#how to delete run history in windows 10

[team-frightfur]

Revelations from Zexal blind watch.

Ep 7 and 8: How did Fuya not get submitted to Gayest Yugioh character poll? This kid is a textbook small gay.

I like when Astral reveals he's just a little stupid. I love how he cannot tell apart fiction and reality. I love how Yuma is too stupid to explain the difference. "It's just TV!" Astral: I see, so TV records the history of a different dimension! We must investigate further!

I hope this trend continues. Seeing him find his legs/compassion and empathy is delightful. Maybe he can find his toes, too.

Omg! Yuma set a card on his first turn without being asked! He's learning! Sadly, it seems to have come at the cost of his jumping ability. Episode 1 Yuma could easily chase Fuya.

Edit: spoke too soon. For someone who refuses to think of the future or the past, Yuma sure runs a lot of traps.

So like, in episode 7, Yuma says 'Haction' and the subs translate that a to 'Live Action'. Honestly shocked and appalled that he was actually just mispronouncing 'Fiction'. I love this stupid dog.

Shark wins the prize for Worst Duel Runner.

Ep 9: This is the kind of episode where you watch as a kid and like, its funny, but as an adult its just terrifying. Like has this catgirl been stripping Yuma naked at night? 5 times a week? I'm scared. Please lock your windows.

I love how Astral is completely oblivious. "I thought stalkers coming into your room was normal." Today on 'Astral Learns Common Sense': the right to privacy!

Omg I'm so proud of Yuma, if he tries he can do it. He can strategise! He can win! he doesn't even need Astral... sometimes! Go go go!

The implication that Astral understands romance more than Yuma. The implication he's been watching romance shows on TV.

Ep 10

Cursed

Shark: So like, I'll duel you, but I gotta head home and grab my deck first. Don't move ok. I gotta walk to the gang hole, grab my duel runner, drive home, grab my deck, drive back. Won't take a moment.

Omg my boy has been improving for real! Yuma set a card all on his own! Too bad Shark runs fucking MST! Actual pro. Whats next? Book of Moon? Crackdown? Compulsory Evacuation Device?

Me: Astral is salting Yuma for not reading graveyards as if anyone reads graveyards.

My Irl Friend: I read graveyards.

Me: Don't talk to me.

Shark deserved that win. He deserved that win so much I'm so proud of him! He spent the last three weeks imagining their next duel, how he'd win, all Yuma's weaknesses. Excellent.

Ep 11 and 12: What genre does shark think he's in. Gangster flick?

Tetsuo is so mad at Yuma for using Numbers but like, what else is he supposed to use? Gagaga beatdown?

Also, everyone keeps saying Yuma's playing this tag duel suboptimally, but without seeing his hand how are we supposed to know? Did he specifically summon Utopia before using S/T removal? Did he have S/T removal? No? then it's not a 'Reckless' summon, Astral! It's 'getting two future Xyz mats off my field and replacing them with a substantial protective body!'

Glad to see Yuma's genuine improvement, though. Admittedly, the end of the duel involving 6 different backrow made me want to just. Drop in. Summon Sat Cannon. Watch the chaos.

Ep 13 and 14: Kaito walking in here freezing time and unleashing a magical girl tranformation. Walked out of a different show. Good for him. Powerful. I like how deranged he is here. Already better.

For a guy who supposedly doesnt like eating souls, you sure did make "Imma eat your soul" a catchphrase, Kaito. You sure smile alot while killing people, Kaito. Holy shit tho, he runs 3 of his monsters. C o n s i s t e n c y.

Kaito truly is a magical girl, specifically, he's a dark magical girl in the vein of Fate Testarossa. Your days are numbered, Kaito. Friendship is coming.

Yuma you were doing so well. Why did you not set that card befoooooore.

Episode 15 and 16: Does this imply that Zexal is the timeline of Gx and Dm but 5ds was deleted from the universe along with synchro summoning? Anyway I literally lined my comm while my friend watched because I lost interest instantly.

[yasodhaviji]

How to Declutter Your Digital Space Without Lifting a Finger (Almost)

Digital clutter is sneaky. One day your phone and laptop are running smoothly, and the next, your desktop looks like a file explosion and your cloud storage is screaming for mercy.

The good news? You don’t need to spend hours cleaning it all up.

If you’ve already peeked at the lazy but genius ways to organize your digital life, this guide takes it a step further. These strategies are so effortless, it’s almost like you're not doing anything at all — just the way we like it.

1. Automate Your Cloud Storage Cleanup

Cloud platforms like Google Drive or Dropbox offer easy-to-use filters and automation tools. You can set them to auto-delete trash, auto-archive old files, or even color-label folders for visual clarity.

Try this lazy trick: Use Google Workspace’s "Storage Management" tool to bulk delete large files, duplicates, and old backups.

2. Use Smart Tools Like “Cleanfox” for Your Inbox

Manual unsubscribing is so last year. Tools like Cleanfox or Leave Me Alone scan your inbox, show you a list of all newsletters and subscriptions, and let you unsubscribe with a swipe or click.

Bonus points: They also show you how much CO₂ you save by decluttering your inbox. Lazy + eco-friendly? Yes please.

3. Schedule Your Phone to Auto-Delete Old Media

Most smartphones let you auto-delete photos, screenshots, or downloaded files after a set period. In iOS, enable Optimize iPhone Storage; on Android, use Files by Google to clean junk files in seconds.

Pair this habit with the mindset from the top 10 lazy but genius ways to organize your digital life, and you’ve got a phone that runs smoother without you lifting a finger.

4. Use “Stack” Apps to Organize Notes and Docs Automatically

Apps like Evernote, Notion, or OneNote allow auto-tagging, sorting, and folder rules.

Lazy Genius Tip: Set up templates or automations so that every new note is filed where it belongs — without you doing it manually.

5. Let Your Browser Clean Itself

Use browser extensions like:

OneTab: Closes all open tabs and saves them in a list

Tab Suspender: Auto-pauses inactive tabs

History AutoDelete: Keeps your browser history from becoming a hoarder's paradise

It’s a solid sidekick to the habits in the top 10 lazy but genius ways to organize your digital life post.

6. Set Recurring Reminders That Actually Work

The key word here is “recurring.” Instead of relying on memory, set monthly 10-minute digital cleanup reminders on your calendar. Automate the repeat, and you’ll never have to remember it again.

Use tools like:

Google Calendar (with reminders and checklists)

TickTick or Todoist (with smart recurring tasks)

Siri or Google Assistant (voice commands FTW)

7. Auto-Sort Downloads Using Folder Rules

Tools like Hazel (Mac) or File Juggler (Windows) can auto-organize your downloads folder based on file type, name, or date.

For example:

Move PDFs to Documents

Send images to Pictures

Trash zip files after 24 hours

This lazy automation turns chaos into calm without constant manual effort.

8. Delete Duplicate Files With a Click

Duplicate files = wasted space. Use tools like:

Gemini 2 (Mac)

CCleaner (Windows)

Duplicate Cleaner Free

These apps scan and clean up your hard drive or cloud storage with minimal interaction — perfect for lazy geniuses like us.

9. Use a Dashboard to See Everything at a Glance

Use Notion or Trello to build a minimalist dashboard of your digital world — to-dos, file links, notes, calendar, and tools all in one spot. Bonus: once it’s built, you just update it here and there.

Pair this with any technique from the top 10 lazy but genius ways to organize your digital life and you’ll become the CEO of calm.

10. Empty the Trash — Automatically

Set your system or cloud service to auto-empty the trash every 30 days. No emotional attachment needed.

Go to your system settings or storage settings (Google Drive, iCloud, etc.) and toggle on the auto-delete function.

Final Thoughts: It’s Not About Working Hard — It’s About Working Smart

Decluttering your digital life doesn't have to be a marathon. With these smart, nearly hands-off hacks, your devices can stay organized while you go do... well, anything else.

Think of this post as a deeper dive into the top 10 lazy but genius ways to organize your digital life — because the lazier the hack, the better the result.

[literaturereviewhelp]

Cleaner enhances system performance by identifying unnecessary files and cleaning them from the system after getting a confirmation from the user. The user gets a choice of which files to keep and which to remove. The diagnostics and removal are done at several levels. Firstly, it removes all the remaining unused files from installed software, empties the recycle bin, removes system temporary files, memory dumps, and various log files. Apart from Windows, temporary files are detected and cleaned for most of popularly used software like Office, various media players, downloading utilities, and others. It also checks and cleans the history and temporary internet files left by browsers. For advanced users, CCleaner also offers a comprehensive registry cleaner. Finally, a tool is available within the utility to permanently delete files without trace which is useful for a security conscious user. Tools also exist to check enable or disable programs that run at system startup. System Requirements: Windows 7, Windows 2000, Windows Vista, Windows XP (“CCleaner specs”). For networks, server support is for Windows 2008 RC2, 2008 and 2003 (“CCleaner Network Edition”). Other information is not available. How easy is the program to use?: The program has a very intuitive interface and very simple to use. Pressing a single “Analyze” button does a complete diagnosis of the system and pressing a single “Run Cleaner” button cleans it. Areas to check within the system can be selected by simple check boxes. It is however advised that the registry cleaner option is used by knowledgeable users only. Cost: The single user version of the software is free. For use on a network, the prices start from $199 for 10 users to $3200 for 500 users. Worth the price?: For a free software, the question might be rephrased to “is it worth to download and use?”. In my opinion it most certainly is. The program does what it says and does it well. Additionally, the utility is very small and installs easily. There are no annoying advertisements or spyware. Would you purchase the utility? Why?: Based on the single user version’s utility, it will be worthwhile for network users to invest in this software. In addition, it can be deployed across the network from a single place with ease, security and reliability (“CCleaner Network Edition”). Read the full article

[inkdrunkworddrunk]

my friend and i share this stupid Gen Z Dark Humor shit that always leaves the Older People flabbergasted. it's always the i-want-to-kill-myself's and i-want-to-die's that get thrown around our conversations. and of course, i know it's a joke.

but the joke only ever applies to him.

every time he delivers another doom-ish line, something along the lines of this-life-is-not-worth-living-at-all, i would give him the inevitable "same," like any digital native would. what always happens after, however, is, i get—and let's use the internet's misused/overly used therapy word—"triggered" by it.

my mind would echo with his words "i hope i die tomorrow..." over and over again until i'm chanting it to myself. i would respond to a shitty TikTok he'd send with an equally shitty meme that would make the both of us do that infamous exhale sharply through my nose but not really laugh thing.

and after the conversation has gone quiet, i would find myself curled up in my bed, doing that whole staring at the ceiling thing that people who are lonely do at 3:10 a.m., going over, once again, for the billionth time, the steps i would take before i do in fact execute what cannot be undone.

i will first write letters. to my friend, as we have joked, told me i should at least write him 2 whole pages of a letter. so i will do just that. 2 whole pages just for him. then i'd write to my parents, probably 5 for each of them. my siblings, maybe 1 for each. and then i'd write on my sticky notes that i never seem to run out of, and i guess would never run out ever, my passwords, to my phone, my bank, my social media accounts. i will also delete my history, so they could at least remain to know me as i've shown them and not someone with an extremely wild imagination and very much so down bad for a fictional character.

then i will tidy up my room, give it a thorough clean. i will wipe down my book shelves. dust away the cobwebs that appears a month after cleaning it off. i will organize my desk. throw out things i don't need to keep. fold my clothes. change my bedsheets. scrub down my bathroom and make my windows squeaky clean. that way my family wouldn't need to clean it out. or maybe they still will.

i will kiss my dog good night.

and of course, i will not deprive myself the opportunity to die pretty. i will wear this blouse that i needed to buy for a university event and pair it up with the flowy floral skirt that i really loved.

the thing is, what my good friend doesn't know, and i guess, never will, is, i already have a plan. i have it all mapped out in my head. how i would do it, where i would do it, when i would it. and it's such a stupidly funny thing that that phrase "you don't really know what's going on with a person" could apply to me, his self-proclaimed best friend. and as far as the best friend thing goes, we are supposed to tell each other every thing, right? we tell each other how our parents are so annoying because, well, they're parents. we talk about how we can rent an apartment together and live like two best buddies would. except, well, i don't tell him anything. he does all the talking. he tells me every single thing, from his first girlfriend, his first car, his solo trips, annoying meetups, to his insecurities that i don't know how to help him with.

my misery has consumed me in ways i have never thought it would. i always thought i would be able to punch my way out of it, crawl if i had to. i didn't realize that the floor would be slippery and made of thick cement, something i definitely cannot punch or crawl my way out of. my fingers are bleeding and my knees are bruised.

i'm tired.

(same💀)

[vaartis]

1 - what was your first distro? Ubuntu 14.10. That my first foray on the family computer into understanding what Linux even was. It lived surprisingly long, I don't really remember what happened to it, and that computer is dead for other reasons anyway.

2 - what was your biggest linux fuckup? All of the times I ran rm -rf on my home directory accidentally. A few of those I managed to cancel before it actually deleted any files. In general just running rm -rf accidentally from searching in history for a file name and pressing enter without looking.

3 - have you ever run rm / on real hardware? Not on the root but on my home dir. Nowadays there is protection against running it on / anyway

4 - do you dual boot or have a secondary machine with windows? Used to have dual boot for a while, but nowadays I have GPU passthrough into a windows virtual machine. I ain't fucking giving windows real hardware, or it will reboot whenever it wants or wake up the computer from sleep to update and reboot (this is a real thing that happens to another computer that is not mine that has windows 11 on it btw btw)

5 - did you change your default shell? Still bash and I do not like any other one, especially zsh because it has different Alt+Backspace and Ctrl+W behaviour than bash that is impossible to change to behave exactly like bash (or at least I was not able to figure it out)

6 - are you afraid of git? No, I am one of the few people I know who actually like git

7 - what was the first machine you installed linux on? Family personal computer. After that it was my own crappy sony vaio laptop that was like 10 years old by then

8 - do you know your way around vim keybinds? I used to be a vim kind of person before emacs, so yes, I do still remember how to use them.

9 - what is your favourite non-os software? Emacs, probably. Kind of crazy how much it can do. QEMU is insane too, surprising how well windows runs in that, almost like it's running on real hardware. The entirety of KDE, I guess, as well. It usually does just work, which I appreciate more and more these days.

10 - biggest linux pet peeve? Dynamic libraries breaking, probably. Not that much of a problem lately because of my current package manager choice, but it used to be something I got very annoyed about when programs stopped working after an update because a dynamic library did not get updated. It still sometimes happens with Qt, but that's about it. Does this even count? Not like anyone will read this post, so it does not matter.

11 - biggest annoyance with the community? The radical free software extremists who do not live in the real word and suggest you use gimp (not even krita) instead of photoshop or LMMS instead of an actual DAW. I'm all for using linux but for some things there is just no good equivalent. There's wine but it is not always perfect and a normal person who is not computer literate will not understand how to set it all up.

12 - do you like your current distro? Yeah. I don't really know that well how to fix any other distro.

13 - Xenia or Tux? I like the design of xenia since it's more of a character than a penguin but tux is pretty funny, i like him too.

