text:
PHOENIX OF SPAIN (foaled 17 February 2016) is an Irish-bred, British-trained Thoroughbred racehorse. As a two-year-old in 2018 he showed top-class form to win two races including the Acomb Stakes as well as finishing second in both the Champagne Stakes and the Vertem Futurity Trophy. He recorded his greatest success on his first run of 2019 when he easily defeated a strong field to take the Irish 2000 Guineas. He failed to reproduce his best form in four subsequent starts and was retired from racing at the end of the year.

Background

Phoenix of Spain is a grey colt bred in Ireland by Cherry Faeste. As a foal in December 2016 he was offered for sale at Tattersalls and was bought for 78,000 guineas by Good Will Bloodstock. He returned to the Tattersalls sale ring in October 2017 and was sold to Howson & Houldsworth Bloodstock for 220,000 guineas.[1] The colt entered the ownership of Tony Wechsler and Ann Plummer and was sent into training with Charles Hills at Lambourn in Berkshire. He was ridden in seven of his ten races by Jamie Spencer.

He is from the fifth crop of foals sired by the Prix du Jockey Club winner Lope de Vega. His other foals have included Newspaperofrecord, Belardo, Vega Magic (Memsie Stakes) The Right Man (Al Quoz Sprint) and Santa Ana Lane (Stradbroke Handicap).[2] Phoenix of Spain's dam Lucky Clio showed no racing ability, failing to win in five starts,[3] but did better as a broodmare, producing six other winners. She was distantly descended from La Faisanderie, a full sister to Slieve Gallion.[4]

Racing career

2018: two-year-old season

On 6 July 2018 Phoenix of Spain began his racing career in a novice race (for horses with no more than two previous wins) over seven furlongs at Sandown Park for which he started a 16/1 outsider and came home fourth behind the John Gosden-trained King of Comedy. Later that month in a similar event on the Tapeta surface at Wolverhampton Racecourse the colt was ridden by Callum Shepherd and started the 6/5 favourite against six opponents. After tracking the leaders he went to the front a furlong out and recorded his first success as he won “comfortably” by two and a half lengths.[5] He was then stepped up in class for the Group 3 Acomb Stakes at York Racecourse on 22 August and started at odds of 9/2 in an eight-runner field. Phoenix of Spain was restrained towards the rear by Spencer before taking the lead a furlong out and winning by one and a half lengths from the favourite Watan.[6] After the race Charles Hills said: “He was impressive at Wolverhampton and we felt York would suit him better. I thought Jamie gave him a great ride. He was a bit windy beforehand and he settled him well... You'd like to think a mile would be within his compass this season”.[7]

James Doyle took the ride when Phoenix of Spain contested the Group 2 Champagne Stakes on 15 September at Doncaster Racecourse. He raced in third place and kept on well in the closing stages to finish second of the six runners, beaten one and a quarter lengths by the odds-on favourite Too Darn Hot. The colt returned to the same track on 27 October when he was moved up in class and distance for the Vertem Futurity Trophy over one mile and went off the 11/2 third choice in the betting. Phoenix of Spain came from well off the pace to dispute the lead inside the final furlong, but after being hampered in the closing stages he finished second in a blanket finish, beaten a head by Magna Grecia with Western Australia, Circus Maximus and Great Scot close behind.

In the official ratings of European juveniles for 2018 Phoenix of Spain was given a mark of 112, making him the fourteen pounds inferior to the top-rated Too Darn Hot.[8]

2019: three-year-old season

For his three-year-old debut Phoenix of Spain was sent to Ireland to contest the Irish 2000 Guineas at the Curragh on 25 May and went off at odds of 16/1. Too Darn Hot and Magna Grecia started joint favourites while the other eleven runners included Skardu (Craven Stakes), Mohawk (Royal Lodge Stakes), Shelir (Tetrarch Stakes), Emaraaty Ana (Gimcrack Stakes) and Van Beethoven (Railway Stakes). Phoenix of Spain led from the start, opened up a clear advantage approaching the final furlong and came home three lengths clear of Too Darn Hot in second place.[9] Charles Hills said “The plan wasn’t really to make the running, but Jamie gave him an absolute peach and he’s some horse. He sustained that gallop all the way through and he just keep lengthening. He’s a big horse and whatever he did last year was a bonus. He’s got a hell of a future ahead of him”.[10]

In June at Royal Ascot Phoenix of Spain started 5/2 second favourite for the St James's Palace Stakes but after racing in third place for most of the way he made no impression in the closing stages and finished sixth of the nine runners behind Circus Maximus. At Goodwood Racecourse on 31 July the colt was matched against older horses for the first time in the Sussex Stakes. He led for most of the way before fading in the last quarter mile and came home sixth as Too Darn Hot won from Circus Maximus. In September he was sent to France and ran fifth to Circus Maximus in the Prix du Moulin at Longchamp Racecourse. On his final racecourse appearance Phoenix of Spain contested the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot on 19 October. Ridden by Doyle he raced in second place before dropping out of contention in the last quarter mile and finished tenth behind King of Change, beaten almost twelve lengths by the winner.

Four days after his final race it was announced that Phoenix of Spain had been retired from racing and would begin his career as a breeding stallion at the Irish National Stud in 2020.[11]

Pedigree

-   Through his sire, Phoenix of Spain was inbred 4 × 4 to Machiavellian, meaning that this stallion appears twice in the fourth generation of his pedigree.

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title: Phoenix of Spain

question: What races has the horse won?

answer: The Acomb Stakes and The Curragh [Not sure if that's the name of the race or just where it occurred]

question: When was the horse retired from racing?

answer: Near the end of 2019

question: Who rode Phoenix of Spain in the majority of his races?

answer: Jamie Spencer

question: Where is Phoenix of Spain from?

answer: Ireland

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: Phoenix of Spain is a horse from Ireland born in 2016. He won several two races in 2018 and 2019 and performed well in several others. At the end of 2019, he was retired and began his career as a breeding stallion.


split: test

text:
**Just looking for a little feedback on this. It deals with a couple of metal-heads, so I thought I'd bring it over this way. If you think it's good, tell me. If you think it's garbage, tell me that too.**

***Term Limit***, by The_Bloodening

After knocking a couple of times on the front door of Ben’s rustic suburban colonial house, rustic being the term he himself has used on several occasions to describe the probably-once-beautiful home he’s lived in for the five years we’ve worked together—I might use a different word to describe this place, but rustic fits the bill just as well as any—and waiting a few minutes with no answer, I simply let myself in. He called me an hour ago and asked that I pay him a visit.

The two of us began our shitty jobs at a shitty nearby restaurant on the same day and we hit it off almost instantly. The ultra-lax dress code in place at the time, and since abolished for something a little more uniform, allowed us to display that most important aspect of our respective personalities on our T-shirts—the music we listen to. It was almost like there was some kind of magic at play that day. He introduced himself and told me that he liked my Slayer shirt, because he owned the same one. I liked his Pantera shirt for the same reason. Nothing would be able to stop us now. “Metal brother”, he called me on that first day. Soon, it was “metal brother *for life*.”

  Five years of working together, and the friendship we’ve forged outside of work, and never once have we tired of the jocular arguments about whether Metallica sucked more than Megadeth now. It never mattered that both of us are huge fans of both groups in all of their incarnations. Nearly identical views on most other forms of music—hip-hop, country, radio pop—only strengthened our bond.

 I dated his sister, Rachel, for about a year, until she dumped me for another of Ben’s friends, because, she said, he has a car. I guess that’s how it goes—leave the schmuck with a decent-enough job for this guy, Todd (it’s always a fucking Todd, too), who, though he did indeed have a car, was forced by necessity to abandon his embryonic dreams of rock superstardom and sell his guitar so that he could put gas in his car to drive Rachel to the hospital one night, only to be told that it was not in fact cramps and bloating from a diet poor in all of the things one needs to be healthy, but instead it was some kind of uterine disorder and now she cannot have children. Todd was indifferent, upset only that he realized all too late that he could have asked his grandmother for the gas money instead.

Ben and I quickly found ourselves embroiled in a take-no-prisoners game of one-upmanship. “See this,” he said to me one day, pointing to a long, gnarly scar running the length of his forearm and across his elbow, “Cannibal Corpse, ’99. Diving off the stage, I caught some dude’s shoulder spike. Tore right through me. I got a roll of duct tape from one of the sound guys and wrapped it up right there. When I got home, I chugged half a fifth of Absolut and sewed it up myself.” The last part was self-evident.

“Oh, yeah,” I told him. “Where you should have definitely gone to the hospital, I actually did. On the frontlines of a Soulfly show, I found myself on the bottom of a twenty-person dog-pile. I was fucked when the first guy fell on me—some dude who must have been at least three-fifty. The other nineteen guys were just there for the show. After excavating my corpse from the wreckage, it was apparent my leg was broken,” I said, showing him my much less-conspicuous scar, one that cut my favorite tattoo clean in half. “But, as they say, the show must go on. So, they wheeled my carcass off the grounds and into an ambulance, my middle finger, growing taller and more defiant by the second, only came back down once I was safely in the back of that thing. That was when the pain really started to make itself known.”

Our main divergence is probably black and death metal. Ben prefers death metal, and you can barely get him to listen to any kind of black metal before he inevitably brings up Immortal and their ridiculous corpse-painted romps through Northern forests. It’s hard to disagree. Myself, I like my metal like I like my women: Black and passionate. One of life’s sad ironies is the sheer dearth of black women into black metal.

