This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 65%. (I'm a bot)

50 people died and over 350 more were injured after a passenger train hit the derailed coaches of Coromandel Express in Odisha's Balasore district.
Balasore,UPDATED: Jun 2, 2023 22:39 IST. Several coaches of the express train overturned after it collided with a goods train.
By Ajay Nath, Indrajit Kundu, Anupam Mishra: 50 people died and over 350 more were injured after a passenger train hit derailed coaches of the Coromandel Express, which runs from Shalimar station in West Bengal to Chennai, in Odisha's Balasore district on Friday evening.
A goods train was also involved in the accident, as per Odisha Chief Secretary Pradeep Jena.
"At around 7 pm, 10-12 coaches of the Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express derailed near Baleswar and fell on the opposite track. After some time, another train from Yeswanthpur to Howrah dashed into those derailed coaches resulting in the derailment of its 3-4 coaches," Railway Spokesperson Amitabh Sharma was quoted as saying by news agency ANI. Must Read. TCS warns employees over work from office rules, says action will be taken if they fail to comply.
FOLLOW LIVE UPDATES ON COROMANDEL EXPRESS ACCIDENT. The office of the Special Relief Commissioner said teams have been sent to the site of the accident for a search and rescue operation.

Summary Source FAQ Feedback Top keywords: accident^#1 train^#2 Odisha^#3 coaches^#4 Balasore^#5
Post found in /india, /unitedstatesofindia, /worldnews, /indianrailways, /IndiaSpeaks, /india and /IndiaOpen.
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This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 65%. (I'm a bot)

50 people died and over 350 more were injured after a passenger train hit the derailed coaches of Coromandel Express in Odisha's Balasore district.
Balasore,UPDATED: Jun 2, 2023 22:39 IST. Several coaches of the express train overturned after it collided with a goods train.
By Ajay Nath, Indrajit Kundu, Anupam Mishra: 50 people died and over 350 more were injured after a passenger train hit derailed coaches of the Coromandel Express, which runs from Shalimar station in West Bengal to Chennai, in Odisha's Balasore district on Friday evening.
A goods train was also involved in the accident, as per Odisha Chief Secretary Pradeep Jena.
"At around 7 pm, 10-12 coaches of the Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express derailed near Baleswar and fell on the opposite track. After some time, another train from Yeswanthpur to Howrah dashed into those derailed coaches resulting in the derailment of its 3-4 coaches," Railway Spokesperson Amitabh Sharma was quoted as saying by news agency ANI. Must Read. TCS warns employees over work from office rules, says action will be taken if they fail to comply.
FOLLOW LIVE UPDATES ON COROMANDEL EXPRESS ACCIDENT. The office of the Special Relief Commissioner said teams have been sent to the site of the accident for a search and rescue operation.

Summary Source FAQ Feedback Top keywords: accident^#1 train^#2 Odisha^#3 coaches^#4 Balasore^#5
Post found in /unitedstatesofindia, /india, /worldnews, /indianrailways, /IndiaSpeaks, /india and /IndiaOpen.
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This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 32%. (I'm a bot)

June 2 - At least 50 people were killed and 300 hospitalized in India after a passenger train derailed and collided with a goods train in Odisha's Balasore district on Friday, according to media reports.
Rescue operations were underway at the site and "All possible assistance" is being given to those affected, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a tweet on Friday.
The collision is a "Grave accident", H K Dwivedi, West Bengal's chief secretary told reporters.
South Eastern Railway officials, who did not want to be named, said they fear heavy casualties, without disclosing the number of deaths.
"I can't comment on the details right now and casualty figures. I was in Delhi and rushing to the accident site," Archana Joshi, general manager for South Eastern Railways, told Reuters.
"Railway rescue teams from Kharagpur and other nearby stations have already reached the site. Relief and rescue are under way."

Summary Source FAQ Feedback Top keywords: Railway^#1 reports^#2 Rescue^#3 site^#4 Joshi^#5
Post found in /worldnews.
NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 63%. (I'm a bot)

An express train met with an accident near Bahanaga railway station in Odisha's Balasore district, injuring many.
Three teams of the National Disaster Response Fund and four units of Odisha's DRF along with 60 ambulances were mobilized for the search and rescue operation.
Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik directed revenue minister Pramila Swain and special relief commissioner Satyabrata Sahu to rush to the accident spot and coordinate rescue and relief operations.
The Odisha chief secretary Pradeep Kumar Jena said that 132 injured passengers have been shifted to community healthcare centres in Soro, Gopalpur and Khantapada.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has expressed shock over the incident and said her government is coordinating with the Odisha government.
"We are sending a 5- 6 members team to the spot to cooperate with the Odisha government and railway authorities and to assist rescue operations. I am monitoring the situation continually personally with Chief Secretary and other senior officers," the chief minister added.

Summary Source FAQ Feedback Top keywords: Odisha^#1 chief^#2 minister^#3 government^#4 rescue^#5
Post found in /trains, /worldnews, /india, /indianews and /unitedstatesofindia.
NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.

Hey guys,
I have a 10 day gap in july and was thinking of hopping on a plane solo, leaving my poor wife behind to look after the kids to do some landscapes in NZ (i'm a pro wedding photog and feel like doing something different for a few days)
I was thinking so far (very early days in planning) to do roughly ;
- Christchurch landing (from sydney) - Drive to west coast i.e. Lake Matheson and similar - Drive to Wanaka/queenstown - Drive to mount cook / lake tekapo - Drive to east coast i.e. moeraki and similar - Drive back to either christchurch or queenstown and fly home to sydney
This will be spread over 7-10 days.
Does this type of direction driving wise sound ok? Basically start at christchurch, then west coast -> wanaka/queenstown -> mount cook -> east coast -> back home
Lastly, the reason I want to go in july is to get the snow look in photos. But if anyone has been there at this time of year (late july) are there any issues on the roads with needing a 4wd/chains etc?
Thanks for any help. I need to sit down properly in google maps and see if thats too much driving, if I should cut any stops out etc. For example not sure if I can fit milford sound into that itinerary.
cheers

Hello lovely readers,
Welcome to the second and final discussion of Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton. This autobiographical comic was Canada Reads (an annual "battle of the books") winner for 2023. You can read the first discussion here.
Summary
The story picks up one month after that horrible party. Kate sleeps with Mike. She continues to get weird sexual comments from the men she works with, but she has started to laugh the comments off. Many of the men seem to have problems with her giving them orders, and her superiors get pissy with her for minor things or for wanting ‘special treatment’. Joe, a fellow Nova Scotian, overhears her swearing in frustration and tells her that everyone at the mine is just yelling at the guy next to them for work they’re not doing themselves, but that people tend to be friendlier to people from their own region of Canada. Kate wonders aloud to Doug whether the oil sands make people better or worse.
The men at the mine have heard that Kate’s ‘little friends’ (her sister Becky and friend Lindsay) are going to be joining them, and she warns them to leave them alone. When Becky and Lindsay arrive, they are wearing skirts and they quickly notice the staring and weird behaviour from the men on site. Kate apologises for it, and they wonder why she is saying sorry.
Kate tells Becky and Lindsay that the other men have been leaving her alone since most people know about her and Mike, and they tell her it’s because in their eyes she’s ‘claimed’.
They take a trip to Gregoire Beach, but Kate doesn’t wear a swimsuit or go swimming. Becky asks her what’s up with her, as she’s noticed something is wrong. Kate talks about how everything at the beach seems so normal, but that she isn’t. However, she doesn’t explain further.
Kate looks for other jobs online, and sees a post for a job at the Maritime Museum of British Columbia in Victoria, the capital of British Columbia.
Not long afterwards, she sees the man who forced himself on her at that party. He and the group of men he’s with see her and they start laughing.
Kate hears a man playing Peter’s Dream on his guitar, and joins in singing the song.
She goes to Becky’s room and tells her that she needs to leave the oil sands for a while, even though she and Lindsay have just arrived. She asks her to promise that she and Lindsay will look out for each other, and finally tells her about the assaults. Becky tells her that it wasn’t her fault, and wishes she had been there sooner to protect her as that’s her job as the big sister. She tells Kate that it happened to her too, at her university dorm. She tells Kate she should go.
We leave the oil sands, for a year in Victoria. Kate gets the museum job but it’s no more than 21 hours per week, so she gets a second job. In a coffee shop, she hears the song An Innis Aigh playing, and tells a woman who was wondering aloud about the language that it’s Gaelic.
Victoria seems like a nicer place than the oil sands, but it isn’t perfect – the city big problems with homelessness and mental health, but none of the old, rich people living there care [read runner note – according to Victoria’s Wikipedia page, the city is known for its disproportionately large retiree population. Some 23.4% of the population of Victoria and its surrounding area are over 65 years of age, which is higher than the overall Canadian distribution of over 65 year-olds in the population (19%). A historically popular cliché refers to Victoria as the home of "the newly wed and nearly dead"]. Kate is fired from her job for not taking American money and not wanting to sell the merchandise badly enough. One of her colleagues (I think?) sees her drawing a comic, and suggests that she should make a website.
Kate tells her parents that on her days off she works at a grocery store, and her father wonders what her degree was for. Shortly afterwards, she is fired from the grocery store for yawning and ‘being surly’. She goes on a date, but panics when the guy tries to kiss her at the end.
Kate can’t get a reprieve from her student loan payments, even though she paid half of it off the previous year with her oil sands earnings. She decides to go back to the oil sands to pay the rest off, and says goodbye to the museum.
After that brief reprieve, we’re back in the oil sands, this time at Shell Albian Sands. Kate has taken a job in the warehouse office, and her living quarters are a bit fancier than at the previous sites. The site also has a Tim Hortons, Wi-Fi and a gym, even yoga classes. Lindsay tells her that a lot of the warehouse crew from Long Lake have moved up there too. One of her new colleagues is Hatim, who is creepy in a new way, plaguing her with messages despite having a wife and children.
The team get a congratulations message with a gif for achieving three million man hours without a lost time incident (LTI). Kate’s boss, Ryan, tells her that they don’t have LTIs at the site because they look bad for the company, I guess implying that they cover them up.
She sees Doug again, who seems to feel that she’s all high and mighty now with her office job, and struggles with her ‘bossing him’ since she’s younger than him (and presumably because she’s female). When she has to cover a warehouse shift, Doug laughs about how she’s down from on high and has gone soft. He tells her that he sang with The Men of the Deeps and even sang for the queen, which she doubts because he has a terrible voice. She sings a bit of Coal Town Road (which I’m kind of disappointed doesn’t sound like Old Town Road) and asks if she could be in the choir too, but he seems annoyed about her singing a mining song when she’s not a miner.
Kate’s sister Becky is still working at Long Lake, but lives in Fort McMurray, and Kate goes to meet her there; she says it’s much better than living in the camp. She tells Kate, that one time a guy jumped out of the closet in her room, but she was able to kick him out. She always locked her door, but often heard the handle jiggling at night. She even had a stalker, who managed to get into her room with a bottle of alcohol and suggested doing body shots – she didn’t report it, but when he got fired everyone thought she had.
Kate struggles to read some of the order sheets because many of the workers are bad spellers or have unclear handwriting; many of the older men at the mine left school in grade six. Lindsay tells her about one of the lead hands from Newfoundland, who can’t read, and was humiliated by the other workers when they tried to make him read the safety memo aloud so they could laugh at him. Lindsay says she’s never seen a grown man ashamed like that, and they discuss how he’s one of the nicest guys there.
A group from the Calgary office visits the mine site, and Kate has to find the nice hard hats and safety vests for the visitors, the ones the actual workers can’t have because they’re too fancy. Basically, they have to put on a show for the head office people – everyone has to look sharp, make things tidier than normal etc. One of the visitors takes a photo of Kate. After they leave, Damian asks if he can have one of the fancy new vests, but they were taken back to Calgary even though they don’t need them at head office.
Kate continues doing her comics, and her colleagues occasionally read them. Ryan finds some of them in the scanner, which she had used to upload them to her website, and tells her not to leave her stuff lying around at work.
Becky and Kate discuss what it would have been like if their father had gone out to the oil sands to work when they were children, as many people did. They wonder if he would have been like the other men they work with, and how they must all be normal at home. Kate says she tries to remember that there are a lot of men who don’t bother her, but she doesn’t remember them because they’re not the ones in her face.
Their safety lectures tell them basic information about how ice is slippery and is all over the ground, which presumably every Canadian already knows. One of the men remarks that it’s not about safety, but an arse-covering exercise so that a worker can’t sue them if they fall. Kate doodles a pony in her notebook (thank you u/Amanda39 for linking to this comic in last week’s discussion!).
Many of the staff have families that they don’t see very often. One of the men gets a phonecall from his wife’s phone, which he answers thinking it’s an emergency as she never calls during the day; it turns out to be his young son, who is calling to see when he’s coming home next.
Brian asks Kate if she heard about the ducks (TITLE DROP!!); three hundred of them got stuck in a tailings pond at another oil sands site [read runner note – two years later, Syncrude was actually found guilty of the death of 1,600 ducks]. The site begins installing anti-waterfowl devices, and the staff are reminded that they have to wear PPE at all times. They’re also told about the death Gerald Snopes, another worker; some of the men talking amongst themselves, and Ryan tells them to have some respect. He had a heart attack while operating a crane, and threw himself out of the cab so that he wouldn’t land on the controls and cause an accident.
Kate hears about a road accident involving some men from Cape Breton. She asks Davy about it to see if she knows them, but neither of them do. Kate finds the news articles and feels annoyed that they were misidentified as Calgary men.
Kate notices some welts on her back; Lindsay has them too but doesn’t know what it is. Kate mentions all the dust they have to wipe off everything, and how there’s so much crap in the air. Lindsay wonders what kind of cancer they’ll have in 20 years.
Kate finds Doug building a scarecrow for the tailings pond, which is meant to scare off the ducks. Probably another arse-covering exercise.
Activists from Greenpeace try to block an oil sands pipeline, and 11 people are arrested. One of the workers gets angry about it, asking who will put their life on the line to unclog the pipe Greenpeace has blocked, and that it sure as hell won’t be the president of Shell. Kate hears about another death – a contractor was in his trucks, and one of the heavy haulers drove over it, crushing him.
Lindsay writes an article for a grassroots paper, giving the inside perspective on working at the oil sands. Kate considers doing a comic about it for them. Lindsay later wonders if she made a mistake writing her article, as many of the comments are critical, including many from women which Lindsay did not expect.
Kate sees a video on YouTube of Celina Harpe, an elder in the Cree community of Fort McKay, talking about the effect of the oil sands on the First Nation. Kate had not realised when she arrived there that Fort McKay was a First Nation, nor that it was so close to Syncrude. She thinks about how she’s not the president of Shell, but she’s still working there, and she can’t extract herself from having come.
At another safety meeting, the staff are down the safety pyramid, which has different levels: at the base it has at-risk behaviours, then near misses, then minor incidents, and it all leads to a major incident or a fatality.
Kate receives a phone call from a reporter at the Globe and Mail who had seen her comics about the oil sands. She asks several leading questions about her experience as a woman at the remote sites and the harassment, but Kate feels uncomfortable giving her examples. She later tells Lindsay that she couldn’t talk to the reporter as she felt like she just wanted gossip, and that the story was already written before she called.
The leering of one of the other workers bothers Kate in the lunchroom, and she tells Lindsay about her assaults. Lindsay is horrified that Mike and Brian laughed at her when she told them about it. Lindsay tells her that it happened to her in university as well.
Kate calls her parents to tell them that she’s finally paid off her student loan, but she needs to keep working at the site because now she has no money. She’s going to try making it as a cartoonist, and her parents are unimpressed.
Kate notices that Ryan is acting strangely, being absent a lot and not doing his work, and it can’t fully be explained by his recent divorce. She hears about other workers who are taking cocaine and behaving strangely too. She asks Ryan if he’s ok and he brushes it off. Kate contemplates the safety pyramid again. She finds a piece of paper on Ryan’s desk with an appointment for the employee assistance program. Emily later tells her that Ryan has left suddenly, and that they need to figure things out until a replacement is found.
Kate wonders why there are so many safety meetings but none have ever talked about drugs or alcohol. Her coworkers say that everyone knows why there is so much of both, and that the company can’t have safety meetings about illegal activities anyway.
Kate finally gets to leave the oil sands and go home. Her colleague Norman gives her prints of some of his photos of the northern lights as a leaving present, including one of a rainbow. Before she leaves, the company organises a staff photograph with all the workers on the site. Kate sees the man who assaulted her the second time, and he recognises her but can’t remember her name or who she is, and asks her how it’s going.
Kate trains her replacement, and finds out that she’s earning more than her despite not having any experience in tools. She complains to John about it, and finally rants about all her shitty treatment in the oil sands. She goes to see Gary in the head office, and demands her full bonus, which was going to be docked because she was leaving. Gary tells her it’s company policy. She tells him about the harassment, and he claims she could have come to them about it, but she fires back that he knows she couldn’t have. Gary agrees to give her the bonus. Her colleagues organise a going-away barbecue, and even Mike attends.
Back in Nova Scotia, Kate is reunited with her family. While out enjoying the seaside air, she chats to a farmer who tells her he’s keeping a field for his son who is working out west in case he ever comes back and wants to build a house. A man called Lauchie visits the house before moving west himself, and tells them there’s something for everyone out there and that the young people have everything they want. Out in Halifax with friends, she and Becky see a man from one of the camps, who tells Becky that they had a bet on who would sleep with her first. Their friends who haven’t worked in the oil sands can’t believe they’d let a man talk to them like that.
In the book’s afterword, Kate talks about how the book chronicles her specific experience at a specific time. She is wary of sensationalism of her story, especially because sexual assault is so common that it’s not actually sensational. She notes that neither of the men who raped her probably consider it to have been rape. She is also critical of the treatment of Indigenous people, and says the YouTube video of Celina Harpe was a “sword that cut through my ignorance”. We also find out that Becky died of cancer, and that her former coworkers pooled money together to send to her.
Bookclub Bingo 2023 categories: Non-Fiction, Graphic Novel (grey), Mod Pick (grey)
Other links:

• The first discussion
• Canada Reads page about Ducks [I hadn’t realised that Station Eleven, another recent bookclub read, was the runner up]
• Kate Beaton on Wikipedia
• Hark! A Vagrant, the archive of Kate Beaton’s comics website
• The original Hark! A Vagrant sketch comic about the oil sands (links to all five parts; I’ve posted the parts individually below this in case that’s easier)
• Original Ducks Part 1
• Original Ducks Part 2
• Original Ducks Part 3
• Original Ducks Part 4
• Original Ducks Part 5
• Lindsay Bird was one of the people in the book whose name wasn’t changed, and in 2019 she published a poetry collection about working in the oil sands called Boom Time. There’s a CBC article about the book here.

The questions are in the comments below. Thank you for joining me and u/fixtheblue in reading this book!

LPs

• METRO BOOMIN PRESENTS SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (w Future, 21 Savage, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown, Don Toliver, NAV, Nas, 2 Chainz, A$AP Rocky, WizKid, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, Offset, BEAM, Lil Uzi Vert, Swae Lee, James Blake, JID + more) [Soundtrack, Republic]
• Moneybagg Yo - Hard 2 Love (w Future, Lil Durk, GloRilla, Fridayy + more) [Memphis Trap, CMG/N-Less/Interscope]
• Toosii - Naujour (w Future, 21 Savage & Khalid) [R&B, Capitol]
• Jelly Roll - Whitsitt Chapel (w Yelawolf, Struggle Jennings + more) [Country Rap, Broken Bow]
• J Billz & Pi'erre Bourne - Streetz Hottest Young'n [Trap, SossHouse]
• Boosie Badazz - Best Album of 2023 (w Kodak Black) [Trap]
• BOJ (🇳🇬) - Gbagada Express Vol. 2: Moving Mad (w Knucks, Arya Starr, Tay Iwar + more) [Afrobeats]
• Camidoh (🇬🇭) - L.I.T.A. (w Kwesi Arthur, Amaarae + more) [Afropop]
• Futuristic - We Made It
• DaBoii & The Mekanix - Soakin Game (w B-Legit, 22nd Jim, Slimmy B, Philthy Rich + more) [Bay Area Trap]
• HAŁASTRA (🇵🇱) - Kombinatoryka [Polish Rap]
• Bad Boy Timz (🇳🇬) — No Bad Boy, No Party (w Olamide, Shenseea, Zlatan & Bnxn) [Afrobeats]
• Chuuwee & Money Montage - No More Rappers 2 (w Chris Crack + more) [Rap]
• Toodha Band$ - Flood The Streets, Pt. 2 (w Big Sad 1900, RMC Mike, Lil Bean, LilCJ Kasino + more) [Trap, FOD]
• DJ Smokey - Nuked Out Dance Party (w RXK Nephew, Rx Papi, Evilgiane, David Shawty + more) [Cloud Rap]
• Trapland Pat - Professor Trap (w Rick Ross, Tee Grizzley, Luh Tyler, Fredo Bang, LOE Shimmy, G.T. + more) [Florida Trap, Alamo]
• Cisco Swank - More Better [Jazz Rap]
• KrispyLife Kidd - Still Krispy (w Bfb Da Packman, RMC Mike + more) [Michigan Trap]
• RealYungPhil - Victory Music (w Gud + more) [Plugg]
• BOA Hunxho - Behind Enemy Lines (w Lil Darius + more) [Trap]
• D.OZi (🇵🇷) - Blue Magic (w Nicky Jam + more) [Latin Rap]
• CJ Fly - HEALING FROM OUR WOUNDS (w Topaz Jones, T'nah, Millyz + more) [Blog Rap, Beast Coast]
• Speakers Corner Quartet (🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿) - Further Out Than The Edge (w Sampha, Confucius MC, Kae Tempest + more) [Electronic, OTIH]
• RXK Nephew & Yung Deco - Rxk Juice Lord [Cloud Rap]
• OTM - Duff & Puff [West Coast Rap, Nervous]
• Factor Chandelier - Moving Like a Planet (w AJ Suede, Eligh + more) [Producer Album, Fake Four]
• Goyard Ibn Said & Ghais Guevara - Goyard Comin': Exordium
• XV - Vizzy Zone (w Bun B, Killer Mike, Talib Kweli, GLC, Charles Hamilton, Mike Posner & MIKE SUMMERS) [Blog Rap, Venice]
• Bla$ta & BoozaKeepScorin - Kings of the North [Bay Area Trap, Thizzler]
• YSR Gramz & Enrgy Beats - So Much Enrgy (w BabyTron, RMC Mike, KrispyLife Kidd & Baglife Tree) [Michigan Trap]
• McKinley Dixon - Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? (w Ghais Guevera, Anjimile + more) [Hip Hop, City Slang]
• Violent J, Ouija Macc and Esham - OBLITERATION [Horrorcore]
• Keyze AriZona - i wonder! IS GOD REAL? (w Lord Apex, MARCO PLUS + more) [Christian Rap?]
• Shaudy Kash - Rich Mile Ruler (w G.T. + more) [Michigan Trap]
• Blak Madeen – Rhyme Dawah: The Best Of 2005-2018 (w Tragedy Khadafi, Planet Asia, Lord Jamar, Gift of Gab + more) [Boom Bap]
• SD - Day to Day [Chicago Drill]
• Jamil Honesty & Krazyfingaz - The God's Honest Truth* (w Elzhi + more) [Boom Bap]
• Maze Overlay- Nouveau Antiqua (w SUBSTANCE180, Lord Juco, Snotty, Brainorchestra & Mark 4ord) [Underground Rap, Calistro]
• Kelly Moonstone - I Digress... [Indie Rap]
• Jason Griff - Craig Hodges Autograph on a Showbiz Pizza Plate [Nerdcore]

Deluxe

• Joony - SHITUMSS [Cloud Rap]
• V Don & Eto - Omertá: The Film [Griselda-core, Serious Soundz/New Crack Era]

EPs

• Fivio Foreign - Without Warning* (w Kanye West) [NY Drill]
• Ugly God & EH Beats - Two Piece* [Meme Rap]
• Na-Kel Smith - Free Pops Fr [Cloud Rap, OF Affiliate]
• MoneySign Suede - Paradise [West Coast Hip Hop]
• Eddie Fresco - BRING IT BACK!: THE PLAYLIST
• Soulzay & Genshin - Profits to Make
• MC Bin Laden - Descontrollado [Baile Funk, GR6]
• Sickboyrari - Born in a Warzone [Cloud Rap]
• Young Roddy & Trademark da Skydiver - The Coterie [Weed Rap]
• quinn - Interstate185 [Digicore]
• Lil Bam - Baby Boy [Trap]
• Alx Veliz (🇨🇦) - Pasaporte [Latin Rap]
• Yung Bambi - Bexar County Club [Plugg]
• Ben Carrillo - BROKEN HEART ANTHEMS [Latin Rap]
• PENPALS - The Curse of Frankie Cabana [Underground Rap]
• KP SKYWALKA - The Preacher [Cloud Rap]
• Dark Lo - Blood in My Eye [Griselda-core, Next]
• Zoomo - Riezu [Beat Tape, RRR]
• GeneralBackPain & Ecto-84 - Caldera* [Underground Rap]
• Filthy Heir - Not All Who Wander Are Lost* [Underground Rap, NJ]

