The Ant Hill Kids Cult

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It's honestly hard to believe that one
person could have enough charisma or riz.

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As the kids are saying now,
it's hard to believe that one person could

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have enough riz and power to manipulate
an entire group of people into doing what

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they say, no matter the cost. On May sixteenth, nineteen forty seven,

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Roke Throat was born in Quebec,
Canada. For the first two years

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of his childhood, Roke was more
or less a normal kid, although he

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was thought to have above average intelligence, and it was this intelligence which led

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a preteen Roke into a deep fascination
with the Bible, in particular the Old

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Testament, which he became devoted to
studying. In the seventh grade, Roke

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dropped out of school and studying the
Bible became his obsession. He held a

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firm belief that the world was currently
stricken with a war between the forces of

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good and evil, which would eventually
lead to the end of days. At

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first, Roke identified as a Catholic, but quickly converted to Seventh Day Adventist

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Church, which was more in line
with his own beliefs. Seventh Day at

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Venice believed that there will be a
second coming of Jesus Christ, resulting in

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the righteous people being resurrected from the
dead into a better world. In short,

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there was everything that Roke wanted.
By the nineteen seventies, Roke was

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no longer content to worship like everybody
else. He wanted to create a miniature

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society full of righteous people. But
more than that, he wanted a consistent

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audience who would listen to his preaching
and applaud his speeches. Roke was persuasive,

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and by the mid nineteen seventies he
had a small group of followers who

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agreed to leave their lives mind and
live in commune in Saint Marie, Quebec.

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From the day Roke's religious commune began
in nineteen seventy seven, it had

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all the key characteristics of a cult. His followers were banned from reaching out

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to their families, and they became
isolated from the Seventh Day had finished church

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that they had all once been loyal
members of. Roke told his followers that

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he had received a warning from God
telling them that the world would end in

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early nineteen seventy nine. Spoiler alert
didn't happen. As that day approached,

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though, Roke became more and more
paranoid and unstable, he decided to relocate

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the cult to a remote area of
the mountain side, which he named Eternal

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Mountain. While the members of the
cults slaved away to build their new home

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on Eternal Mountain, Roke simply sat
back and watched them work. They had

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to wear identical tunics to symbolize that
all members of the cult were equal,

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but of course Roke made himself exempt
from the rule. From a distance,

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he noted that his followers looked like
tiny ants working to build an ant hill,

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and this is how the now notorious
nickname for the commune was created.

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From then on, they were referred
to as the ant Hill Kids. February

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nineteen seventy nine, the month when
Rokee had assured everybody that the world would

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come to an end, It came
and went the world continued to turn.

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After spending so long working and fearing
the end of days, some members of

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the ant Hill Kids began to question
where their Rokee had received a warning from

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God at all. Roke's response was
that he had a miscalculation due to the

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fact that time didn't work the same
way on Earth as it did in God's

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domain, So for the time being, the ant Hill Kids were reassured.

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Roche now had a new focus.
As well as making sure all of the

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ant Hill Kids remained devoted to him, he needed to make their community larger

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and more powerful. In his opinion, the simplest way to do this wasn't

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to crute more followers from the outside
world. Now they was to personally impregnate

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as many of the female cult members
as possible. Roche performed this task with

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Gusto, marrying all eligible women in
the ant Hill Kids and fathering more than

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twenty children by different mothers. By
the time the early nineteen eighties came around,

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the population of the ant Hill Kids
was now at more than forty They

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relocated again, this time to Central
Ontario, and once again wrote continued to

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follow the typical pattern familiar to anyone
that's researched the formation and escalation of cult

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leaders. His initial charisma and kindness
began to fade and turned into a cruel,

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totalitarian attitude. He banned the ant
Hill Kids from having conversations with each

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other. He was the only person
in the cult allowed to have sexual intercourse

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without permission, telling his followers that
God would inform him if they had misbehaved

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or been disloyal, he set about
punishing people who he believed had sinned.

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Like the rest of Roque's behavior,
his punishments followed a continued pattern of escalation.

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If anyone told them that they wanted
to leave the Anthill Kids, or

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even if he just suspected they were
straying, he would beat them, hang

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them from the ceiling, defecate on
their bodies, or spend hours painstakingly plucking

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every single hair from their body.
It just depended on his mood at the

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time. Before long, he was
causing permanent, severe bodily harm, and

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it wasn't just inflicting punishments himself,
but he was also forcing other cult members

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to punish victims for him, or
making the victims physically harm themselves while he

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watched. Roque's followers were ordered to
shoot each other in the arm, break

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their own legs, eat human feces, and cut off each other's toes.

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The children Roque had fathered were no
longer safe. Even the youngest members of

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the cult were systematically sexually abused,
nailed to trees, pelted with rocks,

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and held above open flames. Eliza
Levie, one of Roke's many wives decided

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to protect her newborn child from Roke's
abuse by leaving the baby outside to freeze

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to death, thinking that it was
possibly a kinder fate than he would have

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met had he been allowed to live
under Rogue's rule. In the late nineteen

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eighties, almost twenty of the children
were removed from the cult by social workers.