Ben’s biggest problem with the early-mid black metal scene was something shared by many people of many musical persuasions. “The whole church burning thing is totally ill-conceived and childish. Anyone can wait until midnight on a Tuesday when a church is totally empty. If Varg and those buffoons had any balls, they’d have gone in there on a Sunday morning with chainsaws and tear gas, and slaughtered everyone inside before lighting their blaze in the Northern sky, thus killing two birds with one stone: You get rid of the churches, which is good, but you also take out all of those with the most to gain by rebuilding those disgusting ungodly constructs.” It’s hard to argue with logic that sound.

When I open his door and step inside, I find the usual mess of beer cans on the table, in the sink, on the floor surrounding the couch, and even stuffed into the couch cushions. I call out his name a few times and get no response in return.

Among the mess on his table lay a small black handgun, a 9mm. Glock with the words “Term Limit” etched erratically across the barrel. I pick the weapon up and hold it in my hand, turning it in my palm and examining it in the dim light shining in from outside. I try to spin it around my finger like I’m fucking Doc Holliday, but it slips from my hand and lands on my foot. The loud smack-thud of the pistol on my foot, then the floor, followed by my own exclamation of pain and terror convinces me that Ben just isn’t home. Term Limit. It dawns on me that my fingerprints are all over this thing. Oh well, if I’m going to be implicated in a murder, I might as well make the 24-hour cycle for it.

I place the gun back on the table where I found it and head upstairs to use the bathroom, calling his name as I ascend the steps. The bathroom door is closed and I knock before entering. It’s empty and I relieve myself. When I come out, I cross the narrow corridor to Ben’s room and knock. Maybe he’s sleeping. No answer again, so I open the door to peek inside.

I hear from his stereo the faint sound of Deicide’s *Once Upon the Cross*, his all-time favorite record, and one that should, admittedly, never be played at such a low volume. The room is dark, but enough light shines through the drawn shades to reveal the silhouette of my best friend swinging from the ceiling by his neck. Fuck. This is why he brought me here. I sure wish I had a Lady Gaga CD to put in the player, so the blame for this death might go to someone a little more deserving of public outrage than Glen Benton. Who am I kidding? No one but me is going to care about this. He wanted me to find him. He wanted me to find the note, too.

Ben never gave any indication that this would be his preferred end. Maybe he didn’t prefer it. Nevertheless, he’s dead, and the time for decoding preferences seems to have passed. I flipped on the light, and aside from the obvious dead body pendulating slowly in the air, the ceiling creaking with each subtle shift in Ben’s direction, nothing appears out of place. He’s wearing the same shirt I had on the day we met, the Slayer shirt depicting fields of hanging victims, dead or awaiting torture. I’m wearing the same shirt today. This has happened a hundred times in the years that we’ve been friends. I guess this is the last time.

I pick up the folded piece of paper that lay beneath his feet. I note my name scribbled on the outside before opening it. Thankfully, he typed it out and probably printed it at the library. I don’t think he was too concerned with getting his message just right—I’ve heard his message, but I guess he left this last part out. He probably just wanted me to be able to read it. His penmanship was never up to snuff.

>Tony,

>Well, obviously…

>Somewhere along the line I contracted HIV. Probably Todd. We were sharing a couple of years back. You remember. I know you do because you always gave me that look when I told you I wasnt. Sure, the guy is the poster child for AIDS, but I rationalized myself into oblvion. Surely Rachels been infected too. Maybe I’ll see her soon. Anyway, Term Limits yours. I know you couldn’t keep your grubby hands off of it so you might as well take it before the cops get here. My gift to you. Do whats right with it. There are few exceptable excuses for possessing such a thing. Make it count.

>Your metal brother forever,
>Ben

>ps it was metallica all along

I notice a similar note made out to Todd and Rachel, but leave it untouched. They should have been here by now. I mean, how’d I beat them on foot? They’ll make it eventually.

I start the album over and turn it up to an appropriate volume. Before making my way down the staircase, I grab Ben’s cold limp hand, forcing upon him one last clenched fist, which immediately falls limp.

Downstairs, I pick up Term Limit and place it in my waistband and open the door, taking my final exit. As I’m leaving, I see Todd and Rachel getting out of their car. “He’s upstairs,” I tell them. “He’s got something for you guys. See you around.”

title: A short story I'm looking for feedback on, if you don't mind

question: Summarize the kind of camaraderie and or friendship between Ben and Tony (the narrator).

answer: Ben and Tony met at a nearby restaurant and became friends the same day. They were both wearing t-shirts with inscriptions of their favorite musician on them. Both approved of each other's shirt and that was the beginning of their friendship. Both young men seem to agree on almost everything regarding metal bands. They both loved Metallica and Megadeth. They also enjoy the game of one-upmanship where each felt they have gone through a much worse experience than the other.

question: Where did Ben and Tony work after leaving the nearby "shitty restaurant"?

question: Why does Tony dislike Todd so much?

answer: Tony dislikes Todd because Rachel, his former girlfriend and friend's sister, is now dating Todd. He is also dismissive of Todd because he believes Todd abandoned his dream of being a musician and sold his guitar to buy gas in his car. He also thinks Todd is not a good guy because he learnt Todd was indifferent to the news that Rachel had an infection that will prevent her from having children.


text:
The sun filters through the canopy of the light poles, trees, and houses. It covers small swaths of land in leprous splotches. The leaves sag and brush against the ground in silent supplication. Reaching towards the sunlight and dew stained grass, plagued with swarming insects that enrich and take away from the plants. Huge bulbs hang from the fibrous branches and a slug eats a rotten tomato in the potting soil. A worm crawls through the confines of the pot.

The leaves rustle against the breeze. A few errant leaves die and fall to the ground not yet rotted still retaining the semblance of life. Birds fly in ovals and land on humming power lines. They stare at the houses and shit. A car door slams in the distance and the day begins. In chaotic harmony other doors slam within fifteen minute intervals and the hums and roars of engines lead the townsfolk to their jobs.

Lily emerges from the house of her father and walks around its perimeter. She examines the plants and takes inventory. She pokes the soil and throws old fruit where she finds room. A truck pulls into the driveway and her father shuts the door silently and walks around the house.

He finds her pouring water into a pot. “That might be too much water.”

“I don’t think so. There are three tomato plants here. They must all fight over the water and I’ve been diligent about watering them everyday, so I don’t think it’s too much. I could possibly skip a day though. How was work?”

“Another ten hours of bullshit. Inspecting parts, counting inventory dealing with that dickhead Dave. Has anyone called you back yet?”

“No, not that I’m aware of, however, I did just wake up.”

He lights a cigarette. “Keep telling jokes like that and you could go on tour.”

She walks to the empty potting soil and examines it. A stray shoot pushes through the ground towards the sky. “I think this red onion might have actually sprouted another onion. I can’t be sure yet, but there is a green shoot coming out of it.”

He walks over to the plant. “Well, wait and see is all I can tell you. With that, I’m off to bed for the day.”

“Night.” She calls after him while he ascends the steps towards the house.

She walks around the rest, notes the weeds, and the old grass seed. A young woman walks by with a small dog. Lily waves at the woman. “Cute dog.”

She returns to the house and starts a load of laundry. The syrup like detergent dances around the centrifugal tube and water fills the basin. Lily searches the refrigerator for eggs and cooks one. She opens her laptop and clicks on the web browser. A message from an old boyfriend and several others checking on her.

“I don’t know why you feel that religion is such an important thing, but I won’t stand in your way of worshiping as long as you don’t tell me I’m going to Hell or that I’m sinful. I won’t be judged by you. Go to your church, but don’t bother trying to date me if you think it will make such a major conflict between us.” No smiley face. Send.

She checks the two usual job sites and emails her resume to some temp service that promises her that their jobs can lead to full time positions. The usual forums offer no advice in the job hunt only the same mixture of cynicism and hope. Typing a post, she hears the egg sizzle. She walks to the stove and flips the egg, sprinkles pepper on it, and returns to the computer.

The weather offers no solace to her. Delayed rains only bring the hope of no flash floods. Snores from the bedroom assure her that her father remains asleep. A search brings up a redhead from England who exposes her breasts and pantomimes a blowjob. Lily stares at this woman.

We’d hold hands and make love. It would be beautiful and we’d be beautiful. We could use each other’s youth and then discard one another. I don’t see what’s wrong with that. Just to brush your soft lips or to run my fingers through your hair, would that be too much to ask. We could search for makeup together or play video games. We could feign gamer girl or be them, we could pretend that we hate men, but we wouldn’t. The men where you are aren’t insane like the ones here. They won’t lie and discard us. They’ll join us in our using of them and understand that we’re enjoying one another not lying to one another. If only,…if only…I could…see you. Ah.

Lily raises her panties and closes the laptop. Washing her hands and drying them on a dish towel,  she then returns to the egg and places it on a piece of buttered toast. The pepper tickles her nose and she stifles a sneeze. The toast crunches and the egg’s yolk explodes in her mouth.

In the distance, metalworkers carry empty canisters of Oxygen and Butane to a collection truck for refilling. The sun stops before the entrance of the metallurgist's shop and he closes the shop door. The truck drives off and whips dust. The metallurgist gulps from a water bottle and spits. He returns to the brick building and continues to spark steel.

Lily submerges her hands into the hot water and scrubs the dirt and grime of the dishes. In the basin, the water sloshes and spills onto the counter. Plates delicately klink in the drainer. Lily spies from across the street, the metal workers hoisting long tubes of Oxygen into the back of a truck. She sighs slightly and continues to wash.

She opens a book and starts to take notes and to underline passages. She marks a date on her calendar and then shuts it. She studies bastardizations of classic authors with half paragraph blurbs about their lives and their works translated from the original language. Twisting the top off of a beer, she sits back down and reads.

Her father yawns and belches. He stomps into the room. “What are you doing?”

