#all start between 5am and 12pm

[spoiled-milk]

blush blush bed head cannons [ft nimh, volks, kelby, ichiban, scale, logan, cashew, aki, haru, fuyu]

a/n: i am alive i promise!!! um i definetly didn't disappear off the face of the earth did not happen at all y'all. i have so much brainrot ideas but i've hit writers block so hard. spent who knows how long reformatting this blog.

content warning: none i think? slight mentions of the guys being all touchy touchy but that’s it. also not proofread

word count: ~1.8k

nimh

very very very VERY SHY

will not physically touch you not because he’s scared of you but because he’s scared of violating some sort of boundary

will put a wall of blankets between y’all

probably has at least one stuffed animal on his bed

if he’s feeling ballsy, maybe nimh will hold your hand but unless you initiate it he’s probably not gonna make any moves (platonic or romantic)

his back faces away from you when you sleep, but when he knows you’re asleep, he will turn over and stare at your cute nose and pretty eyelashes and the rising and falling of your chest to help him sleep

he would probably wake up before you so, unfortunately, you don’t get to catch him sleeping :(

volks

awkward but not in a creepy way he’s just so awkward promise guys

he would also be one to sleep facing away from you

he sleeps early and has a strict sleeping schedule (8 hours a night no exceptions according to his manager)

if you’re over at his house it doesn’t matter if you need to do some hw or other work you are going to bed with him at 10pm

he claims he’s not a cuddler, but deep down in my heart i believe that he will snuggle you in your sleep when he's confident that you're asleep

it would start where you two sleep on opposite sides but then when you wake up in the middle of the night for the bathroom, he’s got his hands on your upper back and another one on your lower waist

at this point you don’t have to the heart to wake him up, so you drift off to sleep again

volks wakes up in the morning horrified that he was all up in your personal space but a part of him wants to go back to sleep because you’re so warm and snuggly

kelby

early to bed early to rise type person because duh he’s an athlete

sleeps at 9pm so that he can be up at 5am for his morning jog lol

big on physical affection so will probably snuggle you on your sleep

if y’all are sharing a bed, he probably has a twin bed that he’s too tall and too attached to so you will have to sleep on top of him (not that he’s complaining though lol)

lives to spoon you. he loves the feeling of cradling you like a heated up stuffed animal

honestly, i think he would fw being small spoon too but he knows because of how tall he is, it would be difficult on his partner. but if you went out of your way to cradle him and run your fingers through his hair he would probably melt

kelby has no problems sharing beds with you as long as you don't have problems sharing with him

ichiban

definitely more on the shy side without a doubt you can't convince me otherwise

ichiban for sure has an abhorrent sleep schedule. sometimes he'll be in bed and out by 10pm and wake up at like 8am but other times he'll stay up until 4am and sleep in until 12pm

would want nothing more than to hug you tight in his sleep but the thought of you being so close to his body tells him otherwise. so if y'all are in bed together, you're probably gonna have to initiate snuggles if you want them

he probably rolls around in his sleep lmao but he has a king sized bed probably, it wasn't so pleasant when he had a smaller bed like a twin sized bed

ichiban will sleep with his back against the wall. he also sleeps in just boxers / pajama pants

scale

another person with a terrible sleeping schedule probably

he has tried to fix it desperately, but with training and his assassination thing, it's difficult

i would like to imagine that he has a futon to sleep on to help with his posture or something idk

if y'all share a sleeping space, he will put two or three pillows between you and him

that only applies if he sleeps at all around you, yk someone has to be awake to watch over (you’ll have to remind him you’re not in immediate danger)

he definitely would put like a bunch of things in front of the doors or windows that make a lot of noise if dropped or moved so that he wakes up if someone were to break into his home while asleep

you’ll need to teach him how to relax a little bit when he sleeps scale is a very stiff guy

logan

another guy with a troubled sleeping schedule, BUT ITS NOT HIS FAULT

because he’s a firefighter he has regular normal people shifts and then he has those overnight shifts. after those overnight shifts he will take a shower immediately when he gets home and if you’re at his home he will drag your ass into bed with him

not that you mind ig??? poor guy looks tired after those overnight shifts so you kinda just let him as long as he lets you grab a book or something to read while he’s out

another snuggler for the books. he’s so warm, logan runs so warm so it’s great in the winter but not so much in the summer months

he has no problems with engaging in physical affection with you. he’ll hold your hands in those hot months when y’all sleep and wrap you up in his arms in the winter

another person who also sleeps in his boxers, since he’s super hot (temperature wise ya dingus) clothes when he sleeps are never an option

cashew

ok i think in one of his voice lines he says he stays up late reading books so uh yeah another boy with ABHORRENT SLEEP SCHEDULE

if y’all sleep together, he will always fall asleep later than you. cashew will stay up with a book in hand and lamp light on

if you have trouble sleeping at night he will read you whatever he’s reading at the moment and with his soothing voice it will put you right back to sleep

if you wake up from a nightmare and cashew for some reason is up (ugh go to sleep you bookworm), he is so good at comfort. he’ll reassure you (yk telling you “it’s okay I’m here”) and rub his hands on your back

he’s also another physically affectionate man. he feels so giddy when he gets to hold your hand while you sleep or when he gets to hold you close to him as he finally gets some shut eye

when he wakes up, he finds that you’re now the big spoon. you’re holding him with your hands in his hair and he thinks that he’s in heaven for real

he can feel his ears turning red at this point

aki

he would not own a bed frame lets be honest look at him and tell me that he owns a bed frame

he’s also physically affectionate with you in bed like snuggles and whatnot

aki LOVES being the big spoon. loves the feeling being the big guy (regardless of his height) and any chance he gets to protect you or portray any masculine traits

if he had to pick a bed frame he would pick that lightning mcqueen bed frame that kids pick because he thinks it looks cool

regardless of how hot or cold it is outside will cuddle with you. he cannot go one night without his hands on you (but he would respect your boundaries should you express being uncomfortable)

aki likes to be touchy in his sleep so sometimes when you wake up before him you find his hands up the front of your shirt or under your shirt on your waist

one time as a prank he tried to keep you awake as long as possible to push the human limits, but when he saw how miserable you were trying to go about your day he immediately feels bad. so he takes you back to your home and tucks you into bed with an apology for taking it too far

haru

he is a HUGE fan of physical affection, if you share a bed with him he will be handsy with you

probably owns a regular bed like im talking king sized bed with comforters and a bed frame with a headboard with silk pillowcases

haru also sleeps with a silk eye mask on probably helps him go mimimimi

another man who only sleeps in his boxers but instead of comfort it’s because he knows he’s hot and he wants to see if you act up

i think he only wants to be big spoon because that’s what all his past flings wanted but after you hold him in your arms one night his life is changed

usually haru will be big spoon but there are some occasions that he’ll want to be held by you and when you do pls run his fingers through his hair and play with it he likes it trust me

another man who loves the stick his hands up your shirt if given the opportunity to. he loves the feel of your skin on his

fuyu

now, he would sleep on a futon because yk, he’s an old kitsune man. i bet he believes that the newer younger kitsune who have mattress beds should return to using futons

i mean, think about it. you save on space since you can put the futon away without any issue, it’s better for your back, and some of them come with heaters (great for winter)

but then he stays over at your house one time. you unfortunately have a regular mattress, he won’t admit to you that he’s changed his mind but his actions unfortunately give him away

fuyu likes how soft your mattress is. how much your blankets smell like you, as if you lived in those sheets for eons. how warm you get in those sheets make fuyu fall asleep really early easily

he usually is big spoon because let’s be real, that man is 6’8 there’s a very small chance that you would be able to spoon him comfortably if you’re significantly smaller than him (which unfortunately i am)

same thing applies with his clothes, he will usually sleep in boxers only because pajama pants are not made for people his size

he will ask to be physically affectionate with you. he sleeps with plenty of space between y’all. he will only hold your hand in your sleep

fuyu likes to put his hands around your waist and hold you that way if you let him. he would put his face in the crook of your neck (his new favorite spot). the way his snuggles with you screams “old gentlemanly man”

[starstuddedevents]

Are you ready for a week of good old fashioned halloween fun? Join Star Studded HQ as we embark on the scare of a lifetime down in New Orleans.

THIS IS A MANDATORY EVENT! All celebs must be in attendance. If you're on hiatus during this week, we completely understand and would just ask you make an effort to say your celebrities were there.

For any social media posts or outfits your celebs might wear, please be sure to tag #starstuddedhalloween24. We highly encourage plotting and would be thrilled to recieve some gossip tips for any drama that might occure.

Below the cut there will be an itinerary posted for ideas of which we hope will spark some creativity. Of course, these are all just suggestions and your celeb does not have to attend every single event that is posted.

Another post will be made in due time with details regarding accomodation and the roommates list.

* THIS EVENT WILL BE RUNNING FROM OCTOBER 26TH TO NOVEMBER 1ST. *

DAY ONE

Saturday October 26th

ARRIVAL

At 3pm promptly, guests will start arrive to 'The Ritz-Carlton' in New Orleans, where they will be staying for Halloween week.

SETTLING INTO ROOMS AND MEETING ROOMMATES

Between the hours of 3:10pm to 5:50pm, guests will be escorted to their rooms to settle in, unwind from their travels and meet up with their aasigned roommates.

HALLOWEEN FEAST

As a warm welcome, from 6pm a huge welcome feast will be thrown for the guests in The Ritz-Carlton's dining area. This will give celebrities chance to mingle, enjoy the company around them and fill their stomachs with tantalising food and drink, perfect for a fall evening before settling down for the night.

DAY TWO

Sunday October 27th

BREAKFAST

From 6am, all the way through to 12pm, The Ritz-Carlton will be serving delicious breakfast options for their guests. The celebs have endless options including, savoury muffins, avocado toast, porridge, hashbrowns, pancakes and more.

HALLOWEEN MARKET

between the hours of 9am to 5am, local markets will open up in the towns around New Orleans for people to browse. Given the time of year, these vendors usually sell an array of halloween and fall inspired nick-nacks, clothes, decor, as well as food and drink.

ROCK THE BOAT - HALLOWEEN BOAT RIDE

Celebs are encourage to join in the party on New Orleans most popular halloween boat ride as they sail down the Mississipi River. Departing at 7pm sharp, enjoy everyone's favourite spooky classic songs performed by a live band. Food and liquor will be provided upon arrival. Halloween attire is optional, but a small effort is preferable. Celebs be returned back to the docks at 9pm.

ALL DAY, OUTDOOR MOVIE THEATRE

Through out the entire day of the 27th, a local movie theatre known as "The Broad Theatre" will showing all of the classic slasher movies for everyone to enjoy for a full 24 hours. Classic movie snacks and drinks will be served. People attending are encouraged to wrap up warm and bring their own blankets to fight the Fall chill in the air.

DAY 3

Monday October 28th

BREAKFAST

Breakfast at The Ritz-Carlton will once again be served from 6am, finishing at slightly earlier time of 11am. There will still be a variety of breakfast options to keep guests happy.

FALL TIME FOOD FEST

Between the hours of 12:30pm and 3pm, the streets and communities of New Orleans will come together to host an outdoor fall time food festival, featuring sensational treats to fill guests stomachs and autumnal drinks to fit the vibe. as a source of entertainment, live music will be played by a local bad, along with a variety of halloween activities including apple bobbing and a scavenger hunt for an engaging experience everyone can enjoy.

ZOMBIE PAINTBALL

From 3:30pm to 5:30pm, celebs are invited to a the "NOLA paintball park" where they're encouraged to act like children again. Guests vs Zombies. The mission to survive while being chased around by a team of actors with professionally applied zombie makeup as they stay in character and hunt the guests down with paintball guns.

COCKTAIL PARTY

At the historic "Derbes Mansion" (rumoured to be haunted), located in the beautiful Esplanade Ridge neighborhood in New Orleans, guests are invited to attend a sophisticated cocktail party beteeen the hours of 6:30pm - 9pm.

DAY FOUR

Tuesday October 29th

BREAKFAST

As usual, breakfast will be served been the hours of 6am and 12pm at The Ritz-Carlton.

HOWL-O-WEENIE

For some lighthearted fun, guests are invited to Magazine Street in new orleans to witness the frighteningly sweet dog costume contest between 1pm - 3pm. All breads of dogs are welcomed and will be scored by a panel of judges on their costume. With canines involved, it'll be hard not to drop dead from cuteness overload.

GHOST HUNTING

For those that believe in an afterlife, from 3:30pm - 5pm, guests are invited to take a walk on the spooky side as they search for the paranormal (with professional equipment) at a famous haunted hotel in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

MURDER MYSTERY DINNER

Hosted by "the dinner detectives" at the Doubletree New Orleans airport, between 6:00pm - 8pm guests asked to wear their best clothes, as they are tasked to assess clues to solve a terrible crime while feasting on a fantastic meal. Guest are asked to be vigilant, the culprit is hiding in plain sight somewhere in the room.

VIVACIOUS BURLESQUE EXPERIENCE: DEVILS NIGHT

For one night only, between the hours of 8:30pm - 10:30pm, experience a devilishly outrageous evening of all-star burlesque entertainment, death defying circus feats and a dazzling array of haunting variety acts on the big stage. Hosted at the "joy theatre" in new orleans.

DAY FIVE

Wednesday October 30th

BREAKFAST

The day will once again begin with breakfast provided by the Ritz-Carlton between 6am and 12am.

PUMPKIN CARVING

In the spirit of all things halloween, the Coyote Ugly Saloon in New Orleans is hosting a pumpkin carving contest between 12:30am and 1:30am.

HALLOWEEN PARADE

From 2:00pm to 5pm "crew of brew" will be throwing their yearly halloween parade. Featuring mind blowing floats alongside beautifully horrific props and sculpture, with wonderfully terrifying actors playing their parts. Thjd won't be an event to miss. Loud music to be played, drinks and food available. The route begins in Elysian Fields Aenue and will end in Andrew Higgins Drive.

A SANDRRSON DRAG-TACULAR

Between the hours of 5:30pm and 7pm, guests are invited to the "always lounge & cabaret" for what promises to be mesmerising time. Enjoy the incredible talents of local New Orleans drag queens as they bring the house down with their wicked humour, fierce moves and captivating perfomance, all while capturing the essence of popular halloween characters.

BAR CRAWL

Hosted by "brews and boos" between 8pm and 2am, guests are invited to join the halloween inspired bar crawl. Local bars in the Feench Quarter of New Orleans have all come to together for this event. Spooky themed cocktails along with usually alcohol beverages will be served as guests are escorted from bar to bar.

DAY SIX

Thursday October 31st

BREAKFAST

As usually, breakfast will be served between 6am and 12pm in The Ritz-Carlton.