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However, there was no further investigation
into Roke or the safety of the

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adult members of his cult. Around
this time, Roke started believing that he

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genuinely had holy powers, which would
allow him to heal cult members by performing

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amateur surgeries. One of his followers, Solange Ballard, had an upset stomach

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in nineteen eighty nine. Rokee decided
to treat her complaint with anaesthesia free abdominal

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surgery, and the surgery he punched
her in the gut, gave her an

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enema with olive oil and syrup,
and then tore out some of her intestines

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with his hands. You don't have
to be a doctor to that. That

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didn't fix Solange's stomach pain, and
she died the following day. Roke told

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his followers that he would resurrect her
through the unusual method of drilling a hole

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into her skull and ejaculating into her
brain. When Solange apparently had the audacity

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to remain dead, Roke finally gave
up and buried her body. One of

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the Anhill kids was able to escape
and alert the authorities about this. It

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was Elazar, the same woman who
had left her baby to freeze to death

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as an act of mercy, but
now she was in such poor physical condition

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that she was lucky to be alive
herself. Eight of her teeth had been

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pulled out, her genitals had been
burned with a welding torch, parts of

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her breast and cut off, and
Roque had amputated one of her arms with

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a cleaver after restraining her by stabbing
her with a knife through her hand into

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a table. The fact that none
of these injuries had caused her death is

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a testament to both luck and human
determination. She just refused to die,

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and because of that, she was
the one to take the ant Hill Kids

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down. Local authorities had always suspected
that abuse was taking place in the cult,

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but because Roque had registered the community
as a church, an investigation had

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not been able to legally take place. But with the escapees, testimony and

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the severe injuries that had been inflicted
upon her. Rokee Thorote was placed under

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arrest. He was given a twelve
year sentence for assault, and consequently most

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of the ant Hill Kids members fled. However, Rope did still have a

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few loyal female supporters, with whom
he was able to father four more children

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during his time in jail. That
is, until investigators gathered more evidence and

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sentenced him to life in prison for
Solange's murder. His application for parole was

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justifiably rejected, and he never reapplied. At the age of sixty three,

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Roke died in prison by being stabbed
to death by his cell mate Matthew McDonald.

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After killing Roke, Matthew turned himself
over to the guards immediately and handed

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them the murder weapon. He said, here's the knife. I've sliced him

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up. And Roke's last moments,
after a life spent slicing up so many

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of his own followers, he got
a taste of his own medicine, and

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no, he was not resurrected.
That is ten minute murder for today Brief

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and binge able True Crime. I'm
Joe the host, and I really appreciate

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you listening, and I know what
you're thinking, Joe, that story,

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could you make it more graphic?
It was really it was really graphic today,

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and unusually more graphic than the ten
minute murder stories usually are. And

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I can't apologize for it because without
the details of the story, there's not

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a lot to tell. Normally,
I will avoid a lot of the gory

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graphic stuff talking about it in detail, and I'll mention some of it usually,

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but then other times be a little
bit vague because we're adults here,

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right, You know what I'm saying
without me going into detail about what it

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is exactly. But stories like today, I feel like you need to know

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more of the information to really grasp
exactly what was going on, because on

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the outside looking in, you could
just say, well, why don't they

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just leave this cult? Because they
were scared to death. That's why they

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couldn't just leave, no matter what
they did, no matter what they said.

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They were afraid of being murdered at
any moment, being tortured at any

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moments, having their arms cut off
at any moment, having their literal guts

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ripped out at any moment. So
without the details, I don't think I

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could effectively portray exactly how dangerous this
cult was for the people in the cult.

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All right, so if this is
your first time listening to ten Minute

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Murder, please subscribe now so that
you can catch up on all the back

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episodes and never miss any of the
new ones. Connect with me on social

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media see the visuals that we're talking
about here in the podcast. By the

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way, it will not be showing
the visuals for this story in graphic detail.

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I'll show as many pictures as I
can without being graphic, but you

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can find all that on the social
media pages of ten Minute Murder. If

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you like this episode, please leave
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place that's possible. Your positive feedback
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dot com for all things ten minute
Murder. And if you're still listening at

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this point, I feel like I
should tell you that since I move the

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beginning part to the end, you
know this part that we're enjoying together right

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now. I have no idea how
to end this podcast. I could just

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say goodbye, but it sounds super
plain and I don't know what to do.

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But today I will give you a
piece of advice. Don't let the

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impulsive thoughts win I have this bad
habit when I go to Mexican restaurants where

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they put the plate down and they
say, be careful, it's hot,

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but I have to touch it.
I don't know why they say it's hot.

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They tell me it's hot. They've
got a potholder in their hand when

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they put it down on my table
in front of me, and they tell

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me not to touch it. It's
hot, don't touch it, but I

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have to. And it's usually like
just like a bump. I'll just bump

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it a little bit, and every
now and then they see me do it

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and they just look at me,
like, are you the stupidest human on

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the face of this earth? I
just said don't touch it. So I

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guess this is advice to not just
you, but to me. Also,

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don't let the impulse of thoughts win. Have a good night.