14 - what software are you never using again? I will restrict myself to just linux-related software and say nix. I swear I really did try several times to give it a chance and it's just incomprehensible and too much. I do not like their configuration language, and I do not like it canibalizing all package manager, and I do not like it canibalizing all configuration files with half-working solutions that include maybe 20% of the options and then a "... well, you get it, here's also a way to just write the config file as usual but in your system configuration file and we'll append it to the normal file for you", and also it breaking normal unix filesystem pathes so everything has to be installed from nix or patched or ran via the nix shell or it will simply not work.

15 - stock distro or hours of yak shaving? I do prefer to uninstall the things I do not need or want. It used to be worse before, where I would remove things as soon as I no longer needed them. I no longer do this and let the package manager clean them up whenever I clean the system up from unused packages.

16 - have you compiled the kernel? Yes, used to do it for some time, but at some point switched to a binary one because I really do not care that much about the kernel configuration. Things mostly just work nowadays without any custom kernels or anything.

Linux ask game

1 - what was your first distro? 2 - what was your biggest linux fuckup? 3 - have you ever run rm / on real hardware? 4 - do you dual boot or have a secondary machine with windows? 5 - did you change your default shell? 6 - are you afraid of git? 7 - what was the first machine you installed linux on? 8 - do you know your way around vim keybinds? 9 - what is your favourite non-os software? 10- biggest linux pet peeve? 11- biggest annoyance with the community? 12- do you like your current distro? 13- Xenia or Tux? 14- what software are you never using again? 15- stock distro or hours of yak shaving? 16- have you compiled the kernel?

[definitesolutions]

How to Clear Run Dialog Box History in Windows 10

In this video tutorial you will learn how to Clear Run Dialog Box History Windows 10.

Windows' "Run Dialog box" is more you can possibly imagine, because it lets you launch programs directly from the desktop. You can also customize Windows settings according to your need. It also save commands which you use time by time like your web browser. And just like you delete browser history you also can remove history of Run dialog box.

Follow the steps shown below to Clear Run history in Windows 10:

1. Open Start Menu then regedit and click to open it

2. Now navigate to:

RUN_CURRENT_USER --) SOFTWARE --) Microsoft --) Windows --) CurrentVersion

3. Now find RunMRU and then click on it

4. Now go to right side and Delete all entries except (Default) and MRUList

5. Now close regedit window.

[elsyrel]

Arcana headcanons: main 6 and how they use the internet

I thought I wouldn’t write any more headcanons, but... lmao. What can I say? It’s funnier than I expected. I’m not the most versed person on social media myself, but I’m writting this anyway. Modern AU: 

Asra

Watches anime on pirate webs. Everytime it takes 5 to 10 minutes to start the episode because he doesn’t have Adblock installed. If you tell him to install it, he laughs and assures you he will. Next time, he hasn’t.

Aesthetic Instagram. Varies from the most beautiful art to the most absurd psychedelic nonsense.

Posts a controversial bomb on delicate site (twitter), and magically disappears when the discourse starts as if nothing had happened.

Has several art accounts where he posts from drawings to artesanal crafts. Sells commissions but obviously doesn’t pay taxes. 

Offers tarot readings to strangers. Uses thousands of emoticons to sound as unthreatening as possible.

Nadia

Exhaustive + extremely technical tutorials. Used by university cathedratics in their classes on daily basis without credit.

Periodically recieves several offers from companies to become an influencer. Politely rejects them all every time.

Not very interested in social media, uses the internet mainly for research. However, she is surprisingly generous with likes and reblogs for her friends.

Builds her own computer by buying each individual component and ensambling it all together. The result is a monster with the power of a NUCLEAR REACTOR, even though she doesn’t even need so much potency. Somehow, she manages to make it aesthetically pleasing and elegant.

Always... always... always grammatically correct, no matter the setting.

Julian

He is like a grandpa. Doesn’t understand shit. Has Windows XP as operating system. Calls the IT guy to delete the rejected documents from the recycle bin.

Mispronounces all social media names. No matter how many times you correct him, next time he will mispronounce it again. The weirdest thing is he never pronounces it the same way twice. You suspect that sometimes he does it on purpose to pull your leg.

Accidentally downloads multiple virus while trying to watch the most anodyne film. When weird shit starts to happen, he freaks out as if the government hackers were after him.

Resends the corniest chains. He sees nothing bad with Comic Sans font, or with pure red text over pure blue back. Your eyes will bleed.

Uses facebook to flirt with single moms and dads in his area.

Muriel

Ghosts everyone on whatsapp. He checks new messages once every 6 days at most.

Has a secret Tumblr nobody but Asra knows about. Follows mainly bird tematic blogs. Likes mainly funny videos of chickens and cute animals.  500 Likes. 0 Reblogs. 0 Posts.

Incognito mode for absolutely EVERYTHING, no matter how innocent. If he accidentally enters the Google page without incognito mode, he deletes the historial.

Sticks a piece of tape on the computer camera, just in case.

Listens to music in the shittiest quality and doesn’t give a fuck.

Portia

Cat. Picture. Hell. 70% of her phone memory are just pictures of random cats. Nine hundred and eighty seven photos of Pepi, and counting.

Posts advice for garden care... and it’s really, really good. Really thoughtful, with tons of examples and pictures. If someone asks something, she always knows the answer.

Has a youtube channel with videos of her exploring abandoned buildings, recorded by herself or Julian. Base of followers slowly but steadily going up.

Frequently makes funny videos of dumb stuff. All of them with shitty quality and too moved. A few of them have gone viral. 

Meme avalanch in the group chat at 7 in the fucking morning. There is no meme she doesn't know. The bombardment of memes and puns by whatsapp is constant and endless. Run.

Lucio

The most OBSSESSED with social media. Has an account on every single one of them and literally never shuts up. He gets really frustrated when he realizes that gaining followers is not as easy as he thought. Posts the most stupid opinions, then gets angry when he loses followers. ‘People don't know what’s good’.

Potential victim of cryptocurrency frauds.

The most exibitionist bitch on the net. Of course, he has an Onlyfans. But if you ask nicely, he just posts the nudes publicly anyway. 

Thirsty thirsty THIRSTY for notes. Checks every two minutes.

He is a famous patron in the furry artist community. He spends just. So. Much. Money. Some furries even debate if he is a real person, or just a myth, or maybe even several people. He is kind of a legend, actually.

[glavilio]

iirc a while ago you mentioned disliking microsoft - just wondering if you have any recommendations for another os to use and guides to read on it? ive been considering switching from microsoft for a while now but because ive had my computers for a while it feels like a big change

i get it! i've been split pretty much 50/50 windows and mac for my whole life (with some experience with linux) and i'd say they arent all that different in the most important ways. the barrier for mac, which is quite a big one, is that you need apple hardware like a macbook. however, if you acquire one, you'd probably find the major things like the file system, using applications, etc are very intuitive regardless of what specific OS you are most used to. On mac, most things are very streamlined and self contained, applications do not use a central registry and while they store data in shared folders (for example, "application_support" which is roughly equivalent to something like "APPDATA" on windows), applications are mostly contained within themselves. for an illustrative example: firefox has a .app package in the applications folder, and stores its cache and history in application support, and that's it. as a result, uninstalling apps is almost always a matter of deleting the app file and not using a central uninstaller in settings (though some more complex apps have their own uninstaller). shortcuts and aliases are very rare, and in my opinion most things are easier to find than on windows. its difficult for me to explain exactly what i mean, but there is only one "layer" to macOS. windows is built on principles of backwards compatibility, so there can be a lot of junk where a more central cohesive system would be easier to use and less likely to break. one of my strongest frustrations with windows is that it has two entirely separate (3 if you count the registry) applications for changing settings, and they look and behave completely differently. apple's cohesion is a trade off, as it requires axing functionality that isn't common or popularly necessary anymore (RIP 32 bit programs), but i find it's absolutely worth it. in all, the way macOS functions is a lot like how a phone does, in terms of the way its designed, though i'd argue its more like an android than an iphone. it has a reputation for being locked down and less customizable, but i'd say that isn't accurate for most useful or desirable tinkering. it requires using the terminal and learning some unix commands but it's quite straightforward once you do, and less likely to break or frustrate you as windows is (in my opinion). linux of course is leaps and bounds above both proprietary systems but that's not really my area of expertise. at the end of the day, windows is accessible, that's its biggest advantage and the source of a lot of its problems. it has to run on old architecture, cling to obsolete and archaic systems because that's what people know and expect, and appeal to microsoft execs by jamming in new useless features to impress clueless shareholders. the main issues with microsoft is that it wants to be apple, and its management pushing cortana, and the all things people hate about windows 8, 10, and 11 is completely at odds with its fundamental design principles. that's why its so terrible and so ugly to me. macOS is like if those features were thought out, intuitive, and part of a well designed whole, instead of being wasteful, bloated, and a constant annoyance to the people who actually desire the unique things windows has to bring to the table.

oh and to answer your actual question since this just turned into one of my rambles: i would recommend trying out a linux distribution (like ubuntu or debian) by booting it on a flash drive and playing around with it to get a feel for the file system and other core aspects. its designed somewhat similarly to mac since they are both unix-like but its free and open source. if you hate it then its probably best to not spend a lot on a macbook. if you live near an apple store (or another dept. store that has electronics display models) you can go in and play around on one. there's lots of guides online, though i find its best to just fuck around and if things go wrong, seek answers online. also one last thing is that if you do decide to go with a mac, its no problem to just keep using windows for what you need it to. i have an old PC laptop i use to play video games that only run on windows after all.

[circethegoblin]

STAYING ALIVE MASTERPOST, FROM A BROKE TEEN WITH ADHD

here you go. some down to earth tips on how to not die metally nor physically.

tired of those "drink three liters of water everyday uwu" and "wake up at 5 am" and "buy a bath bomb and a fec mask and some other things you don't have the money for" shit? i'm here for ya.

1. NOT DYING

eat at least three meals a day, one of which m u s t be warm and above 300 kcal (it can be istant ramen with an egg added if you have to)

you technically should shower everyday, but we know how it is. A change of clothes is sometimes enough.

DRY SHAMPOO AND BABY WIPES!!!

keep bottles with water everywhere. On your desk, near that spot on the floor you always end up sitting on, near your bed, basically whenever you know you spend a lot of time. No need to get up and go to the kitchen will help. Obviously change the water in the bottles as often as you can.

Get some form of physical activity. It doesn't have to be much, you can for example replace scrolling on tiktok by walking around your room and scrolling on tiktok! Brilliant, isn't it? Obviously, running or doing those 10 minutes workouts from youtube is better, but you are still getting like an hour of walking.

Buy blankets. Steal blankets. Summon blankets from other dimensions. Just make sure you have a lot of warm, soft blankets in your house. You will thank me when you won't have the anergy to wash your sheets (just take them off and throw some blankets on your bed), or when the power goes out.

If you have pets, ALWAYS keep spare food that'll last for a week for them.

things to always have in the kitchen: milk, eggs, flour, rice, pasta, yeast, cheese, oil, a leafy vegetable, onions, tomatoes, apples, patatoes, some flavourful sauce, sugar, salt, spices and an emergency chocolate bar. You can make a lot of food with those. Just make sure you won't eat the chocolate too fast.

Have a lot of spare batteries. A lot.

Get urself a flashlight, a lighter, and a pocket knife.

Remember the apples? eat one a day. if you don't like apples or you can't eat them for any other reason, you can take a kiwi, banana, orange, basically something that will give you vitamins and non processed sugar.

do the dishes before your sink starts developing it's own ecosystem

drugs from that one guy around the corner = very bad time

2. NOT DYING INSIDE

Open the damn window.

Don't watch so many commentary videos. You are probably not even checking the sources, so you can easily make unjust judgement, and like. did you even hear of half of those people before?

make a discord server just for yourself. get into the habit of writing little things that happened to you there. rant about the fanfics you read. or the movies. vent there if you don't have anyone you can vent to. write your ideas there, write e v e r y t h i n g. make a section for passwords, for quick ideas, for your to do lists. you won't lose it as you do with sticky notes or notebooks. there is no risk anyone will see it. oh, and when you'll have a strong impulse to tell emily that you hate her? write that message in your private server and list all ur arguments. look at tat the next day and decide if you really mean that.

life sucks. come to peace with it.

cuddle ur pets if you have them

1 hour a day without a lot of sensory input. if you have to, reduce to half an hour.

if you find yourself scrolling endlessly through social media, make sure it's pintrest (just don't compare urself to the people here; if you have issues with that, tumblr may be better)

delete. twitter. from. your. phone.

influencers are lying to you; maybe not even intentionally. remember when you were watching that cute-aesthetic-productive morning routine, and you were wondering why your life isn't that pretty? why your room is a mess? why you cannot for the life of god be aesthetic 24/7? its the filter. don't worry about it, their lifes arent that nice either.

realize there's actually nothing stopping you from screaming as loud as you can right now. like there is no physical barrier. think about it. realize there's no actual physical barierr to many other things.

your body is your body. you can decide how it looks like; just remember it's in your greatest interest to keep it healthy.

3. BEING A LITTLE BETTER THAN JUST ALIVE

If you wear make up, take it off before you go to sleep.

moisturize your body; everything is better when your skin doesn't feel dry

have a one brand of cosmetics that you love and buy things mainly from it. they often have sets of products that complete each other. i like ziaja. it's a polish brand, it's surprisingly cheap and has nice quality

cleanser, moisturizer, face mist

of you can, change your sheets once every two weeks

do the dishes before your sink starts developing it's own ecosystem

do a deep house clean once a month (don't beat yourself up when you don't tho)

keep your workspace organized (it doesn't have to look organized to other people, remember)

sunscreen

cook your own food

keep a calendar

no money for scented candles? got ya. make a simmer pot: throw some apple peel, a couple of cinnamon sticks and whatever spices that smell good you have into a pot, add some water and simmer. boom. your house smells good, and you haven't spend 20 dollars.

If you really like candles, buy scented wax melts. it's cheaper.

Buy urself scented mists. they're pretty cheap and will make you feel A LOT better.

keep your clothes clean. if you aren't sure if that shirt thats on your chair is dirty or not, throw it in the washing mashine anyway. better be sure.

if you can, make your bed right when you get up

wear clothes that make you feel good. put some effort into your outfits. really.

