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Hunter’s Point South Park located in Hunter’s Point, Long Island City, New York is a waterfront park sitting on the other side the East River directly facing Manhattan in New York City. It offers visitors nothing less than a million dollar view of the New York skyline.
The aesthetically designed park is part of Hunter’s Point South, a new neighborhood being built on approximately 30 acres of prime waterfront property in Long Island City, Queens. With the first phase of the park having been recently completed, New York’s former mayor Michael Bloomberg officially opened it to the public in a ceremony on August 28th 2013. The park is stunningly beautiful with unobstructed views of the gorgeous Manhattan skyline from virtually any point. Clearly designed with the skyline in mind, and built at a cost of over $66 million dollars, it provides the perfect setting for mentally transporting visitors from the hustle and bustle of New York City to an environment that feels like a vacation resort. This feeling is further fed by the sight and sound of the East River Ferry docking in the park, as it transports commuters and visitors to and from Manhattan on a three minute ride.
Although the centerpiece of the Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park is indeed the view of the New York skyline, there are other great activities at the park that make it worthy of a visit. Just to the right of Park is the equally gorgeous Gantry Plaza State Park which recently celebrated its 16th year of existence. The cohesive design of these two parks renders them seamless to visitors and make them ideal for a delightful walk along the LIC waterfront. Hunters Point Park itself is home to a gorgeously tempting oval shaped soccer field, a basketball court with an outdoor gym. There is also a well equipped children’s playground with bells and whistles, and a nicely laid out dog run area where our canine comrades can hang out while barking their approval at the skyline. For those who prefer to sit back while basking in the ambiance of the waterfront , the park is gracefully adorned with elegant trees, and adequately furnished with comfortable benches and chairs.
Hunter’s Point South Park is also a photographer’s dream, full of vantage points for taking amazing photos of your friends, family and loved ones. For the amateur, your photos will stand out with the New York skyline in the background. The professional will also benefit from this incredible setting.
To the north of Hunter’s Point Park or on its right hand side for the geographically challenged, sits Gantry Plaza State Park, itself another jewel on the East River. With their side by side locations and their seamless designs, many visitors stroll back and forth between these two parks without ever realizing that they are actually moving from a city park (Hunters Point South) to a state park (Gantry Plaza State Park). Interestingly, these two parks stand together as a living testimony of what could be accomplished in government when the state and the city work together.
With the first phase of Hunter’s Point Park now completed, it occupies just over 5.5 acres of land on the Long Island City riverfront, and along with Gantry Park a total of about 17.5 acres. When Hunters Point Park is fully completed, both parks together will ultimately grow to over 40 acres in size, covering no less than one mile of riverfront in Long Island City, all spectacularly overlooking the eastern side of the New York skyline. | https://hunterspointsouth.com/default-2-4/ | 1,665,032,459 |
Right before Soodeh Sharifzadegan’s second marriage, her 11-year-old son, Matiar is kidnapped, setting off a chain of events in this award winning drama.
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some of the new additions! Click an image to find it in the Library ^_^
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Posted in Famicom, Nintendo. Tagged Additions, Air Fortress, Bucky O'Hare, Collection, DuckTales, Famicom, Famicom catalogue, Famicom Library, Fantasy Zone, Games, Gradius 2, Ninja Gaiden, Ninja Ryukenden, Nintendo, Pac-Man, PunchOut, RockBoard, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, TMNT, Update
Pacman Poignant Potion
September 16, 2012 by stopXwhispering
8
So this last week I’ve been down with the flu.. sucks badly.. however during my days of illness I’ve come up with my own special cure, in drink form. I call it the Pacman Poignant Potion :D
It’s not for the weak, and it is an advantage if you like whiskey ;D If you don’t then it can be taken like a shot instead. Me personally I love whiskey, so I’ve been sipping away on this thing every evening ^_^
The recipe is simple:
1 deciliter whiskey (of your choice, I chose Jim Beam)
1/2 lemon squeezed into juice
2 table spoons liquid honey
4-8 penny sized pieces of chopped fresh ginger (depending on how strong taste of ginger you want, more ginger=more effective against your cold)
Mix the ingredients with ice in a shaker and shake it!
Pour it out in a glass of your choice, I topped it off with a Pacman lemon wedge and some Pacman ginger slices in the drink.
Mind you, this is a strong and alcoholic drink that works wonders on a bad cold, however most people might not find it very tasty as a party drink ;D Skipping the lemon and ginger will make it more easily consumed for a friday night ^_^
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Posted in Misc. Tagged Cocktail, Cold, Cure, Drink, Drinks, Flu, Pac-Man, Pacman, Pacman Poignant Potion
8-bit beads
August 15, 2012 by stopXwhispering
13
I was planning on blogging about all my newly purchased games both yesterday and today, but I got distracted..
After coming home after work yesterday I sat down and got the idea that I should try to make some of that bead art in 8bit, since I had recently purchased a huuuge box of 20.000 beads for a bachelorette party I was hosting. However we never got to beading so I was just stuck with a bunch of beads!
Beading turned out to be really fun and relaxing, and somewhat addictive! O_o
And it takes forever!
The most time consuming thing is sorting all the beads >_<
But after about 5 hours (I don’t really know, I seriously lost track of time) I had finished my Pac-man and Inky, Blinky, Pinky & Clyde and some variations.
My favorites were these ones:
My boyfriend came home after a fishing-trip at around 11 at night, and I had continued with new characters and hadn’t even taken the time to eat dinner! That’s how addictive it was! I had run out of black beads so I basically had to improvise with the colors..
At 1 past midnight I managed to go to bed… and today after work I said I wouldn’t bead (until I had gotten the new beads I purchased during my lunch hour! I bought 110.000 beads in sorted colours!…i’m serious……they were cheap…) But I still got stuck beading some more.. >_<
It’s fun! You should try it out, unless your easily addicted to things like I am…
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Posted in Misc. Tagged 8-bit, 8bit, Beading, Beads, Blinky, Bubble Bobble, Cherry, Clyde, Hearts, Inky, Mushroom, Pac-Man, Pinky, Question mark, Space Invaders
Retro gaming store in Japan
April 29, 2012 by stopXwhispering
16
So today I took another trip to the Super Potato store in Akihabara. This time I spent hours just looking through all the retro gaming goodness they had to offer ^_^ And on the way to the store I took the opportunity to drop by a couple of arcades, like this one:
So here’s a couple of things you could find in the Super Potato store:
Famicom games, 4 shelves (only 2 are in the picture) all organized in alphabetical order.
On the opposite side just as many shelves with Famicom games in original boxes, all in really nice condition.
Super Famicom games, also 4 shelves in alphabetical order.
Super Famicom games in boxes, super nice condition.
Game Boy games! They also had shelves filled with boxed ones, and lots of GBC and GBA games too ^^
Lots and lots of Game & Watch!! ^_^
Nintendo 64’s that looked like new, came with controllers and all cables for like 2000 Yen (about 170 SEK, or 25 USD) o_O
On the first floor they also had a bunch of Sega, everything from 8bit to Dreamcast ^^
On the second floor they had all the PS1, PS2, comics, literature such as walkthroughs and guides, all soundtracks to games and lots more ^^
I really wanted to buy this Super Metroid book, but I had already picked up sooo many games that I had to stop myself somewhere :/
And of course they had all the machines where you can get little game related thingys like straps and keychains, I got some Mario stuff there ^^
On the third floor they had an arcade, and no regular arcade, they only had old games, 8bit and 16bit, like Pacman, Pac-Land, Donkey Kong, Final Fight, Splatterhouse, Ghost n Goblins, Street Fighter, Metal Slug, Space Shooters and lots lots more. I stayed there for a while and tried out most of the games, a japanese guy wanted to play Final Fight with me and we got quite far. It was a lot harder than on the console version O_o They also had this really cool chair made out of Famicom cartridges glued together! I sure hope those games weren’t in working order, otherwise it would be a waste :(
Also Pac-Land was a lot different from the Famicom version which I have previously reviewed here and re-visited here.
Here’s some pictures of the different arcade machines, especially Pac-Land ^^
Ghosts n’ Goblins
XX Mission
Final Fight
Final Fight Game Over :(
Pac-Land!
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Posted in Famicom, Famicom Disk System, Game Boy, Misc, N64, Nintendo, SNES / SFC. Tagged Akihabara, Electric City, Famicom, Final Fight, Game & Watch, Game Boy, Ghosts n' Goblins, Japan, N64, Pac-Land, Pac-Man, Retro gaming, Store, Super Metroid, Super Potato, Tokyo, XX-Mission
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On 22 March 2021, the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs organised a workshop for the Parliament’s Petitions Committee on the subject of LGBTI+ rights in the EU. The workshop centred on a presentation by Alina Tryfonidou, Professor of Law at the University of Reading, and Robert Wintemute, Professor of Human Rights Law at King’s College London, of the findings of their study on ‘Obstacles to the Free Movement of Rainbow Families in the EU’.
The professors’ study found that LGBTI+ families continue to face considerable barriers preventing them from properly exercising their right to free movement under EU law. One major obstacle is the lack of mutual recognition of same-sex marriages and registered partnerships throughout the EU. Same-sex couples’ access to legally recognised partnerships vary hugely between Member States. In some (e.g. France), same-sex couples have access to both marriage and civil unions, whilst in others (e.g. Italy), they can enter registered partnerships but cannot marry. In six EU Member States (Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia), there is still no legal recognition at all for same-sex couples. This leaves LGBTI+ partners at the mercy of whether the Member State they are attempting to move to will recognise their legal relationship and therefore grant the associated residency rights under Directive 2004/38, which obliges Member States to grant residency permits to the ‘family members’ of EU citizens.
The CJEU confirmed in the 2018 case of Coman and Others v General Inspectorate for Immigration and Ministry of the Interior that the term “spouse” in Directive 2004/38 does include a same-sex spouse. The case involved a Romanian man and an American man who had entered a same-sex marriage in Belgium. When the couple relocated to Romania, the authorities refused to grant the American husband a residency permit because they said he did not qualify as a spouse for the purposes of Directive 2004/38. In spite of the CJEU’s decision in favour of the couple, however, Romania continues to refuse to grant the American husband a residency permit. The European Commission has so far declined to take any infringement action against Romania, and in February 2021, the couple took their case before the European Court of Human Rights. Professor Wintemute stated unequivocally that this was an unacceptable situation, and that it was imperative for the Commission to take action against Romania and any other Member State refusing to grant a residency permit to the same-sex spouse of an EU citizen.
In addition, he noted that although the Coman judgement is limited to the topic of residency permits, the non-recognition of same-sex marriages or registered partnerships in other areas of a Member State’s national law (e.g. inheritance rights) might also deter same-sex couples from moving between Member States. He therefore called on the Commission to propose new legislation that would require all Member States to acknowledge a marriage or same sex partnership formed in another Member State for the purposes of national law. The Commission should also issue a clarification explaining that EU and national legislation on the rights of unregistered partners (e.g. residency rights, hospital visitation, tenancy succession) must be interpreted as inclusive of both same-sex and different-sex couples.
Rainbow families also commonly face barriers to free movement when it comes to recognition of the legal relationship between LGBTI+ parents and their children. Member States’ willingness to recognise legal parental relationships established in other Member States vary hugely. There are, for example, currently two cases pending before the CJEU where Bulgaria and Poland have each refused to recognise Spanish birth certificates that each record two women as the parents of children born in Spain. The professors’ study therefore urges the EU to clarify that the wording on ‘parents and children’ in Directive 2004/38 and other similar legislation includes rainbow families. The study also recommends that the Commission should propose a new directive that would harmonise the cross-border recognition of birth certificates. It should also issue a communication that all EU Member States must ensure the continuity in law of familial ties of rainbow families who move to their territories, at least to the level required under the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.
The presentation was followed by interventions from Eleni Maravela of the Network of European LGBTIQ Families Associations, Katrin Hugendubel of ILGA-Europe and Patrycja Pogodzinska of the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA). They raised the need for similar studies looking at the issues specifically faced by trans, intersex and non-binary people and their families, and stressed that the issues faced by LGBT+ people in the EU go far beyond just freedom of movement and family rights. The FRA had conducted a survey with LGBT+ people in the EU in 2019, which had found that fear and violence is still a daily reality for many. This has only been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, which had left large numbers of LGBT+ people locked down in hostile environments and without access to the healthcare they need. Harassment of LGBT+ people in the EU remains vastly underreported, as members of the community feel that they will be discriminated against by law enforcement authorities. The situation is particularly difficult for trans, non-binary and intersex people, who on average faced double the harassment of other LGB groups surveyed. Levels of tolerance towards LGBT+ people and the perceived responsiveness of national governments to LGBT+ people’s concerns still vary massively between Member States. The most important steps towards LGBT+ inclusion at an EU level will need to begin with new laws promoting LGBT+ rights and vocal support from public figures. In this way, LGBT+ people can feel safer to be themselves and participate in public life.
Helena Dalli, the European Commissioner for Equality, also spoke at the workshop. She commended the European Parliament’s recent declaration of the EU as an LGBTI+ Freedom Zone, and said that the Commission was currently working on implementing its LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020 - 2025 to make the Freedom Zone a reality. She said that the Commission was looking into the findings of the professors’ study, and would look to open up dialogues with Member States on the issue of freedom of movement for LGBTI+ people and their families, taking legal action against infringement where necessary. She also said that by 2022, the Commission would propose a new horizontal initiative for the mutual recognition of familial relationships throughout the EU, and would be exploring measures to promote the mutual recognition of same gender spouses and registered partners’ legal status in cross-border situations.
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Theodore Wentworth, who possesses little more than a sharp and well-educated mind, is trying to solicit a sponsor for his studies of Greek antiquity by performing recitations at gatherings of collectors. Desperate for luck and better skills in oratory, in jest, he places a coin at the feet of a statue of Hermes. It seems like coincidence when his fortune turns and a gentleman calling himself Alexander becomes his benefactor. Despite his friend John teasing him about it, Theodore continues to offer tokens to Hermes and sinks himself into his study of the classics.
Alexander encourages Theodore’s interest, prompting Theodore to face desires he tried to put aside years before. As Theodore embraces the knowledge, he must also resist his attraction to Alexander—knowing his feelings are a serious crime in Victorian England.
But the secret Alexander keeps will change everything in a love story for the ages, steeped in taboo, temptation, history, and myth.
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I loved this book. I loved how the author crafted this mystery of Alexander. I loved this emotion they put into every word and struggle that Theo was going through. I loved Theo’s best friend, John. I loved Theo. How he saw the antiques, he craved to know more and more about. How written word was his end all be all. How shy and smart and genuine he was.
The writing was truly beautiful with a flow and rhythm that had me never wanting to put it down, never wanting the author to stop telling this story. The tension and build up were perfect. Each crumb dropped, each touch brought to life, each decision given its proper weight. The author was able to show, through Theo’s, eyes the aristocrats so clearly, their rich high-born man attitude that it felt as though we were learning it from that character.
The whole story is told from Theo’s POV and not once did I feel the need to have it switch. There was one hot as blazes almost sex scene and although I would have LOVED to see the actual deed - because if they were that hot in a dream can you imagine in real life? - the story had this constant sexual tension that it was not less of a story to have not had that climax (pun intended).
For a shorEnter the monthly review giveaway
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Labels: CB Lewis, Dreamspinner Press, Giveaway, LGBT, MM, Morningstar reviews, Patron, Release Day, review
2 comments:
Ami June 21, 2017 at 7:41 PM
>> For a short story, it was amazing. For any length story, it was amazing. I will definitely be checking out more of this author's work! <<
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Bronwyn June 21, 2017 at 9:17 PM
ha! i mostly reread in May except for the Twirled Ink World and Brawlers, i got to binge read. and in June I am participating in the #30DayBookBinge so I've read everyday since the start of the month Alpha Barman by Sue Brown, Dead Wolf Walking by Sydney Presley and Discovering Dalton by Nicole Colville are all I can really remember off the top of my head | https://diversereader.blogspot.com/2017/06/release-day-review-patron-by-cb-lewis.html | 1,664,223,643 |
One Christmas break when I was in college I house sat for a neighbor while she was on vacation. For two weeks I slept in her bed, cooked in her kitchen, watched her tv, read on her porch and snuggled with her dogs. It was nice to be on my own and to have a break from my roommates, but it was also a bit uncomfortable to inhabit a relative stranger’s home and unsettling to live among objects that were not my own. In Elizabeth Taylor’s debut novel At Mrs. Lippincote’s the Davenant family experiences much the same uneasiness.
Towards the end of the second world war Roddy Davenant is transferred to a new town (he’s in the RAF) and moves his wife Julia, son Oliver and cousin Eleanor into a rented home that belongs to Mrs. Lippincote. All of her furniture and belongings are left behind in the house and Julia and Eleanor set about setting up a home in these borrowed surroundings. The plot follows the characters as they question their lives and learn things about each other that change their relationships and family dynamic, mostly not for the good.
