PLEASE READ !!!

Taking Page From Authoritarians, Trump Turns Power of State Against Political RivalsDavid E. Sanger,The New York Times•October 11, 2020The  south side of the White House in Washington, on Saturday, Oct. 10,  2020, as viewed from the Ellipse. (Stefani Reynolds/The New York Times)President  Donald Trump’s order to his secretary of state to declassify thousands  of Hillary Clinton’s emails, along with his insistence that his attorney  general issue indictments against Barack Obama and Joe Biden, takes his  presidency into new territory — until now, occupied by leaders with  names like Putin, Xi and Erdogan.Trump has long demanded — quite  publicly, often on Twitter — that his most senior cabinet members use  the power of their office to pursue political enemies. But his appeals  this week, as he trailed badly in the polls and was desperate to turn  the national conversation away from the coronavirus, were so blatant  that one had to look to authoritarian nations to make comparisons.He  took a step even Richard Nixon avoided in his most desperate days:  openly ordering direct immediate government action against specific  opponents, timed to serve his reelection campaign.“There is  essentially no precedent,” said Jack Goldsmith, who led the Justice  Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush and  has written extensively on presidential powers. “We have a norm that  developed after Watergate that presidents don’t talk about ongoing  investigations, much less interfere with them.”“It  is crazy and it is unprecedented,” said Goldsmith, now a professor at  Harvard Law School, “but it’s no different from what he has been saying  since the beginning of his presidency. The only thing new is that he has  moved from talking about it to seeming to order it.”Trump’s  vision of the presidency has always leaned to exercising the absolute  powers of the chief executive, a writ-large version of the family  business he presided over. “I have an Article II,” he told young adults  last year at a Turning Point USA summit, referring to the section of the  Constitution that deals with the president’s powers, “where I have the  right to do whatever I want as president, but I don’t even talk about  that.”Now he is talking about it, almost daily. He is making it  clear that prosecutions, like vaccines for the coronavirus, are useless  to him if they come after Nov. 3. He has declared, without evidence,  that there is already plenty of proof that Obama, Biden and Clinton,  among others, were fueling the charges that his campaign had links to  Russia — what he calls “the Russia hoax.” And he has pressured his  secretary of state to agree to release more of Clinton’s emails before  the election, reprising a yearslong fixation despite having defeated her  four years ago.Presidential historians say there is no case in  modern times where the president has so plainly used his powers to take  political opponents off the field — or has been so eager to replicate  the behavior of strongmen. “In America, our presidents have generally  avoided strongman balcony scenes — that’s for other countries with  authoritarian systems,” Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian,  wrote on Twitter after Trump returned from the hospital where he  received COVID-19 treatment and removed his mask, while still considered  contagious, as he saluted from the White House balcony.Long ago,  White House officials learned how to avoid questions about whether the  president views his powers as fundamentally more constrained than those  of the authoritarians he so often casts in admiring terms, including  Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China and Recep Tayyip Erdogan  of Turkey. They have something in common: Trump’s State Department has  criticized all three for corrupting the justice systems in their  countries to pursue political enemies.Pompeo has always bristled  when reporters have asked him to explain what the world should believe  when it reads Trump’s most authoritarian-sounding tweets. He answers  that what distinguishes the United States is that it is a “rule of law”  nation, and then often turns the tables on his questioners, charging  that even raising the issue reveals that the reporters are partisans,  not journalists, intent on embarrassing Trump and the United States.But  his anger is often wielded as a shield, one that keeps him from  publicly grappling with the underlying question: How can Washington take  on other authoritarians around the world — especially China, Pompeo’s  nemesis — for abusing state power when the president of the United  States calls for political prosecutions and politically motivated  declassifications?“We’ve never seen anything like this in an  American election campaign,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a former  undersecretary of state who is now an informal adviser to Biden. “It  reduces our credibility — we look like the countries we condemn for  nondemocratic practices before an election.”