Sublimation tumbler in convection oven time

Though Shah Ismail Safavid had won two great battles against the Ottoman-Georgian forces which had invaded his realm, his realm could fight no longer. These two victories had come at extremely high costs, rendering the Sfavaids unable to continue the war in any useful capacity. The remnants of Ismail's army was a force less than half of what it once was; it had been reduced not only by Ismail's costly losses on the field of battle but also through disease and desertions, both maladies which now plagued his realm at large. And though he might have wanted to try for a third great victory, it was only after a great deal of protest from his advisors that Ismail was convinced that it was not the external invaders which were the largest threat to his rule, but the rising challenges from within. It was time to make peace.
And so, the Shah dismissed his levies and nomads, wintered in the interior of his realm once again, and then sent representatives to Tabriz to make peace with the Ottomans and Georgians. Ismail's heavy losses, inability to liberate his occupied lands, and piling internal debts and threats meant that his negotiating position would be weak. But, to their credit, the representatives were able to avoid the most extreme of demands, such as the recognition of the right of Hasan Sultan to rule in Shirvan, as well as securing a peace treaty without the unpopular provisions of previous Ottoman-Safavid peaces.
And so, the following treaty had been agreed upon and signed by both parties:

Article I: All parties agree to total, unrestricted cooperation in protecting against pirates in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.
Article II: All parties agree to uphold the ancient rights of merchants in each other's realms. This includes providing for their protection, ensuring they are given the same rights as native merchants, and that all debts held by merchants in one realm is considered valid in the other realm.
Article III: Shah Ismail will cede the regions of Armenia and Far Northern Tabriz to Georgia, along with the Melikdoms of Karabakh (Guylistan, Jaraberd, Khachen, and Dizak). Shah Ismail will cede the regions of Van, Mosul, Baghdad, Basra, and Western Ardalan to the Ottomans.
Article IV: To promise peace, Shah Ismail agrees to send his nephews, Hosayn Khan and Durmeş, as hostages to the Ottoman court for the duration of this peace.
Article V: The existing peace will be renewed in five years, upon which, the hostages presented will either be still in their position or be replaced for the sake of peace.
Article VI: The Sublime Porte agrees to pay Shah Ismail 400,000 civilian florins to help rebuild Tabriz.
Article VII: Shah Ismail agrees for Georgian agents to locate and rescue captives within the Safavid realm for a period of five years.

However, with all such peaces, this was nearly immediately broken.
Durmish Khan Shamlu had spent the last year of his loyal service to Shah Ismail skirmishing against the forces of Prince Demetre and Hasan Sultan, and he had been winning! And now, there was news from the Shah that rather than rewarded, he and his brother would be removed from command and sent as prisoners to the Ottomans? The insult was too great.
In what appears to be the first of many such instances, Durmish Khan Shamlu and his brother have renounced their allegiances to Shah Ismail. Abdal Beg Talish, the coward of Baghdad, would be sent in their place. With such great losses, this Shah Ismail cannot be the prophesized, ever-victorious Shia warrior that was said to be sent by God, and why follow anyone if not that great warrior? The prophecy of the Mahdi has not yet come to fruition, perhaps it will come about another day.
In an attempt to restore some of his prestige and reputation as that of a Shia Gazi warrior, Ismail has started to make good on his promise to his fanatical Ulema and Qizilbash followers that his heretical Sunni subjects will be converted to Shia Islam by any manner possible, no matter how harsh. Mass conversions of the Iranian population have only just begun, with some efforts more brutal than others, sparking yet another round of malcontentment amongst the ever-troubled populace.
However, even with this attempt to restore his reputation as a Shia warrior, Shah Ismail is still losing even his most trusted followers. Several Turcoman tribes have migrated away from his realm, some returning to the Ottoman Empire where the new rhetoric of the Sultan Korkut appeals to them, others to the freer territories of the North Caucasus, and some even pressing further east into central Asia. Some of these tribes remain within the realm, such as the Shamlu brothers, who have taken with them a few hundred followers and continue to make war in the north against not just Hasan Sultan but also the people of the countryside. Such acts are common among the now disgruntled class of Turcoman nomads. Brigandage is on the rise in Shah Ismail's troubled realm, spurred on by wild fanatical nomads and Sunni Gazi resistance.
Such issues of the breakdown of the realm peace have also spread to Georgia. Though Armenia was ceded to the Georgians in the peace deal, their grasp over this region is tenuous, as it remains plagued by marauders from Ismail's army who came to this region in chase of the Georgian army and never left after the war was ended. Now, they roam the countryside in search of revenge and plunder against the local Christian population.
MAP

So I've been working on this mini banana muffin recipe, and my rise hasn't been consistent or sufficient.
Recipe as it stands now:

• 4 ripe bananas
• 1 egg
• 100g 6.5% fat greek yogurt
• 1tbsp and 1tsp cinnamon
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 75g unrefined coconut oil, room temp
• 1tsp baking powder
• 1tsp baking soda
• 1/2tsp salt
• 1.5 cups flour
• Milk chocolate bar, broken into squares, one per muffin

Cream bananas in stand mixer, then add egg, yogurt, sugar, cinnamon, coconut oil, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Mix until blended.
Add flour, mix until just blended.
Oil and fill mini muffin tin (currently using a silicone pan). Take a square of milk chocolate and push into the center of each muffin so the chocolate is fully covered with batter.
Bake at 180c for 13 minutes.
Things I have experimented with:

1. Sprinkle inside of muffin cups with demerara sugar mixed with cinnamon. Gives a nice sugary crisp to muffins, but probably increases friction with the silicone muffin pan.
2. Oven convection high/normal/off. Increased convection correlates with increased but uneven rise.
3. I've ordered metal muffin tins for increased heat conduction.
4. Tried upping the baking powder by 50% - did not seem to change much.

I'm also wondering if increased time between preparation and baking is hurting my rise. I'm not sure, but I think I see that the second batch is rising less. Not sure if this is real or imagined.
Photo: https://imgur.com/a/Rgp9Ql4
Note the demerara sugar+cinnamon mixture along the sides and the uneven rise (due to high convection).
Would love some input.

When I was growing up in the 70s, we had to work and wait for everything we wanted. We developed the ability to invest time and have patience. We learned to persist. That persistence helped us do better in school. Students today never grew up with the need to develop persistence, and as a result, are failing at education.
When I wanted something to eat as a kid, we had to heat the oven, gather everything, make it, cook it, wait, and then do dishes after. It took work, time, and patience. Today, kids nuke something and toss it in the trash after.
When I wanted to watch a TV show, I had to look in the TV guide to see what's going to be on and keep an eye on the calendar and clock to catch it. If I missed it, I had to pray for a rerun. It took work, time, patience, and attention. Kids today have on demand and DVRs.
When I wanted to play video games, I had to work for the money and wait for the chance to go to an arcade. I was laser focused on playing because losing meant another quarter. Even when we got video games, there was only the 1 at a time. You played it until you beat it. No cheat codes. No giving up and just playing another game from the app store. We had to learn persistence. Kids today have unlimited apps, video walk thrus, and cheat codes.
When we wanted to see a movie, we had to go and wait in line. Movies played on 1 screen. Sold out? Wait in line even longer. When we got video, we still had to go to the video store and shop for the right movie. Didn't like your choice? You're committed to it. Kids today have movies at their fingertips. 10 minutes in and they don't like it, they can just pick another one.
I'm not complaining that kids have it easier than I did when I was a kid. I'm not that old and cantankerous. Yet. I'm saying it's a different world. When I grew up, we had to learn patience, to work for things, commitment, and perseverance. Those abilities were foundational for school and education.
With today's conveniences, most students don't have those traits. Learning takes patience and persistence, which they never really developed. If they don't understand what you are telling them immediately, most students will simply move on. They can not stay focused on it. They're not dumb or uninterested. I find students to be as curious and quick as they ever were, they just lack the ability to work towards learning.
The challenge we face is having to get them to learn patience and persistence in such an immediate world. I teach second. I focus on getting my students to develop patience and persistence. I see many improve, but not as many as there used to be.
With text to speak, speak to text, taking pictures of math problems to get answers, and AI for writing, they'll see even less value in education. Students will become totally dependent on technology, and how will new ideas evolve? Can't build on existing ideas if you don't understand them.
If we want students to learn and become the innovators of the future, we have to help them develop those traits needed to learn.

