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  []   Author   Topic: Important announcement from Primedice  (Read 15277 times)
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| ________                                                              |
| STUNNA                                                                |
| Legendary                                                             |
| [*]                                                                   |
| [Offline] Offline                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| Activity: 2688                                                        |
| Merit: 1197                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
|                                                                       |
| Advisor @ Primedice.com, Stake.com                                    |
|                                                                       |
| [View Profile] [WWW]                                                  |
|                                                                       |
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| ---                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| Friends,                                                              |
|                                                                       |
| Effective immediately Primedice will no longer accept deposits from   |
| visitors located within certain jurisdictions including the US. While |
| Primedice is neither operated nor based in the USA, we've chosen to   |
| take proactive measures to mitigate long term risk for our users and  |
| service. The legal landscape is quickly shifting and we are choosing  |
| to completely block deposits from users located in what we've deemed  |
| as higher risk jurisdictions.                                         |
|                                                                       |
| Primedice does not make use of US currency nor banking, and this      |
| block is not recognition that bitcoin gambling is illegal. This       |
| decision has been solely based off of discussions between Primedice   |
| and our legal counsel.                                                |
|                                                                       |
| I know this news will disappoint many of you, however we're strong    |
| believers in Bitcoin and are playing defensively to secure our long   |
| term position at the top of this rapidly growing industry.  We're     |
| confident that every major online casino will accept Bitcoin within   |
| the next five years and we're determined to compete directly with     |
| them by continuing to create new disruptive experiences. We've been   |
| lucky enough to see the transformative power of Bitcoin with regards  |
| to gambling from a first hand perspective and are confident this is   |
| the right decision moving forward.                                    |
|                                                                       |
| Thank You,                                                            |
|                                                                       |
| Primedice Team                                                        |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
|                                                                       |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| ---                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| Stake.com Fastest growing crypto casino & sportsbook                  |
| Primedice.com The original bitcoin instant dice game                  |
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|                                                                       |
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| ________                                                              |
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| ________                                                              |
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| ________                                                              |
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| ________ __Advertised sites are n__ot endorsed by the Bitcoin         |
| Forum.__ They may be unsafe, un__trustworthy, or illega__l__ in your  |
| ju__risdict__ion. Adv__ertise __here.                                 |
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| ________                                                              |
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| ________                                                              |
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| ________                                                              |
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| __                                                                    |
| OMAHAPOKER                                                            |
| Hero Member                                                           |
| [*][*][*][*][*]                                                       |
| [Offline] Offline                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| Activity: 868                                                         |
| Merit: 1000                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
|                                                                       |
| [View Profile]                                                        |
|                                                                       |
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| ---                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| well you can cross off shortkeys on the to do list                    |
|                                                                       |
| thanks stunna                                                         |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
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| ____                                                                  |
| LIQUIDX                                                               |
| Hero Member                                                           |
| [*][*][*][*][*]                                                       |
| [Offline] Offline                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| Activity: 546                                                         |
| Merit: 500                                                            |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
|                                                                       |
| [View Profile]                                                        |
|                                                                       |
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| ---                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| This sucks for people in the US. I hope that bitcoin will rise and    |
| change those laws allowing it's full growth.                          |
| A solution for people in US would be using a VPN to bypass            |
| restrictions.                                                         |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
|                                                                       |
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| ________                                                              |
| KOSHGEL                                                               |
| Legendary                                                             |
| [*]                                                                   |
| [Offline] Offline                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| Activity: 1148                                                        |