“I have worked for  nine secretaries of state,” Burns said. “I cannot imagine any of them  intervening in an election as blatantly as what we are seeing now. Our  tradition is that secretaries of state stay out of elections. If they  wanted to release Hillary Clinton’s emails, they could have done it in  2017, 2018 or 2019. It is an abuse of power by Donald Trump and Mike  Pompeo.”Another career diplomat who served as both ambassador to  Russia and deputy secretary of state, William J. Burns, said that what  Trump had ordered is “exactly the kind of behavior I saw so often in  authoritarian regimes in many years as an American diplomat.”“In  dealing with Putin’s Russia or Erdogan’s Turkey, we would have protested  and condemned such actions,” he said. “Now it’s our own government  that’s engaging in them.“The result,” said Burns, now the  president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “is the  hollowing out of our institutions at home and deep corrosion of our  image and influence abroad.”In the current cases, it is unclear  whether Trump will get his wish — or whether his loyal appointees will  slow-walk his requests. There is some evidence they are already looking  for escape hatches.Pompeo, the administration’s most conspicuous  ideologue, Trump’s most vocal loyalist and a lawyer, was clearly taken  aback when the president expressed displeasure, saying he was “not  happy” that the State Department had not released emails sent through  Clinton’s home server.“You’re running the State Department, you  get them out,” the president told Fox Business in an interview this  week. “Forget about the fact that they were classified. Let’s go. Maybe  Mike Pompeo finally finds them.”Pompeo, one of his aides said  Saturday, was in a box: The complaint about Clinton’s home server was  that she was risking exposing classified emails by not using the State  Department email system — a system Russia had already infiltrated — yet  Trump was demanding that they be released in full. Just days before, he  had announced, over Twitter, that he was using his executive power to  declassify all of them, without redactions.“We’ve got the  emails,” Pompeo responded on Fox News. “We’re getting them out. We’re  going to get all this information out so the American people can see  it.”But he also hinted that many of Clinton’s emails, mostly  those that were stored on the State Department’s own system, have  already been posted on the agency’s website, after an unusually diligent  effort by the department to respond to Freedom of Information Act  requests from Trump’s supporters. (They are often heavily redacted — to  the point of containing no content — despite the president’s order to  the contrary.)“We’re doing it as fast as we can,” Pompeo told  Dana Perino, a Fox News anchor who once served as President Bush’s press  secretary. “I certainly think there’ll be more to see before the  election.”Pompeo clearly understands the problem: Even if he  makes all of them public, they are unlikely to satisfy the president.  Last year, the State Department’s own inspector general found that while  Clinton had risked compromising classified information, she did not  systematically or deliberately mishandle her emails.William Barr  may face an even greater challenge in satisfying the president. No  attorney general since John Mitchell, who served Nixon and brought  conspiracy charges against critics of the Vietnam War, bent the Justice  Department more in a president’s direction. And Nixon himself, while  urging the IRS to audit political opponents, stopped short of publicly  calling for individual prosecutions. Yet in February, Barr told ABC News  that Trump “has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.” At  the same time, he complained that the president’s tweets about the  Justice Department “make it impossible for me to do my job.”Now,  clearly, the president has asked Barr to act in a criminal case — and  not in a quiet phone call. Instead, he did it on Twitter and Fox News,  expressing his deep disappointment with his second attorney general, for  essentially the same reason he fired his first one, Jeff Sessions:  insufficient blind loyalty.His complaint appears to have been  driven by Barr’s warning to the White House and other officials that  there are likely to be no indictments before the election from the  investigation being run by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in  Connecticut. Durham is searching for evidence that the inquiry into  Russia was a politically motivated effort to undercut his presidency.Trump  says the case is clear-cut. He told Rush Limbaugh, the conservative  radio host to whom he gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the  last State of the Union address, that Durham has had “plenty of time to  do it.”“Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes — the  greatest political crime in the history of our country — then we’ll get  little satisfaction, unless I win,” Trump said on Fox Business.“If we don’t win,” he said, “that whole thing is going to be dismissed.”This article originally appeared in The New York Times.© 2020 The New York Times Companynytimes.comTaking Page From Authoritarians, Trump Turns Power of State Against Political RivalsPresident Trump took a step even Richard M. Nixon avoided in his most desperate days: openly ordering direct, immediate government action against specific opponents, timed to serve his re-election campaign.