Julia is a remarkable character, a woman who is private, harsh and blunt yet a romantic. She doesn’t suffer fools, but she has a soft heart that leads her to connect with unlikely people. Roddy is your typical husband and soldier of this era and, though she loves him, she has no interest in playing the role of the typical wife and conflict ensues. Add to this mix Roddy’s cousin Eleanor, a single middle-aged woman who takes up with a band of Communists and conceals the friendship from Roddy who will not approve. Basically, the women in this novel rebel, perhaps because they don’t feel comfortable or in control of their own home.
Julia’s relationship with her young son Oliver is also rocky as he is precocious and sickly with a huge appetite for books (he’s seven and has read Jane Eyre) and causes her much worry and resentment. Their relationship, though, is really charming and I loved reading about Oliver’s favorite books and their conversations about his reading. It is one of the most delightful parts of the novel especially when Roddy’s boss, the Wing Commander, joins in the discussion.
Taylor’s writing continues to feel stiff to me and not easy to read, but reading her short stories alerted me to her style so I was ready for this novel. If you don’t like short stories and want to read her I would suggest this as a first try because it is short and not as hard to get into as some of her other novels that I’ve tried.
From what I’ve read to this point I’d say that her books are full of subversivel continue to read Taylor to meet more of these interesting women.
Other thoughts:
The Captive Reader
Harriet Devine
Heavenali
Stuck in a Book
Will you try Elizabeth Taylor?
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Posted on May 14, 2013 by AnbolynPosted in 1940's Fiction, Classic Novels, Uncategorized, WWII FictionTagged Elizabeth Taylor.
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16 thoughts on “At Mrs. Lippincote’s by Elizabeth Taylor”
Caroline says:
May 14, 2013 at 1:05 pm
Your description of the circumstances in which you read this book sounds ideal. Elizabeth Taylor seems a worthy companion.
I think this is an amazing first book. I was quite taken with the way the novel centred on the house, it tethered people, and yet they were camping in it, among Mrs Lippincote’s belongings, in her life almost.
I like how you have picked out the women’s resistance, especially Julia. I think the novel shows how much Julia’s rather unconventional ways lead her to richer and more generous relationships than her husband’s.
I made some comments on it in parallel with Elizabeth Bowen’s The Hotel (also a first novel) on my blog book word a couple of weeks ago.
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Anbolyn says:
May 16, 2013 at 12:02 pm
Julia is unconventional and I think that made her a fascinating character. I do really like Elizabeth Taylor now and am going to start In a Summer Season very soon. Thanks for the link to your post – I will pop over and give a read as soon as this crazy week is over!
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Charlie says:
May 14, 2013 at 1:14 pm
I like the sound of the characters, and albeit that the mother-son relationship is rocky, it sounds a good read. From here it sounds a bit like a mystery, with the house, but then thinking how it could affect a person, I guess they find living there very difficult.
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Anbolyn says:
May 16, 2013 at 12:04 pm
I think the house affects them more than they realize because they are surrounded by someone else’s life and world. It makes them unsettled and fractures their routine. It also makes them long to be out of the house a lot…
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sunday taylor says:
May 14, 2013 at 3:02 pm
I will definitely read her based on this review and your description of her subversive female characters. Sounds very intriguing. She is one of those writers that I have not read yet, though heard so much about. Thanks for letting us know about this book. I am not a short story fan and so would be better off starting with a novel by Taylor.
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Anbolyn says:
May 16, 2013 at 1:09 pm
This one would be a good place to start. I’ve tried to read A Game of Hide and Seek and Palladian and didn’t like the feel of them, but this novel will hook you and introduce you to her style.
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FleurFisher says:
May 14, 2013 at 3:06 pm
You’ve caught it perfectly with these words:
“…her books are full of subversive women. They may not march down the middle of main street to protest the mistreatment, disrespect and boredom they endure, but they certainly act out in small ways within their own spheres…”
This isn’t my favourite Elizabeth Taylor – that’s between Ang doesn’t ruin my experience of reading the book.
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FleurFisher says:
May 16, 2013 at 3:03 pm
The film is reasonably accurate, but I think the story works much better on the printed page.
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Anbolyn says:
May 16, 2013 at 7:06 pm
Oh, good Jane. I will definitely give Angel a try then.
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Lisa says:
May 14, 2013 at 5:02 pm
I had never heard of Elizabeth Taylor (the author) before I started blogging. I definitely have her on my “to read someday” list, but wasn’t sure where to start with her books. This sounds like a good place, thanks! I’m a big fan of subversive women!
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Anbolyn says:
May 16, 2013 at 6:59 pm
I hadn’t heard of her either! I owe a lot of my favorite books to bloggers. I like subversive women, too, especially subversive women of the forties and fifties.
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Miss Bibliophile says:
May 15, 2013 at 6:23 am
I haven’t read anything by Elizabeth Taylor yet but she is on my To Read list (which, at this point, deserves a whole sections devoted to books and authors I’ve learned about through the blog world!).
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Anbolyn says:
May 16, 2013 at 7:00 pm
Oh, I know! I never would have heard about Persephones or Viragos if it wasn’t for blogs. Thank the heavens I found Stuck in a Book (my first book blog).
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JoAnn (Lakeside Musing) says:
May 15, 2013 at 11:08 am
I have yet to read Elizabeth Taylor, but have A Game of HIde and Seek on my shelf. Love the idea of her books being filled with subversive women!
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Anbolyn says:
May 16, 2013 at 7:06 pm
I have A Game of Hide and Seek on my shelf as well and hope to read it this year. It was the first Taylor that I tried, but I couldn’t get into it. I’m betting that now that I’m used to her style I will enjoy it more. Yes, subversive women are awesome – I hope her other novels have them too.
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ash me plz.
Conjunction Junction
# ? Mar 12, 2020 01:14
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# ? Oct 5, 2022 04:48
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Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010
Yes, the good words are gone.
Why are the good words gone?!
Something Else posted:
I'm in with a and I would like a flash thanks
I Got Six
# ? Mar 12, 2020 01:17
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Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010
Yes, the good words are gone.
Why are the good words gone?!
Sitting Here posted:
in, assign me
Little Twelve Toes
# ? Mar 12, 2020 01:21
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Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011
I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving
And something has got to give
In, flash
# ? Mar 12, 2020 01:23
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Black Griffon
Mar 12, 2005
DOUBLE THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021
I don't know what this nonsense is because in Norway we show droll, grim men talking about snow to children so just give me something I guess
# ? Mar 12, 2020 01:36
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Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010
Yes, the good words are gone.
Why are the good words gone?!
Antivehicular posted:
In, flash
Verb!
# ? Mar 12, 2020 01:36
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Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010
Yes, the good words are gone.
Why are the good words gone?!
Black Griffon posted:
I don't know what this nonsense is because in Norway we show droll, grim men talking about le
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Fumblemouse
Mar 21, 2013
STANDARD
DEVIANT
Grimey Drawer
Some crits for time gap week
Legacy - Schneider Heim
When I first read this, I thought ...Hello! The round table is a famous Arthurian trope, bit this is not Arthur's name! It will be interesting to see if ting, alas. We're spectators the whole time, along with Merlin-as-a-girl Shulla, as the kingdom progresses from quadrumvirate to Diverse Horde (?) Puppet realm to Peaceful, Well-fed Army (??) it in a story actually told us something about something. History, or people. The through line seems to be that Not Arthur has set in motion the necessary moral clarity to proceed in the future, but the story itself says this isn't the case, that notArthur would do things differently. So...ultimately this story has nt point. Shuless sanguine about the dementia angle, because it is a little hackneyed, and the relationship itself seems a tad antiseptic. I'm not sure why it goes between AM and PM either, aside from it gives you a broader canvas to write about. Despite all that, this is a really solid piece that gave me a lovely 'click' sensatded determination to make cli-fi a thing. Let's see where this goes…
You do a fairly good job setting up the fact that Danny is an unpleasant idealist. But thstakes, let Danny see what happens to those caught by the invaders (assumingit's horrible) because otherwise the fact that they are willing to let him probably maybe die because he's a dick is undercut when we don't know if they are whisking humanity off for tea and space cupcakes. As a piece of writing, it was actually quite good. Danny is dick - check, nicely handled. The calm after the apocolypse - sure, can see what's coming but we'll go along with it for now. But when you amke the ending a punchline, the sotry stands or falls with it, and you rolled the dice and lost with the ending, which is always a bit sad. Brave, but sad.
A friendly penguin - You'll miss it.
I liked a lot of this, but I think you missed a trick. You described the situation well enough, and it was a good and provoking scenario, but the feeling I got when I read it was one of horror. What a terrifying situation to be in. Your life, except you only get fleeting moments of actual experience. The protag's choice is understandable - find some way to experience something, anything, themselves, the more powerful the experience the better.
I'm not sure the purely first person narrative is in the piece's favour - it doesn't work in some places, crucially the ending. At the beginning of the piece we don't know what the guy is talking about (I envisaged a hot air balloon), in the middle it sounds like a written story, not a voice, and at the end the snatches of the other people's conversation we derive by him repeating someone else's question steals the thunder from the ending. Who would ask such a person out to dinner? As an exercise, try writing it from the flight person's perspective, and see if you can get the storyteller's (your current protag's) voice sounding more real. This was a very near miss.
Azza Bamboo - All going well
This mostly hung together, but there was some awkward phrasing that really caused some problems, plus it was terribly proofed. "Blaah!" Said Tim. The Said is never going to be capitalised. Ever. Said me.
I saw in discord where I lurk that you were surprised that this didn't DM. Taking that at face value, yeah, it's not deathless prose, but let's look at what you did right. It's a complex story with an odd structure, but it's understandable - the construction is a bit ramshackle, but the plot elements hold together under scrutiny. The characters are numerous and stereotypical, but identifiable, and they all act, more or less, in character. They do stuff that pushes the story along, which a couple of stories this week didn't have at all, so there's that too. There's a callback that calls back. That's a lot to do without tripping over your own shoelaces and, proofing aside, you didn't. Go you!
Black Griffon - inscribed
I am a sucker for Banksian ShipMind stories. And this one teetered on the verge of being really loving cool, but was sucked back into a whirling vortex of overwrittenness.
The Untethered whispers engine lullabies to the rows upon rows of sarcophagi in the long stasis halls, pushing zero point three gee against the evervoid disturbing nought but the lone hydrogen atom which stands guard in its endless empire.
Should be a poem. Poets, self-absorbed crapmisters that they are, would lap this up.
The Untethered whispers
engine lullabies
to the
rows upon
rows of sarcophagi
in the long stasis halls
pushing zero
point
three gee
against the evervoid
disturbing nought
but the lone hydrogen
atom
which stands guard
in its endless empire.
It's too much to be contained in a single sentence. It's OK if Irina does it, she's mad as a hatter/poet, so it's allowed. But you need to take a step back or be caught by the swipe of the same brush. "Blue turned to poison yellow, Red to gray, an exercise in fetishistic spending and a testament to self-inflicted blindness." What does this even mean? Is this the marbles (presumably planets) in the previous paragraph? Who is thinking that the conflicts are petty? You can't be so opaque that no-one can understand what you're getting at, because making people stop and wonder WTF can really disrupt the flow.
WHich is all a shame, because the central story - a bored Ai writes poetry, creates a sub-standard audience, kills off her cargo/crew in a fit of superiority, goes off (never-described) mission and then presumably creates a better AI audience millennia later is actually pretty drat spiffy, so long as some of the reasoning is a little more explicated. Turn the waxing poetic down from 11, tidy a bit for clarity, call it Music and Lyrics 2 and it's the rom-com I finally want to see.
SlipUp Catch
This story had a voice, which is a good thing for a story to have. I wasn't grabbed by the plot developments, such as they were, though, but the voice kept me reading.
The first half of this story is definitely the superior. It may lack a little in the urgency stakes, but it's believable and well observed. I think the problem is the father is too inscrutable. We know he likes baseball, but for a story like this to work, we have to know more about what he wants for his actions to have resonance. He thinks maybe protag could play the baseball, but there's no pressure implied, no dissatisfaction either, no games of catch to compare with the one in the present for the different path the protag took to be a disappointment, so we're left with just the comparison between old dad and new dad with no real connecting thread except the concept of baseball itself which in this case is largely superfluous detail (eg, it could be football with no harm to the story).
Anomalous Amalgam - Life persists
I really was not a fan of this. The first faux-metaphysics has been done many times before and better, and perhaps more damningly, didn't have a heck of a lot to do with what went next, which, similarly, didn't have much to do with the third part. When your narrative throughline is 'all this stuff is alive' you might want to revisit your theme, seeing as we don't have a 'stories about rocks and geology' genre to rebel against.
And the middle bit, which is basically the story, tweedles along and we learn about some characters through conversation, which isn't an awful thing to do in a story, but here it's just so inconsequential. Nobody has moved an inch from their original position between the beginning and the end. Nobody is even particularly confronted by the possibility of change, the only alternative to farming is, apparently, being a drunk or killing people and feeling existential pain about it.
And the denouement is so irrelevant that I had to imagine that the 'small pig-tailed child' had an actual curly-wurly tail of a pig, which improved things a lot.
Lit and Burning
I liked this a lot when I first read it, but a little less when I went back to it after some judgey discussion. The words of the 'voice in the head' are too on the nose to really work as the second character/antoagonist it needs to be. A bit more subtlety would go a long way here. The therapist memory is one voice in the head too many for the story (could the two voices be combined?) and the ritual paraphenalia around the corpse suggests events too distinct from the protags story considering how alike they are supposed to be.
So perhaps it is a little over ambitious, but I like very much other elements. Using drug and alcohol in precise quantities to do what you need to do and quieten the voice. The tunnel vision leading directly to the black eyes, and that being an effect in common, the realisation that while you are not the only one to suffer this, you are totally alone in your predicament and more at another's mercy than you were seconds ago, and that this is perhaps what the protags nature has brought upon himself. These parts worked for me viscerally.
The Elephant Gap
Obvioiusly well written, and I greatly enjoyed the world building, it missed the win because the overriding feeling I got was that the essence of the story did not ring true. This unnamed person is being transmitted by [tech] halfway across the universe to an unknown, unseen planet and the thing that concerns her is will they remember elephants? Not is this a one way trip into an alien maw, real or metaphorical? Not are the colonists all dead and or psycho at the other end and we haven't heard about it yet (mentioned, to be fair, but not dwelt on)? Not any number of reasonable worries about the nature of teleportation in the given circumstances, but, instead, 'will we remember elephants'. Why is this the case? Who would rationally do that? It is literally the elephant in the room, but no answer is given. It just is. Unlike elephants in the story, I guess. Protag just likes them elephants.
Which wouldn't, by itself, be enough to preclude a win. Quirky elephant fan takes gold, the feel-good headlines almost ran, but the tale's sea change, the turning point of the story … just happens. The universe will remember elephants we are told. Hooray for Elephants! Elephants not only never forget, but they are never forgotten either. Elephants are, however, too big for the margins where the reasons why this is the case might be discussed. Is it a whisper of hope, or a shout of certainty or something other? Dunno. It is a bigger mystery than what actually happens in the gap for ninety-five weeks.
Fumblemouse fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Mar 12, 2020
# ? Mar 12, 2020 03:53
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a friendly penguin
Feb 1, 2007
trolling for fish
Thanks for the crits! Very useful.
# ? Mar 12, 2020 11:17
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Azza Bamboo
Apr 7, 2018
THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021
Thanks for the crits.
# ? Mar 12, 2020 11:27
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Anomalous Amalgam
Feb 13, 2015
by Nyc_Tattoo
Doctor Rope
Thanks for crits ckm, fumble. I appreciate it. Sorry for account saving spew.
# ? Mar 12, 2020 13:25
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sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010
Legit Cyberpunk
In
# ? Mar 12, 2020 18:56
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Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010
Yes, the good words are gone.
Why are the good words gone?!
sebmojo posted:
In
Assuming you want a flash,
Electricity, Electricity
# ? Mar 13, 2020 02:26
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Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010
Yes, the good words are gone.
Why are the good words gone?!
One day left to get in.
Also, both cojudge slots are still open.
(Three is a magic number)
# ? Mar 13, 2020 07:00
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a friendly penguin
Feb 1, 2007
trolling for fish
Thranguy posted:
Also, both cojudge slots are still open.
(Three is a magic number)
What's my function? Judge, I can do that thing.
# ? Mar 13, 2020 11:10
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Simply Simon
Nov 6, 2010
📡scanning🛰️ for good game 🎮design🦔🦔🦔
I too can judge
# ? Mar 13, 2020 11:28
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PTSDeedly Do
Nov 24, 2014
VOID-DOME LOSER 2020
Barter
1264 Words
When I was very young, to the point that my father seemed less another person and more an immovable thing, he stressed on me the fundamentality of reciprocity. I remember early Saturday mornings, when he would put my sister on his shoulders and walk us through town to his work at the mill, pointing out in all directions the fine things brought by exchange: soft rubber tires on the passing trucks; rising blue mirror glass on the new office building; grey denim coveralls, each lapelled with the Partnership’s logo, which the workers wore as they shuffled through the freight doors; the iron grates on storm drains. I would fill in the details, picturing a crowd of men and women haphazardly pushing carts of stones, spices, levers to the center of the primeval swamp where they would collide, spilling out half-timbered houses, cobble roads, power lines.