THE ESCAPE GAME

The escape game is an escape room in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Guests will have one hour (2:30pm - 3:30pm) after entering to find their way out. the 60 minute adventure will have a unique, immersive, halloween twist which ensures a thrilling adventure to the finish line.

NIGHTMARE HAUNTED HOUSE

From 4:30pm to 6pm, guest are invited to attend a ghoulish, haunted house in Elmwood, New Orleans. Professional actors will be dected in their most terrifying costumes, aiming to scare the pants off the people who dare enter. With incredible props and a professionally created sets, guests are asked to enter this house at their own risk.

HALLOWEEN COSTUME PARTY

Hosted at The Ritz-Carlton, grand ballroom between 8pm and 4am. Guests must be wearing costumes in order for entery to join in on the fun. An open bar, fun music and a good time for all. This halloween party is not one to be missed.

DAY SEVEN

Friday November 1st

BREAKFAST

For the last time, The Ritz-Carlton will be hosting breakfast from the hours of 6am and 12pm.

CHECKOUT AND DEPARTURE.

After a fun week of halloween festivities, guests must say goodbye to New Orleans as they enter back into the 'normalcy' of their own daily lives.

[playgameshealkids]

2023 Extra Life Schedule

Welcome to our 2023 Extra Life fund raiser! This fund raiser is run by @sollitaire and her family to raise money for sick kids. We normally do this on the national game day, the first Saturday in November, but this year we're doing it during Labor Day Weekend, today September 2nd 2023.

Were I a more organized person, I would have had this up and running pre Extra Life stream day. Sadly, this year I am not.

So we're going to use this platform for now to provide our Extra Life schedule on the day of so people can kind of keep up with or know what's going on over the next 24 hours (starting at 12pm ct).

Streaming will be here: https://www.twitch.tv/sollitaire

September 2nd

12pm: Seasonal Sorc in Diablo 4 2pm: OW Invasion with the twins 4pm: WoW Dragon Flight Shenanigans - probably dragon races 6pm: Dinner Break 7pm: WoW Hardcore Shenanigans - rolling a new Hardcore toon and will see how far I get before I die 10pm: Back to Diablo 4 12am: Heroes of the Storm 5v5 custom ARAM!! 3am: Baldur's Gate - newbie, just past the intro 5am: FFXIV Shenanigans - between 85 Red Mage finishing Endwalker or a baby Lala bard/pally starting all over again (at first dungeon) 8am: Breakfast break 9am: Whatever will keep me going until 12 noon...

Enter to win prizes!

You can learn more and do so here: https://forms.gle/stjDi4y2zcEs465GA

Rules of entry:

A minimum donation is required to enter. 

Donations must be through Team Hubbard's 2023 Extra Life Facebook Charity page or directly to Team Hubbard's 2023 Extra Life page unless previously discussed

Your donation cannot be anonymous

A valid email address must be provided to enter the give away and receive a keys

You understand there is only one item win per person max even if you've opted into more than 1 item

You understand you cannot sell any digital keys you receive if you win

You understand the WoW Subscription giveaway is for game time only and not the game itself

You understand you must own World of Warcraft (Current or Classic) to use a WoW Sub Key

You understand you must have a Battle.net account to redeem a key

 You understand that if you win any physical products you are responsible for paying for shipping

Prizes this year include the following:

Digital Goods

Given away throughout the day

Various amounts of Blizzard Bucks/Battle.net account balance - you can spend this in any game on PC.

WoW Cosmetics, mounts, pets - just a few random items

WoW Subscriptions for a years worth of game time (doesn't include game)

Physical Goods

Given away starting at Midnight CT Winner pays shipping for all physical goods

1 of 1 WoW 15th Anniversary Collector's Edition with Ragnaros Statue (you can see it and its contents for sale here - does include 30 days of game time but no game).

1 of 1 Dragon Flight Collector's Edition - includes game! (You can see it and its contents here - it was only available exclusively through Blizzard and has been long since sold out)

1 of 1 Diablo IV Collector's Box (does not include game- you can see it and its contents here and while yes you can still buy it today - you can get it through our give away and feel good about the money you spend as it will be a donation to help sick kids!

Other Goods

1 of 1 Blizzcon ticket - this includes entrance to the convention in Anaheim during the first weekend of November (now you see why we're doing this early) but DOES NOT include any travel accommodations.

All of these details and more are on our Extra Life page!

See you sooooooon! (Last updated 11am Sept 2nd)

[dentist-brainsurgeon]

Mfw I see next weeks schedule

[bigjimbopickens]

About What Happened From Feb 7-9th

Hey everyone, I’m making another post and I promise it will be the last time I talk about this here, unless there’s a huge update. Since last time it was emotionally driven and I wasn’t in a good headspace I thought I would make another now that I’m in a better mental state and can think more clearly.  

For those who don’t want to read this insanely long post, here is a summarized version: February 7th Kevin uploads a sponsored video on Hogwarts Legacy. It brought a lot of transphobia into the community and it turned on each other. On February 9th Kevin wrote an apology on his subreddit and it has a mixed reception. 

With that out of the way I would encourage you to read the full post as I go into more detail, analyze Kevin’s post and also touch on the video itself since I did watch it when it was uploaded. 

Some trigger warnings will be needed for this. 

TW // transphobia and antisemitism mentions, topics on or related to suicide.

Should also mention that I am only trans, not Jewish, so I cannot speak on their behalf. But since HL has heavy antisemitic themes it would be unfair to leave them out of the conversation.

I am documenting this so it is not forgotten and we can learn from it. There may be things I missed and can add if I am informed. This is also all mostly from my perspective as a trans guy who was very active in all sides of the community during this, not just the subreddit or YouTube comments. 

A recap of the situation:

- February 7th at 12pm Pacific Standard Time, the video “Being a bad wizard in Hogwarts Legacy” by Call Me Kevin is uploaded. It is a sponsored video. 

- Within minutes of the video being posted, the comments become very toxic. People express their concern and/or disappointment that Kevin would promote that game to his audience. People in the replies tell them to off themselves or call them 41%ers, referring to the suicide rate of trans people.

- r/CallMeKevin discusses it in the comments of the bot post and the discussion is mostly respectful.

- The hate then spreads far into the community starting with the subreddit.

- A user wrote an open letter to Kevin about all of this and the comments were horribly transphobic with several upvotes and the thread gets locked. 

- People take to twitter to discuss it and fights break out there as well. The amount of tweets covering it makes the situation spread far outside of the community as outsiders also share their thoughts.

- Other subreddits, specifically trans ones, also cover what happened to what was once a safe space for trans people. 

- February 8th, 12 hours after the situation begins, Instagram account cmk_things, which is run by three trans admins, makes a statement. The comments on that post also become horribly transphobic, thus spurring on the hate to the CMK Instagram community. 

- Allegedly, Anna_Chess is also harassed about this. 

- February 9th at 5am PST Kevin makes the subreddit post titled “A letter to the CMK community”. It has a mixed reception with some forgiving him and others not. 

- A much smaller scale fight breaks out between the people most affected by this and people calling them soft for not wanting to immediately accept Kevin’s apology. 

- By the end of the day things begin to finally calm down. The worst of it has ended.

End of timeline, for now (but I hope it doesn’t continue unless it’s positive). 

Needless to say, this entire situation was horrible for everyone involved. I truly don’t want it to happen again and we can all learn something from this, which is why I have documented it. Next I wanted to analyze the post Kevin made to the subreddit.

Kevin’s Apology Post Link to the post if you haven’t seen it: https://www.reddit.com/r/CallMeKevin/comments/10xu9ot/a_letter_to_the_cmk_community/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf  In this section I wanted to touch upon this more since the wording of it confused me at first, but now that I am feeling better mentally I can properly comprehend it. This is all coming from the perspective of a trans man who’s been a very active community member for 3 years and an active viewer for 5 (and also was an A+ English student who did these a lot). I am not meaning to defend him or anything, rather just explaining it from how I see it. It starts off with him saying he is sorry and that he wanted to explain it from his side. In the next one he wrote “I'm not sure how this whole thing was covered in other countries but as someone who does not use social media this boycott was pretty much invisible.” I am from Canada and this pretty much wasn’t covered at all except online in places you’d only see it if you were from a minority the game impacts, so I will give him that. However, you’d think a gaming YouTuber would at least try to keep up with what’s going on in the gaming world. Kevin also wrote “I'm surprised that I've not heard any discussion within my recent streams or on my comment section given the scale of it.” There was discussion of it, though it was usually just one or two comments or were in places Kevin wouldn’t have seen it. During the stream on February 5th there was a conversation in the chat about it that did get missed where someone asked if he was going to play it and people started saying that they hope he doesn’t for obvious reasons. Though I understand why it was likely missed, Kevin wasn’t reading the chat much as he was playing with other people when it happened. In the next paragraph Kevin wrote “I had also heard of there being a boycott of some kind on the game but honestly assumed this was not a big thing, every other day I hear of someone/something being a problem and I just don't engage with that news.” So he admits to hearing about the boycott after saying it was invisible to him? Strange. Sometimes these things aren’t huge issues as the internet does like to blow things out of proportion (I mean, just look at this situation haha) but oftentimes it is serious and should be treated as such. I wouldn’t be surprised if he heard about it early on before the weeks leading up to the launch and made an assessment based off of that, but on the other hand, I still find it really strange how he didn’t know about how serious this was. Again, you’d think a gaming YouTuber would keep up with these things. Other ones I watch do, like RTGame and Kwite/Kwote. “When it comes to boycotts in a general sense I would disagree that buying something is endorsing the view of everyone involved.” Is the first line of the next section. To an extent he is right, not the devs’ fault that Rowling is a shitty person. Though giving your support to things like this gives the companies involved more incentive to continue, which is one of the reasons why the boycott happened. The problem also wasn’t entirely the fact he played it, rather it was the fact he was paid to promote it to his audience of viewers who were impacted by the game and how his community turned on itself. There is another line in this part that I pretty much have the same thing to say about so I won’t repeat myself, but it’s along the lines of “but JK Rowling wasn’t involved.” Kevin then addresses the comments. The first two statements have no issues, he is correct. Not everyone is as informed as others are. In the third one he explains that usually when his videos are promoted to an outside audience it does get more hate than usual. That is pretty standard for YouTube. He then explains that this time the hate was amplified by the situation and he disabled the comments on the video, which is good on him. Kevin ends this section essentially saying he doesn’t support people attacking others for who they are along with his community because “from my experience [the community] have been the most kind and supportive group of people.” I do a little gatekeeping here, I always have. I believe that genuine fans of CMK wouldn’t be transphobic or antisemitic. Though a lot of the bigotry came from inside the community with users who were either active subreddit users, had CMK related usernames and/or pfps or were usernames I recognized from previous kind comments I got on my artwork. I guess it was the 1% Kevin left out when he said 99%. Kevin then explains how he can see why someone would be on either side of this situation, which is probably not the best thing to put in an apology letter to your community after alienating them and, albeit unintentionally, enabling transphobia and antisemitism to go on. It’s not really a good idea to be neutral on things like this as one side will assume you’ve taken the other’s side and vice versa. It’s like he doesn’t want to make a definitive statement. I know he probably didn’t mean it like that but the way he worded it makes it sound like such. The final part is about how he doesn’t want to put out any more hate and apologizes about everything. When I first read it I actually started crying about the last line, probably because I was at my lowest during the situation and it was 5am. I didn’t sleep at all during those two days. The last line was “I'm sorry for any hurt I've caused you, I have felt terrible knowing I've hurt a group that have been nothing but nice to me.” I am glad he said something as I was very worried he was just going to remain silent or only apologize in a reply thread on Twitter where only a few would see it (like last time). Part of me wishes he did a bit more but I’m satisfied with this. I never once believed he would endorse this behaviour nor did I think he was transphobic. He made a huge mistake that has ruined his reputation and the trust his community had, he’s going to have to work hard to rebuild that. I’m a huge believer in that you can accept an apology but not forgive anyone for anything they may have done. I personally did accept the apology but haven’t forgiven him yet. He shouldn’t have done this in the first place and this situation could’ve been avoided. Though once more time passes and things calm down more I imagine I will. I am in a position to make that call, I am a transgender man who was targeted during this situation as I was very vocal about it. Though I’ll return to the community soon, I have projects that I started before the situation that I don’t want to scrap. I’m just glad that the worst of it is over, we can only improve from here. If Kevin is somehow reading this then I have this to say to you: I know I seem harsh but I don’t mean to be, though sometimes the truth hurts. I genuinely hope you learn from this and I know you never meant for this to happen in the first place. You’ve never come across as that type of person to me. For a while I’ve relied on your content and community as an escape from the real world that was nothing but harsh to me because I’m not the perfect cishet neurotypical catholic woman my family wanted. I would’ve hated for it to all end over something like this. Please, don’t let it happen again. I don’t want to see you become known as a YouTuber who prioritized money over real human lives instead of fictional. And also, skill issue tbh.

Not sure what else I expected from my favourite clueless cishet. It’s sad how he is the only YouTuber I watch who did apologize for this. All the others doubled down and I had to unsubscribe. Grateful Kevin didn’t go down that path.

My own apology: Now I want to take some time to apologize for the confusion that I have caused. I will admit I was not okay mentally when I wrote all those things and I said things I didn’t mean. I also understand that my words could’ve been easily misinterpreted, which did happen. I reek of undiagnosed bipolar disorder and I also have autism. I usually try to not let that fuel anything I talk about online but sometimes it gets the best of me. I’m not trying to use that as an excuse, rather it’s an explanation to why it happened. I will do my best to not let it happen again. I’m sorry. The video itself: I did actually watch the video. I wanted to so I could see if there was any mention of the controversy and so I wouldn’t make assumptions. I watched it while in a call on a Discord server I’m in. We all shouted “KEVIN NO” when we got the notification and continued to shout that once I said it was sponsored. The video itself doesn’t have many issues, aside from the obvious. It was an unbiased look at the game and didn’t feel any different from other CMK videos. If I am going to be honest, I would rather have Kevin do a video on it than someone who’s very clearly biased and the “I bought this game to own the libs” type. Though I still preferred there to be no video at all. He’s also not the only Irish Lad to do a video, Terroriser and Nogla also have and I’m not surprised. Its a video I won’t ever be watching again though. The first CMK video I actually hated watching. 