okay so remember that bmc fanfic competition i made a post about a few days ago? well the idea had me hooked so now here’s everything about it that i have so far

disclaimer: a lot of inspiration was taken from the way the quidditch league on ffn is run

also NO SQU*P#///MY SHIPPERS ALLOWED. as well as those who ship other gross ships such as the adults with children. just wanted to make that clear

there’ll be multiple teams (exact number depends on how many writers sign up) with four members each, with enough rounds (each 2 weeks long) for each team to go up against each other at least once (but min 6 rounds, max 12). each team member has different abilities

blue: their points turned into a percent (ex. 6 pts → 60%) are taken away from the enemy green’s score (ex. B gets 6 points, G originally got a 10 but only 4 points are added to the team’s total)

red: their points turned into a percent are how much blue’s score is increased (ex. B got 10 points, R got 5 points [so 50% boost], so B adds 15 points to the team’s total)

pink: for 1/4 of the rounds, they can choose a different main prompt from the one designated for the pink position. in addition, instead of the typical 3 maximum optional prompts, pinks can choose up to 5 that can overlap with teammates’ choices

green: for 1/3 of the rounds, they can spread another team member’s boost to all team members (ex. green spreads pink’s power, all team members can choose whichever main prompt they’d like and can choose up to 5 optional prompts. for blue and red, percent decreases/increases apply to opposing colors instead of piling onto one enemy player [ie blues affect blues, greens affect greens, etc])

rounds will have four main prompts, one for each position (ie all the reds get one prompt, then all the blues, etc). in addition, you can choose up to 3 of 15 optional prompts that are worth up to 3 points each, separate from the main score (so they don’t impact position abilities), though you can’t choose the same prompts as another teammate (unless you’re a pink—see above). rounds will be posted on tumblr (there’ll be a blog for the competition you can follow for the rounds)

fics (1k words min, 3k max) will be scored based on SPaG (2 pts), main prompt usage (3 pts), characterization (2 pts), and plot/flow (3 pts). optional prompts will be scored out of 3 based on how meaningfully you incorporate the prompt (so the prompt should be more than just a throwaway word just to get the prompt in there). optionally, judges will provide more detailed feedback for each of these categories to tell you what they liked and how they think you could improve. feedback will be available either through google docs or a post submission to your blog

whichever team gets the most points by the end wins! if there’s a tie, a tiebreaker round will be put together with the normal rules applying

if needed (and there any/enough people who don’t think they could write a 1k-3k word fic every two weeks and/or just would rather sign up as a reserve), reserves will be available, each reserve being used for 1 round and not having the buffs of the main writer. if one of your teammates quits, you can get a permanent reserve who will replace the old player and have all abilities, without need to keep signing them up every round. extensions and reserves can be requested by sending the competition’s tumblr an ask, and they’ll be tracked on a tumblr post

you’ll also get extensions for 1/3 of the rounds, which extend the deadline for entry by 2 days. without an extension, each day of late entry detracts 1 point, capping at 2 (not detracted from your fic’s score but from the team’s total for the round)

fics will be submitted by reblogging the round’s tumblr post in this format:

Title/Link:

Position:

Extension: Y/N

Reserve: Y/N

in the notes of an entry, to make it easier for the judges, list your team, position, and any prompts you used

lastly, and most importantly, teams will be named after Mountain Dew flavors

and that’s everything i have so far! it would need a lot of people though -- even just two teams would need eight team members, maybe two reserves, probably two judges to split four fics between them (so probably a judge per team?), and if it gets bigger i’ll need one or two people to help me run the tumblr and the competition (ie come up with rounds, keep track of reserves/extensions, etc). but i really think it would be a fun way to make new content for the fandom

maybe like this post if you’d participate? or idk maybe i’ll put together a poll or something of who’d join, and then whether as a reserve, writer, or judge, if this post gains enough attention