Singles

• The Weeknd - Popular (feat. Playboi Carti & Madonna)
• Baby Keem & Kendrick Lamar - The Hillbillies*
• Latto - Put It On The Floor (Remix) [feat. Cardi B]
• Shafiq Husayn - Crush You (feat. Anderson .Paak)
• Jon Baptiste - Be Who You Are (Real Magic) [feat. JID, NewJeans & Camilo)
• Machine Gun Kelly - Pressure (feat. SlimXX)
• PGF Nuk - Bounce (feat. G Herbo)
• LUCKI & Bhristo - NO BAP
• Trapland Pat - Spoof (feat. Tee Grizzley)
• ASM Bopster - Choose Up (feat. 03 Greedo)
• Dody6 - Not Average (Remix) [feat. ASM Bopster]
• Zya & DRAM - Conflicted
• Kenny Mason - DRACULA
• Domo Genesis & Graymatter - Proceed / Change My Mind
• Baby Smoove - Slim Shady
• Sentheen - Golden Rose (feat. Matt Hartke & Dom Kennedy)
• Nowahh The Flood - Akbar Pray Day (feat. Mach-Hommy & D-Styles)
• Teni - No Days Off (Remix) [feat. PsychoYP]
• Rah Dolla - Switches (feat. Rowdy Rebel)
• UnoTheActivist - Comfy
• DJ Williams - Soldier of Love (feat. DJ Harrison & Kanika Moore)
• Big Yavo - Pape
• YGTUT - IDFW Them
• CJGana - Thru The Rain (feat. Acito)
• Nappyhigh - WhatItFeelsLike (feat. Your Old Droog & Blu)
• Peso Peso - Still Slidin' (feat. Dee Mula & DracBaby) / Options
• LaRussell & UglyMarco - OH DEAR
• Def Soulja - Green Light (feat. Jae Skeese)
• EBK Jaaybo - Kasino Mode
• Lil Migo - U Played Freestyle
• T.F. & 2 Eleven - Pill Form (feat. Rome Streetz)
• DooDat600, 1100 Himself & PayQTheLoot - Coach Carter*
• Dimzy - People
• J.Wood$ - Go Getter (feat. Big Sad 1900)
• Fly Anakin & Foisey - Things Change (feat. Demae)
• Fatpocket - Shaq & Kobe (feat. Wizz Havin)
• Curtybo - Craig and Dae Dae (feat. EBK Bckdoe)
• SUN97.5 - CANT GET IN (feat. POLO PERKS <3<3<3)
• TC4 - Hall Of Fame (feat. Pacman Da Gunman)
• RXKNephew - Doir Socks / Homeless since 2 Yrs Old* / Critical (Cyberspeed Mix) / My Daughter Got Amiri On
• Poloboy NuNu - 4 Boy
• Deetranada - EASY / NEVER RESTING
• JAHMED - 777
• HUGHIE (aka Mr Muthafuckin Exquire) - Namaste
• Esham - Bro!
• Bolo - Homicidal (feat. P Thrizzle & Javn2900)
• Joell - MAMACITA
• Mez - Fire In the Booth
• Sparkheem - Membershipp (feat. CruddyMurda)
• D4NNY - Goodbye 2
• RubberBandRalph - Why You Mad*
• A.P. Da Overlord & TekBeatz - Negro Theory*

and

• Royce Roice, Capalow & 2blessed - No Lies
• Gunna - bread & butter
• Deniro Farrar - Crime Pays (feat. Televangel)
• Bring Me The Horizon - AmEN! (feat. Lil Uzi Vert, Daryl Palumbo & Glassjaw)
• Skeng - Balenciaga (feat. Bimma Boss)
• HorseTheOne - Opp Block
• Danny Grave$ - Dice (feat. Sir Michael Rocks)
• Shortyo - Yes Bitch (feat. T-Pain)
• ShooterGang Kony - Overdue
• MVCP - Chasin' (feat. Da$H)
• Hit-Boy & Big Hit - RECKLESS & RACHET
• EST ShiMike & Lil Jairmy - Dark Cloud
• Boothatus - Party Pick (feat. Lil Blood)
• Kid Cudi - PORSCHE TOPLESS
• Whoppa Wit Da Choppa - Big Tymers
• Shenseea - Sold Out
• Kenzo B - BFFR
• Soulo Q - WALKDOWN // HOLD IT DOWN (feat. WifiGawd)
• EBK Young Joc - Cotto (feat. Kash Keek)
• OG Maco & LXS Zion - Watchya Say
• So Faygo - WISH I COULD TELL YOU (feat. DD Osama)
• Bfb Da Packman - Grocery Freestyle
• Certified Trapper - Trapper Of The Year
• Video Dave & Controller 7 - BabyBirdsEatWorms (DedicationJuly7)
• YL - Back On the Wall
• Z Money - Since a Kid
• Rot Ken - Walk Em Down
• Young Miko - ID (feat. Jowell & Randy)
• RJ's Latest Arrival & Slum Village - One Step at a Time
• KWAYE - Pendulum
• Jesse Boykins III - Kind and Nasty
• Sky, Feid & Myke Towers - El Ceilo
• Deyaz - I'll Scream (All The Words) [feat. Jessie Reyez]
• FloFillz & Bokoya - Makali
• Pretty Brayah - Fucc Boy
• Myko Lyric - New York
• Grafh, Bun B & E-40 - Bang Out
• ARDN & femdot. - ARE U KIDDING
• Red Cafe & Rowdy Rebel - Credit Karma
• Dougie B - No Missing
• Nick Grant - Since Elementary
• Curtis J - Problems (feat. BNXN)
• GRiNGO, Kool Savas, Conway the Machine, Megaloh, YA & Mashkal - Half Baked
• Louis Thesinger & Paul Wall - Down Here
• PRICE & Symba - PLAYERS CLUB
• J.K. Mac - No Love (Shemix) [feat. Flo Milli, Trina & Maiya The Don]
• Isaac Zale - Children's Crusade Freestyle!
• Projexx - Top Speed (feat. Giggs & Marksman)
• Yung Tory - Who's He?
• SAFE - Rumors
• YeloHill & Steelz - Penguin Fish
• French Montana & London on da Track - I Can't Lie (feat. Kodak Black)
• Drego & The ATG - Eyeing Me
• Mace the Great - Thuggish Ruggish (Fabian Dubz Remix)
• Jubël - Triple A (feat. NLE Choppa)
• Flvr - King Kong (feat. Royce da 5'9")
• CKay - nwayi
• Robbie Tripp & BlocBoy JB - They Said
• Savile Row - Night Fever (feat. Open Mike Eagle, Chubb Rock & Milyssa Rose)
• Ohana Bam & femdot. - Watch Me
• Freddie Joachim - Pe Na Estrada
• Woodie Smalls - Rock Bottom
• Gianni Lee & Dawn Richard - Walk In (Club Mix)
• Reuben James - Champagne Kisses (feat. Ric Wilson, CARRTOONS & Joel Culpepper)
• OMB Peezy - Think You Ready
• Jay Burna & T.I. - Ride Or Die
• HeyyAyyOne & KrispyLife Kidd - Spice Talk 1v1
• Dave & Central Cee - Sprinter
• Moh Barretta - Not Looking For Love
• Kage Greene - Prepared For War (feat. Che Noir)
• Symba - Aguacero
• Sett - Snap
• AP Compas, Tha God Fahim & Elduets - War Budget
• Burna Boy - Sittin' On Top Of The World
• Mozzy - 10 Percent
• TrappSavv - Ask the City (feat. EBK Jaaybo)
• Saba & No ID - hue_man nature
• Flat260, Prince Jefe & Babyface Ray - Grammy
• Mercury - heaven
• Ty Dolla $ign - Motion
• Mali Jo$e & Tasman Keith - Price Up! (feat. xmunashe)
• DanQA - Atento (feat. Cookin Soul)
• Lil Terry & SNUPE BANDZ - GET IT IN
• Poundboy & Baby Money - Dirk Nowitzki
• Anti Da Menace - Milk & Cookies
• Jamal Gasol & Vic Spencer - Kansas City SmackMan Vs. Vic Greenthumbs
• Roy Woods - Don't Mind Me
• Dazy Lyn & Cypress Moreno - Iconico
• J Mann & Yvnng Ecko - I Got Myself
• Ratxhet - Add It Up (feat. Lul Tyler & SCY Jimm)
• PESO PLUMA BZRP Music Sessions #55
• Sematary & BLP KOSHER - Hunting Wabbits
• SXMPRA & Ski Mask the Slump God - COWBELL WARRIORS
• LIT killah, Duki, Emilia, Tiago PZK, FMK, Rusherking, Maria Becerra, Big One - Los Del Espacio
• Elcamino - Kill Switch (feat. 38 Spesh)
• Z-Ro - Live It Up
• Desiigner — Mafia Water
• ZZZ & Trippie Redd - Sad and Alone
• Dre A.M. - The Upswing
• Miguel - Rope
• Hus Kingpin & Madlib - Smugglin'
• Lord Juco & Finn - Stockholm Syndrome (feat. Ty Da Dale)
• Kevin Gates - 3rd World Panama
• BIGBABYGUCCI - Alley Oop
• Kid Vishis (Royce 5'9 Brother) - Brenda's Baby (Talib Kweli Diss)

Bold songs drop at midnight
Songs in bold came out at midnight
* means not on Apple Music or Spotify
Sorted by Spotify Monthly Listeners

Old Drop Watches

Full Calendar

Sportsbook and Sports Betting Sign Up Promos and Bonuses
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Excerpt: "To what degree would Washington even be interested in a negotiated resolution to the war in Ukraine? After all, a good deal of evidence suggests that the administration’s real—if only semi-acknowledged—objective is to topple Russia’s government. The draconian sanctions that the United States imposed on Russia were designed to crash its economy. As the New York Times reported, these sanctions have ignited questions in Washington and in European capitals over whether cascading events in Russia could lead to “regime change,” or rulership collapse, which President Biden and European leaders are careful to avoid mentioning.
By repeatedly labeling Putin a “war criminal” and a murderous dictator, President Biden (using the same febrile rhetoric that his predecessors deployed against Noriega, Milošević, Qaddafi, and Saddam Hussein) has circumscribed Washington’s diplomatic options, rendering regime change the war’s only acceptable outcome. Diplomacy requires an understanding of an adversary’s interests and motives and an ability to make judicious compromises. But by assuming a Manichaean view of world politics, as has become Washington’s reflexive posture, “compromise, the virtue of the old diplomacy, becomes the treason of the new,” as the foreign policy scholar Hans Morgenthau put it, “for the mutual accommodation of conflicting claims . . . amounts to surrender when the moral standards themselves are the stakes of the conflict.”
Washington, then, will not entertain an end to the conflict until Russia is handed a decisive defeat. Echoing previous comments by Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin declared in April 2022 that the goal is to weaken Russia militarily. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has repeatedly dismissed the idea of negotiating, insisting that Moscow is not serious about peace. For its part, Kyiv has indicated that it will settle for nothing less than the return of all Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia, including Crimea. Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba has endorsed the strategy of applying enough military pressure on Russia to induce its political collapse.
Of course, the same momentum pushing toward a war in pursuit of overweening ends catapults Washington into pursuing a war employing unlimited means, an impulse encapsulated in the formula, endlessly invoked by Washington policymakers and politicians: “Whatever it takes, for as long as it takes.” As the United States and its NATO allies pour ever more sophisticated weapons onto the battlefield, Moscow will likely be compelled (from military necessity, if not from popular domestic pressure) to interdict the lines of communication that convey these weapons shipments to Ukraine’s forces, which could lead to a direct clash with NATO forces. More importantly, as Russian casualties inevitably mount, animosity toward the West will intensify. A strategy guided by “whatever it takes, for as long as it takes” vastly increases the risk of accidents and escalation.
https://harpers.org/archive/2023/06/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

Excerpt: "To what degree would Washington even be interested in a negotiated resolution to the war in Ukraine? After all, a good deal of evidence suggests that the administration’s real—if only semi-acknowledged—objective is to topple Russia’s government. The draconian sanctions that the United States imposed on Russia were designed to crash its economy. As the New York Times reported, these sanctions have ignited questions in Washington and in European capitals over whether cascading events in Russia could lead to “regime change,” or rulership collapse, which President Biden and European leaders are careful to avoid mentioning.
By repeatedly labeling Putin a “war criminal” and a murderous dictator, President Biden (using the same febrile rhetoric that his predecessors deployed against Noriega, Milošević, Qaddafi, and Saddam Hussein) has circumscribed Washington’s diplomatic options, rendering regime change the war’s only acceptable outcome. Diplomacy requires an understanding of an adversary’s interests and motives and an ability to make judicious compromises. But by assuming a Manichaean view of world politics, as has become Washington’s reflexive posture, “compromise, the virtue of the old diplomacy, becomes the treason of the new,” as the foreign policy scholar Hans Morgenthau put it, “for the mutual accommodation of conflicting claims . . . amounts to surrender when the moral standards themselves are the stakes of the conflict.”
Washington, then, will not entertain an end to the conflict until Russia is handed a decisive defeat. Echoing previous comments by Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin declared in April 2022 that the goal is to weaken Russia militarily. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has repeatedly dismissed the idea of negotiating, insisting that Moscow is not serious about peace. For its part, Kyiv has indicated that it will settle for nothing less than the return of all Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia, including Crimea. Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba has endorsed the strategy of applying enough military pressure on Russia to induce its political collapse.
Of course, the same momentum pushing toward a war in pursuit of overweening ends catapults Washington into pursuing a war employing unlimited means, an impulse encapsulated in the formula, endlessly invoked by Washington policymakers and politicians: “Whatever it takes, for as long as it takes.” As the United States and its NATO allies pour ever more sophisticated weapons onto the battlefield, Moscow will likely be compelled (from military necessity, if not from popular domestic pressure) to interdict the lines of communication that convey these weapons shipments to Ukraine’s forces, which could lead to a direct clash with NATO forces. More importantly, as Russian casualties inevitably mount, animosity toward the West will intensify. A strategy guided by “whatever it takes, for as long as it takes” vastly increases the risk of accidents and escalation.
https://harpers.org/archive/2023/06/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

