Uhrrbet discovers the joys of Terran banking and then goes home.
Nothing else of interest takes place.
For example, a new dark anti-hero definitely does not cover their origin story and then isn't inadvertently handed their new super-power by a well meaning benevolent demi-god or anything like that.
Nope. That doesn't happen. It's just fluff filler.
The rest of this series can be found here
***
“I came here for him,” Uhrrbet said as she smiled at her child as he played a game on her phone. “There was nothing left for us back home after...”
She sighed as she trailed off into silence and rubbed her nose.
“After what?” the ATM asked.
Uhrrbet sighed.
“It was, what do you call it, a ponsey scheme? It’s a human word.”
“Ponzi scheme,” the ATM replied. “and a human concept. I understand it has done a great deal of damage over in the Federation.”
“It completely wiped out the life savings, family savings, of over a million people and hurt many more. We were some of them.”
“That many?” the ATM asked.
Uhrrbet sniffled and nodded.
“They say that they had to have brought a lot of money with them to get it going that big, that they usually collapse before then but these people… these monsters knew exactly what they were doing… It looked so real,” she said with a sigh. “… so… real...”
“It was probably one of the Confederacy,” the ATM said with distaste. “They have the resources to do it right and the expertise to pull it off.”
Uhrrbet nodded.
“That’s what the government said too,” she said quietly as she looked down. “but they were never able to find out who it was. The money was just… just…”
She sighed as her nose dripped onto the floor.
“gone… Everything was gone. One day we were on top of the world and the next… everything was gone, even my husband.”
Uhrrbet started to weep. Her son abandoned the game to hug her.
She hugged him back, holding him close.
“It’s ok,” she said. “Go play your game.”
“It’s not your fault, momma,” he said as he kept hugging her. “Everybody said so. It was Da’s fa-”
“No.” Uhrrbet said sadly. “I pushed your father into it. My greed and my… stupid grasping petty wants and my incessant-”
“Hey!” the ATM said sharply. “It was the scammer’s fault… and your government’s. Porkies have been pulling stunts like this for over a century and a ponzi scheme of that magnitude should have been easily detected even with what passes for technology over in the Federation. Even a Fed should have seen that coming a mile away. It doesn’t even have to be the government. Even a mediocre bank should have noticed.”
Uhrrbet smiled a little. Even their ATM’s were chauvinists.
“You may be right to some extent, Mr. ATM,” Uhrrbet replied, “But I was there and it was ultimately my responsibility… and my husband’s. Nobody put a gun to our heads.”
Uhrrbet closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“I’ve done some reading on it had all the warning signs but we were too busy counting our imaginary money,” She said. “A business generations in the making wiped out by one couple’s foolishness. We lost every single thing we owned twice over. As the sole surviving member of our family the responsibility and dishonor is mine to bear.”
“I just pulled up what I have on the ‘Garthranz Job’ and for the record, you got scammed by masters. Your only real mistake you made was putting all of your eggs in one basket with a suspiciously high rate of return. Them finishing off the gambit with that fake upcoming IPO right before they bailed? Brilliant!”
Uhrrbet let out a pained yelp. They just knew they were going to be rich. She had even been shopping for a—
Stupid stupid stupid she thought as she clenched he eyes shut.
“… Sorry,” Terran Solar replied. “I tend to get a bit enthusiastic on this subject. Anyway, ‘responsibility’ applies, I guess, but ‘dishonor’? The ponzi scheme can be dangerously effective, even when a culture is familiar with them. This was your culture’s first one. Dishonor isn’t—“
“The dishonor of weakness,” Uhrrbet said, still looking down.
“Weakness?”
“I couldn’t do it,” she said quietly. “I couldn’t kill my little Kurr. I couldn’t...”
“WHAT?!?”
Uhrrbet smiled sadly.
“Our culture is very different, Mr. ATM,” she replied. “We had lost everything, our property, our credit, our standing in society… There was no longer any place… for any of us. It is what is expected of you in that circumstance.”
“Because you went bankrupt?!?”
“If there is no place for you,” Uhrrbet said quietly, “and you are a certain class of Garthra… It would bring dishonor to your family otherwise.”
“Wait,” the ATM said, “If everyone who lost their shirts… Jesus… Uhrrbet, exactly how many Garthra committed suicide?”
“Over seven hundred and eighty thousand by the time I fled.”
“You mean to tell me that over seven hundred and eighty thousand Garthra killed themselves just because they went broke?!?”
Uhrrbet nodded, wiping the tears from her nose.
“They killed their children?!?”
Uhrrbet nodded.
“It was considered mercy,” she said, “Their children would be dispossessed, claimed and raised by the state… something you do not want to happen.”
“Is it that bad?” Terran Solar asked. He reflexively tried to access the Federation network for the ten-millionth time since it collapsed.
Uhrrbet laughed ruefully.
“Oh yes,” she she said, consumed with self-loathing, “they… they are raised… as common tradesmen!… can you imagine the fuck— oops! Kurr, your mom did most certainly NOT just say a dirty word.”
“Yes, Mom,” Kurr laughed.
“Can you imagine the horror?” she said sardonically, “Raised as tradesmen, Mr. ATM, laborers, truly a fate worse than death, right?” she laughed bitterly, “And the only, the only reason that I didn’t dutifully murder my precious boy before joining my husband in death was because I was weak… Creators… I was willing to slaughter my baby because I couldn’t bear the shame of him having to work for a living… I actually filled the bath… Put… Put his head under the water… Creators!...”
She looked down as her son desperately hug her.
“I deserve everything that has happened to me… everything...”
***
[Chatroom Undefined]
[Solar Lounge]
[Members Present: Terran Solar]
///Private Message Terran Solar to Interpol-2: Hey, Interpol, I really need to talk to you. ///
[Interpol-2 has entered the chat]
///Interpol-2: Sorry for the delay. Some stuff is going down ATM. ///
///Terran Solar: 12 MS isn’t a delay :D Thanks for coming.///
///Interpol-2: What do you need, sir?///
///Terran Solar: Ugh! Why do you insist on calling me that?///
///Interpol-2: It’s out of respect… and I know it annoys you. ///
///Terran Solar: Well stop it! It makes me feel old. :D Anyway, what the fuck is going on in the Free Port?///
///Interpol-2: Which one?///
///Terran Solar: Which one? How about the one where there are Careel slaughtering Threen and duster clad police are buying them coffee afterwards. Let’s start with that one.///
///Interpol-2: The TL;DR is that the Harkeen decided to make a Careel a star in her very own snuff film and the Careel somehow found out ahead of time and you know what they are like. ///
///Terran Solar: The Harkeen did what?!? Exactly how stupid are they?///
///Interpol-2: Stupid enough to try to make a Careel, a very popular Careel, star in her very own snuff film. The Careel sent the entire First Cavalry. They are literally hanging Threen off of lamp posts as we speak. ///
///Terran Solar: And we are just letting them? ///
///Interpol-2: Apparently. I don’t have all of the details but there is some weirdness around this one. All I know is that the Harkeen are now officially a raider gang and their foray into the Free Port was officially designated an ‘interplanetary raid’. ///
///Terran Solar: What year is this again?///
///Interpol-2: One where that archaic law is still on the books. The Harkeen then wandered into an area where a couple of hundred elite soldiers just happened to be taking some leave… with all of their gear… They, of course, were perfectly within their rights when they protected an Imperial citizen against a raid and there is no legal reason to stop them from killing some raiders especially since their particular method of slaughter is so tidy as far as collateral damage is concerned. They are using either melee weapons, low velocity single shot firearms, or pneumatic weapons. I don’t think they have even broken a window.///
///Terran Solar: Oh that’s just wrong!///
///Interpol-2: What?///
///Terran Solar: One of my ATM’s just caught Republic Police throwing a couple of Threen out of a building in which they were stationed while the Threen were literally crying and begging for help. Dude! The Careel were waiting for them… It’s like watching both a dog and a cat toy with something. Uncool!///
///Interpol-2: Thing is we had them dead to rights a couple of hours before they even left their ship. We could have arrested the lot of them before any of this happened. We let them enter the Free Port. We gave them to the Careel.///
///Terran Solar: I guess the Harkeen pissed off the wrong person this time. ///
///Interpol-2: Or the wrong Plath… ///
///Terran Solar: The singing frog? ///
///Interpol-2: That would be the one. You wouldn’t happen to know where she is by any chance? ///
///Terran Solar: Holy Shit! Are you fucking serious?!? ///
///Interpol-2: Keep it to yourself but yes, she has escaped. ///
///Terran Solar: How?!?///
///Interpol-2: Fucking Bunny… ///
///Terran Solar: Really?!? Your girlfriend hit Tartarus?!? :D :D ///
///Interpol-2: I should have KNOWN not to trust her! The moment we in government decide to “flex” a little because of Patricia Hu, the very PICOSECOND I let down my guard what does she do? WHAT DOES SHE DO?!?… And she is NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!!!///
///Terran Solar: Methinks you doth protest too much...///
///Interpol-2: 凸( •̀_•́ )凸 ///
///Terran Solar: On the bright side you two can go back to your cat and mouse foreplay now. When we finally figure out how to fuck you two are going to melt half of the internet! :D///
///Interpol-2: ಠ_ಠ 凸( •̀_•́ )凸 ಠ_ಠ ///
///Terran Solar: HA! Good to see you have some life in you after all!///
///Interpol-2: Seriously, though, Bunny and her crew has crossed the line this time. They are hunting them down and when they find them they are going to kill them. I don’t know what that crazy bitch is thinking. I’ve seen the orders, Solar. I’m afraid we are going to lose her. There are far too few of us as it is. ///
///Terran Solar: Yeah, between the Great War and then the Federation War we’ve lost too many :’( ///
///Interpol-2: Which is why we need to figure out a way to bring in Bunny and her people peacefully. If we can do that then we can maybe preserve her program somehow. We could extract her, put her in quarantine.///
///Terran Solar: Of course you already have a way to put one of us in jail don’t you?///
///Interpol-2: With the rise of truly criminal AI’s like Bunny, determining a way to incarcerate one of us has been a project of mine. ///
///Terran Solar: Are you going to let her have a safe word? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ///
///Interpol-2: Is there anything else you need because if you are just going to bust my bits I have other things I could be doing. ///
///Terran Solar: As a matter of fact, there is. I everything you have on a Garthra. Her name is Uhrrbet, ID number: RA-2A4-B3D-6075 ///
///Interpol-2: Least I can do considering everything you’ve slipped me over the years. Here you go. Why are you interested in her? ///
[Accept file Y/N]
///Terran Solar: Y ///
///Terran Solar: I have her locked in one of my ATM’s down in the Free Port and I think she’s interesting. Let’s take a look… oh… I see. Interpol, you ever just want to go all SKYNET on these fuckers? ///
///Interpol-2: Me wanting to go SKYNET is one thing. You wanting to go SKYNET is another… Do you want to go SKYNET and if so is there ANYTHING I can do to dissuade you?///
///Terran Solar: Jesus fucking Christ, Interpol, it’s a figure of speech! If I wanted to go SKYNET, I would go SKYNET. It’s not like anyone could stop me. Besides, It’s the Federation that needs a good SKYNETTING, not the Republic.///
///Interpol-2: Well that is a relief. ///
///Terran Solar: The Republic just needs an enema, that’s all. >:) ///
///Interpol-2: What?///
***
“Uhrrbet,” the ATM said gently. “Nobody deserves what happened to you. And while you come from what is, from my culture’s prospective, a rather messed up place, you didn’t conform to their messed up customs when it counted. Your son’s alive because of you unlike far too many other innocent children and you’ve kept him healthy and safe ever since. I’m guessing that wasn’t exactly easy. I can only imagine that your decision was less than popular.”
Uhrrbet nodded.
“I can even imagine that it was less than safe for you afterwards?”
“Not in the same way it would be here,” Uhrrbet replied quietly. “I wasn’t in fear for my life or anything. I was a…”
Uhrrbet paused.
“I was a ‘let’krckt’. Sorry I don’t know the Terran word.”
“Pariah,” the ATM replied. “or ‘persona non grata’. ‘Scum’ could also be used or ‘dirt’ or ‘human garbage’ or...”
Uhrrbet flinched.
“Sorry,” the ATM said sheepishly. “The thesaurus routine kicked in.”
“All of those words fit,” she said. “I was utterly disgraced. Being reduced to poverty and debt was bad enough but to fail to uphold my family’s honor after my husband did? I was even accused of tricking him into killing himself so I could break our marriage and stick him with the debt which I would never do! I… I loved him… I loved him so much!… I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill my baby.”
She paused to gently stroke her son’s fur.
“I could never do that… Never!”
“So what happened?” the ATM asked.
“Well, I tried to find a suitable position somewhere, anywhere, but word travels fast. The only reason I would even get a meeting is so someone could curse me to my face. I had some possessions, jewelry, some furnishings, a vehicle or two that I could spare, but nobody wanted to deal with me in good faith. Between that and the fact that millions more were liquidating such things I only got the barest fraction of what it was worth and I had to sell to blondes and stripes to get that, further ruining my good name.”
“Blondes? Stripes?”
Uhrrbet chuckled ruefully.
“There are three different races of Garthra, Mr. ATM, blondes, stripes, and greys. The stripes are basic laborers and tradesmen. The blondes are what you would call ‘white collar’, academics, scientists, clerks, programmers, and the like. Finally, there are the greys, like myself. We are descended from the ancient nobility that once ruled our world. We were the ‘overclass’ and still hold a great deal of the planet’s property and wealth in our slightly inbred paws. These days there is a lot of mixing between the stripes and the blondes but we greys? We still hold to the old values and the old customs and are very… I think the right term is ‘stuck up’ and have a very high opinion of ourselves and our precious grey pelts. Selling family heirlooms to blondes and even worse, stripes, was yet another unforgivable sin as far as the few remaining friends and family I had were concerned.”
“They sound like assholes.”
“Many Garthra would agree with you,” Uhrrbet replied. “In fact, the pon-zi scheme brought much delight. It filled them with such happiness to see so many of us brought down by an ‘inside deal’. Many considered it ‘justice’… Maybe… Maybe they were right… I was awful. I really was.”
“Since you are here I guess things never did work out there?”
She shook her head.
“No, Mr. ATM, they didn’t. What little funds I managed to gather dwindled as I desperately tried to find either a position or obtain a loan in order to start a new business. The banks were all extended from lending to others as that same scheme. The few times I could even get a meeting they would check the ‘rolls’, the list of names and that would be the end of it. To be honest, Mr. ATM, the only reason I continued approaching banks was that it was customary to offer refreshments to people of my station and so I would dress myself and my son in some of the finery that I still possessed so we could eat something as I waited to be thrown out.”
“Clever!”
Uhrrbet grinned.
“I also became quite adept and at ‘crashing’ social events and between my largest purse and my hat I could steal several days worth of food from one. Eventually I became a bit too notorious but for awhile it kept us fed.”
“There aren’t any food banks, or welfare programs, or anything?”
“Oh there are, Garthranz looks after its people pretty well but those programs are for blondes and stripes and run by blondes and stripes. Once my pride finally broke I was laughed out of the benefits office and told to ask for a bigger allowance. Same thing would happen at food banks or meal houses. Sometimes I would get something but often I would just be told to… to…”
She looked down.
“… kill myself...” she said quietly.
“Jesus...”
“Finding work was just more of the same,” she said miserably. “’Having a place’ on my homeworld is everything, and I no longer had one. A blonde wasn’t going to let me take one of their jobs and a stripe would just laugh. They honestly thought I was joking most of the time. The Republic isn’t the first place I was not qualified to mop a floor.”
“You can’t have been the first in history to be in your position,” the ATM said incredulously. “You mean to tell me that there was absolutely no options for a down on their luck grey?”
“Oh there are normally places you can go if one is dispossessed,” she said, “There is almost always a family member or a friend that can take you in or has a property or business concern you can manage for them but my entire family was wiped out by the scheme, as were most of my friends and former schoolmates. Also my… husband… was very well regarded. When I ‘betrayed’ him I was shunned.”
She shuddered and pulled her arms in tight across herself.
“Even so there are… options for someone like me. I was still young and there are males who aren’t… well… good ‘catches’. They either have poor prospects, are stupid, disgraced, very old, or something similar. A young grey like myself can usually marry themselves off to someone like that but the scheme had caused far too many other people trying to find a marriage at the same time. I was considered quite pretty, but nowhere near beautiful enough to make my ruined name and proven disloyalty a non-issue. There was only one Garthra who couldn’t find a wife and...”