| Merit: 1001                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| [View Profile]                                                        |
|                                                                       |
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| ---                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| better to be safe than sorry.                                         |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
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|                                                                       |
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| BITBABY                                                               |
| Hero Member                                                           |
| [*][*][*][*][*]                                                       |
| [Offline] Offline                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| Activity: 812                                                         |
| Merit: 1000                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
|                                                                       |
| [View Profile] [WWW]                                                  |
|                                                                       |
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| ---                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| It makes sense considering that Nevada is on the crackdown right now  |
| Following the same path as satoshdice did and luckybit avoid the US.  |
| Anyways best of luck with your legal manueveuring.                    |
|                                                                       |
| But I don't think a site which is not operating in USA is going to    |
| have any problems. And I don't understand how avoiding players from   |
| US is going to help anything?                                         |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
|                                                                       |
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| ______                                                                |
| SHULIO                                                                |
| Legendary                                                             |
| [*]                                                                   |
| [Offline] Offline                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| Activity: 1540                                                        |
| Merit: 1016                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| [View Profile]                                                        |
|                                                                       |
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| ---                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| It makes sense considering that Nevada is on the crackdown right now  |
| Following the same path as satoshdice did and luckybit avoid the US.  |
| Anyways best of luck with your legal manueveuring.                    |
|                                                                       |
| But I don't think a site which is not operating in USA is going to    |
| have any problems. And I don't understand how avoiding players from   |
| US is going to help anything?                                         |
|                                                                       |
| Bitcoin gambling is illegal in US and sites like coinbase has been    |
| heavilly shutting down account that has funds consifiscated from      |
| gambling. This is to ensure themselves that no harm will be done to   |
| them by the legal regarding this issue. This might be Stunna's        |
| concern as well, better safe than sorry                               |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
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| ________                                                              |
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| __                                                                    |
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| ________                                                              |
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| ________                                                              |
| TRAFFICOLAA                                                           |
| Legendary                                                             |
| [*]                                                                   |
| [Offline] Offline                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| Activity: 1008                                                        |
| Merit: 1000                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
|                                                                       |
| [View Profile]                                                        |
|                                                                       |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| ---                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| It makes sense considering that Nevada is on the crackdown right now  |
| Following the same path as satoshdice did and luckybit avoid the US.  |
| Anyways best of luck with your legal manueveuring.                    |
|                                                                       |
| But I don't think a site which is not operating in USA is going to    |
| have any problems. And I don't understand how avoiding players from   |
| US is going to help anything?                                         |
|                                                                       |
| Bitcoin gambling is illegal in US and sites like coinbase has been    |
| heavilly shutting down account that has funds consifiscated from      |
| gambling. This is to ensure themselves that no harm will be done to   |
| them by the legal regarding this issue. This might be Stunna's        |
| concern as well, better safe than sorry                               |
|                                                                       |
| Just to add on that Stunna likely does not want unneccessary legal    |
| trouble or warrants seeking arrest like Bryan Micon                   |
| http://www.coindesk.com/nevada-regulators-bitcoin-poker-operator-arre |
| st/                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| that is great step by Stunna safety of business and players is the    |
| first priority and i appriciate this, players from U.S. can play      |
| trough using Tor and vpn so there is no restriction about that.       |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
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| __________                                                            |
| BOOPY265420                                                           |
| Legendary                                                             |
| [*]                                                                   |
| [Offline] Offline                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| Activity: 1876                                                        |
| Merit: 1005                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| [View Profile]                                                        |
|                                                                       |
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| ---                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| What is not clear is this, will players from U.S not be accepted at   |
| all ? If people use tor or VPN service to play from U.S what about    |
| them. I have read all comments above but didn't find satisfactory     |