“Studying for this class. It’s something to do with the Classics. Something about Shakespeare and Chaucer. I don’t really care about who else. I also need to study for that Chemistry test, but I really don’t feel like it. Did you know that there are people in the world that don’t go to college and they end up fine.” She sips.

“Yeah, they end up working the same job for ten plus years and never go anyway. I’m not sending you to college to stay in one spot. I want you to learn something that will make you better. I don’t want you to end up like those idiots who take pictures of themselves in the bathroom of restaurants with their tits hanging out, or getting pregnant by accident. College will help you, it’s just that the help is abstract and non-practical. I don’t live by practical it’s worthless. That blond girl that worked at the fast-food joint, you remember?”

“No why?’ Lily sips.

“She got her degree in nursing through a technical program. She’s stuck there, because she can’t for two goddamn words to save her life. All she can do is suck dick. She’ll be lucky if anyone will want the corn husk of her shell after she’s popped out a few unplanned kids. That may be mean, but she’s stupid and she deserves to remain stupid. Or that nice homosexual boy, said that being a manager was his only dream in the world other than his boyfriend? He’ll be lucky if a small town like this doesn’t lynch him. He can be nice all he wants, but when he acts like that, then we’ll people don’t like that. Those people’s transgressions will come back to them and they’ll feel it one way or the other.”

“I guess so. What time do you go to work?”

“I leave at around seven. It’s enough time to read and to get  shower.” He walks into the bathroom and Lily can hear the shower head ignite.

She finishes the beer and tosses the bottle into the trash can. She returns to her work, and then a knock from the door. She answers. “Yes?”

“Hi, can I come in?”

“No Kyle. You cannot. Please leave and don’t speak to me again.”

“Why not?”

She places a hand on her hip. “I don’t want to see you again. That’s all you need to know.”

“I deserve more than that, sweetie.”

“Fuck off.” She shuts the door in his face.

Kyle remains on the porch in front of the door. He sees a robin’s nest on the ground and steps on an eggshell. He opens the car door and slams it. The transmission sputters as he accelerates away.

Lily returns to her work and rubs her temples. She massages a loose strand of hair into a small knot and then untangles it. Her father emerges from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and searches through the dryer.  He walks off into his bedroom and dresses. When he returns, the towel looks like a small wash rag in his leathery hands as he scrubs his hair, a practice that has lead to his need for a wig.

title: Unfinished piece.

question: Summarize Lily's main activities for the day as described in the passage.

answer:
Lily walked around the house, examining the plants and poking the soil underneath them. She watered the plants for a little while, telling her father about the red onion that may have been sprouting. She took note of the weeds and waved to a woman walking by.
Lily returned to the house and did a bit of laundry. Then she took an egg from the refrigerator to cook. While the egg cooks, she opened her laptop and checks out her messages and a couple of job sites. She returned to her cooked egg, placing it on a piece of buttered toast. She then washed the dishes while she watched metalworkers across the street carrying empty canisters of oxygen and butane. After the dishes were done, Lily said down to study for her Classics class.

question: What school subjects is Lily interested in?


text:
The Australian town of Bairnsdale in Victoria – 300km east of Melbourne – is known as the gateway to east Gippsland’s natural wonders. It is also the scene of a 10-year battle between a group of residents and the East Gippsland shire council over a colony of grey-headed flying foxes that roost along the town’s Mitchell River.

In 2014, the council received federal government approval to clear critical habitat in a three-stage process, the first occurring in 2015. The debate is now heating up in the approach of stage-two clearing, which the council intends to complete by the end of 2018.

[The nightly spectacle of grey-headed flying foxes departing their Bairnsdale camp to fly up the Mitchell River to feed.]

-   The nightly spectacle of grey-headed flying foxes departing their Bairnsdale camp to fly up the Mitchell River to feed

The council maintains the clearing is needed to remove dead or dying trees that make up almost the bats’ entire habitat. The council’s grey-headed flying fox roost site revegetation plan includes a requirement that the area be replanted with trees as a condition of the clearing. Revegetation of stage one has not yet occurred, although the clearing took place three years ago.

[Lisa Roberts and her daughter Lola photograph the flying foxes at the site of the proposed stage-two clearing.]

Council spokesman Chris Waites says: “The delay of the revegetation since the 2015 clearing was due to pathway works, and the council intends on completing it [the revegetation of stage one] this calendar year.”

The group opposing the clearance has undertaken freedom-of-information requests to expose what it considers a breach of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act by the shire, objecting on the grounds that the Bairnsdale colony is classified as nationally important in the department of environment and energy’s national flying fox monitoring program. It also claims some of the federal government’s conditions for clearing have not been met, including revegetation and consultation about the impact on the bats.

Local bat campaigner Lisa Roberts has lived near the roost site since 2003, documenting the bats’ behaviour and breeding activity, and has campaigned against the clearing of the grey-headed flying fox habitat since 2013.

[Lisa Roberts and Lola.]

-   Lisa Roberts and her daughter Lola have recently documented pups and mothers at the roost

“I hold serious concerns about the next stage of clearing. I have captured images of mothers and their pups, indicating it’s a maternal roosting site, not just a summer camp and, therefore, have requested an urgent pause and review of the tree removal,” says Roberts.

The documentation behind the council’s clearing permit application states there is no data or knowledge on where the bats may go when the trees are cleared or what impact it will have on the colony’s population.

“We have recently engaged an ecologist to monitor the colony but as stated in our management plan, there is no information on where the colony may roost following the clearing,” Waites says.

[Grey-headed flying fox mother and pup.]

-   Grey-headed flying fox mother and pup

Bairnsdale is not the first town to debate the competing needs of bats and the people that live near them – it is just one of many towns and cities along the east coast of Australia where similar debates rage. Advocates of clearing cite noise, smell, disease and impact on agriculture of bats entering the urban environment, while opponents claim the “solutions” offered by councils are often violent, environmentally destructive and ineffective.

Front of mind for bat campaigners such as Roberts is the declining size of bat populations across Australia. Grey-headed flying fox numbers are falling by 30% a year, mostly due to habitat loss. At this trajectory, the species will be nationally extinct within 100 years.

[A grey-headed flying fox gliding through the air.]

-   A grey-headed flying fox gliding through the air

“In many ways the flying fox is emblematic of Australia’s human-wildlife conflict when wild animals enter the urban environment,” Roberts says.

She believes the proposed next stage of clearing in Bairnsdale targets trees most used by the colony and the bats will simply relocate to private land.

Dr David Westcott, a senior principal research scientist at the CSIRO, visited Bairnsdale before the stage-one clearing in 2015 and addressed a public meeting. “History has shown it is easier and more successful to train humans to live with flying foxes than the other way around,” he says.

[Grey-headed flying foxes socialise at Melbourne’s Yarra Bend park.]

[An adult grey-headed flying fox at Yarra Bend.]

-   Grey-headed flying foxes socialise (left) and an adult grey-headed flying fox at Yarra Bend at Melbourne’s Yarra Bend park

Australia’s “bat solutions” have achieved limited success at great financial cost. In Melbourne, 30% of a colony in the city’s botanical gardens was lost after the Melbourne city council spent $6m relocating it. On the Sunshine Coast, relocation efforts resulted in a new bat camp being established 400 metres from the initial camp, and in Batemans Bay, the council asked for $2.5m from the federal government to disperse a colony.

[The Yarra Bend Park grey-headed flying fox colony takes flight over Melbourne.]

-   A grey-headed flying fox colony takes flight over Melbourne

Westcott says: “The key thing is that communities understand what it is that they are getting themselves into when they try and move a camp. And while it might work, there is a very good chance that it will only work temporarily [for days or weeks], that it won’t work at all, or will make matters worse.”

Roberts believes the Bairsndale roost site could be a major tourist attraction. “We made a walking map at the gallery for tourists with coffee and cultural attractions. Tourists love the whole concept of them,” she says.

Similar efforts have been implemented in Bellingen, New South Wales, and Yarra Bend in Melbourne, where councils now market the bat roosts as tourist attractions.

question: What does the text say about Lisa Roberts?

answer: Lisa Roberts is a local bat campaigner in Gippsland, Australia. She has lived near the grey-headed flying foxes' roost since 2003, and has documented the bats' behavior and breeding activity. She has campaigned against the clearing of the bat habitat since 2013. She says she holds serious concerns about the next stage of clearing, pointing out the site is a maternal roost. She requests an urgent pause on the tree removal. Campaigners like her are concerned by the declining size of bat populations across Australia. Roberts also argues that the roost site could be a major tourist attraction.

question: Summarize why the clearing is needed.

answer: In 2014, the council of Gippsland received federal government approval to clear critical habitat in a three stage process. They maintained that the clearing is needed to remove dead or dying trees, which make up almost the bats' entire habitat. Most advocates of clearing see noise, smell, disease, and impact on agriculture of bats entering the urban environment as the issue.

question: What does the text say about Australia's "bat solutions"?

answer: The article claims that Australia's "bat solutions" have achieved only limited success at a great financial cost. Melbourne's city council's decision to relocate a colony of bats in the city's botanical gardens caused 30% of the colony to be lost. The council spent $6 million relocating it. On the Sunshine Coast, a relocation effort resulted in a new bat camp being established 400 meters from its initial camp. Opponents of these solutions have called them violent, ineffective, and environmentally destructive.

question: What does the text say about fruit bats?


text:
                                           The King

	Our King has always been a little different. He’s very quiet I haven’t really seen him give anyone orders at all either. Whenever something needs to be done I see him doing it. He doesn’t just sit around; I’ve actually seen him go into the mines. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m a child but not even the adults in the village are as active as him.