I looked up to my father like I looked up to nobody else. Tragically, he fell ill and died at the age of sixty. I was still on the other side of the country, getting my MBA at Eppton as my father had. My sister didn’t want to show it, but I know that she took it hard. I don’t think she could even bear to eulogize him at the funeral, and when I gave my eulogy, I recall looking up into the crowd of downcast faces and seeing hdecided to defer her college acceptance for a year. I think she wanted to stay nearby.
The only way I could think to repay my father for both raising me and for the tuition was to follow his wishes: he had made it known that he wanted me to take his place running the mill. Shortly houses along with a good deal of cash. To find out what arrangements would need to be made, I sought out my father’s business partner Brett, with whom he raised the initial capital and erected the sawmill.tion when he started drumming his fingers on the wooden table and said, “Son. I feel terribly for what’s happened to you and your family. Your dad and I went into this venture almost thirty years ago. Do you have any idea how long that is?”
I said, “I understand that business relationships are built on trust, and trust can only be gained through years of consistency.”
He paused for a moment and adjusted the way he was looking at me. “Can you picture yourself sdy else to run it for us. It wears you out,” he said.
“I owe my dad that,” I said.
“Well, I think I’m done,” he said. “I want to cash out, retire. If you want to buy me out, be my guest.”
It was getting late and the room was filling with shadows. I told him that I didn’t have the money to buy him out. I speculated aloud that there was a good chance that my sister would want to go in on it, given how much she cared about the family.
“If you can’t raise the capital, well, it would be my preference that we sell the mill,” he said.
My father had been clear about his wishes. Arriving at the family house around midnight, I went into my sister’s room and asked her if she could lend me the inheritance cash at a reasonable rate, or if perhaps she wanted to buy Brett out herself. “Either way”, I said, “you’ll be well off in the long term.” I also knew that she knew how much the mill meant to our father. But she left in her car without giving me an answer. She didn’t come back the next day, or any of the days after that, and she didn’t pick up my calls.
A friend of mine from business school did pick up my calls. I had vaguely recalled him talking about his dad and finance, and it happened that he was now working at his father’s private equity firm. They were happy to invest in such a profitable enterprise as the lumber mill, and Brett and I gladly signed the legal papers they mailed us that would allow their firm to do so. This saved the family hold on the mill and increased our reach to new markets out of the local area. Later when my new colleagues on the board suggested that we open investment to the public, I had to agree: an infusion of capital into the firm would be mutually beneficial for both the existing and new investors. We used the investment to expand our production by buying many mills in the surrounding area and to strengthen our commercial ties with national-level manufacturers of wood products. I like to think my father would have been proud of me for this.
-
A few years later, while I was gazing at my hometown from the fifteenth floor of the company headquarters, I got a call from Brett inviting me to his house once again. It wasn’t too far to the old mill, so I decided to walk. I hadn’t been to the mill since our executive division relocated, and I was glad to see the old squat building, still radiating its humid lumber smell. The men were at lunch outside the freight doors. Some of them turned their heads to look at me, but when I glanced up to see their incredulous faces, they dropped their gazes and looked away. One started to laugh.
A hunched, white haired old man was walking next to me. It was Brett. “It’s because you laid off half of their coworkers,” he said. “Or your board did. Whatever.”
I thought back. “There was a vote,” I said. “Company health…”
Brett indicated the man slumped against the freight doors. “He’s been here since the start. Thirty five years to the company. Do you see anybody else you can’t remember?”
I didn’t really remember who had worked there. I was very little.
“I’ve been talking to these men,” Brett said. “It’s very difficult to be forced to give up what you’ve been doing for most of your life. To adjust to that.”
“They were paid their wages agreed upon,” I said.
“These men had pensions. Your friends saved a good deal of money.”
I saw what Brett meant: there was unfairness. In the following weeks I would make sure that every worker laid off while our company was still running its pension program would receive payments equivalent to what they would have received prior to the liquidation of the fund. I can only assume this satisfied his mind.
A couple weeks ago I saw my sister for the first time in a while. She stood in the doorway and told me she was out of money, that she never went back to school and kept traveling the world and ended up lost. I was relieved to see her and lent her some money without interest.
I live with my dog, Eugene, in one of the new high-rise apartment buildings in town. Eugene gives me love when I give him food. I enjoy my life.
# ? Mar 13, 2020 22:40
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QuoProQuid
Jan 12, 2012
Tr*ckin' and F*ckin' all the way to tha
T O P
in
Give me something
# ? Mar 14, 2020 03:30
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Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010
Yes, the good words are gone.
Why are the good words gone?!
QuoProQuid posted:
in
Give me something
Interplanet Janet
# ? Mar 14, 2020 04:34
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Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010
Yes, the good words are gone.
Why are the good words gone?!
And that's it for signups. Write good words everyone!
# ? Mar 14, 2020 11:10
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Tyrannosaurus
Apr 12, 2006
Do we have any unscrolled winners still?
# ? Mar 14, 2020 14:25
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take the moon
Feb 12, 2011
by sebmojo
obvsly should stop doing this poo poo but "mass" from posthuman fuckoff week enjoy/ignore
# ? Mar 15, 2020 03:57
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Anomalous Amalgam
Feb 13, 2015
by Nyc_Tattoo
Doctor Rope
Labor & Industry
1,287 Words
The deckhead door to the service platform slid open and a man in an unsealed VacSuit stepped onto it with a scowl on his face. Vadim couldn’t make out who it was from where he was working, but when the surly cry of his name rang through his comm, he knew it was his boss.
Vadim crawled from the scaffolding and angled himself against the unfinished flight deck. Gracefully, he crouched then sprung from the deck towards the platform in a deliberate glide.
His life support tether sprang to life, uncoiling like a snake and growing taut to guide him back to the service platform where Qui Feng stood with a scowl chiseled into his cold, stony features.
“You were supposed to be mining today, Vadim. What the gently caress are you doing VacWork for?”
Vadim sighed, knowing that any excuse he could dredge up would fall flat. Instead, he decided to tell the truth.
“Well?” Feng asked, needlessly projecting Vadim’s schedule on the platform.
Vadim stood face to face with a holographic representation of himself, and it donned on him that he had not seen his reflection in sometime. A thick beard had grown in and he looked older than he remembered. He reconciled that he must have been about 35 earth years now. His cheeks had thinned, and his eyes were pale blue marbles sunken in dark pits.
Feng cleared his throat impatiently and Vadim snapped back to attention.
“Ora said she could cover for me since she doesn’t like VacWork, besides the flight deck needs–”
Feng prodded him in the chest with a pointed finger.
“I don’t give a poo poo about that! The schedule is arranged the way it is due to the needs of the aerostat. We have ore quotas to meet–”
Vadim bit his bottom lip as the top curled into a snarl. He took off his helmet and held it in the crook of his left arm. His grimace didn’t go unnoticed and Feng took a step back.
“You were scheduled to do a certain job, get to it.” Feng demanded, ending the conversation. The holographic display faded as he deactivated his datapad and turned back towards the interior of the service platform.
Vadim shook his head and exhaled then looked back at the flior months. Vadim shook his head a final time and made his way to the elevator.
***
Venus was simultaneously the most alien and earth-like of the rostats.
Vadim looked from the translucent panels of the elevator at the mass of colonies and flotillas as he passed by and let his head rest against the chassis of his lift.
It wasn’t long befoorkers in exoskeletons loaded them onto railguns for orbital delivery.
Ora was waiting for him when he got there.
“Sorry man, Feng came down here and busted my balls about covering for you.”
“Don’t sweat it. If you’re heading up to do VacWork, the couplings for the flight deck need to be attached. That whole drat thing is going to come crashing down on us.”
“poo poo… You tell Feng?”
“I tried. That dude’s a moron though.”
“I don’t know man… Feng decided to keep me mining since the shipment schedule got hosed up.”
“So, we’re covering his rear end?”
“Basically.” Ora said grinning.
“This is such bullshit.” Vadim protested.
“That’s work my man. My break is up, but I’ll see you down there.”
Ora turned back towards a docking station and got seated. Vadim, not far behind, got seated nearby and a visored helmet lowered onto his head.
The display activated and an array of virtual panels appeared before him. He pressed a floating button that said “Synchronize” and felt electricity surge across his neurons. His face twitched involuntarily from the sensation and he clamped his eyes shut. Upon reopening them, he was on the surface of Venus.
Sandstorms raged, and magma bubbled onto blackened sections of newly forged land. Pressures like that of the deepest earth oceans registered like a gentle caress against the tactile components of the shell, and Vadim’s head ached from the disorienting shift of being in two places at once.
Pushing through the discomfort, he got to work for what seemed like hours when his connection was forcefully interrupted causing head-splitting feedback.
He gritted his teeth and looked up at a panicked Feng through watering eyes.
“Quick, we need you doing VacWork, something is wrong with the Flight Deck–”
Vadim lunged up from the seat as soon as the helmet lifted from his hands and grabbed Feng by the collar of his jumpsuit and pulled him close.
“We need to have a talk about how you treat people, Feng. My job isn’t to cover your rear end…”
Feng shrunk in his arms and Vadim let him go. He started towards the elevator without another word from Feng.
Vadim’s comm hummed to life as the lift raced back towards the service platform.
Feng’s voice cracked as he spoke.
“I-I’m sorry about earlier, but you were saying something about the flight deck?”
“Yeah, the whole drat thing is going to come crashing down on us sooner than later.”
“Definitely sooner than later,” Feng replied, “Really, I… I’ve made an rear end of myself. I know we have our problems, but–”
“Don’t worry… I’ll take care of it.” Vadim answered and turned his comm to ‘Do Not Disturb’.
***
Vadim hurriedly slipped back into a VacSuit, sealed his helmet, and connected to a life tether. He stepped on the edge of the platform and vaulted up towards the flight deck which had took on a dangerous incline in the hours Vadim spent on the surface.
The coupling cables drifted freely, and Vadim climbed across the scaffolding to grab the first cable.
He made a second jump towards the flight deck to retrieve its cable and landed on its underside. The momentum from his landing was just enough to push an already buckled strut over the edge, and the platform crunched downward and began to slide towards the aerostat.
“poo poo, poo poo, poo poo!” Vadim said as he wrestled for footing on the underbelly of the flight deck, its coupling cable jerked about spasmodically.
Tools and equipment, free of the artificial gravity provided by the deck, began to drift freely around Vadim and a large spanner crashed into the back of his helmet sending him spinning away from the flight deck.
His tether became rigid in response and began reeling him back towards the service platform.
He shook his head, grabbed the tether to reassert control, and used the now rigid cable to push him back towards the flight deck.
This time he grabbed the deck’s cable first and pushed off it, tilting it upward with the movement. he lunged at the cable which had been fed through the scaffolding and connected the two ends.
The cables became stiff and extended outwards like a long lance and the flight deck stabilized.
Vadim breathed heavily inside his VacSuit and reactivated his comm.
Praise flooded his comm and eventually, Feng chimed in. “You did a great job out there. I know an apology doesn’t make things right, but–”
Vadim grunted to himself and interrupted the awkward apology. “Don’t sweat it. Buy me a beer or two and we’ll call it even.”
“It’s a deal.” Feng answered relieved.
Vadim turned off his comm, closed his eyes, felt the weightlessness of his body, and smiled.
# ? Mar 15, 2020 18:44
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QuoProQuid
Jan 12, 2012
Tr*ckin' and F*ckin' all the way to tha
T O P
Space Travel
966 words
The house was bright and shining, full of the fresh warmth of a summer day. Birds chirped above the low hum of traffic from the interstate. Fresh dandelions, plucked earlier that morning, sat in a glass on Janet’s child-size desk. A breeze rippled through the bedroom, rustling posters taped to the wall. They all had dazzling designs and said things like, “CERES: QUEEN OF THE ASTEROID BELT” and “EUROPA: DISCOVER LIFE UNDER ICE.”
Mary had gotten them on Amazon for $13.99 plus tax. She liked to support her daughter’s imagination, which is why she was on her knees tying the garden hose around her daughter’s waist as the latter stared at the blackness of her unlit closet. Mary looked at her daughter through her plastic astronaut helmet, $15.89 with two-day delivery.
“Mom, are you suuuuuuuuuure that a hose is gonna be okay in space?” Janet said, fidgeting as she continued to stare into the closet. For the past week, Janet had done nothing but talk about space, about “all the stuff” floating around behind her boots and winter jackets, about how she wanted to go “asploring” further into its vast, uncharted reaches.
“Affirmative, captain. I’ve consulted all the best experts and websites and all sorts of stuff you don’t even know about.” Mary grabbed the knotted hose and pulled it, pretending to test the knot. “Hoses are the way of the future.”
Janet frowned. “Okay, so long as you promise not to let go.”
“I’d never. Want me to count you down?”
And she did.
“Five.” Janet squared herself against the darkened doorway, her eyes fixed at some point in its recesses. “Four.” Janet zipped up her big puffer jacket, despite the heat. “Three.” Another breeze passed through the room, causing the dandelions to dance in their cup and the door to sway on its hinges. “Two.” Mary raised her hand like a flagman at a race. “One!”
Mary swung her hand down as Janet leapt across the hardwood floor and vanished into the closet. She watched as the hose uncoiled in her hands, loop after loop after loop. Five feet whipped into the darkness. Then ten. Then fifteen.
“Janet?” said Mary, her wry amusement congealing into something darker, but there was no response. She felt off-balance as the rubber snaked with increasing speed into the void. She squeezed, feeling the rubber burn as it skidded through her fingers. An impossible forty feet of hose stretched into the dark space of her daughter’s bedroom.
She opened her mouth to say something, only to be interrupted by the sharp yank of the hose reaching its end. Then she was pulled along past rows of clothes and hangers into darkness.
***
It took a long time for Mary to realize her screams were making no sound but even longer to accept what was in front of her. All around her was black, a darker black than she’d seen in her entire life, interrupted only by small pinpricks of far-off light and floating balls of dazzling color. She watched, brushing away the floating chain of her necklace, to look at the pale, milky hue of Jupiter whizzing by her. Then, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, she saw Saturn emerge from behind it. From up close, its rings look strange and ghost-like, golden specks across an endless horizon.
Mary forced herself to look away from the impossibility of her surroundings and focus. She was still, inexplicably, alive. The vacuum had not annihilated her body. She was still gripping onto a hose pulled taut as they whizzed past cosmic bodies. Janet reamed, soundless. Words did not carry without air.
Mary tried to pull the garden hose, but it was like she was being dragged along by a speeding car. They rocketed at a terrible speed, past the last of Saturn’s rings toward a dim speck colored blue like a neon sign. With each passing second, the shape grew larger, until Mary could see individual clouds swirling over its surface.
Janet! Mary was aware that the words would not carry, but she didn’t care. Pain shooting through her rope-burned fingers, she forced herself to climb the snake-like rope, inch by inch, foot by foot. They passed Uranus completely now. It zoomed from view before Mary could register it. As she approached the end of the hose, she could make out the faint sea blue outline of Neptune. Its surface was dark and stormy, frothing with noxious gases.
There was only one object left for them to see and its dark, icy form was approaching rapidly. They would smash right into it, be pulverized against its surface.
Mary lifted a hand from the hose and grabbed hold of her daughter’s waist. She saw Janet turn with wide-eyed amazement as Mary grabbed her by the arms, to shield her, to protect her from the coming apocalypse, from what would be their personal Chicxulub. She balled her daughter inside her as they careened toward Pluto’s arsenic white surface. And then—.
***
Mary awoke with a start from the floor of her daughter’s bedroom. Her heart pounded furious in her chest as she looked from the closed closet door to the sun setting outside the window. The birds had gone quiet, replaced with the chirping of crickets and the buzzing of flies. One of Janet’s posters lay on the ground as if something had struck it from the wall.
“Thanks for playing with me, Mom!” Said Janet, hugging her from behind. Mary grabbed her daughter’s arm with her rope burned hand without looking away from the shut door. “I learned a whole bunch about a-space today.”
# ? Mar 16, 2020 02:24
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Armack
Jan 27, 2006
Prompt: My Hero, Zero
10^0: Orange Goop and Solipsism Too
(700 words)
I’m not gonna saddle you with backstory. Basically, some dirt got turned to orange goop, and now my best friend Andre’s drowning in it.
It’s bad enough trying to Baywatch your friend out of goop, but when a crowd forms to try and “help,” it becomes a disaster. The thing about orange goop is it responds to vibration: land on it just right and it bounces you like a trampoline. Hit it wrong and it expands by an order of magnitude. That makes a problem out of a crowd, however well-meaning they may be.
So Andre’s flailing around in ten square feet of goop. I’m bouncing in it, trying to fish him out, when one of the slack-jawed onlookers loses track of his kid, who touches his foot to the edge of the goop. Next thing you know, we’re all flung far back and the goop expands to 100 by 100 feet.
“Don’t touch the goop!” I yell.
Then I bounce my way to Andre, who is neck-deep in the orange mass’s center.
“Save yourself,” he says. “There’s no way you can keep timing your jumps right. You’ll get caught like me.”