| answer. This is point to be discussed more clearly.                   |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
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| LIQUIDX                                                               |
| Hero Member                                                           |
| [*][*][*][*][*]                                                       |
| [Offline] Offline                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| Activity: 546                                                         |
| Merit: 500                                                            |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
|                                                                       |
| [View Profile]                                                        |
|                                                                       |
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| ---                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| What is not clear is this, will players from U.S not be accepted at   |
| all ? If people use tor or VPN service to play from U.S what about    |
| them. I have read all comments above but didn't find satisfactory     |
| answer. This is point to be discussed more clearly.                   |
|                                                                       |
| That will be ok and it's a solution for players in the US. So just    |
| use a VPN service if you are located there.                           |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
|                                                                       |
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| ---                                                                   |
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| ______                                                                |
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| __                                                                    |
| FREEDOMNO1                                                            |
| Legendary                                                             |
| [*]                                                                   |
| [Offline] Offline                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| Activity: 1666                                                        |
| Merit: 1040                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
|                                                                       |
| Learning the troll avoidance button :)                                |
|                                                                       |
| [View Profile] [WWW]                                                  |
|                                                                       |
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| ---                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| What is not clear is this, will players from U.S not be accepted at   |
| all ? If people use tor or VPN service to play from U.S what about    |
| them. I have read all comments above but didn't find satisfactory     |
| answer. This is point to be discussed more clearly.                   |
|                                                                       |
| Yes you will be allowed i guess as in this case its the fault of      |
| player and he is cheating in a manner not the site.                   |
|                                                                       |
| If the end user in the USA wants to use the site and goes through the |
| means to access it,and they are using tor or a VPN it would not be    |
| the responsibility of the site manager to monitor all proxies.        |
| Simply blocking US IP addresses and using a region block is a         |
| reasonable standard of care and would be enough in my opinion.        |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
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| __________                                                            |
| SHERBYSPARK                                                           |
|                                                                       |
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| ---                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| Kind of surprised to hear this, even though Primedice is not based in |
| US . Whats the reason behind this move ? Any chance it is related to  |
| the case against SwC ?                                                |
| People can still use TOR, and maybe you can actually promote that     |
| service ,as someone from the US using TOR wouldn't put you in the     |
| risk .                                                                |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
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| NEWCRIPTO                                                             |
|                                                                       |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| ---                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| Stunna took right decision to make this announcement to protect his   |
| business as well as players funds. This will boost the use of tor and |
| vpn to access gambling site from all over the united states. I think  |
| users from united states will be allowed continuously to play on PD   |
| if they use tor or vpn.                                               |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
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| __________                                                            |
| ZAIH                                                                  |
|                                                                       |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| ---                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| Sad to hear. Hope business still goes well.                           |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
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| __________                                                            |
| OMAHAPOKER                                                            |
| Hero Member                                                           |
| [*][*][*][*][*]                                                       |
| [Offline] Offline                                                     |
|                                                                       |
| Activity: 868                                                         |
| Merit: 1000                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
|                                                                       |
| [View Profile]                                                        |
|                                                                       |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| ---                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| should have given us players a week or two to try to win btc loss at  |
| pd.                                                                   |
|                                                                       |
| if i knew i couldnt bet there anymore. i would have had one last      |
| chance to get 3 greens in a row there.  seen it done once             |
|                                                                       |
| []                                                                    |
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|                                                                       |
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question: What is the important announcement from Primedice?