       He’s always leaving the kingdom and coming back with tons of different things. I can’t always see what he’s coming back with, but I’ve seen bones, some kind of meat that just looks bad, and even strange looking pearls. And the dogs! He has so many dogs that there’s not a single wild dog here. He must be traveling great distances to find all these dogs, because I know they’re not from here.

	When I see him doing all these strange things I start asking my parents what it is he’s doing, and they tell me: “don’t question the king,” but they never tell me why. He doesn’t look old, so he can’t be all that wise. All that work he does and all the times he leaves - it’s not normal.  I was  sick of wondering.

	I finally got into his castle and he was at his workbench. When I got closer he looked back at me, seemingly confused, but he turned back around and kept tinkering with some weird red dust. I got closer and mustered up the courage to ask him as politely as I could, “How come you’re so different than everyone else?” The king stopped, stood up and looked at me. He asked, “Excuse me?” and I said it again. He chuckled briefly under his breath and said “it seems like you’re different too.”

       He started to tell me a story. “When I was your age, I lived in a different kingdom and I felt the same way about my king. I would go to school and all the kids and the teachers would seem to just drift through their lives, but not the king; he was always spontaneous. I was finally sick of that curious feeling, so I went and talked to my king and he told me his story. Sometime afterwards the kingdom was destroyed and all the people inside were attacked by monsters. It was terrible. There were explosions, arrows, and the groans of the undead.

	I was able to escape, but barely. I fought my way out with nothing but my hands. finally I found a break in the chaos and I found a cave and covered the entrance with dirt. I was devastated, but I wanted to live so I built a shelter.  I enjoyed building. Then since I had built my shelter I began mining - I enjoyed that as well. I had so many supplies I decided to build more and I ended up building a village. Strangely enough people appeared. That village moved on to become this kingdom. That’s my story.”

	I asked him why he told me all that. and he told me simply because I was a player. A player? I was so confused. He then told me that only players are kings. I didn’t understand. He went on by asking me what my earliest memory is and I told him standing outside. “Exactly,” He said. “That was the first time you entered this world.” He started talking about how this life isn’t real and that once he’s gone he’ll be able to enter the real world again.

	He began taking me adventuring with him, that’s when he would explain things and share his knowledge with me. “When a king dies, everything he ever did goes with him. That’s how my king’s old kingdom was destroyed. I left my Kingdom and made a village. I have people of my own now. My king was killed by a mob of three suicide creatures right outside his gate. I saw everything he had made disappear along with him.” That’s when I believed everything he told me - while he took me adventuring with him. Now I know that there is a better life to be had out of this one. A less edged and more rounded one. Thank you king Steve. Minecraft Steve.

title: The King (Minecraft short story)

question: What motivated the king to create the village?

answer: The king was passionate about building and hence ended up creating a village, where people came and settled.

question: What was the reason behind the little boy's curiosity about his king?

answer: The little boy saw that his king stood out from the rest, he would travel a lot and work, this built the boy's curiosity about his king.

question: What must have the king thought of the boy?

answer: It may be implied that the king would have liked the boy's curiosity, he may have also thought that he is seeing a reflection of himself in this boy.

question: How is the reader supposed to feel about the king?

answer: It may be implied that the reader is supposed to think of the king as an ordinary man, someone who does not think highly of himself. The king is like just another person living in the village.


text:
[Photopic (black) and scotopic (green) luminosity functions.[1] The photopic includes the CIE 1931 standard[2] (solid), the Judd–Vos 1978 modified data[3] (dashed), and the Sharpe, Stockman, Jagla & Jägle 2005 data[4] (dotted). The horizontal axis is wavelength in nm.] []

A LUMINOSITY FUNCTION or LUMINOUS EFFICIENCY FUNCTION describes the average spectral sensitivity of human visual perception of brightness. It is based on subjective judgements of which of a pair of different-colored lights is brighter, to describe relative sensitivity to light of different wavelengths. It should not be considered perfectly accurate, but it is a good representation of visual sensitivity of the human eye and it is valuable as a baseline for experimental purposes. Different luminosity functions apply under different lighting condition, varying from photopic in brightly lit conditions through mesotopic to scotopic under low lighting conditions. Without qualification, _the luminosity function_ generally refers to the photopic luminosity function.

The CIE photopic luminosity function (_λ_) or _V_(_λ_) is a standard function established by the Commission Internationale de l'Éclairage (CIE) and may be used to convert radiant energy into luminous (i.e., visible) energy. It also forms the central color matching function in the CIE 1931 color space.

Details

There are two luminosity functions in common use. For everyday light levels, the photopic luminosity function best approximates the response of the human eye. For low light levels, the response of the human eye changes, and the scotopic curve applies. The photopic curve is the CIE standard curve used in the CIE 1931 color space.

The luminous flux (or visible power) in a light source is defined by the photopic luminosity function. The following equation calculates the total luminous flux in a source of light:

    $\Phi_\mathrm{v} = 683.002\ \mathrm{lm/W} \cdot \int^\infin_0 \overline{y}(\lambda) \Phi_{\mathrm{e},\lambda}(\lambda)\, \mathrm{d}\lambda,$

where

-   Φv is the luminous flux, in lumens;
-   Φe,λ is the spectral radiant flux, in watts per nanometre;
-   (_λ_), also known as _V_(_λ_), is the luminosity function, dimensionless;

-   _λ_ is the wavelength, in nanometres.

Formally, the integral is the inner product of the luminosity function with the spectral power distribution.[5] In practice, the integral is replaced by a sum over discrete wavelengths for which tabulated values of the luminosity function are available. The CIE distributes standard tables with luminosity function values at intervals from to .[6]

The standard luminosity function is normalized to a peak value of unity at (see luminous coefficient). The value of the constant in front of the integral is usually rounded off to . The small excess fractional value comes from the slight mismatch between the definition of the lumen and the peak of the luminosity function. The lumen is defined to be unity for a radiant energy of at a frequency of , which corresponds to a standard air wavelength of rather than , which is the peak of the luminosity curve. The value of (_λ_) is at , so that a value of 683/ = 683.002 is the multiplicative constant.[7]

The number 683 is connected to the modern (1979) definition of the candela, the unit of luminous intensity.[8] This arbitrary number made the new definition give numbers equivalent to those from the old definition of the candela.

Improvements to the standard

The CIE 1924 photopic _V_(_λ_) luminosity function,[9] which is included in the CIE 1931 color-matching functions as the (_λ_) function, has long been acknowledged to underestimate the contribution of the blue end of the spectrum to perceived luminance. There have been numerous attempts to improve the standard function, to make it more representative of human vision. Judd in 1951,[10] improved by Vos in 1978,[11] resulted in a function known as CIE _V_M(_λ_).[12] More recently, Sharpe, Stockman, Jagla & Jägle (2005) developed a function consistent with the Stockman & Sharpe cone fundamentals;[13] their curves are plotted in the figure above.

ISO Standard

The ISO standard is ISO 11664-1:2007, soon to be replaced by ISO/CIE FDIS 11664-1. The standard provides an incremental table by nm of each value in the visible range.[14] [15]

Scotopic luminosity

For very low levels of intensity (scotopic vision), the sensitivity of the eye is mediated by rods, not cones, and shifts toward the violet, peaking around for young eyes; the sensitivity is equivalent to [16] or [17] at this peak.

The standard scotopic luminosity function or _V_{{′}}(_λ_) was adopted by the CIE in 1951, based on measurements by Wald (1945) and by Crawford (1949).[18]

Color blindness

[Protanopic (green) and deuteranopic (red) luminosity functions.[19] For comparison, the standard photopic curve is shown in yellow.] Color blindness changes the sensitivity of the eye as a function of wavelength. For people with protanopia, the peak of the eye's response is shifted toward the short-wave part of the spectrum (approximately 540 nm), while for people suffering deuteranopia, there is a slight shift in the peak of the spectrum, to about 560 nm.[20] People with protanopia have essentially no sensitivity to light of wavelengths more than 670 nm.

Most non-primate mammals have the same luminosity function as people with protanopia. Their insensitivity to long-wavelength red light makes it possible to use such illumination while studying the nocturnal life of animals.[21]

For older people with normal color vision, the crystalline lens may become slightly yellow due to cataracts, which moves the maximum of sensitivity to the red part of the spectrum and narrows the range of perceived wavelengths.

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title: Luminosity function

question: What is a luminosity function?

answer: The luminosity function describes the average spectral sensitivity of human visual perception of brightness. As a measure it combines subjective measurements of human perception (whether a light appears brighter or dimmer) with measurements of the wavelengths of light taken from optics. Thus different luminosity functions apply under different lighting conditions, due to the quasi-subjective element.

question: Describe the difference between formal luminosity function integral and luminosity functions in practice.

answer: There are two luminosity functions in common use. For low light levels the scotopic curve applies. However, for high light levels the luminosity curve applies. The luminosity function integral is formally the inner product of the luminosity function over the special product distribution. In practice, the integral is replaced by a sum over discrete wavelengths which have been pre-computed.

question: How does color blindness effect the luminosity function?

answer: Color blindness changes the sensitivity of the eye as a function of wavelength. Depending on proanopia or deuteranopia, there is a shift in the spectrum at either 540 or 560 nanometers. People with protanopia have essentially no sensitivity to light with wavelengths of more than 670 nanometers.


text:
Andy Ngo, the right-wing journalist and provocateur who was embraced by mainstream Republicans and covered favorably in mainstream media after he was attacked by antifa activists during a street fight in Portland, Oregon, may suddenly be persona non grata among conservatives. Nearly all mentions of Ngo were scrubbed from the upscale right-wing publication Quillette after a newly-released video showed him acting friendly with members of Patriot Prayer, a far-right hate group that has repeatedly sought out fights with leftists.