[Official] - TotalBiscuits future This is posted on behalf of TotalBiscuit by the subreddits moderation team. TB does not participate in Reddit anymore (we havent managed to keep him off /r/rarepuppers yet thats a work in progress) since he doesn't think that health related speculation is good for his mindset. Well-wishes can be sent to [email protected] where they'll be sent on by his PR guy.When I went into hospital a week or so ago, it was accompanied by the news that conventional chemotherapys effectiveness had been exhausted. My body has become resistant to all forms of it according to my oncologist. 46 chemo treatments, 138 days plugged into a pump. Let nobody ever say I wasn't stubborn. Unfortunately this was followed up a couple of days later with some more bad news. My liver is failing and its effectiveness has lowered past the point where the clinical trials I had been offered would take me on. Yes apparently there are things that are too dangerous for even the terminal. Obviously we're going to keep looking for other trials but I'm currently coming to terms with the fact that I don't have long left and right now at any rate, there is literally nothing I can do about it other than try to manage the pain as best as possible and stay as hydrated as possible to ease the pressure on the liver. There are quite a few pain management options left to try and the ones that I am using can be increased in dosage quite significantly if need be. The majority of the pain is being caused by pressure on the spine from hardened nodules in the liver and lung as well as fluid. We haven't fully explored the options for dealing with all of that, but its high priority so that my quality-of-life can improve.That's what it comes down to now, getting my quality-of-life to as good a standard as possible. Even though you don't really have any treatments to fight with any more, I firmly believe that the will to live is a very strong asset and that is much easier to maintain when you're not in crippling pain all the time.That will most likely be my last health update, unless some miracle happens or we do indeed find a trial that can do something despite the damage to my liver. I'd ask people not to speculate about how long I might have left. I've deliberately left out some details to try and reduce the behavior, though it might very well have the opposite effect. All I do know is that kind of thing is upsetting to some of my viewers that read it and I'd rather not encourage it. I've already exceeded the "usual" lifespan of someone with my condition so whatever numbers people come up with are just that.Its now a case of "what do I do with the time I have left?" Why am I telling you? Because if you're a viewer of my content, its relevant to you.Retirement, sort ofFirstly, I am retiring as a games critic. I can't do the job anymore. I'm under the influence of too much medication to think clearly and my schedule too unreliable to get coverage out in a timely manner. I've found it very stressful over the last year to try and keep up, knowing that I'm failing and watching my work (rightly) fall out of favour because there isn't enough of it, its not on time or its not of good quality. It doesn't make any sense to continue to try to do that job in my state and while it used to bring me a lot of satisfaction, now it's just the opposite.Does that mean I'm done with Youtube and Twitch? Nope, blokes gotta make a living. I have a family to consider and there's no such thing as "too much" when it comes to what I leave them when I go out kicking and screaming. I want to spend the rest of my time with the two things I love the most, my family and my work. I'm transitioning my Youtube and Twitch work over to gameplay with my wife. There's a bunch of co-op stuff I never really got around to playing and I have the perfect gameplay partner right beside me. When I'm having a good idea, I'll be doing gameplay streams and Youtube videos with Genna. If you want to know what to expect from that, well we've done it before, just not recently, there's some rather popular videos of it over on Her channelThis is something that will make me happy, spending time with my family but also getting job satisfaction. That's something all too easily overlooked by some, I'm a very work-driven person and one of hardest things of the past couple of years has been dealing with not being able to reliable do my work. It's brought on depression, uncertainty, anger, you name it. I hate it.The PodcastWhat about Co-optional? Well that's sticking around. The show must go on after all. We will be moving forward with our proposal to shorten the show to 2 hours per episode however. This is for health reasons but also because lately I've felt like 3 hours drags on too much, we find ourselves having to rely on way too much filler and its not been as enjoyable to do. Some might be disappointed by this though we found in a recent poll that quite a few people, more than those who said they'd be disappointed, actually wanted this change. There are only so many hours in a week. I'd rather have 2 hours of good, fresh content than 3 hours of discussion spread too