Addressing comments: During this I have gotten many comments and messages as I was very vocal during this and I’m also a fairly well known user. Even if you’ve never heard of me you’ve likely seen the things I’ve done. I wanted to publicly address them as it offers more insight to the situation. The most common one I’ve gotten were things along the lines of “You should’ve seen this coming” because he’s played the other Harry Potter games. Yes, I did see this coming. I knew he was going to play Hogwarts Legacy and I warned people that it would likely cause a divide. I never thought it would be this bad, I thought it would just be an argument on the subreddit again or something. If it was just a regular video that didn’t cause this mess I probably wouldn’t have cared as much. Another was “but Kevin played the other ones, does that mean those are bad too?” No, in fact I used to recommend Kevin’s videos to people who still wanted to consume Harry Potter content without supporting a TERF. I was never into HP growing up but I still loved his videos on it. Those games are old and you can’t buy them new anymore, so him buying them isn’t supporting J.K Rowling. It also wasn’t entirely about the fact he played the game, it’s the fact he was paid to promote it to a community that is harmed by Rowling’s actions and it turned his once kind community horribly transphobic and antisemitic. That was the issue. “But don’t you have more important issues to focus on?” I see where you’re coming from with this but do you think we have that kind of power? Also, what group of people are making these anti-trans laws? Definitely not trans people. We are doing what we can to tackle those issues too, trust me. There’s only so much we can do. I guess it only becomes an issue when it slightly inconveniences you. “Why are you so soft?” “You can’t hold onto this forever.” “He apologized so get over it.” If you’re not trans and/or Jewish you don’t get to make those calls. When I say “trans” I am using it as an umbrella term, it affected every non-cis person in the cult too. What happened was absolutely fucking horrible and it’s understandable to why we aren’t quick to forgive Kevin and the community. We had our trust completely broken and it takes a while to heal from that. You wouldn’t be quick to forgive someone either if this happened to you. What someone does is not up to you to decide, if some choose to never forgive him then that’s their choice and we have to respect it. “I wish he would take down the video though.” I do too, but since it’s a sponsored video he likely can’t as he’s bound by a contract. If he breaches the contract he can be sued and he’s not winning that lawsuit from Warner Brothers. A situation like this has happened before where he took a sponsor from Activision/Blizzard while they were being sued for allowing sexual harassment to go on, so I hope this doesn’t become a continuous pattern. Hopefully he learns his lesson this time.  “But people were harassing him!” Where? Fucking where? I mean sure there may have been a few extreme people but all I saw were people expressing their disappointment and getting called slurs for it. The only people being harassed in this were the people who spoke out. I’ve been sent death threats, told to “join the 41%” and purposely misgendered because people thought I was attacking Kevin. Trans rights, until it means your favourite YouTuber gets criticized for enabling transphobia. “It’s not that big of a deal.” How fucking privileged and/or oblivious are you to see all this happen and go “eh, not a big deal”. As ridiculous as this all was, it was a huge deal. Huge enough to damage Kevin’s reputation online and, well, you know the rest.  And these comments weren’t addressed to me but I thought they were funny. Basically people congratulating Kevin for “not going woke”. Like, the existence of his sims and GTA RP series invalidates your entire sentence. You gotta be new to the channel or something or you think Grognak the Destroyer is cis or Jim Pickens is cishet. I also just hate that phrase, woke. 

As we reach the end of this really long thing I originally typed up at 8pm on a Friday night on a Google doc, I wanted to take a moment to thank a few people. It was a horrible situation for everyone and it reminded me that the genuine fans were still out there. Thank you to my friends and partners who supported me and came to fight for me. Thank you to everyone who sent me kind messages and/or left nice comments on my posts and art. It gave me the hope I needed. I hope someday we can restore the cult to what it once was, but it won’t be an overnight process nor will it be the same again. Despite everything, I stayed behind and watched everything happen so I could document it. If the cult was coming to an end I wanted to be there for it. I’m glad it didn’t. If you don’t want to come back then that’s completely understandable. I think we need to follow Jim’s rules more with the first one being “Be kind to everyone.” The cult was the only safe space I had for the longest time as I grew up in an extremely conservative area with an unaccepting family. I also sorta grew up watching CMK as well, I discovered him when I was 14 and I turn 20 later this year. His sims series was my first exposure to queer content and it made me feel so validated because I thought I was the only one who thought it was weird that guys can only like girls and vice versa. I would roleplay as Jim once with other members of the community and realize that being referred to as a man felt right. The community would pay to draw the characters in maid outfits and fund part of my legal transition. They would always come to defend me whenever bullshit happened because a few users got offended by a pride flag or a fursuit. CMK is a pretty big part of my life and I was very heartbroken when all this happened. Still am. I cried so hard I pulled a muscle somehow, that was neat. It’s poetic in a way that I made the last post on the subreddit before this shitshow happened. What happens before a storm? A warning, usually. I was the warning for the upcoming storm. My arrival in the cult was a prophecy. That or it was just a massive coincidence, that is more likely.  - SnowfallWarning/Big Jimbo Pickens

[simplicityts]

100 Baby Challenge Guide | Part I: Overview & Matriarch

Objective

The objective of the 100 Baby Challenge is to give birth to 100 children in as few generations as possible, and successfully raise them to Young Adulthood.

Rules

No cheats or mods, except for ‘bb.moveobjects on’ and ‘reset sim’.

No help from nannies, baby daddies, or free services. Daycare is allowed only when leaving your lot to woo another donor.

You can’t use the same donor twice.

You can’t change pre-existing lot traits or lot traits that you choose, so choose wisely.

A child must reach Young Adulthood to count toward the 100 -- therefore they can’t die or be taken away by social services.

Your matriarch can’t get married until she becomes an elder, and must move out of the household after she is married.

You can’t have a career that takes you out of the household. Example: rabbit-hole jobs.

Only Young Adults can be moved out of the household.

You can’t influence your child’s gender or traits. You must use the randomizer for traits. You can't eat carrots or strawberries. You must avoid Pop and alternative music.

You can only age up:

-> Babies on their actual birthday;

-> Toddlers once they reach level 3 in all skills, or on their birthday, and;

-> When Children and Teens get an A in school.

TIP: Toddlers who reach level 3 or higher in their skills will have a head start in their skills when they age up to children, so don’t just let them languish until their birthdays. (I will go into more detail about this in Part 3: Babies and Toddlers.)

Step 1: Create your Matriarch

According to the official challenge rules by Snarky Witch, your Matriarch can be male (as long as he can become pregnant) or female, but I’m going to use female pronouns for simplicity sake. You can make her look and sound however you want, but she must be a Young Adult.

Choose her traits and aspirations wisely!

1. Aspirations

I highly recommend either the ‘Freelance Botanist’ or ‘Painter Exraordinaire’ aspiration to begin with. I’ve done both, but I personally prefer the former rather than the latter, because you only have to tend to your plants once a day and are therefore not tied to an easel. The problems I encountered with painting are that it takes awhile to finish one painting, and my matriarch would have to start and stop every time she went into labor or had to do anything else (like eat or take care of kids). You can still paint until your plants start generating simoleons (§), but the lot I chose comes with blooming herbs, so I don’t have to wait.

TIP: However, I also recommend switching back and forth between aspirations, because meeting aspiration milestones will give you satisfaction points which you can spend on helpful reward traits (see the Reward Traits section below). In addition to the ‘Freelance Botanist’ (if you choose to garden at all) and the ‘Painter Extraordinaire’ aspirations, you’ll want to complete the following ones as well:

-> Fabulously Wealthy:

You’ll earn 5% interest on your household funds every week. More § for doing nothing? Yes, please!

-> Nerd Brain:

Instantly fix or upgrade any object. Super useful when stuff breaks, and trust me, they will. Completing knowledge based aspirations such as this one will also give you the Quick Learner bonus trait, which will help you learn skills faster.

-> Big Happy Family:

You’ll boost your children’s skill gains whenever you’re nearby, which means they’ll age up faster, and the faster you can age them out, the faster you can make more kids and finish the challenge.

-> Mansion Baron:

Get 10% back on any build mode purchases added to your household funds once a week. You’re going to be buying stuff to furnish your house, so you might as well get some of your § back, no?

-> Serial Romantic:

You might find this handy for the Alluring bonus trait, because it makes you more successful at romantic interactions.

You can still do career based aspirations like Master Chef without actually joining the career. You just won’t be able to complete them once you get to the career based goals. For Master Chef, you can go up to Milestone III. That’s 1,425 satisfaction points right there! Just be sure to switch to this aspiration before you cook anything, and you’ll easily blow through these goals and milestones (same with the other ones).

TIP: I’ll leave you with this last note: don’t bother with children’s aspirations, EXCEPT for your successor! Completing children’s aspirations just wastes time getting them out of the house, but completing these for your successor is beneficial because it means they can buy bonus traits sooner.

2a. Traits

Check out Carl’s Guide to The Sims 4 Traits if you need help narrowing down your traits, but I highly recommend the following:

-> Creative: your sim will become inspired more often, in turn increasing the quality and value of their paintings (higher quality = more §). Choose this one only if you plan on painting being your primary source of income. Otherwise choose something like Cheerful, which will make your sim happier in general, or any of the other traits instead. For instance, I’ve chosen ‘Loves Outdoors’ for my gardeners.

-> Romantic: your sims will be flirty more often, and will gain romantic relationships faster than other sims. This will help you woo and bed donors faster.

-> Family-Oriented: your sim will gain happiness from being around family, which will honestly be most of the time.

2b. Reward Traits

Reward traits can be bought with satisfaction points from the Rewards store. To get to the Rewards Store, press G and then click on the present. 

IMPORTANT! Save your matriarch’s satisfaction points for traits; don’t waste them on potions. However, exchange your Young Adults’ satisfaction points for the ‘Moodlet Solver’ or the ‘Re-Traiting’ reward potion, and then transfer them to your matriarch’s inventory before you move the kid out of your household.

The Moodlet Solver potions will come in handy whenever your sims are mourning the death of someone they know, because it removes all negative moodlets. Don’t mistake this for the Happy potion, which is only a temporary fix.

The Re-Traiting potion, however, is best used on your next matriarch only. The rules of the challenge dictate that you have to randomize all of your children’s traits, so you will inevitably end up with a successor that has unfavorable traits. This potion will allow you to change their traits to more suitable ones. However, focus on stocking up on the Moodlet Solver potions first, and only purchase this one if and when you need it.

I’ve separated the Reward Traits I recommend into 3 categories: general, painters, and gardeners. They’re then ordered from most to least important in each of their categories. If you’re matriarch is a gardener or painter, I recommend buying Never Weary first, then skip to your specific categories, and finally work your way down the rest of the general list. However, anything after Great Kisser really isn’t necessary.

In general...

-> Never Weary (10,000): never have to sleep again! Trust me you’ll want to buy this first, because you’ll get more done if you’re not wasting 6+ hours sleeping.

-> Night Owl (1,000): gain skills 25% faster between 8PM and 3AM. You’re not sleeping any way, so this is great!

-> Frugal (2,000): reduces bills by 25%. Who doesn’t like saving money?

-> Beguiling (2,500): this is my favorite way to woo donors, because it makes it so easy.

-> Great Kisser (3,000): this one increases your Charisma skill every time you kiss, and charismatic sims are more successful at wooing donors.

-> Fertile (3,000): increases your chances of twins and triplets. I don’t recommend this early on. You definitely want to get comfortable with this challenge, and in a groove, before you start popping out multiples.

-> Forever Fresh (8,000): never need to shower or bathe again! Honestly, after the Toddler stage, showering is faster than bathing and isn’t really that much of an inconvenience.

-> Forever Full (10,000): never need to eat again. I like to make my Matriarch and Teens watch the cooking channel while they eat, because it raises their cooking skill, and satisfies their hunger and fun needs at the same time. Therefore this reward, like the previous one, is a very low priority.

For Painters...

-> Marketable (1,500): increases the value of paintings by 10% to triple the usual value. Choose this one, and the next one, if painting is your primary source of income. Otherwise, skip to Night Owl.

-> Creative Visionary (2,000): 20% higher chance of painting Masterpieces, which are worth A LOT of §.

For Gardeners...

-> Morning Sim (1,000): gain skills 25% faster between 5AM and 12PM. This one is great if gardening is your primary source of income, because your plants will need to be tended to and harvested at around 7AM.

For more information on reward traits, check out Carl’s guide here.

Step 2: Choose How to Make Money

I’m not going to spend much time on this, except to clarify which sources of income/careers are allowed. Only Careers that allow you to choose to ‘Work from Home’ are allowed as long as you always choose that option. I’ll try to list all of them, but I’ve only actually tried the Freelancer and Gardener careers with this challenge.

 Work from home careers are as follows:

-> Freelancer (Basegame): including Digital Artist, Programmer, Writer, Fashion Photographer (Moschino Stuff), and Crafter Branch (Eco Lifestyle). I don’t recommend this career, because I found it difficult to manage a work-life balance.

-> Critic (City Living): Art or Food Critic.

-> Style Influencer (Basegame): Trendsetter or Stylist.

-> Gardener (Seasons): I prefer Botanist over Floral Designer, because I have no interest in creating flower arrangements. This is also the career I choose, because my Matriarch’s are usually gardeners.

-> Civil Designer (Eco-Lifestyle): Civil Planner or Green Technician.

-> Military (Strangerville): Covert Operator or Officer.

-> Social Media (City Living): Public Relations or Internet Personality.

Keep in mind that you DON’T have to do any of these careers, but make sure they compliment your Matriarch’s traits if you do. I’d even recommend avoiding these altogether if you’re starting this challenge for the first time.

I choose to pursue the Gardener career, because I get bored with just gardening on its own. This also gives me an additional source of income on top of my side hustles (i.e. gardening, selling collectables, etc..)

Other sources of income include:

-> Painting

-> Gardening

-> Fishing

-> Digging for collectables

-> Selling honey (beekeeping in Seasons)

There’s probably more, but I only have experience with Basegame and Seasons, because, up until recently, those were the only ones I owned.

If you have Seasons installed...

I recommend you get at least one Money Tree, but you don’t have to spend 5,000 points in the rewards store to get a seed. You can easily get a fully grown tree from the Gallery if you have the § , and don’t consider this cheating. Perfect trees are available, but I prefer to download the '3 x Money Fruit Tree’ from SimBuilder20 instead. As I’ve said before, I prefer to make § gardening, so starting with a lower level tree helps me build up my matriarch’s gardening skill and complete the ‘Freelance Botanist’ aspiration quicker.

TIP: You don’t have to keep spending points or simoleons to get more money trees.

Here’s how to get 5 more Money Trees for FREE: go into build mode and put your money tree into your household inventory when it bears fruit. When you do this, the fruit (i.e. seeds) will be separated from the tree. You can then take them out of the inventory and plant them (and your first tree) somewhere on your lot.

Conclusion

Please do a Google search for more information on anything mentioned in this guide. Carl’s Sims 4 guides are a great resource, but so is Youtube, etc..