I’m hoping the Sims 5 has more realistic build/buy items, like things you would see in everyday life. The cliche plastic lawn chair, a front door with a storm door attached, appliances that you can only use to make a certain type of food - like a toast strictly for toast or pop tarts or waffles. A mixer stand for when you need to bake any kind of pastry. I feel like it makes the game harder and more fun to need to purchase these things. I should Not be making waffles in the oven, EA. I should need a dish rack to have dishes. I should need to run my dishwasher only when its full and it should get stinky if I forget to run it. I would like the need for a broom, mop and vacuum cleaner. Not in the silly way with dust bunnies like Sims 4, just realistic cleaning of the floors. I should need a towel rack or my sim should drip everywhere and be cold when they get out of the shower. I should be able to occasionally misplace the TV remote. If I order online, I should expect a parcel at my door and need to install a camera in case of porch pirates.
I crave more realistic game play with the game time slowed down a pinch to accommodate these everyday chores. And babies and toddlers should require a diaper bag when going out. I should need to restock formula or diapers. I WANT to need to go to the grocery store, go inside and shop what is available! It could even have seasonal items to change it up a bit.
I could go on but to make this brief, I want more realism and domestic things to do!

We had our floors sanded and refinished last week. Once the top cost was dry and we went in to take a look we noticed a lot of marks along all of the edges: https://imgur.com/a/RU4PaDI/, as well as against our oven drawer.
We met with the contractor again this morning and he said he used 24 grit then 50 on the edges because the previous darker color was hard to get out, and they couldn’t have known until it was finished that they would appear. He says the oven door is unacceptable and will pay for it, and will do another top coat of poly to smooth out some rough parts (we did 2 coats water-based). But that won’t hide the marks. Along with that, we don’t like the color.
So we want to redo them and even willing to work with him again as he says those marks won’t happen again, they would use a lighter grit and only once along the edges because the color is lighter and new than before.
I was hoping he would work with us on price because of all the marks, but he sent me a message saying they can do it for the same price as before and an extra coat of poly. The thing is, even if we liked the color the marks are there and would need to be redone.
How should we handle this?
Edit: we’ve been adamant with him that due to the scratches it needs to be resanded at their cost, or at a discount (which is unnecessarily generous in my end TBH). Now he’s turning it on us making it sound like we only want them to sand to change the color, but the scratches are along the entire edge of the house. Now he’s offering to sand “by hand” the edges and color them and it’ll look seamless. But he doesn’t want to redo the entire thing. The more I talk with them the less I want to work with them or trust they can do a better job the second time. This sucks.