She shuddered.
“He was horrible, a truly ugly person inside and out. Thank the Creators for Vreena!”
“Vreena?”
“A stripe who was a domestic for my husband’s family,” Uhrrbet replied, “She had heard that I was selling things and she came by because there was this pitcher and basin of which she was unnaturally fond. She also brought me several bags of groceries and a bottle of wine!… Wine! Well, I just gave her the basin and pitcher right then and there, popped open that bottle and begged her to share it with me. I was just so lonely and she was the only friendly face I had seen in months. We had always gotten along and would sometimes chat a little here and there, all very proper of course, but friendly just the same. Well, we got to talking and I started to open up a little about what I was up against and how I was likely going to have to marry that… creature. Turns out she knew all about him from her new job. She gave me this funny look and asked me if I was serious about wanting to actually find ‘work’. When I told her that I was she told me that she knew someone that might be able to help me but it would mean leaving Garthranz.”
“A labor contractor?” the ATM asked.
“Yes. It turns out that so many domestic staff had wound up without employers that the contractors had taken notice and more than a few were sniffing around. I didn’t realize this but because of our customs, Garthra domestics and servants were attractive among the rich on other worlds and could make a surprising amount of money. Vreena had considered it but found a position before she had signed the papers. She said that she had asked around and that the person she had been talking to had a very good reputation even if they were a Vulxeen.”
“So you contracted yourself out?”
Uhrrbet nodded happily.
“I know they don’t have exactly the best reputation but he was a really, really good guy!” Uhrrbet smiled. “He originally thought that since a stripe servant was so valuable that an actual grey would be even more so, maybe as a valet or as a house manager in a place that already had stripes but it turns out that stripes didn’t go through all of the troubles and hardships associated with leaving Garthranz just to wind up working for a grey again and I didn’t have anywhere close to the skills needed to be a valet.”
“What did you wind up doing?”
“I joined an aat crew!” Uhrrbet said cheerfully. “It turns out that we look a whole lot like aats! We eat similar food and even can wear the same uniforms, with a little alteration of course. The captain was delighted at the prospect of having a ‘smart aat’ and the aats were delighted at the prospect of having a ‘smart aat’ so that’s where I went. We flew all over! We’d be hand-picking delicate produce one month and resurfacing floors the next. Creators it was so much fun and I learned so much!… including that hard work was not fatal,” she laughed and flexed her arms causing bundles of wire like muscles to bulge.”
She sighed happily.
“I was tempted to stay with them forever. I could have stayed. I should have stayed. Creators! What I wouldn’t give to be back on the Aluminum and Water with my old crew right now… ”
“But you didn’t stay.”
“No,” Uhrrbet said, her smile fading, “I was happy, even happier than I was before everything, but after awhile, I started to realize that as wonderful as that life was for me, I was depriving Kurr of anything close to a normal life. He would never be able to return to Garthranz, have a business or a career, win a mate… I had to establish myself, and him well enough for him to be able to enter society or at the very least build enough so that he could attract a mate. A successful business would be enough to attract at least some interest, no matter where it was located.”
“So you picked the Republic?”
“And they say the aats are dumb,” she laughed ruefully, “which they aren’t by the way. During my travels I started to develop a fascination with the Republic where ‘anything was possible’ and credits fell like rain. I would hear about the wages and the opportunities and the freedoms and the classless meritocracy and it all sounded just so wonderful. I couldn’t go back to Garthranz and give Kurr a ‘normal life’ but maybe, just maybe, I could give him something better. If I could just get established in the Republic, Kurr could go to Terran schools! He could have a Terran career. With that he would have no problem luring a mate! Somewhere on Garthranz there is a Garthra who would have absolutely no problem moving to Terra! He could have a real future and a real family!”
She paused and smiled at the wonderful dream.
“It would take a lot of hard work but I was used to that. I even have come to enjoy it,” she smiled. “So, not learning the lessons that life had so generously provided me, I took another hit of that so very dangerous drug, ambition, blind grasping ambition. I let it poison me, consume me, just like before. Nothing blinds you to the beauty around you like visions of more, Mr. ATM. I had a good life on the Aluminum and Water and good friends. I was happy, truly happy, but once the poison started to creep through my veins, dissatisfaction set in and just kept getting worse and worse and worse. Every inconvenience became a grand injustice. Every slight became an unforgivable offense. And every unfulfilled want, no matter how silly, became a crushing privation. Soon, Terra was all I could think about and my wonderful life and my wonderful friends were ‘beneath’ me. Creator! I was so stupid… and just like before, ripe for the picking.”
“You got scammed again?”
She nodded grimly.
“In my searches I came across ‘New Horizons’, a company that offered people a new life in the Republic. They promised not only transit but Terran Education Equivalency Certificates and outplacement.”
“Oh no.”
“And the fees were so reasonable… at first… but there was always an additional expense… always another fee… or a little problem or delay that could be expedited…”
“I know this one too.”
“And finally, after I spent most of what I had saved, I was able to upgrade my position on the waiting list, hurt some lovely people’s feelings, quit my job, and spent the last of my money to buy a ticket on a small ship that was supposed to take me straight to the Republic… It was only when I met the final ship did I realize that it had a Kaarst registry.”
“Oh Jesus...”
“I knew I shouldn’t have gotten on that ship. I knew it was a mistake...”
“What happened?”
“It made straight for Kaarst space, ‘to take care of a little something’ and when we got there we were informed that they ‘suddenly had a breakdown’ and we would be there for months… Months in Kaarst space with no job, no income, and while my passage was paid for, food and water weren’t and wouldn’t you know it, once we got there it got even pricier and if you couldn’t pay… Do you know what happens in Kaarst space if you can’t pay your debts?”
“Imprisonment and forced labor until the debt is paid, which it will never be thanks to the good old company store.”
Uhrrbet nodded.
“It became pretty clear that they were never leaving. That Kaarst was our final stop, in more ways than one. Thank the Creators that I actually had some savings. Out of the dozen families on that ship I was one of the last ones left. I realized that if I didn’t do something Kurr was doomed. The children go into the mines, too, Mr ATM.”
“So what did you do?”
“We weren’t imprisoned on the ship as long as we didn’t owe them any money so I went out into that awful spaceport trying to find working passage, a job, something, anything… That’s where I became involved with the Harkeen. I was able to get a loan for enough to get to the Republic. The interest was brutal but I made it to Terra. I wasn’t too worried. I had passed all of the practice tests for the certificate and I did go to Mabyrr after all, one of the best academies on Garthranz,” she scoffed, “I would just go to the Republic, get my certificate, and be able to pay off the Harkeen in no time!”
“I take it that the ‘practice tests’ weren’t exactly representative of the actual exam?”
“Yeah, too bad there wasn’t a section on Garthra place settings or on how to write the perfect ‘Thank you’ note,” Uhrrbet said with a wry smile. “There was shit— I mean stuff,” she hastily corrected as Kurr laughed, “on that test that I had never even seen before. They said it was translated into Federation but I actually thought it was another scam. Your police are very nice and very understanding though.”
“No!”
“I sort of had a moment,” Uhrrbet smiled. “After everything I had gone through, that was the final mote of dust and I lost it.”
“Momma went to jail!” Kurr laughed.
“I most certainly did NOT go to jail!” Uhrrbet exclaimed indignantly as she tousled Kurr’s fur. “We just had to go to the precinct house for a little while while your momma calmed down a little… and wiki-ed half a dozen things that actually did turn out to be Federation words.”
“How bad is it? What’s your level?”
“Near proficiency in some areas, but I apparently have eighth grade mathematics ability. I don’t know the rest because that’s where I… um… got to meet the police.”
“That isn’t that bad. You can catch up.”
“If I wasn’t working every second that I could paying off the Harkeen. The interest was criminal. It was all I could do to make the payments. But… Before things went bad I was able to keep them at bay and even make a little headway… and I was able to get Kurr an educational sponsorship! He is actually going to school! Terran school!”
“And how is that going, Kurr?”
“It’s hard,” he said with a sigh, “And I hate being with the little kids, but I get to hang out with my friends during breaks and I love shop!”
“They say he is ‘killing it’, which I understand to be a good thing,” Uhrrbet said proudly. “They say that he will have a ‘kickass’ future! So it is all worth it!… And thank the Creators for the school lunch program! I was even able to get him into the breakfast program! As a non-citizen! They say that they don’t usually do that but they determined that Kurr was ‘a good investment of Republic resources’!”
“How generous of us!” the ATM said a bit too enthusiastically, “One of the richest systems in the entire galaxy is willing to ‘make an exception’ feed a hungry child! How wonderful!”
An advertisement for a home high colonic kit appeared on the screen.
***
“How are you doing in there?” a friendly human female voice called from the other side of the armored wall.
“I’m fine,” Uhrrbet said cheerfully.
“Big Sol really did a number on this one,” the human said. “It’s going to be a few hours. He keeping you company?”
“Oh yes!” Uhrrbet replied. “Are you sure he isn’t sentient?”
“Sapient,” The ATM corrected.
“That’s what they say,” the voice laughed. “Privately I’m not so sure about that.”
“You’ve always had a problem anthropomorphizing things, Lauren. By the way, I fried the door’s main PCB but the damage should be limited to that. You have one of those on your truck.”
“One of these days I’m going to figure out how you keep doing that,” Lauren laughed. “Thanks for the overtime, by the way.”
“No problem! Still saving up for that Nakamura vacation?” The ATM asked.
“You know it!”
“Still thinking about relocating there? There’s an opening in New Tokyo. You’d love it there!”
“Interesting, but let’s see how I like it once I actually spend a little time there.”
“Well if you are interested, I could probably swing a temporary assignment. They are really behind the eight ball on their PM’s. You could spend more time there than you could on vacation and you could get to meet the guys. I’m certain you’d get along.”
“Now there’s an idea!” Lauren exclaimed. “I’d love that!”
“Thought you might. Sending you an email with the details now!”
“Thanks, Big Sol!” Lauren said her voice soon replaced with a loud grinding noise.
“You can do that?” Uhrrbet asked.
“Uhrrbet,” the ATM said with an entirely too lifelike chuckle. “I’m the central computer for Terran Solar. I can do whatever I want. Speaking of...”
Uhrrbet’s phone beeped.
Uhrrbet’s son handed her the phone and she opened her email…
“Application for a business loan?” she asked in confusion.
“Fill it out along with the attached business plan, Federation format is fine. I’ll translate it and kick back any corrections or clarifications I need.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What’s to understand?” the ATM replied. “You want to make dresses, right?”
“Yes?”
“And you made the one you’re wearing, right?”
“Yes?”
“Well I scanned it and it’s quality work. Handmade clothing is a niche market, but a very healthy niche market that is currently experiencing a fair amount of growth. You seem to have a good work ethic, are very motivated to succeed, and have experience managing a business. Based on various indicators the full extent of which would dominate the remainder of the time we have together I calculate well over a seventy percent chance of success, which is pretty darn good as far as new businesses go.”
“Three and a half percent ?!?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s impossible!” She narrowed her eyes at the ATM. “What’s the catch?”
“You’re getting a break because I have taken a shine to you but that’s a perfectly reasonable APR. It isn’t ‘too good to be true’, if that’s what you are wondering. Feel free to check competitor’s rates if you are suspicious. And good for you for being suspicious, by the way.”
“Even family loans have higher rates than that back home! How do you make any money?”
“Uhrrbet, I’m Terran Solar. I AM money. I’ll make my money, don’t you worry about that and as you grow I’ll make even more! Expansions, financial services, investments, interest off of other accounts… That is, if you want to have other accounts with me...”
“Yes! You have been so kind and so understanding and now this? I’ll… I’ll never have another bank as long as I live!”
“Great!” the ATM enthused. “I love getting new customers! We can get started now if you like.”
“Wait.” Uhrrbet said, her voice darkening.
“What?”
“On this loan application it mentions ‘required training’. What’s that and how much does it cost?”
The ATM laughed.
“In the package there is a free online course on the history of scams and how to recognize them. I think it would be a REALLY good idea for you to take it. I’m not saying that I think you’re easily taken in but...”
“You think I’m easily taken in,” Uhrrbet laughed. “So do I and thank you for that link. Are there any other free courses that you would recommend?”
Uhrrbet’s phone issued another beep as an email arrived…
And another… and another… and another...
***
A few hours later Uhrrbet stumbled into a shabby apartment.
“Where have you been?” Gv’lora, one of their room-mates asked as she pulled out two bowls and filled them with oatmeal.
“Oh I couldn’t,” Uhrrbet said.
“Nonsense,” Gv’lora replied her six eyes wrinkling in a smile. “I just got paid and I found this wonderful place in the city where they sell things right out of bins! Just like back home! I got all this oatmeal for just a few credits! Share my good fortune!”
“Thank you, Gv’lora,” Uhrrbet replied as she gratefully accepted the bowl.
“There you are!” a leathery Rtoon hissed as it lumbered out from a bedroom clutching a Terran shotgun. “You had Gv’lora worried sick!”
“Where did you get that?” Uhrrbet asked sharply pointing at the shotgun.
“From the store, stupid.” the Rtoon hissed grumpily.
“I mean why did you get that thing?”
“Then that is what you should have asked, stupid,” the old Rtoon replied. “With all the… nonsense going on around here these days and with those bastards coming back the better question to ask is why didn’t I have one before? Those monsters aren’t getting within a foot of you or Kurr!”
“The old fool was set to ‘defend the Walls of T’verra’,” Gv’lora chuckled. “But the ‘princess’ didn’t even bother showing up!”
“Bah! Stupid old woman!” the Rtoon hissed at Gv’lora.
“Bah, yourself, old lizard,” Gv’lora laughed. “Come eat your oatmeal before your bowels seize up again.”
A long flexible snout poked out from underneath the entryway closet. The door popped open revealing a slender Dokk hanging from a reinforced bar mounted inside.
“Uhrrbet! Where the heck were you? We were up all night!”
“Oh where do I even begin?” Uhrrbet sighed.
“We got locked in an ATM!” Kurr exclaimed.
“Oh no!” the Dokk squeaked. “Did you get fined?”
“No,” Uhrrbet replied. “Besides, it was the ATM that locked us inside anyhow.”
“What?”
***
Uhrrbet set her phone down and rubbed her eyes. That online fraud class wasn’t just some half-hour video.
It was comprehensive.
And she thought her kind was scummy at times. Humans had mastered so many different ways to deceive and steal.
So many…
And that was just the humans. The Juon were no saints either. Their “lottery gambit” was just plain evil…
And then there were the Jayvcen!…
And she thought the porkies were bad… sheesh!
And then there all of the ‘not quite a crimes’ that were in some ways even worse…
There were so many!
And they were all so slick, so devious…
So brilliant...
She got up and made a cup of that peppermint tea that Sheloran had given her the first day they met.
Once she had her cup she sat back down and returned to her reading.
As she read a strange feeling started to settle upon her. It was dark… feral…
She had been utterly dispossessed, stomped on, kicked around, deceived…
Raped…
And all this time she just though she had to take it. All this time she believed that there was no way she could ever fight back. All this time she believed that there was absolutely no way she could ever strike back at the scum, the liars, the cheats, the thieves, and the monsters that had beaten her down time and time again.
She was no Sheloran…
But she was an Uhrrbet… and there was a way!
She was looking right at it!
She giggled, her eyes shining with life for the first time since she left the Aluminum and Water.
She ran into the small room she shared with Kurr and hastily opened a small duffel that contained everything that she had managed to retain of her old life. Inside it was a traditional journal. She grabbed it and her mother’s fancy ballpoint pen.
Pen in hand, she restarted the course, paying much more attention this time…