answer: Primedice will no longer accept deposits from visitors located within certain jurisdictions, including the US

question: What is Primedice?

answer: It seems that it is an online casino.

question: Where is Primedice operated?

answer: That information can't be found.

question: How does LIQUIDX feel about the author's news?

answer: They think it is a negative thing for people in the U.S. and that they hope Bitcoin will rise and change laws that allow its full growth. They suggest those in the U.S. use a VPN to bypass regulations.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: At the time of this document, the Primedice team announced that they will no longer accept deposits from visitors to their online casino located within certain jurisdictions, including the U.S.. The document provides several comments from users reacting to the news.


split: train

text:
I really had no business in this part of town. Nobody did. So what the hell was I doing here at 4 in the morning? But really, I couldn't care less where I was. Frankly, I'd prefer not being anywhere. Swirling around until a wisp of smoke took my stead. But still, here I was. I was cold and alone.

Not that there was anything new to that. I used to dream, just like everyone. Of the life I was going to live, the people I was going to meet. But I don't dream anymore. I don't expect, apprehend or anticipate. Eventually it all leads to one thing and that's bitter disappointment. The ability to cope with disappointment was not something I lacked, but even the strongest wall will tumble if it's rotten from the inside out.

I used to have friends. Family. A golden retriever. I used to have a reason to stick around. When all that was taken from me, I found a love to keep me around. But now, all I have is a sharp mind and a scrawny body. And they both hate each others' guts.

Imagine feeling sick. Trembling, shaking, shivering. Retching your empty stomach. Your head pounding, as if it's going to split in two at the slightest noise or flash of light. Your eyes burning, your mouth dry. Completely and utterly sick. Imagine hating yourself so much you want to literally pull your guts out through your throat. So much you want to torture yourself, were it not for the fact that no additional pain would even register. Imagine feeling all this. Then imagine you're walking alone through the most filthy, lonely, depressing part of town.

What would you have done?

title: Just wrote this and feel the urge to share. Please be gentle. 300 words.

question: Why was the narrator in that part of town at 4 in the morning?

answer: It was not implied, but he might have been walking alone aimlessly.

question: Why shouldn't anyone be walking alone in that part of town?

answer: Because it is the most filthy, lonely, and depressing part of town.

question: What happened to the narrator's friends, family, and dog?

answer: They were taken from him, but there are no further details available.

question: Why do the narrator's body and mind hate each other?

answer: Presumably, because the narrator's mind is still sharp, it hates his body because it is wasting away in pain from an illness he can't do anything about. His body hates his mind for still being sharp while it is sick and dying.


text:
Inevitably, the paranoia of the powerful met the manic fantasies of the militants. Despite having neither a base nor a popular program, the militants indulged a revolutionary rhetoric of violence—Bernardine Dohrn actually endorsed the murders committed by the Manson family—and they should not have been surprised when the authorities took the rhetoric for reality. Most of the radicals took it for granted that their threat of armed revolution was no more serious than Mick Jagger’s dream of being a street-fighting man. For the prisoners, though, the rhetoric of sixties revolution rang with a special pathos, given the extremity of their situation, as when the inmate orator Herbert Blyden promised the other prisoners that “the world is hearing us! The world is seeing our struggle. . . . And we are the vanguard! . . . Standing here for all the oppressed peoples of the world.” It was still bravado, but in this case brave.

After the early violence—there were incidents of rape and even three murders among the prisoners—the inmates organized themselves into surprisingly efficient security and administrative units, with inmate members of the Nation of Islam essential to this enterprise. (They took specific responsibility for the welfare of the forty-two hostages.) The prisoners also asked, and Oswald quickly agreed, that a committee of “observers” be assembled to witness any negotiations and, presumably, endorse an agreement. This turned out to be the worst possible solution, since the observers, predictably, became the negotiating team, but one that lacked authority to negotiate, experience in negotiation, internal unity, or any procedure to follow. Though made up mainly of prominent radical names of the time, it included Tom Wicker, the _Times_ columnist, apparently because he had written sympathetically about the activist George Jackson, shot dead in a California prison a month earlier.

To get a sense of what was at stake at Attica in fully realized detail, Wicker’s extraordinary account of his four days among the observers, “A Time to Die,” is indispensable. With its intermingling of personal confession and public significance, it is a real masterpiece of the first wave of the nonfiction novel, as good, in its more sober way, as Mailer’s “Armies of the Night.” Wicker turns himself into a character in the drama, seen from the outside as “Tom Wicker”: an archetypal Southern liberal, whose career, superficially in support of civil rights, has involved a steady resistance to racial fact. He becomes every decent liberal who is forced to confront the foundations of his own society—violence directed by whites against a black underclass. The drama of Attica becomes the culminating point in the protagonist’s experience of racial division, expressed with an unsparing detachment that the conventional first person might not have allowed.

In a searching and prescient passage, he suggests that at the heart of the rebellion and the violence it provoked was a whole history of diabolized “blackness.” White fear was the key: “White fear fixed itself upon the literal presence of black human beings. Black people, to whites, were the symbolic representation of the evil in man and thus were also the handy instruments by which white people could hold themselves symbolically innocent of that evil.” Wicker concludes, “The heart of the matter was the fear of blackness.”