thin, which the shows as of late have often been. As for weeks in which I simply cannot do the show (which hopefully wont happen but you can never be sure), Genna is going to be trained in production and will take on a host role, with the usual guests. Genna will be filling in for Dodger while she takes maternity leave anyway so, get used to hearing her voice.SupportWe've had A LOT of questions about donations, how people can help etc. That's always humbling to see. Some suggested a GofundMe. I'm not comfortable with taking donations when I'm still able to work and have income from several different sources. I dont begrudge anyone for using donations as a form of income, its just always seemed inappropriate for us when we have several other ways to making money that result in both parties getting something. If you would like to help, do the things you've always done. Watch our videos without adblock or with Youtube Red (yes Red helps, a lot, much more than watching an ad).Support our podcast sponsors, Squarespace and [Audible at [(https://ift.tt/2HDqc2a] - they've both been very good to us over the past couple of years and let us pay Dodger and Jesse a salary for doing the show rather than just "exposure" (though they got a lot of damn exposure, let's not sell ourselves short here").Watch our streams and consider subscribing. There'll be more content coming on Twitch than there has been for a while with streams with Genna. Our subscription is a service, giving you instant access to VoDs rather than having to wait for them to hit Youtube (in the case of Cooptional, thats 48 hours afterwards), no Twitch ads, 50 chat emotes, access to the subscriber only chat and a 10% discount on our t-shirts and hoodies. We've done our best to make subscribing a service model, not a donation model and we're going to try and keep it that way, including more features and discounts if we can.Speaking of merchandise, yes the purchase of a shirt is very helpful. Margins on t-shirts are ridiculous, that's why everyone and their mother wants to sell them to you. [https://ift.tt/2zKjDqA] is where we sell ours.We have a games retail partner in [http://chrono.gg/tb] that sells a different game every day at a big discount. We get a cut of each sale, so if you see something on there you like and pick it up under our link, that helps.We do have another partnership in the works as well, with a company you should be quite familiar with.Lastly, I'll be taking the occasional brand deal here and there. Even though I'm not a critic anymore, I still fully believe in disclosure, honesty with the audience and only taking deals for games you actually like. People can see right through the fake bullshit anyway, so why waste your time and I'd quite like however many videos I've got left in me to be fun. I'm not playing your crappy game, no matter how much money you try to slip me, so you can take me off those mobile mailing lists please.These are all better than asking for donations. We're still running a business and I want to keep acting like it. All that said, if something goes horribly wrong, if my insurance stops paying out for whatever reason or if faced between draining all savings and leaving my family with nothing but our physical assets and asking for help, you better believe I'll be asking for help. The family comes first.What we leave behindIt goes further than that though. When I leave this world I want to leave something my family can use to help them earn. Not only would I be ok with Genna taking over my channels and assets once I'm gone, I'd be delighted if she did. I've been encouraging her for years to create more content for Youtube, hopefully as we make a bunch of fun videos together over the next however-long, that confidence will grow. I fully expect The Co-optional Podcast to go on and I love the thought that once I'm gone, the channels will go on in my absence, hosted by the person who knows me best and has been with me for the better part of my adult life.If this is all a bit brutally honest... well, it is me. I want you to see where I'm coming from, I always have and I really believe that's what made me an effective and useful critic. It's been a privilege, thank you all for letting me into your life and do something so important as to have an impact on how you spend your hard-earned money. Thankfully Youtube is thriving with great review and critical content now, there's plenty of awesome choices and considering most of my critical content has been reserved for the podcast over the last year, many of you have most likely found the places you can rely on.TL:DR - Conventional treatments ineffective, liver too damage for clinical trials that we know of. I'm retiring as a critic to spend whats left of my life sharing my love of gaming with my wife and all of you via co-op videos and streams. The podcast will continue every week, with a streamlined 2-hour format. We have no plans to launch any kind of donation campaign and suggest above a list of ways to support us if you would like to.Thank you for reading, watching or listening and I will see you soon, along with Genna, on a stream or YT channel near you.