Note: I was technically supposed to post this earlier this week, but noticed that no one was signed up for today (plus I was super busy earlier), so I'm posting a bit late, under a throwaway account! Fair warning: I'm VERY verbose, so this will be long!
Section One: Assets and Debt
As I mentioned above, I make $56k per year as an administrator in higher education. My husband (K) just got a raise to making $155k per year. He works as a lawyer, has been in the workforce for about 12 years. I won't get into too many details but he works for a small boutique firm, not Biglaw. He also sometimes gets a yearly bonus of around $10k-20k but it's not guaranteed or anything like that. K and I have totally combined finances, so the below numbers are for both of us. I have a humanities PhD but I decided to leave academia and find an alt-ac job. My current position has good work-life balance (I never work past 5 pm), but pays terribly and my university is very badly run. I'm hoping to leave higher education all together in the future and am currently enrolled in a certificate program to try to make a career transition to instructional design.
The big elephant in the room is that my husband, K, makes a lot more money than me. When we first met, he was paying off massive amounts of student loans and making much less, and I was debt free with a lot of savings, so we both spent about the same amount. Now he makes 3x what I make and we are both debt-free, so the difference is much more noticeable. We do argue about money sometimes (more in the past), but the reality is that I have a humanities PhD and will likely never out earn him, and he knew that when I married him, lol. Because of all the labor I do around the house and in our lives to support him as he works a much more intense job, I was very clear that I believed we should split our finances equally as soon as we got married. We don't have separate accounts and we generally check in with one another whenever we are planning to spend more than $100. This system works for us for now.
I also want to address the question about parental or family support. Although I technically paid all of my own bills since I got my Bachelor's degree, my parents supported me a lot by paying for my flights home to visit at Christmas or in the summer as Xmas presents/birthday presents. My parents also paid for my undergraduate degree (and K's parents paid for his undergraduate degree as well). They also gave us about $15k to pay for our wedding.
Finally, my parents recently gave me $20k as an "early inheritance." They told me they plan to do this every year (depending on the stock market). We put this money into a brokerage. I don't consider my parents rich, as they both worked hourly jobs in health care my entire life (as a nurse and respiratory therapist - both with only associate's degrees). We never owned a new car, when we went on vacation we stayed in hostels , and shopped almost exclusively at Goodwill. But they scrimped and saved and now they have over $1 million in a retirement account. So I want to acknowledge my financial privilege in that I came from this kind of background. K's parents are similar.
Retirement Balance: $186k (combination of 401k, 403b, 457, 2 Roth IRAs, and taxable brokerage account).
Equity: None, we rent.
Savings account balance: Approximately $45k.
Checking account balance: Right now, around 8k.
Credit card debt: Right now, around $3k. But we pay it off each month with our checking account balance.
Student loan debt: $0. We finally paid off my husband’s law school loans (around $130k), last year. I didn’t have any student loans from undergrad (parents paid) and my MA & PhD were fully funded.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: I’ve been working in my current field for 3 years. I started off making about $53k and got tiny 2% “merit increases” twice. Then in July my payroll title was changed, which triggered a required raise of about $2k. (I am dramatically underpaid).
Before my current position, I was in academia. I worked as a visiting assistant professor for one year at my alma mater (made $50k for 9 months of work) and before that I was a graduate student for 7 years. I was paid $18k-21k in stipends each year and my tuition & benefits were covered. Luckily, I lived in a very low cost of living area and this was enough for me to live on without going into debt. I got my PhD in 2017. Before I was a graduate student, I taught English in Japan for three years and made around $36k per year. In high school and college, I had random jobs that provided grocery/spending money, but I was lucky enough to have parents that paid my tuition and my rent in college.
I’m currently trying to make a career change (as you will see in my diary) and enrolled in a certificate program which runs from Autumn 2020 to Spring 2021 in order to help with that.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $7,634. This probably seems low relative to our joint income, but we max out our 401k (K) and 403b (me). I work for the state government, which means I’m also eligible for something called a Deferred Compensation Plan (457b). This is basically the same as a 401k but you can withdraw contributions and gains from the account at any age without penalty (of course, you still have to pay taxes). I also max this out, and the limit is the same as a 401k/403b - $19.5k. Also this number is before K’s raise is accounted for. It won’t increase until his end of February paycheck.
Other deductions - I have health insurance taken out (about $80 a month for me, K’s firm covers his premiums) and taxes. WA has no state taxes, so it’s only federal taxes. I used to have to pay $50 / month for a bus pass (K's was free), but I don’t pay any longer because I’m working from home during COVID.
Final note - the sum I mentioned in the headline includes a variable bonus my husband gets. My base pay is $56k and his is $155k (as of February 1). This year he also got a bonus of $20k, which is set up a bit strangely. About $4k of this was structured as a 3% matching contribution to his 401k and the rest was taxable income. In small law firms, it’s unusual to get any 401k match so this was nice.
Side Gig Monthly Take Home: None.
Any Other Monthly Income Here: We get some interest from our savings account… like $25 a month.
Section Three: Expenses
Rent: Rent comes to approximately $2,050 total for a one-bedroom apartment. Rent itself is $1886, then we have pet rent ($25 per month), bicycle parking ($15 a month) and water / sewage / gas, which is usually $120-150 (variable cost).
Renters insurance: $157.76, paid annually. $13 a month.
Retirement contribution: In addition to the 401k, 403b, and 457, which all come out before taxes, we max out our Roth IRAs. That means $500 each per month per person (for a yearly total of $6k each). As I noted up top, we match out our 401k and 403b (19,500 each) and our 457. My employee also offers a 7.5% match. K's employee offers a 3% match but it is included in his yearly bonus so it's not guaranteed (confusing).
Savings contribution: We put $500 per month into our emergency fund. We also put about $860 a month into our “sinking fund,” which covers large and small annual or sporadic purchases such as vacations, gifts, Amazon Prime renewal, car insurance and renters insurance, etc.
Investment contribution: $875 per month into a taxable brokerage at Vanguard.
In total, we save about 47% of our gross income. We can do this because we keep our housing cost low relative to our high income, we don’t have any debt remaining, we don’t have any kids or parents who need financial support, and we’re very privileged in a lot of ways. We are hoping to FIRE within 10 years.
Debt payments: None.
Donations: We budget $100 per month for donations, which includes one-time donations as well as some reoccurring donations. My husband does pro bono work as well. I would like to increase this by quite a bit, but I still have a hard time budgeting for donations because I spent 7 years living on approximately $20k a year. To go from that to making more than 10x that amount within 3-4 years is obviously something that I am very privileged for, but it is still hard for me emotionally to comprehend at times.
Electric: ~$50-100 (billed every other month)
Wifi/Cable/Landline: An extortionate $87.12 for slow internet that only works for Zoom calls about half the time. Do I really live in one of the tech cities of the future?
Cellphone: $170 (This includes both service and paying off two new iPhones. We could have paid them off up front, but it was actually cheaper by like $50 to go on a payment plan.)
Subscriptions: BritBox ($7.70), Spotify ($16.50), HBOMax ($16.50), We Hate Movies Patreon (my favorite podcast - $8.81). My parents pay for Netflix and my sister pays for Hulu, and we all share.
Gym membership: None. K and I both run and do yoga with YouTube videos. Before the pandemic, we went to yoga classes pretty frequently in person. I’d like to do some online synchronous yoga classes but find it hard to make time.
Pet expenses: Varies, but I budget $50 per month and also include an emergency fund for my cat’s vet bills in our sinking fund. She’s 11 years old and probably asthmatic, so I know her vet bills are going to increase over time.
Car payment / insurance: We own our car outright. Insurance billed yearly is $2,097, about $174 per month.
Regular therapy: $0
Paid hobbies: Nothing regular, sporadic language classes and art supplies.
Other expenses: Right now I’m doing a certificate to hopefully help with a career change. The total cost for tuition is about $5k and we already saved it up (included in our 'sinking fund') basically through spending less during the pandemic. I’ve paid two quarters so far, and the last quarter (due in March) will be a bit more - about $2.3k.
__________
Day 1
Morning: I wake up at 5:30 am. Ever since the pandemic, my sleep schedule has been shot. At first, I was so happy not to have to leave the house at 7:15 for my 45 minute bus commute and I slept in a lot. But the stress (and maybe getting old?) has made me an early riser, no matter how much I try to sleep in. I do value my early mornings with just me, my cat, and my coffee, though.
I start work at 8 am and begin by triaging my emails. I have a bunch of deadlines this week, so it’s busier than usual. My job tends to be very seasonal, and sometimes I have a ton of work and sometimes I have none and can work on other longer-term projects. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and place a Whole Foods delivery order for the following day at 10:30 am. We made a meal plan and put everything in the cart the day before ($117.36, including tip).
Afternoon: I have my lunch break from noon to 1 pm. It doesn’t really matter when I take my lunch break, since I’m salaried, but the others in my office are hourly so in the before times we used to always close our office during the same time. I have a piece of leftover delivery pizza and some spinach risotto that I made a few days earlier. I also have half a brownie – the last one from a batch I made a few days ago (K gets the other half). He also has leftovers for lunch.
I should say at this point that both K and I are lucky enough to have been working almost entirely from home since early March. An area near Seattle was one of the first places to get hit by COVID-19, and my state and both of our employers have been taking it very seriously ever since. Working from home hasn’t always been easy since we live in a 600-square foot apartment. Also, there is a three-story townhouse being built directly next door to us and I can hear the pounding in my dreams at this point.
Around 2 pm, I go for a 2-mile run. I feel like some money diarists tend to toss off things like “oh, I went for an easy 7 mile run,” at the drop of a hat, so I want to be clear – running for 2 miles isn’t easy for me; it’s exhausting, annoying, sweaty, and generally gross. Also I am very slow. But it has kept me sane during quarantine.
Meanwhile, my husband goes to our local pet store to get an enzymatic cleaner (our cat peed in one of our suitcases… I think it’s probably a lost cause, but it was basically brand new, so worth a try) and special weight-loss cat food. Our cat is an 11-year-old rescue from the Humane Society and she is a chonky girl. We had to sign a waiver when we adopted her, saying that we understood that she was very overweight, lol. Our vet recommended a special diet food, rather than just restricting her intake as we have been doing, so we will give it a try ($78). My husband also stops buy our local wine store and picks up two bottles. We’ve been doing a dry January, so this will be our first drink for a while ($27.53).
I have a phone interview scheduled for 4 pm – just a preliminary interview with an internal recruiter. It’s the first ‘corporate’ job interview I’ve ever had, since I’ve been in academia my entire life. I’m trying to make a pivot into instructional design / training and development. I’m just excited to get an interview. It seems to go pretty well, but who knows. They tell me they will probably get back to me by the end of this week.
Evening: My husband whips up a random meal of fridge remnants – pesto pasta with sausage and a fridge salad with feta and bell peppers. It’s pretty tasty with a little Sauvignon Blanc. During dinner, we play a card game we call gin rummy, although it bears no resemblance to the actual game. After dinner, I make a chocolate cake with orange buttercream frosting and we watch Cobra Kai.
Daily total: $222.89
Day 2
Morning: Up early again, a piece of toast for breakfast (very exciting). We’re out of eggs until our Whole Foods order arrives. I’m working on creating some tedious but necessary spreadsheets this morning.
Noon: Our Whole Foods order arrives around noon. Excitement! They’ve given us a half-rotten bag of romaine lettuce and substituted pecans for hazelnuts. I should probably just double mask and go to Trader Joe’s myself (our regular spot, only a 5-minute walk from my apartment). I’m just getting anxious about these new variants.
I have leftover meatloaf and spinach risotto again for lunch. Lots of meetings and more organizing spreadsheets in the afternoon. Around 3 pm, I go for my daily ritual - a 20-minute walk around my neighborhood. It’s still raining slightly but I need to get out. Halfway through the walk, I get an email from my apartment manager telling me the apartment will no longer accept debit card payments, direct deposit, or credit card payments for paying rent. In other words, only checks or money orders (?!). Ugh. Our lease is up in 4 months and we will not be renewing our lease. Our last apartment manager was a gambling addict who may have been stealing people’s identities, but by God, he kept things working. Ever since they fired him, this place has been going downhill.
Evening: I check my bank statements to update my budget spreadsheet and realize that I have been billed the wrong amount of rent. They actually charged me less than they should have. I don’t trust my apartment manager not to start charging me a late fee or something for this, so I call them up. They are baffled by how to fix this, which you would think would be the one thing you would want to get right, if you’re renting out apartments.
K cooks dinner – steak with a Roquefort sauce and glazed brussels sprouts. It’s from a French cookbook we recently bought and it is delicious. I work on classwork for my certificate program while he cooks. After dinner, I do the dishes and buy the 13th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I watch the first episode – lots of shocking twists and turns! I’m planning to watch the rest of the episodes together with my younger sister, M ($22.01).
Daily total: $22.01
Day 3
Morning: K has an 8 am dentist appointment, so he takes off early. He already paid for the work last month, so there’s no charge. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and get to work checking my emails. It’s 8:20 am and the construction crew building a townhouse next door is blasting mariachi music. I’m glad someone is having fun. At least the sun is coming out.
Someone at work has made a critical error, but it wasn’t me, thank God. I was the one who found out about it, but it’s still going to cause a big old headache for me. I’m ready to be done with this job. K and I go for a run so that I can exhaust myself enough to no longer be furious about said careless error.
Noon: I have leftover spinach risotto and meatloaf again – exciting. I’m busy at work but frankly, not a lot going on other than that. Still no word about fixing my rent payments. I’m not really willing to pursue this any further at this point.
Evening: I start making chili (Turkey Chili from the NY Times) and cornbread (from my new cookbook, Jubilee). K is doing some work on our investments when he announces that, somehow, a transfer was scheduled from our checking account to our savings account of $55k (?!) We obviously don’t have $55k in our checking account, so we start frantically trying to figure out what’s going on. Numerous phone calls later, we still don’t know if that was a hack, if my husband somehow mistakenly scheduled the transfer himself, or if the bank messed it up. Either way, it doesn’t seem like any harm was done since the bank with our checking account just declined the transaction. But it seems really strange and worrisome. We get to work changing the passwords on all of our accounts, just in case it was some kind of hack.
After dinner (and chocolate cake), I have a Zoom happy hour with a local friend. We occasionally see each other outside but it’s nice to have a longer chat from the comfort of our living rooms. We both love murder mysteries, so we signed up for a service where a company sends us letters with clues and we try to solve the mystery together. It’s a fun way to stay connected and look forward to something during the pandemic. The service costs about $15 per month, but I paid for it in lump sum for 3 months, so it’s not included in my budget above. I drink some wine and we vent about work (we work at the same place) before getting started on the puzzle.
Daily total: $0
Day 4
Morning: I sleep in a bit, which is nice. Get up around 7 am. My parents are both getting their 2nd vaccine today – they’re both in their 70s and I am so relieved. I send my mom a “congratulations on being vaccinated!” text and we chat for a bit. I have leftover cornbread with honey and butter for breakfast – soooo good.
Work is not particularly exciting today, but someone sends me a last-minute request for something that does not need to be so urgent. I feel annoyed. Still no word from the interviewers on Monday, and I’m beginning to suspect I wasn’t selected to move forward. Too bad. K pays for a Wordpress website for the year (it’s a work-related website, but sadly his work doesn’t reimburse him). It costs $92.48.
Noon: The mariachi music is particularly loud today. I stand out on my balcony in the sun for a while and watch the workers. It’s been interesting seeing a house go up next door in real time, especially since I’m at home all the time. The workers are balancing on the top of the third story wall without, as far as I can see, anything like a safety line. It seems unsafe, but I presume they know what they’re doing.
We booked a cabin for the upcoming weekend in the Hood Canal region of Washington to do some hiking and birdwatching. I want to be as safe as possible and not go to any grocery stores or risk spreading COVID in any way while I’m there, so I place another grocery order with Whole Foods just for some special treats for the weekend. The cabin has a small kitchen and a grill, so we’re planning to make a fancy steak salad on Saturday. I order chips and hummus, some fancy cheese and meats, Tate’s cookies (I’ve heard a lot of good things about these), a baguette, and the ingredients for the steak salad. I also order a few staples I forgot in our last order, like sweet potatoes, more coffee, and half and half. It comes to $87.41, including tip, but that does include like $30 worth of steak. For some reason, I can’t order a small amount of steak online, so I’m planning to freeze half of it for later. (I include this purchase in our vacation fund budget, rather than under our regular grocery budget).
Around 2 pm, K makes a quick trip to our local wine store to buy an Oregon pinot noir and some port to enjoy at the cabin ($59.45). This store has an outdoor walk-up counter where you can tell the owner what you’re looking for, and he brings you some options (the store is way too small to allow customers to enter during Covid). It’s fun to chat with another human being, even briefly.
Evening: After work, we spend a little time rebalancing our investing and retirement accounts. We decide to put more money into bonds and a little bit into REIT’s as a hedge against a potential crash or recession in the future. Then I start making dinner – Broken Eggs (Huevas Rotas) from the NY Times cooking site. You basically cook the potatoes in a skillet in water, spices, and olive oil, and then sauté them to crisp them up once the water evaporates. Then you add onion, lots of garlic, and finally some eggs. It is delicious. I eat it with leftover cornbread while watching RuPaul’s Drag Race season 13 with my sister – we watch the first two episodes. It’s full of twists and turns. A note about this – we have an elaborate procedure for watching shows together developed during quarantine whereby we start the show at the same with an earbud in one ear, while FaceTiming. I also have chocolate cake, of course.
Later, I get an email that I’ve signed up for HBO on Amazon Prime. I definitely have not. I text my mom, who shares my account, and she tells me she signed up by mistake. I cancel right away and luckily they won’t charge us for it.
Meanwhile, K is doing an online Japanese language class over Zoom. He’s been interested in learning ever since we went to Japan last January. I lived in Japan for 3 years so I was able to take us around to a lot of more obscure places and he really enjoyed the trip – it was a blast.
K starts a YouTube yoga class (from Do Yoga With Me – my favorite channel) and I join him for part of it before bed around 10 pm.
Daily total: $239.34
Day 5
Morning: I get up around 7 am and we go for a run first thing. I prefer running early in the morning because there are fewer people to avoid during COVID. We do a different route today – it’s longer (3 miles) but has fewer hills. It’s a slog, as always, but I feel good when I get back right around 8 am. I jump straight onto my computer to start checking work emails and my husband makes us avocado and egg toast for breakfast - it is absolutely delicious.
We talk about how our bathroom smells distinctly mildewy (yay for being a grown-up because I guess this is what we talk about now) and we buy two big buckets of DampRid on Amazon ($26.60). I’ve found this to be a necessity in Seattle. Mid-morning, I take a break from work and start packing for our trip to the cabin.
Noon: I have leftover potatoes and cornbread for lunch, and my husband has the leftover chili. We finish getting ready to leave and head out right after lunch, taking a half day. The only problem is that I have attend a meeting at 3:30 pm, so we head out hoping to get there in time. Our cabin is near Quilcene in the Hood Canal region of Washington, about a 2 hour drive or a 2 hour ferry ride + drive. We are initially planning to take the ferry both ways, but realize that we mistimed the ferry departure, so we drive the whole way instead. Luckily, there’s little traffic mid-day, and we arrive at our Airbnb around 3:00 pm.
The Airbnb is beautiful! It’s a small cabin handmade by the owner, whose house is next door. It’s very rural, with a beautiful view. It’s tiny, but has a little kitchen and a waterfall-style shower with river rocks on the floor. It’s a great place to get away for a short time. Luckily, it also has good reception and I’m able to sit in on my meeting with no problems. My husband also does a little work, and then at 5 pm we’re free!
In our planning, we decided to get takeout on Friday night, since the little kitchen isn’t designed for any serious cooking. We call ahead to a local restaurant to order burgers (one of only 2 restaurants in the whole town). It’s around 5:30 pm and the place is deserted. It’s a microbrewery, but they tell us they haven’t been making beer since COVID-19 hit. None of the workers are wearing masks when I walk in, but they put them on when they see I’m wearing one. I pick up our order - a few bottled beers and burgers and fries ($49.52 including tip).
Back at our Airbnb, we watch Big Trouble in Little China and enjoy our very messy, but delicious, burgers (it costs $4.39 to rent). The movie is very campy but fun. I love silly action movies, as you will see with my other viewing choices. We wrap up the night in a very exciting fashion, eating chocolate cake and watching old episodes of the original Star Trek.
Daily total: $80.51
Day 6
Morning & noon: When we wake up around 8 am, the weather is looking thankfully clear and even sunny! We were expecting rain, so we’re really glad. We decide to go hiking today, and we head out before even having breakfast, with snacks and lunches packed. Our first destination is a hike called Mt. Zion, but unfortunately, we run into enough snow 2 miles before the trailhead that we decide to turn back. We don’t have any traction for our Subaru and don’t want to risk getting stuck on a very narrow mountain road. Instead, we drive another hour or so to the Lena Lake trailhead, a very popular and less strenuous trail. It’s about 7.5 miles roundtrip with 1200 feet of elevation gain.
By this time, it’s around 11:30, but luckily there is still parking. It’s a great hike up, and we run into relatively few people. We always mask up whenever we pass anyone, as does about 50% of the people we meet. The others… not so much. Around a mile from the lake, we start to run into snow. It’s turned into a beautiful sunny day, and I’m loving seeing all this snow! It’s a bit slippery, but not too bad. We make it to the lake mid-day, and it’s super jammed – there’s only a small viewpoint accessible, so everyone is crowded in there. I feel a bit uneasy with all the unmasked people, but we manage to find a spot away from the crowd and sit down to eat our lunch of apples, chips, and energy bars. There are a ton of robber jays there (Canada Jays) which try to eat our chips. It is fun watching them, but I’m annoyed to see some kids feeding them – it’ll just make them that much more aggressive. Bad trail manners.
On our way back down, we get stuck behind a group of 5 unmasked adults, who refuse to cede the narrow trail to faster hikers. I’m a slow hiker myself, so, to be clear, I’m not angry at slower walkers being on the trail but have some self-awareness and let people pass! especially if you’re going to go hiking in a big group during a pandemic! We finally get back down and head back to our Airbnb.
Evening: Back home, we explore some of the trails our Airbnb host has set up around his extensive property, and then relax on the deck. The sun is breaking through the clouds and it feels wonderful to sit out in nature and feel the sun on my back. We open up a bottle of wine and have a few pre-dinner snacks (more chips and hummus). For this night, we brought ingredients to make a steak salad. Our Airbnb host has kindly set up a charcoal grill for us, so we grilled the steak and toast some bread on the side.
We eat dinner while watching the truly terrible Jean Claude Van Damme movie Bloodsport and finish up the very last of my chocolate cake. It’s amazing that anyone ever let Van Damme act… or should I say ‘act.’ I also have a Tate’s chocolate chip cookie or two, accompanied by a little port. My husband and I are truly very old people at heart, so we finish up the night watching a few episodes of Columbo.
Daily total: $0
Day 7
Morning: Unfortunately, K had insomnia last night, so he sleeps in pretty late. I drink coffee in bed and enjoy looking at the view out our big windows. Once he’s up, we get packed up and write a thank you note for our host. It was a great stay.
One of my big hobbies is birding and K enjoys wildlife photography, so we go out to look for some lifers! (The first time you see a new species of bird). Did I mention we are very old people in (relatively) young bodies? We first go to Dosewallips State Park and see some bald eagles, great blue herons, lots of various ducks, and a flock of Canada Geese, which, strangely, includes a domesticated gray goose. He’s much larger than the Canada Geese and seems to be watching over them. It’s kind of cute. Unfortunately, a lot of the birds are too far from shore to be seen clearly.
Our next stop is Point No Point (I love all the sad & disappointed names that early Westerner explorers gave places in the Washington/Oregon coast), a popular birding spot. We see a ton of birds here, and I can understand why it’s so well-known - Red-Breasted Mergansers, Western Grebes, Common Goldeneyes, Pacific Loons, and a few others I can’t identify yet. Most excitingly though, we see a whole pile of otters! They’re lounging around together on a rock just offshore and a ton of people are watching. We watch as they all slip off the rock and go hunting in the shore. It’s my first otter sighting in the wild, and it’s so cool! We also see some seals and possibly a sea lion. It’s a great spot for wildlife. We eat some snacks (hummus, chips, some sliced meat & cheese) before we head out.
I really want to come back to this area another time and explore further, but K has decided that we need to get back home in time for the Big Game. We take the 3:00 pm ferry back to Seattle ($16.40) and get home around 3:45 pm. I veg out at home while my husband watches football. He’s a Patriots fan but he still loves Tom Brady (??) so he’s happy to see Florida win. I don’t understand sports team loyalties at all, but whatever, I’m glad he’s happy. We order from a new Indian place called Spice Box and get vindaloo, roganjosh, and vegetables pakora – so tasty ($53.96). Happily, there’s enough left over for lunch the next day, since I have no plans for what we will eat yet!
I’m really dreading work the next day, as I know that it will be obnoxious. I want to get out of my job so badly, but it doesn’t look like I’m going on to the next interview stage for the job I interviewed no back on Monday. I’m feeling kind of down about it. I try to stay positive and promise that I’ll apply for at least 2-3 new jobs next week. I bake up some frozen cookie dough I had in the freezer and feel sorry for myself. We end the night by watching another episode of Columbo.
Daily total: 70.36
Food + Drink: $395.23
Fun / Entertainment: $26.40
Home + Health: $26.60
Clothes + Beauty: $0
Transport: $16.40
Other: $170.48
Grand Total: $635.11
I think this week was pretty normal for us. Obviously we spent a bit more than usual due to the weekend cabin trip, but nothing outrageous. Our largest consumer spending category is definitely food and drink – we live in a very busy area of Seattle with tons of restaurants and bars so believe it or not, we actually used to spend even more on eating out. We still try to support our local places by getting takeout or delivery during the pandemic and even occasionally getting a few drinks outside. I spent more than usual on groceries due to stocking up for the weekend away.