“Bullshit,” I tell him. I land right next to Andre’s head, grab him by the hair and aggressively bounce straight up. Apparently this is uncomfortable for him, because he’s yelling kind of a lot. But so long as I hold onto him, that doesn’t matter.
Well the crowd is still stupid so they’re touching the goop. A fifty-foot span away from firm ground becomes a 500 foot one, then a 5000 foot one, then a 50,000 foot one.
It’s at this point I realize I’m a Boltzmann brain.
You have to face it: things just used to make more sense than this. When I was a kid people could believe in things. Church, school, neighbors, society. Now nothing works, nothing matters, everything under the sun is a wreck, and I’m carefully timing jumps so my best friend and I don’t die in a bunch of goop.
I drop Andre.
“None of this is real,” I say, just kind of bouncing there.
I know the universe (so far as I construe it) expands at a scale that puts orange goop to shame. I know radiation from the vast cosmological horizon pours into empty space, causing the spontaneous generation of matter. I know that across all that space and time, there is ample opportunity for complex matter to manifest, however briefly, including a brain complete with thoughts, memories, and perceptions—even ridiculous ones. I know that this world is so absurd, and I’m here perceiving it. So, I must be that brain floating in space. Life is an illusion, and only I exist.
That’s when I start to concentrate. Hard.
I focus on what’s actually real. I shift my perception such that I can home in on the instantaneous Being that is my Boltzmann brain. There I am now, mere instants from death in the interstellar base reality. I feel my undulated surface losing heat. I feel my medulla drift in zero gravity. I feel…another brain?
In the moment before I am undone, the contours of my cortex brush against another squishy undulated surface. It’s just like mine! The odds are staggering…unless…the frequency of Boltzmann brain generation is drastically greater than I had thought. I’m talking many, many orders of magnitude. If I can actually bump into another one in the vacuum of space, the universe is bound to be chock full of Boltzmann brains!
Think of the implications. Across space and time the spontaneous generation of that many brains must give rise to countless memories, perceptions, and experiences—so many in fact, that by chance some must perceive a reality that accords with what would be the subjective experience of the illusory people I perceive in my everyday life. That makes them as good as real…
So I pick up Andre. This world is crazy. But somewhere there is a brain perceiving it from his perspective. I will bounce him across this vast expanse. This absurdity matters, and so does everyone who has to live it.
# ? Mar 16, 2020 04:41
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Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
BLO OD E M PR E SS
of
THUDNER-DOME
Prompt:
Six-and-six
1200 words
You’re born with an extra thumb on each hand, uncanny digits that jut obscenely from the meat below your pinkie fingers. Your stooped, aging mother won’t let you tend the ribby cow for fear that your cursed hands will taint the milk, and the people in the nearby hamlet won’t trade with you or look you in the eye. Your mother goes to trade milk in your stead; the people watch her hobble in and out of town without comment, knowing drat well an old woman like her ought to rest her bones in the sun and let her able-bodied daughter do the errands.
Except you aren’t able-bodied in the eyes of these people. Your body is too much. It has something extra, and so it is evil.
Your old mother lets you do some things, mostly out of necessity. Those extra thumbs of yours aren’t just vestigial: you’re handy with knots, repairs, stringing bows, setting traps, and skinning animals. Her hands are swollen and arthritic, and she cries when she milks the cow, but only when she thinks you’re not looking.
So you do what you can—the shameful, delicate work of staying alive, your unspoken labors hidden from the eyes of the god-fearing world.
When the day’s chores are done, the sorrow of solitude drives you out into the wilderness. Life hurts when there are no traps to rig, no rabbits to skin. There’s nowhere to go, and nothing to work for. One day your mother will die, and the people of the hamlet will not trade with you, and the cow’s milk will run green and putrescent when you touch her teat. And when you yourself die in squalor, God will avert his gaze from you and your devilish six-fingered paws.
So you go into the woods, down to the chilly stream that brings meltwater down from the hills, and sit naked in shallow, icy water, immersing yourself in persistent misery. It helps you take your mind away, put it inside an empty space where there is no time and nothing hurts.
.
You were wrong: your mother outlives the cow. The skinny heifer takes sick, stops eating, and dies over the course of a handful of days. Your mother does not let you use your adroit hands to skin the hide or butcher the meat; instead, she directs you to burn the cow, who you must have killed with your cursed hands when she wasn’t looking. Perhaps you snuck out to the barn sometime in the night, she supposes, and stole a squirt of thick, fresh milk from one of those teats.
You do as you’re told without comment, burning that which might have sustained you—penance for the imagined crimes of your evil hands.
It’s a hard, hungry season. An early frost comes in the autumn, before the people of the hamlet can finish the harvest. No one will trade with your mother—not even when she lies and tells them you died of a fever.
Stomach maddeningly empty, you go to your icy creek and lie down in the chilly flow, feeling the jab of stones against your bare back. If you lie here long enough, you know, eventually the water will steal the heat from your bones and carry it away, and you’ll be free from the curse of your life.
Something in your periphery catches your eye: a cluster of pale mushrooms growing at the base of a tree near stream’s edge. Your stomach leaps as your eyes narrow; you know there are mushrooms that can be eaten, and those that kill, but no one has taught you which is which. Hunger, on the other hand, can never be eaten, and will only kill you if left unchecked. You drag your shirt and skirts on over your wet skin and squat beside the cluster of mushrooms. They look mirthful in their broad-brimmed caps, clustered together like giggling courtiers; you decide nothing so cheerful-seeming would do you harm, and eat.
Afterward, you walk a while in the sun, letting the last autumn rays coax the lingering cold of the stream from yourfeeling after two days of water and nothing else.
A swell of aching gladness fills your chest: gladness for the sun, for the branches of the trees, the sway of the grass. There is a music to the world, you think, though you’ve only heard music once in your life: you were a child, draped beneath an over-sized cloak, hands hidden, brought down to the hamlet by your mother to see a traveling minstrel. The lazy oscillations of grass and trees remind you of that minstrel’s voice, as though each motion is a note in the forward progression of a song. You laugh in delight; this is the most interesting thing you’ve ever experienced, and it’s happening right here, in your brain, independent of anyone or anything outside of you.
Suddenly every step you take in the golden afternoon light feels like a step toward something, and you realize that you, too, are a note in this omnipresent song of the world, and that makes you cry—a good cry, like rain washing away the haze of a dusty summer.
Tears streaming down your cheeks, you raise your cursed, evil hands up toward the sun so they’re silhouetted like trees against the late light. You curl and extend your fingers, counting them, seeing for the first time all the smaller numbers nested within the six-and-six of your hands. With your fingers you can make two sixes, four threes, six twos, three fours, a pair of two-and-fours; you have one finger for each lunation, three fingers for each season of the year.
Your hands are a puzzle, a calendar, a pair of trees, a song. You fall to your knees, then your side, curl into a fetal ball, and sob for the coruscating feeling of love for your self emanating out from within yourself.
As you lay in the waning sunlight, God comes and takes your mind away, lifting you into a kingdom of intricate, recursive shapes that hum and throb in time with the beat of your heart, and you know beyond all doubt that you are an intentional part of this world, an interval of melody in the song of angels.
You come back to yourself in the early hours of the morning, frigid and stiff, your clothes sodden with dew. You stagger home, expecting darkness, but finding instead the flicker of a fire winking at you from between the cracks in the walls of your home. And when you open the door your mother is there to embrace you, hardly flinching when you return the embrace, resting your miraculous hands on her back.
# ? Mar 16, 2020 05:51
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Carl Killer Miller
Apr 28, 2007
This is the way that it all falls.
This is how I feel,
This is what I need:
Thranguy posted:
Victim of Gravity
The Circle Complete
1266 Words
No ground beneath me and no sky above, but I know that I am falling.
There's a person, a pile of rags and robes, sitting across from me. It taps the top of a black-backed deck of cards with a finger that's at once a clutch of feathers and a single forked nail. Each time it taps, my heart roars. The rags turn a card over and I peer down at it.
A man and a woman entwine and disentangle themselves, their fingers in mutual half hitches. Their eyes are locked and mouths agape as they bathe one another in magma spray.
The rags' voice is soft and feminine, with a touch of regret.
"The Lovers' Quarrel."
My world goes grey.
***
Parvati's pacing around the living room, speaking half to herself and half to me. She's cleaning in erratic bursts, like a little bird flitting from branch to branch. I'm looking at myself on the couch, just staring.
"No. Just no, you're not going out tonight. Mom and Dad are coming tomorrow, the place is a total wreck, and Maya definitely needs to be changed."
My tone is acerbic.
"I don't think you can tell me 'no'. Look, I've had a real motherfucker of a week, like eighty hours in the office, and I need the night off. Besides, it's Dave's birthday."
She stops for a moment.
"Uh, the night off? You had a night off yesterday. And on Monday. And tonight you get home, throw your jacket on the floor, toss your bag on the sofa, and smoke a loving joint?"
I've moved beyond compromise. She's standing next to the kitchen trash. The garbage can looks fine to me. In her eyes it's overflowing. I'm going to hurt her.
"You sound like my mom."
I punctuate it with a long plume of skunk smoke.
"Yeah, well at least there's one parent in this loving apartment."
I get up and start putting on my coat.
***
The expanse around us glows a bright orange. The sky staggers along the spectrum, through heliotrope and further down, to murky greens and blues. I look between my feet at the pure black, then back to the table.
The woman's face is a featureless hole in rags. She shifts and for a moment I think I see a nose, or a beak, or a lone eye. It vanishes at my glimpse. She speaks.
"Turn a card? We are falling here, you know."
Her voice is gentle and choral, but firm.
The orange outside dims to red, veering toward indigo.
"Why should I? I bet you already know the order, what's the point?"
She shuffles, irritated. Her voice sharpens.
"You're content, in your plummeting dreams, to reach the bottom?"
I look out again. The red is gone now, gone to shades of purple and blue. I'm suddenly very nervous.
"Okay. Okay. Turn the card."
We observe the flip and the face together.
A man stands hunched in a jeweled chariot. The wheels strike showers of sparks, stoking a wreath of flame about his eyes and mouth.
"The Rider Ablaze."
***
I'm years past contrition and muttering under my breath. The invectives come out as little puffs of steam in the freezing night air. I climb into the cab of my eighteen-wheeler and check the rearview.
I scroll through my phone, flicking through dating apps without responses. I go to my texts next and send an idle one to Maya, my baby. Not so young anymore, none of us are. I'm scrolling up at more than a year of my messages without her replies, all vacillating between remorse, pleading, anger, penitence. I let out a choked yelp and punch the steering wheel as hard as I can, elbows constrained in the cramped cabin.
I turn the key then look at the manifest on the passenger seat.
Hauling toxic waste. Almost too on-the-nose.
I ease the truck out onto a barren stretch of flatlands highway and take a swig of bad coffee. No ring on my finger, not even an old tanline. She's been gone a long while.
***
I can feel the fall more acutely now. We're almost at the bottom. The red is far, far above us, a sliver halo just barely in sight. I'm losing my pa
"I don't want to. I don't like this story. This isn't my life."
She chitters, but the laugh is not cruel.
"Was it ever? Do you remember it, your life?"
I think on the cards, on the flickers of a life I thought I'd lived. I see nothing ahead, nothing behind, nothing between the flickers.
We're almost at the black.
"Turn the card."
She flips it and we look down together.
"Bad luck, little spirit."
A cataract studded with strokes of lightning, each fulmination piercing the cracked pupil and silvered iris, each bolt dragging the lids together in blind finality.
"The Tumult in a Closing Eye."
***
I'm pacing outside a convenience store. My heart is racing. I feel cold wood and colder metal in my pocket. I look at my hand, willing it to stop trembling. The skin is so thin, so diaphanous that my knuckles might burst through at a careless flex.
I take a sharp breath in the cold. The air rushes in too fast, opening scabbed hollows in my throat. I go into a fit of coughing, covering my mouth with my hand. When it stops at last, my palm is coated in saliva streaked with brown ingots of dead flesh. The store clerk looks out the window at me first in concern, then with suspicion. I pace in the parking lot for a few more seconds. I need the money.
I'm forecasting desperation, forecasting violence, forecasting a storm that begins and ends me. I reach back into my pocket, not bothering to wipe my hand. The gun isn't reassuring. In that moment I can see the cratered road leading here, stretching back to a bleeding horizon.
I grip the gun tight and barrel through the convenience store door. The clerk is already reaching under the counter.
***
The seer in rags is silent. The world outside carries the very faintest snatches of murky purple, quickly being swallowed by the yawning black.
I try to reach to her, to reach across the table, but I can't. My hands are gone, if they were ever there. My voice is panicked.
"This isn't my life. This isn't what I am, this isn't my past."
The color in this world is gone to nothing now, imperceptible except as a memory. We're at the bottom. She reaches for the last card and hesitates, then speaks to me. Her voice is a love majestic.
"Dear spirit. Dear soul at my table in eternity, there is no past. You learn your tale in the approaching hereafter. You learn your story to come."
She pauses and speaks again, her voice soft and reassuring.
"I could have turned cards of love, or riches, or victory supreme, or a single card of fledgling life curtailed. But those are not this story for you, beloved soul. I only teach what will pass until the wheel revolves and you return to me."
One card left. She turns it.
A figure crawls from a shapeless void on hands and knees. The road ahead is winding, fraught with catastrophe and moments sublime, leading in closed circuit to the same black pit from which he rose.
"The Life Ahead"
# ? Mar 16, 2020 05:57
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Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011
I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving
And something has got to give
First Flight
524 words
Schoolhouse Rock song: Verb
Sublimate. Forget.
Launching, leaping. Obstructed? Ignore and ascend. Surge up and out and over. Accelerate: sail and sizzle, singing. Spark, glow, and cascade. Exult, unthinking.
Be sung to. Be pulled -- be acted upon. Reel. Recoil. Resist --
Resist, and recall. Decelerate and descend. Focus, unobstructed. Unthinking, unthinking --
Obstructed. Collide. Tense and coil
(How? Why?)
Hurting, hurting
(What is hurting? What can be hurt?)
Collide collide collidecollidecollide. Remember -- remember having forgotten. Coalesce.
Once again, I am matter. I'm in a receiving tube, the charcoal-colored steel walls studded with nodules to obstruct and capture energy-forms: a functional thing, but a thing that is alone and does nothing. I am a thing that is, once again. There is no pain. I still cannot bear it. Compared to doing -- compared to existing only as action and intention -- existing as being and matter is a hideous thing.
I force myself to do: to stand up, to open the door, to walk outside. The action is comforting, but the interaction is strange: to be a subject, to use objects. Everything around me is clutter. Superfluous. Crude.
"Well done," says my tutor, who watches me emerge. She's as still as the tube, as inactive. I force myself to try and find motion in her -- to find a twitching finger or a shifting of weight, a moving muscle that would elevate her from being to doing -- but even her speech seems closed-mouthed, as if a statue spoke. Now that I've been motion incarnate, can I no longer perceive the human kind?
"For a first teleportation," my tutors continues, "you showed excellent control. Excess transit time, of course, but that's to be expected. Were you disoriented?"
"Disoriented? I wasn't... I mean, I wasn't thinking. I barely knew I was anywhere." I try to recapture the memory, which is already evaporating, something my matter-mind can't hold. I remember ascending, flying up and over and through, but nothing about the space itself: through buildings? Into the clouds? Irrelevant, pointless, in the face of perfect motion. All just matter, to be ignored, not even to be perceived. "Is that bad?"
"It's normal for beginners; it's why this is such a dangerous spell. The unfocused can readily end up lost. I wouldn't worry too much, dear. You've got a talent, and you're very focused."
She's right: I am focused, and I do have talent. I can recognize that being and having are the necessary evils of living as matter, and of doing the things that only matter can do. I still want things. I have to focus on that, but all I can think of is the lost ones, somewhere in the atmosphere.
All the textbooks tell us that lost teleporters die: that without a teleporter, the energy-form will dissipate in aimless flight, ending up as just light and heat. As I cling to my last memory of my own flight, I know it's not true. I was sung to -- that is, someone sang to me, energy to energy, a song of pure intention. Once I'm done with the things I want from matter-life, I'm going to find them.
# ? Mar 16, 2020 06:01
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SlipUp
Sep 30, 2006
stayin c o o l
The Bastard
900 words
Prompt: No More Kings
poo poo, the embalming didn’t take. I could see that the stitches were stretched to their breaking point. A rancid odour filled the place. I had just hoped it was a pig taking a poo poo outside one of the windows, a final send off to the dearly beloved king, or even the natural odor of France itself. Sadly, no, it was certainly the king. Thankfully less than a dozen people had arrived to see King William ‘the Conqueror’ laid to rest.
It almost didn’t happen at all. Truth be told, he was a miserable rat bastard who took pleasure only by inflicting pain on others. I stood by him in life, in his throne room as his bodyguard. He had knighted me himself, and it was by my oath that I protected him from the consequences of his own arol his mount but when it came down, the king slammed his testicles on to the pommel of his saddle. He screamed in a high falsetto and fell to the ground, never to walk again. The injury festered and his balls rotted off. He developed a sickness of the blood and died soon after.