[Official] - TotalBiscuits future This is posted on behalf of TotalBiscuit by the subreddits moderation team. TB does not participate in Reddit anymore (we havent managed to keep him off /r/rarepuppers yet thats a work in progress) since he doesn't think that health related speculation is good for his mindset. Well-wishes can be sent to [email protected] where they'll be sent on by his PR guy.When I went into hospital a week or so ago, it was accompanied by the news that conventional chemotherapys effectiveness had been exhausted. My body has become resistant to all forms of it according to my oncologist. 46 chemo treatments, 138 days plugged into a pump. Let nobody ever say I wasn't stubborn. Unfortunately this was followed up a couple of days later with some more bad news. My liver is failing and its effectiveness has lowered past the point where the clinical trials I had been offered would take me on. Yes apparently there are things that are too dangerous for even the terminal. Obviously we're going to keep looking for other trials but I'm currently coming to terms with the fact that I don't have long left and right now at any rate, there is literally nothing I can do about it other than try to manage the pain as best as possible and stay as hydrated as possible to ease the pressure on the liver. There are quite a few pain management options left to try and the ones that I am using can be increased in dosage quite significantly if need be. The majority of the pain is being caused by pressure on the spine from hardened nodules in the liver and lung as well as fluid. We haven't fully explored the options for dealing with all of that, but its high priority so that my quality-of-life can improve.That's what it comes down to now, getting my quality-of-life to as good a standard as possible. Even though you don't really have any treatments to fight with any more, I firmly believe that the will to live is a very strong asset and that is much easier to maintain when you're not in crippling pain all the time.That will most likely be my last health update, unless some miracle happens or we do indeed find a trial that can do something despite the damage to my liver. I'd ask people not to speculate about how long I might have left. I've deliberately left out some details to try and reduce the behavior, though it might very well have the opposite effect. All I do know is that kind of thing is upsetting to some of my viewers that read it and I'd rather not encourage it. I've already exceeded the "usual" lifespan of someone with my condition so whatever numbers people come up with are just that.Its now a case of "what do I do with the time I have left?" Why am I telling you? Because if you're a viewer of my content, its relevant to you.Retirement, sort ofFirstly, I am retiring as a games critic. I can't do the job anymore. I'm under the influence of too much medication to think clearly and my schedule too unreliable to get coverage out in a timely manner. I've found it very stressful over the last year to try and keep up, knowing that I'm failing and watching my work (rightly) fall out of favour because there isn't enough of it, its not on time or its not of good quality. It doesn't make any sense to continue to try to do that job in my state and while it used to bring me a lot of satisfaction, now it's just the opposite.Does that mean I'm done with Youtube and Twitch? Nope, blokes gotta make a living. I have a family to consider and there's no such thing as "too much" when it comes to what I leave them when I go out kicking and screaming. I want to spend the rest of my time with the two things I love the most, my family and my work. I'm transitioning my Youtube and Twitch work over to gameplay with my wife. There's a bunch of co-op stuff I never really got around to playing and I have the perfect gameplay partner right beside me. When I'm having a good idea, I'll be doing gameplay streams and Youtube videos with Genna. If you want to know what to expect from that, well we've done it before, just not recently, there's some rather popular videos of it over on Her channelThis is something that will make me happy, spending time with my family but also getting job satisfaction. That's something all too easily overlooked by some, I'm a very work-driven person and one of hardest things of the past couple of years has been dealing with not being able to reliable do my work. It's brought on depression, uncertainty, anger, you name it. I hate it.The PodcastWhat about Co-optional? Well that's sticking around. The show must go on after all. We will be moving forward with our proposal to shorten the show to 2 hours per episode however. This is for health reasons but also because lately I've felt like 3 hours drags on too much, we find ourselves having to rely on way too much filler and its not been as enjoyable to do. Some might be disappointed by this though we found in a recent poll that quite a few people, more than those who said they'd be disappointed, actually wanted this change. There are only so many hours in a week. I'd rather have 2 hours of good, fresh content than 3 hours of discussion spread too