pushing the Indian Removal Act through the United States Congress in 1828 leading to the trail of tears. John Brant solicited help from the New England company to build the Mohawk institute, the first residential school in Canada. The mohawk institute operated from 1831 to June 27, 1970. John Brant appointed Rev. Abraham Nelles son of Freemason Robert Nelles as principal of the Mohawk Institute. Abraham after over 30 years was succeeded by Freemason Robert Ashton. Oronhyatekha aka Peter Martin was also a Freemason and played an important role in the development of the Mohawk Institute. The Arthur of the Historical sketch of the Barton Lodge, No. 6, G.R.C., A.F. and A.M., says “the name of Brother John Brant is connected with important events in the history of Canadian Masonry.” John Brant is responsible for the formation of at least 12 residential schools in Ontario, while Freemason Israel Powell the superintendent of Indian affairs in British Columbia Powell “was able to boast that the government had established seventeen Indian schools, one for each year in office.”. Powell sought to establish several boarding schools across the province and particularly pushed for creating a school in Kamloops to address communities in the province’s interior.The school opened in Kamloops in 1890 and became one of the largest residential schools operated by Indian Affairs. The Freemason Organisation is vicariously liable for all abuses in those residential schools.
In 1837 a Rebellion in Upper Canada was led by William Lyon Mackenzie, who was a fierce critic of Simcoe’s Family Compact, an elite clique of businessmen and many Freemasons. Mackenzie opposed a system of land grants that favored settlers from Britain. Many Freemasons such as William Botsford Jarvis and Sir Allen Napier Macnab who was Joint premier of the Province of Canada helped stop this rebellion. Sir Allen Macnab was succeeded by Freemason Sir John A. Macdonald as Joint Premier. This Rebellion of 1837, this triggered the 6th generation Freemason Lord Durham to write The Durham Report, he was appointed governor in chief of British North America. In his 1839 Report on the Affairs of British North America, he recommended that Upper and Lower Canada be united under a single Parliament, with responsible government. In 1863 a steamboat named the Brother Johnathan) carried smallpox from San Francisco to British Columbia killing 1/3rd of the Native population. Many Freemasons like Thomas Harris the first mayor of Victoria, Israel Wood Powell who served in the Victoria Rifle Volunteer Corps which was established to protect the colony from the indigenous population, Amor De Cosmos who was the extremely racist editor of The Daily British Colonist, and Ronald J. NcDonell clerk for magistrate Pemberton who forced The Nuu-chah-nulth to leave their camp, escorted by two gunboats. There are many many more who may have purposefully mishandled the smallpox epidemic of 1863. British freemason Edward Jenner created the life-saving smallpox vaccine but on the other hand Freemasons Jeffrey Amherst and Col Henry Bouquet have been accused of distributing smallpox contaminated blankets to their enemies.
As early as 1866 Israel W. Powell, with his colleague Amor De Cosmos, had proposed confederation with the Canadian colonies. Israel Wood Powell, Superintendent of Indian affairs also outlawed potlatching an indigenous ceremony In British Columbia. Following the Lord Durham’s report, Freemason Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon proposed The British North America Act, 1867 Under section 91(24) of the Constitution Act, 1867, the federal government has exclusive legislative authority for "Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians." Of the 36 Fathers of the Canadian confederation, 11 were Freemasons. One being Freemason Sir John A. Macdonald, He was named by the United Grand Lodge of England as their Grand Representative near to the Grand Lodge of Canada. Sir John A. Macdonald took a page from American Freemason Andrew Jackson's book by removing the Indigenous people from their land. He was proud that he was able to subdue the Indigenous people with less blood shed than his American brethren. One Of Macdonald's Legacies is the Canadian Pacific Railway which displaced many tribes across Canada. Sir John A. Macdonald's campaign promise in the 1870s was that he would have a railway built that would link the country from coast to coast. Freemasons Richard Marpole, Sir Sandford Fleming, Sir George J.A. Bury And the Chinese Freemasons of Vancouver and Alberta made Macdonald’s promise come true. As quickly as the railroad was laid Freemason lodges were erected. Louis Riel a Métis hero, led two resistance movements against the Government of Canada and its Freemason Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald. Riel sought to defend Métis rights and identity. The Wolseley expedition was a military force authorized by Sir John A. Macdonald to confront Louis Riel and had been dispatched to Red River under Freemason Colonel Garnet Joseph Wolseley. Another of Mcdonald's legacies is the North West Mounted Police. Macdonald established the N.W.M.P in 1873 which boasted 750 Freemason members in its time. He claimed that “it was intended to have a body of mounted rifles to protect the people from the chance of an Indian war.’’ Meanwhile, The Pacific Scandal, the first major post-Confederation political scandal in Canada, Sir John Macdonald and senior members of his Conservative Cabinet were accused of accepting election funds for the contract to build the C.P rail.