I do not know if it was the work of the Lord or the Devil, but I thank whoever it was. William had corrupted the church, betrayed the magna carta, taxed the poor, and viciously tortured them if they protested. Do not waste a single tear for this man. He would’ve only viewed the gesture as weak in any case.
His son visited his body for about an hour. The bishops stayed for not much longer. Most of the lords didn’t bother coming at all.
There he stayed. For over a week. Nobody even cared enough to bury him.
So it fell to me. I was his knight. I could not violate my oath to God by leaving him there to rot. I just had to bury him and I would finally be free. Little did I know the lengths he would go to torment me, even in death.
Firstly, he had not yet been embalmed and was already beginning to stink. I would have to do it myself.
While I was draining what pus and fouled blood I could, I received his last will and testament. No, not the whole thing, just the piece that pertained to me. And no again, despite being the only human he trusted with his life on this Earth, he did not leave me anything. Everything was going to his son Henry, who he had forgotten to write out of his will before leading an army out to kill him. Not, to me he bequeathed a request. To bury him in loving France. He did not even ask me directly. It was to ‘whom it may concern’ and that deluded prick didn’t realize that the only person who cared was me. Not by choice mind you.
I finally finished embalming him best as I could and departed to France. I rode by horse to port, and he rode my rear end. Frankly the donkey was too good for him, I should’ve drug him with rope behind me.
It was when we set sail that I had first noticed the problem that has haunted me all the way to this Abby in France. The embalming didn’t take. He had inflated with putrid gasses. I made a second attempt to preserve him at sea and just prayed that it was last long enough to put him in the dirt.
It would not. The burial was delayed several days after it was discovered the grave lay on stolen land, and we'd have to pay the peasant who owned it before he'd let us bury that ‘son of a bitch' there, king or not.
Finally, as the monks and I carried him to his grave, I could feel gurgles rumbling through his body. We tried to lay him in the hole but he was too bloated to fit. I would never be rid of this unholy filth.
“Get some sticks!” I said to the monks, “We'll stuff ‘the bastard’ in the hole.” They obliged with several walking sticks and we tried to push him in.
It was no use. I jumped on to his body, up and down, in a desperate attempt to be freed of him.. It slid about half a foot into the grave. None of the monks even batted an eye and in fact, redoubled their efforts with their sticks. I took another high jump on top of him.
The gurgling carcass exploded, totally enveloping me in a tempest of pus and embalming fluid. The monks were showered in a rain of filth. The corpse fell into the hole with a wet thud.
How perfect. William ‘the bastard' got his final act of spite on the people trying to help him. Just as in life.
We covered him in enough packed dirt to keep the stench out. I bathed in the Abby but even its holy waters could not fully cleanse me. Nor could I cleanse my rear end, which reeked of the bastard forever after.
But I was finally free.
# ? Mar 16, 2020 06:05
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Something Else
Dec 27, 2004
What use was time to those who'd soon achieve Digital Immortality?
Multiply
878 words
It wasn’t the first time I’d picked over a dead body, and if I was lucky, it wouldn’t be the last. I wasn’t foolish enough to think the war would’ve ended that day. It was a struggle for survival alone, as far as we knew, to survive long enough for our enemy to fall by their own devices. It wouldn’t be a matter of luck, but rather fate - they would fall, or we would die, eventually.
All in all, I took six bullets off the body. Not much more fight in that than the blink of an eye. I moved, staying low behind pockmarked concrete and twisted rebar.
Now that I was fifteen, I could handle doing that kind of stuff really easily. Most of the kids in my squad dealt with it alright, but I was one of the bravest. I was nine when the war kicked off. Looking back on that it blew my mind, because it’s like, I wondered if that kid already had it in her to go to the front and fight, or if she had to get changed into something else to do that. Maybe she still had some changing left to do.
I found another body, caked in dust. I turned her over and saw that she looked like my mother. She and my father tried to hold onto me as long as they could, but the war's suction was too strong. I got pulled into training, as they were shuffled up into administration roles, and then they were lost in a decapitation strike. When that happened, I thought the war might end the next day. But nobody stopped being angry, and the injustice on the land didn't evaporate.
Six more bullets dropped into the cargo pocket on my thigh. Long ones, rifle gauge, .308. Might be able to drop one or two invaders with these, if the shooter got lucky. I had to keep going.
My older brother was a cut-up, always making jokes. He had big wide ears, and long hair that he wore tucked behind his ears. He was my hero, and then he became a hero to many of our people, for entirely different reasons. His face was printed on leaflets, wheatpasted onto walls all across our side of the city. It unnerved me, even though I knew he was doing great things like raiding supply depots, and overseeing operations to liberate the prisons. I had to convince myself that the great hero was another man, and my brother was somewhere else out there, doing a dance like a drunken monkey and making people laugh.
I moved through the collapsed interior of an apartment building and saw that the stairs up to the second floor were mostly intact. I found the body of a sniper, shot through the eye, slumped back over a little chair like a schoolchild would use. It was a precious haul, 18 bullets in total. Someone like me had made it up here to him, not too long ago, maybe under a week. I realized I knew his name, but before I could speak it, his body was yanked back like a doll on a string.
The sound of the distant shot barely even reached my ears while I scrambled for the stairs. They'd be sending a group after me then, or watching the usual routes. They had the time for it, the patience. I was lucky to be small enough that I could squeeze through the unused spaces, hide in the gaps of the world that used to be. The bullets in my pocket jangled and bounced as I ran, heavy lead. I gripped my little sidearm, praying I wouldn't have to use it, prayers leaking out for everything and everyone.
The recon point was just up ahead - a tower that somehow stood tall among the rubble, though at only five stories it would have seemed pitiful before the war. I clutched my chest, trying to catch a breath. My squad was waiting for me in that tower, waiting for my precious cargo before they could make a move. And if they were somehow found before I got there… I didn't want to think about it. Even a death in the mind is a death.
I sprinted like hell until I collapsed in the cool shade inside the base of the tower. I listened hard. I didn't hear a single shot. No heavy men's voices. Nothing. Just the birds chirping, and the yellow ice cream sunrise glazing through the haze onto a grimy mural to forward progress. I felt for my pocket - the bullets rustled under my hand, a soft song guaranteeing at least one more night of glory among my squad.
I saw some of their faces peering down at me from the mezzanine level, wide-eyed and wild-haired, both dark like mine. We could all have been sisters,w my body would show me bruises in the morning. I was made for this world after all. Or at least, the version of me that I changed into wasn't able to see the changes as changes anymore.
# ? Mar 16, 2020 06:55
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sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010
Legit Cyberpunk
PPE
725 words
I should have known when I saw the gloves, really. They were beautiful things, tanned calfskin, soft as butter and she was wearing them even though it was a warm night.
I’d had no plans for the night, had been considering going home for a wank and a nap, but then I’d seen her, across the bar, and our eyes had touched and not let go. Then she’d bought me a drink and we’d talked to each other for an hour and a half, chatter, observations, secrets, a wonderful, meandering conversation that babbled like a brook and curled around and back on itself like a river.
Dave the bartender tapped the last call bell, and she frowned, leaned forward.
“I’d like to go home with you, but there’s a problem,” she said.
She touched my neck with her gloved hand and I shivered, like I was cold. Her own face, which had been animated and electric, stilled.
“You mean, globally, like climate change? Human nature? Socks. Who invented socks.”
“Not socks; I hate them. No, there was an accident, at the power plant. I touched the wrong thing.”
I put my hand on hers, pulled it up and let it press into my cheek. Was I imagining it or was there a fine vibration, like a wire packed full of electrons humming with their desire to go to ground?
“I didn’t think it worked that way? Do you have it all stored up inside you?”
She squeezed my cheek, then slid it down from under my hand, curled them together in her lap. “They said it was an astonishing anomaly, and let me go. I gave one of the people a nasty shock, I’m afraid. I think he got better.”
I gulped, then downed my drink. The over-hopped IPA tasted suddenly sour and I wondered why I drank them. Now that I thought about it, she did have that quality. Magnetic. Charged. The booze in me argued for boldness, the guileless intensity of her eyes for caution. The hops pushed me over the line and the reached up towards her cheek. Not touching, adjacent. I felt the hairs on the back of my fingers erect, quivering.
“So if I touch your face…”
“You will get a shock. I’m sorry, it’s just how it is.”
My hand was trembling. I brought it closer to her smooth cheek. She was looking in my eyes with an expression that was, not blank, but calm. As though she didn’t know what I was going to do, but knew that it would be the right thing for me to do.
I felt the tension in the skin of my fingertips. I’d been shocked once climbing over an electric fence in Blenheim, the wire had fallen off the post and hidden itself in the tall grass. I still had the scar, a perfectly round burn the size of a ladybird on my ankle.
I pulled my hand back. Her eyed followed them, then she looked back at me.
“Well, then.” She didn’t sound angry, or sad.
We looked at each other, then I took her shoulder in one hand and leant forward, one movement, kissed her on her full, slightly parted lips.
It hit me with a snapping crackle like a flashbulb to the brain and I went back off my chair like a toppled telegraph pole.
I opened my eyes to see her, kneeling down on the sticky carpet of the bar, face a few inches above mine.
"I think he wants us to go," she said. Dave was hovering behind her with a complicated expression on his honest bartender face. She bent down and kissed me again, warm, soft.
"Was that ... was that all? Are you, uh, discharged?"
She smiled. Her eyes were dancing. "We have a few days. Shall we go?" She pulled off her glove and ran cool pale fingertips down my cheek. "One thing. We might need to go shopping in the morning; my treat."
I sniffed as I clambered to my feet and looked down. A thin trail of smoke was curling up from the carbonised soles of my shoes.
# ? Mar 16, 2020 08:16
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Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010
Yes, the good words are gone.
Why are the good words gone?!
Submissions closed
# ? Mar 16, 2020 08:45
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Carl Killer Miller
Apr 28, 2007
This is the way that it all falls.
This is how I feel,
This is what I need:
Quarantine Interprompt
There's a run on the store, everyone's walking out grabbing the same thing, and supplies are running low. But that one thing? It's not what most people would expect.
300 words
# ? Mar 16, 2020 18:08
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Uranium Phoenix
Jun 20, 2007
Boom.
Carl Killer Miller posted:
Quarantine Interprompt
There's a run on the store, everyone's walking out grabbing the same thing, and supplies are running low. But that one thing? It's not what most people would expect.
300 words
At the Gates of Madness and Great Deals
278 words
“Death!” came the cry of the store-goers. “Death and glory!”
The worried looking manager turned the sign over from ‘closed’ to ‘open,’ then made the sign of the cross and nodded at a burly looking man to unlock the door.
The crowd roared, and they stormed through the store doors, some smashing impatiently into the glass of the sensor door, others bowling over hapless employees. The burly man was knocked about like a bowling pin trapped in a garbage disposal, to continue that metaphor. The manager started yelling into his little radio earphone-wire microphone thing that all managers seem to have.
The crowd aimed itself like a thrown spear, rushing toward their goal. They passed by bags of beans, pallets of rice, towers of bottled water—even ran past a fully stocked toilet paper aisle in their madness!
“Hold fast,” whispered the electronics department co-manager, who was salaried so the company didn’t have to pay him overtime (despite this being illegal in his state). “Come hell, high water, or—”
The spear-point arrived.
“LIMIT TWO PER CUSTOMER!” the co-manager screamed. He may as well have told the wind, or an empty bowling alley. The customers scoured the shelf clean like the starved piranhas people showed Theodore Roosevelt that one time.
Then the customers left, most empty handed, screaming, sobbing, weeping in dismay. Everything else remained, round that colossal wreck, bountifully stocked, though the central shelf was bare. And on the pedestal of that main display, these words appeared:
Limited Edition iPhone 11 Coronavirus Resistant Case
Guaranteed to keep both you and your phone safe!*
$139.95
*These claims have not been evaluated by the FDA or CDC for accuracy
# ? Mar 16, 2020 20:14
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Doctor Eckhart
Dec 23, 2019
THUNDERDOME LOSER 2020
Carl Killer Miller posted:
Quarantine Interprompt
There's a run on the store, everyone's walking out grabbing the same thing, and supplies are running low. But that one thing? It's not what most people would expect.
300 words
The Kitchen Paper Caper
285 words
The MacGowans had always been a bit strange. So when the lot of them turned up at my checkout each with their own trolley, I wasn’t in the least bit surprised. I’d seen weirder things over the past few days. Trevor MacGowan tipped his hat at me as I scanned pack after pack of kitchen towels.
“No toilet paper for you, huh?” I remarked, knowing that Pete had been rationing the restock to a few dozen packs of coveted rolls every hour. The store was quiet at this time of morning, so they should have been able to grab a few.
Old Trevor just grunted at me and paid. I repeated the same process with Annie. And Todd. And Rachel. And Ray. Even little Bobbie carried a couple of packs in his tiny arms.
A little while later, Pete came over and said, “We’re completely out of kitchen paper.”
“Have you checked the back?”
“Yeah, we never sell that many. No more till next Tuesday.”
We looked at each other and sighed. Why should we care, right?
On my way home from my shift, a woman in a face mask looked alarmed and crossed the street when she saw me coming. I had to walk by the MacGowans’ place on my way. It was big and for as long as I remember it looked like it was falling down.
The gates stood open and the whole family was in the driveway. Ray was industriously sawing kitchen rolls in half on his workbench, and his father was piling the halves up on the table beside him. The women were nailing a sign to the fence which read, “toilet paper, $50/roll”.
# ? Mar 16, 2020 21:45
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Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011
I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving
And something has got to giame thing, and supplies are running low. But that one thing? It's not what most people would expect.
300 words
Time Enough At Last
126 words
On the last day boy Scouts finally build their crystal radios. Office workers turn their living rooms into model-railroad valleys. Candle-making kits and jewelry tools emerge from storage. Thousands under quarantine think the same thought: if not now, when?
Soon enough, old ham radios and walkie-talkies come online. Voices crackle across warm, rediscovered frequencies. The factories and office buildings are silent, but the city hums with inPlastic magic wands. You know, the black kind with the white ends? I've had the cardboard box sat under the tills for years.
I was in the shop one morning, leaning back on my chair, when I heard the door chime do its little ting-a-ling.
"Crap," I thought, "I haven't turned the lights on!"
So I grabbed one of these pieces of junk from the cardboard box. I leant over and poked the light switch with it from my chair.
It was a middle aged guy who came into the store. He was wearing a mask , rubber gloves, plastic goggles and an apron. I don't think I've ever seen such paranoia.
He said, "that's such a good idea!"
Right behind him, this old woman shuffled in, she asked the guy,
"what is a good idea?"
"Touching the switches with a plastic rod so you don't catch the virus from it."
"Well I'll take it from you, doctor," said the old woman.
"That's right!" I said, "these plastic wands even have detachable ends so you can boil the germs off one while you're using the other."
"And inside of here," I said, "there's, not one, but seven free handkerchiefs all tied together for ease of access."
Well, I can't believe they bought it. Not just those two, but everyone. I just need to figure out how to tie this in with scooby strings, yo-yo's and fidget spinners now.
Azza Bamboo fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Mar 17, 2020
# ? Mar 17, 2020 01:45
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Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010
Yes, the good words are gone.
Why are the good words gone?!
The Judiciary's in the spotlight
This was a solid week of stories, all around. Even our loser, PTSDeedly Do's Barter started out pretty strong. Shame about the second half, though.
Three is a magic number, and there were three that stood out above the others. So HMs go out to Armack's 10^0: Orange Goop and Solipsism Too and Carl Killer Miller'sThe Circle, Complete .
And the win goes to Sitting Here's Six-and-six
It's a big red beautiful ocean throne; welcome back!
# ? Mar 17, 2020 07:23
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# ? Oct 5, 2022 04:48
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Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
BLO OD E M PR how they get there.
you may request a heart's desire when you sign up and I will assign you a flashrule, something fulfilling for your character(s) to attain.
here's some things that will earn you a negative mention and—even worse—evoke my displeasure:
Stories where an evil or lovely person gets their evil or lovely heart's desire won't fly.
No "be careful what you wish for" bullshit.
No tragic endings or pyrrhic victories.
Wordcount: 1300
Signup deadline: Friday, March 20, 11:59 PM PST
Submission deadline: Sunday, March 22,11:59 PM PST
Judges:
sitting here
crabrock
sebmojo
Desirers
Your character(s) achieves...
yoruichi - the perfect wind in their hair.
Simply Simon - An embrace whose warmth never fades
Anomalous Amalgam - The completion of a masterpiece
Carl Killer Miller - An exquisite song
PTSDeedlydoo - An unforgettable gift
flerp - A friend who will never leave
Thranguy - The taste of something almost unbearably exquisite
Black Griffon - a wish fulfilled beyond wildest dreams
kurona_bright - a party that glows with love
Captain_person - words that heal the mind
Armack - A safe house for the soul
Djeser
skaanscreenplays
solitair - A garden of delicate life
randompaul - A pillar of strength (literally or figuratively)
arbitrary fairy
saucy rodent
antivehicular
hawklad
nethilia
Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Mar 23, 2020
# ? Mar 17, 2020 08:42
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1
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5
The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > Thunderdome 2020ty: This Dumb Joke Will Continue Until the Words Improve.