4. OTHER PEOPLE

be nice to essential workers.

if you have money, give tips.

remember, you do not owe anyone love; it is not something you can force. even if they saved your life. even when they helped you in your darkest time. if you don't love them, you don't.

you don't have to be in a romantic relationship to be happy.

if you want to, date! date everyone! date girls, date boys, date nonbinary people! date people completly different than you, date people from different countries, date them!!! just make sure they're kind and won't kill you. even if you don't end up in a relationship, you can learn a lot.

don't be afraid to piss off people that deserve it

smile to strangers :)

5. NOT FAILING SCHOOL

heard of dark academia? check it out

romanticize the heck out of studying

do not let your studying be just reading the same partagraph over and over again. it won't work. believe me.

seterra for geography, quizlet for everything else

try to make yourself intrestet in whatever you are studying (watch veritasium, listen to podcasts about weird history facts)

notes are for you and you only; don't worry about them looking pretty. doodle on margins, make weird metaphors, squeeze in as much info as you can.

when you're studying, listen to music without words/in a language you don't understand.

chew gum while you study

get the forest app, get attached to the trees, focus.

don't feel guilty for taking breaks

grades aren't everything, but they are important.

eat something in school

don't just use the cheapest pens. invest a couple dollars in something that will make writing enjoyable and smooth

those study with me videos? they're great

if you like to argue with the teachers, take care of your grades becouse. they may not like you afterwards.

be nice to your classmates and help them with homework. if you don't do your homework they'll help you

executive dysfunction won't let you study? been there. sometimes it's better to wake up ealier tommorow and do that homework then.

don't feel guilty for failing a test

go to the goddamn class

don't pull all nighters oh my god don't especially on weekdays

6. OTHER LIFEHACKS

don't get involved in the crime, and if you do always have a believable explanation why you were doing it

have different alarm sounds for every day of the week

set a daily limit of money that you spend

great hobbies that don't require a lot of money; urban exploration, writing, hiking and learning other languages

thrift stores

don't eat grapefruits while on meds

nail polish removers dissolve most strong glues.

if you have a cut on your skin, desinfect it. do it. please just do it.

always have pads with you. even if you don't get periods, at least one of your friends probably does

sign up in your local library. its free

[tundrainafrica]

Title: Lovebug (14/14)

Summary:

“It might be a bug.”

“A bug?”

“Sometimes the developers of this application make mistakes. This is our first time meeting I’m sure so…Isn’t it a bit weird that we just met for the first time and it rings like this? And for two strangers to coincidentally ring each other’s alarms?“

Levi is the developer of the Love Alarm App and Hange is married to Zeke.

Link to cross-postings: AO3

Other Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Notes: I know I usually post on Wednesdays but I'll be on the road on Wednesday and if I don't get this out soon, I'll probably end up dropping it next week or smthg so here it is. Two days early. I hope you enjoy :D

Is this all that there is to life? A glaring question that came unexpectedly, in between reading through codes for his nth freelance project the past few years.

In response, Levi closed his eyes, sat back and reflected. A part of him may have been asking that question for a while and slowly, Levi started to understand why he was asked that in the first place.

A few minutes ago, he had been strangely happy to see his code compiling at the first try. And just a few hours ago, he had been enthusiastic at running a debugger through a code and finding a few typos to fix.

Happiness. That was happiness right?

That part of him continued to nag. It soured that 'happiness,' leaving a burning dissatisfaction inside him. You’ve experienced better moments, happier moments.

Then Levi got fed up. He reached into the back of his mind, he remembered, then something stopped him from reminiscing for a while longer.

Something strange. Something buried.

He hadn’t allowed himself to feel much since he first moved into that new city. He had allowed the novelty and the business to carry him through his first months. But the novelty of a new beginning never lasted long.

Too shaken to even bother applying for a new job, Levi opted to work freelance. Consequently, his only companions were the four walls of his studio apartment and the occasional voices from next door.

There was only so much which could stimulate interest. His mind continued to search for them and naturally, time continued to move along with it. Routine and episodes of ennui seemed to last infinities in the moment. But in retrospect, it felt like they all happened too fast.

He had made sense of time in milestones, milestones worth ten times the refreshing feeling of running a debugger through code or the fleeting euphoria of compiling codes at the first try.

Is that all that there is to life? Eventually, he made sense of that strange voice. There was reason to that question.

That day was another milestone. If it wasn't for his nagging mind, he could have missed it.

It was a blustery autumn day in late October, the weather similar to the last view he had of his home five years ago. Shifting his gaze from the window of his present apartment, he took a quick look at the calendar and it was like a dam had ended up spilling open inside him.

The five year mark was a bittersweet milestone, five years since he left home. The fifth year rang more loudly than every year before that. Maybe because five was such a perfect number, or perhaps because he had been keeping something in for a while.

He felt a release. Then a reprieve from the monotony, a reprieve from the five years avoiding his old life. Levi found himself opening his browser tab, typing the words ‘love alarm’ on the search box and deleting it a second later.

An aimless and useless sequence of movements. He didn’t need a quick google search to know how it was doing.

The love alarm had become a household name even all the way in his side of the world. With his very human need to go out, whether it be for groceries, shopping or just some fresh air, Levi couldn’t completely ignore it. With the right decisions, Levi could choose not to give so much as a side glance at the people walking, heads bent down, staring at the number of hearts on their application.

When he went out though, even with his music at full blast, he would hear the familiar alarm as he walked through crowds.

At first, it had left a pang in his chest, a brief bout of nausea, perhaps disgust or embarrassment at his old life.

It had been five years since he first arrived though and it turned out, time did heal.

Levi looked through the wikipedia page of the love alarm and he found, it hurt more like a raw scar than a stab in his chest or a crushing weight. The nausea, the pang in his chest that plagued him years before were weak if almost nonexistent.

Curiosity took over.

He took his phone from the side of his desk and downloaded the application again. The name Jaeger was under the title screen and right next to it were the words ‘All rights reserved.”

Would would have felt like an ache in the chest years ago, felt more like a mosquito bite. Levi was just slightly annoyed. It did nothing to stop him though from registering again and looking through the application interface.

Nothing much had changed. There were some slight changes to the skin of the registration page, a change in the name of the company at the bottom. Levi purposely touched the activate button rapidly and found he had crashed the application.

That was one bug that he never got to fix. He turned his phone to the side, noting the way the screen glitched as it adjusted to the landscape orientation of the phone. Another bug Levi never got to fix.

Then he wondered who the developer on the other end had been to have never even caught it.

Biometrics registered, Levi activated the alarm to find no hearts. He couldn’t help but entertain that slight disappointment. Of course no hearts would have appeared though. He hadn’t even interacted with his neighbors.

It would have been creepy it rang. Letting out a sardonic laugh just loud enough for himself, he leaned back on the chair and stared at the ceiling, forcing his thoughts back to whatever coding freelance project he’d been dealing with a few minutes ago.

Work came in freelance projects. They were enough for rent, for savings and some capacity to eat out occasionally.

A simple yet comfortable life. But is that all that there is to life? That voice continued to tear into his work related thoughts. Levi gave in to the nagging thought again. He started scrolling through wikipedia articles detailing use, detailing acquisition history, he found another key word under related articles, more interesting than ‘love alarm.’

Mood Alarm.

It sent a strange shiver through the back of his neck. Levi rolled his shoulders, relieving the tension that came with the last few eons of reflection. He let out a whistle, opened the new article and scrolled down towards references.

There were lists of articles.

Partner of Zeke Jaeger and freshly minted PhD graduate Doctor Hange Zoe release Mood Alarm.

Doctor Hange Zoe. Something inside him was fighting for control. He couldn’t bring himself to click the link. At the same time though, there was this curiosity inside him that he couldn’t seem to get to the bottom of.

Under the link to the article was the official website.

At the front page, there was a boring and overly professional introduction Levi didn’t bother to read

Below them, everything else had been interesting enough to give more than a second long glance.

The list of functionalities. The color codes. Then newly launched dashboard functionalities, almost a carbon copy of the plan Levi had sent years back.

“Fucking hell, you actually did it,” Levi muttered. He couldn’t help but just allow the smile that tugged at his lips some control. Excitement had him searching for the application on the play store, downloading it and methodically going through the same registration process as the love alarm.

It didn’t look much like the mood alarm Levi had worked on years ago. He saw hints of it though and worked from there to admire it.

The front end had been cleaned up. The font chosen fit the silver-to-white gradient of the application. When Levi clicked ‘activate,’ the screen loaded.

The colors mixed against one another for a second, an aesthetic choice of animation that Levi couldn’t help but be amused with.

Red. Yellow. Blue. Purple. Green. Orange.

The colors continued to mix. Then some disappeared as if they had lost themselves in some colorful war.

Then it was only blue and yellow. The two colors danced against one another for a few seconds longer before they disappeared too. More specifically, they bundled against one another.

Green. It took him at least five seconds to get that reading.

He didn’t have to look at the guide on the website to know what it meant.

Sad happy? Or happy sad? Whatever that feeling was, Levi felt no need to introspect, or maybe he had been too lazy to.

It had been a while since he had even let himself feel something. The green on his screen, the feeling that accompanied it, seemed more like an old friend he hadn’t talked to a while.

If he had any ability at introspection, maybe it had already rusted. Still, he let those emotions inside him, that yellow and that blue do their work.

They had him turning off the mood alarm, then turning off the love alarm. Something inside him still hesitated to delete the applications. Then it had him considering the space on his phone for just a second.

He downloaded another app that night. A familiar app with a flame, then another one with a bee. Only months into his new life in a new city with a new job, Levi was already bored— and if he had to admit it—terribly, terribly lonely.

And maybe the best way to cure it was to spend the whole night swiping.

***

Finding a companion wasn’t as easy as desperation and a few second long rush of confidence made it out to be.

Perhaps, online dating was a rash idea, an uncharacteristic move.

Didn't he reject Petra years ago? How could he date anyone else? Petra… How is she… With nothing much to do but wait for his date, he found himself texting Petra as he waited in the cafe.

He sent a few thank you messages at her well wishes. They exchanged brief updates and Petra’s own updates dragged on for longer.

Her life was more eventful than his.

Petra had started dating Oluo. She had found someone who loved her, just as much as she loved him. Keeping a correspondence with her only highlighted points for reflection for Levi. The more he reflected, the more questions came up. The more he reflected, the more complicated the questions became.

He was lonely but could he be picky? At the same time, did he even have the heart to put anyone through the shitty experience of a half hearted courtship?

Hange’s words echoed in his head, not in any specific string, a few parts in words, a few parts in phrases.

Considering the circumstances… Love is a choice.

When he let her words echo through him, he managed to grip a presence long gone. A presence and a relationship, he clarified, that had never been his in the first place.

He never did completely brush away the guilt that accompanied every passing thought of Hange. There was this strange acceptance though that appended it, and it had him a little more discerning, a little more prudent.

If he couldn’t have her, he could always just keep her close in his own personal way.

“Have you heard of the love alarm?”

How long had she been there? How long had she been talking?

Right, Levi was on a date. She had said words before that question and Levi could have sworn they had exchanged greetings even before that.

“In passing,” Levi said. He manifested some reality from the words, as if a firm response was enough to forget decades worth of overtime and testing.

“It’s this application we can use to test compatibility… So at least we know if this could work.”

Levi listened with some fake intent as she explained how the love alarm worked. He made sure to nod at points where her tone had gone a little higher or louder.

“What do you think?” There was some finality to her voice, an expectant look on her face.

Levi hummed in thought.. “I don’t believe in using an app to check compatibility. What about when we consider circumstances? Get to know each other… Then decide if it could work?”

She looked at her phone for a second, then back at Levi, her brows furrowed in confusion.

Levi shook his head. “Sorry, I just don’t believe in things like the love alarm, it seems just like horoscopes or Myer Briggs to me. Compatibility, relationships, they’re just gonna be choices we make anyway.” He found himself guiltily looking away as he said those last points.

The pout that played at his date’s lips was evidence enough, there probably wouldn’t be a second date. “It’s not like our love alarm’s would have rung anyway,” she said.

It had been a while since Levi dated though and he started to realize, maybe his filter and his social skills had rusted just a bit.

***

Love is a choice.

It looked like he might have been the only one to believe that. He had managed to piss off countless other dates with his own ‘love is a choice’ schtick.

And he had been dating semi regularly for the past year already. Yet, nothing was coming up fruitful.

How the hell did Hange even manage to get married? Or maybe Hange had just been the exception. He then concluded, Hange just had too many other loveable qualities which could make anyone want to snap her up early on.

The more he entertained the thought of Hange, the heavier his own chest became. Then he stopped entertaining her then the cycle would start again, a very vicious cycle.

It just so happened that sometimes the thought of ‘Hange’ manifested as some domineering thought. ‘Love is a choice’ and the strange sensation that came with his whole body protesting, rebelling in their own little way worked hand in hand.

He was confused and consequently desperate enough to open the mood alarm for some inkling of comprehension. He would focus on the way the colors switched among one another, disappearing, always revealing a yellow and a light blue dancing between one another then always ending with a light blue.

Sometimes he was blue. Sometimes he was green.

Ane he continued to check. After all, he mood alarm had become a beautiful and constant companion. He had deleted the love alarm but kept the mood alarm close.

“What do you think of the love alarm?”

How many people are gonna ask about that fucking application?

Zeke had just been a little too good at marketing. It was the nth time someone had broken the ice of a first date with that fucking question and Levi regretted not making a drinking game out of it. Maybe he would have been able to drink enough to forget that cursed product.

“Are you okay?” his new date asked.

He had spent the past few minutes too silent, not thinking. “Nifa…” That was her name right? He cleared his throat. “I’m fine.”

She looked as nervous as he did, or even more nervous. That part was comforting at least. In a way, her demeanor seemed a little more pleasant, more genuinely curious than wary. “I asked just a second ago, have you ever used that love alarm?” she said in response.

Levi followed the same script. "In passing."

“Would you like to try it out? Just to make sure we’re on the same page, relationship wise.”

“I’d rather we relied on circumstances and compatibility to make the choice for us. Get to know each other maybe…” When it came to suggestions, Levi had revised his script just a bit. Too many people got offended by his invalidating horoscopes and Myer Briggs type for some weird reason. “Like get to know each other, like…” Levi trailed off for a second, allowing himself a pregnant pause. ”... Elizabeth and Darcy?”

Nifa had cocked her head to the side curiously, thought for a long second and smiled just a bit wider. “You read Pride and Prejudice?”

Levi nodded subtly. “A while back,.”

She paused for a second, seeming deep in thought. “Well… Now that I think about it, you might be right,” Nifa said. “This compatibility thing… Your idea of love. I think it makes sense.”

“Really? You think so?”

“Yeah, why?” Nifa asked.

Levi dropped his shoulders in relief, the weight of at least a hundred failed dates fell off his shoulders. “I’ve been dating for years and I feel like you’re the only one who actually said that.”

Nifa didn’t reply immediately and the longer Levi sat there, the more clearly he saw her face. Surprise morphed into something that seemed more like pity. Then, the chronic pang in his chest came back.

A first love did that to people maybe? A painful first love lost had that special power to maybe just twist his own philosophies, to make him almost disgusted at his own creations and the way it had challenged his own convictions.

Are you scared? Levi thought to himself. He couldn’t be too sure how he was handling himself in front of Nifa. He looked down at his hands, opening and closing them a few times and if he looked closely, he could almost feel those uncomfortable twinges in his wrist that came from years of coding.

“I’m willing to put the time into it if you are.” Nifa’s voice was more gentle and it flowed as if she had sensed the stiffness in his voice.

Levi didn’t respond immediately and suddenly their little corner of the crowded cafe was eerily silent. There was a melancholy that had blanketed their little corner despite the Saturday afternoon crowd.

Nifa seemed like she was trying to break away from it with some light conversation. “Hey, have you heard of the mood alarm?”

“The mood alarm?” Levi let that half smile creep up his lips, just high enough to be more invisible than obvious. Three words from a stranger and his emotions were reduced to a mess.

He once again felt that twinge again at his rests and that sleepless night, and her. He was remembering her in his office through sleepy exhausted eyes, with a cocktail dress and a sandwich bag in one hand.