The near completion of the railway allowed troops from eastern Canada to quickly arrive in the territory causing Riel to surrender to Canadian forces. The NWMP barracks was where Louis Riel was detained after his arrest in 1885 for leading the North-West Rebellion. Many Freemasons were involved in the defeat of Louis Riel. The RCMP museum had a display of the noose which hung Riel. Macdonald said this about Riel "He shall die though every dog in Quebec barks in his favor." John A. Macdonald is also one of the fathers of the Canadian Indian act First passed in 1876. In 1879 Freemason Nicholas Flood Davin wrote the Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds, otherwise known as The Davin Report. An amendment to the Indian Act in 1894 under Freemason Prime Minister Sir Mackenzie Bowell, made attendance at day schools, industrial schools, or residential schools compulsory for First Nations children, resulting in over 100000 Indigenous children being forcefully removed from their families by Indian agents and the RCMP. From 1740 to 1896 The Mexican government's response to the various uprisings of the Yaqui tribe have been likened to genocide particularly under Freemason Porfirio Diaz. Due to slavery and massacre, the population of the Yaqui tribe in Mexico was reduced from 30,000 to 7,000 under Diaz's rule. One source estimates at least 20,000 out of these Yaquis were victims of state murders in Sonora. It was during this period of the conflict that the United States Army fought the last battle of the American Indian Wars, the final battle being the Wounded Knee Massacre December 29, 1890, and in the subsequent Drexel Mission Fight the next day. In recent history the statues of Freemason John A. Macdonald, Freemason Edward Cornwallis, Freemason George Washington, Freemason Lawrence Sullivan Ross, Freemason Robert E. Lee and Andrew Jackson have all been vandalized but no mention of their affiliation to the Freemasons in the news. We can't point fingers at the church or government without first confirming whether or not the accused are Freemasons. The Order of the Eastern Star, Job's Daughters, and Rainbow Girls are masonic fraternities for women such as the daughter, widow, wife, sister, or mother of a Master Mason. All masons will cry out that Freemasonry has nothing to do with what an individual member has done, yet they all praise these men and prop them up as heroes. Freemasons claim to have superior morality compared to the average person, that they are the most honorable men on the planet, yet they refuse to acknowledge their members role in the genocide of the Indigenous Americans.
You may believe Freemasons are irrelevant nowadays but that is far from true. Winston Churchill is regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century. Churchill was initiated into Studholme Lodge No. 1591 on 24 May 1901. He said of the Pashtun people “all who resist will be killed without quarter,” Pashtun territory was occupied by the British in 1848 and divided into two areas. Winston Churchill's policies caused a famine that claimed more than 3 million Indian lives during the The Bengal famine of 1943. President Harry Truman, known as one of the most dedicated men to have joined Masonry on the morning of August 6, 1945, ordered an American B-29 bomber to drop two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians. John Edgar Hoover, more commonly referred to as J. Edgar Hoover, was an American attorney and director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Hoover was raised on November 9th 1920 in Federal Lodge No. 1 in Washington D.C. In 1919 Hoover became the head of the Bureau of Investigation's (predecessor of the FBI) new General Intelligence Division. The division was also called the Radical Division because it was the task of the division to find radical elements in American society to monitor and disrupt their activities. The Duke of Kent was initiated as a Freemason in Royal Alpha Lodge No. 16 in London on 16 December 1963. The Duke of Kent, is now UGLE’s longest-serving Grand Master. The Duke’s brother, Prince Michael of Kent, is also a Freemason and is Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons, and Provincial Grand Master of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Middlesex. On 6 March 1953, HRH Prince Philip progressed to the Second Degree of Freemasonry, before advancing to the Third Degree on 4 May 1953.