https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/13u9t3m/my_father_always_kept_the_shed_locked_today_i/Part 1:
The darkness around us was oppressive, cloying and total. Anywhere we weren’t pointing our flashlights would turn into a solid wall of black, impenetrable shadows. But we could hear something. As we walked further down the hallway, we heard soft footsteps and giggling.
Sometimes, it sounded like it came from directly behind us. At other times, it would come from the rooms all around us, the endless rooms that split off the hallway on both sides. We found some strange things in those rooms as we walked slowly, the gun raised in my hand and the bowie knife raised in my brother’s.
There were corpses in some of the rooms. Many had partially mummified in the dry, chilly air down here. Others were clearly fresher. One woman was hanging from the rafters with a note pinned to her chest. I looked back at Gil when we reached this part of the hall. We had stayed out of the rooms since the incident with the little boy, but some deep innate curiosity needed to know what was on this note. Gil nodded at me, and we walked forward side by side, scanning every corner of the room and looking behind smashed-out fish tanks and torn sofas covered in black mold for any signs that we weren’t alone in here. Once we were both satisfied, we returned to the young woman hanging in the center of the room.
She had somehow climbed up to the ceiling, opened a panel and found a sturdy enough beam or rafter to tie the rope to. Yet there was no ladder or anything remotely tall enough to reach the ceiling nearby. It was somewhat of a mystery. I explained this to Gil, who looked somewhat confused- and alarmed. He clearly hadn’t realized it until I pointed it out to him.
I turned back to the woman’s corpse, picking off the note, which had been stuck into the front of her blouse with a huge wooden splinter. Gil kept a look-out while I read, shining his light back and forth in a circle across the room, holding his ridiculously huge knife in the other hand like some sort of medieval swordsman. I saw with increasing horror that the note appeared to have been written in the woman’s own blood. Looking at her body, I saw a deep slash on her left arm, one that had clotted days ago. I looked back down at the desperate message this dying woman had left for us.
“To anyone who finds this,
“My name is Michaela Mansfield. I came in here by accident through the sewers underneath the town of Caplin. My two friends and I went exploring and got separated after a girl in our group twisted her ankle. I went forward alone to find help while my other friend stayed behind with the injured girl. After perhaps a day of being lost, my flashlight started to die, and I thought I was going to die with it. And then I saw fluorescent lights up ahead. They were flickering and looked like they might sputter out at any moment, but it was the only hope I had. I followed the lights and found myself in this hallway. When I tried to turn around and go back, the entrance to the sewers had disappeared. It was just a hallway that seemed to extend forever, the one that has haunted me for weeks now.
“Please, if you find this note, tell my parents what happened to me. Take my golden locket and return it to my mother and father as proof. I hope you have better luck getting out of here than I did.
“Goodbye, and may God forgive me for what I’m about to do.
“-Michaela.”
I looked up at Gil, with one eyebrow raised. I saw he had been reading the note over my shoulder rather than keeping a look-out. I sighed, deciding not to say anything.
“We can’t take the locket,” I said. Gil shook his head.
“We have to take the locket,” he said.
“They’re going to think we had something to do with this girl’s death if we just show up randomly with a piece of her jewelry. Actually, I think I remember when this girl and her friends went missing. It was on the news. Her parents were pleading for anyone with information to come forward. I think the cops were acting on the suspicion that it was murder or kidnapping or something. But they probably just went exploring without telling anyone and never came back.”
“We’ll wipe it down and send it anonymously through the mail with a note explaining what happened,” he said. I sighed, giving up. He was right. It was the right thing to do. But I’m sure many innocent men have gone to prison over trying to do the right thing. I pointed to the note.
“This doesn’t help us at all,” I said. He shrugged.
“Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t. It doesn’t really help us formulate a plan, but it does give us information. For example, now we know that this place probably connects to a lot more places than the shed. We might be able to get out through dozens or hundreds of exits. If it connects to a random sewer over in Caplin, then it could connect to places all over the county.”
“True,” I said, “but what if it connects to some alien world? Or to a black hole? What if it connects to some point in the void between galaxies and we get sucked out to our deaths?” He simply shrugged again, seeming apathetic to these possibilities.
“Well, in that case,” he said smugly, a half-smile forming on his lips, “our deaths would probably be a lot quicker than they would at the hands of these creatures down here.” Then he started laughing. It sounded eerie in this dark, forlorn place, where everything smelled like yeast and the floors were all wet substrates growing strange jungles of alien molds. He reached forward and took the golden locket off of the woman’s neck, placing it carefully in his pocket. We started walking out of the room together.
“Also,” I said, “the note seems to imply that the entrances are temporary. She couldn’t find her way back out after she got in here. What if they’re all like that? What if they’re like… I don’t know, lobster traps, or Venus fly traps, or something? They draw people in here, and then once they’re inside…” I stopped speaking as soon as I realized I heard someone following us.
I heard running footsteps. A high-pitched giggling started, then was cut off. We both stood there in the darkness, our flashlights pointing forward. Then the voice of that demonic little girl started up, high-pitched and somewhat inhuman-sounding. Her words all had a strange hoarseness to them, an uncanny valley sound as if she were only imitating human emotions and human speech.
“Adam’s ‘It’, but he won’t play,” she said sulkily, her voice bouncing off the walls, the rapid beat of the footsteps approaching nearer and nearer. “He says his throat hurts. So I guess I’m ‘It’! You better run!”
“God dammit,” Gil said, swinging his giant knife around from side to side as if he were going to bat a mosquito with it. His light flashed and wavered as he tried to keep a watch on all sides. But I knew she was coming from behind us. I could feel it. I kept my light shining down there, the gun raised, trying to emanate a calm I didn’t feel. Then I saw a flash of blue, zigzagging crazily past a chair leg and the snapped remains of a folding table, tiny legs pumping at a superhuman speed. She looked like little more than an approaching blur.
“Listen to me very carefully,” I said, trying to keep my gun pointed on her. “We need to cut off her head.”
“What?!” Gil said. “Why?”
“Last time, bullets didn’t work on…” I began, but then she was on us, no more than a few feet away, jumping over the discarded junk that intermittently appeared on the sides of the hallway. And then I felt myself knocked over by a tremendous force that took the air right out of my lungs.
I still had my hands crossed in front of me, one holding the gun and the other the flashlight. The skeletal face of the creature was mere inches away from my own, biting and gnashing madly. I could see small muscles in the back of her mouth working furiously. She was pushing down on my arms with all of her strength, which was far more than such a small body seemed to suggest.
The gun was pressed closely to the front of her chest. I was about to pull the trigger when I felt the weight start to lift off of me. I saw Gil behind her, wrapping his arm around her neck and pulling her back. She still gnashed and bit in a mad frenzy, small droplets of blood and saliva dripping off her mouth and into my face. She kicked her body back and forth like an enraged snake, freeing her neck from Gil’s grasp. He went to grab her, and her skeletal face opened up wide, the jaw hanging halfway down her neck.
With the speed of a cat snatching a mouse, she leapt forward, snapping her jaw around some of the fingers on Gil’s left hand. I saw his index and middle finger disappear into her mouth, and he began to scream in agony.
I was scrambling back to my feet by this point. I ran at the girl, using all of my body weight to push her. She went tumbling on the floor, her mouth flying open as she landed hard on the wood. Two mutilated fingers flew out, rolling across the floor and disappearing into a dome of black mold. I was sweating heavily now, drops of perspiration rolling down my forehead and stinging my eyes. I tried to wipe them away, thinking of what to do. My mind screamed at me to shoot, to empty my entire magazine into this little monster, but I knew in my heart that it would just be wasting bullets. Deep down, I knew what I had told Gil earlier was true- we had to cut off her head. Just like in the old myths of vampires or demons, I had a deep instinctual feeling that fire or decapitation would be the only way to deal with her, and as for fire, we had no flamethrowers.
“Gil!” I said. “Get ready!” He was holding his spurting hand tightly against his chest, still grasping the bowie knife in his right. His face was alarmingly pale and white, and I wondered if he might not just pass out right here and doom both of us. But he hadn’t dropped the knife, even while fighting the writhing monster, even while getting his fingers bitten off. He is stronger than he looks, I reassured myself.
A sense of calm and clarity overcame me then, and I saw what I needed to do. The demonic girl was getting up, growling and spitting and laughing. I ran over and stomped on her back, putting my full weight on her body to drive her back down. Then I took the pistol and shot her through the back of the kneecaps, one bullet for each.
She wailed as dark red blood poured out of her small legs, turning her head almost all the way back to try and bite me. Her hands were changing, the small fingers lengthening and darkening into sharp, black claws, and I knew our time was running out.
“Now!” I yelled, and Gil ran forward, using his right hand to swing the bowie knife. I watched it fall in a descending arc, as if in slow motion, watched it approach the spitting skeletal face that looked at us with black eyes and unfathomable hatred. It went clean through, and was so sharp that for a split second, the head stayed there, the face blank, looking like it was still attached to the body. Then it tumbled forward, dark blood spurting out of the neck and staining the white and gold molds underneath with its crimson hue.
Gil fell back against the wall, breathing fast. He dropped the bowie knife on the floor. I saw his flashlight, still on, had rolled against an ancient wheelchair that was probably new back in the 1960s. I stopped and grabbed it, shoving it in my pants belt so it would give me more light to work with. Gil still had his hand clasped to his chest. Slowly, I put my hands forward and grasped his injured hand by the wrist. He inhaled deeply, gritting his teeth and closing his eyes.
“We’re going to need to wrap it in something,” I said. He nodded. I took off my shirt and started ripping long slices from the bottom, then wrapping them around his hand tightly in an attempt to slow the bleeding. When I got to the fingers, he flinched and seemed to waver on his feet. I reached a hand out in case he was about to fall over, but he managed to steady himself. “All done,” I told him as I put my shirt back on, which was missing the bottom third portion now and looked rather absurd, almost as if I was wearing a woman’s crop top.