There was also something amusing and painfully ironic about hearing his own brainchild, from someone so casually, as if it had turned into some household name while he wasn’t looking.

The conversation was getting painful, painfully interesting and the masochist in Levi was gripping him and pulling him back to reality. “Like the love alarm…” Levi added.

“Well, they’re products from the Jaeger corporation… You know the Jaeger family right?” Nifa added.

Levi could only be thankful he hadn’t been sipping at his tea then. He probably could have choked. How could he ever forget Zeke Jaeger?

He might have gotten a lot better at hiding his own disgust or Nifa could have been too deep in thought. She continued to talk. “They bought Love Alarm a few years back.”

“I know the Jaeger family,” Levi said.

“So you know about their eldest son, the heir of the Jaeger corporation… And his partner?”

Levi took a sip of tea, not bothering to respond.

Nifa may have taken that as a ‘no.’“His partner was working towards a PhD in psychology and apparently that was her final project. The codes for the mood alarm are very similar to the love alarm apparently."

“Oh?” Levi asked, feigning interest.

Soon, it turned into something genuine. Nifa was offering new information. “She got the PhD a few years ago and soon after that, the application was launched. And now they’re launching a solution for hospitals.”

“What kind of solution?” Levi asked.

“Wait, have you ever used the mood alarm? Or do you know how it works?” Nifa asked. “Anyway, I realized I ended up digressing here… The point I was trying to make is, the one who developed the mood alarm was able to prove that whatever measurements they use for the love alarm, are related to emotions. And what if, understanding how we feel when we work towards a relationship is a better determinant of whether the relationship could work?”

Levi nodded quickly, an attempt to be polite. At that point though, he wasn’t too interested in the point she had been trying to make “I’m familiar with the application and how it works. But you mentioned something about a solution for hospitals…” He didn’t think it was worth lying. He didn’t need a long winded explanation of the alarm he made. He needed an explanation of what Hange had been making."

Nifa didn’t seem to get the message. “So, the application will determine your emotions for you--- I have one right now and we could use it over time to articulate how we feel.” She pulled out her phone and dropped it on the table. “I think analyzing our own emotions would do a better job than relying on how the love alarm processes the emotions.”

There was something surreal about seeing a user explain it to him, as if they knew it more than him.

For a while, he couldn’t help but just entertain the possibility that in her own way, Nifa may have known more. With someone explaining and demonstrating, he was more easily able to make sense of the changes that had been implemented since Hange acquired it.

The app icon was reminiscent of the love alarm, two rings around it but instead of a heart in between, there was an icon, an elegant cross between a flower and a color wheel.

Red. Blue. Yellow. In between the primary colors were purple, green and orange.

Nifa activated it and held the phone between her fingertips. Just like the night when Levi had first played with it, the colored blobs swam amongst one another again, each blob would disappear one by one, leaving the remaining colors.

Yellow and Orange. “Looks like I’m happy,” Nifa commented. “So apparently the new dashboard allows us to connect this reading on the phone to a PC and get a more detailed explanation, numbers, heart rate, all the like.”

“You seem to know a lot about the app,” Levi mused.

Nifa cocked her head to one side. “Well, I’m into psychology too. I work as a psychologist in one of the hospitals. Our hospital is one of the first ones to buy software licenses so I’ve done my research.” She hummed, looking straight at him for a second as if studying him. “Now that I think about it, your job wasn’t on your profile. What do you do for a living?”

Levi’s response was automatic. “IT work.” He was suddenly self conscious about even mentioning the word ‘developer.’

“Ooooh... So you’d probably figure out how this app works much faster than I would.” Nifa sighed. “And you could probably help reassure me about this."

“Reassure you about what?”

“I’m honestly pretty nervous about rolling out this software.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s relatively new, a few bugs would come up here and there.”

“All softwares are going to face new bugs with every update. It’s never ending,” Levi said nonchalantly.

“Spoken like a true IT guy,” Nifa joked. She took a sip of her shake and stared down at his tea and up at him again. “Say, since you’re in IT, you think you can hook us up with someone?”

“Hook you up with someone?” Levi asked. His mind was going places more suited for a tinder date than a conversation on career. He raised one eyebrow in question. He couldn’t be too sure of what she meant just yet.

It looked like she had started to understand that double entendre. Nifa blushed then let out a cough. “No, no. Our company is looking to build a small support team.”

“An IT support team?” Levi asked.

“Well, people who could focus on learning the product, dealing with whatever bugs, testing them, compiling them and sending them over to the Mood Alarm team. You think you’d know anyone tech savvy? Maybe familiar with how biotechnology works?

“I could try to look around…” Levi said.

“Great!” Nifa chimed

By some magic, the conversation shifted elsewhere. Nifa had a way with conversation, keeping some sort of a flow, talking about her own job and getting him to talk about his freelance projects.

Levi’s thoughts on the hospital solution though were an ubiquitous part of his mind space.That was the whole point of the investment right? Back then, Zeke and Hange had plans on selling it to hospitals.

And there was a free trial. That night, Levi had been curious enough to click the ‘book a free trial button’ and to even fill out the first few lines.

Organization name? He didn't have one.

Purpose? To catch up with his own brain child maybe.

He ended up staring at the blank screen for a while, wondering where the hell he would get an organization and a valid purpose.

He wanted to check it out, he really did. And he was a little salty that they required a background check before they even allowed trials for a project he created.

Curiosity became desperation. With desperation, came creativity, audacity. He took his phone with the intention of just asking Nifa a few questions, only to see there was an unread message from her.

Thanks for today! I had a lot of fun. Hopefully, we can plan something soon. I might be busy with work this week but maybe the week after?

Levi stared at her message and composed a quick reply, pleasantries forgotten.

You mentioned something about IT support openings in the hospital...

***

The hiring manager introduced himself as Moblit but he didn't say much else. Instead, he spent the next few minutes looking through Levi's resume, his brow wrinkled.

"Is there something wrong with my resume?" Levi asked, breaking the silence. He had kept it minimalistic, only sticking to odd jobs the past five years.

Moblit shook his head. "Nothing, it just doesn't look like you have support role experience."

"Do I need experience in a support role? I think I'm familiar enough with how apps work to stand in as one," Levi said. Should he mention that he had done the support work before?

"So you've compiled tickets, sent them over to developers?"

I'm the developer who deals with those bullshit tickets. He thought to himself. On the outside though, he nodded and leaned a bit more forward on the table. It wasn’t too difficult to show interest. He was genuinely interested, having given in to that curiosity-turned-desperation.

"Well, if you're interested in taking the job then…” Moblit said. “Let's see how much you know about the mood alarm app." He opened a folder. "It's a relatively new solution, so I don't expect you to know much but if you've heard of the love alarm?"

"I have."

"Well they're from the same corporation…"

Information on their history flew into one ear and out the other. "Do you have any more questions for me?" Levi asked. He could have interrupted Moblit there but he didn’t want to hear about a history he actually experienced first hand.

Moblit cleared his throat. "Well, if you could tell me how you think the mood alarm works? Then I’ll give you a list of common bugs and can you tell me how you will go about raising them to developers?

***

Six years hadn’t done much to make him forget. He had been working with the love alarm for almost a decade after all.

And the mood alarm? He had a strange connection to it, he couldn’t explain.

The code wasn’t open source. Of course it wouldn’t. That was an enterprise application and they wouldn’t want any hacker just randomly getting it. Yet, why did he feel so offended at not having access?

“Hey Levi, how would you handle this?”

“Handle what?” Levi didn’t look up from his monitor immediately. The voice and the question have all were all too familiar and it wasn’t urgent anyway.

“Levi, take a look…” Farlan seemed more frustrated than a second ago.

Levi looked at Farlan’s screen. Another display issue. He was all too familiar with the bugs and it looked like the love alarm and the mood alarm were coming up with the same issues. “Click the activate button three times really fast, right click the desktop, select inspect and take a screenshot. We send it over to the developers on the mood alarm team,” Levi said. That had become routine after a while, yet somehow, his two colleagues Farlan and Isabel were still asking questions.

Maybe because he was the only one who understood what the hell the developers needed to see to actually get to the bottom of the problem.

“Make sure to check it in both light mode and dark mode,” Levi said. “And also, there’s a known bug for the phone app, check if turning on the alarm affects your ability to receive notifications from other apps.” Those words had sent a wave of nostalgia through him. That was one of the bugs he had gotten around to fixing with the love alarm.

“Hey...”Isabel’s voice sounded from next to him. Levi turned around, almost jumping when he saw she had been close enough to look over his shoulder. “What are you researching?”

It wouldn't look good if he slacked off at work in front of colleagues a good few years his junior. Levi closed the tab. “Just my own research on mood alarm.” And when he looked at his codes a little longer, then back at Isabel who seemed almost confused, Levi realized it had looked more like extra work than anything else.

He spent the whole morning on ‘extra work, watching the API calls, making notes to himself to check the codes he had sent Hange years back just to see how much had changed.

“You finished all your tasks today and you still wanna do research on the mood alarm?” Farlan asked, a look of utter amazement on his face.

“What can I say? This app is pretty interesting.” it wasn’t a lie. Watching the growth of his own child from afar, was a fun thing to do.

“It honestly feels like you’ve done this type of work before."

“I did something similar,” Levi said.

“What kind of place did you work in before?” Isabel asked excitedly, her tasks also forgotten.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Levi answered, his tone unchanged.

“Something like the love alarm?”

Levi nodded. “Maybe that’s the reason I can figure things out pretty fast,” he said. The best plan of action was to digress.

“So that means we could make you handle the harder cases?” Farlan snickered.

“I’d rather you learn how to deal with others on your own,” Levi said. “I’ve worked with these apps for a long time. The bugs never end.”

***

“Moblit’s saying you’re doing a pretty good job picking out the bugs,” Nifa spoke above the bustle of the lunch time crowd.

“Are we?” Levi asked. He kept his words brief, not wanting to waste too much energy speaking over the others in the hospital cafeteria.

“Well, he was talking about you mostly,” Nifa said. “Most big issues get resolved with each release. And Moblit was saying that our support team just gives really good feedback.”

“The developers do the work. All we do is find the bugs.” Levi started to pick more meticulously at his salad

Nifa shook her head. “I think the support team deserves credit too. It’s difficult figuring out whether issues are user issues or there’s really a bug. Isabel also told me you find ways to reproduce it quickly.”

“Do I?” His responses were getting less and less creative. There just wasn’t much to say and the compliments were making him more and more uncomfortable by the second.

Moblit was a life saver. He had broken out of the crowd, running to Nifa, an urgent but excited expression on his face. “Nifa, you’ve got to hear this.”

Levi used that brief distraction to shovel more salad into his mouth.

Moblit had spoken just beneath the sounds of other conversations and Levi couldn’t make out what he had said. He did make out the urgency in Nifa’s face and the excitement. Whatever Moblit had said was contagious.

“When are they coming?” Nifa asked, her voice much louder than Moblit’s.

Levi stood up, gathering his plate, his utensils and his unfinished salad. “If I’m not supposed to be in this conversation…”

Moblit shook his head. “Levi, no, please stay. I’d rather you hear this since this is related to your line of work too.”

“Why?” Levi raised one eyebrow.

“Zeke Jaeger and his partner Doctor Hange Zoe, they’re planning to visit,” Moblit said.

Levi couldn’t even tell what expression he had on then.

Maybe Moblit had interpreted shock as confusion. “Zeke Jaeger is the owner of the love alarm. Hange Zoe’s the creator of the mood alarm… In case you didn't know.”

***

“Hey, I wanna see her… Is this how she looks like?” Isabel’s voice was a whisper, a very loud whisper. “She looks smart.”

Farlan’s voice wasn’t any softer. “Well, that’s what you’d expect from the mastermind behind the mood alarm right? I heard Zeke Jaeger bought her the love alarm so she could look through the code and make the mood alarm for herself.”

“Where did you hear that?” Isabel asked.

“Watch the interviews.”

The click and clack of the keyboard. Then there was the sound of voices coming from the loud speaker from Farlan’s computer.

Then Hange’s very familiar voice.

Levi didn’t want to listen. “You know, if you spend too much time looking through this. You’re not gonna get anything done.” He forced his voice into something louder than what he was comfortable with. “Don’t you two have other tasks to do?”

“Aren’t you excited to meet them?” Isabel rolled her chair next to Levi.

No way in hell am I meeting them. “I’m planning on taking a leave,” he said.

“Wait, why?” Isabel seeming heartbroken, as if Levi taking a leave was the most terrible thing in the world.

“Well, as employees we’re entitled to leaves right?” Levi asked emotionlessly, willing himself not to at all be affected by Isabel’s puppy dog face.

Farlan sighed. “You’re the best one at this type of work among the three of us. You know, this is a good opportunity for you to get noticed.”

“I don’t wanna get noticed,” Levi said, as he focused back again on the screen, refreshing their ticketing software a little bit faster that time. It really was an uneventful afternoon. He couldn’t blame Farlan and Isabel for doing nothing.

“It’s a big money, a chance at a big career move,” Farlan said, raising his voice as if that could have done anything to convince Levi.

Levi looked up from the monitor and back to Farlan. “Do you really want me out of here?”

Farlan shrugged. “I dunno, you just seem too overqualified for this kind of job.”

Levi sighed. “Believe me, I’m happy to be here.” He continued to click refresh, just in case anything could have halted that already seemingly awkward conversation. The reason why he didn’t want to run into Zeke or Hange… Was it written all over his face?

Just in case Farlan and Isabel were mind readers, Levi kept quiet, kept his eyes glued on the screen and he prayed the day would get busier somehow.

It did. But it got busy so close to the end of the day and overtime seemed inevitable.

“We’re not receiving any readings.”

The same exact fucking line, from ten different customers from different hospital branches around the country. “You’re fucking kidding me,” Levi muttered.

He opened all the test devices, only to find, none of them were receiving readings from the mood alarm either. He was sure though, he was annoyed, very very annoyed. Maybe even angry. “Try testing,” he ordered.

Farlan and Isabel were more emotional than he was. If it didn’t work for them, it probably wasn’t working at all.

They had full trust on him. Isabel and Farlan nodded and they went through the devices quickly. All test devices exhausted and there was nothing much to do. Levi was convinced it was an issue that could only be investigated on the backend. “We’re done for the day.”

“We have to send a report right?”

Levi started to pack his bag. “Send a report saying we’re not getting any readings,” he said with a shrug. “It’s probably a backend issue or an issue with their API.”

“You sure we can’t do anything from our side?” Farlan pressed.

Levi shook his head. “None.” He logged out, slung his backpack over his shoulder and exited the office.

He sensed their disappointment in him. In his months working there, Levi had never left the office without doing a thorough investigation and writing a detailed report.

That might be the first time in months, they would give something completely unhelpful for the developers. That wasn’t Levi’s intention though. There were just some things that were better off investigated on his own personal PC.

For the first time in a while, Levi didn’t go straight for the shower when he arrived back home. He booted up his own PC. When he checked his cloud account, he found the private repository with all the codes from the love alarm and the mood alarm was still there.

It hadn’t been touched in years though.