thin, which the shows as of late have often been. As for weeks in which I simply cannot do the show (which hopefully wont happen but you can never be sure), Genna is going to be trained in production and will take on a host role, with the usual guests. Genna will be filling in for Dodger while she takes maternity leave anyway so, get used to hearing her voice.SupportWe've had A LOT of questions about donations, how people can help etc. That's always humbling to see. Some suggested a GofundMe. I'm not comfortable with taking donations when I'm still able to work and have income from several different sources. I dont begrudge anyone for using donations as a form of income, its just always seemed inappropriate for us when we have several other ways to making money that result in both parties getting something. If you would like to help, do the things you've always done. Watch our videos without adblock or with Youtube Red (yes Red helps, a lot, much more than watching an ad).Support our podcast sponsors, Squarespace and [Audible at [(https://ift.tt/2HDqc2a] - they've both been very good to us over the past couple of years and let us pay Dodger and Jesse a salary for doing the show rather than just "exposure" (though they got a lot of damn exposure, let's not sell ourselves short here").Watch our streams and consider subscribing. There'll be more content coming on Twitch than there has been for a while with streams with Genna. Our subscription is a service, giving you instant access to VoDs rather than having to wait for them to hit Youtube (in the case of Cooptional, thats 48 hours afterwards), no Twitch ads, 50 chat emotes, access to the subscriber only chat and a 10% discount on our t-shirts and hoodies. We've done our best to make subscribing a service model, not a donation model and we're going to try and keep it that way, including more features and discounts if we can.Speaking of merchandise, yes the purchase of a shirt is very helpful. Margins on t-shirts are ridiculous, that's why everyone and their mother wants to sell them to you. [https://ift.tt/2zKjDqA] is where we sell ours.We have a games retail partner in [http://chrono.gg/tb] that sells a different game every day at a big discount. We get a cut of each sale, so if you see something on there you like and pick it up under our link, that helps.We do have another partnership in the works as well, with a company you should be quite familiar with.Lastly, I'll be taking the occasional brand deal here and there. Even though I'm not a critic anymore, I still fully believe in disclosure, honesty with the audience and only taking deals for games you actually like. People can see right through the fake bullshit anyway, so why waste your time and I'd quite like however many videos I've got left in me to be fun. I'm not playing your crappy game, no matter how much money you try to slip me, so you can take me off those mobile mailing lists please.These are all better than asking for donations. We're still running a business and I want to keep acting like it. All that said, if something goes horribly wrong, if my insurance stops paying out for whatever reason or if faced between draining all savings and leaving my family with nothing but our physical assets and asking for help, you better believe I'll be asking for help. The family comes first.What we leave behindIt goes further than that though. When I leave this world I want to leave something my family can use to help them earn. Not only would I be ok with Genna taking over my channels and assets once I'm gone, I'd be delighted if she did. I've been encouraging her for years to create more content for Youtube, hopefully as we make a bunch of fun videos together over the next however-long, that confidence will grow. I fully expect The Co-optional Podcast to go on and I love the thought that once I'm gone, the channels will go on in my absence, hosted by the person who knows me best and has been with me for the better part of my adult life.If this is all a bit brutally honest... well, it is me. I want you to see where I'm coming from, I always have and I really believe that's what made me an effective and useful critic. It's been a privilege, thank you all for letting me into your life and do something so important as to have an impact on how you spend your hard-earned money. Thankfully Youtube is thriving with great review and critical content now, there's plenty of awesome choices and considering most of my critical content has been reserved for the podcast over the last year, many of you have most likely found the places you can rely on.TL:DR - Conventional treatments ineffective, liver too damage for clinical trials that we know of. I'm retiring as a critic to spend whats left of my life sharing my love of gaming with my wife and all of you via co-op videos and streams. The podcast will continue every week, with a streamlined 2-hour format. We have no plans to launch any kind of donation campaign and suggest above a list of ways to support us if you would like to.Thank you for reading, watching or listening and I will see you soon, along with Genna, on a stream or YT channel near you.