Ngo, who has used selectively edited videos to paint antifa as a violent, criminal group was hit with punches and milkshakes during a clash between antifa activists and members of the Proud Boys, an organization labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Many on the right rallied around Ngo after that altercation, and spread false rumors that the milkshakes thrown at him and others had contained quick-dry cement.

Ngo used his newfound fame to boost his profile, appearing on Fox News and other cable news outlets and embracing his victimhood.

Just weeks later, however, a video surfaced on Twitter showing Ngo pal around with the Proud Boys-adjacent group Patriot Prayer.

The video shows Ngo laughing as the group plans a violent attack on antifa members at a Portland bar in May. The video surfaced as part of a lawsuit brought by the bar, accusing Patriot Prayer members of causing a riot.

The Portland Mercury reports that Patriot Prayer members targeted antifa while they were celebrating a day of peaceful May Day celebrations. The lawsuit brought by the bar owners alleges that Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson and six others trespassed onto the property with the aim of engaging in violence.

The video of Ngo laughing as the group plans their attack, wrote Portland Mercury news editor Alex Zielinski, “is the clearest evidence I’ve seen supporting the claim that [Patriot Prayer] & leader Joy Gibson were intent on instigating a fight that afternoon.”

The video shows members discuss their weapons and making preparations for the attack. Ngo is present the entire time and can be seen laughing at certain points.

“There’s no way he couldn’t know the group was planning on instigating violence,” Zielinski wrote.

In Ngo’s coverage of the violence, however, videos of the attack were selectively edited to remove violence by Patriot Prayer members. His tweets entirely blamed antifa for the violence.

“As more people send me clips, it becomes clear that Andy’s work is plagued by these dishonest edits," wrote a Twitter user who has posted numerous videos discrediting Ngo’s tweets. "For example, in this clip, he edited out some goons stomping a man’s head, and did it with a sloppy looking jump-cut in his own clip.”

Quillette, where Ngo worked as a photo editor until Monday, announced after the video surfaced that Ngo was leaving his job at the site. Ngo’s name was scrubbed from the site, The Daily Beast reported.

Quillette editor-in-chief Claire Lehmann told The Daily Beast that Ngo left the site weeks earlier but the move was not publicized until Monday.

“Andy actually moved on from Quillette a few weeks ago because he is undertaking bigger & better projects, we just hadn't updated the website and he hadn't updated his Twitter bio until today,” she told the Daily Beast. “I haven’t seen the video,” she added.

Lehmann also said that Ngo had been on a “break” from a “brain injury” he suffered at the Portland rally.

Ngo, however, did not remove Quillette from his Twitter bio until Monday, noted National Observer reporter Caroline Orr, the same day that the Patriot Prayer video was released.

Meanwhile, Ngo’s crowdfunding campaign has raised nearly $195,000 since the Portland attack, which was even cited in a letter sent by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to the Justice Department.

Cruz cited the Ngo incident to demand that the FBI investigate Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and prosecute antifa members under the RICO statute. Cruz’s call was amplified by President Trump to his 63 million followers on Twitter.

“At least give Andy Ngo credit,” wrote HuffPost reporter Luke O’Brien, for “lifting $200k off some of the dumbest people alive. Right-wing writers staked their reputations on this guy. Ted Cruz based an anti-anti-fascist congressional resolution on Ngo.”

question: Why was Ngo attacked?

answer: Ngo has used selectively edited videos to show antifa as a violent, criminal group. In the videos that he shared, the violence by Patriot Prayer was edited out and his tweets entirely blamed antifa for the violence. After the video surfaced, Quillette, where Ngo worked, announced that hewas leaving his job at the site.

question: What is Ngo's crowdfunding campaign about?

question: Explain what was happening in the video.

answer: In the video, the group members are seen discussing their weapons and making preparations for the attack. Ngo is also present the entire time and is seen laughing at certain points.

question: How did social media react to the video?

answer: A Twitter user says that as he sees more and more clips, it's becoming clear that Ngo's work is plagued by these dishonest edits. He further adds that in a certain video, Ngo has edited out some goons stomping a man's head.


text:
The LLEWELLYN GLACIER is a glacier located in British Columbia. It is the second-largest glacier in the Juneau Icefield. The glacier has rapidly retreated as of recent, and on June 6, 2018, a large kilometre-sized chunk of the narrow tongue of the glacier broke off and plunged into Atlin Lake.[1]

[1]

title: Llewellyn Glacier

question: What has caused the retreat of the glacier and the falling off of such a huge chunk?

answer: Presumably the green house effect and global warming.


text:
DANIEL JUDAH ELAZAR (August 25, 1934 – December 2, 1999) was a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University (Israel) and Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[1] He was the Director of the Center for the Study of Federalism at Temple University and the founder and president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Biography

Elazar was born in Minneapolis in 1934. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago where he studied under renowned federalism scholar Morton Grodzins. He maintained residences in Philadelphia and Jerusalem. He was married to Harriet, with whom he had three children.[2]

Academic career

Elazar was a leading political scientist and specialist in the study of federalism, political culture, the Jewish political tradition, Israel and the world Jewish community. As founder and President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, he headed the major independent Jewish “think tank” concerned with analyzing and solving the key problems facing Israel and world Jewry. He was Professor of Political Science at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he founded and directed the Center for the Study of Federalism, a leading federalism research institute. He held the Senator N.M. Paterson Professorship in Intergovernmental Relations at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, heading its Institute for Local Government. In 1986, President Reagan appointed him a citizen member of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, the major intergovernmental agency dealing with federalism issues. He was appointed for a second term in 1988 and a third in 1991. He was the founding president of the International Association of Centers for Federal Studies, Secretary of the American Political Science Association, was Chairman of the Israel Political Science Association, and was a member of various consultative bodies of the Israeli government.

Elazar was the author or editor of more than 60 books and many other publications including a 4-volume study of the Covenant Tradition in Politics, as well as Community and Polity, The Jewish Polity, and People and Polity, a trilogy on Jewish political and community organization from earliest times to the present. He also founded and edited the scholarly journal Jewish Political Studies Review. His books in the area of federalism include _The American Partnership_ (1962); _American Federalism: A View from the States_ (1966); _The American Mosaic_ (1994); and _Exploring Federalism_ (1987). He was also the author of a multi-generational study of the development of civil community in midwestern cities. The research produced _Cities of the Prairie_ (1970), _Cities of the Prairie Revisited_ (1986) and _Cities of the Prairie: Opening Cybernetic Frontiers_ (2004). He was also the founder and editor of _Publius, the Journal of Federalism_.[3]

Elazar was recognized as an expert on Jewish community organization worldwide, on the Jewish political tradition, and on Israel's government and politics. He was a consultant to the Israeli government, the Jewish Agency, the World Zionist Organization, the city of Jerusalem, and to most major Jewish organizations in the United States and in Canada, Europe, South Africa and Australia. He took a leadership role in numerous local and national Jewish organizations. He was President of the American Sephardi Federation, and served on the International Council of Yad Vashem.

Elazar was twice a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, a fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, a Fulbright Senior Lecturer, and received grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Earhart and Ford Foundations, the Huntington Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation. He served as consultant to many federal, state and local agencies, including the U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development, the National Governors' Association, the Education Commission of the States, and the Pennsylvania Science and Technology Commission, as well as to the governments of Israel, Canada, Cyprus, Italy, South Africa, and Spain.

Honors and awards

Elazar was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He was awarded honorary degrees from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati and Gratz College in Philadelphia, and received awards for distinguished scholarly contributions from the Section on Intergovernmental Administration and Management of the American Society for Public Administration, the Section on Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations of the American Political Science Association, and the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry. The Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations Section of the American Political Science Association has created the Daniel Elazar Distinguished Federalism Scholar Award to recognize scholars who have made significant contributions to the field.

Political theories

Elazar authored a four-volume comprehensive work on the idea of covenant called _The Covenant Tradition in Politics_:.[4]

-   Volume 1: _Covenant and Polity in Biblical Israel: Biblical Foundations and Jewish Expressions_: The covenants of the Bible are the founding covenants of Western civilization. They have their beginnings in the need to establish clear and binding relationships between God and humans and among humans, relationships which must be understood as being political far more than theological in character, designed to establish lines of authority, distributions of power, bodies politic, and systems of law.
-   Volume 2: _Covenant and Commonwealth: From Christian Separation through the Protestant Reformation_: The history of the covenant tradition in the Western world has, in the course of two thousand years, undergone three separations, each of which has established a stream of covenant tradition of its own: (1) the separation between Judaism and Christianity; (2) the separation between Christianity and its Reformed wing; and (3) the separation between Jewish and Christian covenantalists and believers in a secular compact.
-   Volume 3: _Covenant and Constitutionalism: The Great Frontier and the Matrix of Federal Democracy_: “The great frontier” that began at the end of the 15th century, whereby Europe embarked on an expansion that made Europeans and their descendants the rulers of the world for 500 years, was seen as a great opportunity for beginning again, launching an unprecedented movement of migration and colonization.
-   Volume 4: _Covenant and Civil Society: The Constitutional Matrix of Modern Democracy_: The settlement of new worlds by bearers of the covenant tradition in politics gave those settlers an unparalleled opportunity to build societies on the covenantal model or as close to it as they could.

Elazar wrote extensively about the tradition of politics in Jewish scripture and thinking. His works on the subject include: _Kinship and Consent: The Jewish Political Tradition and Its Contemporary Uses_, _Authority, Power and Leadership in the Jewish Polity: Cases and Issues_, and _Morality and Power: Contemporary Jewish Views_.