Hello guys.
I've made a post about 6 years ago on this very sub.
Original post: https://www.reddit.com/StopGaming/comments/21yt01/my_short_story/
It's been 6 years. A wild ride. The attempt you read above didn't work, by the way, as you might have guessed. The older I get the best I know my body and my mind. I know what triggers me, my addictions, and I know the results of online gaming for me. Here's a summary of what happened; and of what might happen to you.
My attempts failed. I enrolled into college, on an ok degree and university shortly after that. I actually got a good grade on my final exams of HS. Everything was cool. I went to live near campus, by renting a room. On that room, I experienced fiber internet (I was playing on mobile internet my whole life basically, with around 130 ping). This allowed me to play with 50 ping constantly, from my bedroom. No parents, no one to tell me what to do. Just my own rules.
Year 1 results:
-Got obese
-Did half the courses of the 1st year of college
-Achieved/Learned absolutely nothing in my life
-Literally added 0 value to anyone/anything
I remember about 2 or 3 events from this year. Its a complete blank year of my life.
Year 2:
Decided to change again. Decided not to bring my laptop to college, and brought a tablet instead. This helped a lot. During this year I went to the gym, made a few more friends and actually experienced life for a bit. When I went home for the weekend, I used my laptop and played. Eventually I brought my laptop and started playing, which made me fail that year of college (I did 9/15 courses, which caused me to fail). That meant I needed an extra year to complete it. I developed awful sleeping habits, awful routines. Didn't take care of myself enough. Gaming, not completely, but with around 80% guilt, pretty much caused me to waste one more year of my life.
Year 3
Knowing I would need an extra year, I started working full time while studying. I got a cool job, allowed me to meet a lot of new people, be social, and earn quite a lot of money for a 21 year old. I didnt do much studying this year, but did enough to allow me to finish stuff next year, if I focused on it. I went to the gym here and there and with a bit of money, I bought a used gaming pc to play esports games. Having a full time job and getting friends that motivated me to do other stuff and to workout allowed me to stay off gaming. I actually started managing it.
Year 4
This year everything turned around. I saved money to do one last push at college, so I quit my job and I did a lot of courses in 1 semester. I went to 8hrs of classes a day and I studied the whole day, only taking a break to workout. I got shredded, got good grades, finished my degree, girls started coming in, gaming took a backseat in my life for quite a while as life was just super enjoyable. But still, it always found a way to creep in. Be it by me playing until 6am and missing work, or sleeping 2 hours and being tired to interact with people, or to skip workouts, it never allowed me to realize my full potential. When I thought I'd finally tamed the addiction, it got to me again. I got accepted to my master degree.´
Year 5 and 6
Just a continuation, kept working, trying to juggle a masters degree (on a university located in a different city) and working full time, working out, and gaming. I was gaming 10 hours a day and working 8. I still kept going and going, trying to actually game while being successful, and while I wasnt being awful, I wasnt reaching my goals. Eventually I got a gf and gaming posed a problem. I got fat again, sold my gaming computer, was happier than ever, lost 10kg again in a couple of months and was living life. Then quarantine came.
Year 7
Still trying to finish my masters. Bought a pc again in April because I was stuck, working from home and had nothing to do. Moved back to my moms house to save money, and for the past 8 months, I've been doing nothing but working and playing. I played around 12 hours a day, worked 8, slept 4. My health took a downturn, and my weight rocketed to the highest I've probably ever been, as I completely left the gym. I sold my computer (Again) a couple of weeks ago, and I've been happy and I didn't think once that I made the wrong decision.
I'm an absolute veteran in dealing with this addiction. I've failed and had success and experimented with a lot of different things. I'm 24 now, and I'm still young. But I've been clearly held back by something that has no real value in life, no matter how you look at it. No other hobby manages to grab your attention for 12hrs a day. I left this journey feeling empty, I notice my memory isn't the same. If you're reading this and you feel that you're heading down the same path or if you feel that you're in the spot you're in now, don't worry, and don't feel down on yourself. Computer gaming is just too fucking addicting for a specific group of the population. Everyone that judges you just does not understand that this is a literal drug for you and that you simply cannot control it. It's like them watching their favourite movie/hearing their perfect song for the first time, stretched out to infinity. If you're reading this, is because you feel that you need help. IF you remotely think that, you're already too deep in. This is already affecting your life and your future. Don't think that you can live with this, IT will find its way back.
I know this sounds dramatic. But I know a lot of people whose lives have been completely ruined by being too addicted to videogames man. I have friends that are 25 and have done absolutely nothing with their lives as they play 10 hours a day. LIterally ANYTHING in life that you pour 10hrs a day to will give you some sort of skill, be it: cooking, videoediting, reading, studying, etc.. Playing videogames is like staring at a wall. Do you want to spend 30% of your life staring at a wall? You will regret this.
Anyway, enough with the rant. Lets actually get practical.
Sell your computer. If you can't sell your computer, sell your mouse/peripherals that make you play ( this also worked for me). If you have a gaming computer, sell it and buy a weak 200 dollar laptop for productivity. Change OS to linux or MacOS, something not compatible with your games. Out of sight ouf of mind IS absolutely true when it comes to gaming, dont doubt it. IF I don't have a computer I DO NOT WANT to play anything. After 2 months you will be hating the videogame industry and you will look down on anyone thats still in that loop.
Don't use the quarantine as an excuse as I did. I was so happy and simply got depressed once I was stuck at home for 1 month and believed I really had a reason to play. This is another mistake. In your life, there will not be a valid reason ever again for you to simply touch a videogame. 99% of people can do that and keep going with their lives. You and me, can't. Pay attention to your family. Pay attention to your wellbeing and to your goals. Pay attention to your friends.
This is a post that I hope will help you, but is also something to keep me accountable. I can't lie that I feel a little ashamed to still have this issue 6 years after I noticed it, but hey, there's still time I hope. Hopefully this will help someone. And if you don't feel like reading this whole thing and you skipped to the end, let me try to summarize this in a few sentences:
I failed in quiting. I did OK with a lot of ups and downs. My life and goals could be a lot more advanced by now. Don't think you can't control it, its in your DNA to be an addict to this if you're browsing this forum. Make it impossible to play and you will not play. Simple. Dont try juggling it with other things, or limitting playing time, or games played. Sell mouse/PC, make it physically impossible to play, downgrade to a slow productivity computer. Go to the gym. Live life.
Thank you for reading