Negotiations tend to be remarkably consistent in form, whether the subject is Iranian nukes or prisoners’ rights. Both sides arrive with obviously ridiculous demands; the act of meeting marks the rejection of those demands but also shows that there is enough good will for a deal to be made; the shape of the agreement swiftly appears; and then, often, the two sides get trapped in tiny details pointing to the tribal instincts that brought the conflict on in the first place. Certainly the negotiations at Attica took this shape. After the clear nonstarters were off the table—in their first manifesto, the prisoners had asked for mass transportation to a “non-imperialistic” country—the potential deal at Attica was arrived at quite quickly: amnesty for the mutineers and a promise to look into their previous petition in exchange for an end to the uprising. But the meta issues of perception remained unsolved: both sides had to give; neither could be seen to fold. The authorities could not be seen to offer an amnesty, even if they were, in effect, offering an amnesty. They offered not to “initiate any criminal complaint . . . of any kind or nature relating to property.” In theory, this left the prisoners liable for crimes that didn’t relate to property, but, as all present believed, this could be taken as a merely linguistic distinction—“something close to amnesty without men like Oswald having to admit that it was amnesty,” as Wicker writes.

At that point, on the third day of the takeover, two bad things happened. One of the guards who had been injured in the original takeover died of his wounds; and the radical lawyer William Kunstler, one of the observers, let the prisoners know that this had happened, which persuaded them, probably wrongly, that any amnesty offer wouldn’t be honored. (A conviction for the killing, given the mob scene at the start, would have been perilously difficult to achieve—trying later, the state failed—and the authorities must have known this perfectly well.) At the same time, the outside pressure to storm the prison was growing, not only from the Rockefeller statehouse but from the families of the correction officers being held hostage. Wicker recalls how, trying to convey information about the hostages to their families and the press, he was, understandably, met by rage. “What about my son?” Steven Smith, the father of Mike Smith, who had been taken hostage in D Yard, said. “We have to go in and bring those people out. Wet-nursing those convicts won’t do it!”

During the night of September 12th, the authorities decided to act. Oswald, still convinced that he could have negotiated a settlement had it not been for the presence of “Maoists” imported from elsewhere in the prison system, drafted a final offer to be read to the prisoners in D Yard, deliberately “not phrased as an ultimatum,” Thompson notes, though that is what it was. The prisoners were not fully aware that the state had come to the end of the line, and, having no chance to act on that understanding, voted down Oswald’s offer (“If they had said, ‘Either release the hostages or we’re coming in shooting,’ ” one inmate observed afterward, the vote might have gone the other way.)

Then the prisoners, sensing a crisis, blindfolded several of the guards and forced them up onto the catwalks, knives visible at their throats. Wicker and Thompson both insist that the blindfolded guards were in little real danger, that the prisoners were bluffing, and that there was no way that they would, in fact, have murdered their hostages. Yet it wasn’t clear that the authorities could have known this, or, really, that the prisoners themselves could have known. To insist that it was mere theatre is to be more certain than anyone can be about how men with knives pressed to the throats of men they have long had reason to hate would act in extremis. Thompson does establish that, on the fateful catwalk, Mike Smith and Don Noble, the guard and the prisoner who had tacitly collaborated on the July petition, “made a solemn pact that if anything happened to either of them they would find the other’s family members and make sure they knew how much they were loved.”

There are sins of omission but there are also virtues of patience. Many of the wisest things we do, in life and in politics, are the things we don’t. Affairs not started, advice not given, distant lands left uninvaded—the null class of non-events is often more blessed than the enumerated class of actions, though less dramatic. One of the things that the Obama Administration gets too little credit for not doing is not intervening when militia types occupied a federal building in Oregon—even though it was a clear case of the government ceding to violent seditionists. It looked weak. But the powerful waited out the powerless, and the affair ended with minimal violence. Time, in such cases, is almost always on the side of the state. Avoiding Atticas and Wacos is not that hard when you are more worried about losing lives than about losing face.