On the 4th of February 1990, a body was discovered in Deptford Township. It was found in what was then a wooded area, between the Pathmark Supermarket (Now the Edge Fitness Clubs Gym) and The Club at Locust Grove Housing Department on Clement's Bridge Road in Deptford Township, New Jersey. Apparently the location was littered with car parts.
Her remains were skeletal and incomplete. According to NAMUS, she was missing "one or more limbs" and "one or more hands." There were sweatpants tied around her neck, and her cause of death is believed to be ligature strangulation.
She is believed to have been between 16 - 20 years old and to have been dead for 1 to 2 years before her discovery, placing her time of death around 1988-1989.
It was determined that she was between 5'5 - 5'8 (165cm - 172cm) and 120 - 145lbs (54.4 - 65.7kg). She was white, with medium to dark brown hair, misaligned teeth (several of which had silver fillings), a crooked philtrum (the groove between the base of the nose and the upper lip) and a nasal septum deviation to the right. According to a newspaper from the time, she also had an overbite.
Several pieces of jewelry were found with the body, and multiple items of clothing were found inside the sweatpants around her neck. The jewelry includes a 14k gold horseshoe earring with a spiral pattern, a yellow/gold ball earring and a 16'' faux pearl bead necklace. The clothing inside the medium sized, Tultex branded sweatpants were a pair of Nylon pantyhose, a mid-length sock and a knee-length nylon stocking.
No fingerprints were found, however DNA, dental charts and dental X-rays are available according to the New Jersey State Police. The full DNA profile was uploaded to the Federal Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) in 2008.
The National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children reached out to investigators in 2020 asking if they could review the case, and investigators are also working with the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification in an effort to use genealogy to identify the victim.
The current theory from law enforcement is that she was a runaway from a different area, as "she would have been identified by now if she was from the area." The fact she was found in an area near the New Jersey Turnpike and Route 55 seems to support this theory.
According to unidentified-awareness 10 women have been ruled out as possible matches. They don't list them on the site, however I was able to find 4.
Carol Donn, disappeared from West Palm Beach, Florida in 1980.
Tracy Kroh, disappeared from Millersburg, Pennsylvania on August 5th 1989
Alicia Markovich, disappeared from Blairsville, Pennsylvania on April 26th 1987
Tiffany Sessions, disappeared from Gainesville, Florida on February 9th, 1989.
She has remained unidentified for 33 years.
With genealogy underway, I have hope that she will be identified in the coming years. Hopefully we have a breakthrough soon. This is one of my first ever posts so I'd love some feedback as I'm keen to make some more and would be happy to see where I can improve. :)
If you have any information regarding the case, contact:
The Deptford Township Police Department (Ph: 856-686-2227), and The Gloucester County Prosecutors Office (Ph: 856-3845680; Email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]))
I used these sources:
https://www.nj.com/gloucester-county/2022/02/32-years-after-woman-found-strangled-detectives-hope-new-effort-will-help-identify-her.html
https://www.doenetwork.org/cases/121ufnj.html
https://www.namus.gov/UnidentifiedPersons/Case#/1489
https://unidentified-awareness.fandom.com/wiki/Gloucester_County_Jane_Doe_(February_1990))
https://www.gloucestercountynj.gov/745/Jane-Doe-2

Public opinion of TriMet's decisions have been pretty mixed, mostly because TriMet's decisions are so convoluted that they can be a real challenge to understand. In reality, Metro and Portlanders need to have a bigger civic conversation about the future of TriMet, looking at the big picture. We have 3 looming existential crises of TriMet to be concerned about that are bigger than revenue dips, crime, or homeless people.
Civic leaders and the public are focused on a quick "fix" for TriMet revenue drops - even though we've seen this coming for a long time, it's very predictable that TriMet's Board of Directors acts at the last minute. Also, very predictably, TriMet's Board opted for a fare increase because over the previous 20 years that's been a go-to answer to every problem (except for that one time they killed Fareless Square). The politically appointed boards of TriMet and Metro lack the unique specialized knowledge of the issues I'll bring up here. If TriMet knows about these larger issues, they're obviously burring it from public view. In the short term, increasing fares is like putting fresh paint on a house that's on fire; in this situation, that paint is HIGHLY flammable.
First - fare hikes as a tactic is a brain-dead move. Just the most utterly stupid and self-sabotaging response to a looming budget shortfall. I'm dwelling on this because it illustrates their terrible decision-making, which is functional proof they have no idea what they're doing. Some of the core reasons for this:

• Increasing fares reduces utilization. Higher cost means fewer people ride, which will decrease the ridership revenue. It will also marginally increase the number of people who won't pay (funny story, some of those who don't pay actually can't afford to). TriMet isn't a monopoly or inelastic service, and plenty of other choices exist that didn't exist 20 years ago: an actual bike share, scooters, electric bikes, UbeLyft, shared vehicles, and more bike paths. Before the pandemic, it was common that I would bus into downtown for work and then take a Lyft home because it wasn't all that expensive, like $8 more than a bus ride - TriMet's price increases make a system that wasn't very competitive simply less compelling.
  
• Across Portland we need to go through a process of austerity and downsizing government. I absolutely support Wheeler putting a pause on rate increases, but for God's sake, we have far too much largesse in every layer of government. If you need to learn what I'm talking about, read my old article on Parks & Rec. So many divisions/agencies have doubled their staff while reducing service levels. It's bonkers. Cutting throats needs to be an imperative. This is because the great majority of public sector employees in Oregon and Portland are incompetent, redundant, and only exist because Oregon and Portland have been reluctant to use automation. And I don't mean the cutting-edge AI stuff, I'm talking about people who still handle business processes as if they're paper forms. I could tell so many stories from my professional experience - but you'll have to take my word for it for now: culling this bureaucracy is the right move, and until there's a significant downsizing, the political class is taking none of the financial crisis or cost of living situation seriously.
  
• TriMet's operating budget/revenue is primarily Payroll Taxes, not passenger revenue. About 20-30% of TriMet's budget comes from people buying fares, whereas the bulk of money TriMet needs comes from payroll taxes that businesses pay directly. Because of this, transit activists (including myself) have been proponents of increasing the payroll taxes marginally to make TriMet free for riders. Of course, fareless transit comes with a wide variety of new and different problems (that's an article for another time). Still, when you understand that only a sliver of revenue comes from fares, increasing the fare simply results in a marginal increase in revenue. The much bigger problem is going to businesses investing outside of Metro, and changing workforces that 1) won't pay payroll taxes reliably, 2) don't need people to go into the office. Think about the longer-term game here: is TriMet's board going to increase fares as utilization drops and payroll taxes continually diminish? (See my point above about how their default answer is "yes" because it's the only politically expedient answer.)
  

Reading comments about the fare hikes, most of the public thinks TriMet is dealing with a safety or utilization issue. Both of these are 100% true: soft-on-crime progressives have wholly obliterated the working class perception of TriMet safety - there are so many different ways this has happened, but we should thank so many people in the media and political class: Ana del Rocio's crying wolf about racism in fare inspections (and the media entertaining it), or Mike Schmidt deinstitutionalizing of the justice system, or Legislature's inability to act on the massive mental health crisis and drug addiction crisis in Oregon. No matter the underlying cause, we have a system where deranged violent mentally ill tweakers can be disruptive on the train, but working-class people face a $250 fine if they can't afford a $2.50 ($2.80) ticket. TriMet is less safe, especially the light rail and bus lines. We could hypothetically talk about various policy and infrastructure changes, such as turnstiles and security guards - but pragmatically, this won't do shit when our society has adopted a philosophy of transforming the urban core into an open-air insane asylum and opened the doors to the prisons. This safety issue is well beyond TriMet's scope, and even if there was consensus among TriMet and Metro to solve this, the entire justice system and Legislature is still broken.

Fare Hikes and Utilization is the Red Herring - Let's talk about TriMet's future

In reality, multiple design choices made decades ago set us up for failure. But we also have to thank brain-dead progressive lunatics and corrupt politicos who have steered our transit decision-making into the ground.
There are three specific issues I'm going to talk about, with each becoming more consequential and disastrous for TriMet:

• Hub and Spoke Design and the need for a redesign of the entire system to fit new commuting/transit patterns
  
• Portland Light Rail's short cars are a capacity problem not worth the price tag to fix
  
• Autonomous vehicles are here, and it's just going to get worse for TriMet
  

The strategic design of TriMet's system is broken, and it's been broken before.

If you looked at a map of TriMet's bus and rail system, you'd see a design pattern often referred to as a "Radial Design" or sometimes a "Hub And Spoke" design. The Hub and Spoke strategy is building our transit system around centralized locations to connect to other routes. For Portland the idea is to go downtown (or sometimes a Park and Ride) where you can connect to your next destination. This is why the majority of bus routes and all the max routes go downtown, to our Transit Mall and Pioneer Square.
Downtown planning was a smart idea in the 1960s when it was coupled with Main Street economic theory and prototype urban development zones - all of this wrapped up in the 1972 Downtown Plan policy. During these decades, the primary economic idea of urban revitalization was that downtown cores could provide better business climates and shopping districts that amplify economic activity synergistically. In other words, packing all the office jobs and luxury shopping in one area is good for workers, business, and civic planning.
All very smart ideas in yester-year, so TriMet became focused on serving the downtown business community myopically. This myopia became so paramount that it was considered illegitimate (actually taboo, borderline illegal) if you used a Park & Ride facility to park and NOT ride downtown. Amanda Fritz once explained that we couldn't expand Barbur Transit Center because that would result in students parking at Barbur Transit Center and riding the bus to PCC Sylvania. This view implies that TriMet exists only to service downtown workers, not the students, not the impoverished mom needing to go to a grocery store.
How does TriMet's hub and spoke design represent its purpose?
Portland's unspoken rule of transit philosophy is that jobs pay for the system (remember, business payroll taxes pay for most of it), so TriMet should be focused on serving people utilizing it for their job - employers pay for it, and they get value out of it. But this is both unspoken (never said aloud) and largely unobserved. The whole idea of TriMet as a social service to serve low-income people, to help impoverished people - well, those ideas were just lukewarm political rhetoric that is tossed out as soon as some Undesirable with tattered clothing reeking of cigarettes gets aboard - then Portlanders jump right back "this is for workers only!" Sadly, there hasn't ever been a public consensus of why TriMet exists because I could equally argue that TriMet's purpose isn't serving the working class; it's actually vehicle emissions reductions - but here, too, reality contradicts that this is the purpose for why we operate TriMet. TriMet's real purpose seems to be "Spend money on lofty capital projects" and if we want to be cynical about it, we can elaborate "…because large capital projects enable grift, embezzlement, and inflating property values for developers."
We haven't always depended upon a hub and spoke design. A great article from Jarrett Walker written in 2010 on his Human Transit blog explains in "The Power and Pleasure of Grids"

Why aren't all frequent networks grids? The competing impulse is the radial network impulse, which says: "We have one downtown. Everyone is going there, so just run everything to there." Most networks start out radial, but some later transition to more of a grid form, often with compromises in which a grid pattern of routes is distorted around downtown so that many parallel routes converge there. You can see this pattern in many cities, Portland for example. Many of the lines extending north and east out of the city center form elements of a grid, but converge on the downtown. Many other major routes (numbered in the 70s in Portland's system) do not go downtown, but instead complete the grid pattern. This balance between grid and radial patterns was carefully constructed in 1982, replacing an old network in which almost all routes went downtown.

Over the years the grid pattern was neglected in favor of a downtown-focused investment strategy. To a real degree it made practical sense: that's where the jobs were. But again, this is the presumption that TriMet and Mass Transit ought to service workers first, and there's not much consensus on that. But while we can't decide on TriMet's purpose, we can absolutely agree on one important thing: Downtown is dead.
No 5-star hotel is going to fix it. (As of writing, I'm not even convinced that this mafia-connected bamboozle of public fraud will open.) No "tough-on-crime" DA to replace Mike Schmidt, like Nathan Vasquez, will fix downtown. It's not JUST a crime problem: most of the problems we deal with today mirror the problems facing Portland in the 1960s, especially our inability to invest in good infrastructure people actually want to use. That's on top of crime, vandalism, and an unhealthy business ecosystem.
IF we want to maintain TriMet (and that's a big IF, for reasons I'll explain below), then it will be focused on something other than downtown. We need to move back to a grid-design transit system, as this is a much easier way to use transit to get around the city, no matter your destination. If TriMet continues to exist and operate fleets in 20-30 years, this is the only way it exists - because it will just be too inconvenient to ride downtown as a side quest to your destination, especially as we look at 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now.
Of course, we can only transform some parts of the transit infrastructure this way, and there are no uplifting and moving train tracks here. So light rail doesn't have a future in the grid system - but even without the grid system, light rail is doomed.

The fatal flaws of light rail in Portland.

I want to preface this by saying I like light rail as a strategy, it's not a bad system or bad civic investment. I could write another 5,000-word essay on why Seattle did an excellent job with light rail and the specific decisions Portland made wildly incorrectly. In transit advocacy the wacktavists inappropriately categorized skeptics of Portland's light rail as some soft bigotry - as if you're racist if you don't like Portland's light rail - even though, ironically, most light rail systems tend to be built for the preference of white culture and white workers, precisely what happened here in Portland and most cities (but this is all a story for another time).
Portland's light rail system has a capacity problem and has dealt with this capacity problem quietly for the last 20+ years. When you see the capacity problem, you can quickly understand this light rail system won't work in the future. All the other smart cities in the world that designed light rail realized they needed big long trains to move many people. Portland decided to limit the train car length to the size of our city blocks to save construction costs - and this has always been a fatal flaw.
Portland's highest capacity train car is our Type 5, according to Wikipedia it has a seating capacity of 72 and an overall capacity of 186 per train car, meaning each train can accommodate up to 372, but even these numbers seem unreliable (*edit). Let's compare:

• Washington DC has 6-car trains capable of carrying 120 passengers per car, or 720 per train.
  
• Salt Lake City has a 4-car train capable of carrying 230 passengers per car, or 920 per train.
  
• Seattle's Link system has a 3 or 4-car train, each capable of carrying approximately 200 passengers per car, so 600 to 800 per train.
  