-   _Kinship and Consent_: The exploration of the Jewish political tradition is predicated on the recognition of the Jews as a separate people, not merely a religion or a set of moral principles growing out of a religion. The exploration of the Jewish political tradition, then, is an exploration of how the Jews as a people managed to maintain their polity over centuries of independence, exile and dispersion, and how they animated that polity by communicating their own expressions of political culture and modes of political behavior.
-   _Authority, Power and Leadership in the Jewish Polity_: Many Jews are finding that they express themselves Jewishly through political means, if at all, whether that entails support of Israel or other causes which then become “Jewish” causes, or through working within the political and communal organizations of the Jewish people, which increasingly are perceived for what they are, namely, means of organizing power.
-   _Morality and Power_: In September 1988, as the intifada approached the end of its first year, a distinguished group of leaders in academic and public affairs in Israel and the diaspora was invited to participate in a symposium on the problems of relating morality and power in contemporary statecraft.

The Elazar typology of Jewish communal involvement is a typology laid out in _Community and Polity: The Organizational Dynamics of American Jewry_. It categorizes the degree of involvement American Jews have in the Jewish community:

-   _Integral Jews_ make up 10-13 percent. For these, Jewishness is a central focus of life and is passed through generations. Specifically, integral Jews may express their Jewishness “through traditional religion, ethnic nationalism or intensive involvement in Jewish affairs.”[5]
-   _Participants_ make up 12-15 percent. For this group, Judaism is a “major avocational interest”; they “take part in Jewish life in a regular way but whose rhythm of life follows larger society.” Participants are likely to regularly attend synagogue and to be involved in different organizations, examples including participating in adult education, “fundraising for Jewish causes,” or lobbying for Israel.[6]
-   _Affiliates_ make up 30-33 percent. These are “members of Jewish organizations but not particularly active”; they may be “affiliated with synagogues but irregular attenders.”[7]
-   _Contributors and Consumers_ make up another 25-33 percent. They “periodically use the services of Jewish organizations as needed,” and keep a Jewish identity but remain “minimally associated.” They may on occasion contribute financially to Jewish organizations.[8]
-   _Peripherals_ make up 25 percent. These are “recognizably Jewish but wholly uninvolved in Jewish life”; they have “no particular desire to use Jewish institutions or contribute to organizations”[9]
-   _Repudiators_ and _Converts-Out_ make up 2-7 percent. This group includes those who have converted to another religion and who “actively deny Jewishness.”

Elazar's theories on the political subcultures in the American states, articulated in _American Federalism, A View From the States_ have been influential and remains relevant among scholars of American politics. Elazar argues that there are three dominant political subcultures in the American states: moralistic (government viewed as egalitarian institution charged with pursuing the common good), traditionalistic (government viewed a hierarchical institution charged with protecting an elite-centered status quo), and individualistic (government viewed as minimalist institution charged with protecting the functionality of the marketplace but is otherwise not active).[10] Elazar's theory is still routinely used as variable in academic research and is discussed in most textbooks on American state and local government.[11][12][13]

Published works

-   The American Partnership: Intergovernmental Cooperation in the United States, 1962
-   American Federalism: A View from the States. 1966
-   The American System: A New View of Government in the United States, edited for Morton Grodzins, 1966
-   Cooperation and Conflict, Readings in American Federalism, Elazar as editor, 1969
-   The Politics of American Federalism, editor, 1969
-   Cities of the Prairie: The Metropolitan Frontier and American Politics, 1970
-   The Politics of Belleville, 1971
-   The Ecology of American Political Culture, editor with Joseph Zikmund II, 1975
-   Community and Polity: The Organizational Dynamics of American Jewry, 1976
-   A Classification System for Libraries of Judaica, with David H. Elazar, 1979
-   Self Rule/Shared Rule: Federal Solutions to the Middle East Conflict, editor, 1979
-   Federalism and Political Integration, editor, 1979
-   Republicanism, Representation and Consent: Views of the Founding Era, editor, 1979
-   Kinship and Consent: The Jewish Political Tradition and Its Contemporary Uses, editor, 1981
-   Governing Peoples and Territories, editor, 1982
-   Judea, Samaria, and Gaza: Views on the Present and Future, editor, 1982
-   State Constitutional Design in Federal Systems, editor with Stephen L. Schechter, 1982
-   Covenant, Polity and Constitutionalism, editor with John Kincaid, 1983
-   Jewish Communities in Frontier Societies, with Peter Medding, 1983
-   Kinship and Consent: The Jewish Political Tradition and Its Contemporary Uses, editor, 1983
-   From Autonomy to Shared Rule: Options for Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, editor, 1983
-   The Balkan Jewish Communities: Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, with Harriet Pass Friedenrich, Baruch Hazzan, and Adina Weiss Liberies, 1984
-   The Jewish Communities of Scandinavia: Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, with Adina Weiss Liberies and Simcha Werner, 1984
-   Understanding the Jewish Agency: A Handbook, editor with Alysa M. Dortort, 1984
-   The Jewish Polity: Jewish Political Organization From Biblical Times to the Present, with Stuart A. Cohen, 1985
-   The Covenant Connection: From Federal Theology to Modern Federalism, editor with John Kincaid, 2000

[1] Inventory of Daniel J. Elazar's papers at the Minnesota Historical Society

[2] Schechter, Stephen L. 1999. “In Memoriam: Daniel J. Elazar.” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 29 (Autumn): 3-10.

[3] Kincaid, John. 2000. “In Memoriam: Daniel J. Elazar.” PS: Political Science & Politics 33 (1): 91-95.

[4] Horowitz, Irving Louis. 2000. “Daniel J. Elazar and the Covenant Tradition in Politics.” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 31 (Winter): 1-7.

[5] ufl.edu Elazar's typology

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10] Elazar, Daniel J, American Federalism: A View From the States (T.Y. Crowell).

[11] Boeckelman, K. (1991). Political culture and state development policy. Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 21(2), 49-62. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/3330400

[12] Laitin, D., & Wildavsky, A. (1988). Political culture and political preferences. The American Political Science Review, 82(2), 589-597. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/1957403

[13] Lowery, D., & Sigelman, L. (1982). Political culture and state public policy: The missing link. The Western Political Quarterly, 35(3), 376-384. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/447552

title: Daniel J. Elazar

question: Summarize Elazar's personal life.

answer: Elazar was born in 1934 in Minneapolis. He studied at the University of Chicago and received his M.A. and Ph.D. Elazar lived in Philadelphia and Jerusalem. He was married to Harriet and had three children.

question: Summarize Elazar's work as an author.

answer: Elazar authored and edited more than sixty books and other publications. He also founded and edited the scholarly journal Jewish Political Studies Review. The books he has written in the area of federalism are - The American Partnership, Exploring Federalism, and The American Mosaic. He has also been the author of a multi-generational study of the development of the civil community in midwestern cities. The research gave rise to Cities of the Praire, Cities of the Praire Revisited, and Cities of the Praire: Opening Cybernetic Frontiers. Elazar also founded and edited Publius, the Journal of Federalism.

question: Summarize the honors and awards received by Elazar.

answer: Elazar was awarded honorary degrees from the Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati and Gratz College in Philadelphia. He had also made significant contributions from the Section on Intergovernmental Administration and Management of the American Society for Public Administration, the Section on Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations of the American Political Science Association, and the Association for the Social-Scientific Study on Jewry and received awards for the same. An award has also been created by the name of Daniel Elazar Distinguished Federalism Scholar Award to recognize scholars who have made contributions to the field.

question: What was the beginning of Elazar's academic career like?

answer: Elazar had founded and was the President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He was also heading a major think tank that was concerned with analyzing and solving key problems facing Israel and world Jewry. Elazar was also a professor of Political Science at Temple University in Philadelphia where he also founded the Center for the Study of Federalism.


text:
(CNN)President Donald Trump is disputing that former White House chief of staff John Kelly warned the President before he left the White House last year not to hire a replacement who wouldn't tell him the truth or that he would be impeached.

Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, made the comments during an interview at the Sea Island Summit political conference hosted by the Washington Examiner this weekend.

Kelly said if he had stayed on as chief of staff Trump wouldn't be in the midst of the current impeachment inquiry, implying that White House advisers could have prevented it.

"I said, whatever you do — and we were still in the process of trying to find someone to take my place — I said whatever you do, don't hire a 'yes man,' someone who won't tell you the truth — don't do that," Kelly said. "Because if you do, I believe you will be impeached."

Kelly's comments come after his successor, now acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, brashly confirmed and then deniedearlier this month that Trump froze nearly $400 million in US security aid to Ukraine in part to pressure that country into investigating Democrats.

Trump weighed in Saturday on Kelly's interview with the Washington Examiner, saying in a statement to CNN, "John Kelly never said that, he never said anything like that. If he would have said that I would have thrown him out of the office. He just wants to come back into the action like everybody else does."

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham added, "I worked with John Kelly, and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great President."

Mulvaney did not immediately respond to CNN's requests for comment.

Kelly also suggested that the Trump administration could have averted the current probe into the president, the Examiner reported.

"Someone has got to be a guide that tells [the president] that you either have the authority or you don't, or Mr. President, don't do it," Kelly said, adding that "the system that should be in place, clearly — the system of advising, bringing in experts in, having these discussions with the president so he can make an informed decision, that clearly is not in place."

Kelly also said that in light of the inquiry, "I feel bad that I left."

"That was almost 11 months ago, and I have an awful lot of, to say the least, second thoughts about leaving," he added. "It pains me to see what's going on because I believe if I was still there or someone like me was there, he would not be kind of, all over the place."