“It feels like my hand’s on fire,” Gil said in a hoarse whisper. “We’re going to need water, too.” I was feeling the start of dehydration pangs myself.
“That girl, Michaela, her note said she was stuck in here for weeks. That must mean there’s water. Assuming her counting was correct, seeing as there’s no sun or sky to go by. If there was no water, she would have died after a few days, especially being on the move,” I said. I was hoping that we would find food as well, but it wasn’t really life or death. I knew that we could potentially go weeks without food and still live, even though it would feel extremely unpleasant and weaken us physically. I sighed, shining my flashlight at Gil.
“Ready to keep going?” I asked, and then the lights started turning back on. Most of them were still either out or flickering on and off rapidly, but enough of them were lit to see down the hall.
“Oh, thank God,” Gil said. “At least now we’re not walking through this junkyard in the fucking dark.” Up ahead, I saw something new as well. It looked like the hallway forked off. I pointed at it, and Gil’s eyes widened. “Finally, after walking for endless miles, this place does something!” As we neared it, I saw there was even a sign. One pointed left, reading, “To Veriden”. The other pointed right, reading, “To Rusty Township”.
“Hmm…” I said, “I’ve never heard of either of those places. They’re definitely not in the county.” Gil’s dark brown eyes looked past me, into the room behind us, and they widened. I reached for the pistol, turning quickly, but I found nothing but a mostly empty, half-lit room. Against the corner was a vending machine and a soda machine.
“Oh thank God!” I said, running forward, reaching in my pocket for some money. Then I remembered I had left my wallet at home. After all, I thought we were just going into the shed. Gil strode right past me.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he said, taking the butt of his bowie knife and smashing the glass of the vending machine. “You don’t need money. Who’s going to call the cops, the walking undead and demons here?” He pulled out brands I had never heard of: Overholser’s Beef Jerky, chocolate bars with caramel and peanuts called Eisenhearts, Took’s salt-water taffy and Riza’s fruit snacks. The other vending machine was no less alien, as I smashed it with the butt of the gun and found Springy’s Lemon-Lime Soda, Kanna-brand cola and Saint Kristoff’s Ginger Ale, among others. Not one of the brands was recognizable from our world.
We tore into the food with ravenous hunger, chugging bottle after bottle of soda. It all tasted similar enough to what we expected, though some of it was rather strange. The ginger ale, for example, had small silver shavings on the bottom of each bottle, their trademark gimmick, and Gil swallowed them and nearly ended up choking. I smacked his back hard, laughing.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to drink those,” I said sarcastically. We were filling up our pockets when the drumming started from down the hall. It was so sudden and loud in the otherwise perfect silence that I jumped nearly a foot, spinning around and taking out the gun. It was becoming second-nature to me by this point, and so much adrenaline was constantly pounding through my body that I was as jumpy as a cat.
The drumming grew louder and fast. It reminded me of the drums some ancient Aztecs must have used when cutting out the hearts of prisoners of war. It had a deep, primal beat to it that would be useful for stirring people up during acts of savagery and violence. It was coming from the direction labeled “Rusty Township”. I could barely hear myself think over the intensity of the drum beats. I tried to motion to Gil that I would go first since I had the gun but that he should stay right behind me, but he looked like he was just smiling and nodding and likely hadn’t understood a bit of what I was trying to communicate. Sighing, I started forward down the corridor.
I peaked my head around the next corner, where a doorway opened up into a huge gymnasium. The ceiling towered over me. I saw dirty, disheveled people standing in a semi-circle around a metal coffin that was stood up on one end against the back wall. Blood was pouring out the bottom, following a river of clotted gore that stretched across the gymnasium and curved off to the right corner. The people surrounding the metal coffin were laughing, clapping their hands and cheering, stomping their feet in time with the beats. I saw scurvy blossoms and festering sores across their faces and exposed skin. And, for the first time since we had gotten lost down here, there were windows around the edge of this massive chamber, windows showing the outside world. I ran over, looking out.
I saw a city on fire, the buildings burning and sending up thick, black plumes of smoke. It reminded me of what Berlin at the end of World War II must have looked like. Fronts of houses had collapsed inwards, the streets were cracked and filled with debris and I saw bodies hanging from lampposts up and down the street. Many of them were so old that the ropes were starting to fray. Some of the bodies had started to mummify, with thin, papery skin clinging tightly to desiccated muscles and hanging jaws.
Around the corners of houses and alleyways, I caught glimpses of strange shapes: crouching half-animal, half-human beings who carried sledgehammers and long knives, robed figures who seemed to float over the devastated and cracked ground, and children with red skin who I saw crawling up walls on all fours like geckos.
The drums stopped as suddenly as they had started. My ears were still ringing. I turned back to the semi-circle of sickly, dirty people. They had stopped their clapping and dancing and cheering, and now just stood like statues, staring at Gil and me with flat, dead eyes.
“You shouldn’t stare into the Township,” a thin woman with filthy black hair said. A strange accent crept into her words, one that I had never heard before. “Strange things live in there, and they come out when the drums stop.” She stepped forward, whispering. “We keep them away by giving a sacrifice every time the drumbeats come. The blood satisfies the ones in the city and the others in the halls. We will all have our turn in the coffin, sure enough.”
Another member of their group stepped forward and opened up the metal coffin. I saw long, thin spikes sliding out of a body, and then a pale form fell out, landing on the dirty floor with a wet smacking sound. The smell of coppery blood in the air was now overwhelming. Gil and I both gasped in unison as we saw this form on the floor was a person, a young woman in fact, almost totally drained of blood. Dozens of puncture marks were sliced into her face, neck, stomach, legs and arms. An expression of pain and horror was frozen onto her dead face, her wide, staring eyes looking up at the ceiling.
“You killed her!” Gil said, aghast, still clutching his mutilated hand close to his body in an unconscious gesture of his anxiety and fear. “Why? Why would you put someone from your own group in an iron maiden?”
“Iron maiden?” the woman with the black hair in front responded. “Aye, that’s as good a name for it as any. We call her the steel mistress in my world, in my time, and the steel mistress sees a lot of use…” She gestured out the window, her face emotionless. “You see my world, after all. It is a place that always reeks of death, and more often than not, reeks of fire too.”
“What part of the United States is this?” Gil asked, gesturing out the window. The woman frowned.
“I do not know these ‘United States’,” she said, shrugging.
“What country are you from?” he asked.
“Why, Victoriat, of course. But Victoriat only has three states. Rusty Township was the capitol, until ‘twas attacked by the Black Hand Allegiance soldiers. We’re all refugees from Rusty here,” she said sadly.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” I said to Gil under my breath. He nodded, sighing.
“Can you tell us how to get back to the stone steps? Big, circular stone steps that go around and around?” Gil asked the woman in one last attempt to get a sensical answer out of her. She nodded her grimy face.
“Aye, in the center of the Undergraves,” she said, pointing past the iron maiden and the dead body on the ground. I realized that there was a sign up on the ceiling in front of the next corridor, one pointing left and saying, “To Rusty Township center” and one pointing right and saying, “To the Undergraves”. The sign was so covered in dust and specks of black mold that it was no wonder I hadn’t seen it.
“Do you have any maps of this place?” I asked the dirty woman and her friends. They all shook their heads.
“There are no maps of the Undergraves, but the stairs be at the center. You just take a right here and follow the path straight. Ignore all forks to the right or left, just keep following it straight…” We were walking away fast now, trying to leave these lunatics behind. “But you’d be mad to go there now after the drums just stopped!” Her voice was fading rapidly as Gil and I ran forward.
“Those people were fucking nuts,” Gil said. “Killing each other just because they think the blood keeps away demons.”
“Brother,” I said through heavy breaths, “if you and I lived down here for a few months, we would be just as crazy as those people.”
As we jogged into the Undergraves, I realized the walls were turning into something organic and pulsating, like being in some huge intestine. Massive forks to the left and right appeared every few hundred feet. From them, dark shapes appeared, stepping forward. They moved shakily, blurring as they stepped to the right or left randomly, their mouths opened wide and seeming to be filled with blackness. Their eyes looked like pure black sockets, and the rest of their body was no more than a shaky silhouette of shadows. When the first few stepped forward, I didn’t know what to do.
I gingerly raised the gun, deciding better safe than sorry. They were coming at me fast, jerking randomly, their skin seeming to writhe and shiver as I stared at it. As they got within ten feet of me, a deep burning heat started to fill my body, as if I were standing in front of an oven. I started shooting, one bullet for each of their center mass, and they dissipated into smoke. I watched the black stuff curl back into the red, pulsating room they had just come out of. The sense of heat dissipated instantly, but my skin still felt warm and strange.
We were running through the Undergraves now. Miles of slick gore covering the floors, strange tissues growing across the rooms and tumor-like sacs covering the fluorescent lights, which even here flickered endlessly across the ceiling.
In many of the rooms, I saw people strung upside down from the ceiling, their ribs sliced open. Strange, hunched figures sliced the meat into strips, preparing it and drying it. One of them looked at me with its pig-like face, its bovine legs walking across the sticky floor, slowly and uncertainly at first, and then running for me. I was running low on ammunition by this point. Gil came from behind and disemboweled the creature as it raised its butcher’s knife. It had been so focused on me that it hadn’t noticed him jogging up with his blood-stained bowie knife in one hand.
“I can’t run much longer,” Gil said, panting. I nodded wearily. Neither could I. “My hand is still on fire, too. I really should have gotten medical attention, like, twelve hours ago…”
Part of me wondered if the stairs were even here, or if we had been lied to, sent into the worst part of this strange hall to become sacrifices to these abominations. We had, after all, put our lives in the hands of a band of lunatics.
But at this point, we had nowhere else to go but forwards.