The evidence suggests that neither Rockefeller nor Oswald anticipated that the retaking of the prison would be as brutal as it was—more brutal than anyone could have imagined. Just before ten in the morning, on September 13th, a National Guard helicopter dropped tear gas into the prison yard. Then some five hundred and fifty New York State Police troopers, augmented by more than two hundred sheriff’s deputies—and with the Attica correction officers unconscionably mixed in—entered the prison and mounted the catwalks. Armed with shotguns deliberately loaded with wide-arc buckshot and .270 rifles loaded with unjacketed bullets, of a kind banned by the Geneva Conventions, they started shooting, firing at everything they saw. “The bullets were coming like rain,” one hostage recalled.

The firing was at first mostly indiscriminate, striking hostages and inmates alike. Sometime afterward, it turned into a manhunt: the enraged correction officers and troopers sought out those whom they thought of as ringleaders and executed them. Several of the dead among the leaders were seen alive well after the prison had been retaken. Some were shot as many as twelve times, at close range. One prisoner, William Maynard, told Thompson about trying to carry his friend Jomo, who had been shot several times, to safety. A correction officer ordered him to stop and raise his hands. As Maynard struggled to do so, the officer shot him in his forearms. Then, Maynard recounts, he “loaded up his gun and shot Jomo six times right on top of me and kicked me in the face and says both the niggers are dead and went on.” Even the thirty-nine dead did not end the violence, as the guards forced the inmates to strip naked and then tortured them for most of the rest of the day and night. “Any prisoner who troopers or CO’s considered to be a leader was chalked across the back with a large white X,” Thompson writes. As each one was made to run a gantlet of clubs, the officers would call out, “You want your amnesty? Well, come and get it.” The vengeful officers played Russian roulette with the inmates, and then forced them to drink the guards’ urine. One inmate, Frank (Big Black) Smith, who had been visible in the uprising, lay wounded on a table for many hours, made to clutch a football beneath his chin, and warned that if it dropped he would be killed. When he was released, he collapsed and the guards battered him repeatedly in the groin and anal region as he pleaded for mercy. Mike Smith and Don Noble, hostage and mutineer, were both shot and severely wounded in the takeover, though both survived.

In a curious way, the psychology of the (almost exclusively white) troopers and guards, more than the ideology of the inmates, seems most haunting now, as part of the permanent picture of American fixations. The inmates were doing what anyone would do in their situation: having seen a protest turn unexpectedly into a revolt that was sure to be short-lived, they desperately improvised a way to keep their dignity and be heard, to avoid the worst punishment and get some small reforms. Their occasionally overblown rhetoric was the act of men who, stripped of dignity, try to reclaim it. But the troopers and guards retaking the prison were indulging an orgy of racist violence neither ordered nor wholly explicable. There was no need for them to conduct a massacre to reassert their authority. They had all the firepower; the prisoners were armed only with homemade knives; the guards had control of the yard within minutes. Nor were they, so far as anyone can detect, under direct commands to kill. In an American tale already known fully to Mark Twain, a white ethnic proletariat could distinguish itself as superior only by its ability to be brutal to a still more subordinate class of color. When its members were denied their exercise of this “right,” they turned crazy and violent.

In social terms, what separated the guards from the prisoners was simply skin color and a gun. But pure racial assertion seems to have burned alongside something still more visceral. The horror story repeated most urgently among troopers and guards to justify the violence was that the prisoners had castrated one of the hostages. (They hadn’t.) This phantasm of emasculation was at the heart of the violence. A vast insult had been made to their masculinity, and the only way to avenge it was to kill, shame, and torment the helpless.

Thompson devotes the second half of her book to the efforts of the surviving inmates—and, indeed, some of the surviving hostages—to use the courts to get some recompense for what had been allowed to happen. The system “worked” only late, and lamely, but it eventually recognized that a wrong had been done and damages were owed. Attempts by the state to blame the inmates for the massacre failed in the courts; Big Black Smith eventually got a settlement. It should be said that it took thirty years. It should also be said that, in the history of mankind, only liberal democracies have ever done such things—held conscientious post-hoc court proceedings in which the state arraigns itself for its own injustices. The Tiananmen Square protesters are still waiting for their day in court, much less their recompense.