He scrolled through the code, allowing that wave of nostalgic to wash over him gently. Having been the only one who worked on the base, Levi was very very familiar with it. Memories came quickly with the nostalgia. There was a point where the server was down and he remembered the hundreds of support tickets about the temporarily malfunctioning love alarm.

No readings were coming through. Levi did a quick calculation of the time zones of his own city and of the mood alarm headquarters. Then he looked through the code again.

Convinced that it was a fair theory, Levi opened his pseudo email, entered the support email for the mood alarm and left just one sentence on the email body.

I’m convinced one of your devs left a debugger on one of these codes on the backend.

A few years ago, he had been guilty of leaving a debugger running overnight,  fucking up the whole command system of the love alarm.

He copied and pasted a part of the code and the sent the email off. For all he knew, the mood alarm could have branched off far from the love alarm, rendering his theory completely stupid. Still, it was a theory worth entertaining.

The issues from work forgotten, Levi started to open his other emails, finding one from Petra on the third page, dated months ago.

Just a reminder that he hadn’t opened that email in months. “A wedding invite?”

Petra Ral and Oluo Bozado invite you to celebrate their wedding…

He didn’t need the rest of it to convince himself to go. He only needed to look at the date under, conveniently a week after Hange and Zeke were scheduled to visit the hospital where he worked.

He sent off two emails that night.

One to Petra, a very very late RSVP.

Then one to management, a request for a two week leave. For personal reasons.

A wedding always made a good personal reason. That was probably only half his actual personal reason though.

***

“I didn’t even expect you to come.” Petra seemed happy.

It could have been the make up or her natural blush. She was a glowing bride, glowing bright enough that Levi was starting to feel lonely.

“It’s been a while,” Levi said. “And you two are looking good.”

“How’s life abroad?” Petra asked.

“It’s fine,” Levi said.

“You adjusted well?” Petra asked again.

“Yeah, I guess I did.” Levi took a sip of his wine.

“You managed to get a software engineering job there?” That time it was Oluo who asked.

“Something similar,” Levi said. He started to shake his glass a bit, feigning deep consideration. Maybe that would explain his inability to respond. In truth, he was in no mood to make conversation but when the bride and the groom had gone out of their way to sit next to him on the bench outside their party, and they had gone through all the trouble of asking, it was only polite that he kept his side of the conversation.

Somewhere along the exchanges, Petra brought up a question. And whether it had been appropriate or not, Levi couldn’t tell but he thought it worth an answer at least.

“Have you met anyone?” Petra asked.

“What?” Levi responded.

“I dunno… I guess someone who makes you feel good? Someone who manages to ring your love alarm?” Petra gave him a knowing look.

Levi only had to shift his gaze from Petra to the seemingly blank face of Oluo to know, Petra had at least kept that part to herself. To the others, his alarm ringing with Hange could have been just a bug.

Levi shook his head. “I haven’t touched the love alarm in years,” he admitted.

Petra seemed more understanding. “We haven’t touched it in years either.”

Levi raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

Petra stared ahead, looking deep in thought. She turned to Oluo. “Well, I guess a part of us wanted to build this organically, get to know each other first. And maybe that’s the best way to find people. I think the love alarm just causes unnecessary chaos sometimes.”

Levi only had to look back at his past five years to see it. To be honest, he could actually put the blame on the love alarm for completely uprooting his life. He couldn't say he totally agreed though. He didn’t regret the time with Hange either.

But he wasn’t going to deny her credit where credit was due. “You make sense.”

It wasn’t as simple as that though. Somehow, Hange’s own words had torn into the silence. Just for him. The love alarm causes chaos but sometimes it can tie loose ends.

And for him, it had been both. It had caused chaos but somehow, meeting Hange, having gotten to know her, having gotten to talk to her had tied some loose ends inside him.

What kind of loose ends? He couldn’t be too sure.

“Even when you don’t use the love alarm now, have you met other people?” Petra was still very interested in his love life.

Oluo should have been silently uncomfortable about that. Levi couldn’t tell with a quick glance.

“I’ve met a few people though… There’s someone named Nifa,” Levi said,

“Next time you come here, you’ll take her for a visit? Make sure to introduce us to her?” Petra asked.

“Or maybe next time, it will be us visiting,” Oluo added.

The brief conversation ended soon after, with a few exchanged greetings and a promise to bring Nifa. In case something ever happened between him and NIfa.

By the end of the night, he had made a promise to himself not to use that love alarm to find his next love.

Petra was right, the love alarm could cause unnecessary chaos. Besides, love is a choice right?

***

Levi came back from his very relaxing two week leave to two words that made his stomach turn.

Doctor Zoe. That was what Farlan and Isabel called her.

“Doctor Zoe…” Levi repeated. The words tasted unfamiliar. Suddenly, the road trip, the beach trip and just the quiet meetings in the cafe all seemed like just a fevered dream.

“And she stopped to talk to all of us!” Isabel sang, her eyes filled with wonder. “You should have stayed. I swear, I feel like you would have gotten along. She never stops talking. You two could have talked about the mood alarm for hours.”

“She sounds tiring to be with,” Levi said, an attempt at a halfhearted reply.

Farlan grinned, an alarmingly knowing expression on his face. “Don’t lie, you would have enjoyed at least listening. You’re way more enthusiastic about the mood alarm than we are.”

“I’m just being a good employee.” Levi shook his head, as if that was enough to erase the regret that shoved itself into his throat and down to his chest.

“She really made sure to talk to everyone,” Isabel said. “And she stayed for a few days longer. Maybe the plans changed since she went alone.”

“Wait, she came alone?” Levi said. Don’t regret. Don’t you dare regret leaving.

Farlan nodded in response. “Moblit explained this to us before they came.” He turned to Isabel as if expecting some explanation from her.

“I can’t be too sure either, I’ve only heard a bit about it. And rich people like the Jaegers, they like to keep their personal lives a secret right?” Isabel answered.

Farlan shrugged. “Anyway, from what Moblit told me, they intended to visit all the major customers including our hospital chain. They’ve been planning this tour for months, maybe even years but Doctor Zoe ended up going alone.”

“Did you ever find out why?” Levi kept his voice soft, anything louder and he might just look more invested. He turned back to the unopened tickets on his screen. From his peripherals, he could see Farlan and Isabel exchanging glances.

It was Farlan who spoke up. “I have a theory.”

“Tell me,” Levi said.

“They fought.”

“Okay, couples fight.” Levi continued to click at the tickets, opening them one by one, just to feel productive.

“Yeah, but it must have been a big fight right?” Isabel added. “I did some research on Doctor Zoe after we met her and apparently, they were having problems even years ago. Apparently, there are rumors that her husband bought the love alarm to save their marriage.”

“Where the hell did you get that info?” Farlan sounded incredulous.

Isabel chuckled mischievously. “The dark, dark internet.”

“That can’t be true.” Farlan shook his head in disbelief.

“I can’t really prove it anymore. A lot of the threads online that actually discuss this get taken down by the admin. But I swear, now that I think about it, it does make sense. I read some articles, no one expected Zeke Jaeger to buy the love alarm… Some said he did it to save the love alarm after a major bug showed up that could have prevented PR….Apparently, there was a certain point a few years ago, where there were photos of Doctor Zoe with another man. I tried looking for the photos but I can’t find them anymore.”

“You really got invested in her love life huh?”

Isabel groaned. “I couldn’t help it. She seemed so nice and she talked to us a lot even when we were just support, she took the time to teach us and she’s just so humble…”

“But what if she really did cheat on her husband?” Farlan challenged. “I mean, the rumors have to have been there for a reason right?”

“Do you think she looks like the type to cheat?” Isabel asked. “That very honest and open face?”

Farlan coughed in surprise. “She doesn’t for sure---but rumors don’t come out of nowhere right?”

“You two, go back to work,” Levi said. While the two had been working, he had been assigning tickets to them, an ingenious way to compose himself.

“Wait not yet, what do you think Levi? You might have better intuition than we do.”

“Intuition?” Levi repeated, one eyebrow raised.

“Does she really look like the type to cheat?” Farlan asked.

Levi continued to stare at the screen, not willing to risk showing them whatever expression played at his face then. “I didn’t meet her. You two did so you’re better qualified to answer that question. Tell me, does she look like the type to cheat?”

Farlan paused for a second, then narrowed his eyes at Levi. “I think I have a question which you might be more qualified to answer,” Farlan said. “You’re pretty good at finding bugs. Have you ever done research on the love alarm bug? What do you think the bug was… The one which made Zeke Jaeger buy the app?”

“I don’t think there was a bug,” Levi said.

“What do you mean?” Farlan pressed.

“Get back to work you two.” Levi kept his voice firm, loud and authoritative. Something he would have rather not done, if it hadn’t been for the weight which came with what should have been a light piece of gossip, and his whittling ability to keep a stoic demeanor.

The deep dark internet. Levi watched his two companions. Their eyes were once again fixed on the screen, Farlan’s fingers were flying over the keyboard, Isabel was playing with some test device.

Deep enough at work for Levi to take his own quick break. He opened an incognito tab and put his headphones on.

One video or one article, and he’d get back to work. He found an interview, the opening questions had been the same familiar ones Farlan had been playing on speaker months ago.

He played the first few questions at twice the speed. He knew the answers already.

What inspired you to make the mood alarm?

“Love alarm… Codes… Yadayadayada…” Levi muttered just a loud enough for himself. Hange had been careful not to mention anything about a developer. He could see the way she had shifted gazes for just a second, seeming uncomfortable.

He couldn’t blame her. Isabel had said so herself, in the deep dark internet, maybe there were rumors of an affair.

And some journalists were aware.

Personal Life? Around the point that someone asked about her personal life, Levi slowed the clip down. They had timed it, to the exact point where Hange had tensed up and looked away for just a second.

“Can you tell us about your relationship with Zeke Jaeger? How has it been?”

“How did you feel when you realized he bought you the love alarm? Is it true he bought it to win you back?”

Hange was admirably professional about it. “We’re digressing now,” she said with a light hearted tone, a laugh which seemed more rehearsed than actually Hange’s.

Is it true you had an affair with another man? It wasn’t loud enough for Hange to have heard it, just a sound among others. When Levi had been looking for that question and it rang more loudly for him. He rewinded the video a few times just to make sure.

What the hell… No we didn’t… We. Didn’t. Have. An. Affair.

“Levi, are you okay?” Isabel asked

“What?”

“You were talking to yourself just now.”

Levi quickly closed the tab as Isabel looked over his shoulder. “Nothing, just looking at tickets,” he said. He went back to their ticketing application, opened a few more tickets and decided to table the research until later that evening.

***

The deep, dark internet.

With his own personal wifi and his own VPN, Levi had more wriggle room to dig deeper.

There was a mention of a fight, a marriage on the rocks, and the rumors only grew from there. The more Levi found, the more courage he mustered. It turned out, the process of scrolling through threads, joining chat groups had been nothing but liberating.

Liberating but infuriating.

The internet was an aggregate of bad takes and the occasional good one. From bad takes came horrible half baked rumors.

I swear, if they end up divorcing…

Jaeger should have dumped her fucking ass from the start.

Slut…

Whore…

Hange Zoe. Fucking gold digger.

There were rumors that she had manipulated Zeke for the money. Rumors that she had only married him to complete her PhD.

Levi quickly went through those.

Some of the people were nice though and Levi read those comments a little more slowly.

The mood alarm was Zoe’s deal.

The money Jaeger put into was a donation.

If they’re not happy, let them divorce.

And there were videos, particularly zoomed videos in events of Zeke and Hange in conventions and conferences, the latest one only a few months ago. Before Hange  had visited the hospital.

In the most recent one, they were talking, just at the corner behind the stage, still visible from the camera. Levi rewinded the video again and again just to confirm their identity.

The Hange on the screen seemed indignant. Zeke had pulled her in by the waist, she pulled away. In response, Zeke had once again gone for her hands, pulling her towards him.

Just like back in the school gym.

It was different, that time in the gym Hange had been accepted yet determined at the same time. The Hange on the video, or the least, the one he could make out from the flailing of her hands, the stamping of her food on the ground, the moment she had pulled away then turned away was telling.

Hange wasn’t accepting anything anymore.

Levi scrolled through the comments.

If Hange Zoe divorces Zeke Jaeger… If she keeps possession of the mood alarm... she’s a gold digger.

She needed Jaeger funds to complete PhD… It’s Zeke Jaeger’s PhD not hers lmao XD

It was around the fifth most liked comment when Levi closed the tab, not bothering to bookmark the site. That was enough internet toxicity for the day.

***

“You’re transferring me?” Levi had ended up preempting the discussion.

Nifa and Moblit looked at each other, then back at him. Then Nifa nodded.

Moblit shook his head, creating some confusion. “No, we wanted your opinion on this first. The city we’ll be transferring you to isn’t very… convenient.”

“But you will be paid more,” Nifa said.

Since no one actually wants to live there. A fact no one actually admitted during those types of meetings but Levi had been in corporate long enough to know.

“And it’s just for a few years,” Moblit said, his tone, a tone of reassurance more than actual confidence. “Our hospital got special permission to do testing and research and we’ll need one support guy there. This is an important project for our hospital so...”

Levi had done a quick google search of the city under the table, a name he never heard of, and just the picture of a very sleepy town with not many buildings with even two floors was indicative. There was a reason why Moblit and Nifa seemed uncertain about a transfer.

There wasn’t much he did anyway in that city. How could moving away be any different?

“What’s this research about?” Levi asked.

Moblit responded to that more clearly and more confidently. “We’re planning to do further research, create programs for kids who grew up in difficult households to help them process emotions better. We’re starting with a few kids, on a small research facility up north… And having someone on call would be helpful.”

It didn’t take much to convince Levi after that. “There isn’t much for me to miss here anyway.” Really, he would have taken that transfer even without the pay raise.

***

There was peace and quiet which came with living in the middle of nowhere. Peace and quiet had a way of making Levi unbearably bored yet at the same time more perceptive as to why the hell no one wanted to live there in the first place.

Winters were cruel, with snow piling up meters high. Even in the summers, the sky was overcast and in all four seasons, the air still found a way to be suffocatingly dry.

Someone mentioned something about lake effects and something about rain shadows, and Levi couldn’t really tell which one was it. He wasn’t a scientist after all.

He was human though, a very simple minded human with no science degree. So he let the weather affect his moods, maybe even affect his long term philosophies in life. His current environment was too different from the bustling city he grew up in, or the other urban jungle he had lived the past five years of his life, he deemed his new home, the epitome of the middle of nowhere.

It was completely unfamiliar and by some psychological consequence to Levi, it was too far flung from his old life for Levi to even entertain anything about his old life, beyond work. So it became easier to take a more pragmatic approach at reminiscing.

A few months into his transfer, he had even started reading articles on Zeke and Hange again.

Billionaire Zeke Jaeger finalizes divorce would Mood Alarm founder Hange Zoe.

Then the comments section:

That was fast.

I knew it, Zoe’s a gold digger.

There was the string of names, whore, sluts, cheaters and gold diggers that never made too much sense as sentences. So Levi quickly closed the tab.

You actually did it. He thought to himself. And when he thought a little longer about it, he realized he did feel happy for her.