Dear friends, I offer all the sets from Collector Cache 2021-2022, Immortal 2021-2022 Mythical Set 2021-2022
I am not changing 1 cache set to another!!! Cache sets can be transferred only 1 time as a gift!!!

Hero	Set	Quantity	Price
Coll Cache I 22	Coll Cache I 22	Coll Cache I 22	Coll Cache I 22
Riki	Scarlet Subversion	1	5$
Snapfire	Whippersnapper	3	4$
Chen	Hounds of obsession	6	3$
Clockwerk	Seadog’s Stash	7	3$
Spectre	Spoils of the Shadowveil	1	5$
Faceless Void	Chines of the Inquisitor	5	3$
Ursa	Trophies of the Hallowed Hunt	4	4$
Phoenix	Crimson Dawn	7	3$
Terrorblade	Forgotten Station	6	2.5$
Undying	Dirge Amplifier	5	3$
Monkey King	Champion of the Fire Lotus	8	2.5$
Witch Doctor	Deathstitch Shaman	8	3$
MARCI	Blue Horizons (RARE)	4	10$
INVOKER	Angel of Vex (RARE)	4	15$
PRIMAL BEAST	Dark Behemoth (VERY RARE)	2	20$
Coll Cache II 22	Coll Cache II 22	Coll Cache II 22	Coll Cache II 22
Silenser	Grand Supressor	3	3$
Alchemist	Darkbrew's Transgression	5	3$
Oracle	Transcendent path	3	4$
Brewmaster	The Wilding Tiger	2	3$
Doom	Dawn of a darkness foretold	2	3$
Pudge	Cursed CryptBraker	3	4$
Night Stalker	Feasts of Forever	2	4$
Phantom Assassin	Darkfeather Factioneer	3	4$
Clinkz	Withering pain	4	4$
Ogre Magi	Freeboot Fortunes	4	3$
Vangeful Spirit	Acrimonies of obsession	3	4$
Huskar	Sacred Chamber Guardian	4	4$
Techies	War Rig Eradicators	1	4$
Treant Protector (Rare)	Grudges of the gallows tree	3	10$
Anti-Mage (rare)	Brands of the reaper	4	8$
Void Spirit (very rare)	Sublime equilibrium	2	20$
Dead Reckoning	Dead Reckoning	Dead Reckoning	Dead Reckoning
Lina	Dead Heat	1	5$
Anti Mage	Spectral Hunter	1	5$
Dawnbreaker	Dying Light	2	5$
Sniper	Expired Gun	1	5$
Medusa	Death Adder	1	5$
Viper	Soul Serpent	2	5$
Immortal 2022	Immortal 2022	Immortal 2022	Immortal 2022
Centaur Warruner	Infernal Cavalcade	6	1.5$
Enchantress	Flutterstep	7	1.5$
TemplarAssasin	Seclusions of the Void	5	1.5$
Venomanser	Aktok's Glory	6	1.5$
Meepo	Everglyph Goggles	8	1.5$
BroodMother	Limbs of Lycosidae	4	1.5$
Huskar	Draca Mane	4	1.5$
Necrothos	Sullen Sanctum	7	1.5$
DarkSeer	Insight of Forlorn Precipice	6	1.5$
DragonKnight	Draconic Divide	6	1.5$
Disruptor(RARE)	Tremors of the Tandem Storm	3	5$
Bristleback(RARE)	Blastmitt Berserker	5	3$
TemplarAssasin (VERY RARE)	Golden Seclusions of the Void	4	10$
Centaur Warraner (VERY RARE)	Golden Infernal Cavalcade	2	10$
Huskar (VERY RARE)	Golden Draca Mane	3	10$
Necrothos (VERY RARE)	Golden Sullen Sanctum	5	10$
Hoodwink	The Strings of Suradan	1 ( unpacked)	30$
Coll Cache 22	Coll Cache 22	Coll Cache 22	Coll Cache 22
Phantom Lancer	Scales Of The Shadow Walker	1	4$
Chen	Perils of the red banks	3	4$
Broodmother	Widow of the undermount gloom	2	4$
Rubick	March of the crackerjack mage	3	4$
Coll Cache 21	Coll Cache 21	Coll Cache 21	Coll Cache 21
Enchantress	Caerulean Star	2	4$
Coll Cache 20	Coll Cache 20	Coll Cache 20	Coll Cache 20
Rubick	Carousal of the Mystic Masquerade	1	5$
Jakiro	Fissured Flight	1	5$
Coll Cache 19	Coll Cache 19	Coll Cache 19	Coll Cache 19
Abaddon	Echoes of the Everblack	1	10$

I have been trading honestly for 3 years - all my reputation and merits are in my profile on the wall.
I want to remind you that all sets from the Collector Cache can be transferred only as a gift if you are friends for more than 30 days according to the rules of Steam.
Therefore, for the purchase, you add my profile to friends, write to me, pay for the goods and wait 30 days. IT is IMPORTANT that in order to buy a product, YOU MUST PAY WHEN ORDERING.
I accept Dota2 item, Arcana, Tf2 Key, Steam Gift Card for payment
There are Discounts - everything is negotiable.
My SteamRep [SteamRep]
My steam profile [Steam Profile]

Hi, I’m currently exploring evolution after having been brought up as a YEC in a Baptist family. I’m considering reading some of Richard Dawkins’ books (just saw an amazing video in which he explains how the evolution of the eye is not “irreducibly complex”), but noticed this critical review on the Amazon page for his book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. As I’m very new to all this, I can’t really make heads or tails of whether this reviewer’s arguments are in any way valid, or totally fallacious. So, I was curious if anyone here more knowledgable than myself on the subject might have any thoughts/could help me out? I just don’t want to go from believing one thing (which I now think is likely false) straight to believing another, without adequately exploring it and any potentially-valid arguments from its detractors. Thanks.
​