CNN's Jeremy Diamond, Kevin Liptak and Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.

question: What is President Donald Trump disputing?

answer: He is disputing that the former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, had warned the President to not hire a replacement who wouldn't tell him the truth.

question: What did White house press secretary, Stephanie Grisham have to say about John Kelly?

answer: She said he was unequipped to handle the genius of our great President.

question: How would Trump not have been in the middle of an impeachment inquiry?

answer: If John Kelly had stayed on as chief of staff, Trump would not have been in the middle of an impeachment inquiry, according to Kelly.

question: Who did Kelly say could have averted the current probe into the president?

answer: The Trump administration, suggested by Kelly, could have averted the probe into the president.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: This article quotes ex-chief of staff to President Trump, John Kelly, who said he could have prevented the impeachment Trump was going thru. Opposing views including Trump and the current press secretary said that Kelly was unequipped to handle the President.


text:
Out of all five senses, sound has always had one of the most powerful effects on my emotions. At the age of two, when most babies would be spitting out adorable gibberish, my mother noticed while she held me that instead of making sounds, I would flap my mouth open and closed soundlessly save for a few guttural noises. She took me to see the doctor, the good mother she was, who said that I had an exorbitant amount of fluid cemented behind my eardrums, so much so that I could barely hear. Therefore my indiscernible mouthing was in fact a manifestation of my natural infantile inclination to imitate what I saw without actually hearing the external voices that are so important to a baby’s brain development. Apparently this condition is actually very common among toddlers. Anyways, I had two operations to remove the fluid and eventually had tubes inserted into my eardrums which left me with heavy scarring in both of my ears and what I would roughly estimate is only about 90% of the average person’s hearing capacity. When I was in high school my brother downloaded an application on his phone, which would emit a controlled high frequency sound and would estimate how old you were based on how high the pitch was when you were no longer able to hear it. The application guessed both of my brothers’ ages correctly within a few years. It estimated that I was in my mid-forties. Despite all this, I truly cannot complain and will forever be grateful that I was able to gain my sense of sound at all.

Because I cannot hear quite as well as the average person, one might think that sound does not take as much precedence in my life as the senses of touch or sight, but on the contrary, my hearing has been particularly sensitive for as long as I can remember. While I often need to have people repeat their low murmurs and quiet whispers, contrastingly the sounds of loud, competing voices in a crowd or really violent sounding music can feel so over stimulating to me that I sometimes have to remove myself from certain situations. When watching my favorite movies as a child, I would often cover my ears during the scary or sad part of the movie rather than cover my eyes, as if somehow hearing the horrible part would be worse than visually witnessing it. Even as an adult I still foolishly find myself feeling the natural urge to cover my ears during horror movies to protect myself. I had no idea as a young child how much my sense of sound would shape my entire view and experience of the world.

The year was 2005 and I was in the fifth grade, living in Kenya while my dad did medical mission work there. So far I had lived a very blissful childhood, full of sunshine, friends, food, and the good-natured chasing of boys. I lived in a wealthy, comfortable suburb of the capitol, and was largely sheltered, save for the blatant, unavoidable poverty that surrounded me. This poverty was evident in the surreal but unfortunately regular experience of turning down street kids for spare change as I walked to school, which often left me feeling guilty and embarrassed. The surreal nature of this experience was that many of these kids, like me, were ten years old and essentially were peers to me, but all of them, unlike me, were dressed in raggedy clothes, regularly huffed glue, and relied on begging to provide for their families. The guilt-yielding nature of this experience was that although I was young, I was well aware that the only thing keeping me from being one of these kids was my white skin, my American passport, and the hereditary lottery into privilege that I had undeservedly won. However, at that age I was immune to the city’s social injustice and the sick feeling it left in my stomach once I walked safely into the padlocked gate that sealed my family’s house from unwanted outsiders. It didn’t take me long, however, to realize that the violent crime that surrounded me in the city could infect and permeate the concrete walls of my compound as easily as the rich smells of the delicious roasted maize and chili powder wafted in from the shosho who cooked them on the street outside.

One fateful night, I awoke suddenly in my bed to the sound of my next-door neighbor screaming. It was unlike any noise I had ever heard uttered from human lips before, and the bone-chilling nature of it communicated more to me than any last words could have; that she was in imminent, life-threatening danger. I immediately froze and my eyes widened while I silently listened to her scream. What I’m sure was only a few seconds of noise felt like long, drawn-out minutes, until it was suddenly interrupted with a solitary staccato gunshot that seemed to reverberate across the entire neighborhood.

Then there was an almost deafening silence. All of my muscles were tensed, and it felt as though my blood had frozen over the second the bullet had left the gun’s chamber. Although my older sister was asleep in the bed just above me, and my parents were in the bedroom adjacent to ours, I felt excruciatingly vulnerable and alone. A few long minutes of silence later, I heard my father tiptoe outside in the hall, trying to look out of the window nearest to my neighbor’s house to see what was going on. Knowing he was close by and aware of the situation should have been comforting but offered me no such relief and I still found myself frozen and bound to my bed, as if getting up to look with my dad would alert whoever shot my neighbor to the fact that there were people in my house to be preyed upon as well. After hours of listening to the silence and not moving a single muscle, I eventually grew tired again and mercifully slid back into a strange sleep.

The next day my best friend, who lived on the same street as me, informed me that what everyone had heard the night before was not, in fact, my neighbor being murdered in cold blood, but what had happened was the following; my sweet middle-aged neighbor heard a noise that night coming from her garden. Upon sticking her head out of the window and noting that one, the noise was, in fact, a thief trying to enter their house and two, that her security guard was fast asleep, she screamed as loud as she possibly could to try and awake her guard and to alert the rest of the neighborhood. Only then did the thief harmlessly fire his gun into the air to silence the woman and make his escape, his job ruined.

I will forever be grateful that the neighbor lady was not harmed in any way. But as I look back on that incident, harmless as it turned out to be, I realize that I lost a small piece of the natural safety each child needs to feel that day and though I was young, I was no longer a stranger to the violence and injustice that surrounded me.

It wasn’t until five years later, at the age of 13, that the remainder of that natural sense of safety was snatched away from me as quickly as a disgruntled mother grabs small, chokeable objects out of an infant’s hands. The night was 20 December, 2008, my younger brother’s birthday. Though my family had spent the day celebrating and was on our way to a family friend’s house for a Christmas party, the air was ripe with a curious, ominous tension I had never felt before. This was due to the country’s upcoming tribally-charged election exactly a week from that day. I was not alone in sensing the tension, friends I had, young and old, were having strange dreams and there was an unspoken sense in spiritual communities that this election had relevance to dimensions that the eye cannot see. Shortly after New Years it would erupt into one of the bloodiest and most infamous internal conflicts Kenya has ever experienced.

At around 7 PM, just after pitch darkness had settled on the city, my entire family and I drove to our friends’ house. We entered the nearby wealthy neighborhood called “Runda” and drove through without a problem until we reached the other outlet of the housing complex. The makeshift gate, or barrier as we called it, to the complex was a long metal pole balanced with a heavy weight on one side and a rope with a guard on the other side who controlled which cars went in and out of the complex. Typically when cars approached the barrier, the guards would lazily let the car through without giving it a second look, so it was strange that when we approached it, the barrier was lowered and a car sat in front of it on our side. What happened then I remember only in the hazy way you retain things when you’re in shock. I had been staring out of the window on the right side of our car when I happened to notice that the guard’s shack on that side of the barrier was empty, which was unusual for that time of night. As I registered the strangeness of the situation and heard panicked, distant-sounding noises from my family members, I slowly turned my head to the left and numbly took in the scene: the lowered barrier, the parked car, four men stepping out of the car, and then the final realization that they were actually being forced out of the car by an ordinary-looking man who was wearing a hat and jacket but brandishing a pistol at the men. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as he made each of the four men from the car get on their knees, and then lay facedown in the middle of the street, next to the car. I suddenly felt jerked back into normal time when I heard my mom yell at my dad, the driver, who also seemed stunned, to get out of there. Our car lurched backwards and then back down the street we had just turned off of. Seconds after we were out of eyesight of the car, we distinctly heard four gunshots puncture the night. One for each man.

Over the next few days, we would receive news that gave us more information about what we had witnessed. A family friend coming from the very party we were on our way to passed through that barrier a few hours later that night and found the road covered in blood. My mother found out from connections in a slum not far from where the incident happened that what had appeared to us as a brutal but unfortunately routine carjacking was actually a police sting operation. The man dressed completely in civilian clothes holding the ordinary-looking pistol was actually a policeman and had been tracking four young burglars from the nearby slum who had been robbing houses all over Runda the past couple of weeks. Though they were unarmed and made no movements of aggression towards the officer, he shot them and left them to die in the street, apparently viewing them as undeserving of the judicial system. This situation speaks volumes about the state of police brutality in Kenya. It also marked the beginning of a paralyzing fear I experienced for years afterwards whenever I heard loud popping noises, not unlike a skittish dog. All personal PTSD aside though, what made me the angriest about the situation was that my younger sister, who was six at the time, bore witness to the whole thing. As my family drove away reeling from the murders we had just witnessed , my sister was silent until she meekly said, “I want to cry.” I remember writing in my journal that night about how sick of a world we must live in, that a six year old girl had witnessed such things.