I encourage those who have been affected by the actions of Freemasons to begin a class action lawsuit against this organization in what ever country, state or province you live in and hold Freemasonry accountable for genocide. The first thing a Freemason will say when presented with this evidence is you don't know how masonry operates, that the lodge is not responsible for individual members actions. That is exactly what the Catholic church said before the Canadian Court of Appeal on July 28, 2020 had found the Archdiocese vicariously liable for abuses committed by a civilian employee. I witnessed countless people stand up against the Catholic Church for what they have done and the Pope came to Canada and apologized. Now it's time to turn your sight toward Freemasonry. You must understand that all Freemasons on the American contenent have greatly benefited from the genocide of Indigenous Americans.
“ Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's acceptance of an inquiry's finding that Canada committed genocide against Indigenous people could have tremendous legal impact if a court ever weighs Ottawa's responsibility for crimes against humanity, experts say.”
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/trudeau-s-acknowledgment-of-indigenous-genocide-could-have-legal-impacts-experts-1.5457668
"I didn't use the word genocide because it didn't come to mind but I described genocide," Pope Francis told reporters on the papal flight from Iqaluit to Rome on Friday.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/pope-francis-residential-schools-genocide-1.6537203
“The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.”
President John F. Kennedy
“President Kennedy issued an Executive Order prohibiting use of facilities on military bases by groups not integrated. The result was to bar Masonic lodges from using the bases.” Masonic Parallels with History - A Chronology of General and Masonic History by Alphonse Cerza. themasonictrowel
THE MILITARY AND FREEMASONRY
Freemasonry in Nova Scotia
Freemasonry at the Two Sieges of Louisbourg 1745 and 1758
Freemasonry in Quebec
Sir William Johnson, the Brant family, the Kerr family and the British Indian Department
MOOR’S INDIAN CHARITY SCHOOL
Mohawk Institute (Mush Hole)
The rebellion of 1837
Manitoba Freemasons
Saskatchewan Freemasons
North-West Rebellion
Provincial Premiers Alberta masons
The Canadian Pacific Railway
Smallpox epidemic of 1862
British Columbia Freemasons
Freemason Prime Ministers
American Freemasons and the genocide of the
Indigenous peoples.
Spanish Freemasons
Royal Freemasons
300 Years of Freemasonry Celebrated at Royal Albert Hall Global Event
Freemasonry according to Masons.
The Fourth Council of Toledo Canon 60 and Indian Residential Schools
Sources
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQ4QiANX3BnEdEwD94FXfh1Nkg_RJ-XN5UhN0_gLX10isR2i08xUziA9ZX7sErUMdp4PTKKPhP0P7F2/pub#h.fpjzhjnusgk1
submitted by nostone3241 to u/nostone3241 [link] [comments]


2023.03.21 17:09 InternationalWash822 Warren Buffett invested in these Fintech Companies - How does SOFI Measure Up?

Warren Buffett invested in these Fintech Companies - How does SOFI Measure Up?
The fintech industry has seen one of the most exciting growth trends as it revolutionizes how people access financial services. Right now, there are over 30,000 fintech startups and by the end of 2021, fintech investment reached a total of $210 billion. The fintech sphere is only expected to grow, so I believe it is a very attractive industry for investors and Warren Buffet seems to think so too.