Greatest Show on Earth: Issues
The reason expositors of Darwinian theory like Dawkins cannot convince independent thinkers that the theory is believable is that they do not address the important questions. They prefer instead to demolish over and over again the straw man of the denial of evolution. Evolution is a fact, but the explanation of the how of evolution is, in my opinion, not. In Darwin's theory of evolution, natural selection is the explanation of the how of evolution. This theory within a theory leaves so many basic questions unanswered that it is not credible. The review, then, is about the gaps in the theory of natural selection, or what I refer to as important questions not addressed. A couple of points about this review. First, this book is as much a defense of Darwinian theory as it is of evolution. So there is much about that theory in this review. Second, the review is written as if evolutionary-developmental biology (evo-devo) does not exist. That omission is not something the reviewer can remedy.
Important question not addressed (IQNA) 1: the nature of variation: the size of variants. Although Darwin devotes three chapters in Origin to the subject of variation, Dawkins, like almost every other writer (an exception is Kirshchner and Gerhart with their Plausibility of life) has nothing to say about variation, other than that it is random. Variation and selection are the concepts that are the alpha and omega of Darwinian theory. This same theory that Dawkins touts as the most important in biology has one of its two pillars explained in one word, random. And in a word that has several dictionary definitions.
Consider the meaning of random: unpredictable, haphazard, yielding different outcomes under identical conditions. Chance is another term that is used in the present regard. But all of this tells us little. It tells us nothing about the size of variants or about the quantity of the variability. Let's consider size. Are variants itty bitty things, or are they or may they be "chunks." Darwin was steadfast that variants (what we today would call the phenotypic effects of mutation) are imperceptibly small. "Insensibly fine" was probably his favorite phraseology in the present regard. But to leave no doubt, he also (1st ed. Origin) used "infinitesimally small." It is important whether variation is small or large. Size affects the speed of evolution and its perceptibility. If variant size is small, this explains why we cannot see evolution unfolding before our eyes, why it may be like the hour hand of a clock. Small variants are convenient to the Darwinian theorist because they seem to deal with the issue of how new variants are formed. Who will be so uncharitable as to begrudge Darwin the sudden appearance of an insensibly fine variation that accretes something useful to what already exists in the organism? For it is another matter when variation is large. For example, if someone claimed that a full-blown wing or even a full blown feather had appeared suddenly as the result of mutation, the general reaction would be that of incredulity. "How is it possible for dumb molecules to do this?" people would wonder. There would be general disbelief. Insensibly fine variants are congruent with Darwin's thinking because the phenomenon seems consistent with a naturalistic explanation of phenomena, which kind of explanation was Darwin's goal. Large variants betoken guidance, direction, constraint, not a naturalistic process unless it is a most peculiar such process.
Dawkins goes along with Darwin's position that variants are always small, despite the fact that examples of mega-mutations pepper his book. Not to mention that everyone knows about large mutational leaps, even Darwin. Darwin and Dawkins tell us that the large change effected by artificial selection often come about not by the the tedious accumulation of insensibly fine variants over a long period of time, but by the sudden appearance of sports. What happens is that there is the sudden appearance of a "sport," maybe monstrous size or the opposite. The breeder uses the "monster" to breed the great dane. By taking advantage of these saltational changes, it was possible to create the basset hound. Dawkins tells the reader about the gene that is responsible for both the basset hound and dwarfism in humans. And tumbling in tumbler pigeons and pointing in pointers, these are mutant characteristics that suddenly appeared. No animal breeder, Darwin tells us would have ever thought of producing such characteristics if they were not already apparent in nature.
In the same vein, who doesn't by now know that if you expose fruit flies to a mutagen, you can cause a leg to grow out of the head instead of antenna? This, by the way, is a mutation also commonly found in nature. And there are numerous other examples of saltatory mutations in flies. There's an eyeless gene whose mutant form is the absence of eyes, a tinman gene whose mutant form is a highly anomalous heart. You can go on and on and on. Of course, there is blue eye color vs. brown in humans and as in Mendel's, research smooth vs. wrinkled seeds, and on and on. One wonders whether there are any micro mutations that we do know about?! So why this continued drum beat about variation being insensibly fine? Can it be that large, perceptible mutations, like antenna in the wrong place, are inexplicable and that they betoken, if not demonstrate, variation that is not random? One must wonder why he cannot get a straight answer about the size of variants (i.e., mutations) from biology. One must also wonder how Darwin can talk about the accumulation of insensibly small changes when he himself adduces so much evidence that nature produces huge amount of variation that is saltatory, large sudden changes in organisms. Does he not see the contradiction? Ditto for Dawkins. And not unimportantly, does not the huge evidence for saltatory variation, to use Darwin's own phraseology, "annihilate" his theory?
IQNA 2: Where does variation come from, especially the insensibly fine variation? And how does successive variation accumulate to change an organ or organism? The Darwinian idea or ideal is that there is a pool of insensibly fine variants in an interbreeding group that provides the raw material for natural selection. Darwin referred to this variation as individual differences. Suppose the finches with large beaks are more successful in producing progeny than those with smaller beaks. The next generation will have on the average larger beaks than the previous one. Not only that, but the variants that are produced by the next generation will be on the average larger. The distribution of differences will have been moved upwards. If living conditions remain unchanged, the larger beaks of the new generation will produce an increased number of progeny. In this way, the beak will get larger over successive generations. This is the main way, for Darwin, for evolution to occur--small modifications over many successive generations accumulating to produce large change.
But where do these important variants that differ insensibly from that of the parent's come from. You read a lot about mutations that produce large, saltatory change (e.g., the gene for PKU, for hemophilia, etc.), but not about those that produce the insensibly fine change. Dawkins credits all variation to mutation, but he furnishes no detail--does he mean the insensibly fine modifications are mutations, too?. Without an explanation of the origin of insensibly fine modifications, the theory is (as Darwin would say) "fatally" incomplete.
And just how do slight modifications accumulate? There are so many scenarios one can imagine, it is bewildering. I'll illustrate with one. Simultaneously, 100 (or any number of members of the same species pass the same mutation on to an offspring. This can go on day after day even hour after hour. You instantly have, after only the first round, 100 strains of the species. At the same time, a second mutation is being passed on to a different 100 offspring. I ask the question that Darwin himself asked (Origin): "Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being as we see them, well defined?" In another place, he asks: "Why are not all organic beings blended into an inextricable chaos?" I am unpersuaded by Darwin's answer, and Dawkins does not address the matter.
And finally on this matter of how mutations accumulate. Take the creature that is an incipient giraffe. It passes a mutation for (insensibly fine) elongated neck to an offspring. This same kind of thing is going to happen for myriad successive generations, each time the neck being lengthened a bit. Question: Is the mutation for the myriad lengthenings the same, or is each mutation distinct? I don't know the answer. This is the most basic of questions; but it is not addressed by Darwin or Dawkins or in any book of the same genre as Dawkins'. I don't know about the textbooks
IQNA 3: Can imperceptibly small variants make a difference in fitness? Fitness, in the present context, means reproductive prowess or ability to pass one's genes to the next generations. We have seen that many variants (mutations) are quite large, anything but insensibly fine. But there may be cases where variants are insensibly fine. The question is whether such small changes can make a difference for the organism's fitness. The question here is not whether insensibly fine changes can accumulate to somerthing perceptible. It is whether such small change can increase fitness. I don't think this has been empirically demonstrated. And I think there are good reasons for believing this is not probable, if even possible. Consider the noise background consisting of all the changes simultaneously taking place. When writers like Dawkins talk about some selection pressure, such as drought or predation, they act as if no other selection pressures are operating at the same time. But that is the furthest thing from the truth. Finally, there is the intelligence of the organism that is going to overwhelm any effect of an insensibly fine variant. Weiner, in his account of the research of the Grants on Darwin's finches, tells of birds that wedge seeds into crevices and apply outside pressure when it becomes too hard to crack seed with the beak. Since the effect of intelligence is unlikely to correlate with some random variant, its likely large effect on fitness will drown out any effect from the variant, in this case, size of beak.
IQNA 4: What about the qualitative nature of variation? We have considered size variation, like the size of a beak. But what about qualitative variation? Birds uniquely have feathers and beaks; mammals, hair, mammary glands. There are qualitative differences within the individual organisms. The eye is not an ear, which is not a heart, which is not limb, and so on. There are innumerable qualitative differences in behavior. There are intraorgan differences that are qualitative. There are different parts of the eye. There are intratrait qualitative differences, such as differences in eye color, blood type, flower color, seed texture, melanin. Amazingly, Dawkins has written a tome about evolution without using the term allele. Let's talk about one qualitative variant, the angle the contour feather shaft on a bird makes with the surface of the body - call it the feather angle. There are easily infinitely many possibilities, since even one degree may be divided into infinitely many divisions. How fortunate for the bird that it mutated a feather angle that improved fitness. If the feather shaft stuck straight out from the body at a 90 degree angle, that would not have been useful as a contour feather that has to lie close to the body to give the body a sleek, aerodynamic form. By far, the greatest number of possible angles would not be useful to the organism. Yet just the right angle appeared. Or possibly the mutation that puts the tinniest feather or an incipient feather on a featherless creature occurred myriad times, improving the probability that in at least one case the angle would be beneficial. It is issues like this that should be carefully explicated by Dawkins, not seemingly hidden under the rug.
IQNA 5. In what way is variation random? Dawkins tells us that variation is random; yet it is obviously the case that variation is not random in important respects. Mutation repeats itself in nature and in the lab. How can this be random? Alleles are greatly limited in number and kind. If there are two possible alleles, one a beneficial one and the other not; in what meaningful way is variation random? Feathers do not grow on pigs, but only on birds. Obviously not random. It is so obviously the case that variation is constrained. How does this constraint come about? Dawkins will not acknowledge that there an issue here..The notion that random mutation, mutation that is not biased or constrained so that it is relevant and/or useful to the the individual's life situation can get the job done requires an act of faith incongruous in empirical science. Or is there magic in the world after all? That anything, however simple, could evolve if dependent on purely random variation, I don't think, is credible. Let's talk about eyes, all sorts of them. Why would an eyespot ever spontaneously spring into existence, say on a flatworm, as the result of a random event. And why would this be followed by the appearance of a nerve that attaches itself to the eyespot, and this a random event, too? This is more improbable than the appearance of the eyespot. And why on descendents of this flatworm, would there be the recessing of the tissue containing it into a pocket containing the eyespot? And why would the eyspot move till it is centered perfectly at the back of the pocket? And on and on and on. Do such things occur indiscriminately? For example, do eyespots spring up in guts or anuses or nostrils or on tails, etc.? Or are they reserved for eye-appropriate places, like the anterior surface of the organism? Can light-sensitivity, for example, appear anywhere on or in the organism, like in the gut, on the tail, in a nostril? If not,why not? But back to the main point, things do not spontaneously happen. Consider that life has originated one time in 4.6 billion years on this planet.
On the matter of characteristics spontaneously appearing, evolutionary biologists are quick to point out that nothing appears de novo, that everything originates from a precursor. Which explains why there are not feathers on pigs. This posture gets the biologist off the hook for explaining beginnings, something not easy to do. Darwin would not discuss beginnings, either of life or of an organ, like an eye.
No one, not Darwin, not Dawkins, would deny that variation is constrained by the nature of the organism in question. Which is why there are feathers only on birds. The big question is the nature of the constraint. So what is it about the peahen that causes it to be inflamed sexually by eyespots on the tail of the peacock, but not by squares, triangles, or crescent moons, which do not, in fact, embellish peacocks?
IQNA 6. What is the role of behavior, intelligence, and adaptability in Darwin's theory. Behavior is what the theory is really all about. Organs, like feathers, wings, eyes, limbs, enable organisms to behave, to hunt, to defend, to love, to enjoy, to reason etc. Yet hardly anything is said about behavior by Darwin. Dawkins says nothing. Darwin talks expressly about instinct, but instinct is a small part of behavior, especially in primates. But Darwin give a great many examples of intelligent, adaptable behavior in his making of various points. In fact, Darwin's examples of adaptability (flexibility, resourcefulness, etc.) make one wonder if adaptability won't preempt or make unnecessary natural selection. For if an organism can deal with any crisis (famine, predation, disease, etc.) by the use of its wits, why does it need to change physically. This last is a very old idea.
In conclusion, The greatest show on earth, does not help the cause of Darwinism.