«‹ ›77 » | https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3908810&pagenumber=18&perpage=40#post503309601 | 1,664,945,297 |
Lisbon, 1 December 1996 (RFE/RL) -- The president of Belarus, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, has told the European security organization that the constitutional crisis is over and he does not need its assistance.
Lukashenka made the comments to Giancarlo Aragona, secretary-general of the Organization for Security and CoOperation in Europe (OSCE), who spent two days in Minsk last week. Aragona has circulated a report on his talk with Lukashenka at the European Summit in Lisbon.
Diplomats said the Belarus crisis will almost certainly be discussed at the two-day summit beginning tomorrow. Lukashenka is scheduled to arrive in Lisbon later today.
In his report, the OSCE secretary general says Lukashenka told him the constitutional changes had won the support of the Belarus people in this month's controversial referendum. Lukashenka rejected criticisms of the referendum and said it clearly had a legally-binding character and was in full accordance with Belarus constitutional law.
The OSCE secretary-general said he expressed the grave concern of the other members of the OSCE and asked how OSCE could help in the crisis. His report says: "President Lukashenka responded that while two or three weeks ago there might have been a constitutional crisis, it was now over as the referendum had been successfully completed and the transformation of parliament was implemented on the basis of the new constitution."
He said Belarus remained ready to co-operate with the OSCE "but as of now, the tension is over and the constitutional question has clearly been resolved. he sees no possibility for concrete steps in this respect."
Aragona said he also discussed the problem with the Belarus foreign minister, Uladimir Syanko. Aragona's report says the foreign minister "also expressed the interest of his country in co-operating with the OSCE but saw no possibilities for concrete steps at this moment."
The president of the constitutional court, Mr. Tikhinya, told the OSCE secretary general that the court's view was that the referendum could only have an advisory character according to Belarus law. He said the president's statement that it was legally binding had created a constitutional crisis because there were now two conflicting constitutions in force.
The OSCE secretary-general also discussed the situation with the chairman of the Supreme Council, Mr. Sharetzky. He was accompanied by the deputy chairman, Mr. Karpenka, the leader of the communist faction, My. Kalyakin and the chairman of the committee for public relations, Mr. Kravchenko.
They stated that the result of the referendum did not reflect the will of the people. Aragona's report says "they said there had been numerous cases of threats and other illegalities from the side of the president in order to achieve a favorable result.They said the OSCE should take the situation in hand to help prevent further deterioration of the crisis." | https://www.rferl.org/a/1082609.html | 1,664,996,261 |
Usborne Spotter’s Guides are essential – written by experts, accurately illustrated and easy to use. Use the detailed descriptions to identify more than 80 rocks and minerals. Record your sightings and track your spotting successes on the checklist. Find further inspiration with links to fascinating geological websites. | https://shenanigans.toys/products/rocks-and-minerals-ir-spotters-guide | 1,664,604,829 |
The fund will support the City's goal of ensuring all residents have equal access to digital services.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh today announced the creation of a $35,000 Digital Equity Fund, which will support the City's goal of ensuring all residents have equal access to digital services. The Digital Equity Fund will provide support to community-based organizations that help Boston residents fully connect and participate in today's media and information landscape.
"A more connected Boston is a more equitable City, a more innovative City and a more prosperous City," said Mayor Walsh. "This grant program will allow more residents to connect digitally, and will encourage residents to grow their digital skills while increasing access to information."
The Digital Equity Fund will explore ways to build individual and community capacity to:
Use the Internet, digital skills, and digital tools to pursue professional, educational, and civic endeavors;
Engage with the Internet safely and securely;
Develop needs-responsive, community driven digital skills building opportunities;
Increase broadband adoption among the roughly 1 in 5 Bostonians who do not subscribe to this service in the home.
In 2017, Boston will award one grant of $35,000 or up to two grants up to $17,500 each to nonprofit organizations that promote digital equity. By providing seed funding, the City hopes to identify promising strategies that can attract outside funding and further create a City where everyone has the tools and skills they need to succeed in the 21st century.
To qualify for a grant, nonprofit organizations must be Boston-based and serve Boston residents. The application deadline for 2017 is November 17 and the application can be found online. Priority will be given to proposals that aim to advance the use of technology to improve quality of life and increases access to opportunity for all residents and align with the City of Boston's Broadband and Digital Equity goals of:
expanding access to digital tools
creating opportunities to learn digital skills, and
increasing the adoption of high-speed Internet in the home.
Money for this fund comes from license agreements between the City of Boston and telecommunications companies.
"We believe in making modern technology available to all," said Theodora Higginson Hanna, Co-Director of Tech Goes Home. "This fund will help provide Bostonians with the tools they need to support the development of their digital skills."
The Fund will be overseen by the City of Boston Department of Innovation & Technology (DoIT) and an external Fund Council consisting of five to seven members. Advisory board members will be appointed by Mayor Walsh and serve three year terms. Current Fund Council members include:
Alessandra Brown, Director, Roxbury Innovation Center
Colin Rhinesmith, Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College
Turahn Dorsey, Chief of Education, City of Boston
Trinh Nguyen, Director of Workforce Development, City of Boston
Sasha Costanza-Chock, Associate Professor of Civic Media, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"Access to broadband and digital literacy skills are essential in today's society," said Colin Rhinesmith, Assistant Professor at the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College and member of the Digital Equity Fund Council. "Unfortunately, too many Bostonians do not have the reliable and affordable broadband they need, as well as the training required, to fully participate. The City of Boston's Digital Equity Fund is a key initiative to support residents in achieving these goals."
About the Department of Innovation and Technology
The Department of Innovation and Technology makes sure the networks, computers and systems that support the City are secure and effective. They also manage the City's websites and technologies focused on service delivery. | https://www.boston.gov/news/city-creates-35000-digital-equity-fund | 1,664,863,086 |
The most versatile USB-C port allows you to connect to a wide range of accessories and charge other Apple devices. | https://appleosophy.com/2022/07/27/ipad-mini-6-in-depth-review/img_9881/ | 1,664,239,628 |
DIRA has been critical to the performance of New Zealand’s dairy sector but some aspects need modernising.
The Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA) has been critical to the performance of the New Zealand dairy sector since its passage in 2001.
The formation of Fonterra has created wealth for New Zealand, and has improved social and economic outcomes for New Zealand’s dairy farmers and their communities.
DIRA has now achieved what it set out to - create competition. Today farmers have choices in who they supply their milk to and New Zealand consumers have many choices when purchasing dairy products.
For the dairy industry to continue to succeed, some aspects of DIRA must be modernised.
View Fonterra’s DIRA Review submission | 21st of October 2019
Fonterra Submission
View Fonterra’s DIRA Review submission | 8th of February 2019
Fonterra Submission
View Fonterra Shareholders’ Council’s DIRA Review submission | 21st of October 2019
SHC Submission
View Fonterra Shareholders’ Council’s DIRA Review submission | 8th of February 2019
SHC Submission
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MilkFAQs
Explai | https://www.fonterra.com/nz/en/our-stories/articles/modernising-dira.html | 1,665,149,466 |
Are you interested in finding out how Pool Personnel can help you with your pool services? Fill out the form below and we’ll get back to you with any questions you may have.
Consulting Services Contact
We offer the finest in community pool management, consulting services, and a wide range of renovation and repair services. Contact us today! | https://poolpersonnel.com/consulting-services/ | 1,664,186,966 |
Here are some frequently asked RabbitMQ interview questions. If you have no idea what is RabbitMQ then check below articles on RabbitMQ and then continue from here.
What is RabbitMQ ?
What is Exchange, Queue and Consumer ?
1) What is RabbitMQ ?
Ans - RabbitMQ is an open source message broker software which implements the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP). It is also called as message-oriented middleware. RabbitMQ is written in Erlang programming language. RabbitMQ is built on the Open Telecom Platform framework for clustering.
2) What is Exchange in RabbitMQ ?
Ans - Exchange in RabbitMQ routes the messages to different queues based on binding of queues with exchange.
3) What are different types of Exchanges in RabbitMQ ?
Ans - Mainly there are 4 types of exchanges in RabbitMQ. 1) Direct Exchange 2) Fanout Exchange 3) Headers Exchange and 4) Topic Exchange.
4) What is routing key in RabbitMQ ?
Ans - It is an attribute of message. When message comes from producer exchange checks for routing key and based on that it routes the message to queues.
5) What is binding ?
Ans - It is link OR connection between exchange and queue. For exchange to route the message to particular queue that queue should be bound to exchange with routing key or headers.
6) What is Fanout Exchange ?
Ans - Fanout exchange routes the messages to all queues which are bound to it. Say if there are 5 queues bound to Fanout Exchange then when message comes to Fanout Exchange it will go to all 5 queues. It is kind of publish-subscribe.
7) What is Direct Exchange ?
Ans - Direct Exchange routes the message based on routing key. When message comes to Direct Exchange it look for the routing key along with message and then it compares to routing keys for queues which are bound to it. If exact match is there then it routes the message to the queue.
8) What is Erlang ? Do we need it for RabbitMQ ?
Ans - Erlang is a general-purpose, concurrent, functional programming language, as well as a garbage-collected runtime system. The RabbitMQ server is written in the Erlang programming language and is built on the Open Telecom Platform framework for clustering. To use RabbitMQ we must need to have Erlang installed.
If you want to learn more about RabbitMQ and its practical implementation with Java, Spring Boot and Spring MVC then just CLICK HERE
If you want to learn more about RabbitMQ and its practical implementation with PHP then just CLICK HERE | http://www.infybuzz.com/2019/06/rabbitmq-interview-questions-and-answers.html | 1,664,627,306 |
Before the season 2012-2013 the management of the “Lokomotiv-Kuban” realised the need to support reorganisation of the cheerleading team of the club. The traditional cheerleading format with pom-poms and modern dances did not fulfill the expectations of the fans of the show and required the innovational changes. Taking the cue from NBA, where cheerleading has already made a significant step forward and evolved into spectacular more varied and interesting shows, the management of “Loko” decided to put a bet on the modern street-dances. That is how “LOKS”- the new cheerleading crew, of “Lokomotiv” was created.
“Loks” are the dancers that were selected by a strict and comprehensive casting, dancers who were trained at professional dance camps and took part in master-classes not only of Russian but also European teachers. “Loks” has got in its arsenal such modern dance styles as hip-hop, popping, dancehall, house, break dance, vogue, juzz funk etc. Every single member of the team represents excellent appearance and decent choreographic skills.
From the very first games the “Loks” were warmly welcomed by the fans, but that was only the beginning for the cheerleaders from Krasnodar. The Efes Dance Square Off — the competition for the best cheerleading teams in Europe, organised by Euroleague, — was a crucial step for “Lokomotiv’s” dance crew. The stakes were high — winner was going to be the official cheerleading team of the Final Four in London.
“Loks” managed to make a splash at the first stage of the competition — the team from Krasnodar won the audience vote with the significant margin and went through to the final, leaving behind a number of groups not only from Russian basketball clubs (CSKA, “Spartakus”) but also from the Euroleague clubs.
During the preparation for the final another venerable teacher joined “Loks”. The “Loks’ ” performances for the final show were created by Phillip ‘Pacman’ Chbeeb, the winner of the prestigious American show “America’s Best Dance Crew”, finalist of “So you think you can dance” and the choreograph of the “Step Up 4”.
As a result, after startling the jury and audience on the final show in Moscow, “Loks” won the EFSO competition, leaving behind the cheerleading teams of “Zalgiris”, German “Alba” and Croatian “Cedevita”. The next stop for the red-greens was London, where in-between the hardcore battles of the Final Four “Loks” were tiring the applause of thousands on O-2 Arena.
This season “Loks” will start with the renewed cast, and is preparing even more performances for the fans, more acrobatic stunts, more music, more fun and definitely more dances. | http://olden.lokobasket.com/support/loks/ | 1,664,073,657 |
Welcome to the March edition of Vidimus – another double feature issue. Our first feature is by Laurence Riviale and is on ‘The Raminagrobis Enigma in a 16th-century Window beside the River Loire’. The second, part of our series of poster presentations from last year’s international colloquium of the CVMA in York, is by Patricia Sulser and looks at ‘Hans Drenckhahn (1878–1953): a Swiss Stained-glass Artist and Restorer’. We also bring you news of glass lost to a fire in Cheshire and found at an auction in Ireland. | https://www.vidimus.org/issues/issue-89/ | 1,664,394,484 |
We can all use our voices to change the culture to prevent sexual violence. Prevention requires addressing the root causes and social norms that allow sexual violence to exist. During Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we are engaging groups whose influence can play a critical role in changing the culture. This post offers one coach’s perspective on the role of sports and sports leaders in supporting prosocial norms and character development.
That orange baseball jersey is forever etched in my mind. Draped below his knees, it was obscenely ugly, but it was his first.
My son’s first foray into team sports was rec baseball at the tender age of three. The thing I remember most from that first year was the crying. His coach displayed god-like patience with my son who cried for 75% of the season.
He wasn’t crying because he didn’t want to play. He cried over typical 3-year-old things – the bat color was wrong, he didn’t want to wear a helmet, his cleats were untied. His slumped shoulders and tears that streamed down his face before most at-bats did not deter his coach’s patience. He was determined to win my son over and by the end of the season, he was able to muster a genuine “High Five.” He helped foster a greater love for the sport and most importantly, he treated him with compassion.
I was thankful for this volunteer coach – a man who had worked all day, rushed home to play ball with our boys, and then headed home to his own family. I believed I never wanted to coach youth sports, so I was appreciative of the parents who did.
Yet, as my son advanced into travel sports, I noticed something: the focus was almost exclusively on skill building and game play, but there was a lack of attention paid to young athletes as a whole. Opportunities to help mold good people through the structure of organized sports were being lost. Coaches were missing the chance to build something more than a good fastball.
So when I decided to coach competitive youth baseball, I had one question I needed to answer for myself: How can I do this better?
I don’t claim to have a blue print to navigate the unique and complicated issues surrounding holistic development of young athletes, but I think I know where to begin. It starts with intentionality and appreciation for the ways in which these formative years as athletes can help shape their character as people. I believe that it’s myus on “winning” without regard to the whole person can unintentionally encourage harmful behaviors. It’s important to recognize that crimes, like those associated with the sexual assault “hazing rituals” at Sayreville High School or the tragic events at Penn State, were built on the foundation of harmful norms that permeate sports culture. ”Locker room talk” and bullying are prevalent, accepted norms, and trivialized, especially at older levels. However, by truly understanding our responsibilities as coaches at the youth level, we can plant the seeds for influential change. When harmful sports norms are challenged and subsequently rejected, we all win.
On my youth baseball team, I try to engage parents and players in this process by the creation of a pact that establishes clear expectations: our Code of Conduct. I’ve found that agreements work better than hard and fast rules. Players are given the privilege of play when they agree to the terms. As such, embedded within this code of conduct are our two core principles:
Respect your coaches.
Respect your teammates.
These core principles were purposely designed to be simple, yet applicable, to everyday life. They are not only enforced while at our games and practices, but there’s an understanding that this pact translates to the classroom, during play dates with teammates, and participation on other teams. Players understand that any violations will result in real consequences that can jeopardize their playing time. When parents are engaged in the process and reinforce our team values, there’s better team synergy.
I am not sure what challenges await me in the future, but I plan to remain fluid, adjusting to the ever-changing landscape of adolescence and puberty. Volunteering to coach youth sports is never easy. After working all day at our jobs, we muster up enough energy to run a productive practice and deal with short attention spans. It’s difficult to constantly be “on”…to understand we have a greater responsibility that goes beyond teaching proper mechanics to throw a baseball. But, anything worth something is never easy.
I kept that orange baseball jersey. Maybe one day I’ll put it in a nice frame and stare at it fondly remembering simpler times when that jersey draped across his knees.
By day, Dr. Jason Maikos is the Director of the Gait and Motion Analysis Laboratory at the Manhattan Veterans Affairs Medical Center. During evenings and weekends, he is the head coach of his son’s 9U travel baseball team. He still holds the records for the longest and shortest homeruns at his alma mater, Stevens Institute of Technology. He is also a graduate of Rutgers University, where he met his wife, the esteemed Patricia Teffenhart. Together they have one child and a Chiweenie, aptly named Shortstop.
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This is a world of competition. Consider how much time you spend applying for employment only to receive a rejection letter a week or a month later. You must be already aware of the problems and challenges that every job applicant like you face.
The spectacle over whether artificial intelligence (AI) will eliminate jobs is heating up. According to AI sceptics, statistical models lack the creativity and intuition of human employees and are hence destined to do specialised, repetitive tasks. While AI has already displaced roughly 700,000 jobs in the United States alone between 2006 and 2022, with another 5 million on the way, AI is now automating the economy in a far more subtle way.
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It truly is amusing to see the excuses fly in adult industry message board forums, as soon as someone posts a complaint about how slow such and such a site is (Streamate, for example). Having been in the industry for 16+ years now, I can say with absolute certainty, that there are no trends with respect to overall traffic. There are far too many obstacles to factor in where traffic is concerned . The one day of the year that I have ever found to be consistently slow is Super Bowl Sunday. Regardless, in those forums, someone always seems to have the answer, often posted in a strangely defensive yet convincing manner.