If you have any additional tips regarding the topics covered in this post, please include them as a note on this thread. Otherwise, stay tuned for Part II: Your Lot wherein we will discuss things like: choosing which lot to purchase, applying lot traits, and saving money in build/buy mode.

[things2mustdo]

Win the morning. Win the day.

Step 1 – Hydrate

The first thing you need to do upon waking is chug some H2O. The average male body is made up of 60% water and you have just spent a number of hours without it. Even slight dehydration can suppress your testosterone and growth hormone production. But getting hydrated is only half the battle. You also have to make sure that you’re not drinking estrogenic water.

Water is one of nature’s best solvents, i.e. the solids it comes into contact with eventually dissolve into it. This can be dangerous given the fact that a large portion of us drink water from plastic bottles. A lot has been said about plastics here at ROK, and for good reason – plastics are a silent killer of masculinity. They contain chemicals like BPA and phthalates, both of which exert potent estrogenic effects on the male body. Avoid drinking water from plastic bottles.

Ideally, you have access to spring water that is pure of chlorine, heavy metals, and contaminants. Findapsring can help you discover a spring near you. The next best option is to opt for a Pur filter to attach to your faucet or a Brita pitcher you can fill up and stick in the fridge. Either way, start your mornings with at least 12 ounces of pure, filtered water.

Step 2 – Make Your Bed

After getting hydrated and using the toilet, go ahead and make your bed.

Admiral McRaven, retired Navy Seal and author of Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life, said it best:

Making your bed will reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you’ll never be able to do the big things right. And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made – that you made. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find any evidence to support the fact that making your bed boosts testosterone, but do it anyway. It will continue to build on the positive momentum you have moving forward.

Step 3 – Get Lit

Next up, get outside and soak some sun. Your skin synthesizes vitamin D upon exposure to sunlight and vitamin D is crucial for testosterone production. If you’re currently deficient in vitamin D – and chances are, you are – then topping up your levels is perhaps the simplest way to boost your testosterone.

“But Mo, I live in Alaska and the sun barely comes out. Does this mean I’m doomed to a life of low testosterone?”

Worry not my friend. If you live in a part of the world that doesn’t get much sun (or you’re just too lazy to go outside), opt for a daily dose of 2000-5000IU of vitamin D3 to help optimize your levels.

Step 4 – Breathe Deeply

Whether it’s work, family, or financial pressures all of us have something that we’re stressed about. The problem, though, lies not in the stress itself but in our inability to deal with it effectively. This leads to the stress becoming chronic. Chronic stress is a testosterone killer, but deep diaphragmatic breathing is a proven way to conquer it.

Diaphragmatic breathing is a central tenet of the Wim Hof Method. Wim Hof is a modern day alpha superhuman known for setting a number of extreme sports world records and climbing Mount Everest during a blizzard in nothing but his shorts. What’s more is that he has taught groups of men to achieve similar feats. I bought and completed Wim Hof’s 10-week program a while back, but diaphragmatic breathing is a practice that I’ve carried on with till today.

Here’s how to get started:

Inhale through your mouth and/or nose deep into your diaphragm and exhale without any effort. Maintain a consistent rhythm for about 30 breaths. You should begin to feel a slight lightheadedness and tingling sensations in your extremities. This is a sign that your blood is becoming hyper-oxygenated. At this point, take one last deep breath, exhale, and hold for as long as you can. When you feel the urge to breathe again, take a deep breath in, hold for 20-30 seconds, and let go. That is one full cycle of what’s come to be known as the Wim Hof Method.

I do three cycles of this every single morning. I also make it a point to track my breath retention progress. When I started, I could only hold my breath for 45 seconds. Today, I can hold it for over 3 minutes.

Step 5 – Hop Into a Cold Shower

The direct link between cold showers and higher testosterone levels is not conclusive, but there is some evidence to suggest that the testes perform better in cold temperatures. Also, cold showers are a proven way to combat inflammation.

But the biggest reason to start taking cold showers everyday is to exercise your willpower. I’ve been taking cold showers for about 3 years now and I still find myself resisting them. But after the shower is over, I always feel a sense of pride and accomplishment in overcoming that little voice in my head that didn’t want to do it.

As Aubrey Marcus writes in Own the Day, Own Your Life:

In the smithy of life, cold exposure is the anvil against which your character is shaped and your resolve is hardened, so that you might confront your chronic stress and conquer it more completely.

Step 6 – Skip Breakfast

If you believe that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, you’re still plugged into the bluepill world of mainstream consciousness.

Skipping breakfast is a proven way to boost testosterone, skyrocket growth hormone, ward of oxidative stress, regulate insulin, and increase cellular repair. You can read about the science behind all these benefits here.

Simply push your first meal back 4-6 hours after waking. If you get hungry in between, drink some black coffee to suppress your appetite. The second option is to go for the 16/8 method of intermittent fasting whereby you choose an 8-hour window within which to fit all your meals, e.g between 12pm – 8pm, 10am-6pm, etc.

Conclusion

Starting your day with these six steps will not only boost your testosterone levels, but will also help transform you into a more grounded and powerful version of yourself.

https://www.returnofkings.com/195107/develop-your-discipline-with-this-simple-habit

If you’re like most men, there’s a gap between your intentions and your actions. You know what you need to do to get what you want, but have difficulty in following through. Want to get better with women? Interact with more women. Want to get in shape? Eat less, move more. Want to make more money? Leverage your time and focus on income producing activities. Sounds pretty simple when I put it like that, but simple does not mean easy.

Not too long ago, I found it difficult to crawl out of bed in the morning. I was always tired and barely had the energy to stay awake, let alone go to the gym, cold approach women, and build a business. I was caught in a downward spiral, breaking out of which required a tremendous amount of will. Thankfully, I realized that the root cause of my problems could be narrowed down to the simple fact that I lacked discipline. Now, I’ve come to believe that self-discipline is the missing link between everything you are and everything you’re capable of being. I believe that self-discipline is the only difference between success and failure in every aspect of life.

In this article, I’ll discuss the #1 way I’ve found to develop my self-discipline and skyrocket my energy, mood, and focus in the process.

Cold Showers: The Secret to Sending Your Discipline Through The Roof

Picture this: You finally realize the power of rising early and set an alarm for 5:00am the next day. The next morning, you groggily wake up to the sound of your alarm buzzing and a part of you tries to convince you to hit the snooze. The decision you make in that moment – whether to get out of bed or to hit the snooze – is the decision that makes all the difference.

Self-discipline is the ability to do what needs to be done regardless of whether you feel like it or not. Getting out of bed at 5am, even though you don’t feel like it, sets the momentum towards taking right action despite what your emotions tell you. It’s the same with taking a cold shower. When you enter your shower and think about turning the knob to “C,” you will hear the same voice trying to talk you out of it. But when you turn the knob anyway, you have effectively overcome that lower part of yourself and are letting your mind know who’s in charge. Then, later on in the day, when that voice tries to talk you into skipping a workout or reaching for those cookies, you are less likely to listen.

Having taken cold showers relatively consistently over the past couple of years, I know for sure that the days I start with a cold shower are always more productive than the days that I don’t. True freedom is impossible without a mind made free through discipline, and starting my day with a cold shower is the best way I’ve found to practice my willpower, develop my discipline, and learn to associate pleasure with doing the hard things in life.

Can Taking a Cold Shower Boost Your Testosterone?

As a reader of RoK and the manosphere, you’ve probably heard about cold showers in the context of boosting testosterone. Having researched this topic in-depth (check out my ultimate guide here), I’ll be the first to tell you that there is no definitive evidence to back this claim up.

Does this mean that cold showers don’t boost testosterone?

No. What it means is that there are currently no studies that have observed the phenomenon. Understand that the majority of scientific research is driven by economics. Since cold water is cheap and nobody owns the rights to it, there is no financial incentive to drive the research. This is where anecdotal evidence (personal accounts) becomes important – and there is no shortage of that. A simple Google search for “cold shower benefits” will reveal countless testimonials from men who’ve experienced profound transformation by implementing cold showers as a regular part of their life.

Although the direct link between cold showers and testosterone has not been studied, there are a bunch of mechanisms through which cold exposure can indirectly affect your T.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sNpMed1RmE

The Scientifically Proven Benefits of Cold Showers

Anyone who’s taken a cold shower before can attest to the increased levels of energy and focus they feel afterwards. The reason? It all comes down to a hormone called norepinephrine.

Cold water exposure stimulates the fight-or-flight response in your sympathetic nervous system and causes a massive release of norepinephrine. In this study, 1-hour of cold water exposure at a temperature of 57°F (14°C) caused a 530% increase of norepinephrine and a 250% increase of dopamine – both of which go hand-in-hand to cause a massive lift in energy, focus, and mood. On the flip side, low levels of norepinephrine and dopamine correlate with diminished focus, drive, and depression. In fact, part of how antidepressants work is by increasing the uptake of norepinephrine and dopamine in your brain. The positive effect of cold exposure on mood is so profound that researchers have begun studying it as a possible measure against depression.

Furthermore, cold water exposure has also been shown to boost immune function, increase fat-loss, and even speed up muscle recovery.

Conclusion

All in all, starting your day with a cold shower is a quick and easy way to boost your immune system, speed up your fat-loss, increase your energy levels, and massively develop your self-discipline in the process.

Download my FREE 5-Step Testosterone Optimization Blueprint and move towards a life of more energy, health, and vitality.

[bugheadfanfictionawards]

Hello everyone and welcome to The Fifth Bughead Fanfiction Awards! As always, we’re excited to celebrate some of the best authors, fanfics, and overall creators in our community. This time around, the awards are being brought to you by your administrators, @theheavycrown & @bettysnooper, along with immeasurable help from our team members, @arsenicpanda & @jughead-jones. This round we’re adding a week in-between nominations being announced & voting opening to give everyone a chance to investigate the nominated works before voting commences. Now, on with the show!

 RULES

To promote variety in nominations, a fic & author may only be nominated for a maximum of 2 categories each. If either is nominated for more than 2 categories, the final categories will be decided based on how many votes each category received, and only the top 2 will be selected.

Likewise, each nominated fic or author may only win 1 award each during the voting round.  Whichever category receives the most votes will win the award - subsequent category wins will go to the runner-up.

All fics must have an initial publish date between January 1, 2019 and June 30, 2019.

If a fic has been nominated, or won, in any previous Bughead Fanfiction Awards, it will not be eligible for nomination this round. The full, updated list of past winners can be found here.

Nominations through our inboxes or replying to this post will not count. Please use the Google Form only.

If you bribe your readers for votes in exchange for “prizes,” eg. faster updates, you will be disqualified.

TIMELINE

July 1 - NOMINATIONS ARE NOW OPEN

July 11 - Nominations will close at 12am EST / 5am BST / 3pm AEST

July 16 - Nominations are announced!

July 23 - Voting will open at 6pm EST / 11pm BST / 9am AEST

August 1 - Voting will close at 12pm EST / 5pm BST / 3am AEST*

August 2 - Award Winners will be announced (Time TBD)

**THE VOTING WINDOW HAS BEEN EXTENDED!

CATEGORIES

MULTI-CHAPTERS

Multi-Chapter Overall: Complete - fav completed multichapter

Multi-Chapter Overall: WIP - fav work in progress multichapter

Smut - fav smutty multichapter

Fluff - fav fluffy sweet multichapter

Angst - fav angsty multichapter

Fantasy/Sci-Fi - fav multichapter with fantasy/sci-fi elements

AU - fav multichapter in an alternate universe (completely different than canon)

ONESHOTS

Oneshot Overall - fav oneshot

Smut - fav smutty oneshot

Fluff - fav fluffy sweet oneshot

Angst - fav angsty oneshot

Canon Missing Moment - fav oneshot that fills in scenes/post episodes

Fantasy/Sci-Fi - fav oneshot with fantasy/sci-fi elements

AU - fav oneshot in an alternate universe (completely different than canon)

SPECIFICS - Multichapter or Oneshot

High School - set during high school years

Post High School - set after high school graduation

Tropefest -  enemies-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, fake dating, roommates, bed sharing, etc

Domestic - baking, babies, betrothals... all the goodness

Outside of New York state - set anywhere outside of New York state

Supporting Cast - fav use of supporting characters featured in a fic

Favorite Betty - fav Betty in a fic

Favorite Jughead - fav Jughead in a fic

Favorite Under the Radar -  fav fic which has under 150 kudos

Favorite Series - fav fic series with a story added within the eligible dates

AUTHORS

Author Overall - fav writer

Smut - fav smut writer

Fluff - fav fluff writer

Angst - fav angst writer

Fantasy/Sci-Fi - fav writer of fics with fantasy or sci-fi elements

AU - fav writer of a fic set in a universe entirely different from canon

Newbie - started writing during this nomination period

Creative - most creative writer

BONUS

Favorite Other Ships Fanfic - fav fic of other ships, ot3s eligible

Favorite Other Ships Author - fav writer of other ships, ot3s eligible

Favorite Beta Reader - fav fic editor

Favorite Commenter - fav commenter either on your fics or the fics of others

Favorite Gif Maker - fav gif maker for Bughead

Favorite Fan Artist - fav artist for Bughead

Favorite Edit Maker - fav aesthetic, moodboard, graphic, fanvid, or edit maker for Bughead

The Fifth Bughead Fanfiction Awards nomination form can be found HERE! Please nominate as soon as possible at our Google Form!

For those interested, we have created a printable for your convenience in preparing your nominations. The doc version can be found here, or a free pdf version can be downloaded here. Thank you for helping us celebrate our talented community! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to send us an ask or reach out to our team, @theheavycrown or @bettysnooper. We’d be happy to help.

[btswishes]

I am not enough.

Werewolf Au (Wonho)

Part1 / Part2 / Part3 / Part4 / Part5 / Part6 / Part7 /

A/N:  Lets speed this up a bit. XD

Word count:  2,880

Warnings: Dirty, flirting, suggestive language, cursing

                            —————————————————

  The night seemed longer than you thought. It was 12pm and you were still sleeping.Not even the sun or the birds could get you to move from your spot. Everything was quiet and you were enjoying it to the fullest. Usually the mornings for you were a mix of random sounds, since the boys enjoyed a nice rumble first this in the morning. Being as tired as you were, not even one suspicious thought passed through your mind.

  Unknown to you, early in the morning at around 5am ,Shownu gathered the boys in the living room. They were tip-toeing passed your and Wonho’s rooms, being extra careful not to wake either one of you up. 

“Shownu, what do you want at THIS time in the morning?!”Hyungwon growled, when the oldest grabbed his mouth and shushed him 

“Are you crazy!” he whispered hyper “I don’t want to wake Y/N and Wonho up!”