Portland's light rail lines have roughly the same people moving capacity as a single lane of a highway, maybe marginally more, maybe marginally less. These other cities have a light rail system that can move the same amount of people as an entire 3-lane highway.
You might suspect that Portland could simply run trains more frequently - but nah, that's impossible because the trains run through the central core of downtown Portland, and they're blocked by the real interfaces with road traffic and bottlenecks. TriMet/PBOT/Metro has offered rosy ideas that we could hypothetically run cars every 90 seconds, 2 minutes, 4 minutes, or 6 minutes (depending upon who you ask) - but these are garbage numbers invented out of thin air. For example, you could stand at Pioneer Courthouse Square at 4:50pm on a Wednesday in 2016 - there was a train opening doors to load passengers, and you could visibly see the next train at Pioneer Place Mall pulling into the station behind. Trains were running at approximately a 3 to 4 minute at peak - but on paper, TriMet will claim anything, as they don't give a shit about lying to the public. But the bigger problem is that trains were full. You might have to wait 90 minutes to find a train that offers a seat. And god forbid you had a bike.
I'm not making this very real capacity problem, Metro even acknowledges:

At the busiest hours of the day, 40 light rail trains must cross the river and traverse downtown – one train every 90 seconds. As the region grows and the demand for light rail increases, the region will need at least 64 MAX trains through downtown every hour, more than one train each minute. Our current system can't support that change.

Suppose you're silly enough to trust government propaganda. In that case, you can read the details of Metro study on this in 2019. If we assumed their numbers added up, it's just fucking impossible to run 62 trains per hour, because passenger loading and unloading can take a full minute (sometimes longer). So unless we want to apply substantial g-forces onto the passengers, the train isn't accelerating out of the stops fast enough. Not to mention how unreliable this whole system would be if a sole tweaker, bike rider, or person with a stroller held up the system for 2 minutes.
This is why the bottom line needs to be upfront about capacity - quoting Metro's study here:

Today MAX is limited to 2-car trains because of the length of downtown city blocks. A tunnel could allow for longer trains if the stations outside the downtown core are retrofitted. In the long-term, this could greatly increase MAX capacity.

Do you see that trick? Build a tunnel, yes - but the entire system has to be retrofitted. Literally every light rail station would need to be redesigned, the lines themselves recalculated for larger heavier trains - and extending platforms at Willow Creek might be simple enough, but how in the living fuck is Metro going to afford to expand the Zoo stop? Doubling the size of that platform would cost $500 million alone.
If the city weren't full of cheap dipshits, we would have elevated or buried our light rail lines in the 1980s or 90s, enabling longer train cars to run. Yes, we all knew back then that it was the best practice not to have light rail running on the street - it's less safe, less reliable, runs slower, and limits train car size. Oops.
Just to keep TriMet's own bullshit inflated utopian vision, it would mean spending another billion dollars just to unfuck downtown, bypass an aging bridge, and potentially allow a marginally higher volume of trains - which again is a band-aid on a mortal wound.
The real buried lede is that to add extra train cars means retrofitting all the stops in the system - that's tens of billions of dollars. You can argue costs, but Metro knows we need to do this. It means shutting down the system for a year or years while construction and retrofits happen. It's fucking outrageous. Is this system worth of people per line worth 20, 30, or 40 billion dollars? Fuck no, it ain't. Again, if we had a raging metropolis of industry and commerce downtown, we could reasonably entertain the idea for a moment - but we don't and never will again.
Some folks might argue that if we kill off the light rail system we'd lose out on all those lucrative Transit Oriented Developments. Originally the public was told that Transit Oriented Development strategy would cause a massive infusion of private investment because the light rail was so damn lucrative and desirable for Richard Florida's Creative Class. Turns out the Creative Class is now called today the Laptop Class, and they don't give a flying fuck about street cars, light rail, or walking scores - because most can't be bothered to put pants on during their "commute" from bed to desk. TOD was all a fantasy illusion from the beginning, as multiple studies about Portland commuters showed that college-educated white folks riding Max were equally comfortable riding their bike as a substitute for the same commute. All of these billions of dollars was to accommodate white fare-weather bikers. So here's my hot take on transit: pave over the rail lines and put in bike lanes, and boy, then you'd have a bike system to give folks like Maus a hardon. But of course, Bike Portland would complain because their focus isn't biking; they exist only to favor all poorly thought utopian transit ideas.
Another group of Max/TOD advocates would claim that TOD is better for disabled and impoverished people. And yeah, there's truth there, but see my entire argument above about the Hub & Spoke design of TriMet being the antithesis of transit as a social service. If you believe that TriMet should serve low-income people, you must advocate for a bus-centric grid design.
But even if you're a die-hard believer in light rail - there's another inevitable reality coming that is the nail in the coffin.

Autonomous vehicles will replace mass transit faster than the automobile replaced the horse.

I work in advanced technology, and the thing about tech is that the public and politicians deny that it's going to be there until the majority of the public finally experiences it. You could say this about personal computers, internet, cloud compute, electric cars, smartphones, distributed ledger (cryptocurrency), AI, and driverless vehicles.
Schrodinger's technology doesn't exist until it's measured in an Apple store or your mother asks you for tech support.
No one thought AI was really real until ChatGPT did their kid's homework, and today most people are coming to terms with the fact that ChatGPT 3.5 could do most people's jobs. And that's not even the most advanced AI, that's the freeware put out by Microsoft, they have paywalls to access the real deal.
In 2018 I rode in my colleague's Tesla in self-driving mode from downtown Portland to Top Golf in Hillsboro. We started our journey at the surface parking lot on the west side of the Morrison Bridge. He used his phone to tell the car to pull out of the parking spot and to pick us up. Then he gave the car the address, and it drove us the entire way without any human input necessary. The only time he provided feedback was to touch the turn signal to pass a slow car on the highway. People think self-driving isn't here - but it is - and it's gotten exponentially better and will continue to do so. People will complain and moan about idealized, utopian, pedantic "level 5" full self-driving, how none of it exists or could exist, as a Tesla passes them on the road and the driver is half asleep.
Of course, Portland and every major city have also thought deeply about self-driving technology, and a few places have implemented self-driving solutions - but so far, none of these are really at scale. Though it will be a short time before cost-conscious cities go all-in.
TriMet kicked around the idea of using an autonomous bus for a leg of the trip of the Southwest Corridor project, connecting a segment of the light rail route to the community college. It was bafflingly stupid and short-sighted to think they could use it in this niche application but that it wouldn't open the floodgates for a hundred different applications that eviscerate TriMet's labor model. The simplest example of autonomous operation would be to operate the light rail systems - because they don't make turns, all we need is an AI vision service to slam on the breaks if necessary - that technology has existed for 20+ years. We could retrofit the entire train system in about 3 to 6 months - replace every Max operator with a security guard, and maybe people would ride the Max again? But I digress.
Let's speculate about the far-future, some 5, 10, or 20 years from now: your transit options will expand significantly. The cost will decrease considerably for services using automated vehicles.
You'll look at your options as:

• Drive to work: fastest, takes $100+ worth of gas a month, but you also need $50+ for insurance and $500+ for the monthly car payment, plus those surprise maintenance and broken windows. Also, do you pay for parking? Pick a number for how much it costs to drive your personally owned and manually operated vehicle to work each month.
  
• Autonomous vehicle service: price TBA, but think of how much an Uber costs when you don't have to pay the driver, you don't have to pay for gas. An Uber that runs for $20 today would likely be $10 or less. So, to and from work 20 times a month, $200. $300? Ok, let's just say it's $400 a month. It's still all cheaper than owning a car and driving it to work. No parking fees, and it picks you up quickly enough that it's not a nuisance.
  
• Mass Transit: $150 per month, but ugghhh it's slow, it smells like piss, a guy jacked off in your hair, and you can't schedule a meeting for the first 30 minutes of your anticipated workday in case you miss a connection - and it breaks so often the government actively hides the reliability data from the public and media.
  

Just a few years into this future we'll see a brand new trend, one that already exists: a shared autonomous vehicle like a privately operated bus. For example, Uber Bus - it already exists as a commuter option in some cities, it's just not autonomous yet. The significant benefit of an autonomous bus is that these shared vehicles will utilize HOV lanes very commonly, and commuting in an autonomous vehicle will be as fast as driving to work in your manually operated car while also being less expensive.
Simultaneously automobile accidents in autonomous vehicles will be virtually non-existent, and insurance companies will start to increase prices on vehicles that lack AI/smart assisted safety driving features. Public leaders will see the value of creating lanes of traffic on highways dedicated explicitly to autonomous vehicles so that they can drive at much higher speeds than manually operated traffic. Oregon won't lead the way here, but wait until Texas or one of the Crazy States greenlights a speed limit differential, and self-driving vehicles have a speed limit of 90, 120, or 150 miles per hour. You might think "accidents would be terrible and deadly" but there will be fewer accidents in the autonomous lane than in manual lanes. At this point, it will be WAY faster to take an autonomous vehicle to your work.
Purchasing power of consumers will decrease while the cost of vehicles will increase (especially autonomous vehicles), making ownership of any vehicle less likely. Frankly, the great majority of people won't know how to drive and will never learn to - just like how young people today don't know how to use manual transmission. However, fleets of autonomous vehicles owned by companies like Tesla, Uber, and Lyft will benefit from scale and keep their autonomous bus fleets operating at low cost. This will lead to a trend where fewer and fewer people will own an automobile, and fewer people even bother learning how to drive or paying the enormous insurance cost.... while also depending upon automobiles more than we do today.
Eventually, in the distant future, manually driven vehicles will be prohibited in urban areas as some reckless relic from a bygone era.
Cities and public bodies don't have to be cut out of this system if they act responsibly. For example, cities could start a data brokering exchange where commuters provide their commuting data (i.e., pick-up point, destination, arrival time). The government uses either a privatized fleet or a publicly owned fleet of autonomous vehicles to move as many people as possible as often as possible. Sort of a publicly run car-pool list - or a hyper-responsive bus fleet that runs for the exact passengers going to exact locations. A big problem companies like Uber, Lyft, and Tesla will have is that they'll lack market saturation to optimize commuting routes - they'll be able to win unique rides, but the best way they can achieve the lowest cost service model is these super predictable and timely commuter riders. The more data points and riders, the more optimization they can achieve. These companies can look at the data for as many people as possible and bid for as many routes as possible - optimizing for convenience, time, energy usage, emissions, etc. The public will voluntarily participate if this is optimized to get the cheapest ride possible. If the government doesn't do this, the private sector will eventually.
As a parallel, no one today even considers how Metro runs garbage collection. No one cares. And if you didn't like Metro's trash service, if you needed a better service for unique needs, you go procure that on your own. Likewise, you wouldn't care about the quality of the commuting trip as long as it's up to some minimal standards of your class expectations, it's reliable, nearly as quick as driving your own vehicle, and it seems reasonably affordable.
If the public ran this data exchange, fees could subsidize lower-income riders. This is a theory on what a TriMet like system or mass transit system could look like in a primarily autonomous world where most people don't own their own or drive an automobile.
This system would be far from perfect, opening up all sorts of problems around mobility. However, it's hard to see how autonomous vehicles will not obliterate the value proposition of mass transit.

Another narrative on the same story.

As the working class moves to autonomous vehicles, transit agencies will collect fewer and fewer fares - prices and taxes will rise, creating a cycle of failure. As a result, some cities will make buses self-driving to cut costs. It could start with Tokyo, Shanghai, Oslo, et al. Again, it's unlikely that Portland or Oregon will be the first movers on this, but when cities start laying off hundreds of mass transit operators and cutting fares to practically nothing, there will be substantial public pressure to mimic locally. It will be inhumane, it will be illiberal, to make those impoverished bus-riding single mothers pay premiums. As most of the fleet becomes autonomous, responsive, and disconnected from labor costs, the next question arises: why do we still operate bus routes? Why big buses instead of smaller and nimble vehicles?
This alternative story/perspective leads to the same outcome: we figure out where people are going and when they need to get there - then dispatch the appropriate amount of vehicles to move that exact number of people as efficiently as possible.
But our local government getting its act together on all this is outside the world of possibility.
In a practical sense, we're going to see history repeat itself. Portland's mass transit history is about private and public entities over-extending themselves, getting too deep in debt on a flawed and outdated idea. As a result, the system collapses into consolidation or liquidation. Following this historical pattern, TriMet/Metro won't respond to changing conditions fast enough, and laughably stupid ideas like cranking up taxes or increasing ridership fares will continue to be the only option until the media finally acknowledges these groups are insolvent. I just hope we don't spend tens of billions of dollars propping up this zombie system before we can soberly realize that we made some mistakes and these vanity-laden projects 20 and 30 years ago need to die.
You see, the biggest flaw with TriMet isn't the design, it needs to be outpaced by technology, it's that the people making decisions at TriMet and Metro are going to make the politically expedient decisions, not the right decisions. They won't redesign, and they won't leverage technology for cost savings, so this charade will just get going along until the media simply declares they're insolvent.
Back to fares for a second - the media happily reprints TriMet's horseshit take about "The higher fares will bring in an estimated $4.9 million in annual revenue starting next year, the report says." Just sort of amazing to me there's no skepticism about this number - but most spectacular is no media considerations about alternative solutions. For example, I could tell TriMet how to save $9,548,091 next year - a useless program primarily utilized by white middle-class folks who own alternative methods of transport - and this would inconvenience way less transit-dependent people than raising fares. But, that's off the table - we're not even developing a decision matrix for when we kill the blackhole of money known as WES.