Hey there,
I'm currently looking at buying a new air fryer since the instant pot 6qt with the lid is too small for me and I can't use the pressure cooker at the same time obviously.
I would really like to go for the grill max pro (Model name: AG651EU) since I don't have a grill right now and I could kill 2 birds with one stone.
I also like the included thermometer for meat, cause my current one is just a standard electric thermometer. I always have to open the air fryer and take a measurement while cooking.
But as far as I know I can't put a normal sized pizza in there.
Standard frozen pizza I buy is about 24cm (~9.5 inches) while the inner dimensions seem to only have a depth of 22.5 cm (~8.85 inches).
So i would have to cut the pizza in half beforehand.
I also looked at the oven 8 in 1 ( SP101EU ) which could definitely hold a pizza, but I've heard the grill function isn't the best. It seems like it's heating up fine, but after 2 minutes it doesn't heat up again for almost 2 minutes and then again only for 20 seconds.
It also wouldnt allow me to use it like a normal contact/electric grill. Which i think the pro max grill can. But correct me if I'm wrong.
So I'm hoping you could all give me some input.
Did anyone try the grill function in the oven? What works what doesn't?
Anything else I might have to take into consideration between those two?
Thanks for the help.

I don’t understand why everyone is so confused. Heat > Nuggets everytime.
Sure, if the timing is right and the Nuggets get out fast enough they will be be fine.
But if the nuggets stay in too long they will burn and you can’t eat them.
That’s just the way an oven works y’all

Have you ever encountered an issue with a gas appliance where you were advised to check the pilot light? Let's delve into what a pilot light is, its importance, and what steps to take if one of your appliances goes out. Some gas-powered equipment maintains a small flame called a pilot light.
If you're looking to purchase original equipment manufacturer (OEM) pilot lights for your commercial cooking appliances, you can find affordable options from PartsFe, featuring brands like Vulcan and Garland.
How does it function? When the appliance is in operation, gas is released to the main burner, which is ignited by the pilot light to initiate the main burner and generate heat. Thanks to a standing pilot light, users are spared the need to manually provide a flame every time their equipment needs to be heated.
Now that you understand what a pilot light is and how it operates, let's explore which appliances incorporate pilot lights. Gas-powered appliances such as ovens, stoves, ranges, and griddles feature pilot lights. These pilot lights offer the advantages of time savings and a safer alternative to manually lighting the device, which often involves bending over and contorting one's body to reach tight spots with a match or lighter.
However, the convenience of a pilot light comes at a significant cost. Up to 80% of the total gas consumption by a gas appliance is consumed by pilot lights. Read for more...

Context: You were raised by a werewolf with no clue about your origins or ties to your humanity. Fortunately, he was a fantastic father and helped you grow into the person you are today with minimal casualties. You're a little protective of your old man, especially after he had a workplace accident. You can't imagine him ever crossing anyone... until tonight.
Setting: Home
Tags:[MM4A][Adoptee Werewolf Speaker][Mobster Werewolf Speaker][Adopted Human Paranormal (?) Listener][Mystery][Bad Deal][Threats][Protecting Dad][Lil' Slugger Inspired][Supernatural][Action][Bit of Slice of Life][Hunted Down][Predator]vs[Prey][CW: Threats/Violence]
Usage: You may tweak or record this script. Gender flipping is OK! Please credit me if you use this script in any of your projects. If you would like to use this script for a paywalled recording, please note:
Monetization: All forms of monetization are OK with me! Youtube, Patreon, etc. I would appreciate being able to listen to the recording, if possible. Let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!
***
Check out the rest of my scripts by using the [Script Directory](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1N05GJmsVHKEYRo22RUCXcE--jo3t20gn9-GdDNz\_BTI/edit?usp=share\_link)
***
[D] = Dad
[P] = Pyrrho (pronounced ‘peer-oh’) but feel free to sound it out like ‘pyro’ if desired.
***
[Scene opens at home]
[SFX: A door opening and shutting]
[You arrive home from baseball practice and your Dad smiles from his armchair, tail wagging]
[D] “Hey! There’s my Lil’ Slugger! How’d practice go?”
[Pause!]
[He laughs as you talk excitedly and clamor into the kitchen for much-needed snacks]
[D] “Easy, easy! Dinner’s almost ready! Don’t go filling up on chips and soda, pretty please?”
[SDX: A delayed soda hiss that sounds appropriately shameful]
[Pause…]
[He shoots you a look but quickly lets it go with a shake of his head and a smile]
[D] “Pftt, I can’t stay mad at you. I’m glad practice went well. It was pretty quiet here, thankfully. Finally got a chance to vacuum the house.”
[Pause!]
[D] “I know, I know, I said I’d let you do it this time, but you’re always busy! Between work, practice, and taking care of my old tail, you hardly ever get to relax…”
[His smile fades, and looks to the cane leaning against his chair with a sigh]
[Pause?]
[D] “...Oh, your old man is OK, Slugger. It’s just… going from working werewolf to house hermit thanks to one work accident… Ain’t great for the pride. Used to be able to run with the best of them, work eighteen-hour days, then come home and catch our show with you! Now I can barely manage to do the last one…”
[...]
[You cross the room and hug him]
[D] “Oh? Oof! Aha… Alright, hug time. Got it. Mmh… Watch that strength, kiddo! Sheesh, your Coach must be a good one. I swear you could bench press a bus at times!”
[Pause~]
[He gives you a playful side-eye]
[D] “...You’re not on steroids, right?”
[Pause!]
[D] “OK, I’m only asking because it’s a universal law that cool dudes don’t do that stuff, right? And we’re cool dudes, right?”
[Pause!!]
[He laughs]
[D] “Haha, alright, alright! I’ll stop teasing! I just want to make sure you’re OK… You’ve been through a lot, and I’m proud of you for working so hard.”
[Pause <3]
[D] “I love you, too, kiddo. With all of my heart… Oof, oh no, not Dad tears! Quick, go pull the casserole out of the oven before I start blubbering!”
[You give him a solemn salute and hurry into the kitchen]
[SFX: The oven being opened / general movement]
[You go to get the casserole out, as requested when the doorbell rings]
[SFX: A doorbell]
[Pause?]
[D] “No, no, I got it! Who on Earth would be knocking on my door at nearly 7 PM on a damned Tuesday night?”
[SFX: Him opening the door]
[You glance over and see a younger werewolf standing in the doorway, more nicely dressed than you’ve seen anyone be]
[Pause]
[Your father pales, hobbling a few steps back from the younger werewolf]
[D] “P-Pyrrho… I, ah-”.
[P] “Save your breath, Hoss. I ain’t here to hear it…”
[Your Dad lowers his voice, under the impression you can’t hear him]
[D] “...please don’t do this in front of my kid… Please, I… I know I still owe a lot, b-but…”
[...]
[‘Pyrrho’ steps inside and your father is forced to take a few more steps back]
[P] “I was given my orders. It’s pay-up or pay with your life, Hoss. If your kid is here, then… I was told to leave no witnesses.”
[For the first time in your life, you hear your father growl under his breath]
[D] “...You can do whatever you want to me, but if you even think for a second-!”
[SFX: [D] being struck and falling to the ground with a yelp]
[You hear your father cry out and that is about the moment you forget every shred of humanity that is in you]
[SFX: A LOT of glass shattering]
[P] “What the fuck-?! What is wrong with your fucking human, Hoss?!”
[D, legitimately terrified] “Pyrrho, RUN-!”
[You don’t give him the chance. You grab your bat and saunter over to the attacker]
[...]
[P, unimpressed] “Really, sweetheart? You brought a bat to a gunfight?”
[...]
[Your father staggers to his fight and gets you in the best suplex he can]
[D] “I-I’m sorry, Slugger! Pyrrho, fucking RUN WHILE I HAVE THEM IN THIS SUPLEX!”
[...]
[SFX: A heavy step forward]
[P] “...Didn’t realize your kid was a weightlifter, Hoss… Managing to walk with a four-hundred-pound werewolf on their back is impressive. It still doesn’t change the fact that, well…”
[SFX: A gun being drawn]
[P, coldly] “I have a gun.”
[D] “Pyrrho, for the love of God-!”
[...]
[SFX: Another dragging step forward]
[P, uncertain] “...D-Don’t you make me shoot!”
[Pause!]
[You sprint forward, carrying the entire four-hundred pounds of your struggling father, and slam the bat into Pyrrho’s wrist]
[SFX: A bat making contact and the gun scattering away]
[P] “GAH! MY FUCKING WRIST!”
[D] “RUN, PYRRHO! FOR YOUR OWN GODAMNED SAFETY, RUN!”
[...]
[You stare into the intruder’s eyes. You can see your own reflected back and it seems like you both see the death there before Pyrrho stumbles back with a pained whimper]
[P] “...T-This ain’t over-!”
[D] “RUN!!!”
[With a yelp of pain, the intruder flees]
[Pause!!]
[SFX: Another heavy footstep]
[D] “Slugger, no! Shh… shh, it’s OK… It’s OK… Breathe… Papa’s OK, see? You don’t have to be angry anymore…”
[...]
[SFX: A car skidding away]
[D] “...Nice, quiet howl with me. Just like when you were little… OK?”
[...]
[You howl quietly with him for a moment until the red fades. Until there’s no longer an expiration date burned into your eyes]
[...Pause?]
[Your father sighs shakily, finally letting you go]
[D] “...I… I’m sorry I didn’t tell you… I owe bad people a lot of money… I thought I could figure it out, I thought I could work it off, but… b-but my accident at work… I’m so sorry…”
[...]
[You hug him again and assure him it’s OK]
[D] “...Thank you for the hug, Slugger… You’re such a good kid… Please don’t forget that, OK? Don’t forget that you’re good, no matter how angry you get, no matter how powerful you are… You’re good. OK?”
[Pause]
[You nod]
[D] “Good… I, ah… Let me get this mess cleaned up and we can talk this through. OK?”
[Again, you nod… but you can see it again, reflected in a nearby picture of the two of you. You can see the death in your eyes… and you know the night is young]
[Pause]
[D, exhaling] “...We’ll be OK, kiddo. One way or another, your old man will figure this out, and you can focus on being the world’s best baseball player in the making. OK?”
[For the last time, you nod. Your baseball bat is spattered in blood]
[To be continued]
Note: The original title for this series was going to be “Death In Their Eyes” but then I remembered YouTube is a dick