“What is all this about?” he removed his hand from Hyungwon’s mouth, giving him none verbal permission to talk

“Let’s be honest, I am not the only one who noticed how much those two bicker and frankly it’s unhealthy for the whole pack. Alpha or not Wonho is supposed to listen to Y/N.” the boy started explaining his view point on the whole matter 

“So, what do you plan to do at 5am?” Kihyun yawned ,as he leaned onto his hyungs shoulder “ Lock them together until they make up or something like that?”

“Ummmm, actually yes.”

“WHAT!?” Chang Kyun yelled out from the top of his lungs, before all the boys jumped on top of him, covering his face with pillows 

“What part of shush don’t you understand!” the young wolf crawled from under the sneak attack, his hair in the same mess as his emotions 

“We are not doing that! Have you idiots gone mad!?”he leaned closer to the boys, looked at each of them as he angrily whispered

“Do you have a better idea?” it was getting pretty bad if even Joohoney started feeling strange “ They can’t even look at each other. You saw how Y/N reacted last night.”

“It’s not because of that.” he looked at the ground, biting his lip trying to keep his thoughts to himself 

“Then what is it Chang Kyun?” the wolves stared at him, but he didn’t spill anything to them

“Look, just trust me on that one. They shouldn’t be left alone together.”

“Who ever is in favor of this idea, raise your hand.” in just a matter of seconds Shownu got everyone except Chang Kyun to vote for the plan. “Look I know you are overprotective and don’t like being far from Y/N, but this is the best thing to do. Who knows what will happen if they continue to act like this.” in the end Shownu swayed the worried boy and he had to agree.

“Maybe you are right. Ok. So where will we go then?” the most obvious question was asked and all of them stared at the carpet ,when Minhyuk suggested something 

“There is gonna be a 1 day, 1 night music festival in town at the beach. We can go, have fun, let these to hopefully deal with their problems and get back.”

  So it was settled, while you and Wonho were sleeping soundly the rest of the pack just packed some backpacks and went to have some fun, hoping you could fix your issues by being alone.

 Still half asleep, you reached out to check the time, but your phone was nowhere in sight. “Aw shit, I forgot it over there.”sighing you got up and went to get ready for the day. Brushing your teeth, taking a shower and getting your hair in check was like a little ritual that always woke you up in the morning. Your stomach rumbled so loud you swore even God could hear. It wasn’t something embarrassing since you were alone in your room.

 You were rubbing your eyes even while making cereal. The chair was comfy and sturdy enough to keep your back straight, so you didn’t choke on the breakfast. While your eyes were focused onto the sink in front of you, in your peripheral vision moved a light pink blob.

“Morning.” you said causally     

“Yeah.” said the figure in a deep raspy morning voice. He sat next to you, clanking his bowl against the marble counter top of the kitchen island. “Shit, I forgot the milk.” you pushed the carton and it slid in front of him “Thanks.”

“You welcome.” your head was leaned onto your hand. You were chewing slowly, still focused on that one spot in the kitchen. It was quite and the birds were singing outside, the perfect morning picture.

“Ah...” you sighed satisfied “I love peaceful mornings.”

“Same same.” the boy instinctively added  

“It’s never like this.” your smile froze as you slowly turned around and found the house empty “Too quiet....” you were looking around but there was no curly or brown hair in sight “Where is everyone?Wait....” you paused “...then who are you...” almost like you saw a ghost, your head moved carefully to your left “WONHO!” a piece of the cereal didn’t sit well in this situation and decided to just lodge itself nice and snugly in your throat.

  You began coughing intensely. Wonho didn’t think much when he jumped, grabbed you and simply helped you take a deep breath again. You were panting in his hands, holding his arms at your chest level.

“Why the fuck do you do dumb shit like this!” he yelled out

  Pushing him away, you gave him a pissed off look “I am fine, thanks for asking.”

“You should be thanking me! If I wasn’t here this pack wouldn’t have an alpha anymore.” he hissed at your remark 

“ Oh so you actually see me as an alpha.Wow this is new!” the angry mom position took over your body and suddenly you unleashed all your hidden thoughts 

“You still going on with that?” he exhaled sharply as the corner of his lips formed a half smirk in disbelieve “ You are still such a child you know, getting offended like that.” 

“If you don’t want me to keep repeating this you shouldn’t have said it. You think you are so cool just because you are a buff alpha!” you pocked at his chest, staring him right in the eyes 

“What is gotten into you these past days?” his hand shot to the side “You’ve hanging around with those stupid wolves in Dean’s pack.” 

“Why do you keep bring him up in every conversation?!”

   His hand came in, hitting his chest where you touched a second ago “You keep ignoring me and running away like I am gonna burn you. If it’s all because I said that, well I am sorry.”

“I don’t want your half-ass apology at all!” you hissed at him 

“Don’t...” Wonho’s voice got silent for a second, before he crashed you against the wall ”Don’t hiss at me with that tone little girl!” your chest sunk in when he growled at you in a deep dominant way. You could feel it resonate though your body “I don’t like that trash of an alpha hanging around you! Is it so fucking bad?!” his fist indented the wall next to your head. You could feel his warm breath on your skin ,as his eyes were pulling you in their deep dark color, like a spell.

* ring ring*

  You used the moment and slipped from under his arm and ran to open the door.

“Dean!” you were surprised from the unexpected visitor

“You forgot your phone yesterday, so I decided to bring it to you.” he passed it over in your hand . Dean noticed the empty house very fast “It’s quiet for your pack house. Did they run away or something?” 

“Thanks for the phone.I don’t know, I think they went somewhere.” you laughed out because it was true, you had no idea what happened 

“Well, my pack is waiting for me, I just came since April told me you forgot this.” he was about to leave when you grabbed his shirt “Hm?”

“Dean, about last night...” you wanted to say sorry for what you did

“It’s cool, you alright tho? Can you stand ok?” he didn’t know what else to say, since the whole situation was awkward to begin with 

“Yea-” a hand grabbed the door, emitting a murderous aura in thick black clouds 

“She is great!” Wonho pushed you back, standing firmly between you and Dean, almost breathing in his face 

“Look who finally turned.” 

“You better hurry over to your dogs, wouldn’t want them to get lost.” Wonho growled 

“You alone with him hu?”Dean looked at you.

“Yeah, coincidentally.” you grabbed the big boy’s arm and tired to pull him away from the door. “Wonho stop being an ass!”

“Have a great day!” his words came in between his sharp teeth as he crashed the door in the alpha’s face. Dean didn’t stay long after that and left.

“You act like such an ass honestly. Try being nicer for once, it won’t kill you ” 

“I fucking hate that guy!” he hit the wall again, before walking up to you and grabbing your phone “Why was this with him?”

“I left it at his pack house, what is wrong with that?” crossing your hands in front of your chest, you sat on the couch ignoring him

“I bet that is not the only thing that happened between him and you.” Wonho was saying a lot of hurtful words that hit home for you. He kept acting like he knew everything even though all of this was his fault anyways. You gripped your arms keeping yourself from speaking to him. 

  Your eyes were shut as you were listening to everything he was saying. Not dropping onto his level was your way of keeping a cool-head ,when it came to fighting with little kids like him. You thought that this would give you the upper hand, when his palm made hard contact with the couch behind you. His face was inches from yours, leaning closer as his arm bent outwards. Wonho started to repeat Dean’s words silently ,as he stared deep in your eyes like a beast. 

“Are you ok? Why the fuck wouldn’t you be?” his voice was low and vibrating in his chest “Why wouldn’t you be able to stand up? I am so interested in finding out what that means.” you licked your lips and looked away a bit pissed off at him “Oh no no. You are not gonna get out of this so easy.” he grabbed your head and pulled it in front of his, again “No one is home which means no Chang Kyun keeping you safe, no Shownu to tell me that I am bitchy.”

“Let go of me!” you growled, eyes glowing at him, but Wonho wasn’t the type to give up easy. He was a full-fledged alpha so his hormones were amped up to the max. You slapped his hand away from your face “ Why the fucking hell are you getting so pissed of lately? Stop messing with me or you are really gonna get your ass beat! “ he pulled back a bit taken by surprise at you standing up for yourself and ran his hand frustrated through his hair “ I don’t give a damn that you are a pure breed alpha, I am still your pack leader and you are gonna listen to me!” you tugged on your shirt with all the anger slipping though your calm nature 

“You ain’t gonna answer me? What are you hiding so mu-” Wonho’s eyes froze on your neck. His blood got cold seconds before his heart started to pump it fast though his body. His jaw clenched hard as his pupil from a big black disk turned into a tiny dot. Breathing heavy, his muscles clenched digging his nails into the couch. Alpha hormones filled the room if not the whole house.

“What is that on your neck?” he didn’t move, not even his lips as he spoke 

 In a moment of shock and panic you grabbed the exposed skin and jumping up, trying to run to your room. It took less than a second for him to grab your arm aggressively and crash you against the wall. Sharp pain ran down your spine as you made contact with the hard surface. His claws ripped your whole shirt into shreds, discarding it on the ground behind himself. Wonho’s back was so big you couldn’t get yourself out of this situation. 

“Nothing happened between you and Dean!? Is this what YOU CALL NOTHING?” your bottom lip was trembling.He was bigger, stronger more dominant. Your beta side subdued the alpha and led the omega out. “YOU LET THAT TRASH MARK YOU?! HOW FUCKING DARE THAT ASSHOLE EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!”

“I-it’t not...” you stuttered, tripping over your own words, covering your chest with your arms 

“IT’S NOT?! UGHH” he growled so loud it sounded like a deep aggravated howl “You really fine with him doing this to you?!” he laughed out uncomfortably, thoughts running through his head by the tens and thousands 

“IS IT WRONG TO BE FINE WITH THIS!?” you finally found the strength again to scream in his face, which made him even more angry

“For fucks sake Y/N!” his head shot to the side, wide eyed and fangs out to their fullest potential “Since you are so FINE with him, there shouldn’t be trouble with ME!”

  Without a sign or warning his teeth sunk into the plump skin on the side of your neck. Your lips let out a small scream.Soon his mouth was replaced with his hand keeping you stuck to the wall.

“WONH-” two fingers went up to your lips, closing them shut ,as his sharp eyes moved down to your exposed mid drift, placing a bite on your right side.

“Can you stand...”he mumbled under his nose, grabbing the fabric of your shorts. Your eyes widened thinking of where he was going next. Biting his hand you expected him to let go. Like the rising moon he swiftly jumped back up to look at you ,as blood dripped from his hand, your teeth deep in it. Your eyes were glowing gold as your chest moved harshly up and down.

  Wonho’s jaw moved in front of his top lip, feeling the pain through his body, but still not even thinking of letting you go.You clamped down even harder staring right at him, showing that you are not a weak child he can take advantage of even if this situation wasn’t on your side.

“A-are you making fucking fun of me?” 

 Your heart sank in a minute, his hand relaxed when the look on his face faded to a half smirk. It wasn’t prideful or anything like that. His lips trembled a bit as he swallowed hard. Eyes no longer dark, glistening with a certain pain. Wonho’s head hit the wall next to your left ear.

“Was he there already too....” you were looking at him, to the side as his pink hair hanged low with his heart. His palm moved away from your mouth in a sudden aggressive motion to pull out your fangs. It drifted to the bite mark he left on your side, smearing his blood over it unknowingly. His other arm pulled his body away from you. Turning his back on this mess, Wonho took his shirt off and threw it to you.

“Put that on and forget about what happened.” he sighed and looked up at the ceiling “I will stop talking back to you. I won’t complain anymore. I will listen to you, I don’t care if you go to that trash of an alpha.”

“THE ONE WHO IS TRASH HERE IS YOU!” you threw a piece of fabric hard at the back of his head. His arm pulled it away from his nape. Expecting to see his shirt, it was a major shock when he found your shorts in his big hand “LOOK AT ME WONHO!”

 He was hesitant but did it. His shirt was on your body, but it wasn’t short enough to hide the bite marks on your thighs. His blood began boiling again, not wanting to see anymore of this.

“STOP RUBBING IT IN MY FACE! I GET IT DEAN MARKED YOU!” he growled low and painful 

“IT WAS YOU!” it wasn’t a howl, it wasn’t the sound of a beta, alpha or omega.It was a sorrowful scream from someone hurt, bleeding from the inside out. 

“YOUR NOSE IS SHIT FOR AN ALPHA!”you grabbed his head and pushed it against the bite mark on your nape “ DOES THIS SMELL LIKE DEAN?! DO I SMELL LIKE HIM TO YOU!? YOU ARE THE ONE WHO IS TRASH SINCE YOU DON’T EVEN REMEMBER!!!” 

  Grabbing your shorts from him, you punched Wonho in the stomach with all your anger and send him flying through one of the doors, completely breaking it. While he was still getting back up from the shock wave ,you ran up the stares and made sure to lock the door tight and properly this time.

[justinsdaysinthedark]

Post #2 - Thank You

What an overwhelming 36 hours it's been. An endless amount of phone calls & messages of support got me through what was an agonising day of waiting yesterday. This blog was started to keep my family and close friends informed about my journey but it's grown into so much more.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you to each and every single one of you that took the time to reach out and wish me the best of luck. A simple message of support may not seem like much to you, but when you're in a situation like mine it means so much. Thank you.

Monday night provided the worst sleep I've had in weeks. Keep in mind, i've had some terrible sleeps in that time! Why? It was nerves. Simple as that. I was nervous for the gastroscopy and biopsy. It wasn't the procedure itself but the anaesthetic side to the operation. I haven't been under since I was five and the unknown had my measure. What if they didn't put me under fully? What if I could feel the procedure? What if I woke up early? What if I didn't wake up at all?

In retrospect, I lost sleep over nothing.

With the little sleep I did have, I woke up Tuesday morning earlier than normal. I was expecting the gastroscopy between 8:30am - 11:30am and knew I was booked in for a Radionuclide Ventriculography (RVG) scan of my heart later that afternoon.

Since being in hospital, 9am has been my regular time to get up, shower, brush the chompers - y'know, get ready for the day of sitting in my little 3x3 room and watching the world go past. Tuesday however, I was up and about at 7:30 - showered and ready. I hate feeling dirty, so if my procedure was at 8:30, I'd be ready to go.

Breakfast rolled around at 8:00 and I had to politely decline it as I was required to fast from 12am for the procedure.

This is about the time when my previous blog post took off and messages started coming in for the remainder of the morning. Before I knew it, it was 11am and nobody had been to get me for my procedure yet. I called the nurse and enquired to which I was told to hand tight, it shouldn't be much longer. Whilst she was around, she did my daily observations and it was no surprise to see my heart rate up to 100+BPM (regularly around 65BPM resting) and a slightly higher blood pressure. I guarantee this was due to the nerves.