To this day, I still find huge relief in the fact that I did not actually visually witness those terrible crimes. It’s an unsettling relief though, as I can’t help but look back on the second situation with guilty pangs in my heart, questioning why the universe’s protective hands covered my eyes instead of those four men. I came to realize though that what I had witnessed can be everyday occurrences to the children living in the nearby slum where the thieves were from. What was a traumatizing and life-changing event for me is the very space in which they live. Why was it that much more noteworthy for a Westerner to experience it? The answers to all of my questions seem simple but are probably more complex than I will ever be able to grasp. Until I understand, I will keep on smelling the roses, touching the lives around me, tasting the air that those centuries before me have, watching out for the injustices that go unnoticed, and above all, listening.

title: [UR] Listening - True story from my life. Would love feedback!

question: Summarize the 2005 crime.

answer: The narrator heard a scream and a gunshot. The narrator was frozen in silence in the house next door, thinking the neighbor was being murdered. It turns out the neighbor interrupted a robbery and screamed to wake the nearby guard and alert the neighborhood. The thief fired a shot into the air to quiet her before fleeing.

question: What does the text say about Nairobi?


text:
This is it. This is the moment that I end my own life. I’m on the rooftop and I think I’m ready. People are going to say that they had no idea. That they never would have guessed that I would do something like this. That might be true, if they’d ever truly talked to me before or really knew me. I’ve had depression for a long time but nobody seemed to notice.

Maybe they did and I didn’t notice. That doesn’t matter now.

Climbing up onto the ledge, I stare down into where my final moments will be. People will most likely say it was unplanned since I didn’t leave a note or anything and for the most part it’s true. All I did was research a couple of buildings with rooftop access that were high enough for my needs. Had to be sure the fall would kill me. No paralysed from the neck down, waist down or going into a coma for me. No I expect to be dead on arrival with that piece of pavement down there. It’s early morning so there’s hardly anyone except the odd car driving by. Hopefully I don’t traumatise anyone.

Well this is it. I try to step off then try to jump but I stop myself every time. I’ve been up here too long. I’m too calm and my brain is hardwired to survive. I try to remember all the things that have led up to this decision here. Suddenly I can hear someone talking. I look around and notice that there’s a man with his back to me on the opposite side of the rooftop. “In life and death I will continue to be clear sighted and know the truth. That there is no point. The days of misery and mediocrity in this life are no more. So suck it world” he said. I shout over “hey!”

“ahh” he jumps back startled then looks over at me, running his eyes up and down assessing me. “I’m already committed to this, you can’t stop me” he says turning back around getting ready to jump. “I don’t want to stop you. I’m here for the same reason” I call over. He turns back to face me a second time then charges at me full speed, his eyes flashing angrily. I wonder if he’s going to push me over so he doesn’t have to listen to me talk. He stops just short of me and I take a good look at him. He’s wearing a dark suit and looks to be only a year or so older than me. He looks at me and simply says “no” as if in answer to some unspoken question. I wait for him to elaborate. Both of us standing there patiently waiting for one to understand the other. The guy runs out of patience quickly “didn’t you hear me, get out of here!”

“Ok just give me second” I said turning back round ready to jump. “No!” he shouts grabbing my arm and pulling me back off the ledge. “This is my spot ok go find somewhere else to die” he says shoving me away. “What no way I was here first” I say outraged.

“It doesn’t matter. This has been my spot for over a week and I’m not sharing.”

“why does it even matter we’re both going to be dead” I say incredulously.

“Of course it matters. I don’t want people thinking we’re part of some gay suicide pact!”

“ok i’ll pin a note to myself saying ‘I don’t know this corpse’

He shakes his head “that won’t work people will just think your ashamed of it. You have to find another rooftop”

“I was here first you have to find another rooftop”

“No this is my spot”

“why does it even matter?”

He grabs my arm and pull me over to where I first saw him. “look down there” he said. I look down and just see the pavement and road. “no no over there” he says pointing to across the road to a gym where the walls are just glass windows. “All those flabby house mums who just want to have sex again are going to see some reality fall in front of them when I go splat”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing “that’s not a reason to kill yourself!” He smiles as if he expected me to say that. “what I’m about to do is gonna stay with them for the rest of their lives. I’ll have left a permanent mark on their psyches.”

Oh god, he's insane. I mean I guess you have to be to kill yourself but still. "Ok fine this is a good location for you thats great but I was here first and I just want to get it over with. So move" I said.

"no"

"fine" I say and head off to another rooftop edge. He chases after me and jumps in front of me.

"ok ok. Look how about we play for it?" He asks and at this point I just want him to leave as fast as possible. "What did you have in mind?" I asked.

“Got any change? We could flip for it"

"No I didn't think I'd need change in the afterlife" I said sarcastically.

"so you think there's an afterlife?"

"yes... no, look what else have you got"

"rock paper scissors.” I looked into the eyes of a man who was going to duel me with rock paper scissors with the grand prize of death to the winner and I said yes to that insanity.

"this is crazy" I say getting my hand out ready.

"ok 1... 2 .... 3"

"wait your supposed to go after 3"

"What are you talking about everyone knows you go on 3" he says irritably.

"It's one two three and then you go" I explained.

"fine we'll do it your way. ok 1 2 3 go, ha rock beats paper"

"ok now your just fucking with me right?"

"I had rock you had paper so I win" he said.

"Paper covers rock"

"and rock smashes through paper" he said triumphantly.

"what... no it's... fuck its exhausting talking to you"

He smiled "off you go now it’s killing time" and then louder he shouted "Dead man walking" as he approached the edge. I hadn't moved, in fact I was actively watching him transfixed by a morbid curiosity. He soon noticed this too and said "I thought you were leaving."

"don't worry I'm not going to jump. You know gay suicide pact thing and all"

His eyes narrowed "why don't you just find another rooftop"

"that’s what I'm going to do" I said surprised

"no you said you weren't going to jump. At all."

"Of course I'm going to do it why else would I be up here?"

"maybe originally you were going to but now you seem... unsure"

"I guess doing all this shit with you. I mean if I really wanted to end my own life I'd have just ignored you to begin with and just did it" I said.

He nodded as if he understood "maybe I'm just depressed" I offered.

"maybe. Well two audience members are better than one"

"now I’m the confused one"

"you've been the confused one this whole time" he joked.

I ignore it and press on "who's the other audience member" I ask wipingthe smile off of his face.

He turns round back to facing the ledge "it doesn't matter"

I get up onto the ledge with him and follow his line of site back to that gym. I see one woman in her mid forties exercising vigoursly on a stationary bike. "Is that your mum?"

"yep"

"Jesus, you shouldn't kill yourself because you hate your mum."

"what would you know. You said it yourself your just depressed" he snarled

"aren't you? Aren't you angry and sad all the time like me?"

"You see that post there?" he said pointing next to the gym. I nodded

"that's where I'd stand when I was little and mum had to exercise"

"so what you had to wait outside for an hour every once in a while when you were little?"

"It might have been that way a few times but mostly she'd find some guy and she'd disappear for the rest of the night and if she came back and I wasn't right where she left me at that post as soon as we got home she'd just start hitting me saying things like she wished she'd bought condoms that week." I didn't know what to say to that.

"sometimes if the guy came home with her she'd have him do it for her while she got ready in the bedroom"

Ok now I knew what to say "so what?"

his eyes flashed angrily "didn't you hear a word I said"

"yeah and you know what fuck her"

"what?"

"fuck her. don't let that bitch win. You don't have to take that shit any more. just walk away from her. Fuck her"

He shook his head "I've left before and it always ends with her calling the police or me running out of money"

"your what 17?"

He nodded "so you graduate in like 6 months then. You only need to hold out till then"

"I got kicked out. For fighting."

I smiled "that's what other schools are for"

I could see that he starting to come around "I've got nowhere to go though"

"6 months will go by pretty quickly" I said.

He shook his head firmly and lifted up shirt to reveal a large bruise running down his side. "Her latest boyfriend. I can't stay there"

"You could stay with me then. All I know is you shouldn't kill yourself because of her. Fuck her now you say it"

"Fuck her"

"louder"

"FUCK HER!"

we both laughed  headed back off of the edge towards the door "hang on one sec" I said. I went back over to that edge and peered over. If this were film or something all of our problems would be solved by now. But it isn't and they’re not. That guy who was abused as a kid who I think I can call a friend now after nearly dying with him was still abused and I'm still well... me. I don't want dive into my issues now it’s not a competition.

I look back and the roof’s empty. Panic sets in. Did I just hallucinate him? Did this fucking cliché really just happen to me where the apparition shows the man the truth thus saving him from himself. Am I schizophrenic now? Maybe I should ju... “hey you coming?” he pops his head out from behind the door. Immediately relieved “yeah let’s go”

“Christ your slow” he mumbles as we head down the steps.

title: Suicide is Solitary

question: Summarize the context of "hopefully I don't traumatize anyone".

answer: The narrator climbs up onto a ledge on a tall rooftop of a building. He's decided to end his life. He made sure that the building was tall enough that it would kill him, not paralyze him. He thinks of the logistics of doing it in the early morning, as there will be less cars driving by. This makes him hope he doesn't traumatize anyone.

question: Summarize the context of rock, paper, scissors being played.

answer: The narrator encounters another boy trying to end his life in the same spot on the rooftop. They both feel they have a right to the spot. After going back and forth they settle on "rock, paper, scissors" to decide who gets the spot. The other boy ends up winning after the boys argue over the rules.

question: What does the text say about the narrator's opinion changes on ending his life?

answer: Initially, the narrator seems dead set on ending his life. He had chosen the best spot to do it and he even jumps on the ledge of the building. However, there's another boy who is trying to end his life up there. They both argue about how they have the right to the spot and the other one should find a new place. As they continue to argue, they decide to settle it with rock, paper, scissors. The other boy wins, and the narrator seems to back off his idea of ending his life.  He figures he wouldn't have put up the boy and would have just jumped if he really wanted to. After having a nice discussion with the boy, they both decide to not end their lives and walk away together.

question: Summarize the death of the other boy on the roof.