Comment on "Surveillance, Slander, and Censorship 2023: How the Chinese Communist Party’s Persecution Impacts Falun Gong Believers on US University Campuses" by Falun Dafa Information Center https://library.faluninfo.net/surveillance-slander-and-censorship/
The report suggests that the government was involved in the incidents. I think it's probable. In another example, there was a suspicious Chinese student always standing around Falun Gong activities. The Falun Gong practitioner suggested that it deterred other Chinese students from participating. These conclusions downplay another reason for their rejection... Chinese people generally don't like Falun Gong. As someone who has silently watched the overseas Chinese society for a long time, I feel that most people (even those who oppose the Chinese government) don't like Falun Gong, even though Falun Gong organizations spend a lot of efforts to promote themselves. (And other overseas Chinese would agree with me.)
The website "Voice of Chinese" conducted a survey about Chinese people's opinions on Falun Gong in 1999. The survey respondents were mostly overseas Chinese. The survey isn't uniformly distributed, but it shows quite a lot of opposition to Falun Gong. The present opposition is certainly higher, because this survey was conducted just around the time when Falun Gong was banned in China, and many things happened since. Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20021202141747/http://www.voicesofchinese.org/falun/surveyrpt.shtml
According to LA Times, Falun Gong has failed to generate lasting sympathy from the Chinese American community, where some label the Falun Gong as a fringe group. "They’re visible because they have devoted members, but they don’t have a large following," said Yong Chen, who teaches history and Asian American studies at UC Irvine. "The perception among many people is that the Falun Gong is not equivalent to human rights." [1] According to Yan Sun, a political science professor at Queens College, Falun Gong is a fringe group that has limited acceptance among Chinese people. [2]
[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-dec-30-me-chinarose30-story.html
[2] http://www.queenstribune.com/news/1216920411.html
In the 3rd and 4th sections of the report, which are about criticism about Falun Gong, criticism of Falun Gong is directly considered to be incorrect demonizing propaganda. However, the reason is not given. There is also a particular criticism of Falun Gong (promoting LGBTQ hate) that is not mainly a criticism made by the Chinese government, but by the society in the West. However, it is attributed to the Chinese government.
There is another criticism that is considered to be false by the report (rejecting medicine and others), although the report did not explain why it's false. The criticism is true, because Falun Gong teaches that medicine doesn't cure illnesses, that true Falun Gong practitioners don't have illnesses (only illusions, opportunities to reduce karma by suffering the illness). The Falun Dafa Information Center wrote (elsewhere) that Li Hongzhi clearly stated that people should take medicine when they need to. However, taking medicine also makes one a false practitioner. In the book "Falun Gong", it is written that taking medicine is equivalent to not believing Falun Gong. It is impossible for true Falun Gong practitioners to take medicine even if they are not forbidden, because they would possibly miss salvation or enlightment, which they consider to be more important than what happens in the human world. (list of quotes of related Falun Gong teachings at https://flgtruth.blogspot.com/2023/02/falun-gong-and-rejecting-medicine.html)
It is possible that Falun Gong causes insanity, because Falun Gong practitioners' thoughs may be influenced negatively. Falun Gong teaches to abandon "attachments", including: normal human emotions (fear, love [all types], pride, etc.), social relationships, fame, money, life & death (meaning deduced with other teachings: do not attach importance to whether you die or not, because salvation is guaranteed by Falun Gong). Falun Gong teaches that Li Hongzhi's "Falun" (law wheels) and "Fashen" (law bodies) will protect the practitioner, such as being invincible during a car accident, etc. (although Falun Gong doesn't incite people to test this). On Falun Gong's website, there are many stories of miracle cures and disasters prevented by Falun Gong. There are also some stories about demons in society. I think that Falun Gong practitioners have some contetion with suspected "demons".

Hey everyone,
I’m looking to purchase a car and carfax is showing 4 previous owners, and 1 minor accident. The car was initially owned by someone from 2020 (when it came out) until March of 2023. It then says
Owner 2 bought it on 3/22/23 when it passed Ontario emissions at the same dealership.
Owner 3 is reported on 4/5/23 when another Ontario emissions was completed and the vehicle was serviced at the same dealership.
Owner 4 is then reported on 4/17/23, and it shows the car was then registered in Arkansas and the vehicle was then offered for sale in NJ on 5/31/23 (yesterday at the time of writing).
The mileage has only gone up about 300 miles from the first time the car was sold in Canada to the time the car was listed for sale in NJ (from 32,800 to 33,100).
On Autocheck, it shows the car having no accidents and only 1 previous owner.
Do you guys think that this could be an error on carfax?
Here’s a few screenshots of the carfax: https://imgur.com/a/70B5Hqp
And autocheck: https://imgur.com/a/cyrcDA0
I also just got off the phone with the dealer and they state that it has to be an error with carfax. What do you guys think?

Hey everyone,
I’m looking to purchase a car and carfax is showing 4 previous owners, and 1 minor accident. The car was initially owned by someone from 2020 (when it came out) until March of 2023. It then says
Owner 2 bought it on 3/22/23 when it passed Ontario emissions at the same dealership.
Owner 3 is reported on 4/5/23 when another Ontario emissions was completed and the vehicle was serviced at the same dealership.
Owner 4 is then reported on 4/17/23, and it shows the car was then registered in Arkansas and the vehicle was then offered for sale in NJ on 5/31/23 (yesterday at the time of writing).
The mileage has only gone up about 300 miles from the first time the car was sold in Canada to the time the car was listed for sale in NJ (from 32,800 to 33,100).
On Autocheck, it shows the car having no accidents and only 1 previous owner.
Do you guys think that this could be an error on carfax?
Here’s a few screenshots of the carfax: https://imgur.com/a/70B5Hqp
And autocheck: https://imgur.com/a/cyrcDA0
I also just got off the phone with the dealer and they state that it has to be an error with carfax. What do you guys think?

Well, I guess I should start at the beginning the majority of all stories tend to start. I was born in Detroit, Michigan in the month of June 1977. I was soon adopted and never met my biological family but have been told that I have two biological sisters, Karen, and Xinea as well as two brothers named Robert, and Jerry(perhaps Gerry I suppose). My mother is Patricia Bray, and my alleged father is Carl Ambers according to the adoption records that I found after the death of my adopted mother, Opal in 2001; I was a grown man by then. I was adopted by Opal and Frank Smith(we will say) in 1978. Somehow they knew my biological mother but that connection was never revelled to me. Opal was one of 17 children who grew up on a mountain somewhere in West Virginia. I was told that her father killed himself in front of her and her siblings when she was less than 10 years old. He was a coal miner and was injured in some type of accident and left unable to work with 19 mouths to feed; hard to fathom but for the love of God why in front of the children? Regardless of his reason this event left a lasting impact upon his 9 year old daughter that would ripple throughout space and time with the force of an atomic bomb; to this day that act and subsequent reaction linger. Opal was a devout Pentecost, Southern Baptist, or whatever similar religion she felt; not exactly sure. She was once a member of the People's Temple church in the early days when they were in Indianapolis (circa 1953-54). She left the church when the new leader, a man by the name of Jim Jones took over and began to allow people of other races into the fellowship; Opal being a woman of God as well as a devout racist left the church. They would later commit forced suicide in Ghana by drinking cyanide laced drinks at the end of machine guns. Opal was a small woman and she had many older brothers. She spent her developmental years fatherless, emotionally wrecked, and on a mountain with those brothers; I do not wish to even imagine what that must have been like, but one thing is for certain; she grew up mean and she knew how to fight, how to hurt a person, and how to use her 4' 11" 120lbs to do damage. Her temper was short and she was fast to react in a violent physical nature. She was married to Frank who was from Kentucky. Frank ran a laundry delivery service, smoked cigars, and loved pro wrestling. He was already in his forties when I was adopted as was Opal. Frank was amazing to me as a young child but as time went on he became isolated and didn't much bother with anything other than work. Looking back it is obvious he was terribly unhappy but that is unfortunately the theme of this story. I also had three adopted sisters that we shall call Kay, Mary, and Carry. All of whom were already 10 and older once I was brought into the household. The six of us lived in a two bedroom single bath home on the south side of Indianapolis. My earliest memory is literally the day that they brought me to their house; you may think that is crazy, a child less than a year old having a vivid memory but I swear to you I do. I remember being brought into the kitchen and being placed into a high chair with a pack of saltines....then a bath and to bed. For the first few years it seemed that we had a happy, perfect family. Frank made good money and so Opal stayed home and managed the house while watching me. I remember how nice she was at first but that would soon change, everything changed. The early eighties were a rough time economically and it showed. The stress of life really brought out the mean in Opal, she would fly off the handle in a millisecond flat. I was a very advanced child for my age and by pre-school I could count to 1000, read children's books myself, and I knew all my shapes and colors beyond the standard "circle, square, blue, red". My adopted parents were not very well educated and I think they were taken aback by the rate at which I absorbed information. It could not possibly be that this child simply has a thirst for knowledge and an ability to process things; it must be DEMONS...yep, folks, demons. From the time I was maybe 3 until I stopped speaking to Opal circa 1999 I was repeatedly told that I was "FULL OF DEMONS" as well as the everpopular"YOU ARE GOING TO HELL FOR _________" Now you can add whatever you wish to that blank up there because she sure did. I was going to hell for running in the house, catching insects, not going to bed on time, throwing rocks, playing with sticks, you name it, and he'll was fucking terrifying. I was taken to churches where people preached that the devil was not among us , but inside of us all!!! and as I watched them shake and scream and yell it honestly scared the shit out of me. Being a developing child and being told you are possessed by creatures from hell may have a lasting mental effect. Like many kids I began to rebel against and since I was full of demons I began to act accordingly. Things in the household spiraled downward like a toy boat circling an open drain. Opal was becoming aloof and isolated, coming from her bedroom only to cuss, complain, and rage. After the first few times getting my ass or face slapped up I learned to shut my mouth but unfortunately my older adopted sister Mary never got that lesson. She was about early high school age when I was adopted but I do not remember either of my two oldest sisters going to school at all. She like rock music of the time, she didn't dress appropriately, she was loud, and she did not listen to anything she was told. She was a typical teen girl in the 80's until she snuck out one night and some men snuck PCP into her drink. She had a bad reaction and seized, they just dumped her from the car onto a cold, dark Indianapolis street corner in the middle of a ghetto where she lay until found. She was rushed to the hospital where she died and was revived many time; luckily she lived, but she had went without oxygen and it left her with some mental impairment. She never really progressed past a teen mentality. I do not know if it was shame at her sneaking out with men and being discovered or the lingering mental illness but Opal had a fire for her like no other. They once had a shouting match over what Mary was wearing and after a few minutes Opal picked up an old golf wedge club that I had found and began to beat her savagely. I counted at least 30 shots before I got the courage to jump in from of her; I was maybe 8 years old. The following years would show a pattern of such actions with all four of us occasionally getting it but Mary and myself got the brunt of things...there were hot off the stove spatulas to bare skin, broomsticks, rake handles, and even the cast iron skillet with hot oil still inside. My father, having been introduced to Opal's violent nature knew better than to intervene, choosing to withdraw all together of the situation. Left to free rein Opal never missed an opportunity to abuse physically, or verbally. I remember being perhaps 9-10 years old and being as my parernts were way older I dressed like I was from the 60's,. Opal had since went to work at a metal polishing factory and I was left to the daily care of three teenage, adopted sister with no clue about basic hygiene so I smelled terrible and the stress of my violent home life had put weight on me other kids fucked with me hardcore. I had had a terrible day at school; my pants had ripped and all the other kids were laughing and calling me fatass and such literally all day long. So I get home finally and I totally break down into hesterical crying fits to which my "mother" responds to be yelling "BOY!!....WHAT IS ALL THE NOISE ABOUT!!?!" and through tears and in broken English I struggled to explain the events of the day and how all the kids said I "stink and that my clothes were trash and that I was too fat!!" and her caring response was to look me dead in my eyes and yell to me "YOU ARE FAT AND I AM NOT BUYING YOU NEW CLOTHES UNTIL YOU LOSE SOME WEIGHT!!" This event would truly cast a demon of hatred and anger deep into my soul that I would struggle to shake for the next 20 or more years. The next day at school, on recess a group of slightly younger children began to gather around me and began the usual verbal and physical harassment. As they had a few days previous they were attempting to set me up for that trick where one person gets down in a dog-like pose behind you while you are distracted and once in place the other push you over and everyone has a grand old laugh at your expense while you struggle to get your fat ass off the ground and get your wind back but that day I was not playing that shit and so when the little fucker ducked down behind me I immediately swung around with my right foot and landed a vicious snap kick directly to his eye socket; the sound of it breaking echoed the playground followed by painful wailing. It felt good to hear, it felt good to see the fear in the eyes of his friend's eyes, to send a message that I was no longer their victim or anyone else's for that matter. I started skipping school, vandalizing, petty theft, shoplifting, and anything other than wholesome which got me arrested for stealing CD's and Transformers from K-Mart. L.L. Cool J.....funny the shit you value when you look in retrospect. The ride home from the juvenile center on East 21st street was a long one and I was petrified of the beating that awaited me as new and different ways and items to beat the fuck from me danced in my head like those fucking sugar-plums from that stupid Christmas Song. When we finally got back to our house in Fountain Square I was directed into the kitchen where a length of 2/4 about 2 foot long waited on the kitchen table. Opal from behind me yelled out "BOY!!" which was what I was always referenced as as if I had no fucking name and when I did a 180 she belted me across my face with a hard right fist, but unlike every other time she hit me I did not scream out, cry, or even flinch from the blow. This further infuriated her and so she struck my face again to the same result, and again, and again until I firmly grabbed her right wrist at which point she immediately hit me with a hard left and I subsequently grabbed her left wrist. I was about 175lbs if not more and my strength overpowered her ability to strike me and when she realized that she could not move and seen in my eyes that this was not going to happen she began to scream "LET GO OF ME!!" to which I replied "I am going to let you go and when I do you are not going to fucking touch me in any way!!"...I let go, and defeated she walked away. After that she offered no real support other than a place to sleep. I began to steal clothing from people's clotheslines and after wearing the same pair of shoes for so long that my feet are literally deformed, I took a pair of Nikes off of someone's porch. Over the next few years I would have many more legal troubles, assaults, thefts, arsons until the State of Indiana stepped in and made me a ward of the state. I was sentenced and sent to a place called Glen Mills Schools in Concordville, Pennsylvania. It was supposed to be a fresh start and a chance to better myself and I was able to get my HSE, learn computer aided drafting, and I got to compete in powerlifting as well. It was the first time in my life I had seen a dentist even; I was 15 years old and finally I felt hopeful and happy; that would soon change.
If you would like to hear more please leave a comment or like. I also appreciate any feedback about my writing as I am not a professional in any way but always looking to improve my craft. If you made it this far; you are greatly appreciated.