I'm mostly writing this as a marker to keep tabs on what changed, what's going on recently and maybe compare a few things if others are willing to share - how much energy / gas / water did you / your household use since in the last year? What changed in your life since then?
I am still relying heavily on thingies from the old apartment, but with each device or appliance I put together going nextdoors feels more like just visiting family members and not living with them. It's such a strange feeling to slowly realise I'm getting into actually managing most of my own stuff from A to Z. Currently I have the luxury of not needing to worry about rent and utilities since I'm still studying and parents are taking care of that, but sooner rather than later I would like to take over paying for the utilities, maybe even as a littlebit of a challenge and further my motivations to reduce usage and speed up the progress on getting my hands on potential alternatives or upgrades. At the moment this apartment used up: -310kWh of electrical energy, which equates to roughly 35 Watts of average constant drain. Most of it comes from powering my computer, microwave / oven combo and lights, but the demand will rise significantly when I get the cooling system for the fridge and air conditioning operational... or 203 kgs of CO2 going by off-google calculations for Poland. -285m³ (or 540kgs of CO2) of natural gas, which pretty much all went into heating the apartment with a decently large roof - area (which is decently insulated though!) during the winter... and water! ... of which i used around 18.5 m^3. It's crazy to think that it's enough to hydrate a person for like 25 years. The values are decently low, since I still rely on my parent's apartment to have a fridge, washing machine and stuff like that up and running, but with some of my plans for the future I'll definitely be well below the average consumption by the time the next year passes, even with increased demand! But if we only count me and this apartment, my metabolism accounted for like 30-40% of my CO2 output.
Still have to do more to manage my waste, since this year I had to throw away around 15x 30-40 ish liters garbage bags worth of unsorted trash and a bunch of larger stuff like cardboards and packing material in them that I didnt bother to throw out. I have a few ideas to reduce waste, having a cooking hob and a fridge will help with that at the expense of a doubling or tripling by energy demand.
However I also reclaimed and hoarded up quite a bit of raw materials / things that I could further process, notable among them are: -7 kilograms of aluminum scrap, mostly usable pieces that can immediately be cut and shaped for immediate use. On top of that I keep the sharp pieces that I cut off, but I get rid of the cans decently regularly by just giving them away to homeless people since they are a bit too dirty for me to bother hoarding them to smelt in the future. -just above 2 kilograms of copper from excess wiring, mangled heatsinks and leftovers from depleted electrodes. Most of it will be refined and used up for electroplating thingies, but I might melt it all down one day when I make actually safe equipment to do so. -about 6 kilograms of LCD screen displays for tin and indium recovery. -600 grams of nickel, mostly leftovers from dismantled batterypacks. Will one day be used to make my first actually usable batteries. Since they are basically (pun inteded!) a quirky, but maybe-worth-investigating spin on these old nickel-iron batteries it's obvious that nickel will be the bottleneck. That's why I'm working to make a chemistry that will need as little nickel per stored unit of energy as I can feasibly make in homebrew settings. It's definitely not yet a rewarding process to just make mild improvements and twice as many failures with each cell variation and it will NEVER be even remotely comparable to commercial batteries (can't get to the moon by jumping on progressively higher trees!), but it's fun and maybe I'll have something usable by the end of the decade haha! -7 kilograms of just random circuit boards for salvaging components if I'm ever in a situation where I don't want to wait for shipping. And in the future I'll be able to get copper out of them! ...it's not much money-wise and I don't really plan to sell it anywhere anyway, but I can't be bothered overspensing to get raw materials if I can get enough for other random stuff just by not throwing scraps away. Recently I also got about 10kgs of scrap cotton patches (30x60cm ish) for almost free and it's just about perfect for fueling my newfound hobby of machine sewing! I wonder what I'll be able to do with that next year, I can't wait to see!

Okay so quick backstory and then I'll get to the question.
I started my learning to code journey in high school but never followed through. It's now been almost 10 years and I'm going back to school for software development. I started using Sublime Text 3 in 2013/14 and loved its look and feel. But now, I'm learning Python and am having a lot of issues getting Sublime to act the way I want it to.
I started coding python in VS Code (which I understand is better for python coding anyway) and Geany. Both of which allow you to run the code in an interactive terminal (meaning input() works). With Sublime I have found SublimeREPL and Terminus etc. But what I would like it to do is;
press a "run" keybinding
it runs the code in a popup terminal
and it can either refresh like vs code does every time I run it, or have an exit hotkey like geany.
​
Are there any plugins or settings within terminus or sublimeREPL that would allow this functionality, or should I just stick with VS Code for debugging?
Also, this is my first question on reddit so if this should be in a sublimetext group instead of this one please let me know.
Thanks