Lunch comes around at 12:30 and once again had to politely decline. 12 hours fasting thus far - lucky I don't have an appetite still and honestly didn't care! It was around this time the doctor comes around with the results of my Lumbar Puncture. This fortunately came back negative as there was no major changes to the one I had three weeks ago. White blood cells still present with a marginally higher protein count than normal. I once again mentioned about my gastroscopy or there lack of and the doctor assumed I'd already had it. He said he'd follow it up and get back to me.

Mentally, I'm okay. Still incredibly nervous and a little frustrated I prepared myself for a procedure between 8:30 - 11:30 and still nothing. Your messages of support continue to light up my phone, which certainly kept me pre-occupied and made the time fly by.

Finally! 2:43pm and somebody comes to my bed to pick me up. "Justin Smith for a procedure? Let's go." I mentally build myself up as they take me. With my heart beating the quickest it had all day, we get going. Minutes later, we get into quite a dark room with a single scanner to my left and a glass wall. The radiographer, Liv meets me and goes through the basic questions. Name? Date of birth? Address? What are you here for? "A gastroscopy and biopsy" I reply. A few seconds of awkward silence follows so I split it with an "I think..." hoping to relieve the slight tension.

Liv replies with "not quite. We're here to do your Radionuclide Ventriculography scan of your heart."

My heart dropped. I spent the past fifteen minutes mentally preparing to go under and it's not even for the right procedure; I almost feel robbed!

To give you a brief understanding, the RVG scan involves injecting a small amount of radioactive material into your blood stream where they then track it until it passes through the heart, ensuring the heart is healthy and working as it should to a level that it should. Why am I having this scan? Good question. The doctors wanted to get ahead of the game essentially. Providing the biopsy comes back positive for lymphoma, I will need chemotherapy. The level of that chemo will depend, however if I do happen to require a strong dose, it can have negative effects to the heart. This scan is to ensure they have a baseline reading of my heart and ensure it will be able to handle a high dose of chemo.

This scan took 40 minutes from start to finish and before I knew it, I was up in my ward again. By this time, dad had arrived so at least I had somebody to talk to and reassure me when the time comes to get my gastroscopy.

4:00pm and the time finally came. 16 hours of fasting, I was slightly hungry but by this stage, I just wanted to get the procedure over and done with. I was still nervous, but more relieved the time had come. Having dad there for the hour or so beforehand made me feel a lot better about the whole thing.

The operation itself involved a gastroscopy (camera down my throat into my stomach) and if they could see lymphnodes, get a biopsy to test.

Cutting to the chase, was it worth worrying for 16+ hours? Not at all. All I remember is them checking my blood pressure, putting something in my cannula and asking me to count to 10. I got to 12 and next thing I know, I woke up coughing my lungs up in recovery with a nurse next to me. Luckily, the coughing only lasted for about fifteen minutes and that was just a result of irritating my throat.

Apparently, the gastroscopy went well and they were able to get a couple of good tissues from the lymphnodes to biopsy. Additionally, they also took the following photos whilst they were inside - I have no idea what they're of or even if anything is okay, but I thought they were cool!

For the first 45 minutes after the procedure, I felt fine. I was great! I felt incredibly thirsty and hungry but I assume that was simply due to the fact I hadn't eaten. Things from here turned pretty quickly once I had some dinner and a glass of water. I started to go downhill pretty quickly - feeling incredibly fatigued and tired....essentially dopey. It was from here I knew I just needed to have some rest and I'd wake up better in the morning. Needless to say, I was asleep by 9pm and basically slept through the night...except for when the nurses woke me up at 11pm, 12pm. 3am and 5am.

Waking up this morning (Wednesday July 17th), I instantly felt a lot better than I had last night. Admittedly, I had a bit more of a sleep in than I generally would've - it was great. I use the term 'sleep in' lightly though - it's nothing like a sleep in at home! What was the plan of attack for today? Well to be honest I wasn't too sure. A doctor yesterday mentioned briefly about a bone marrow test however the nurses and doctors on had no idea about one and couldn't see one booked in. I hadn't eaten since the night prior however the nurses got me to fast once again whilst they investigated. As a result, breakfast was staring me right in the face and I couldn't even touch my beloved weetbix, milk and sugar!

The clock ticks over to 10:37 and a Young, lanky doctor comes by. "Hi Justin, I'm Alex and I'll be doing your bone marrow procedure today..." Alex went on to explain the procedure, risks and what to expect. As he finished and started to walk away I had one last burning question. "When are we doing it? Later this afternoon?" "Now" Alex replied.

Woah. Wait. What? Hang on two seconds. I'm not prepared for this. You mean now...as in like, once Alex had finished preparing? You betcha....

Now I was under the assumption I'd be getting knocked out as I had done the night before however Alex proceeded to explain they'll put some medication in my cannula that "makes you feel like you've had four or five beers" as well as some local anaesthetic. No point being worried or scared about it - if it's getting done bedside, it couldn't be near as bad as the lumbar puncture, right? Once again, like I have been for the past few weeks I was completely and utterly wrong.

First though, what's this procedure involve? Basically, blood, white blood cells and platelets are produced in your bone marrow. This can be accessed via key areas of your body depending on your age...for me it was my hipbone - left side to be exact. The aim of the procedure is to get these fresh samples of blood, white blood cells and platelets as well as get a sample of my bone marrow - generally one small sample of the bone.

Alex got me curled up in the fetal position, lying on my right and basically began straight away. A few local anaesthetic needles numbed the surface before he inserted a needle in to collect the blood samples. This part was similar to a lumbar puncture, but I couldn't feel as much internally.

Alex then stated he was starting the bone marrow collection, which was without fail the worst part of this whole experience so far. He used the large needle with a blue handle, which can be seen below.

Alex hit the bone and advised me the next part was only going to tickle a little bit. What's he do? He starts to screw into my bone. Whilst I couldn't see, it felt very similar to uncorking a bottle of wine. Whilst he went in no deeper than 1mm, christ it hurt. The worst part was yet to come. Much like the pressure behind uncorking a bottle of wine, this happened too. Alex yanked the sample out and the pressure and pain was immense! Done. It's all done. Thank goodness. Then Alex said the words I didn't want to hear next. "Y'know what Justin? We want to make sure we only have to do this once, so let's get another sample, eh?"

Oh my lord. Are you kidding me? Whatever. Lets do it. I want to get it over and done with. I don't even think I replied, just mumbled something along the lines of whatever. And thus, the process happens again. I've attached photos of the two samples below, which I thought were pretty cool!

I must admit, Alex was incredible during the procedure. I asked at the start to keep me informed throughout the whole process. I'm quite an inquisitive character when things are happening that I don't know what the process is and this was no different. Alex not only kept me informed, he did as much as he could to keep me as comfortable as I could be during such a procedure. One thing I was incredibly surprised at was how much blood was on his hands!

Not much happened throughout the rest of today to be honest. Courtney, dad and mum came to visit but that was it. The doctors advised they are expecting the result of the biopsy tomorrow afternoon (hopefully) however they said it could take anywhere up to 72 hours from the procedure - which puts it at Friday night or Monday. Where does that put me? Same boat as I have been throughout this entire process - just waiting for answers.

I was advised that the results could come back either negative or inconclusive. Whilst this wouldn't be ideal, it's unfortunately just going to be another roadblock in this venture. In preparation the results don't come back the way we probably expect the, too, I'm booked in for an ultrasound of my gall bladder tomorrow. That will be their next avenue to answers. I suspect this is because my PET scan showed up significant areas in my gall bladder and I suppose that's not exactly a vital cog of the human body...so I suspect they'll just remove it, cut it open and see what's inside. But that's nowhere near a medical analysis of what's going to happen.

Before I finish for tonight, I'll leave you with how I am mentally. How am I going despite all this? Y'know what? I'm actually the opposite to what you probably think I am. I'm in the best mental state I have been over the past six weeks. Why? I think it's because we're close to (hopefully) getting an answer or at least following a more solid path to answers.

I end tonight with a final thank you. Thank you for all the messages and endless love. It's helping - trust me, it is.

Juzz xx

[novaent]

It's June 30th and all the members performed both of their songs in front of their CEO, Hyun Bin. He's looking down, tapping a finger against his leg, before he looks up to give each one of you a look.

"Well… there's a lot for you to work on." The man stays still for a moment before motioning at the coaches in the room. "I knew these choices weren't the easiest but we have a time limit on this. This is your debut. I don't think I should have expected less from you. Do you?" With this, Hyun Bin stands up from his seat. "I'm not moving things around because of you. People are expecting a lot from you, so work harder now than ever. I won't be repeating this."

When he walks out, the room is empty, and it takes a few minutes before your coaches return. With them, a woman you haven’t seen before comes with them. “This here is Shin Jina.” Minsoo introduces her and the woman bows at all of you. She looks happy to be there, but overall plain. “She will be your manager starting from today. This month you’ll have a lot to do so she’ll be in charge of making sure none of you are left behind anywhere and that you go to where you need to go.”

And the month will be a long one for PER_SE. It’s on that same day that they receive their b-side songs and are told to learn all of their lyrics accordingly. These can be found on this document. The recording dates for their songs have also been decided. The boys will go in order of age. The one recording next is expected to wait in the room to make the process as smooth as possible. Once you’re done, go back to practice and tell the next one to go up.

July 6th — Pirate King; Treasure

July 13th — Shut Up N’ Lemme Go; Together

They’ll be taken to a hair salon all together on July 17th to get their hairstyles prepared for their debut. Below you’ll be able to found how each of the members is supposed to look like.

Huidong — Brown ( reference )

Haknyeon — Red ( reference )

Yuchan — Brown ( reference )

Hosung — Grey ( reference )

Jongin — Black ( reference )

Jungwoo — Blonde ( reference )

After their appearances are ready, the boys are told to pack up! For their first mini-album, all the members of PER_SE will fly off to Marrakech, Morocco, to record their music video. They’ll depart from the Incheon airport on July 23rd and leave on July 28th. They’ll be separated in rooms of two. The roommates will be Jungwoo and Jongin, Hosung and Haknyeon, and Huidong and Yuchan.

Their first schedule will be on the day after, July 24th, when they’ll have their album photoshoot. The pictures will be taken on one of the sets of their debut song music video, the over 150 years old Bahia Palace. For reference, these are some of the images that may be taken there: 1, 2, 3. After they’re done, they’ll start the recording of their music video during the afternoon.

The recording schedule is as seen below:

DAY ONE — JULY 24TH

5AM: Get hair and makeup done

6AM: Go to first filming location (Bahia Palace)

7AM: Change into outfits

7:30AM: Photoshoot

8AM: Recording of first scenes ( [Jongin&Haknyeon] 0:25; 0:31; 0:39; 0:50; 1:18; 1:40; 1:47 // [Huidong&Hosung&Yuchan&Jungwoo] 1:57; 2:06 )

9AM: Filming of first dance shots ( 1:27; 1:33; 2:11; 2:22; 2:26 )

10:30AM: Specific shots ( [Yuchan&Jungwoo] 0:45; 0:52; 1:30 )

11AM: Lunch Break

11:30AM: Outfit change

12PM: Specific shots ( [Huidong&Hosung 0:53; 2:02 // [Jungwoo] 1:26 )

12:30PM: Filming of second dance shots ( 0:47; 0:57; 1:05; 2:10; 2:12 )

1:30PM: Specific shots ( [Hosung] 0:43 // [Jungwoo] 0:56; 2:53 // [Jongin] 1:21; 2:59 // [Haknyeon] 2:29 // [Group] 1:10; 2:43 )

2:30PM: Outfit change

3PM: Head to second location (Sahara Desert)

4PM: [Pirate King] Desert dance shots recording ( 0:11 )

5PM: Outfit change

5:30PM: Ride on the desert ( 2:23; 2:31 )

6:30PM: Specific shots ( 0:00 )

7PM: Photoshoot

7:30PM: Thank staff for hard work

8PM: Head back to the hotel; eat, shower, rest

DAY TWO — JULY 25TH

6AM: Head to Tinghir, Morroco

1PM: Arrive in hotel; eat

1:30PM: Get hair and makeup done

2PM: Go to third filming location 

3PM: Change into outfits

3:30PM: Recording of first scenes ( [Jongin] 0:11; 0:27; // [Jungwoo&Hosung&Yuchan] 0:19 // [Haknyeon] 0:14; 0:34; 1:43 )

4:30PM: Photoshoot

5PM: Outfit change

5:30PM: Specific scenes ( [Group/Huidong] 2:13; 2:54 // [Haknyeon] 1:39 // [Yuchan] 1:32  // [Huidong&Hosung&Yuchan&Jungwoo] 1:02 // [Jongin&Haknyeon] 2:50 )

7PM: Dance scene recording ( 0:07; 0:18; 0:23; 0:28; 2:07; 2:19; 2:27; 3:09 )

8PM: Thank staff for hard work

8:30PM: Head back to the hotel; eat, shower, rest

DAY THREE — JULY 26TH

6AM: Get hair and makeup done

7AM: Go to fourth filming location (Todra Gorge)

8AM: Change into outfits

8:30AM: [Pirate King] Recording of dance scene ( 0:00 )

10AM: Photoshoot

10:30AM: Head to last filming location

11AM: Lunch break

11:30AM: Outfit change

12PM: Specific scenes ( [Hosung&Huidong] 2:39; [Jongin&Haknyeon] 1:50 ) 

1PM: Photoshoot

2PM: Change outfits; hair and makeup retouch

2:30PM: Recording dance scene ( 1:14; 1:23; 2:03; 3:13 )

4PM: Outfit change

4:30PM: [Pirate King] Dance scene ( 1:19 )

6PM: Photoshoot

7PM: Thank staff for hard work

7:30PM: Head back to the hotel; eat, shower, rest

If the members would like to sightsee during their free time, they must notify their manager so she may go with them. There can only be one group of members sightseeing at a time, so be sure to organize who would like to go where. If someone would simply like to walk near the hotel, they only need to notify a staff member and then can go by himself. Sharing photos or information about their trip is extremely prohibited until after their debut. PER_SE’s debut date has been set for August 18.

Apart from all of this, you may submit between today and July 10th a stage name idea for your PER_SE muse. You may simply submit the name you’d like or add an explanation to it. These choices can be completely OOC, meaning your muse didn’t think of it but you thought it’d be cool for them to have it. These will be taken into account, but the final choice will be made by the mods.

Write one four post thread or one 300+ words solo about your muse preparing themselves in Seoul, be it about practice, or regarding hair color change, or anything else for +3 POINTS TO DISTRIBUTE AS YOU WISH and +2 DEBUT POINTS.