Happy? Sad? Disappointed? Out of curiosity, he opened his own mood alarm and clicked activate. It glowed with a bright green.

He could have been happier.

Levi decided to blame the sky for his fickle mood. That grey view that stretched far unimpeded by any of the surrounding low rising buildings, only ending by the mountains that seemed hundreds of miles away.

The surrounding mountains and the large lake followed him to work. An overly scenic landscape that reminded him, the train back to the capital only came once a day, the train that passed through the next major city only passed three times a day.

And fucking hell, train tickets were expensive.

By some modern day definition, Levi really was trapped in the middle of nowhere.

The weather only made him more cynical, yet angrier at the tasteless comments under the news article on Zeke and Hange’s divorce. As he neared the research center, he ended up tabling that reflection with one sentence, something comforting yet oddly depressing.

Hange wouldn’t look for me. Then he brushed it away violently soon after. The audacity of even considering the prospect that he was important enough for her to want to search for him. Why would Hange care where he is?

The fact that Hange was followed by the press while he was trapped in the middle of nowhere was indicative enough. They were from two completely different worlds.

***

It may have taken months more, but what Levi clocked to a ‘bout of wanderlust’ eventually settled. He found, keeping himself busy with the right work had done wonders to placate the turmoil inside him.

Keeping busy somehow made it easier to sit up and get ready for work. It meant managing to desensitize his own moods to the weather around him.

Most importantly, it meant seeing some connection with the world, some sliver of motivation to go the extra mile with the people who worked with.

“Early as always, Ackerman.” Same greeting everyday.

“Morning to you too, Onyankopon,” Levi responded as he entered the irsmall office.

Onyankopon was a companion  duringearly in the mornings, lunch times, late afternoons and sometimes, even the dinners when he would invite Levi out for a drink in the only bar for miles around.

Still, it made life remotely eventful when the only changing things had been the weather and his work.

And his work was very eventful.

“Uncle Levi! Did you find any bugs yesterday?” Just like every other morning, the two kids would burst through the door. Or more specifically, the brunette was always the one bursting through the door, the blonde just followed.

“Gaby, you might be bothering them,” Falco said. He said that at least three times a week.

Levi had never been the type anyway to tell them he didn’t mind their morning visits. It always meant something to look forward to.

“Nothing so far,” Levi said. He looked towards Onyakopon, the one in charge of reporting issues. “Hopefully.”

Onyankopon raised his hands in defense. “Don’t get mad at me, get mad at the devs who created the mood alarm in the first place."

Levi was constantly mad at the devs anyway, if he considered that constant state of self loathing. Working on the mood alarm as support had only made Levi realize how many shortcuts he had taken into making that damn application years ago.

“There’s nothing today,” Levi said as he looked at the two kids. “But I could give you a quick lesson,” he added. He couldn’t say no to the crestfallen faces of the two kids.

He dragged one seat next to him and guided Gaby to one of them and Falco to his own seat. “When I want to look for errors in the code, I look here first.” It was a terribly boring lesson, a useless one. Support 101. At the least, the kids seemed satisfied. “If I right click here, and then inspect, I can see what this website is made out of.”

Gaby let out a breath, a mix between a ‘wow’ and an ‘oh.’ “I can’t read it.”

“It’s another language,” Levi explained. “Computers don’t understand our language. So we have to learn another language to be able to talk to them. And when we’re able to tell them what we want, they’ll do things for us, things we can’t do ourselves.”

Gaby had asked more questions after that. Falco had asked his own too, albeit hesitantly.

The difference between the network and console tabs, the meanings of the strange brackets, what happens if they just aimlessly click…

That morning session ended with less than half the questions answered, and a promise to teach them more the next morning. Like every other day before, at eight in the morning, Onyankopon brought them to the activity room and Levi was left alone in the office.

There weren’t many people in the research center, only five employees in total. After all, there were only ten to twenty kids who came and went every day, a very manageable number for five people. He and Onyankopon shared an office and with Onyankopon busy a good chunk of the day, Levi was left alone.

With his own efficient working methods and his outstanding ability to quickly pick out the bugs, Levi was usually free for a cumulated five hours a day.

When he first started working there, his five hour long breaks consisted of reading novels or whatever stupid article came up on his timeline. He could have taken longer breaks yet chose to spend them as short sporadic bouts of inactivity

By spreading out periods of inactivity, Levi managed to somehow pacify the guilt at ‘doing nothing’ while being paid for the eight hours a day. There were times, it was strong, remnants maybe of his stint with the love alarm, barely taking leaves, willingly putting him through the pain of overtime.

Some days, they were particularly strong, sometimes incomprehensible that Levi suspected they could have been related to the burning curiosity, the burning attachment to his own application that never abated.

A burning attachment, a natural need to be productive eventually resulted in sporadic bouts of unproductivity spent just testing the mood alarm all for a brief look into his own emotions.

Even when he wasn’t feeling anything in particular, the application continued to glow colors, just flitting between greens and blues. They could have been yellows or oranges maybe, when Onyankopon or Gabi or Falco visited. He had never been the type to wear his heart on his sleeve though and thus, had never opened it with them around.

That day wasn’t any different. Alone in the office, he opened it again, held it in his hands and watched the colored blobs swim amongst each other, mix amongst one another, then disappear.

Blue or Green? That day it was blue. Why blue and why not green? He could never ask. ‘How’ was always an easier question to answer. He only had to connect his phone to the PC then boot up the dashboard.

His next break, he decided to try a visualization exercise, like every other time before.

Memories never seemed to do the trick. He’d take a risk and dive deep, into his memories with Hange, his anger at the situation, the loss of a life before. Yet it all came out greens and blues. The alarm rang, an almost deafening sound in the silent room and for a split second, it had Levi attentive and a little paranoid. Levi knew though, with the thick concrete walls around him, it was a sound just for him.

He connected his phone to the dashboard and booted the PC again.

There were numbers. He switched to a bar graph view, noting how there were terms, hormones and chemicals he could only barely make sense of. But the blue and the green bars higher than usual yet still very low were signs in themselves.

That morning was a normal morning. And every morning since he built that habit had been a normal morning.

The only thing which ended up different about that day was when footsteps sounded just outside the door. If Levi had been listening closely, he would have been able to point out, those weren't a rhythm of footsteps he was particularly privy too.

But normal mornings tended to desensitize people. Footsteps weren’t particularly interesting either.

In a town with only a few hundred people, it would most likely be someone who already lived there. He continued to work. He disconnected his phone from the dashboard and played with the mood alarm in his own phone again.

The door clicked open behind him, slowly enough for the creak to sound, then fast enough for the slam to come right after yet gently.

Onyankopon always opened the door a little wider, always slamming the door behind him and in between, there was always a greeting. If Levi had been more aware of his surroundings, maybe the lack of all that could have peaked his interest.

In the grand scheme of things though, the door slamming wasn’t anything particularly interesting. Levi continued to sit and stare at his phone.

“Levi Ackerman.”

A voice in an empty room though, was always an interesting thing. By some natural inclination towards voices, any presence in a room that was always his by mid morning, Levi was listening.

Making sense of the voice was a surprisingly slow process. The mood alarm reacted first.

The alarm sounded.

A wave climbed from his chest up until his neck, there was a bristle at the back of his neck, a tickle at his ears, then something pricked at his eyes. He looked down at the alarm before he could completely understand. The colors continued to swim then mix.

They always disappeared and finalized the reading in five seconds.

A second or two passed, and the colors still didn’t look at all in a hurry to disappear.

You’re going crazy Levi. He took a deep breath. He was dreaming. Because what the fuck. Of course she wouldn’t be here. She had an international company to run.

“Levi…” The voice sang. “That’s you right?”

Don’t look back.

“Or maybe there are just a lot of developers named Levi in this world… “ The footsteps were only getting closer. “Developers who are just really good at using the mood alarm.” Then the voice was right next to him.

When she had settled on that seat right at his peripherals, he couldn’t exactly chalk it up to a fevered dream. The mood alarm in his hands continued to ring. He could have sworn at least five seconds had passed. Yet the colors never disappeared, countless colors still swimming around on the interface as the mood alarm continued to read his emotions.

Levi had never been a master of articulation. The war of colors, the chaos on the phone were the best visual representation. He struggled to find the right words, but she continued to stare from his peripherals, her face many things at once.

Apologetic? Expectant?

“It is you,” she said, triumph and relief apparent in her tone.

That only pissed Levi off more. Another emotion added to his boiling pot. Eventually Levi thought it necessary to respond. With too little time, too little mindspace to even attempt to articulate, Levi kept himself to three words, the only three which could have meant everything at once.

“What the fuck.”

In response, she let out a soft laugh. “Are you crying?”

Crying? Now that Levi did think about it, there had been a crack in her voice too. Levi looked up to see her, smiling. Her eyes were smiling too. Then he followed the tear streak that barely grazed the side of her lip.

There was enough time, enough silence for Levi to gather himself. To stare at the reading on the application that couldn’t seem to decide what emotion Levi was feeling.

With enough self discipline, enough concentration, Levi managed to speak. “Hange, if you ask people why they’re crying, you’re just gonna make it worse.”

***

There was only one tea shop in the town, a tea shop which naturally, Levi had chosen as his favorite hang out spot.

Over the months, he had grown familiar with it and in turn, it had grown to become an intimate friend. An intimate friend he had never expected to ever introduce to Hange.

Onyankopon and Moblit had joined them for tea though, and suddenly, Hange didn’t feel like Hange. It could have been the way she shifted to an ‘all business’ demeanor or maybe a part of him was still trying to rationalize what he had deemed to be a very irrational thought.

Maybe he had imagined visiting the cafe with Hange a few times. The realist inside him though, had always believed it to be impossible. At that moment, the dreamer inside him was still taking its victory lap.

“You should have told us you’d be coming. We could have set up something better than late afternoon tea,” Onyankopon said. Either way, he seemed very happy to see them.

Moblit took a sip from his cup then revealed an apologetic smile underneath as he put the cup down. “Apologies for visiting all of a sudden. Doctor Zoe is a very impulsive person.”

Hange nodded. “I hope you don’t mind. As soon as I heard about this, I hopped on the next plane just to get here as soon as possible,” she said “I’m hoping to start something like this in the hospitals back home.”

Moblit put his cup down. “Right, I never got to properly introduce you to Levi.” He turned to Onyankopon then to Levi. “But I’m sure you’ve had a fair share of introductions… You did barge into his office this morning.” He had an apologetic look on his face.

“Hey, Doctor Zoe just wanted to see how we were using the software,” Onyankopon said in Hange’s defense. “I’m more than honored to see that the founder of the mood alarm is taking the time to even wander around our facility.”

Moblit cleared his throat. “Anyway, Levi, this is Doctor Hange Zoe, the founder of the mood alarm application. She visited our main hospital a year back but if I remember correctly, you were on leave right?”

“On a personal leave,” Levi clarified. He couldn’t find much else to say. He took a long sip of tea.

“This is Levi Ackerman,” Moblit said. “One of our best in IT support. He learned how to use your application pretty fast.”

“Yes…” Hange said. “And ever since you told me about him, I’ve been very excited to meet him.” Her grin only got wider as she studied his features, her eyes giving him a good once over. “I guess that’s the reason I ended up taking my own tour of the center while you too were catching up. I wanted to see your genius IT support in action,” she joked.

It was almost unbelievable that that morning, Hange had showed a completely different side to him. She had wiped her own tears pretty fast, shifting her expression to something very professional as soon as Onyankopon and Moblit had entered the office just that morning.

The whole afternoon, Hange was busy with activities and tours of the town, Levi busy with his own work. They barely got to talk. Fortunately, that had allowed Levi time to compose himself, enough to keep a straight face when Onyankopon had invited them over for some tea.

Then and there, there were conversations of partnerships and business, almost reminiscent to whatever bullshit he had to deal with in his old company. But this conversation had Hange, and Hange had shifted her gaze towards him enough times for Levi to feel it only proper to reciprocate.

“Once this project is over, would you consider letting Levi go?” Hange asked. “I’d love to have him visit our main office, maybe help out with some of our development work.”

Moblit shook his head vigorously. “No hesitation. It always felt like he was overqualified for this type of job.”

“By the way you talk about him, I can tell.” She looked at Levi knowingly, a silent form of communication just between both of them. She turned back to Moblit then Onyankopon, her face once again all business. “There are many things I hope to still improve with this application so any support on research, troubleshooting, development is very much appreciated.”

“What do you suggest?” Moblit asked.

A quick glance at Onyankopon and Levi knew he was asking the same question.

Hange put one finger to her chin in thought “A partnership…”

It looked like they had expected Hange to talk Levi’s ear off non stop about the application. Moblit had mentioned something about going straight home while Hange discussed the partnership with Levi, mentioning bugs, the debugger that had been stuck in the system and the bugs which Levi had been quick to point out.

Levi, being respectful, had only listened.

That was until Onyankopon and Moblit offered to walk ahead, leaving Levi and Hange alone on the red brick road overlooking the large lake.

It was early in the evening but it still felt like late afternoon. The sun never set until seven or eight during the mid months of spring.

Yet, the streets was empty, bereft of anything but the both of them.

With one quick scan of their surroundings, Hange turned back to him, she bit her lip and took a deep breath.

Her demeanor was suddenly a stark contrast with the enthusiastic, eloquent one back at a cafe. The sudden transformation was enough for Levi to tense up,

Hange spoke up. “This town really sleeps early,” she commented. “You're planning on going home now too?”

“I usually go home an hour earlier, especially on weekdays,” Levi responded. “I’m only out at this time because they invited me for late afternoon tea.” Technically it was dinner.

“Do you go home….” Hange started, she paused for a second, a very out-of-place pause. “To anyone?”

It took a lot of effort for Levi to resist choking or even letting out a ghost of a laugh at that question. I’m married to my job. That was the answer that popped into his mind out of instinct.

“Did I make it time?” Hange added a second later, only reminding Levi that he hadn’t even mustered a glimmer of answer.

“Make it in time?” Levi asked, in an attempt to stall for time.

“Petra…”

“She married Oluo.”

Hange didn’t seem satisfied. “Is there someone else…” she pressed. “Someone else...”

Hange started to speak with her hands, gesturing for Levi to ‘go on,’ in some awkward wave of a hand. The first awkward gesture Hange had done since they arrived.

Levi couldn’t help but just appreciate that bout of vulnerability he could pull out of her. “There is,” he said.

Just for a second, Hange’s face fell and for a moment Levi relished it.

“Oh…” Hange turned away. “Then, I should take you home… I’d love to meet her…”

Then suddenly, Levi felt just a little bad for that trick. “I was fucking kidding,” he said.

Hange let out a loud sigh of relief, an ugly huff and she looked away, suddenly self conscious.

Levi had to admit, it was an ugly snort. He was tempted to take a good look at her face, and maybe he had craned his neck as she kept silent for a second longer. “I’m not some idiot who would marry someone just because it’s convenient," he said.

“Give me a break. I just graduated from college when I decided to get married,” Hange said. “Besides, we enjoyed each other’s company.”