Defending the Draft: 2023 Washington Commanders 8-8-1
Preface:
Hope.
This 2023 season will be the most interesting for the Commanders franchise in a long long time. We enter this season with more uncertainty than I have ever been a part of, however, the one thing the fan base is certain of... is the future is brighter. Dan Snyder purchased the franchise in 1999 and subsequently done nothing but run a blue blood franchise into the ground. This team has lacked direction for a long time and a large part of that was due to Dan Snyder's meddling in the day-to-day football operations of the team. Starting his ownership with signing washed up HOF veterans, to then overspending in free agency (Albert Haynesworth is arguably the worst free agent signing of all time), drug scandal with thetraining staff, the mishandling of the RG3 and Kirk Cousins situation, Not resigning Trent Williams, and lastly we've now reached tumultuous time where his off the field issues have hung a dark cloud over a once proud franchise. Although, lol, his most egregious mistake may be hiring Jim Zorn as head coach. It's egregious that his only punishment is a 6 billion dollar payout for his franchise. I hope the banks bury him and he faces the deserved legal actions. As of now there had been an agreement to sell the franchise to 76'rs and NJ Devils owner, Josh Harris.... and is 20ish members of his parliament. We await to hear news of the reviews from the NFL financial committee to close out the process. Last news I came across was he has cut down the number of minority owners to 20. It will be a pleasure when this agreement is finalized. He could be a terrible owner, but it would still be an upgrade from Synder. Harris, seemingly has been a hands off owner and properly allows the people he's hired to operate the team. This last sports season he's had both of his teams deep in the playoff hunt. This season will be interesting. A lot of questions all around: Sam Howell? Chase Young? Ron Rivera? Eric Bienemy? Josh Harris? I'm not sure of those answers, but I'm very excited to find them out.
Coaching:
HC- Ron Rivera OC- Eric Bieniemy DC- Jack Del Rio
Key Additions: Eric Bieniemy
Ole' Riverboat Ron Rivera is back and going into his 4th season with the Washington Commanders, hopefully his last. I believe Ron Rivera is a leader of men, but I highly question his actual coaching skills and team building. I've currently seen enough of this coaching regime and front office to safely say let's move on. There's been several things that I believed were firable offenses.... the Carson Wentz trade. Some rumors have said that this was a Snyder push. Not entirely positive, but Ron bragged that it was his call. Our team at that point was not a qb away from being really good, let alone a Carson Wentz level of qb. The next fireable offense was starting Wentz over Hienke when the playoffs were on the line. Wentz ended up being benched for Hienke, but it was too little too late. The next fireable offense was not realizing we were eliminated from the playoffs. Going into the last week of the season Ron planned on starting Hieneke. Pretty odd to not know you're out of the playoffs, let alone to test Sam Howell out for next season. Additionally, there's been some pretty questionable roster creation decisions. I absolutely hate the versatile secondary and offensive line philosophy. We currently have a patch work offensive line that has the means to fluctuate between average to below average. Not a single player on the line is top 5 at their respected position. Two years ago we had a top 10 o-line, but that had Brandon Sherff playing like a top 5 guard and Charles Leno having his best season. Our o-line took a significant step back this past season and now looks to be our biggest weakness. Ron has shown to trust his own board and has reached (according to the consensus big board) with every single pick so far. People mistake 2019 as one of his drafts ( Sweat, McLaurin, Holcomb), but he was hired at the end of the season. Take this with a grain of salt as it takes at least 3 years to properly review a draft. Rons 1st round picks have been the following: 2020 pick 2 Chase Young- the correct pick at the time, but hard to botch the 2nd overall pick, 2021 pick 19 Jamin Davis- hated the pick at the time, too early for a linebacker... let a lone a project. On tape he looked lost a lot and made up for it with his elite athleticism. He's shown progress, but nothing showing he's worthy of the pick. 2022 pick 16 Jahan Dotson- looks to be an absolute baller, had him ranked above Olave in the pre-draft process. Was a slight reach above the consensus board, but flashed high end ability. Davis has been the only mistake in the 1st round thus far. When I say mistake I don't necessarily mean player, but the roster building philosophy. Whether reaching on Phidarian Mathis in the 2nd round of 2022. Lol, he was older than Payne coming out of the draft, one year of good production, and was taken a round too early. In the next round Brian Robinson was taken and was really just a body. Haven't really seen anything elite with him so far and was a meh pick. John Bates in the 4th round was egregious. Now I have to give credit where it's due. Kam Curl was an absolute steal and can solidify himself as top 5 safety this season if he continues to play this well. Our other starting safety in Darrick Forest also had a lot of bright spots playing this past season.
Arguably, our best offseason move was signing Eric Bieniemy. I'm absolutely excited. Forget everything about him not calling the plays. Reports from OTA's shows his hands on approach and full control of the offense. One of my favorites things I've heard is he is using OTA's to see what the players can do and crafting the offense to their abilities. Time and time again (Scott Turner) you see coaches say this is the offense and not change anything to match the players strengths. We don't know for sure how the offense will look, but if it's anything close to the motion west coast offense the Chiefs have... boy lessssss gooooooo. Jack Del Rio has been up-and-down in his time in Washington. He's had two very slow starts with the defense to start year, however, they've finished strong and kept his job safe. This is really the no excuse year and everyone needs to show up amd show out.
Free Agency:
Key Departures:
Taylor Hieneke- signed with the Falcons
Cole Holcolm- signed with the Steelers
Bobby McCain- signed with the Giants
Carson Wentz- TBD
J.D. McKissic- TBD
Trai Turner TBD
Andrew Norwell- will be released when he passes a physical
Summary:
In my personal oppinion, the only player that hurt losing in free agency was Cole Holcolm. Linebacker is our one weak spot on defense, however, not resigning Holcolm shows Ron's belief in Jaymin Davis's progression. Cole was limited to 7 games last season and has yet to truly break out. Always played very solid and losing him downgraded the position. We've moved on from both starting guards from last year in Norwell and Turner (previously on the Panthers). Both players were liabilities last season and the guard position was easily upgradeable. Bonny McCain was a solid do it all for is player. Lined up at corner, safety, and nickel throughout the season. Hieneke was a big fan favorite, but was never the answer. We thank you for your service though. Carson Wentz, fuck you. Loved J.D. and his time here, suffered a major injury. Not sure if he gets picked up hy another team.
Key Additions:
Andrew Wiley- 3 years for 24 million, 12 guaranteed. Previously on the Chiefs
Nick Gates- 3 years for 16.5 million, 8 million guaranteed. Previously on the Giants
Jacoby Brissett- 1 year for 8 million, 7.5 million guaranteed. Previously on the Browns
Cody Barton- 1 year for 3.5 million, 3.5 million guaranteed. Previously on the Seahawks
Summary:
Simple. In free agency the Commanders did not overspend and tackled positions of need. None of the players signed are top 5 at their position, however, they could all possibly end up being upgrades to what we have. The most interesting is Andrew Wiley. He allowed 9 sacks (tied for 3rd most)... but man he put on the performance of his life in the superbowl. Another stat that favors him is pass block win-rate, which measure if a lineman can sustain a block for 2.5 seconds. Wylie ranked 9th in that stat last season. I translate that stat to mean can a lineman sustain a block against thr initial rush and counter move off the snap. After that 2.5 seconds the ball is thrown or the play breaks down. Another key factor to this signing is it kicks Samuel Cosmi inside to guard. Cosmi has shown flashes being a high end lineman and I expect him to be even better kicking to guard from right tackle. Guard was our weakest position on the line and Wylie signing helped to upgrade the RG position. Nick Gates is expected to he our starting center. He's coming off of a brutal leg injury that made him consider retirement. Has played guard and center and has some positional flexibility. Jacoby Brissett is the best backup qb in thr league. A solid signing if Howell doesn't pan out. Just a solid game manager that doesn't commit many turnovers. Cody Barton is another unproven guy. Last year was his first year with significant reps. Bobby Wagner leaving in FA and Jordyn Brooks injury made em the guy. He showed flashes of coverage abilities and had a lot of tackles. The tackles weren't necessarily a product of his abilities and more so of cleaning up on a bad run defense team. I've read some notes that he has trouble getting off of blocks. Honestly, haven't watched much on the guy, but reports were he played solid down the stretch.
The Draft:
Round 1 Pick 16: Emmanuel Forbes- CB
Round 2 Pick 47: Jatavius Martin- NCB/S
Round 3 Pick 97: Ricky Stromberg- C/G
Round 4 Pick 118: Braeden Daniels- T/G
Round 5 Pick 137: KJ Henry-DE
Round 6 Pick 193: Chris Rodriguez-RB
Round 7 Pick 223: Andre Jones- DE/LB
Link to all RAS scores for our draft class
https://commanderswire.usatoday.com/lists/2023-nfl-draft-ras-scores-for-the-washington-commanders-7-player-class-emmanuel-forbes/
Round 1:16 Emmanuel Forbes 6'1" 174 lbs. Mississippi St
Stats: 58 targets, 31 catches allowed for 284 yards (23 yards a game), 3 tds allowed/ 6 ints, 9 forced incompletions, 2 dropped ints, 46 tackles.
PFF Grade: 87.2
If being a 160 pounds is your only knock then I think you're doing something alright. The word on the street is he is already up to 174 pounds. You wouldnt realize hes only 174 pounds by the way he plays the run. Hes not scared to hit and flies ro the ball. Although, he does struggle to get off of blocks. Emmanuel Forbes, per PFF, had the highest rating in man coverage last season, albeit the snap count was very miniscule. Emmanuel Forbes is a lanky corner than played a lot of zone coverage and is a very good scheme fit for what we do. I like the pick and I'm not upset about taking him over Gonzalez, who also had his own question marks. Forbes set a NCAA record with 6 pick sixes. A lot of those were the right place at the right time, but when you have that high of a number than you're doing something right.
PFF:
Forbes is one of the best ballhawks in this class. Over the course of his three-year career, he came down with 13 interceptions. That’s four more than the next closest Power Five cornerback since 2020. Forbes was unbelievably dominant in man coverage in 2022, giving up only three catches while also snagging three interceptions. He also only allowed a 20% completion rate in man, the lowest among FBS
PROS
Remarkably lanky frame. Limbs for days — ideal for a corner.Has bounce like a hooper. He can challenge any catch point necessary. Elite ability to locate the football. All six of his interceptions came in man coverage.
CONS
Still a stick. Not much mass on his frame. Has eyes that get him in trouble. Some freelance tendencies on tape.Can get bowled over in the run game. Mediocre tackler over the course of his career.
Round 2: 47 Jartavius "Quan" Martin 5'11". 194 lbs Illinois
Stats: 74 targets, 42 catches allowed, 611 yards allowed, 3 tds allowed, 3 ints, 15 forced incompletions, 2 dropped ints, 4 missed tackles, 64 tackles.
PFF Grade: 73.2
Quan is a beast. I thought he was the 2nd best nickel prospect in the draft and a better deep safety than Brian Branch. Martin absolute rockets around the field in the run game. He started his career at cornerback before transitioning into the safety/nickel position. Another elite athlete that is a perfect fit for our Buffalo Nickel defense.
PFF:
Martin came to Illinois and immediately started as a true freshman in 2018. He originally started off as an outside corner before becoming more of a slot corner recently. He had arguably his best year in 2022, as his 15 forced incompletions were tied for the sixth-most among Power-Five corners. Martin’s 91.0 run-defense grade also led all Power Five cornerbacks. While he played corner at Illinois, we project him more as a safety for the next level.
PROS:
Explosive flat-foot breaks. Tremendous burst. Forceful and reliable tackler - 7 misses on the last 129 attempts last two seasons.Fills like a mac truck in the run game. Wants to come downhill and play in the backfield.
CONS:
Pure man skills are work in progress. Overagressive and liability to bite on fakes. cons On the lighter side for an around the line of scrimmage player. Gets caught with his eyes in the backfield on run
Round 3: 97 Ricky Stromberg 6'3" 306 lbs Arkansas
Stats: 9 impact blocks, 11 qb hurries, 0 qb hits, 0 sacks allowed
PFF Grade: 82.4
Nasty. Another guard experience player that spent his last two years at the center position. Award winner of the Jacob's Blocking Trophy for the SEC'S most outstanding blocker award. This is a solid player that has started since he was freshman in the SEC. He's been battle tested since he was kid and has improved every year. He has some knocks about his play strength, but a NFL program should get em to where he needs to be.
PFF:
Stromberg was a three-star recruit in the 2019 class and started for the Razorbacks as a true freshman, mostly at right guard. He moved inside to center for his sophomore season and spent his final three college seasons there. Stromberg’s 82.4 overall grade and 83.7 run-blocking grade in 2022 both ranked fourth among all centers in college football, and his nine big-time blocks were tied for fifth among FBS centers. Not to mention, Stromberg had an incredible performance at the NFL combine.
PROS:
Does not want to let blocks go. Can see him straining his butt of to stay engaged on tape. Tons of experience against top competition. Four-year starter with 3,121 career snaps.
CONS:
Forward lean gets going on the move, making him liable to topple over. Has wide hands to initiate contact in pass protection before resetting. Leaves himself open for stronger rushers.Unimpressive musculature, which leaves questions about how he'll anchor against NFL strength.
Round 4: Braeden Daniels 6'4" 296 lbs Utah STATS:
0 sacks allowed, 1 qb hit allowed, 14 hurries allowed.
PFF GRADE: 72.2 at tackle, 2021 84.4 at guard.
Braeden Daniels is another tackle/guard hybrid, with starting experience across his college career. This guy is on the lighter side but that allows him to be an Explosive athlete. Very raw at the tackle position and will be a developmental guy. I'd like to give em a try as our swing tackle and see how he performs. He was one of the quickest offensive lineman I've seen off the tape and that athleticism will let him climb to the next level. Even on the lightweight side I'd hate to see this guy running at me on the second level.
PFF:
Daniels is an experienced veteran who commanded the Utes’ offensive line for the past few years. He originally started as a guard before switching over to tackle. His best season came in 2021, as he put up an 84.4 PFF grade. Given his time on the interior, Daniels is at his best when run blocking, and his run-blocking grade in 2021 was an elite 89.1. He still held his own as a pass protector, allowing only five sacks in his Utah career.
PROS
Explodes out of his stance. Arguably the quickest get off in the offensive line class. Linebackers don't want to see him climbing. Gets on them before they can even react. Drive in his lower half to still move the line of scrimmage despite being under 300 pounds.
CONS
Wild into contact. He approaches blocks with the adjustment ability of a freight train. consDoesn't bring his hands with him. Clean engagements are rare on tape. Very light by NFL standards (294 pounds at combine).
Round 5: 137 KJ Henry 6'4" 260 lbs Clemson
STATS:
51 tackles, 3.5 sacks, 1 FF, 6 pass deflections, 50 qb pressures, 31 qb hurries, 14 qb hits.
PFF GRADE: 83.1
Loved this pick. Henry was a 5 star recruit coming out of high-school and decided to attend Clemson University. With Clemson having deep lines it took him a couple of years to get on the field. The stats look odd when you only see 3.5 sacks, however, the 50 qb pressures is the key stat. Seems more like bad luck that the sack numbers weren't high. Clemson's whole d-line underperformed (Bresee, Murphey) and they should have picked up more sacks from Henry who was the best DE on that team last year. The team clearly liked him as we traded back up for him. He's not elite athlete, but he is an elite hands guy. Almost had that veteran presence in college. High motor and will immediately make an impact as a rotational de, a position that sorely needed an upgrade.
PFF:
On a team with Myles Murphy, you can easily make the case that KJ Henry was Clemson's best defensive end this year, as he posted better PFF grades than Murphy in every category and even generated 19 more pressures. The only problem is That Henry is 24 years old while Murphy is only 21. Therefore, Henry was expected to produce this well against younger competition. Nonetheless, this doesn’t mean that he can’t still improve. If Henry's play this season is any indication of his potential, he can still have a great NFL career as an edge defender.
PROS:
Heavy hands that are so well refined. Uses them independently to use combination moves.Utilizes hesitations and head fakes so well to catch linemen off-balance. Coaches rave about the type of teammate he is. He is the type of player you want in the locker room.
CONS:
First step that's unimposing for a rusher on the smaller side. Late bloomer. Wasn't even a starter until this past fall. One of the oldest prospects in the class. Already 24 years old.
Round 6: 193 Chris Rodriguez 6'0" 217 lbs Kentucky
STATS: 8 games played, 175 attempts, 904 rushing yards, 6 tds, 5.2 ypa, 5 catches, 41 rec yards.
PFF GRADE: 90.8
Chris Rodriguez is a PFF darling and was rated as the 7th best running back. This guy's is a pure one cut, run you over, power back. There's not much finesse to his game, but there's highlights of dragging guys 10-yards down the field. He does not posses break away speed, but he will get you 40 yards. He was suspended 4 games due to a dui and he may have been drafted higher on am abysmal Kentucky team. An extra 4 games of stats against SEC competition and no suspension may have jumped him into the 4th round. This was an Eric Bienemy guy and they brought him in because of that. Isiah Pacheco was another EB guy.
PFF:
Rodriguez is a powerful runner, but he lacks the burst and creativity to become anything more than a downhill grinder. He has the size and mentality to do the dirty work between the tackles, but it could be a challenge for him to get to and through the hole quickly in the NFL. He’s a physical blitz protector, so teams might envision a role for him as a second-half battering ram and third-down quarterback protector.
PROS:
Two-time team captain. Thick frame with ability to pick up tough yards. Makes tacklers feel his size at impact. Stays square getting through downhill cuts. Low success rate guaranteed for arm-tacklers. Stays on his feet through heavy angle strikes. Allows lead blockers to do their work. Steps up with force against incoming rushers.
CONS:
Below-average burst getting through line of scrimmage. Lacks finesse to navigate tight run lanes. Change of direction is heavy. One-speed running style is easy to track for linebackers. Pad level is a little tall as run-finisher. Inconsistent finding assignment versus blitz.
Round 7: 233 Andre Jones 6'4" 248 lbs Louisiana
STATS: 7 sacks, 5 qb hits, 20 hurries.
PFF GRADE: 77.2
Andre Jones was another hybrid de/lb player coming out last year. He possess 34 1/4" arms which is an elite number for his size. May move to LB, but I'm not sure that's the right move with a 4.71 40-yard dash. He doesn't have much a pass rush move set playing a hybrid role, but does use length to his advantage. A solid developmental pick.
PROS:
Shows a natural feel for setting up blockers and getting them off-balance. His hands are active and violent, and Jones quickly disengages with blockers and counters when his initial move stalls. Possesses accurate snap anticipation and timing to beat blockers off the edge. Offers some versatility, rushing from a two-and three-point stance with the playing speed to stand up in space.Flashes strength as a bull rusher and his energy doesn't plateau. Showed initial quickness and good flexibility to dip and bend. Jones has active hands and suddenness to his movements, demonstrating the ability to counter inside. Has fluid footwork to redirect, reverse momentum and close with a burst. Regularly first off the ball with good snap anticipation. He’s a high-effort pass rusher with an impressive combination of length and speed.
CONS:
Jones has to develop a counter move or two in the pass rush, and Jones needs to make better use of his hands. He lacks the speed of a chase and- tackle guy. He lacks twitch as a pass rusher and lacks the feet and flexibility to threaten around the edge. Jones also shows some stiffness when trying to bend the edge, often getting pushed past the pocket — he seems more comfortable countering back inside.
Draft Summary:
This was my favorite Ron Rivera/Martin Mayhew draft thus far. Going into the draft, offensive line, cornerback, and quarterback were our three biggest needs. Drafting in the middle of the round really took us out of the olineman race. The last one that interested me was Broderick Jones and he went off the board when the Steelers traded up. At that point in the draft it really left us with going cornerback. The Forbes pick was received negatively due to Christian Gonzalez being available. Both players will be viewed under the microscope throughout their careers. I'm fine with Forbes pick though. Another lanky cornerback who was an elite athlete. I did have Gonzalez rated higher going into the draft, but he slid for a reason. A lot of his tape shows him not necessarily being an elite cornerback, but being an elite athlete that plays corner. Forbes actually showed the athleticism, corner skills, and ballhawking ability. Some additional knocks against Gonazalez and his love of the game. Quan Martin was our biggest surprise pick of the draft. A lot of people had him going in the 3rd round, but I think the 2nd was a fine spot. Mayhew after the draft said he wish we were more aggressive at times, which I translated as not getting Brian Branch that went several picks before us. I think Quan was the backup option, but I like him as much as Branch. I think Quan will be a better deep safety and Bramch will be a better nickel. Liked Quan alot, but felt we should have gone o-line at this pick. Ocyrus Torrence would've been a sweet pick here. I think if that happened, the consensus view on our draft would shoot up. Quan will immediately via for playing time as our base defense is essentially a 4-2-5. Kendall Fuller was our only above average corner and now we turned our secondary into a strength. Ricky Stromberg and Braeden Daniels were our next two picks. I like Stromberg’s tape a lot and think by next he will be a solid starter at guard or center. Braeden Daniels will be a nice depth piece and if he's able to tame his play he could develop into a starter. Fun player to watch. KJ Henry was an awesome pick and can see him being a nice rotational piece. Good pick at an underrated area of need on our defense. RB wasn't a pressing need, but it's an underrated area of weakness. I think Brian Robinson is about as average of rb as you will see starting in the NFL. I wouldn't be surprised if Rodriguez slowly cut into Robinson's role over the next two years. Antonio Gibson has had some solid season, but has a severe fumbling problem. Andre Jones will be a depth piece that will need development moving forward.
Offseason summary:
The biggest question of our offseason was our owner, which now appears resolved. Our second biggest question... was who was our starting qb? Sam Howell. Ron preached all offseason that he was going with Howell and I'll be damned, he did. Brissett was good qb to bring in, not someone that would necessarily turn the offseason into a battle, but can be a starter if called upon. Really a true backup qb. I'm all in on the Sam Howell train. I love it for a multitude of reasons. One, he balls out and we have our qb of the future, two he plays well enough we give him another season and maybe Ron is out and we get a high draft pick, three he bombs and we fire Ron Rivera and go for Caleb Williams next season. If anything, it gives us a direction for our future. I'm ready for Ron to go and think he's only as good as his coordinators. I'm concerned that EB AND Howell turn the offense around Ron gets resigned and EB takes a head coaching role... then the offense regressed. Additionally, I don't want Ron to get credit for drafting Howell. It was 5th round pick, you and every team passed on him for 4 rounds. If Howell is that good... it's not because Ron was a genius and drafted him. Very similar to Seattle taking Russel. I am excited about EB being here and think he's the real deal. I will give Ron credit for allowing him to run his own offense as he sees fit. OTA's have shown that EB is pushing his guys hard and is trying to see what he can do with the offense. We really do have elite playmaker and I'm most excited to see what he can do with Antonio Gibson. I can see his role being that of Jerrick McKinnon, with more athleticism. Sam Howell has shown a lot of progress since his rookie season. Had issues with his foot work, but has shown vast improvements. We only have 1 preseason game and 1 NFL game of tape on him. I liked what he showed. When watching tape you could see him going through his progression, man absolutely saved the day wish his escapability- was under pressure the whole game, threw two beautiful deep passes, and won the game. He did throw one bad pick, but was under pressure and playing hero ball. He had one week of practice with the starters, now he has a whole offseason. Our defense should be a top 5 unit next season and we only got better. Chase Young should be fully healthy and he's the X-factor for the number one overall defense. He comes out plays to his full potential then he could be a mid teens sack guy. If we have that sort of production and Sam Howell plays well than we can compete for the decision. Big if though. Our secondary really lacked a 2nd option, Benjamin St Juyce has shown some flashes but didn't seeze the role last year. Now on paper he's the number and that's very solid. We return two top 6 defensive tackles and Montez Swear is one of the most underrated players in the league. He's yet to have a high sack season, but is very much that Jadaveon Ckowney type of player in the run game. Big question mark season for Jaymin Davis. We knew he needed development, but it's been slower than previously thought. Down the stretch he showed flashes that he was coming into his own and now is his year. He's one of the best athletes at linebacker in the league and his ceiling is very very high. Overall I predict we will go 10-7 and challenge for a wild card spot. That record can fluctuate each one, but I'm calling the improvement now. We went 8-8-1 with bottom 3 qb play. The defense got better, we hired a better offensive coordinator, Howell will at the minimum be slightly better than Hienke last season, we didn't lose any major pieces and had a solid all around draft. I'm truly excited to watch how our future plays out.