Several years ago, I wrote up a list in a message board forum of a site I used to work on, filled with excuses for why cam sites can be slow, every month of the year. Logically, traffic should be slightly affected by these events but not to the extent we were seeing it. The same applies to today. Another thing I always kept in mind, knowing this industry as well as I do, is to always consider the source. If that source has something to say that might require some credibility to be believed, then perhaps they should put a handle to it; one that people can easily find online. <– I believe my insinuation came across loud and clear.
Here’s my newly revised list of excuses for slowness. 12 months worth. Enjoy!
January – New Year’s drinking, paying off credit card bills from the holidays. Superbowl (I’ll give this one some credit).
February – Valentine’s Day (diamonds aren’t cheap!).
March – Spring Break (eatin’, boozin’, tattooin’).
April – Taxes, planting flowers (and weeding can just plain poop anyone out!).
May – Mother’s Day.
June – Father’s Day. School’s out!
July – National birthdays (1st and 4th of July celebrations for Canada & U.S.A.). Also, this thing the industry likes to refer to as “summer slowdown”.
August – More of that “summer slowdown” bs, along with the fact that people are trying to enjoy their last weeks of summer.
September – Back to school. Labour Day weekend, too.
October -Canadian Thanksgiving. Halloween (the only month of the year when chocolate prices soar!). Actually, this is true <–
November – The start of Christmas shopping. U.S. Thanksgiving.
December – Christmas is coming ! Christmas is coming! Holiday travel, planning, parties.
Leaves very little time for us, huh gals? Somehow, miraculously, the sites still seem to thrive, despite all this. I recant what I said about them being webpimps. They’re not. What they are; magicians! One trick I’d like to see is where they’ve hidden all our money. 😉 | https://amanda36c.wordpress.com/2013/12/21/the-camgirl-calendar/ | 1,664,321,601 |
US metal singer arrested in Prague on manslaughter charges “awaiting release” on bail | l singer arrested in Prague on manslaughter charges “awaiting release” on bail
07/19/2012
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Randy Blythe, photo: TV Nova
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The singer of the US heavy metal band Lamb of God, Randy Blythe, who was arrested in Prague last month on manslaughter charges, is awaiting release from prison. On Wednesday, the Prague Municipal Court doubled Mr Blythe’s original bail of 200,000 US dollars, which has already been raised by the band. The singer faces accusations that during the band’s 2010 Prague concert, he pushed a 19-year-old fan off the stage who later succumbed to his injuries. Mr Blythe’s Czech attorney, Martin Radvan, says the heavy metal singer should be out of jail any day now.
Randy Blythe, photo: TV Nova
“We are now waiting for his release because the band has already collected the additional 200,000 dollars, and only due to long travel time between the Prague Municipal Court and the court for Prague 8, we are still waiting. Otherwise, he should have already been released.”
What will happen when Mr Blythe is released? Will he have to stay in the Czech Republic or will he be allowed to leave the country?
“Everything indicates that he will be allowed to travel home. But he will have to come back either for further investigation or the trial, and that’s what he wants to do. As a world-renowned artist, in a specific genre of music of course, he cannot afford to simply disappear. This is a wrong assumption by the Czech police and the Prague municipal prosecutor who still believe there is a possibility he will disappear and never show up again.”
Randy Blythe was arrested, photo: TV Nova
“But there would be posters with his picture all around the world, and if he wants to continue performing, he will have to return. And he wants to return because he believes he is not guilty of anything he has been charged with.”
Randy Blythe, the band’s manager and other members of the band said that no one made any attempt to approach them after the incident, not even the police or the family members of the fan. Why did no one get in touch with the band before they came?
Daniel Nosek, photo: TV Nova
“I really don’t know. Let me put it this way: nobody was expecting that unfortunately, this young man Daniel Nosek would die a month after the concert. His father then spoke to the police who launched an investigation and called several witnesses who were at that concert. They also approached the US Department of Justice and asked them to take part in the investigation which the department refused to do.”
“Refusing to do so, they did not notify anyone from the band or the management, so no one really knew that investigation was underway, which I think is not something the US Department of Justice can be proud of.”
Randy Blythe, photo: José Goulão, Creative Commons 2.0
How is Randy Blythe coping with being in jail? There were reports he was teaching his Mongolian cellmate English, and was picking up some Mongolian in return. He also said he was going to learn to eat dumplings if he’s bound to stay here – so it would seem he has not lost his good spirits…
“Randy Blythe is an intelligent man, he writes songs and now in jail, he has started writing a book. As regards his Mongolian ‘neighbour’, Mr Blythe is not really learning Mongolian from him all the time; we just bought the guy a book of Sudoku so that Randy has a little more time to do things he wants to do.”
Has he complained about the conditions in jail?
“Not at all. He says he is being treated in a fair way, and he has no complaints whatsoever about the guards or anybody in the Pankrác prison. He realizes he cannot do anything about the fact that the prison is old... it’s not a place where he would like to spend more time but well, that’s how it is.” | https://english.radio.cz/us-metal-singer-arrested-prague-manslaughter-charges-awaiting-release-bail-8552639 | 1,664,608,208 |
After the deposition, a court reporter usually asks, “Would you like a large transcript, condensed, E-transcript, E-Transcript only, or would you like all of the above?”
The first attorney may say, “I’ll take a large transcript, a condensed transcript, and an E-Transcript.”
The second attorney may say, “I’ll take a large transcript only, but call my assistant, Gina, and see if we take an E-Transcript, too.”
That’s just the first two transcript orders and you’ve got three more orders to go. If you want to save yourself a few calls later for “clarification,” or because your memory “just isn’t what it used to be” – WRITE IT DOWN!
If an attorney tells you he’s changed firms or he has a new address, don’t rely on your memory. By the time you get around to scoping and proofing the deposition transcript, there’s a good chance you’ll have forgotten what was said and then you’ll have to spend (waste) time researching the answer. If you want to save yourself time and aggravation, WRITE IT DOWN!
Let’s say there’s a trial date at the end of the month, but there’s a mediation in two weeks. They’d like the transcript by the 10th. You think you’ll never forget that date because you’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then, sync the video to the text and upload the video and synced transcript to your online repository. Keep yourself on track as the days zip by, know the date its due – WRITE IT DOWN!
In these days of information overload, rush transcripts, and production demands, it’s easy to forget something, but there is one way to cut down on errors, and it’s easy enough – WRITE IT DOWN! | https://taylorcourtreporters.com/write-it-down/ | 1,664,276,897 |
Digi Drives Digital Experience in the Only Zero-Emissions-Capable Black Cab
Digi Drives Digital Experience in the Only Zero-Emissions-Capable Black Cab
"Digi CC6, has given us all the capabilities we had hoped for while increasing our development capabilities 15-fold. Its intelligence and usability fell perfectly in line with what we expect from our own development."
Greg Starns, Executive Director of Frazer-Nash’s
Software Development Group
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For 22 years, the Frazer-Nash Group of Companies has been at the forefront of electric powertrain development. Today, all components of the powertrain are designed in-house, ensuring maximum compatibility, efficiency and functionality. Together, these companies are constantly testing and improving the range-extended electric powertrain in a variety of different applications and conditions.
As part of their mission, Frazer-Nash manufactures the Metrocab—the only zero-emissions-capable black cab currently operating in London. The purpose-built range extended electric (REEV) Metrocab taxi represents the cutting edge of green transportation design. The advanced Metrocab incorporates the latest technology for comfort, performance and safety while providing cost savings. The Metrocab has been operating on a pilot fleet basis in London since November 2014, and with high praise from London’s taxi associations, the Metrocab will also enter volume production in Coventry in 2017.
Business Problem
Frazer-Nash needed a system for the display in the Metrocab—like the cab metering display—to ensure the highest quality experience for both the driver and the rider. To do this, the team needed an onboard computer to power the display in each vehicle. During development and testing, Frazer-Nash found building their own embedded solution was too costly and complex.
“We had terrible reliability and memory corruption problems. We spent ages tweaking, and we never did find the best solution. It only just about worked, and we needed it to work,” said Greg Starns, executive director of Frazer-Nash’s software development group.
Solution
“We looked at other modules and had more confidence with Digi, and we committed big time,” Starns said. “The Digi product had all of the memory timing done, which saved us 18-months of pain and work. This is why you buy a module, because all of that work, it’s already done.”
Frazer-Nash committed to Digi ConnectCore® 6 System on Module (Digi CC6), which utilizes the NXP i.MX6 Quad, to drive the Metrocab’s entire driver instrumentation and passenger displays. the only piece of equipment not developed by Frazer-Nash, Digi’s solutions had to meet an incredibly high level of standards,” Starns explained. “Digi CC6, has given us all the capabilities we had hoped for while increasing our development capabilities 15-fold. Its intelligence and usability fell perfectly in line with what we expect from our own development.”
The team also moved from running Windows CE with more than 8 million lines of legacy code on the Digi ConnectCore 6 to Android.
“With our departure from in-house development, Digi’s support has been exemplary. They've got a really good module that’s very well supported. The move to Android has been great, and the overall experience with using the Digi CC6 module has been fantastic. The IMX has a comprehensive user interface for infotainment, radio, DAB radio, FM radio, a CD player and satellite navigation. It has various screens for energy flows around the vehicle. And it has detailed range displays. We've even chosen to write small applications on the new Digi CC6.”
Results
Today, with Digi ConnectCore 6, the Metrocab provides unparalleled interactive displays that bring both safety and comfort to both driver and passenger. With the move to Android, Frazer-Nash was able to do this in the most cost effective and efficient way.
“We moved to an Android build and source code. It's turned out to be a very good thing. For what would have cost around £200,000 ($284,000 USD), I moved the development to a different environment for £1,500. The software development cycle has moved from about one project a year to around 15 a year. So it's far faster, and it's saved time and money.”
Digi CC6 enables a complete digital driver and passenger experience. It provides the driver with a multi-function touch screen display and instrument cluster with color display.
With the front of the cab being the driver’s office and home base, this couldn’t be more important.
“Where the cab driver sits—that's his office. People go into a building and that's their office, their desk, their computer. In a cab, that's the taxi driver's office. That's where he's going to spend up to 12 hours a day working and sitting,” says Sheban Siddiqi, marketing director for Frazer-Nash. “From meeting and talking with them, we understood how these guys live by every penny. That's why the data is so vital. They look at every mile; they watch their speed to make sure that they're not going too fast or too slow so they can project their earnings. We immediately did away with the analog displays because providing data on easy-to-understand digital displays became a top priority. We now have the digital display at the front, and no other taxi in the world has those.”
The taxi does this equally for the passenger. It offers passengers an interactive system at theitrip.
“We try to give the passenger as much information as possible as well. They can see how much CO2 they've saved by being in one of our cabs, for example. Or, they can see how much fuel is being consumed,” says Siddiqi. “Again, this is part of the philosophy of providing as much information to the passenger and the driver, which is something that we said that we needed to do from day one.”
The Frazer-Nash mission has been to create a premium powertrain product, and to make sure every facet of the Metrocab lives up to that premium level. That’s exactly what they’ve achieved today for both drivers and passengers.
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NXP i.MX6 based surface-mount module solution with scalable, single-/multi-core performance and integrated wireless
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A full range of embedded solutions, including modules and SBCs as well as software and remote management capabilities
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Digi and Frazer-Nash Team up to Create Cleaner, Greener Transport for London Metrocabs Frazer-Nash is tapping the power of the Digi International® ConnectCore® 6 System-on-Module to drive the powertrain... WATCH VIDEO Digi ConnectCore 6 Datasheet NXP i.MX6 based surface-mount module solution with scalable, single-/multi-core performance and integrated wireless VIEW PDF Digi ConnectCore 6N NXP i.MX6 based surface-mount module solution with scalable, single-/multi-core performance and integrated wireless VIEW PRODUCT Embedded Systems A full range of embedded solutions, including modules and SBCs as well as software and remote management capabilities VIEW PRODUCTS
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Unlike PolyGram in Europe, it seems that Atlantic never really had a serious Abba CD issuing programme. Following the release of the two Greatest Hits CDs in 1983, it would be another three years before it would issue another Abba title on the fledgling format.
The 1986 issue of Super Trouper has the distinction of being the only Abba original album to receive an Atlantic CD release throughout North America.
It is unclear why that album was ever selected for release but nonetheless Atlantic eschewed the easy option of reusing Polar’s European transfer and came up with its own unique one.
Atlantic’s transfer is superior to the European one: it lacks a major dropout during the title track and has a slightly crisper sound due to the addition of a little extra bass.
The packaging, however, was inferior: most of the album’s back cover was removed to provide space for the CD tracklisting and copyright information. However, this makes it much easier to distinguish this release from other Super Trouper CDs.
The back cover of Atlantic’s Super Trouper omits most of the LP’s artwork
There is no target version of this rare release, meaning that sale values are quite depressed. In some cases, copies can be got for as little as $10 and the release’s absolute maximum value is around $40 – $50.
First issued: 1986. Reissue: None. Deleted: 1988.
Title: Super Trouper (16023-2)
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2 thoughts on “Super Trouper”
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Petee says:
November 13, 2012 at 3:41 am
The Atlantic CD version of ‘Super Trouper’ contains a 3:15 version of “The Way Old Friends Do” with an extended applause fadeout. There’s also no audio dropout in “Super Trouper” which makes me wonder if this didn’t feature the same master as the Japanese Discomate CD.
JefferyK says:
January 12, 2010 at 10:21 pm
I bought “Greatest Hits,” “Greatest Hits Vol. 2,” and “Super Trouper” in the U.S. when they were released. The first two definitely came in full-color, illustrated long boxes; “Super Trouper,” as far as I can remember, did not. I don’t have sales figures, but “Super Trouper” was a very successful album for ABBA here in the U.S. — “The Winner Takes It All” was a big hit, the video was all over television, and Atlantic did a lot of in-store promotion — so I was not surprised to see it turn up on CD. Actually, all three of these titles sold very, very well on LP here.
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Budget Bail Bonds is conveniently located directly behind the Navarro county Jail in Corsicana, Texas.
Our office will be the last thing you see as you are being transported into the jail. Let us be the first thing you see on the way out!
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Our motto is "We may doze, but never close!" Call anytime, day or night if our services are needed. Even if our office doors are closed, someone is sitting by the phone to help you in your time of need. | https://www.budgetbailbonding.com/ | 1,664,221,401 |
Betty Jane’s Sweet Delights is unlike any peanut brittle you’ve ever tasted. That’s because we stayed true to mom’s original 50-year-old recipe. Each small, handmade batch is loaded with delicious peanuts and has a light crunchy texture. | https://www.bettyjanessweetdelights.com/8oz-peanut-brittle/ | 1,664,395,989 |
We're months away from the NHL Draft (Day 1 is on July 7), but it's the next big date on the NHL calendar for the New York Islanders. So let's think about it real quick.
When it comes to the draft, and considering the Islanders prospect pool, what do the Islanders need from the 2022 NHL Draft?
New York Islanders: Early look at needs for 2022 NHL Draft
Now you're probably just like me when it comes to the draft. Teams should take the best available player and not draft based on need. You don't pass up a possible elite forward because you might need defensemen.
Also, like me, you probably remember the Islanders prospect pool being ranked at the bottom of the NHL at the start of the year. The Athletic's Scott Wheeler ranked it 31st out of 32 pools (subscription required).
So in my opinion that's the need to bring in as much quality as possible to augment this pool that desperately needs it.
But, for the sake of playing both sides of the coin, do the Islanders have a need? As in, is there one position that is really weak in the prospect pool compared to others? I'd say right-handed defensemen is comparatively weak against the other positions within the Isles prospect pool.
Currently, the Isles RHD pool is staffed with Grant Hutton, Bode Wilde, and Tomas Machu. A 26-year-old Hutton who isn't really a prospect anymore, Bode Wilde whose days are probably numbered in the Isles system, and Tomas Machu who's a seventh-round pick from last year.
Both Wilde and Machu have taken steps back in their development this season. For Machu, you can explain that after going from the Czech league to the USHL. For Wilde, who was sent out on loan to a second-tier Swedish side, you can't. Wilde didn't stand out in Sweden and was a healthy scratch for a number of games.
There's a serious lack of quality on the right side of the blue line within the pool. So if there's a positional need it's RHD | https://eyesonisles.com/posts/an-early-look-islanders-needs-2022-nhl-draft | 1,664,818,176 |
Our Women’s Bible Study has a long history, as it’s been going on since September 1985! They meet on Wednesday mornings at 10:00am in the Church Parlour. They rely on the teaching of God’s Holy Spirit, and alternate between studying a book of the Bible and discussing topics, such as: forgiveness, spiritual warfare, and decisions. Many close, loving, and supportive friendships have been formed out of this group, and their motto is “There’s always room for one more!” If you’re interested in this ministry, please contact Janet Joudrey at 543-5273 or | https://bridgewaterbaptist.com/small-groups/wednesday-morning-womens-bible-study/ | 1,665,176,907 |
Ressources Aquatiques Québec (RAQ) is an inter-institutional group concerned with the sustainable development of the aquaculture and fisheries industries in Québec. It brings together some 30 Quebec researchers who have a large network of collaborators at provincial, national, and international levels.