The Oracle of Omaha has been making large investments in multiple fintech companies. In fact, Buffet has invested over $900M (107.1M shares) in the Brazilian company, Nu Holdings, and $907M (30M shares) in ALLY. This is a huge investment even for someone like Buffett. Nu Holdings is actually his 8th largest investment in terms of shares. This raises the question, why has Buffett invested in these other fintech companies, but not in Sofi?
Throughout this post, I’ll be talking about Sofi, ALLY, and Nu Holdings - comparing their pros, cons, and similarities. My goal here is to see if there is room for 3 top dogs in the fintech industry or not.
Why has Buffett purchased a lot of shares of Nu Holdings, specifically?
For starters, the company has grown its customer base to 70.9 million clients in just over a year since going public. Nu Holdings provides credit cards to people who are not eligible to get one through other banks & tries to minimize risk by reducing the eligible benefits that the customer is initially eligible for. As they pay their bills on time, they unlock more benefits & more credit limits.
Another reason is its management. It's no secret that Buffett likes to invest in companies with good management. As he once said, “When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding management, our favorite holding period is forever.”
Nu Holdings has recently hired David Marcus (former president of PayPal & former Meta Board member) on March 6 to be part of its Board of Directors. It’s expected that David will play a crucial role in Nu’s journey going forward.
The rest of the management team brings a lot of experience to the table as well:
  • CEO, David Velez, was a partner at Sequoia capital between January 2011 & March 2013. He also worked for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and General Atlantic.
  • CGO, Cristina Junqueira, worked for a Boston Consulting group before founding Nu Holdings in 2013.
  • CFO, Guilherme Lago, worked in Credit Suisse Group AG & Mckinsey as well.
  • CPO, Jagpreet Duggal, worked as a director of product management at Facebook.
So you can see Nu’s management team has significant experience in this sector and under their leadership, Nu Holdings grew its revs from $1.7 billion in 2021 to $4.8 billion in 2022 - a 182.3% increase YoY.
Nu Holdings’ Edge - Brazil’s Unbanked Population
Before Nu Holdings started, over 55 million Brazilians were unbanked. This is because it's notoriously difficult for people who are not wealthy to obtain credit cards in Brazil. In general, it's very difficult to get a credit card in Latin America without being one of the wealthy elites.
By offering credit cards to people who would not be able to obtain one any other way, Nu has captured a large, untapped market. This is the main reason Nu is as successful as it is today.
Compared to SOFI, Nu Holdings has a much larger client base, this is of course due to its operations in Brazil, Mexico, & Columbia which in total have a larger population than the US. Thanks in part to these widespread operations, Forbes listed Nu Holdings as one of the world’s best banks in 2022.
Nu Holdings has a larger client base, more revenues, and is growing at a much faster rate than Sofi. The main reason for this is the fact that Nu Holdings doesn’t have as many competitors as Sofi, especially since they focus on an untapped market in Latin America. With Sofi, they have competitors right, left, and center due to established banks and fintech competitors. Nu Holdings became profitable Q3 2022 - only a year after its inception. After making a net profit of $7.8 million in Q3, it went on to make $58 million the next quarter and is on track to report an EPS of $0.02 & $1.393B in revenues in Q1 2023
Whereas SOFI is still struggling to become profitable and is forecast to make an EPS of $-0.077 & $442.262M in revenue in Q1 2023.

https://preview.redd.it/gkta3om784pa1.png?width=626&format=png&auto=webp&s=4d1bfed341d05e0187966a6da3b3e34c4895cbfd
https://preview.redd.it/eu2am7q684pa1.png?width=622&format=png&auto=webp&s=6b0d5b8ff376c5c0ae86c565cbc715a50d293f28
*Screenshot taken from Future Investing YouTube*
How are Nu Holdings & Sofi similar?
But Nu Holdings & Sofi share one very important thing in common. They both want to be a one stop shop for financial services.
Since Sofi specializes in student loan refinancing, it creates a bond with younger customers who - hopefully - will turn into lifelong customers that use Sofi for all their banking needs. Similarly, Nu Holdings offers credit cards to customers younger than 18 in Brazil - capturing a demographic of young people who will hopefully become lifelong customers.