Write one four post thread or one 300+ words solo about any part of your muse’s time in Morocco for +3 POINTS TO DISTRIBUTE AS YOU WISH, +1WK RELEVANT ACHIEVEMENT and +2 DEBUT POINTS.

The tag for this evaluation will be #perse:julyeval and posts should be up by midnight EST at the end of July 31st. PER_SE members are told not to share the information given to anyone outside of NOVA or else they’ll risk losing their place on the debut team.

PER_SE JULY EVALUATION (for the August 7 verification form)

PROOF OF ACTIVITY: [ x ]

+3 ___ POINTS

+2 DEBUT POINTS

NEW DEBUT POINTS TOTAL:

PROOF OF ACTIVITY: [ x ]

+3 ___ POINTS

+1WK RELEVANT ACHIEVEMENT (NUMBER OF TIMES TAKEN + CURRENT LEVEL)

+2 DEBUT POINTS

NEW DEBUT POINTS TOTAL:

[orangetreenurturer]

21 January 2022

The only routine I have is..

Okay so once apon a time.. We didn't have unlimited wifi.. And I would stay up all night just to play on the midnight data and how this happened was that the middle of the month I would have this routine every month where I'm up for the rest of the month from 12pm to 5am.. Just swapping between 4 apps unhealthy knowing it's bad for me.. But I'm a free human so I can stay up until when I want which did not please my mother..

That once apon a time was 4 months ago.. And I've begun to notice that my body has become used to staying up in the middle of the month.. In the middle of the night..

Right now I'm not going to sleep and the past 3 days I've gone to bed late; late being 3am and slowly that number has increased as I've had more data in the past.. But now I don't need to worry about that.. And it's just interesting that my body has built this system that says I need to stay up and play on the data or less there won't be any data..

I don't know if you've heard of it take 21 days to start a new habit.. And the word habit reminds me of hobbies.. I definitely have never had access to anything I want there have always been monitary restrictions.. So a lot of my hobbies are anything I can currently get my hands on.. And the vast world of the internet has been a Hobbie.. Not a very good one but it's what I could get my hands..

Recently as in yesterday I deleted Instagram and Tiktok bc I looked at myself in the mirror with my phone to see.. Lests just say I've found a new way to.. Read myself.. Instead of using tarot.. I need hints about what's right for me and in my room there isn't much that simulates me to find new things about myself.. This is what I like to call my comfort zone, where I'm comfortable when I get to sit and that's about it because anytime I do anything else I alway find myself wishing I was somewhere else.. Like with crochet and drawing maybe some new craft.. I don't do these creative things everyday just about 3 months apart.. Sorry I can't focus Adele is singing face off right now..

This is an interesting reaction to music because when we sense danger our hair stands up.. Goosebumps are an entire ocean of vast emotion, it isn't singular its album.😂

Did you get that on record.

So yes it's just fascinating how the body grows and it makes me feel like a Neanderthal in comparison to the Astral beings in spirit form from the Orion Constellation

Stellarium is the app I got these images from:

Orion Constellation:

Here the text is clearly upside down, you just gotta flip your phone..

The beings I'm talking to are from the star Betelguese.

I do believe I am speaking to the energetic representatives of Betelgueses solar system, like Jesus for us who comes from the constellation Gemini, in religious history there are a lot of God's and Goddess From Egypt to Greek time, who I believe praised or looked up these constellations and created art and multiple forms of.. Celebrated these signs with various forms of art.

You'll be surprised how many stars there are whose names you've heard before..

Here are a couple:

Betelguese

Bellatrix

Hercules

Mimosa

Pleiades

Bellatrix and Betelguese are in the same constellation.

I do believe that Bellatrix from Harry Potter, was definitely named aftet the constellation Bellatrix

[windowmagic]

Window Magic’s Transmission Service #48

New year, new seasons of sonic adventures… my radio broadcasts on Keith F’em are back in full swing starting this Friday with the premiere of Transmission Service episode 48, get ready for two hours of collected sound pieces and tape music of all colours, shapes and forms. All ears welcome.

Tune in at keithfem.com between January 14-25 at these international times:

Los Angeles • Fri 5am ~ Mon 8pm 

New York • Fri 8am ~ Mon 11pm 

London • Fri 1pm ~ Tue 3am 

Berlin • Fri 2pm ~ Tue 4am 

Moscow • Fri 3pm ~ Tue 6am 

Beijing • Fri 8pm ~ Tue 11am 

Tokyo • Fri 9pm ~ Tue 12pm 

Sydney • Fri 10pm ~ Tue 2pm

[limforbiddendesiresolstice]

一，

woke up by 4.40am Mal time just now. 一, pihak tertentu mendesak Mahiaddin supaya mencampuri urusan mahkamah.

https://m.malaysiakini.com/news/585812

一，

always, i woke up by 5am Malaysia time to protect kidney, then meditate. 一，

have warm plain water is 👍.

Do not shower or wash head between 6pm ~ 10am.

2

cure diabetes, cancer etc: Jogging continuously 30 minutes in daytime only after digested breakfast, light lunch & then walked 10000 steps for sweating & bone health is 👍.

To prevent illness: Avoid cold sugar drink & dessert after meal (at least an hour, better stop). AVOID chili for recuperating all illness including cough, flu, diabetes, etc.

Sugar, sweetie and cold water will incur to the brain a false signal of hungry which is 👎.

Start from warm-watered the legs, not the head when shower. Do not shower or wash head before 10am & finished shower before 6pm or then use hot water but not late than 6.30pm.

Reduced desire less than two times/month especially May, June, Dec, Jan, Mar, Sept...2protect life.

Have 12pm noon eyes' rest about 15 minutes (after light lunch & then walked minimum 100 steps).

Sleep before 10pm to discharge toxic & wake up by 5am every day

i

s

👍

.

[foxwide539]

Zulu Time Zone

Z-time (Coordinated Universal Time) All aspects of meteorology are based upon a world-wide 24-hour clock called Zulu time (Z), more commonly called Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). You will notice all weather maps, radar, and satellite images all have their time expressed in 'Z'. The Zulu term stems from military usage while Coordinated Universal Time is the civilian term for this 24-hour clock. Africa Time Zones. West Africa Time (WAT). Central Africa Time (CAT). East Africa Time (EAT). Egypt. Nigeria. Kenya. Ghana. Morocco. Tanzania. Ethiopia. Uganda. South Africa. Cairo. Algiers. Casablanca. Accra. Lagos. Cape Town. Nairobi. South America Time Zones.

Zulu Time Zone Explained

Zulu Time Zone Calculator

Zulu Time Zone City

Zulu Time Zone Gmt

The military has its own time zones which are different from civilian time zones. The military names each time zone with a letter A-Z, instead of a common name or abreviation, which is how civilian time zones are named.

Xampp mysql phpmyadmin. The military uses letters to name time zones for efficiency, accuracy and to prevent mistakes when communicating time. Precise time is extremely important when planning missions. Rendevous, extractions and other field opporations rely heavily on highly accurate timing and lives depend on it. A simple mistaken time zone could easily jeopardize an entire operation and the lives of the soldiers in that operation.

How are Time Zones Named in the Military

UTC (Universal Time Zone) or GMT, is considered the “starting point” for imte zones. This zone is given the letter “Z”. Since Z has the call sign of “Zulu” in the military, it is commonly referred to as “Zulu” time zone or “Zulu Time”. Moving West from Zulu, or UTC, time zones are named sequentially from A to M. Moving East from UTC, time zones are named sequentially from N to Y. This intuitive naming allows for simpler translation and conversion of times during planning phases, and in daily military life.

Military Time Zone Chart with UTC Offset

Time Zone LetterMilitary NameUTC OffsetMilitary Time @ 12:00PM UTCCivilian Time @ 12:00PM UTC

© ArmyTimeConverter.com

AAlphaUTC +113001:00 PMBBravoUTC +214002:00 PMCCharlieUTC +315003:00 PMDDeltaUTC +416004:00 PMEEchoUTC +517005:00 PMFFoxtrotUTC +618006:00 PMGGolfUTC +719007:00 PMHHotelUTC +820008:00 PMIIndiaUTC +921009:00 PMKKiloUTC +10220010:00 PMLLimaUTC +11230011:00 PMMMikeUTC +12000012:00 AMNNovemberUTC -1110011:00 AMOOscarUTC -2100010:00 AMPPapaUTC -309009:00 AMQQuebecUTC -408008:00 AMRRomeoUTC -507007:00 AMSSierraUTC -606006:00 AMTTangoUTC -705005:00 AMUUniformUTC -804004:00 AMVVictorUTC -903003:00 AMWWhiskeyUTC -1002002:00 AMXX-rayUTC -1101001:00 AMYYankeeUTC -12000012:00 AMZZuluUTC +0120012:00 PM

Military time zones (A-Z) with the time zone letter, common name, and UTC offset time, the number of hours behind or ahead of Zulu time.

Download Printable Charts in Excel or PDF

Download these charts to convert military time zones to standard time zones.

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While it is easy for civilian companies to manage the three or four major contintental US time zones straight, remember the Military operates all over the world. Time zone naming is not standardized in foreign countries. Each one has its own unique way of referring to their time zone. Units in different parts of the world can name their time zone one way, while a unit in another calls the same one something different.

The armed forces conduct missions across multiple time zones, in various countries with different languages. Using time zone letters leaves the smallest margin of error and simplifies the communication of time no matter where the military operates, or where the mission is taking place.

Using letters to name time zones make it easier to encrypt and decode plans. The system of military letter time zones also removes the possibility of confusing common names for one time zone with another. Utc to gmt +8.

So, naming time zones by letter makes the military more efficient, effective and safe. Learn more about civilian time zone naming here

Military Time Zone Letters and Corresponding GMT Times

The military names time zones in a simple, efficient way. The zero meridian time zone, also called Greenwich Mean Time or GMT and Universal Time or UTC, is given the letter “Z” or Zulu, taking the army call sign for Z. This is the Zulu time you hear in movies and shows. The Z stands for the military’s time zone, also relates to the zero meridian, and zero hour offset for the time zone. It is neither behind or ahead universal time.

Military time zones are then designated letters sequentially in each direction moving east or west from “Z”. Each one corresponds to the number of hours ahead or behind UTC.

Going West from GMT, time zones are numbered A to M. East of GMT, military time zones are lettered N through Y.

The first time zone west of UTC or GMT, is one hour ahead, and has letter A or Alpha. Time Zone A, just east of Z includes countries like Paris, Germany, Oslo and countries like Algeria, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.

The time zone west is letter B, “Bravo” and it includes countries like Finland, Egypt and Libya. Russia is in 11 time zones for instance, its most westerly coast adjacent to the US is in the last time zone that is ahead of GMT, or GMT +12.

The first time zone east of UTC is UTC -1 or GMT -1 (one hour behind), and that is letter N. This includes the Azores and Cape Verde in Africa. The last time zone west of GMT is letter Y or Yankee (military call sign), the international date line. The line that delineates date changes. It is also GMT +12.

Countries in military time zone Y include Fiji and Kirbati.

How the Military Names Time Zones and Corresponding GMT Times

What do the military time zone letters mean? The military names time zones in a simple, efficient way. The zero meridian time zone, also called Greenwich Mean Time or GMT and Universal Time or UTC, is given the letter “Z” or Zulu, taking the army call sign for Z. This is the Zulu time you hear in movies and shows. The Z stands for the military’s time zone, also relates to the zero meridian, and zero hour offset for the time zone. It is neither behind or ahead universal time.

Military time zones are then designated letters sequentially in each direction moving east or west from “Z”. Each one corresponds to the number of hours ahead or behind UTC.

Zulu Time Zone Explained

Going West from GMT, time zones are numbered A to M. East of GMT, military time zones are lettered N through Y.

The first time zone west of UTC or GMT, is one hour ahead, and has letter A or Alpha. Time Zone A, just east of Z includes countries like Paris, Germany, Oslo and countries like Algeria, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.

The time zone west is letter B, “Bravo” and it includes countries like Finland, Egypt and Libya. Russia is in 11 time zones for instance, its most westerly coast adjacent to the US is in the last time zone that is ahead of GMT, or GMT +12.

The first time zone east of UTC is UTC -1 or GMT -1 (one hour behind), and that is letter N. This includes the Azores and Cape Verde in Africa. The last time zone west of GMT is letter Y or Yankee (military call sign), the international date line. The line that delineates date changes. It is also GMT +12.

Countries in military time zone Y include Fiji and Kirbati.

CST automatically adjusted to CDT time zone, that is in use

Time Difference

Central Daylight Time is 5 hours behind of Zulu Time Zone 4:00 am04:00 in CDT is 9:00 am09:00 in Z

CST to Z call time Best time for a conference call or a meeting is between 8am-12pm in CST which corresponds to 2pm-6pm in Z

4:00 am04:00 Central Daylight Time (CDT). Offset UTC -5:00 hours 9:00 am09:00 Zulu Time Zone (Z). Offset UTC 0:00 hours

4:00 am04:00 CDT / 9:00 am09:00 Z

CDTZ12am (midnight)5am1am6am2am7am3am8am4am9am5am10am6am11am7am12pm (noon)8am1pm9am2pm10am3pm11am4pm12pm (noon)5pm1pm6pm2pm7pm3pm8pm4pm9pm5pm10pm6pm11pm7pm12am (midnight)8pm1am9pm2am10pm3am11pm4am0:005:001:006:002:007:003:008:004:009:005:0010:006:0011:007:0012:008:0013:009:0014:0010:0015:0011:0016:0012:0017:0013:0018:0014:0019:0015:0020:0016:0021:0017:0022:0018:0023:0019:000:0020:001:0021:002:0022:003:0023:004:00

Central Standard Time

Offset: CST is 6 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and is used in North America

Countries: It is used in following countries: Belize, Canada, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvador, United States

Principal Cities: 0200 utc to cst. The largest city in the CST timezone is Mexico City from Mexico with population about 12.294 million people. Other major cities in the area are Chicago, Houston, Iztapalapa, Ecatepec

Daylight Saving: This is a standard timezone, however during summer some places adjust time for one hour forward for daylight saving and observe Central Daylight Time (CDT).

End: CST ended and clocks were set one hour forward on Sunday, 14 March 2021, at 2:00 (2:00 am) local time.

Start: CST starts and clocks are set one hour back on Sunday, 07 November 2021, at 2:00 (2:00 am) local time.

French: HNC - Heure Normale du Centre

Spanish: CT - Tiempo Central Estándar, CT - Zona Centro

CST representations, usage and related time zones

W3C/ISO-8601: International standard covering representation and exchange of dates and time-related data

Zulu Time Zone Calculator

-06 - basic short

-0600 - basic

-06:00 - extended

Email/RFC-2822: Internet Message Format Date Standard, typically used for timestamps in email headers

-0600 - sign character (-) followed by a four digit time providing hours (06) and minutes (00) of the offset. Indicates six hour and zero minutes time differences to the west of the zero meridian.