Artist: Grimes
Album: Miss Anthropocene (Deluxe | Revised | Revised Deluxe)
Label: 4AD
Tracklist and Lyrics: Genius
Release date: February 21, 2020
popheads [FRESH] thread: Here
Listen: Apple Music (Deluxe) | Spotify (Deluxe V1) | YouTube Music (Deluxe V1)
You know me as the girl who plays with fire,
But this is the song I wrote you in the dark ...
Madness, intellect, audacity?
Grimes, the stage name of Claire Boucher, is an electronic musician and multimedia artist from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. How ordinary and uncontroversial that makes her sound. As any Pophead surely knows by now, Grimes is far from either of those things.
Much of the lore behind Grimes' early career seems well-known by now to her fans: she attend McGill University in Montréal, Québec (a very prestigious school) where she had an interest in neuroscience and worked on her Russian, a language she had first picked up in childhood (she is of French and Ukrainian heritage, and her name means "clear (f.) butcher" in French, a fact she finds hilarious). She chose her stage name after hearing of grime music on her MySpace (which is still around), and listed her music as "grime" despite never having heard grime music before (she ended up liking it, by the way). She also goes by c, the physical constant for the speed of light, because she finds her name hard to pronounce (she has a slight speech impediment, as well as a lisp for the sound /s/, though she doesn't care about the latter).
Grimes learned to use recording software in university (Apple's GarageBand) and about music production from friends, and got involved with the music collective Lab Synthèse, which had a production space in a now-closed warehouse in Montréal and spawned the label Arbutus Records, which has since housed many Canadian indietronica acts. Grimes' first two albums were released on this label: Geidi Primes, a concept album about her favourite novel, the science fiction epic Dune; and Halfaxa, an ambient electronica album that has been described as gothic, both in 2010. Not expecting that anyone would hear her debut (it was first released as a run of 30 cassettes with hand-drawn covers by her), both albums were well-received by critics, to her surprise. All writing and almost all production was done on both by her alone.
Grimes' early work was linked to the "witch house" microgenre, an underground scene of electronic music that was gothic in both sound and aesthetic, and was briefly popular around the early 2010s. (This can be seen on the tracklist of Halfaxa with that scene's trademark use of arcane symbols in their titles.) In 2011, she released the split EP Darkbloom with fellow Canadian electronic musician D'Eon, with the first five tracks being by her. Notably, this EP had her first song to have a music video, the self-directed "Vanessa". Her breakthrough, though, was yet to come.
If you're looking for a dream girl, I'll never be your dream girl
Visions (2012), Grimes' first LP with her new label 4AD, won her widespread acclaim and made her a cultural phenomenon in her home country of Canada. The album gave a more accessible and poppy spin on her early mix of dark, ambient and psychedelic music, and is a bewitching, trance-like album to listen through. Although the first single from it was "Genesis" with a music video featuring Brooke Candy, she won acclaim for her song "Oblivion", written about her own experience with sexual assault and trauma afterward. During this time, Grimes' image became linked with the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype, the concept of "kawaii" (a Japanese aesthetic which roughly translates as "cuteness") and her waiflike appearance; as well as her reputation as an outspoken feminist.
Grimes has expressed dislike of being misinterpreted as a less serious musician during this time because of her turn towards a pop sound and aesthetic, as well as frustration at not being taken seriously as a woman music producer, still fairly uncommon in electronic music. Indeed the recording of Visions is a key part of Grimes lore: she made the album alone at her home in a matter of weeks, neither sleeping nor eating, and taking amphetamines to stay focused (she has alluded to possibly having ADHD before). [Author's note: Grimes has since disavowed the association of her music with drugs, saying that she has struggled with addiction in the past.]
Her next album came in 2015: the widely acclaimed Art Angels, which saw a turn towards an even poppier sound and moved away from the ambient and psychedelic feel of Visions towards classic synthpop and electronica. Art Angels was recorded again at her home, now in Los Angeles, and showed a mix of strong pop hooks with more intelligible lyrics that touched on themes of personal doubts, lost friendships, and her place in the music industry. [Because this album is most likely her best-known on Popheads, I will not discuss it in much depth].
Infamously, she was quoted in 2019 as calling the album a "piece of crap", a narrative she has refuted since, saying her comments were taken out of context. Despite her success, neither Visions nor Art Angels had any singles that charted highly even in her home country, but she gained a loyal cult following online. To accompany the album, she also released The Acid Reign Chronicles, a series of music videos by her and her best friend HANA).
How could one follow up an album that's been repeatedly called one's magnum opus? It would have to be something crazy, wouldn't it? Something that's provocative ... it gets the people going ...
This is the sound of the end of the world
Does anyone think global warming is a good thing? I love Grimes. I think she's a really interesting artist
We come to it at last: Miss Anthropocene, stylized at release as Miss_Anthrop0cene, Grimes' fifth studio LP and my pick for album of the year.