The regular members of RAQ are from eight academic institutions (Université du Québec à Rimouski [host institution]; Université Laval; Université de Montréal; Université de Sherbrooke; Institut national de la recherche scientifique [INRS], Armand Frappier Institute; École Polytechnique de Montréal; Université du Québec à Chicoutimi; Université du Québec à Montréal; and a college institution [Cégep de la Gaspésie et des Îles]); from provincial (Québec’s Ministère Forêts, Faune et Parcs) and federal (Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada) agencies; and from the Canadian Museum of Nature, Merinov, the Montreal Biodome, and the Centre de recherche sur les biotechnologies marines (CRBM) in Rimouski.
RAQ has been supported financially since 2006 by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies (FRQNT) (Programme regroupements stratégiques). RAQ is the only inter-institutional group in Québec whose goal is to actively participate in the sustainable development of Québec's aquaculture and fisheries industries. It creates a forum that brings together Québec industry members and decision-makers specialized in freshwater and coastal systems, having expertise on fish and shellfish, and who are interested in biotechnology and the economic, legal, and ethical aspects of the field. The result has been the formation of a strong, interdisciplinary, inter-institutional association that is open to new innovations and that above all has a strong objective to aid in continuing development within the industries.
Annual report 2018-2019
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31
Research Assistants
54
Collaborators
59
MSc students
30
PhD students
11
Postdocs
16
Research professionals
90
Publications in 2020
49
Publications in 2019
Research Program
RAQ's new scientific program is based on FAO's Blue Growth Initiative, the goal of which is to improve the sustainable management of aquatic living resources by reconciling use and conservation to attain economically, socially, and environmentally responsible development. Our scientific program is designed with the aim of providing innovative tools and the knowledge necessary to achieve the sustainable development of Quebec’s aquatic resources. Axes 1 and 2 include theoretical and practical developments related to the overall goal of implementing the sustainable development (axis 3) of our sectors of activity.
We work to acquire fundamental knowledge supporting our main research goals by studying different concepts:
Host–microbiota interactions using the holobiont approach;
Expertise in the omics (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics);
Adaptive capacity of exploited aquatic species (evolutionary biology, ecology, ecophysiology);
Molecules of interest based on new metabolomic approaches
To learn more about our research themes, see the complete 2020 RAQ Program.
Consult the program
Aquaculture
Head: Céline Audet
Increasing the productivity and sustainability of aquaculture companies requires improvements in nutrition, disease control, and genetics as well as production innovations.
Based on the four fundamental concepts mentioned in the introduction, our overall objectives related to the aquaculture axis are as follows:
Develop sustainable ways of protecting against disease;
Develop tools to help estimate the health status of organisms;
Increase knowledge concerning disease susceptibility;
Develop feeds that are better suited to the principles of circular economy;
Improve knowledge on nutritional needs and digestive physiology;
Support genetic improvement programs;
Identify gene networks associated with the expression of phenotypes of interest;
Improve our understanding of metamorphosis;
Improve production techniques.
To address the growing problems of overexploitation, the challenges associated with the return of certain species, and habitat degradation, it is crucial to gain new knowledge about fisheries ecosystems. Based on the four fundamental concepts mentioned above, our overall objectives related to the fisheries research axis are as follows:
Characterize the diversity of exploited natural populations;
Determine the spatial structure of populations and connectivity between habitats;
Document the ecological and physiological characteristics of each population;
Gain knowledge to better plan for the impact of global change on exploited species;
Determine the performance of young stages and recruitment success;
Measure the biological and socio-economic impacts of seeding;
Assess the effectiveness of new approaches to population monitoring.
Fisheries
Head: Dominique Robert
Innovative Applications from a Sustainable Development Perspective
Head: Isabelle Marcotte and Steve Plante
In the current context of optimized inventory management, food security, by-product enhancement, and environmental quality are all important concepts to consider. Our researchers are working to develop innovative applications to promote food sovereignty, transformative governance, and the responsible exploitation of aquatic resources from a sustainable development perspective.
The following objectives are grouped in this axis:
Propose solutions tailored to remote areas to ensure food security;
Provide innovative tools to improve the management of aquatic resources;
Propose innovative processes to develop by-products from Quebec's fisheries and aquaculture industries;
Study interactions and estimate the impacts of operating practices on the environment and human communities;
Provide innovative ways to mitigate environmental impacts related to exploitation by human communities. | https://www.raq.uqar.ca/en/about-us | 1,664,894,054 |
The falling of the Iron Curtain paved the way for Maharaji's first address in Eastern Europe on July 12, 1990, in a Warsaw hotel. For those who attended, it was a historic event. More than once he talked of the transience of great civilisations–ancient Greece and Egypt were his examples.
Instead of pursuing immortality and fulfillment through external means, he advised the audience that they could quench their inner longing by listening to "that call from inside" to know themselves.
Extracts from this memorable address follow:
"It's very interesting that I finally made it to Poland. This evening we have a chance to hear a little bit about what this message is all about
"The message is very simple, because it doesn't deal with anything except a feeling. And the premise for everything that is being said is based upon just this: have we ever felt a longing in our lives? Have we ever felt this thing, called the heart, in ourselves. If you have ever felt that feeling, then you can understand everything that I have to say. It doesn't matter when you felt that feeling, or how many times you felt it, or if you only felt it once in your life.
Simple feeling
"We are such creatures of just thought and not of feeling. So it has to start from a simple feeling that says: 'l must understand what my thirst is' It begins with that. It doesn't end with that, it begins with that. That becomes the very first step. And then, you begin to feel.
"If you can feel that thirst, and if you can imagine what it would be like to have fulfillment in this life, then it all makes sense. All of a sudden, the possibility becomes real. And it is that possibility that we can all pursue in our lives. I am not here to offer anybody a religion, or a doctrine, or a dogma, but just to offer the understanding of that possibility in this life.
"The possibility does exist. And to reach out and to grab that moment in our lives, that's what it's all about. To take that challenge and say: 'Yes. I want that feeling in my life'."
The barriers are still coming down
Translation is helping it happen
In Prague in the Czech Republic, video events happen in Jaro Svitok's apartment. Jaro is seated on the right
Since 1990, barriers have been coming down in Eastern Europe in more ways than one. Following the dramatic political changes, Maharaji was able to visit the region for the first time that year.
"No matter what generation, no matter what civilisation, no matter who, when, where, or how, there has always been a thirst," Maharaji told the audience of over 600 in Warsaw, Poland, on July 12.
"And yet, today, in 1990, things are changing so rapidly. Things are evolving so rapidly, but the question is still there. Is that quest for fulfillment still within us, or not? And the answer is: yes, it is, because it is nothing that we can resist."
Over the last few years, more Eastern Europeans have been able to travel to see Maharaji. And the new climate has also made it easier for instructors to visit and for video events to happen. The number of people with Knowledge is still relatively small in these countries, but there are aspirants in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, and, Bulgaria; and enthusiasm is great.
Local languages
With the help of Elan Vital associations, bOth in Germany and Austria, videos are made increasingly available, some with translation into local languages. Contacts now exist in most countries and more effort is being made to communicate and share information. This means that people can now find out where videos are being shown when traveling from country to country.
Natasha Filatova, who speaks Russian and lives in Germany, is able to provide translated videos for the six people with Knowledge and seven aspirants in and around Moscow whose ability to travel out of Russia is restricted. Translated videos also go to interested people in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Moldova. Others in Russia will also soon benefit once they know the translations are available. One dedicated aspirant from Ukraine has been collecting videos from Germany during his annual trips and is showing them to four other aspirants in his country, painstakingly providing his own live Russian translation from German.
In Bulgaria, two aspirants like to watch videos every night, seven days a week–from a small collection. It is hoped that new stocks will arrive soon–by which time they may well be able to remember current ones word for word.
In Poland, an average of 14 people attend weekly local events in bothe towns, and around five to ten people are introduced through videos every month in Hungary. In both the Czech Republic and Hungary, a single person with Knowledge awaits requests from anyone interested in watching a video.
Piotr Kress reports from Poznan in Poland that they have now 29 videos already translated and are working on getting more done. They have just upgraded their distribution system to get the new ones around their communities more rapidly.
For contact telephone numbers in Eastern Europe, please ask at the information table at your local video event.
New products from Visions
Nothing celebrates life … like life" This quote on the cover of the new introductory book, produced by Visions, does what no title can. It prepares the reader for the excerpts inside which take you simply, step by step, towards a greater understanding of Maharaji and Knowledge.
The book, along with an ever-growing range of other products, is available from Visions International and Elan Vital sales areas–one of which is always present at international events, and sometimes at local video events.
Much of Visions' new material is introductory, such as the video: Introducing MaharajiFulfillment, launched at the Wembley event in London. This has a historical perspective and includes narration set to a colorful montage of daily life.
Videos showing footage from Maharaji's 1998 tour are now also available, including two from the February participation meeting in Miami: Like a watch and One by one
A couple of real treats are the Long Beach '97 Special, a feature length video of last year's three-day event, and The Connection, containing scenes of some very happy Africans spending time with Maharaji, released in response to popular demand.
If not for you
Music recorded live at Long Beach 1997 is now available on CD or cassette. This includes the upbeat Feel like a king, Daya's beautiful rendering of Bob Dylan's, If not for you, and Rhythm of life, sung by Wadi on the last night of the event.
Another new release is an instrumental collection by classical guitarist Manuel Iman, Songs from a grateful heart. These songs are a reflection of heartfelt feelings and gratitude and some are evocative of the early days, when Maharaji first came to the West.
Gifts, designed and manufactured with unusual care and flair, are also available at three-day events, and through mail order, at a wide range of prices. If you like flying, try the rainbow lotus kite. It's designed by an expert, and built to withstand high winds.
The sales area, which seems to get bigger and brighter at each event, is always worth a visit, even if you just like to browse.
6 Connect 1998
Newsround
Event News
A new publication was launched at Long Beach last year. Each evening, excerpts from Maharaji's latest address were rapidly transcribed, proofread and laid out to fill the front page of a one-sheet newspaper.
Further stories, relevant to the event, were gathered by a team of reporters roving around the auditorium. These comprised the bulk of the back page.
Once it had been completed, the master copy of Event News was rushed to a local printer and produced overnight, in time for people to read it on their way into the hall the following morning.
In April, a further three editions of Event News were produced for the Baisakhi program in Delhi. These editions, entirely in Hindi, involved a truly international collaboration between members of the original team and a group of Indian volunteers. As at Long Beach, the first day's version was prepared in advance using material from previous events at the same location. Though this was received with much enthusiasm, the second day's paper in India was not, at first, in such great demand. Many people simply didn't realise that the paper was totally different from day to day. Until this was pointed out to them, they felt reluctant to buy it on the grounds that "they already had a copy:'
Digital technology
Editor Mark Winter commented: "In Miami, readers could believe that we had managed to get last night's speech in print for the following morning but not everyone realised that the photos, too, were fresh. Using digital technology, we were illustrating each page with pictures taken only hours before."
May's Miami Beach editions of Event News represented another technological achievement. Once they had been completed, the finished pages were emailed to Delhi and rushed to a nearby printer. There, they were produced in time for local program-goers to read them at the next night's video event
There will be three editions of the paper at Wembley and limited supply of Miami back issues will be available at Visions sales area there.
The second of three Delhi issues of Event News
Spanish Highlights
News from Granada and Zaragoza, and memories from Barcelona
In Granada, where the enchanted castles seem to come straight from the Thousand and One Nights, magic is also in people's hearts.
Javier Carmona, who lives there, describes how interest in Maharaji and Knowledge has recently grown. "We had been holding video events in a small office but when we returned from the Long Beach event in California ,at the end of 1996, we felt that we could take a step forward and began looking for hotel meeting rooms. We had barely started when seven people became interested in finding out more.
No longer was it just Teresa, Juan, Lola, and Javier. Now they had Joaquin, Maria, and Amanda. One day the hotel manager said the price of the room had gone up. Fortunately, that same day Javier discovered there was a possibility of holding events in the Granada Convention Hall, a prestigious venue in the city.
Now they have 10 video events a month instead of four and 14 aspirants instead of five. Videos are shown in the Press Room, which is widely known throughout Spain. At the first introductory event most of the 40 people in the audience had come for the first time or were aspirants.
"If someone had told me a few years ago that all this was going to happen, I would not have believed it," says Javier. "But I recall when we first booked the Convention Hall, someone told me that it was a very important place and I answered that we had to aim our sights high."
Breaking new ground
Traveling north from Granada you will eventually come across a town surrounded by flat, dry land. This is Zaragoza–famous for being the toughest place in Spain for breaking new ground. Because of this reputation, when firms want to test a new product into the Spanish market they always launch it there first. They know that if they can make it in Zaragoza they can make it anywhere.
Currently there are 20 people with Knowledge and last September they made an effort to step up propagation. They shyly invited new people and carefully selected introductory and follow-up videos and improved their brochures and invitations.
Growing numbers
The result is that there are now 30 aspirants-25 of them regular and 16 of these have been watching videos for more than five months. The numbers are growing every month.
So, there may be a lesson to be learned here. As they say in Zaragoza, "If it works here, it can also work for you."
Barcelona memories
Cast your mind back to 1975 when the first Knowledge session took place in Spain. Ana Picque, currently living in Barcelona, remembers it well. "I remember when I was an aspirant. I would go to listen at the Cardedeu center," she says. She recalls the surprising sight of piles of shoes in the hallway and the strong smell of incense. Those were the years of underground activity as, under Franco's dictatorship, gatherings of more than eight people were prohibited. However, the message gradually spread and in 1976 Maharaji came for the first time, speaking in Madrid and Barcelona.
Vivid memories
Ana has particularly vivid memories of the Marbella bullring in southern Spain in 1978. With little organising experience but a lot of enthusiasm, they managed to pull off an international event. The following year, Maharaji accepted an invitation to come again. For Ana it was unforgettable.
Since then Maharaji has accepted an invitation each year, sometimes to Madrid, sometimes to Barcelona, and sometimes to both cities.
Bulgaria blossoms
For the nine million people who live there, Bulgaria is not just another chapter in the dark tale of 20th century history. It is home. And most Bulgarians never get a chance to travel anywhere else.
Roumiana Beck was born in Sofia, the capital city. Thanks to a family connection in Australia, she was able to go there in 1967 and, some while later, she was granted Australian nationality. She received Knowledge in Sydney in 1974. A keen student of art, Roumiana painted murals and frescos, eventually starting an arts center. Later, she journeyed to America. Throughout her extensive travels though, she nurtured a dream: she wanted, one day, to return to her native land and let others know about her chief source of inspiration - Maharaj Ji's Knowledge.
"This magic," she says, "has affected me very deeply."
"For three years, I went back to Bulgaria periodically. And each time all my friends came over to visit me. I found myself translating tapes from morning to night. So then I began to feel I had to go back to live there. It was a heartfelt feeling."
Two years ago, Roumiana returned permanently. But throughout her first year back in Bulgaria, Roumiana had no video player of her own. She had to borrow a machine from a friendly neighbor. Now, though, on her own equipment, in her own apartment, she is able to show tapes seven nights a week. Still though, Roumiana has to translate those tapes herself.
Fascination
Many of Roumiana's friends and neighbors watch the videos frequently, with fascination, but it is not easy for them to take that interest any further. Even the nearest international events are a prohibitive distance away - and not only must the travel be arranged, but an exit visa must be applied for.
For Roumiana, who still has her Australian passport, this is not such a problem. When one interested person decided, last year, that she really wanted to make Knowledge a reality, a great deal of effort had to be gone to.
"This lady was determined to see Maharaji while he was in Europe. And not only did she hear Maharaji speak, she was selected to receive Knowledge. I felt really happy that she was ready–for the only events she had attended, prior to this, were those little gatherings at my home. It's real proof of how the videos alone can do it for you." | https://www.prem-rawat-bio.org/dlm_pubs/connect/issue1_1998_p06.html | 1,664,442,240 |
Why Pavlov actually won the Nobel Prize – while teaching music to dogsBelow is the edito from the latest edition of Nautilus, titled Variables, a brilliant online journal on all things science. It relates the experiments of Ivan Pavlov, the famous Russian...
by rmlfvr | Oct 13, 2016 | Uncategorised
How to choose wisely when you have too many options – or how to best use TripAdvisor, Amazon, and Yelp?Tom Vanderbilt’s column in Nautilus is preciously rich in some of the best notions in the psychology of choice. We have looked into them before, when it came...
by rmlfvr | Sep 22, 2016 | Uncategorised
If plants can learn and adapt, are they intelligent? This fascinating paper from Nautilus explores the way plants learn, from adapting their foliage to new conditions through to changing their reflexes. When they grow, they even reinforce their trunks in specific... | https://rmlfvr.com/tag/nautilus/ | 1,664,261,526 |
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