“If you chose that type of life, I wouldn’t have stopped you. Besides, you had a lot on the line, your PhD, your mood alarm, the love alarm, your reputation. It wouldn’t have been easy choice to make.”

Hange hummed. “The PhD is done, my reputation, I don’t give too much of a rat’s ass about that. And the mood alarm? That has always been mine. I put my own money into building that business.”

“It definitely wasn’t cheap.”

“It wasn’t,” Hange admitted. “What if I told you, I earned my own capital for building it in one night in a casino.”

Levi's thoughts flew back to the night at the casino. He grinned. “I’d believe you.”

“So the mood alarm is mine and I managed to keep it,” Hange said. “But I never forgot you know... The plans, the codes, they’re all yours.”

“So you did get the email,” Levi said.

Hange nodded. “And the email got me thinking…” she trailed off for what seemed like an eternity.

Levi couldn’t wait. “About what?”

Hange thought for a few seconds longer, putting her hands behind her back. “That ended up one reason why I even considered leaving Zeke,” she said. “He has a different way of loving, I have a different one too. Love is freedom. Love is just trusting. Zeke on the other hand, always likes to play safe, tie people down.”

“What happened to ‘love is a choice?’”

Hange seemed unperturbed. “Love still is a choice.”

“Then why not choose to love Zeke?” Levi challenged.

Hange sighed and put one hand up. “You said it yourself, deciding to leave wouldn’t be an easy decision,” she started. “I considered three things.”

She put one finger up. “Our own views of love. Zeke sees it as a game, as an investment and he approaches it conservatively… On the other hand, I see love and relationships as a form of freedom, a risk. In love, I don't believe in playing to win.”

She put another finger up. “I considered how I was feeling, this really weird feeling, my thoughts on Pemberley then on colors.”

“I thought you didn’t want to be a slave to your emotions.”

Hange shook her head. “I’m not. I approached this methodically. Even before considering my feelings, I considered my circumstances.” She put the third finger up. “I considered the backlash, I considered Zeke’s feelings, dealing with a divorce. And that’s what brought me here, despite the criticism, despite my inability to buy the love alarm and to barely salvage the mood alarm.”

“You still gave in to your emotions.”

Hange nodded. “After thinking long and hard about it, I did. But before that, I weighed all three, and I decided to take the risk.”

“Was it worth it?”

Hange shrugged and she leaned over the rail, seeming mesmerized by the lake. “I won’t know yet but I guess, even when I thought you had someone else…” There was a flash of hurt on her face, enough for Levi to regret playing that little joke on her.

“I don’t have anyone else,” Levi clarified.

Hange continued to speak. “I still thought the risk was worth taking. It would have been unfair to Zeke if I stayed and who am I to stop you if someone makes you feel happy.” She turned back to him. “This is the way I’ll choose to love. I’ll weigh my emotions, my circumstances and my worst case scenarios. Then I decide the most loving thing to do. If I have to take a risk, I take it. And I guess, given all that, looking for you seemed like the correct decision.”

Levi couldn’t stifle that smile any longer, and he hoped somehow, his own words would stop it from getting any wider. “Well, it's too early to tell if it's a good decision.”

Hange opened her phone and opened the application. “Can we try again?”

“You wanna use the love alarm?” Levi asked. “Your ex-husband’s application.”

“It’s still your brainchild,” Hange said as she waited for it to load. She hovered her thumb over it.

“I don’t have it installed,” Levi said.

“I can wait,” Hange said. And there was no room for argument in her voice.

An awkward few minutes as Hange watched him download the application. Levi focused on the loading bar, and luckily, his biometrics were still registered from that brief experiment of a year ago.

“On three…” Hange said, her voice a little stilted.

But they didn’t finish counting or maybe they just counted at completely different paces.

The alarms rang, filling the empty space between them, two rings which never seemed to find a uniform pace. Even with a very dominant fastidious side though, Levi wasn’t thinking too much about such a small detail.

Hange’s was smiling, grinning, or whatever that was called. Her face was a mix between pure ecstasy and pure passion. She wrinkled her eyes at him, her mouth climbed into a grin wider than he had ever been used to.

She let out a loud sigh. “I was fucking scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“That you would have gotten over me… I dunno, thought you might just think love was a choice, and I dunno, stop feeling whatever that love alarm thing was feeling.”

“I don’t think the love alarm works like that,” Levi said. Really, he started to realize he didn’t know how it worked.

Hange shook her head. “I’m probably just overthinking. You know… I learned how to code over the years, talked to a few developers and tried to look into how the application works,” she said.

“Did you find anything?”

“Remember when you told me that the love alarm starts to figure out for its own what love is. It creates its own definition. Something we can’t even comprehend...” Hange was still grinning, her voice coming out as breaths and sometimes sounds.

Still, Levi could comprehend most of it. “You have any theories?” he pressed. Hange always had theories.

“Soulmates? Relationships in a past life?” Hange suggested.

“Well, we can’t really look back at those right?” Levi said. “Well, what else?”

One word, one word out of Hange’s mouth. “Pemberley.”

“Pemberley?” Levi asked. Somehow though as Hange looked back at the lake, up at the sky then at the gaudy main street of that small town. Levi started to understand it himself.

“It’s ugly here,” Levi said. At first he had meant it. As Hange started to look at her surroundings then back at the lake, with a look of wonder in her eyes, Levi was sure he had meant it as a challenge.

“When you’re in love then with the person we love, everywhere starts to feel like Pemberley,” Hange completed a second later.

Does it? And he wondered why the hell, he needed Hange to point it out.

They were in an ugly town, a place people were paid to live in. The sky was constantly overcast. When it wasn’t raining, it was snowing and it snowed six months a year. When it wasn’t snowing or raining, the sky was at least threatening it.

The way that Hange had looked at it with such naive wonder, the way she had just stood there, looking at everything and back at him, Levi couldn’t help but entertain the idea of Pemberley.

Maybe give the colors a chance to show themselves? Hange didn’t say it out loud. In the moment they made eye contact though, Levi couldn’t help but just give that little piece of advice a chance, whether it had been his own or Hange’s.

He looked first at the main road and the red brick path, noting how the gaudy red, worn by the elements more than actual foot traffic seemed to still glow a bright red despite the grey undertones. He then looked to the buildings, varying shades of concrete grey yet ‘the varying shades’ of it seemed to still have some sense of novelty.

He then looked back at the ocean, the dark sky above never allowed it a more beautiful shade of blue, yet the bluish black still continued to glow. The waves only sent glimmers of silver against the dark blue. Then it was only natural that he looked up at the sky, the sky which never allowed any other shade for itself, except on a few select days a year.

The fog blocked whatever green the mountains beyond the lake would have shown him.

Looking back at Hange then back at his surroundings, he started to accept it. There were greens, reds, blues, yellows and every other color in the spectrum. The world glowed with so many colors, so many lights and sounds. His emotions were a whirlwind that spun to whatever rhythm the lights and colors blinked at.

Colors persevered and they’ve always persevered.

Emotions persevered and they’ve always persevered.

Even emotions we don’t understand ourselves. Levi added to himself.

Maybe Hange was right. That was what the love alarm had been trying to show. The one person who made the colors, the emotions all the clearer.

“This is a beautiful place,” Hange said. “And I wouldn’t mind staying here, lay low a bit, just long enough for people to forget the divorce fiasco.”

“There are a few nice places here,” Levi said.

Hange continued to stare.

Why don’t we just live here together right Levi?

I know you, you wouldn’t be able to stay out of the action.

Levi felt almost ashamed at that mystery response that seemed to pop into his head out of nowhere. We can live here long enough to get our shit together. "First things first, let’s discuss this partnership, over tea in my house.”

“Now?” Hange’s widened her eyes. And her eyes were smiling.

“Well, unless you have other plans tonight,” Levi said.

Hange shook her head. “Nothing much…”

They made the whole way back to his home in silence. Surprisingly, Levi preferred it that way. It had been enough for him to appreciate his new comprehension of his surroundings, the small details he hadn't noticed before.

It wasn’t just the view. The rhythm of their footsteps, their uncoordinated breathing, and just the way the trees rustled, the wind blew, always found a way to glow different colors. His emotions, the chaos of every moment after that were also challenging him to find their colors.

And the circumstances that had them locked in his cramped apartment, sitting over tea, with no one else watching, nothing restricting them had Levi reflecting. It probably had Hange reflecting too. They spoke unhindered with just thoughts, expressions and locked gazes.

For one reason or the other, it happened quickly and abruptly, leaving no space or time to comprehend it.

Sitting on his living room sofa right next to her. Hands clasped against the other. Her dry lips were on his.

The magic welling in his chest, the thunder that climbed quickly up his throat, persevering even underneath the grey. They were all screaming at him then, they all glowed colors.

At that moment though, he had been to tired to reflect on it for any longer. He decided to just roll with it.

It was no use making sense of it. After all, life, love and emotions... They were all just complicated that way.

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched (and books I read) this Week #101

First watch: Věra Chytilová’s seminal New Czech Wave Comedy Daisies, done during mid-60′s short window of permissiveness. An irreverent, Richard Lester surrealist romp of two carefree young women who don’t abide by any rules, except their own whims. Senseless mayhem, nihilist slapstick and constant eating, ending with a Mad Hatter Feast of pie fights and destruction. The Soviet Czech government banned the film because it promoted ‘Food waste”. 5/10.

🍿  

Fellini's Casanova, another of his 1970′s bloated, over-the-top, exaggerated Baroque classics. The story of the always horny, lecherous cocksman, whose life avocation was to fuck anything female, be it young, old, hunchbacks, ugly, fat, thin, even mechanical dolls. Traveling all over Europe with his sexually-stimulated mechanical bird and ridiculous girdle in pursuit of female benefactors, but who longed to be considered a serious intellectual, and not just a famous womanizer. The infamous Chesty Morgan was cast in the film, but her scenes were deleted from the final cut. 2nd re-watch after 40 years. (Photo Above). 3/10. 

🍿

A blind viewing of an erotic Japanese New Wave film I never heard of, This Transient Life, part of the unique director Akio Jissoji’s ‘Buddhist Trilogy’. Jissoji apparently was known for his distinctive visual style which he used in horror films, children television and Sadomasochistic adult movies.

This beautiful but controversial 1970 story deals with Buddhist thought, family roles, religious art, obsession - and incest. It tells of an amoral young nihilist who fathers a child with his sister, even as he flirts with moral and philosophical values. Gorgeous black & white photography, constant camera movement - and social transgressiveness. It also touches on impotence, voyeurism, threesomes, suicide and murder. It ends with a climatic philosophical “duel” between a Buddhist monk and the ‘hero’, and a surrealistic dream scene involving a giant stone carp.

What a complex, strange experience - The surprising find of the week!

🍿

2 different foreign TV series:

🍿 The gift is a supernatural/fantasy Turkish TV series from 2019. I was under the influence when I saw the trailer for it (it felt longer), and also later when I watched the first episode. So I thought that this was one of the most visually-stunning productions I’ve seen in a long time, with superb stagecraft, surprising imagination, sophistication and modern uniqueness (quotes from my notes), original like ‘Close encounters of the third kind’. But as I watched the rest of season One, I realized that it was just an ordinary TV mystery of the Netflix kind. With lovely actress Beren Saat.

Kids, don’t do drugs. 2/10 

🍿 Marseille, a French TV series about power, corruption and revenge in a mayoral succession struggle. Starring Gérard Depardieu (”The second highest grossing actor in the history of French Cinema behind Louis de Funès”, but also alleged-rapist).

I was attracted to it because of the mysterious Egyptian ear worm cover Ya Sidi, to which I listened dozens of times in this past week. However, of the series itself, I only watched the first episode.

🍿

See how they run, another Agatha Christie adjacent murder mystery, a pleasant new comedy starring the always-lovely Saoirse Ronan (as well as Harris Dickinson who I saw just last week in ‘Triangle of sadness’). A meta-classic British whodunnit playing around the 100th performance of ‘The Mousetrap’ in 1953. 7/10     

🍿

My 3rd and 4th films by Ira Sachs (both with Greg Kinnear):

🍿 I was compelled to re-visit his low-key Frankie, the story of famous actress Isabelle Huppert who invited her family to a last Portuguese vacation, before she succumbs to cancer. It was my ‘Best film of the week’ about 5 months ago, but I now read it received mixed reviews upon its 2019 premiere. I can somehow see why: It’s a slow and melancholic art film, and the dynamics between the diverse characters are not very deeply explored. Still, the Sintra locations are magnificent and the final scene at the mountain top is transcendent.

🍿 Little Men is a quiet, humane drama about friendship of two 13-year-old boys in Brooklyn. It is now my favorite of his films. The boy who played the role of Tony, 14-year-old Michael Barbieri, was tremendous.

🍿 

The new She said retells how the two female New York Times investigating reporters exposed Harvey Weinstein’s decade-long sexual abuse, thus launching the #metoo movement around the world. I wanted to like it very much, but like most ‘Based on a recent true story’ it started badly and only slightly improved. I hate the trumps, the Weinsteins and the Epsteins of the world with a passion, and I liked the fact that this was a feminist film done with mostly women at the helm, but ‘All the President’s Men’ it was not. Even though it was clearly an attempt to frame it as such.

🍿

Orson Welles X 2:

🍿 First watch: The stranger, Welles third feature film (after ‘Citizen Kane’ and ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’). He directed this Noir thriller to prove that he could make commercially viable films, and it did become his biggest box office success. It's a story about a Nazi refugee who hides in a small Connecticut town, and it was the first commercial film to use documentary footage from the Nazi concentration camps. Disappointingly mediocre. 3/10.

🍿“... How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? This is Orson Welles. I am speaking for the Mercury Theatre, and what follows is supposed to advertise our first motion picture..”

The Citizen Kane trailer, a four-minute, self-contained, "making of" promotional featurette, released in 1940 to promote his first film. Unlike other standard theatrical trailers of the era, it did not feature any footage of the actual film itself, but was a wholly original pseudo-documentary piece. It is considered to be a standalone short film, rather than a conventional "trailer".

🍿

Sr., a loving documentary by Robert Downey Jr. about his father, underground filmmaker, Robert Downey Sr. Filmed in the last 3 years of his life, so more than a family portrait and meditation about life, death and art, it’s also a tribute to saying goodbye. 5/10.

🍿   

A short: A lock of Walt Whitman’s hair, Jack Kerouac’s boots, and Virginia Woolf’s cane are just a few of the items of literary paraphernalia available at The New York Public Library’s Collection of Weird Objects.

🍿    

Central Park, my first book by French best-seller author Guillaume Musso, a thriller about a French policewoman who wakes up in NYC from a coma, handcuffed to a jazz musician she never met with the whole world after them. Poorly-written and empty-calories, it’s obvious that it was written to be optioned as a movie. I picked it up at a ‘Free Library’ stall at the University Train Station in Tel-Aviv, and read it in a quick tortured go on the plane back. 1/10.

🍿

(My complete movie list is here)

[definitesolutions]

How to Remove RUN history using Command Prompt in Windows 10

In this video tutorial you will learn how to Remove Run History using CMD in Windows 10. 