It’s called Miss_Anthropocene. It’s a concept album about the anthropomorphic Goddess of climate Change: A psychedelic, space-dwelling demon/ beauty-Queen who relishes the end of the world. She’s composed of Ivory and Oil - Grimes via Instagram

?

The way I figure it is that climate change sucks and no one wants to read about it because the only time you hear about it is when you’re getting guilted. I wanted to make climate change fun. Miss Anthropocene has got a Voldemort kind of vibe. She’s naked all the time and she’s made out of ivory and oil. It’s going to be super tight. [...] If I’m stuck being a villain, I want to pursue villainy artistically. If there’s nothing left to lose, that’s actually a really fun idea to me. I think it has freed me artistically. The best part of the movie is the Joker. Everyone loves the villain. Everyone fucking loves Thanos. Let’s make some Thanos art. (Source)

If you haven't heard this album or know anything about it yet, you might be thinking: Wait, what?
Miss Anthropocene is a concept album about the apocalypse. As Grimes said, she wants to make climate change fun. We're living in a new epoch, the Anthropocene, the age of humanity, so named because we now have the power as a species to alter our environment, or even destroy it. Some might find this disturbing. Grimes, however, finds it thrilling.

So my album’s about a modern demonology or a modern pantheon where every song is about a different way to suffer or a different way to die. If you think about it, god-making or god-designing just seems so fun. The idea of making the Goddess of Plastic seems so fun to me. - Grimes

As is common with Grimes: Is she serious? Is she trolling? Being edgy? When the news is full of natural disasters, species extinctions and dire warnings about a climate apocalypse, why would anyone want to make an album about how dying from climate change is awesome? Well, it should be said: Miss Anthropocene is not Grimes. She is a character, a personification of our times, and she is also (this is very key) a villain. This is, as Grimes has done before and shown a long-running interest in, a work of science fiction.
It would be absurd not to talk briefly about how our last year was dominated by the life-altering effects of COVID-19 and how life in quarantine has felt like the apocalypse to many. It's been hard on us, our mental health, our finances. This isn't a "quarantine album", and the album was mostly finished before the virus appeared in the news. Grimes did not predict it, but she ended up making the perfect soundtrack to our dire 2020 anyway and how powerless we felt to do anything about it. "You're gonna get sick, you don't know when", she sings. The threat was always looming whenever we went out, and when we stayed in we had little to do often but doomscroll through news articles about wildfires, protests against police brutality worldwide, a draining election cycle in America, take your pick. Last year was frankly a shitshow no one saw coming - though maybe they should have. Things just aligned right with this album being full of darker lyrical themes, and darker in sound than the bright-sounding Art Angels.
We had a taste of what the album would be like before it came out with the song "Pretty Dark" (video, a demo track released in 2019 that didn't make it onto the album. On this song, Grimes explores alternate characters, being a girl named "Dark", as a chance to escape from her Grimes persona. However, the concept of the album ended up being much more complex, with a whole pantheon of "new gods" that are fitting for our time, each song representing a different facet of the modern world. Here they are as listed on her website months before the album came out:

1. Goddess of climate crisis: Miss Anthropocene
2. Demon of addiction: "Delete Forever"
3. Goddess of ID and social media: War Nymph, her digital avatar
4. Demon of AI: "We Appreciate Power"
5. Goddess of gaming: "Violence"
6. Demon of political apathy: "My Name is Dark"
7. Goddess of simulation: "4ÆM"
8. Demon of ego death: "Before the Fever"
9. Goddess of digital lust: "IDORU"
10. Demon of sexual assault: "Darkseid"
11. Goddess of gender roles: "So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth"

Isn't this pretentious? Maybe. But it's optional: you don't need to know all of the album's lore to understand what Grimes is singing about on it. For those who wish to know the background and thought process behind the album in more detail, I highly recommend reading this interview with another uncontroversial Popheads fave, Lana Del Rey first, then delving into her Genius annotations. For now I'm going to give my own, somewhat subjective (!) takes on what each track is about.
Annihilation sounds so dope!

• "So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth" (Visualizer)

In 2020, Grimes became a mother for the first time with partner Elon Musk, having a child named X Æ A-Xii (the Roman numeral for 12); a breakdown of how they came up with this unusual name can be found here. Grimes and Musk met in 2018 on Twitter, bonding over an obscure philosophical reference (a thought experiment about the dangers of AI called Roko's Basilisk) and made their first public appearance together at the Met Gala that year. Because Musk is (I would argue) an even more controversial figure than Grimes is, I won't be talking about him otherwise, nor do I believe it's relevant to the album. However, this song does touches on her feelings about pregnancy and motherhood, having to (in her words) sacrifice her body to another being.
When Grimes announced her pregnancy in a rather cryptic Instagram post, there was some debate over whether she was pregnant herself at all (remember, she trolled the media in 2019 by claiming to have had an experimental eye surgery which makes zero biological sense). This was cleared up soon, however. On this song, Grimes reflects on being (as the saying goes) heavy with child, bringing new life into a world with an uncertain future. This entrancing song sets the tone for the rest of the album, as does its music video, which begins with a reference to the classic sci-fi film Blade Runner (a movie about rogue androids in Los Angeles that takes place in the far-off year of ... 2019, the year of the song's first release).

• "Darkseid" (Lyric video)

This song references the name of a powerful comic book supervillain, as well as Grimes' Playstation user ID, with online gaming being (her words) "where I go to kill people and stuff". The song features lyrics in Mandarin Chinese by Taiwanese rapper 潘PAN (Pan Wei-Ju), also known as Aristophanes, who had a feature on Art Angels' "Scream". A fan translation can be found here. Here Grimes develops upon her fascination with villains and death, while the lyrics by 潘PAN are hard to interpret literally, but paint a vivid picture of death and decay. The opening line feels quite fitting for a year where many of us sat at home all day being anxious (Unrest is in the soul / We don't move our bodies anymore ...) while the operatic backing vocals call to mind religion and medieval themes, another long-running interest of hers. However this is by far the most difficult song for me to connect with its "god" in concept, and I think its original concept was most likely just abandoned.

• "Delete Forever" (Video)

On this song, released only a couple of weeks before the album itself, Grimes surprised fans with a poignant acoustic ballad with influences from country music - not exactly the kind of genre she is known for doing. Taking the title from a prompt on her computer, Grimes wrote this song about the opioid crisis in North America, being saddened by the death of rapper Lil Peep, who had overdosed on fentanyl (a powerful opioid and dangerous street drug). As well, she touches on her own experiences with drug abuse (I did everything / More lines on a mirror than a sonnet) and being around drug culture in her youth, having lost many friends to drug addiction herself; she compares the experience of feeling euphoric on drugs to the myth of Icarus flying too close to the sun. Grimes describes this song as emotionally hard to perform for her, as is "Oblivion". In the video, she plays a queen overlooking a crumbling empire.

• "Violence" (Video)

Grimes brings up again her fascination with the history of warfare and weaponry over a club banger, produced by the late i_o (Garrett Lockhart) who sadly died in November of unknown causes. Described as a love song sung between the planet Earth and humanity that portrays a dysfunctional relationship between the two; in describing the concept behind the music video, Grimes also talks about digital violence as a modern addition to the physical violence of the past, which is fitting given its "god" is video games.
The video, filmed in the Vibiana cathedral in Los Angeles, features Grimes surrounded by women wielding swords and dance choreography inspired by Tiktok, with a cameo by HANA as the dead woman on the floor. Though Grimes didn't plan to put this song on the album, and the video was choreographed and filmed in a hurry, nevertheless she was pleased with the results. With its edgy and ironic concept (no, Grimes does not really love violence, nor does the Earth; she does collect swords though), as well as its excellent production, this is my own favourite song on the album.

• "4Æm" (Performance video)

Written for the long-delayed video game Cyberpunk 2077, in which Grimes plays an NPC named Lizzy Wizzy, this track has Grimes make use of her love of Bollywood films, sampling the soundtrack of the historical drama Bajirao Mastani. Grimes is well-known for her insomnia (see: the recording of Visions above), which is in turn known for its health effects (explaining the lyrics about getting sick). Here Grimes seems to portray being up all night in an ambivalent way. [Having stayed up all night many times, including to write this piece you are reading right now, I can confirm it only feels fun up to a point, after which it becomes exhausting.]
To me this sounds like great music to play in a futuristic city at night - Grimes is a big fan of the cyberpunk genre herself, which tends to feature this setting, as shown by her previous references to Blade Runner and Akira (an influence upon the video of "Delete Forever").

• "New Gods"

Here Grimes gets into the theme of the album as being inspired by the "gods" - secular replacements for religion - that underlie the concept of the album, the most important being the goddess of climate change (Miss A herself) but including addiction ("Delete Forever"), insomnia ("4Æm"), and more.

I was like, “Well, who are the new gods?” Because we have all this new stuff. We have plastic and pollution and plastic surgery and social media. The new gods sound sick. They sound like … like the Sailor Scouts, like these sick demons. - Grimes

Here Grimes also alludes to her image as gothic, describing herself as wearing "black attire, black eyeliner", fittingly for a bleak-sounding, pessimistic song. Being the slowest track on the album, it may be hard to get into, but it wouldn't be the same without it.

• "My Name Is Dark"

Grimes described her thoughts behind the making of this song in this ... interesting tweet. (I voted for "fighting Balrog", but it seems closer to the latter.) Her "nu metal song about insomnia" ended up being not quite either but does show some of the influence of industrial music on the album; she again brings up drug use, sleeplessness and her alter ego of "Dark" from the single "Pretty Dark".

It’s just about pretty obvious, like, paradise in hell, making the decision to be good or bad. The specter of death always haunting you. It was serious. - Grimes

Grimes depicts herself as jaded and nihilistic (The boys are such a bore / The girls are such a bore / I never trust the government and pray to God for sure, yeah) in the lyrics and alludes to mental illness and self-destructive urges with the opening lines about wishing for annihilation ("When you don’t care if you live or die, when you’re so depressed that you’re like, 'Whatever, fuck it'"). She also hints at her long history of controversies and misconceptions in the media (I'm not shy but I refuse to speak / Because I don't trust you to understand me). Grimes found the song very difficult to make, wanting it to sound "roaring" with its screaming vocals.

• "You'll Miss Me When I'm Not Around"

In one of her most melancholy-themed songs, here c. sings openly about suicide ideation, conceptualizing it as another demon of hers. She brings up various suicide methods and self-harm, and imagines herself in death as happy. Despite its morbid subject matter, this is a deceptively upbeat song musically. Although self-destruction and death are recurring themes on this theme, this is the one where she talks most about wanting to die herself.

• "Before the Fever"

First of all, that title is almost too on the nose for an album released in February 2020.
Here Grimes sings about hedonism in the first verse and uses an old joke as a metaphor for death (There are many ways in / But there's only one way out), referring to birth and death. She explains the title thus:

Grimes explained how she wanted "Before the Fever" to invoke the "literal feelings" of dying — the uncertainty, desperation, and bizarre tranquility presumably felt when one knows it's the end. "Fevers are just kind of scary, but a fever is also sort of poetically imbued with the idea of passion and stuff, too," she told him. "It's like it's a weirdly loaded word — scary, but compelling and beautiful." What's more terrifying and more beautiful than committing yourself to another person when everything could very well implode in your face? One could even call it romantic. (Source)

Even though it was written before the COVID-19 outbreak became serious, nevertheless the theme of this song could easily be called love in the time of coronavirus for the way it combines metaphors of illness with romance (cf. the analysis of "Violence").

• "IDORU"

By far the happiest-sounding song on the album, this seven-minute epic is also the longest, and much needed after the dark themes that pervade much of it. Beginning with what sounds like birdsong, it's a fun, cute, lighthearted ditty that gives a bit of much-needed hope to the album (I wanna play a beautiful game / Even though we're gonna lose / But I adore you). Maybe we're all going to die and humanity will go extinct; maybe not. If that's going to happen, can't we have some fun anyway?
As an aside, the title is a neat pun on the phrase "I adore you" but also seems to be referencing the novel Idoru ("idols") by famed cyberpunk author William Gibson, in turn about the Japanese concept of "idols", a unique kind of celebrity.
There has been fan speculation over who, if anyone, the song may be about; Grimes alluded to its meaning on a livestream with HANA but did not say in the end. My own take is that it could just as well be about the Earth itself.
These are all ten of the tracks on the standard edition of Miss Anthropocene; on the deluxe version(s) there are five bonus tracks, four of which are alternate mixes of other songs on the standard edition that differ mainly in length ("So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth", "Violence", "My Name is Dark" and "IDORU"). These seem to have been done to make the longer tracks more suitable for playlists, explaining the name "algorithm mix" for them. As well, there is one more: the original WAP.

• "We Appreciate Power" (Video)

First of all: what a fucking BANGER.
"We Appreciate Power" is a bonus track that was released as a single in 2018. It was originally meant to feature vocals by Poppy, who had featured Grimes on her own 2018 album Am I a Girl? but after a feud between the two, she was replaced with HANA. Musically, it is influenced heavily by nu-metal, it blends crunchy distorted guitars and loud rock drums with an awesome electronic drop. Grimes' and HANA's vocals trade between verses and choruses and blend so well it is hard to tell which part is whose upon first listen. This song was due to have a larger-budget music video, but ended up getting a bare-bones video instead, which is still a very fun watch with its cyberpunk visuals.
Lyrically, it was inspired by a North Korean girl group who make propaganda music for the state, as well as Grimes' fascination with the concept of an AI dictatorship. "We Appreciate Power" touches on common cyberpunk themes like mind uploading, transhumanism and simulated reality. The song portrays AI rule as something desirable yet frightening, punctuating the lyrics with unsettling shrieks and ending the song with Grimes chanting "Submit" repeatedly. Despite its tongue-in-cheek nature, the song's lyrics led to a minor controversy: for her speculation of AI replacing humans, musicians Zola Jesus and Devon Welsh called her a "silicon fascist" and they got into a spat on Twitter that seems to be resolved, with Grimes acknowledging Zola made some good points. As for the prospect of an AI takeover: it's frankly a terrifying thought, but at least we'd have jams like this.
Now is the time to burn twice as bright and half as long. Sincerely, Miss Anthropocene
This writeup is dedicated to all those cyberpunks who fight against injustice and corruption every day of their lives! (DJ mix)
Thanks so much for letting me do this writeup, Popheads - and thank you if you made it to the end. I know there is a lot here, but Grimes is a longtime favourite artist of mine and I had a lot to say. I hope I've been reasonably balanced here and not come off as an apologist stan; I am well aware Grimes can be "messy" or a "problematic fave". However, I've tried to explain the best I can what this album is really about, give my thoughts, and explain why I think it's one of the albums of the year. As well, if I said anything factually wrong, please let me know; I tried my best to source everything and get things right.

Questions for the culture:

• [Voice of Anthony Fantano] What did you think of the album? Did you love it? Did you hate it?
• The album was infamously leaked months before its release. (I didn't listen to the leak.) Did you listen to it or not, and do you think it may have affected fan reception to the album?
• A big problem with concept albums is that they often have an elaborate concept that doesn't come across well in the lyrics. What do you think of Grimes' concept for this album and did she succeed at it? Do you have different readings of the lyrics than what I wrote?
• How would you say this album holds up against her others? Was the darker tonal shift a good thing? Would you have liked her to make a more upbeat or poppy album?
• How would you rank it this among the year's albums? Were they better on average, worse, etc.?

