Welcome back to Tildes’s now officially monthly creative writing contest! Last month’s entries were a joy to read, and I’m excited to see what literary magic you all conjure this time around.

Your goal: Write a creative short story based on the prompt provided and post it in this thread.
Deadline: 2025-02-21T23:59:59-05:00.
Prize: Your choice of a $20 gift code for either Proton or Tuta! I added the other major encrypted provider as a choice this time around, so you’ll need to choose if I select your entry as the winner. If anyone wants to suggest or donate future prizes, send a DM my way.

Your prompt: Write a story that begins and ends with the same sentence, but the meaning of that sentence has completely changed by the story’s conclusion.

Rules (Streamlined and Improved!):

1. Creative Writing Only: It must be creative writing. Creative fiction, creative non-fiction, and fanfiction are all welcome! If you go the fanfic route, keep in mind that I might not be familiar with the source material. Also, your submission should be in English, unless you’re particularly confident in Google Translate’s artistic sensibilities.
2. Length: While there’s no hard limit, “short story” generally implies somewhere in the ballpark of 1,000–7,500 words. Aim for that range, give or take, or it may mildly count against you. Only one submission per person, please!
3. Judging: The winner will be chosen by my entirely subjective judgment, not by comment votes. Don’t worry, though—I have impeccable taste. Also, infallible.
4. Originality: Your story should be written specifically for this contest based on new material.
5. Formatting: Please use collapsible formatting if posting your full story in the comments to keep the thread tidy. You are allowed/encouraged to host it somewhere else and link to it from here as well.
6. Licensing: New requirement this time around! Include a clear license declaration with your submission (e.g. “All Rights Reserved,” your choice of Creative Commons license, or perhaps even the JWCL (coughcough)). This helps me know whether I can compile the stories for the community later.
7. Shameless Self-Promotion: In case the self-promotion in the last rule was a tad too subtle for your tastes, you can also always check out my own creative writing.

And everyone, whether you’re submitting a story or not, please leave feedback on the entries! It means the world to writers when their work is appreciated (or even just constructively criticized).

Today I got an email from ebay.

It says:

We wanted to let you know that your eBay account has been permanently suspended because of activity that we believe was putting the eBay community at risk...

Well this is weird because I don't use ebay. I sold some things there over 10 years ago. Since then I may have logged in once or twice. Maybe I reset my password a few years ago to make it more secure. So I couldn't have violated any of their policies.

This is a concern to me because I assume someone has been using my account. I assume they have been logging into it and scamming other people. And the account is linked to my email so the scammer has that. So I don't know if someone found out my address info, credit card, or something else. But I can't login to ebay and change my email or check account history because my account is suspended.

So I contacted customer support and they replied a few hours later that I'm banned for life and the reason can't be told to me.

By the way, I did not reply to the original email or click any links in it. I went directly to the ebay site and contacted customer support through that. I'm sure it wasn't a phishing attempt, it's really ebay and they really banned my account (which I haven't been using).

Any suggestions? In my opinion eBay has not used proper security and is exposing me to risk by not giving more information about what has happened.

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Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT launches tomorrow (6th March) for a MRRP of:

• $600 USA before taxes
• £570 UK after taxes

Reviews:

• Have They Finally Done It? - Hardware Unboxed
• Review & Benchmarks vs. 5070 Ti, 5070, 7900 XT - Gamer Nexus
• Nvidia in Trouble? The RX 9070 XT has great potential - der8auer
• AMD Radeon RX 9070 / 9070 XT review: back to winning ways - Eurogamer
• AMD, I Could Kiss You - 9070 and 9070 XT Review - Linus Tech Tips
• AMD's Radeon RX 9070 XT is the most exciting GPU to launch in years - XDA Developers

Bonus:

• AMD FSR 4 Upscaling Tested vs DLSS 3/4 - A Big Leap Forward - RDNA 4 Delivers! - Digital Foundry

I don't really have any cool articles about de Laroche besides the Wikipedia page on her, but it is quite good and a shortish read, so very worthwhile. There is also this short article from the University of Houston, complete with a 3-minute audio version.

The week of 8 March is also International Women of Aviation Week, celebrating all the female aviators (people are getting away from using gender-specific words like aviatrix that weren't necessary in English anyway), including Jacqueline Cochran, the wartime head of Women Airforce Service Pilots in the U.S. and who would go on to be the first woman to break the sound barrier; Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman, the first African-American and Native American woman aviator and presumably the first licensed female pilot of mixed race to participate in air races and barnstorming stunt shows across the U.S. and Europe; Leah Hing, the first Chinese-American female pilot and who started her own flight school after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931; among many other women past and present who are earning their pilot's license.

RESOLVED
/var/lib/docker/volumes/ <-- thats where the data is saved

I fucked up colossaly
I run a Nextcloud all in one instance on my ubuntu VM with Hetzner.
I run a backup of my phone to said instance.
I forgot to set a sensible limit on my Nextcloud.
I somehow changed to hourly backups....
My Vm filled up in a very short time.
My VM has not one byte of free space left.

What I tried to do:
open Console inside the Nextcloud Aio Container with docker exec -t -i , to find the space and delete stuff, but no chance, not enough space.

There is nothing else on the VM i know of that i could delete to make space (nothing else i put)

has somebody an idea how to fix this gracefully?

I have some ideas but they involve a lot of work or money...

• just pay for a bigger VM but i dont need more cores only more space, even that i dont really need (incures a monthly cost, cannot downsize afterwards as more space means you cannot downsize)
• clone my vm onto a bigger one, delete stuff, clone it back to the original one... (sound like a lot of work, incrues (little) cost, and feels like a lot of risk involved)

My parameters are

• Any kind of racing - F1, Moto GP, X games, rallycross, antigravity... you name it.
• No subscriptions
• I lean away from sim/management games... I don't mind some customization, but I don't want to have to choose from 10 different types of brake pads for best performance on each track.
• Combat optional
• If it makes a difference, I'll be playing with a controller, not a racing wheel.

[Edit: I should have specified - a modern racing game. I'm pretty versed on the options pre-2010, it's the new stuff I'm looking for.]

I originally wanted a rally game to scratch a hillclimb itch but I'm open to whatever now. Trawling through Steam has made my head spin though.

Previous racing games/series I've played and liked - Rallisport Challenge (really, if I could just play this again I'd be set), Wipeout 3, Road Rash, Ridge Racer Type 4, Twisted Metal 2, Jet Moto, Wave Race, Mario Kart, Sled Storm... OutRun! Showing my age here.

Somehow I've never really liked Need For Speed.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.