The Start Menu at Windows 10 is totally redesigned as compare to Previous Operating Systems of Microsoft. In the New interface of Windows 10, the search history in RUN windows doesn't get removed by itself. When you open RUN windows, and you tap on arrow to open a drop down list, the list of commands you see their, that's called RUN history. To remove the RUN history you just need to run simple command at Command Prompt. 

Follow the steps shown below to Remove Run history using Command Prompt in Windows 10: 

1. Open Start Menu then type cmd, right click on it then click on Run as Administrator 

2. Now type below command then press Enter: 

reg delete HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RunMRU /va 

type above command as it is 

3. After press Enter, it will ask you for confirmation, so press y then press Enter to execute command. 

Now command is successfully executed, then open RUN box again to check history. 

[loadingfunding482]

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If you enter the wrong passcode too many times, you’ll see a message that your device is disabled. If you can’t remember your passcode, you'll need to erase your iPhone, which deletes your data and settings, including the passcode.

If you backed up your iPhone, you can restore your data and settings after restoring your iPhone. If you never backed up your iPhone before you forgot your passcode, you won't be able to save the data on your iPhone. Follow the steps below to remove your passcode.

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You need a computer to follow the steps below. If you don't have a computer, borrow one from a friend, or go to an Apple Retail Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider.

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Remove the passcode on iPhone X or later, iPhone SE (2nd generation), iPhone 8, and iPhone 8 Plus

Make sure that your iPhone isn't connected to your computer.

Press and hold the Side button and one of the volume buttons until the power off slider appears. Drag the slider to turn off your iPhone. Then connect your iPhone to your computer while holding the Side button. Keep holding the Side button until you see the recovery mode screen.

If you backed up your iPhone, after you remove the passcode, restore your data and settings.

Remove the passcode on iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus

Make sure that your iPhone isn't connected to your computer.

Press and hold the Side button until the power off slider appears. Drag the slider to turn off your iPhone. Then connect your iPhone to your computer while holding the Volume down button. Keep holding the Volume down button until you see the recovery mode screen.

If you backed up your iPhone, after you remove the passcode, restore your data and settings.

Remove the passcode on iPhone SE (1st generation), and iPhone 6s and earlier

Make sure that your iPhone isn't connected to your computer.

Press and hold the Side (or Top) button until the power off slider appears. Drag the slider to turn off your iPhone. Then connect your iPhone to your computer while holding the Home button. Keep holding the Home button until you see the recovery mode screen.

If you backed up your iPhone, after you remove the passcode, restore your data and settings.

Phone Password Breaker For Mac Os

Restore your iPhone

Iphone Password Breaker Free

Locate your iPhone on your computer. When you see the option to Restore or Update, choose Restore. The Finder or iTunes will download software for your iPhone. If it takes more than 15 minutes, your iPhone will exit recovery mode, and you'll need to select your iPhone model above and repeat the steps to remove the passcode.

Wait for the process to finish. Then set up and use your iPhone.

Still need help?

If you can't update or restore your iPhone using recovery mode, or you can't use recovery mode because of broken or stuck buttons,contact Apple Support. Then follow the steps to set up service for your iPhone.

If you're asked to enter your Apple ID and password while you're setting up your iPhone, learn what to do.

[digitaltvtunerdevice]

What is Digital TV Tuner Device Registration Application?

In the Registry Editor window, navigate to this cope with  and look for the folder containing your digital TV tuner then delete it. Once you’re accomplished, restart your PC.

This app is required to look at and file premium virtual cable channels from your cable provider. It’s a scheduled assignment that runs every time you open Windows Media Center.

Without this app, you can not use your PC as a TV. This little hardware cum software facilitates your PC to acquire cable alerts and then show photos. However, occasionally Digital Tuner Device blunders becomes stressful by way of slowing your PC.

That’s where you can without problems restore the virtual TV tuner device. The strategies defined on this submit will assist you plenty.

Every Windows 10 person has reputedly been faced with one errors or another, which they understand not anything approximately. Well, there are lots of built-in Windows apps that strength your PC to feature as it's far doing – you can now not recognise, but these apps are crucial and shouldn’t be tampered with. If you’ve ever come across “Digital TV Tuner Device Registration Application” in your Windows 10 PC and puzzled what it may be, this article explains everything you should understand approximately this Windows service.

Digital TV tuner app or ehPrivJob.Exe (procedure call) is a built-in history service app for Windows Media Center (WMC). It sincerely runs a scheduled assignment for the WMC. If you’re capable to look at cable TV right in your laptop – this home windows app is definitely the brain at the back of that.

The digital TV tuner device registration software lets you movement premium cable TV channels, and that’s just its work. If this built-in app is eliminated or disabled to your computer, you could locate it difficult (if no longer not possible) to circulation cable TV channels on PC.

Nevertheless, antivirus programs (normally Avast) do see the digital TV tuner device registration software as an app that slows down your laptop’s performance; accordingly, suggesting that you put the app to sleep or prevent it unexpectedly. Well, preventing this app does improve your PC’s performance, and this text explains how you could do that, following some simple steps.

Does this application gradual down PC performance?

Most historical past Windows app/services do gradual down a pc’s overall performance, and this app isn't exempted. However, it's miles important to know that the virtual TV tuner tool registration software runs in the historical past to appearance up virtual cable tuners that may be attached to your laptop.

This automated movement can be essential to a few Windows PC users who may not continually recall to release manual scans for the digital cable tuners connected on their computer systems.

Is this app harmful to my pc?

Basically, this app – digital TV tuner tool registration application does no longer pose any safety risk. But its ability to purpose a laptop to perform sluggishly seam to overcompensate its usefulness.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Soundtrack Revealed – Listen to the Songs Here

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The Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack is, much like the game itself, poised to be one of the best of the year.

While composers Marcin Przybyłowicz, P. T. Adamczyk, Paul Leonard-Morgan are looking to surpass The Witcher 3‘s incredible original score, the real story of Cyberpunk 2077‘s soundtrack may be the game’s GTA-like radio stations and their lineups of licensed songs.

Of course, you may not initially realize that Cyberpunk 2077‘s soundtrack is loaded with licensed hits as a quick Spotify search for in-game bands like Window Weather, Bara Nova, and Tainted Overlord yields no relevant results. Well, that’s because all of the bands in Cyberpunk 2077 go by pseudonyms designed to better match the lore and style of the Cyberpunk universe. For instance, Run the Jewels is “Yankee and the Brave,” Nina Kraviz is “Bara Nova,” and Converge is “Shattered Void.”

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Since many of the bands in the game wrote original songs for Cyberpunk 2077, the majority of the game’s tracks are unfortunately unavailable to listen to. The very good news is that the Cyberpunk 2077 team has already released the following playlist that includes six of the original songs you’ll find in the full game:

CD Project Red will also release two volumes of music from the upcoming game which will feature the following tracks:

Radio Volume 1:

01. Run the Jewels (Yankee and the Brave): “No Save Point” 02. SOPHIE / Shygirl (Clockwork Venus): “BM” 03. Le Destroy (The Bait): “Kill Kill” 04. Yugen Blakrok (Gorgon Madonna): “Metamorphosis” 05. Konrad Oldmoney (7 Facas): “Dinero” [ft. Cerbeus] 06. Deadly Hunta / Maro Music (Footage Missing): “When It’s War’ 07. The Armed (Homeschool Dropouts): “Night City Aliens” 08. Converge (Shattered Void): “I Won’t Let You Go” 09. Aligns (Rubicones): “Friday Night Fire Fight” 10. Tomb Mold (Bacillus): “Adaptive Manipulator” 11. Deafkids (Tainted Overlord): “Selva Pulsátil”

Radio Volume 2:

01. Namakopuri (Us Cracks): “PonPon Shit” 02. Grimes (Lizzy Wizzy): “Delicate Weapon” 03. Rat Boy (IBDY): “Who’s Ready for Tomorrow” 04. HEALTH (Window Weather): “Major Crimes” 05. Rosa Walton (Hallie Coggins): “I Really Want to Stay at Your House” 06. Nina Kraviz (Bara Nova): “Surprise Me, I’m Surprised Today” 07. Raney Shockne (Point Break Candy): “Hole in the Sun” [f. COS and Conway] 08. Gazelle Twin (Trash Generation): “History” 09. Poloz (Tinnitus): “On My Way to Hell”

Cyberpunk 2077 is clearly loaded with electric sounds, but the game’s composers have stated that they’re actually going for a “90s attitude” inspired by “Rage Against the Machine, Beastie Boys, Nine Inch Nails” and others. It’s a fascinating approach that should result in an undeniably memorable soundtrack that so happens to double as a fantastic examination of this universe and how the music scene in this world arrived at the point we find it in at the start of the game.

One other thing that’s certainly worth pointing out is that Cyberpunk 2077 will feature a unique streaming mode that changes the licensed tracks in the game to unlicensed songs. This move seems to be in response to the recent DMCA takedowns that have impacted Twitch and forced many streamers to delete their old videos to avoid copyright claims typically related to licensed music played on-stream and in games.

The post Cyberpunk 2077 Soundtrack Revealed – Listen to the Songs Here appeared first on Den of Geek.

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How To Download On Puffin Browser

Puffin Browser Download (2020 Latest) for Windows 10, 8, 7. Get Puffin Browser full installation 64/32 bit for your windows PC. Download in (41.2 MB) Safe & Secure from getsoftonic.com. Latest Browsers and Plugins software category wih new features to download for Windows 7 / Windows 7 64 / Windows 8 / Windows 8 64 / Windows 10 / Windows 10 64 by CloudMosa Inc..

Puffin Browser Installation Guide for Firestick & Fire TV For the installation of Puffin TV on our Firestick 4K we will be using both Downloader and the alternative app store Aptoide TV. Note: Since the Puffin Browser is optimized for Android TV devices, we suggest trying the Amazon Silk Browser on a Firestick/Fire TV for better performance. How to download and install Puffin Browser for Mac using PC. When downloading the Puffin browser for Mac, then you must come to know some of the main features of it. So we are going to let you know the actionable tips regarding downloading the browser below: Install the android emulator either Nox Player or the BlueStacks. Puffin Browser Installation Guide for Firestick & Fire TV For the installation of Puffin TV on our Firestick 4K we will be using both Downloader and the alternative app store Aptoide TV. Note: Since the Puffin Browser is optimized for Android TV devices, we suggest trying the Amazon Silk Browser on a Firestick/Fire TV for better performance.

Puffin Browser setup technical informations

This technical details better to read before you install the Puffin Browser on your PC.

filename : Puffin Browser Download (2020 Latest) for Windows 10, 8, 7 file size : (41.2 MB) Safe & Secure Developer : CloudMosa Inc. version : Puffin Browser 8.2.1.666 LATEST category : Browsers and Plugins Operating system : Windows 7 / Windows 7 64 / Windows 8 / Windows 8 64 / Windows 10 / Windows 10 64

Puffin Browser sort review

Puffin Browser speeds up Internet browsing by shifting the workload from the resource-limited devices to the cloud servers, and resource-demanding webpages can run super-fast on your devices. While most browsers depend on the limited local computing power to render web pages, Puffin Internet Browser can leverage the unlimited cloud computing power to do everything better and faster. In the following video, you will find how Puffin and the built-in Edge browser perform on a commodity PC.

Web Browser, with its revolutionary JavaScript engine and cloud computing technology, utilizes servers to preprocess and compress web pages. You can surf wherever you want and leave without any trail with the built-in incognito mode. All traffic from browsing the app to the server is encrypted. It’s safe to use public insecure WiFi through It.

Safeguard your devices Whenever a zero-day attack emerges, all devices running browsers other than the program are vulnerable to cyber exploits. Since your browsing sessions are in the cloud, your devices won’t be affected by zero-day attacks.

Avoid cybersecurity threats Whenever a browsing session ends, everything is purged and destroyed on servers. You are always in a clean state and isolated from potential threats on the web.

Boost performance with the cloud rendering engine Regardless of your device specifications, the tool leverages the cloud computing resources on servers and supercharges the browsing performance.

FAQ:

How To Download Videos On Puffin Browser

How does Incognito browsing work? When you browse under Incognito mode, the web browser does not save your browsing history or any information entered in forms. Cookies and site data are deleted when you leave Incognito mode. Please note that Incognito mode is only available when the Cloud Server is turned on.

Wrong Geo-location The app leverages servers in the USA and Singapore to improve the user’s web browsing experience’. The side effect is that the websites receive the server’s IP rather than the IP of your current device. Although web browser passes your IP to websites via X-Forwarded-For, some websites do not support this standard and cannot accurately detect your region.

How to access Flash game or Flash video content? Browser now opens mobile web pages by default. However, most websites do not show Flash content in their mobile pages. To access Flash content, please click the main menu at the top right, and choose the ‘Request Desktop site’. It will then reopen the same page in the desktop mode.

Why do I see ads when viewing Flash content in Puffin Browser Free? To cover operational costs of maintaining Flash on cloud servers, ads may appear from time to time when viewing Flash content or playing Flash games in the free version of the program.

Note: Requires .NET Framework. Puffin Secure Browser offers a free month of service for new customers. You can enjoy all the services within the free trial period.

Also Available: Download Puffin Browser for Mac

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How to uninstall Puffin Browser Download (2020 Latest) for Windows 10, 8, 7?

How do I uninstall Puffin Browser in Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7 / Windows 8 / Windows 10?

Click “Start”

Click on “Control Panel”

Under Programs click the Uninstall a Program link.

Select “Puffin Browser” and right click, then select Uninstall/Change.

Click “Yes” to confirm the uninstallation.

How do I uninstall Puffin Browser in Windows XP?

Click “Start”

Click on “Control Panel”

Click the Add or Remove Programs icon.

Click on “Puffin Browser”, then click “Remove/Uninstall.”

Click “Yes” to confirm the uninstallation.

How do I uninstall Puffin Browser in Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000?

How To Download On Puffin Browser Safari

Click “Start”

Click on “Control Panel”

Double-click the “Add/Remove Programs” icon.

Select “Puffin Browser” and right click, then select Uninstall/Change.

Click “Yes” to confirm the uninstallation.

Disclaimer Puffin Browser

Puffin Browser is a product developed by CloudMosa Inc.. This site is not directly affiliated with Puffin Browser. All trademarks, registered trademarks, product names and company names or logos mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

All informations about programs or games on this website have been found in open sources on the Internet. All programs and games not hosted on our site. When visitor click “Download now” button files will downloading directly from official sources(owners sites). getsoftonic.com is strongly against the piracy, we do not support any manifestation of piracy. If you think that app/game you own the copyrights is listed on our website and you want to remove it, please contact us. We are DMCA-compliant and gladly to work with you. Please find the DMCA / Removal Request below.

DMCA / REMOVAL REQUEST Puffin Browser

Please include the following information in your claim request:

How To Download On Puffin Browser Settings

Identification of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed;

An exact description of where the material about which you complain is located within the getsoftonic.com;

Your full address, phone number, and email address;

A statement by you that you have a good-faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;

A statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your notice is accurate and that you are the owner of the copyright interest involved or are authorized to act on behalf of that owner;

Your electronic or physical signature.

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You may send an email to support [at] getsoftonic.com for all DMCA / Removal Requests with “Puffin Browser Download (2020 Latest) for Windows 10, 8, 7” subject.