This means that both companies could continue to grow and expand as their customer base grows older and younger generations adopt their services as well.

https://preview.redd.it/xlub4fg884pa1.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9d8d039e9347417080f9035758f5cb9435e6dc29
Why has Buffett invested in ALLY?
Having invested $1.7B since 2012 in the industry giant, General Motors, you could say Buffet is an expert on the auto industry. Which helps explain why Buffett took an interest in Ally.
This fintech company offers multiple services but specializes in the auto loan industry since it once was a financing division of GM, originally known as GMAC. After GM sold the rest of its 8.5% stake in Ally for $900M in 2013, Ally has expanded its market by offering mortgages, credit cards, wealth management, & other services.

https://preview.redd.it/y1c473va84pa1.png?width=605&format=png&auto=webp&s=84b47713c9d3fc8551a21260e51fc863cc7d1570
Another reason Buffett is investing in ALLY could be its history of share buybacks. Buffett is a big believer in stock buybacks and has said they can be the best use of corporate capital. ALLY also offers quarterly dividends to shareholders, which is a sign of the company’s fundamental strength.
How does ALLY compare to Sofi?
The main difference is the source of Ally’s revenue. 65.6% of Ally’s total revenue in 2022 came from the auto finance industry, while Sofi’s edge is student loan refinancing. In 2019, Sofi generated 59.7% of its revenue from student loans. But it’s worth noting that it can be quite difficult to qualify for student loan refinancing if you have a bad credit score whereas it’s a bit easier for people to get auto loans.

https://preview.redd.it/q9efotfb84pa1.png?width=615&format=png&auto=webp&s=3dc7776eb6c02cd0e9293b82cb11e14b391cd86b
How are Ally & Sofi similar?
Ally & Sofi both offer commission free stock trading for investors with a high APY as well. Ally’s savings account offers 3.60% APY and Sofi offers 3.75% APY with a direct deposit. This means that with a direct deposit, you’ll earn a higher APY with Sofi, but without one, you’d earn a higher APY with Ally.
Both companies offer multiple services such as mortgage loans, credit cards, insurance, etc. and are online banks with no physical locations. Given their different niches, it makes sense that Ally’s customers tend to be millennials while Sofi’s customers tend to be students or fresh graduates.
Sofi’s Edge
So after going through the pros and cons of all three of these companies, you might be wondering if SOFI has what it takes to gain market share in the growing Fintech industry.
I believe Sofi has an edge over these two competitors when it comes to diversification. The two pictures below show the type of services that Sofi & Ally offer. Sofi is constantly trying to increase its market by opening up different services to attract new customers. To name a few:
  • Sofi Relay: Allows members to link all their existing deposit accounts, investment accounts, & retirement accounts into a single mobile dashboard.
  • Money Vaults: Helps users prioritize saving money. Vaults are used to save money for a certain purchase to be made in the future (Ex. Car or house).
  • Retirement accounts: Traditional, Roth, & SEP IRAs
    • Traditional: Traditional retirement account, withdrawable
    • Roth: Allows you to contribute after-tax dollars, and then withdraw the money tax free in retirement.
    • SEP IRA: A retirement account for someone who’s self-employed.
  • Sofi Protect: Gathers details to get comparisons on insurance providers to find the best rate for you.
  • Sofi Invest:
    • Crypto investing: offers trading for 30 cryptocurrencies with a 1.25% charge per trade.
    • Stock investing: stock and ETF investing commission free.
    • Automated Investing with goal setting, auto rebalancing, & Diversification
  • Loans:
    • Wedding loans: Loans used to purchase an engagement ring, wedding, or honeymoon with a low fixed-rate personal loan from $5k-$100k.
    • Travel Loans: Loan used to travel. Low fixed rate personal loan from $5k to $100k.