In the near future, scientific breakthroughs have discovered a way for time travel to the past to be possible. By supplanting the time traveler into the life of someone far into the past, they can live out the life of someone else safely and securely until they are extracted back into the present into their own body and mind.
This form of time travel became the latest craze of tourism, sending travels into the lives of kings and queens to live as a powerful individual with everything taken care of for them- or perhaps a thrilling life as a pirate sailing the seas, or an outlaw in the American frontier. Some even chose a more humble travel plan, only going back into the late 1900s.
Naturally, this form of tourism was not without risk. On exceptionally rare occasions, the target of who you would attempt to time travel with wouldn’t properly match up, sending you into another life completely off the radar and monitoring of the agency back in the present era. These individuals sometimes found themselves stuck for some time in the past, having to live out whatever role they found themselves in, hoping only for eventual rescue… but those are one in a million circumstances, right?
———
Hi there, as I’m sure you could guess by now, I’m fascinated by time travel. The idea of getting stuck in the past in a place of time in a body that isn’t my own, forced to adapt to the strange world around me is just incredible. So what I’d like to do is go through one of these scenarios, going to the past when a freak accident strands me with little hope of ever returning to the modern era.
The possibilities are endless, I could become a noblewoman or maid in Victorian England, a princess or queen from hundreds of years ago, a saloon girl in the Wild West, you name it! I am a nearly limitless individual, so please send me a chat or DM with your kinks and limits, along with what era you’d like this to take place in if you are interested in joining me!