Military/NATO: Used by the U.S. military, Chinese military and others

Sierra - Military abbreviation for CST

S - short form of 'Sierra'

Zulu Time Zone City

IANA/Olson: Reflects CST time zone boundaries defined by political bodies, primarily intended for use with computer programs and operating systems

America/Bahia_Banderas

America/Belize

America/Chicago

America/Costa_Rica

America/El_Salvador

America/Guatemala

America/Indiana/Knox

America/Indiana/Tell_City

America/Knox_IN

America/Managua

America/Matamoros

America/Menominee

America/Merida

America/Mexico_City

America/Monterrey

America/North_Dakota/Beulah

America/North_Dakota/Center

America/North_Dakota/New_Salem

America/Rainy_River

America/Rankin_Inlet

America/Regina

America/Resolute

America/Swift_Current

America/Tegucigalpa

America/Winnipeg

CST6CDT

Canada/Central

Canada/Saskatchewan

Mexico/General

US/Central

US/Indiana-Starke

Zulu Time Zone Gmt

CST Abbreviation: Several time zones share CST abbreviation and it could refer to these time zones

Central Standard Time - UTC -6

China Standard Time - UTC +8

Cuba Standard Time - UTC -5

Time zones with the GMT -6 offset:

CST - Central Standard Time

CT - Central Time

MDT - Mountain Daylight Time

EAST - Easter Island Standard Time

GALT - Galapagos Time

S - Sierra Time Zone

-06 -

[barelynakedthoughts]

Wow, the past few days have been unreal. I last updated on Thursday in the morning soon after they had started pumping in pitocin. From 12pm, May 12th, until 5 am, May 14th, I was dealing with contractions. 41 hours of early labor and it only led to being dilated by 4cm.

I used a fitness orb, a fitness peanut, slow dancing, varying leg positions. Nothing pushed me into active labor. They kept saying to make it to 6cm and we'll be in the home stretch. The contractions got so strong throughout the day, too. I didn't want an epidural because I didn't want to do it so early. If the beginning took this long, can the ending really be that short? I wanted the baby in my arms but I knew he wasn't ready so I waited for him to give me a sign. (Note we can freely say pronouns now)

I believe at 10am on May 13th, they broke my water because I had made it to 4cm. It felt like things were moving so nicely! The doctor who came in at 6 am wa snot very comforting -made me cry. She gave me minimal answers and her visit was brief. Had I obtained the knowledge of inductions and labor that I have now, I would have been okay, but it was all so new to me and she was very curt after working her 24 hour shift. I wish she would do people favors and just not do those shifts. It would give her a better bedside manner. She basically gave me my first crying spell and I felt so desperate for four hours.

A new doctor came in soon after that. She reminded me of General Holdo from Star Wars, except I have no clue if she had purple-ish hair. Though Jackie, the nurse who talked a lot, had purple-ish hair. I could see it sticking out through her hair cap thing. Our room was always dark so I didn't really see much going on. Anyways, they broke my water and the contractions quickly turned into pain, pain and more pain. Not cramping pain, but pain nonetheless. I was on 2-30 levels of pitocin (whatever that means), and when the water broke, I was contracting every 1-2 minutes for hours on end. I breathed through all of them, dealt with the pain and kept my mind on the goal.

-----

I was thankful for the nurse we had the night before they broke my water, Shawna, because she knew how to just be there for me. When the new nurse came in after that terrible doctor visit, I wasn't all too thrilled cuz she talked a lot and overexplained things, but she at least made it very apparent that she cared. Shawna came back later in the evening, but she wasn't my nurse. She just knew that I liked her and she just wanted to help. It was a relief to have her there for a little bits she came in on.

-----

May 13th was like one last date day between Ryan and I. Besides the constant pain and regular contraction pauses, he and I just talked, hugged, watched Falcon and Winter Soldier, cried, laughed, and appreciated the other one being there. We barely got any rest. Though Ry was able to get a bit more than me, but not much. It was honestly a blurry of a day for me since I spent most of staring at focal points (the red light from the TV being turned off or Ryan's eyes or the up button for the bed or even this white piece on a red container on the baby's soon-to-be panda warmer). Im trying to write as much down as possible, but I know I'll miss a few things.

-----

As the day progressed, my energy level dropped substantially. I gave up my fitness orb life and I embraced bedrest for the first time in the pregnancy. Going to the bathroom was difficult and I was constipated. Stupid magical hemorrhoids that appeared two days before going in the hospital.

Those pesky IV issues got worse. As my pain increased, I had to deal with a 5 IVs. After the one in my elbow went off sixty thousand times, the nurse finally called the anesthesiology team to try another spot but with a deeper vein. She found it with an ultrasound, which was neat, and she had to really numb my arm to get it in there. It was the best IV, though. It really stuck in there and I only had minimal issues with the IV tower. Thank goodness because I was at my wits end at that point. Though Jackie ended up finish the IV and reconnecting my pitocin and fluid drips...she taped the IV to my hospital bracelet. So when anyone tried to scan it, I had to twist my arm painfully.

The one time, the food people came. I twisted my arm to have them read it, and they didn't even scan it....but we'll the damage was done. I had accidentally disconnected everything. The IV started gushing blood like a fountain and I just sat on my fitness orb with nothing much to do but hope it stopped soon...or that someone would come in. My husband actually had to go get someone because there was blood everywhere. All the while, I was contracting every 3 minutes at that point. So a fountain of blood just pushing out while squeezed my own legs. What a trip! The final IV sat in my arm up until May 15th...it was annoying to breastfeed with it in. I had to finish my toradol pain meds before it could come out.

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As the day went on, I kept contracting but nothing changed...at 10pm, they finally told us our options: more of the same or having a c-section. We were looking at a failed induction if we didn't progress to 6 cm by 5am, May 14th. At the point, it would have been 18 hours post my water being broke and the chance of infection would then steadily increase. I didn't take the news well and I cried. My night time doctor, who I had seen in the office and who is actually a midwife, was the one who broke the news. She tried to say it was natural to feel sad about this, but honestly...nothing was going to console me after here the word "failure".

Just like my sister, the pitocin failed. Before they officially said it failed, they did a pit rest (a 1-2 hour pitocin break) and then started the process at 2 levels again. We made it up to 10 levels before they called it at 430am. My cervix stopped at 4cm and there was no changing it. Though at that time, I had finally accepted the c-section. It was the right choice and it meant getting to see our baby sooner. We just needed to pray again for safety, healing and life...plus tell our families that I was having a c-section. They were wondering where we went for so long because I just cried for a while and asked that my husband not share anything until we were ready.

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The surgery was interesting. I wasn't really contracting anymore but I was exhausted, starving, shaking, and ready to be done. They wheeled me over without my husband so they could give me a spinal anesthetic, still no epidural. I sat there breathing in and out. Using yoga techniques to keep myself present and prepared for a flexible response. I hate the idea of needles going into my spine. I don't care about needles...it's the whole losing movement permanently issue. I need to be able to move and fidget to breathe calmly and react appropriately.

After they were finished, they slowly lowered me back. My legs went numbs and I started to shake uncontrollably. My teeth started chattering. It was if I was extremely cold so they put 3-4 warm blankets on me. I can't remember how many but I do know there were 5 total on me when all was said and done. They splayed my arms out like I was being crucified and I made sure not to move them beyond the shaking. I have no clue how long the procedure lasted but it was light outside when they were done. I believe it was less than an hour, but I honestly don't know. Time had become irrelevant yet so necessary by then. Time still hasn't recovered and it's been almost 3 weeks. (Note: I've been writing this on and off since the hospital stay.)

C-sections are weird. You're awake for the whole procedure and you can feel everything happening to you - the incision, the hands rooting around your insides for the baby, the baby coming out with their arms and legs hitting the sides of your open stomach as they leave, the uterus flopping around. There's just no pain involved.

When my baby came out, he didn't cry much, but when I heard his first squeal, my husband and I cried, too. He was finally here. Our baby boy was alive and well. A 7lb 5oz baby measuring at 20 inches even though he was a few weeks early. He was fully grown and ready to be with us. They measured him, cleaned him a little and got all his vitals while the doctors finished up with my stomach. They gave him to my husband to hold and I got to slightly touch the baby. I cried the whole time because of how happy I was. It was the most fulfilling moment and it was just the beginning of my son's life.

The surgeon was the OBGYN who recommended us to the fertility clinic three years prior, almost to the date. We had come full circle. She still has a weird bedside manner, but the whole thing was surreal. She did a good job and we all made it out safely. My husband was so nervous holding our baby. It was his first time ever holding a baby. I didn't want a c-section, but I was glad when everything was over. My legs remained numb for a while - a few hours I think? In order to graduate to the mother/baby unit and to eat, I had to be able to move my toes. It was a weird feeling to be able to move my arms and not my lower body. Around my incision, I'm still a bit numb there and apparently, I could be for a long time.

We took our first picture together and I look terrible, as if I had gone through pain for 3 days straight. My husband, the always photogenic one, looked great and our son could barely be seen. At least we have this family photo - even if no one else is allowed to see it. My body was still shaking. My shoulders were starting to hurt and feeling was coming back to my lower extremities slowly. They were prescribing me motrin, tylenol and oxy. I only took tylenol because the rest seemed frivolous. Sure, I was in pain, but nothing compared to the contractions and well, I survived all of that with just a tylenol here and there for headaches.

By about noon, I was starving by this point. It had been 30ish+ hours of early labor since I had last eaten. We ordered food (with some hiccups along the way) and finally got to eat when we arrived the mother/baby unit. It was then we started our four day stay of recovering, figuring out parenting, breastfeeding, and personal survival, and being interrupted every hour by nurses, doctors, consultants, social workers and who knows who else. I had only gotten about 2-3 hours of sleep in total during the 3 days of delivery. I matched this during the first few days of parenting, too. Even when I got home, I lived on 2 hours max for about three days straight. A week+ of no sleep really did me in. I was exhausted and finally got rest when I slept through a few alarms. Thankfully my husband took over that night because I needed it.

While in the mother/baby unit, our son had dropped about 10% of his birthweight. He was dehydrated and having a tough time pooping because of the weight loss. It was getting much milk because my nipples wouldn't stay erect while he was eating. Plus he kept falling asleep and it was hard to keep him demeanor.

A lactation consultant visited 6 times. I didn't like the first one, but then we lucked out with Renee for the rest of the visits. She was understanding and she didn't pressure us to breastfeed her way. She thought of different ways to encourage us and give solutions, such as a nipple shield or supplementing formula. Renee revealed that her oldest went through this as well and that it doesn't help when the hospital staff tells you how to do everything their way without listening to your needs. I commend her for her absolutely genuine care and reassuring assistance.

A few nurses were stellar (not Shawna awesome, but still great to have). Katie gave us our first few hours of rest. It also hurt his weight cuz I was delayed on the feedings, but she gave us swaddlers, extra blankets, shirts, etc. She also made sure to talk to us like we were humans and not patients who were leaving in a few days. Kristie was the first one to see me cry and she knew exactly what to do. She brought us the right sized nipple shield and flanges. She brought us a ton of formula. She helped ease my feelings of hopelessness transition into a sense of pointed purpose. The other nurses - Salimah, Anna, Natalie and a few others in the mother/baby unit were the best parts of the stay. Even if they all provided varying levels of care.

The doctors were too quick with their check-ins and I didn't really enjoy their presence. They had the best intentions but we felt like a mark on their checklist. I assume they have too much to do in one day.

The room was small for a three person family but large enough for everything we needed to do while there. Our baby had a little plastic tube of a bassinet with two drawers of storage. My husband had to sleep on the most uncomfortable couch out of the three he ventured on. I believe it was this one that he caught an ear infection from because he didn't use the bed setting. He used the regular couch setup because the bedding was slanting.

The bathroom was pretty big, though. I put many mesh underwear and large pads on in there. It's where a nurses used a perineal bottle on me and showed me how to use it. It's where I took my first post-surgery shower and found out my stomach was numb still. I liked our original room with the induction unit best because of the couch for my husband, and I loved the huge size of the labor/delivery room. The bathroom for the mother/baby unit was best. It was right next to my bed during a time when it was hard to walk. Plus it served as a dish washing site and a great place to rest from all the noises in a hospital.

I had a catheter in from the c-section and by the time they took it out, I was very hydrated. Peeing clear impressed the nurses who took it out - I guess it's the little odd things that make the day better.

My husband and I fought multiple times in the hospital and since coming home. We're exhausted. We don't fight often, but when we do, it is normally because one of us is tired...and well, we're always tired right now.

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It's now 6 weeks post delivery and our little guy is doing well. He's a tad under the weather (doctors says a cold), but otherwise he is 11 pounds and 22 inches long. He grows pretty fast so he may be heavier by now.

These last few weeks have been very tough and I've gone through a lot of emotions. It's a lot of work and we asked for it. We really wanted a child and now we're finding out how hard it is to raise one. Yet would I trade my son for anything? No. This shows how bad we wanted a child and also how much we are still willing to sacrifice in order to hold him for many more years. The birthing experience was not what I wanted, but he came home. That's all I prayed for...and it's exactly what we got. I can only be thankful to God for his life right now. My heart feels warm.

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This post took six weeks to write because I don't have much time anymore. Most of it was done while in the hospital, but some parts had to be completed or filled in afterwards. It barely covers everything that happened during our 6-day stay. It was a long and arduous time, and now we are met we an harder time of caretaking. Parenthood is so glamorized and I'm here to tell you how much it shouldn't be. The afterglow is wonderful and the heart fuzziness is neverending. No, seriously. I feel joy even when my son is crying and I don't know what to do to help. Yet, we paint pictures of cuddling babies and doing fun activities, but it's a lot more than that. Make sure you want a baby before having one. It's a lot of work to get to the time where they can take care of themselves alongside you. It's years of waiting for them to grow old enough to just pee on their on own. It's many days wondering if you're doing okay as a guardian. You just hope they survive your mistakes and your novice-abilities of taking care of a human life. As rewarding as it may be, you are forever changed. For at least the beginning parts, you will not have much time to do anything for yourselves besides eat and sleep, which is still something you lose and have to reteach yourself and your baby how to do at the same time.

I'm not complaining, just not being dishonest. I'd rather be open about my struggles than to sink in self-negligence. Sure, I probably have postpartum depression in a mild sense, but I am actively working to go beyond it. It's been tough to not have much time for myself, but I can't give up. I have to do this for my baby and for my husband. I have to keep going for myself, too. I owe it to me.