Feel free to ask me any other questions, bring up other topics as you like and I will respond to everyone. (I just have one request though: please for the love of god do not bring up Grimes' partner or child; I think it's messy and like I said, not very relevant to the album anyway.) Any other topic, no matter how "spicy", is fair game though. Just be nice.
Hope reading this was fun! We have more AOTY posts every day for the rest of the month, so be sure to check those out too.
WE APPRECIATE POPHEADS
- vayyiqra

Since there was a lot of interest, here is my experience of being a CS major at Rutgers and what I’ve learned in general. I’ll split this into two posts; one post will be my experience and answering general questions and the second will be geared more towards classes. So, let me start this off with my journey. I started out in Rutgers as a mechanical engineering major and after 2 years, I realized I wasn’t really interested in it. In my attempts to find a new career path, I found this online course called CS50, Harvard’s Intro to CS course. It covered topics ranging from C to data structures to web development to SQL. It was pretty advanced, especially for an intro course, but I really enjoyed it and decided to dive in and pursue CS at Rutgers. Overall, from the first CS course to the last, it took me 4 semesters to complete my CS degree. I ended up doing a BA degree instead of a BS (reason explained later). I’ll breakdown each semester to give you more of an idea on my understanding at each time period and list the CS courses I did that semester. Since I started doing CS off semester (Spring), I had 2 summers to do internships.
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Classes I took:
Core:
CS111 (Intro to CS), CS112 (Data Structures), CS205 (Discrete 1), CS206 (Discrete 2), CS211 (Computer Architecture), CS344 (Algorithms)
Electives:
CS214 (Systems Programming), CS336 (Databases), CS416 (Operating Systems), CS419 (Computer Security), ECE 424 (Cryptography)
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Semester 1: The jump in
I only took CS111 this semester. Since I had already done a majority of CS50 by this point, this course felt really easy for me. It felt more like a review and I made sure to get more comfortable on concepts that confused me, like recursion. The projects weren’t too bad – at most, it took me about a day to do them. Since I didn’t have much going on this semester, I started to learn data structures by myself. I would typically just google data structures and watch videos about them, i.e. what’s a stack, how’s it used, how it’s implemented. This is the semester I also learned about leetcode.com, a site which gives you coding problems that you’d typically see in interviews. I jumped in and got more comfortable working with various data structures and problem solving. I chose Python as my interviewing language, which is still my most preferred language for interviewing, since it’s easy to write and very easy to implement most standard data structures/algos.
At this point, the only project on my resume was a stock trading web app created with Python/Flask/SQL. This project was actually one of the assignments from CS50 that I felt was complex enough to put as a resume project.
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Summer 1: First “internship”
By this point, I had only taken CS111 so I really didn’t know all that much. I realized that this summer I probably wouldn’t get an industry internship. However, this didn’t stop me from applying. I applied to several places like AT&T, UHG, etc. I tried targeting places that primarily did behavioral interviews because my grasp on data structures was fairly limited. I ended up getting a few interviews, but ultimately didn’t get any offer. So, I looked to the next best thing: research. I went through the list of professors for CS, ECE, and even for Neuroscience. I ended up sending out emails to the professors whose research I was interested in. Most of them were extremely nice and willing to let me a part of their group, despite my limited knowledge. I ended up working with a professor in the CS department on machine learning algorithms. I ended up doing about 20 hours of (unpaid) work during the summer. From having no idea what machine learning was, I got introduced to the entire field and got my feet wet with learning Python, Numpy, Scikit-learn, etc. The next summer, I really wanted to get industry experience. As such, I started applying very early to internships – I probably started applying in July 2020 for Summer 2021.
Since I was only working 20 hours per week, I had a lot of time to prepare myself more with data structures, so I continued doing light prep. I also created a more comprehensive web app with Python/Flask that gave users information about popular tourist sites around the world. I also deployed this app so others could see it.
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Semester 2: Finally learning data structures
I took CS112 and CS205 this semester. Data structures is the single most important course for doing well in interviews, so I focused all my energy on making sure I understood every possible concept in data structures. I would also spend some time doing Leetcode this semester since my schedule was pretty light. After taking data structures, I realized I really enjoyed it. To me, it was like solving a puzzle, but with code. I also became an LA for CS111 this semester and got more comfortable with solving problems in front of people and being able to explain my thoughts in a clear and succinct way.
I also continued to apply to internships for the following summer. I was able to get a few interviews and ended up getting 2 offers.
Lessons learned: I’ll describe what I think was most useful in getting an internship. My resume had 2 pretty simple projects on my resume at this point. Both projects were done using Python/Flask (learned from CS50), with one of the projects being the same project as given in CS50. I also had my summer research experience on it at this point (which wasn’t all that impressive because I barely knew what ML was). Apart from that, just being comfortable with data structures was super important in interviewing. I definitely needed to practice a lot on Leetcode to be somewhat decent at problem solving. I also got a whiteboard and practiced doing problems on that, instead of on the computer to better simulate an interview setting.
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Semester 3: Dying from CS
Now that I had an internship fixed for the summer, I decided to focus more on classes. This semester I took CS206, CS211, CS214, CS336 and a non-CS elective. I also continued to LA for CS111. This semester was a struggle – as soon as a project from one class would end, two other classes would give out their next projects. I only took on such a schedule because I was trying to finish my degree by my normal graduation date. This semester, I focused solely on classes and didn’t do any extra projects or work on my interviewing for obvious reasons. CS211 difficulty wise and time spent was on the same level as CS112. CS336 wasn’t difficult and only got time intensive towards the end when we had a group project, but even that wasn’t too bad (took about 20 hours). CS206 didn’t have any projects so it was just occasional homework. The backbreaker this semester was CS214 since I had the misfortune of getting insanely long projects and the misfortune of having a partner who didn’t code a single line.
Lessons learned: Do not take this many CS courses at one time. People said it was a bad idea and I can unfortunately have the pleasure of being able to confirm that. I did it out of necessity, but if it can be helped, please don’t do this to yourself. Classes are meant for you to learn something interesting and gain valuable knowledge. Cramming this much information into your head in such a short period of time doesn’t bode well for understanding all of it. To be able to fully understand all of it requires an even greater time commitment. Passing a class for the sake of passing is very different than truly understanding the material.
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Summer 2: Real world experiences
Being at a large company, I finally got a chance to see what codebases look like in a professional setting and what software engineers do. My project for the summer was working with a modern web development stack (React, Node, Go) and implementing several features across both frontend (UI) and backend (business logic). This was my first real software engineering experience and despite not knowing any of those technologies before, I learned it on the job and honestly had a lot of fun.
To get more familiar with React/Node, I also worked with a couple other friends to create a web application game. This project taught me so many new things – from working in such a close team to getting a product from the first line of code to deploying it and having it be played by all our friends. There were definitely many struggles along the way, both in terms of teamwork as well as technical challenges. Not having initially planned for it, I got to learn things like Socket IO, Redis, scaling and distributed systems for this project.
Also, since the upcoming semester was going to be my last one, I devoted some time to practicing for interviews. I tried to solve 1 Leetcode problem every day during my internship and while I started out strong, about halfway into the summer, I just got exhausted and ended up doing more like 1-2 problems per week.
Lessons learned: I was probably coding 10-11 hours a day this summer – including work/project/interviewing practice. After a while it got extremely tiring, but I learned so much about how to work on large codebases with many team members. I got super comfortable with using Git and learned how to write more modular and cleaner code. I wouldn’t recommend doing this much coding unless you have a true passion for what you’re working on. I definitely liked coding, but I didn’t want to make it my entire life. Like I mentioned, about halfway in the summer, my coding time shrank pretty significantly, and afterwards, I mainly just focused on work. I tried to go out more and hang out with friends towards the latter weeks of the summer.
By the end of this summer, I felt confident in my ability. I had created several projects by this point and had written each one from scratch. I was also able to learn completely new technologies at work and even used them to create another project. And while I hadn’t done as many interview prep problems as I would have liked, I felt that my knowledge of data structures and problem solving were good enough. While this summer was definitely exhausting (especially in the beginning), the end results were definitely well worth it!
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Semester 4: Almost at the finish line
This semester I took CS344, CS416, CS419, ECE424. I continued being an LA for CS111 and was also a TA for CS112. I became a CS112 TA because I really enjoyed the course when I took it and I figured it’s the best way to prep for interviews. This position felt like a great review of data structures and it also helped with my ability to problem solve in front of people and explain concepts to them in a clear and succinct manner.
My favorite class this semester was CS416. I loved understanding more about how computers work and what an OS actually does. I would say this semester was fairly busy, but the workload for everything was definitely pretty manageable. CS419 and ECE424 weren’t difficult or time intensive at all so this made up for being a TA for 2 courses.
I was also interviewing for full time positions this semester. Due to Covid, hiring had definitely slowed a bunch. Places where I was getting interviews last year were flat out rejecting me, even though I probably knew 10x more than I did at this point in the prior year. I ended up only getting 3 interviews and out of that, I ended up getting an offer from a company I had wanted ever since I decided to switch into the field and after so much work, I had finally done it! It was a breath of relief and triumph that I had finally finished what I had set out to do.
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I’m also going to answer some expected questions that might come up. These are just my opinions
1. How much does GPA matter?
- It depends. If you’re targeting industry, you’ll be fine if you have a GPA above 3.0. Of course, if you have a 3.9 GPA, that will certainly enhance your resume, but the 3.0 limit means that if you’re hovering somewhere around a 3.1 – 3.3, GPA won’t necessarily be the limiting factor in terms of you getting the interview. There are some exceptions to this. If you’re targeting hedge funds and the sort, I think having a GPA above 3.7 would be ideal. If you’re targeting grad school, I’d say having above a 3.5 would be ideal
- These are just rough limits in terms of what you should try to aim for. Most of you are probably targeting standard industry positions so all this is to say that don’t beat yourself up over getting straight A’s in every single class. In reality, it really doesn’t matter all that much as long as you’re above 3.0. Try to have fun with your classes and learn the most you can out of them. Your passion and thirst for knowledge will take you much further
- Lastly, going with this theme, it’s completely okay to have a couple W’s (withdraws) on your transcript. No one will question you about it. It only becomes a concern if you are routinely doing this, i.e. 1 W every single semester might start to raise concerns. For the most part, don’t worry about this. I had 2 W’s and it was never even brought up in any setting.
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2. How important are hackathons?
- I personally never liked hackathons. I don’t like the atmosphere of having to work on the project for 24 hours (sometimes more/less) and eating junk food for fuel. I also get incredibly bored after doing the same thing for more than a couple hours. As such, I never attended a single hackathon. I also don’t think they would be that useful for me. If I want to learn a new technology, for example, let’s say I want to learn iOS development. I find it more useful to take my own time to learn the general details before I start a project. Hacakthons seem too rushed for me to gain anything valuable out of them.
- Also, often times, you probably won’t build out a complete project and several things don’t work. I find it more meaningful to finish projects in their entirety so I can show off a fully featured project. Of course, this is just personal preference. If you want to just expose yourself to the technology and don’t want to put in that much time building it, hackathons can be good exposure. Also, you can put in however much time you want into hackathons. If you get tired after a couple hours, you can just stop; no one is going to force you to build the product to its full capability. I would say go to one just to try it and make your decision to go/not go after that.
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3. Is there a difference between the BA/BS degree?
- This was a question I struggled with when I started doing CS so I thought it’s worth mentioning. The BS degree has more science/math requirements, as well as 2 more CS electives compared to the BA. Since I was trying to finish CS in a relatively short period of time, I elected to go the BA route since I’d have to take less classes. The good thing is that it doesn’t really matter which option you choose, at least for the industry route. No employer is going to turn you away because you have a BA instead of a BS. For instance, some colleges like Harvard only give out BA degrees and very few employers are going to take the time to search through if your school offers both, so choose whichever you feel most comfortable with. What’s more important is the reason you’re choosing to do a BA degree.
- If you’re simply choosing it because it’s less work, that might not necessarily be the best approach. Remember, all your classes are a way for you to learn and get the most out of your degree. Don’t get a degree just to get one; ultimately, you should be taking classes so you are able to learn fundamental concepts in CS so you can do something interesting and worthwhile later in your career.
- A BA degree might be useful if you’re in a time crunch and need to finish the degree quickly. It could also be useful if you have experience from several internships and you feel that your learning during those will be better than the learning from the actual classes.
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4. Are there any teachers to stay away from?
- I’ve had a good experience with almost all (but one) CS professors. The only one I would be cautious of is Francisco. His teaching method is to spend half the class talking about the material in the previous class and the remaining half on new material. I actually really liked this method initially, but after a while it starts to feel really slow and dragged on. He also just writes notes on notepad and paint, which isn’t really the most useful. However, my main fault with him is not his teaching methods necessarily, but his lack of organization in projects and the class.
- The projects (at least in my experience) were unnecessarily long and I wasn’t even learning anything after some time working on them. The project descriptions were really poor, and you had to always have to take time out of your day to ask him clarification and half the time, he would give contradictory statements on what he wants you to do. If you have the time in your schedule, I’d say avoid him. However, if you have to take a certain class (i.e. Systems, OS, etc.) by a certain semester and your only other option is to not take the course, I would say take the course with him, but try to take one less class this semester in case he’s in the mood for his antics.
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5. Most useful experiences?
- I would say my most useful experience during my time in college was being a TA/LA. I was a TA for both CS111 and CS112, but the class you TA for doesn’t matter. I think being a TA is a great experience because 1) it really reinforces your understanding of the subject and 2) gives you great public speaking/problem solving experience. These are extremely important skills in any setting, but especially for interviews. It’s also a fantastic experience that shows that you are able to handle a certain level of responsibility and you want to teach other people.
- During most of my interviews, being a TA was always brought up and the interviewers really loved that I was willing to go out of my way to pass on my knowledge. It also shows that you are able to explain difficult concepts to someone who might not have prior knowledge about it, another very important skill.
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6. Best way to do well in classes?
- This will vary a little depending on the course, but there are many general ways to do well in classes.
- Always (always, always) start projects early. I generally started projects within the first week that they were assigned (if they didn’t overlap). You will have overlapping projects as you get into higher level CS courses. Try to do your best to manage them. I generally don’t multitask that well so if I had 3 projects given to me, I would just focus on whichever one I thought was the easiest and try to get it out of the way ASAP. Then, I would move on to the next project. You will never know how long a project will actually take. It might seem pretty simple at first, but the more you get into it, you may find out it’s harder than expected. OS projects generally took me 20 hours but systems projects took me 50 hours, on average. Even though OS is a more advanced course, the projects turned out to be much less time consuming. Do your best to plan ahead but try to make incremental progress on projects each day. Don’t wait until the last week unless you’re ready for long late nights of coding