    • Law school loans: Loan for Law school students. Competitive rates, exclusive member benefits, & no fees
    • MBA Loans
    • Home Improvement loans
  • Cyber Insurance: Protection from Cyber financial fraud, cyber extortion, identity theft, phishing scams
  • Sofi Insights: Tracks all your money in one place on the mobile app, monitor your credit score, set multiple goals, track your spending.
  • Estate Planning: Partnered with Trust & Will to give members 15% off their trust.
I recently learned that SOFI is even letting its customers get early access to IPOs which could draw more traders to the company’s services. If SOFI underwrites more IPOs, investors like you and me may join its platform just to get in on that action. Personally, I think this is a fantastic service because up till now IPOs have been a very exclusive process.

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Besides diversification, SOFI’s focus on student loan refinancing is also a plus imo. College education is essential in the US and without a college degree, most people can only get so far in their career.
For instance, 53.7% of the US working population in 2021 graduated from college and at least 75% of new jobs require a college degree.
When you factor in the average cost of tuition - which has soared 31.4% from 2010-2020 - and that the average student debt among college graduates is $28,000, SOFI is in a great position to profit from this sector.
Given this inflationary environment & higher interest rates, I think that demand for student loan refinancing will only increase. This is because employers are constantly looking for people with degrees & the number of jobs requiring this are increasing every year. So it's no surprise that CEO Anthony Noto recently said, “We’d expect the demand for that product (student loans) to really go through the roof and be back to normalized levels that we saw in 2019.”
But with the student loan pause in place, SOFI is losing a lot of money. The company stated that it has lost $300M to $400M and is pushing very hard to get a decision passed ending the student loan moratorium. The Supreme Court already heard the oral arguments regarding the case and is expected to give a decision in June.
If things are not resolved by then or the Supreme Court rules against federal student loan forgiveness, then payments are expected to resume by the end of August. This is because payments are expected to start up again, 60 days following the ruling.
Needless to say this would be a huge catalyst for SOFI and I, personally, believe that the Supreme Court will rule in SOFI’s favor. And the flood of refinancing requests that could come in once this limbo ends could give SOFI’s revenues a much-needed push. With this in mind, June will be a make-or-break moment for SOFI.
Now, you might be thinking ‘that’s great and all but what about Buffett’s 8th largest investment by shares? OP is just some dude on the internet, and this is THE Warren Buffett’.

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Well, you wouldn’t be wrong. It's hard to argue against Warren Buffett’s logic and I think NU could be a good investment as well, but compared to SOFI, I think that it presents a lot more risk.
For one thing, Brazil has just gotten out of one of its worst economic crises in history and with a new government taking over there’s a lot of uncertainty. Corruption is very high in Brazil, and banks which provide their services almost exclusively to the rich in Brazil could use their power to turn the government against Nu Holdings if they feel threatened.
Also, giving out credit cards to kids under 18 (even if the card’s benefits are limited) just sounds really risky to me. Given that most people in Brazil are not as financially well off as most US residents, its weaker currency, and struggling economy, Nu Holdings could face the greatest risk of all three companies. But time will tell whether the Brazilian government will make life easier or more difficult for a company like Nu Holdings.
So this means that ALLY, which also focuses on the US market for financial services, is probably SOFI’s greatest competition.
Both companies have a lot in common, but they’ve chosen to specialize in different niches. So let’s break it down:
  • 91.55% of households reported having access to at least one vehicle in 2020, however, the number of registered vehicles declined between 2012-2019 by over 25 million.
  • The average cost of a car in 2021 was $42,258 with an average payment of $563 per month. Today, it costs an average of $48,080 to purchase a new car.
  • Moreover, around 31% of American adults have relied on auto loans to pay for their car in 2022.
  • Rising inflation has caused new vehicle prices to increase 5.8% YoY according to February’s CPI report, although used car prices decreased 13.6% from last year (probably due to overstock).
With ALLY being specialized in the auto industry, its fortunes may take a hit as the US enters a recession since consumers are less likely to purchase new or expensive vehicles when they are monitoring their budgets. New vehicle sales dropped nearly 40% during the 2008 recession and I believe history is likely to repeat itself here if the economy enters a recession.
Regardless of the potential hit to the automotive sector, when you compare auto loans to student loans you quickly see that student loans take the cake.
The market size of the Auto leasing, loans, & sales financing industry is $173.2 billion, while the student loan industry is a massive $1.76 trillion. So Sofi has the upper hand here in terms of the market potential.
With college tuition constantly increasing & students entering college year after year,
SOFI also has stricter requirements for qualifying for personal loans, such as a credit score of 680 and other factors which make their loans comparatively safer since its clients are more thoroughly vetted. This is good because it allows Sofi to minimize the potential risk of a customer not being able to pay back their loan in the future.
Conclusion:
So, in conclusion, I think SOFI is in a fairly safe spot as long as the Supreme Court gives a favorable ruling. Since Nu Holdings operates in Latin America it won’t compete with Sofi for market share. Ally & Sofi also have different specializations, but Ally is a more established FinTech company which could take customers from Sofi. Still, SOFI’s goal is to become a one stop shop for all financial services and it has diversified its services extensively over the years which could give it an edge in this industry.
Personally, I believe SOFI will be able to grow its customer base better than ALLY because it appeals directly to young adults heading into college. If these customers have a good experience, then SOFI can become their go-to financial service provider for the rest of their life.
On this note, the FinTech industry is on track for major growth especially since Covid-19 acted as a catalyst for the industry - leading to wider adoption at a time when contactless payments were becoming essential.
Besides this, the FinTech industry will likely continue to grow just out of sheer practicality. For one thing, Fintech cuts down servicing costs like maintaining physical branches while still providing a very high value service. As more and more transactions move online, the digital revolution continues to work in the industry’s favor and the widespread adoption of smartphones means that our phones will increasingly act as wallets. So, it's not surprising that the use of Fintech companies increased 88% from 2020 to 2021.
So I'm pretty bullish on three of these stocks for the time being at least.
Now for the TA...
$SOFI

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$SOFI has been stuck in a sideways channel since April 2022. The stock has a strong resistance at $7.59 which it tested on its positive Q4 earnings, however SOFI dropped almost 18% to its support at $5.25 due to market uncertainty.
Now trading at $5.20, SOFI is below the 50, 200, and 21 MAs on the daily timeframe. Despite this, I’m expecting a bounce and potential retest of the $7.59 resistance leading up to the Supreme Court decision in June since the RSI oversold at 30.
Right now SOFI is fundamentally oversold IMO. I bought 1k shares here as a starter with a stop loss at the $4.92 support. I’ll be averaging down under the $5.25 support or averaging up depending on the trend. My take profits will be the 200 MA, $6.43 resistance and the $7.59 resistance.

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$ALLY:

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ALLY was in a downward channel all of 2022 but it broke out at the start of 2023 - testing the $34 resistance after earnings. Since then the trend has reversed and is now bearish. The stock touched its $21.91 support mostly due to market turmoil rather than fundamentals.
I’m expecting ALLY to break out of this channel like it did at the start of this year when it approached the $34 support. The stock recently tested what was once the upper trendline and bounced off of it which is a bullish sign.
Personally, I think that these banking fears will dissipate now that the government has stepped in - as illustrated by the XLF closing green on Monday. Looking at the daily timeframe, ALLY is oversold with the RSI at 30 so I am expecting a bounce over the next few weeks.
Long-term, I think ALLY will trade in a sideways channel between the $23.80 support and $34 resistance until a strong catalyst is able to break it out.
But for now, I’ll take a swing here with a stoploss at $23 and my take profits at $27.05 and the 50MA.
$NU:

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Compared to ALLY and SOFI, NU has not dropped as dramatically, which is likely due to its exposure to Latin American markets rather than the US.
The stock is currently trending downwards within the sideways channel. The stock is testing the 200 MA on the daily chart, if it breaks through it I will be going short with the lower trendline as my take profit and the 50 MA as my SL.
submitted by InternationalWash822 to Shortsqueeze [link] [comments]