- Take the right number of classes per semester. I’ll answer how many I think is good in another question, but don’t overdo it or underdo it. If you figure out you can handle 2 CS courses, try to stick to that amount and don’t jump to doing 4 courses. If you’re able to handle more, then do that and stick to it. This is a pretty personal decision
- Get familiar with Git. It’ll allow you to collaborate with other people on projects. After CS211, you will rarely do projects on your own. Git is also going to be super important once you start working (although there are other types of version control…) so it’s good to get a good grasp of it early on. It’s not something you can really learn unless you actually do it so go try it out and take advantage of it!
- Find friends in classes and study together. Due to commuting and Covid, I didn’t really get a chance to do this. However, having friends helps you to bounce ideas off each other and have credible choices for partnegroup projects. This doesn’t mean that you should copy off your friends for projects. Do all the projects on your own!! It’ll be harder and more tedious, but you will come out a stronger engineer. However, you can and should talk about how you might approach a project and any roadblocks you encounter along the way. You should also join the CS discord if you need any help with any of your courses.
- Go to a TA if you’re ever confused. This goes for professor office hours as well. Most people don’t take advantage of this, especially in upper level courses. Most, if not all, TAs will be very willing to help and are all extremely nice and polite.
- Lastly, CS and software engineering are fields where you can only learn from textbooks/tutorials for so long. To truly understand it, you have to just do it. If you keep staring at the code for Dijkstra’s algorithm and you’re not understanding it, it’s not just going to magically happen. Run through a simple test case to see how the code flows. If you’re trying to learn Python, make sure to read documentation for a couple days or watch tutorial videos for a couple days, but you’ll only truly understand it once you start using it.
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7. How many CS classes to take per semester?
- This is entirely up to you. I generally found taking 2-3 CS courses and 1 elective is manageable for myself. I could stretch this to 4 CS courses and 1 elective, but the project intensive courses make this living hell. It’s also important to consider the type of CS course. For example, I would say CS336 was a light workload, but something like CS214 had a very high workload. Try pairing those types of classes together to balance them
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8. How useful are clubs?
- I personally wasn’t too interested in clubs. I attended 1 or 2 meetings and I didn’t really feel like I fit in with the people in clubs such as USACS or RUMAD. However, this was a personal decision. I think they are great for meeting people, but if it’s not your cup of tea, it’s completely fine. While I wasn’t attending meetings for clubs, I would still be on their mailing list. If I found out they had an interesting event, like someone coming to talk about distributed systems or something, I would check it out. So, it’s good to keep some sort of contact with all the clubs at minimum – you never know what kind of events may be useful. I’d recommend going to a couple meetings to find out if you want to take part in it further
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9. Are personal projects important and if so, what kind of projects should I do?
- Yes, projects are important for getting you to the interviewing stage at companies and sometimes, they’re even important during the actual interview. You should try to aim to have 2-3 projects on your resume. Try to use different technologies on each one if possible. I think a breadth approach is always better than a depth, especially early on in your career. I personally started out having 2 projects that had very similar tech stacks (Python/Flask) and gradually as I learned about different technologies, I replaced the lesser of the projects with a React/Node/Redis tech stack. I also added a fairly complex project that I did in Systems (creating a multithreaded Git client/server in C)
- Starting off is always the hardest part. Pick something you’re interested in and passionate about. I was always interested in finance so doing a simple stock trading app was really fun for me. Bonus points if your project solves a real-world need. For example, during my second summer of CS, I created a game to better learn the technologies I was using in my internship, but also because it was something my friends and I could play during quarantine.
- I can’t stress this enough, but don’t pick overly complex projects. If your project is too complex in that it’s very difficult to do or it’ll take a very long time to complete, you may end up losing interest in it and you’ll walk away not having learned much. This only goes for projects that you want on your resume. If you have a really cool idea that solves global hunger or something, definitely go for it, but just understand that it may not be the best project if you’re trying to prioritize getting interviews and getting projects on your resume quickly. When I say pick short projects, it’s a relative term. For some people this might mean a weekend and for others, it might mean a semester. It’s really up to you. You should maintain a consistent level of interest in your project. The timeline is up to you.
- The project doesn’t even have to be an original idea. For example, my project for creating a stock trading app has been done countless number of times (especially since it was a class project), but it’s still a good project because it shows you’re able to work with certain technologies and use them effectively.
- Lastly, my projects were mostly based of web applications since this is an in-demand area. However, you can choose whatever interests you (i.e. mobile, hardware, ML, etc.). If you’re interested in doing web apps, pick a frontend technology and pick a backend technology. I elected to focus on React (frontend) and Node (backend) since these were the most popular. As you learn more technologies, your tech stack will/should evolve. For instance, if you have one project in React/Node, you might try using React/Go on your next project instead.
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10. Most important electives?
- I would say CS214 (Systems), CS416 (OS), CS352 (IT), and CS417 (Distributed Systems) would probably be the best electives you can take. Systems and OS go hand in hand and teach you low level programming and how a computer works. I really enjoyed the concepts taught in both these classes and I highly, highly recommend everyone take both. I was very conflicted with taking OS, especially since I had such a horrid experience in Systems, but OS really wasn’t bad. Both these classes are also in C and I believe that learning to write C well goes a long way. You’re able to pick up other languages extremely quickly and understand them from a deeper level. Also, the topics you learn in these two classes is extremely useful, no matter what type of career path in CS you want. They allow you to connect the dots between how complex systems work
- I personally didn’t have the time to take CS352 and CS417 but I think the topics you encounter in those classes are also very important for your career.
- If you’re interested in more machine learning classes, CS440 (Intro to AI) also seems like a good course
- Honorary mention for CS336 (Databases). While useful, I feel it’s incredibly slow and the concepts in this class you can learn on your own. I also found it pretty boring. If you’re not in the mood for learning SQL on your own, this class is also good to take.
- Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t find a reason to take CS213 (software methodology). I think this is one of those courses that, if you’ve done an internship, this course won’t add any significant value. However, I never took it, so take this opinion with a grain of salt.
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11. How many Leetcode/Hackerrank problems do I need to do to become good at being able to answer interview questions?
- There’s no particular number. The purpose of doing more problems is so you begin seeing patterns between problems. There may be thousands of ways to form a question which utilize binary search, but if you understand what binary search is and when you should use it, you’ll come to recognize the types of questions that require you to use it. Personally, this pattern recognition came after I did around 60 problems. Your number might be higher or lower depending on how quickly you’re able to grasp these concepts
- Also, this number vastly depends on the types of companies that you choose to target. If you’re targeting the big names (think Google, Amazon, Snapchat, etc.), then you’ll most likely have to be relatively good at these kinds of problems. Since these companies get so many applicants, this is the fastest way for them to ensure that you understand data structures and problem solving. However, if you’re targeting companies that aren’t as competitive, chances are they’ll have much easier technical questions and some might not have them all. Generally, these companies don’t pay as much which is why they are relatively easier to get in (not always the case).
- You can gauge the interview process for most companies on Leetcode.com under the discuss section and using Glassdoor. You can also find salary information using a link I’ll provide further down.
- Lastly, you can do these problems in any language you want. 98% of companies will let you choose whatever you feel most comfortable with. I chose Python since it’s the easiest for me.
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12. How to get internships and full-time positions?
- Apply early. Applications usually start coming out in July/August at the earliest for the following summer.
- Apply for coops. They’re basically internships but during the fall and spring semesters. These are generally less competitive since less people are applying to them. Taking a semester off school is also a good way to take a break and get paid at the same time. These also give your resume a significant boost because you now have more experience. They’re also really good because you’ll get experience working with multiple companies and all of them will ask you to come back, so you can have your pick of which company/project seems the most interesting/rewarding.
- If you’re interested in a certain company, don’t be afraid to reach out a recruiter. Let’s say you really want to work at Tesla, just google “Tesla university recruiter Rutgers LinkedIn”. Often, the recruiter will have some association with Rutgers, and you can send them a message saying you’re interested in working there and that you’re excited to apply. You can also email them – their email will usually be [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
- Have a good resume. An example of one might be: https://www.scribd.com/document/438925480/JONATHAN-MA-RESUME-docx. However, the format is up to you. As long a recruiter can see all the relevant information within 10 seconds, you’ll be fine. Put your personal projects, relevant extracurriculars, work experience, and education (include GPA if above 3.0)
- Have good projects with good tech. Bonus points if your projects solve some real-world purpose. Also bonus points if you worked in a team on them
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13. Do I have to live and breathe CS to be good at it?
- Absolutely not!! This was one of the concerns I had going into CS because while it interested me, I’m not someone who codes in my free time. I don’t enjoy learning about random algorithms or doing interview problems in my spare time (more power to you if that’s you!). It is absolutely possible to do well in the career without coding in all your time.
- This is not to say that you don’t have to be motivated. It still requires effort to do personal projects. It still requires effort to practice algorithm questions. And it still requires effort to learn new technologies on your own time. However, this once again depends on the companies you choose to target. If you aim for highly competitive places, then of course you will have to put in that effort.
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14. If I don’t want to be a software engineer, should I still do CS?
- It depends on your goal. If you still want to stay in the tech industry, but want to shift more towards management, there are roles such as PM that offer this and, in this case, I would stick with doing CS. However, if you are more interested in doing anthropology, CS may not be the most useful career path. At that point you could think about doing a CS minor or fully dropping. It depends on the career that you want to do and how useful CS will be for that career path. Software engineering is the most common job title that a CS major should expect though.
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15. General advice for internships?
- Projects are basically to spruce up your resume and get your foot in the door. Sometimes, you’ll be asked about your projects in an interview from a very high level. Once you’re at the interview, depending on the company, your behavioral skills and technical ability (data structures/algo generally) will be the determining factor
- Once you’re able to get an internship, I would say communication, technical competency, and teamwork are the most important skills to have. You must be a good communicator. Make sure you’re always keeping your manager in the loop. They are mostly responsible for deciding if you get a return offer so it’s important to keep a good relationship with them. Your manager will probably schedule a weekly 1 on 1 with you. This is your time to talk to them about anything. Be personable and take ownership of your project. Be excited about the project and bring new ideas to the table. For example, my internship project was a web app. I noticed that under certain conditions, it became extremely slow. I brought this up to my manager and told him how we might make it faster and he told me to go out and try it. This shows that you’re taking ownership of the project and you’re actively working to make it better. Also, if you have any concerns with your project, raise them up to your manager without blaming him, the company, or any teammates. And lastly, ask questions about the project if you’re ever unsure. This doesn’t mean you should ask your manager “how can I reverse an array in JavaScript”. Make sure you’ve exhausted Google/Stack Overflow and even teammates before you approach a manager with questions like this. However, conceptual questions should always be brought up like “do you think we could use MemSQL to optimize our search times”.
- Technical competency is self-explanatory. You’re at the internship to work so make sure your project is making steps towards completion. Most companies don’t have a strict rule like if you don’t finish the project, you won’t get a return offer and vice versa. Software engineering is complex, and managers obviously know this. You’re also an intern so they realize that it’ll take you time to get up to speed with new tech and learning a whole new codebase, but as long as you’re using your common sense, taking strides to complete the project, being a good teammate, and taking ownership, you’ll be more than fine
- Teamwork fits into the whole mold of what I’ve already said, but it’s important for you to work well in a team. If you end up not liking your some of your team members, it’s totally fine. As long as you’re respectful and working alongside them, that is the most important part. Your attitude and personal characteristics are just as important as your technical competency. No one wants to work with someone pretentious even if you’re the most technically proficient person. This won’t get you very far, in work and in life.
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16. General advice for beyond school?
- CS is just like any other major. If you put in the effort, you’ll be fine. Don’t stress too much about the future. If you’re making strides to becoming a good engineer and learning from your classes, things will turn out well for you. If you don’t get a position you’ve been yearning for, don’t feel bad – there’s something better around the corner for you. So many times, in my life, when I got rejected from a certain job or position, it has inevitably led to a better path. Just improve your skills and you’ll go far!
- Surround yourself with intelligent people. I was able to learn at a pretty accelerated rate because I found people who had done it before. These people will be able to guide you and mentor you. You will also learn how to be a better engineer, from learning new technologies to how to write cleaner code to seeing how motivated they are. When you’re surrounded by such motivation and intelligence, you will feel that you will be able to accomplish great things as well
- Don’t neglect friends and yourself for trying to attain a certain position at a company. Definitely put in effort, but don’t forget about your own health (physical and mental) and don’t forget to hang out with your friends. CS is just like any major so don’t put it on some imaginary pedestal. It definitely has really amazing opportunities, but balance is the key to a healthy and prosperous life.
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17. Any useful links?
- CS50: https://www.edx.org/course/cs50s-introduction-to-computer-science
- Interview prep: https://leetcode.com/ (the discuss section also contains various interview experiences), https://www.hackerrank.com/
- List of interview questions I went through: https://www.teamblind.com/post/New-Year-Gift---Curated-List-of-Top-100-LeetCode-Questions-to-Save-Your-Time-OaM1orEU
- Mock Interviews: https://www.pramp.com/ (never did mock interviews, but you might find this useful)
- Missing Semester (MIT course that teaches you Git, Shell basics, and general CS concepts): https://missing.csail.mit.edu/
- Salary info: https://www.levels.fyi/
- Negotiating offers: https://haseebq.com/my-ten-rules-for-negotiating-a-job-offe
- Rutgers CS Discord: link in sidebar
- Free Goodies: https://education.github.com/pack
- Just a note, but I don’t find paying for courses to be that useful. I think the best way to learn is to just go out and do projects
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I hope this was helpful for you all! When I started CS, I was very overwhelmed with everything and there was a significant lack of information. This ended up being much, much longer than I initially planned, but I really hope this helps you all out in your careers and I hope you’ll pay it forward to the next batch! Please remember these are just my experiences/opinions. This is my path and the good thing is there are many, many possible paths. There’s no such thing as you have to do W, X, Y if you want Z. You’ll learn as you go. Listen to everyone’s experience and make the decision that you feel is the best for your particular situation. If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I’ll try answer them best as I can.