The uprising at Attica was, in the not very long run, one of the things that stopped prison reform dead in its tracks. The fear that Attica generated among prison administrators and the American public pointed the way to the supermax and permanent solitary, emboldening the most reactionary forces in the government to begin the program of mass incarceration that remains the moral scandal of our country. Prison reform doesn’t happen in response to violence in prisons. It happens in response to awakened consciences about the violence of imprisonment.

In broadly democratic countries, violence frightens the “masses” as they really are—i.e., the majority of citizens—much faster than reformers can persuade them to change. Nonviolent episodes of protest are extraordinarily efficient in creating social change in democratic states; violent episodes undo the good work of change with astonishing rapidity. As the Princeton political scientist Omar Wasow has shown, in an important new empirical study, the spectacle of urban violence probably did get Richard Nixon elected. (“In public opinion polls between 1950 and 1980, a majority of subjects identified ‘civil rights’ as the most important problem facing America at the same time that nonviolent black protest activity peaked,” he observes, “and, likewise, responded with ‘law and order’ when black-led violent protests were most active.”)

Impassioned liberals are not “centrists.” They are the radicals of reality, who believe in reason and reform not because they are too timid for revolution but because they are too ambitious for change. The notion that you need both a violent wing and a moderate one to bring about social change is the truly timid, “centrist” argument, designed to appease all the forces on “your” side rather than confront the facts about what works and what does not. We have seen in recent weeks how isolated anti-police incidents can, among the easily panicked, obliterate the memory of decades of dwindling violent crime. The panicked people will almost always be the majority—they are, in effect, the guards and their families, waiting outside the prison—and we cannot rhetoric them away. The Rockefellers, the “one per cent,” may indeed be served by fear and panic, but they are served because there are fifty-one per cent ready to let panic persuade them.

Evil exists. Prisons, punishment, segregation, exile: even the most enlightened state needs some way of sorting the truly dangerous from the sadly criminal and the sadly criminal from the merely unlucky. I eventually discovered that the erudite inmate who arraigned me for not attending to my Foucault had committed the most horrible crime of which I ever hope to hear. (In the midst of a custody battle with his estranged wife, he called her on the phone, had her hold the line, and then murdered their two daughters while she listened and they pleaded.) No sane society can survive if the state, however fair, however free, cannot enforce order and hold a monopoly on legitimate violence.

Prisons are the bad conscience of the liberal imagination not because they show the true, oppressive face of the liberal state but because they expose how fragile liberal proceduralism can be. The liberal democratic state sublimates revenge, just as it does heroism and altruism, into the integrity of institutions. No one is expected to be Jesus; no one is asked to be. If you do your job—at the D.M.V. or as a C.O. or a pfc.—equity and fairness are, achingly, protected. These institutional safeguards seem robust when they are in place, so much so that we mock them as “bureaucracy.” When the institutional integrity breaks down, catastrophes happen. Almost unknown to themselves, the inmates at Attica had heartbreaking, unstated confidence in the integrity of the institution: they knew that they would lose, and that they would have to go back to their cells, but they never thought that the officers of the state would come in with shotguns and explosive bullets to kill as many of them as they could. The line from the politician Herman Badillo that Wicker took for his title, “A time to die,” became unsought prophesy.

At moments of crisis, the integrity of our institutions turns out to depend, to an alarming degree, on the fragile integrity of individuals. Prisons are our vulnerable point because they reveal, under pressure, that procedures designed to insure justice have to be constantly reanimated by human will. The strangest and most gruesome scene in Thompson’s book is among the most heroic. On the day after the killings, the local medical examiners, John Edland and Richard Abbott, overworked at the best of times, had the nightmarish task of autopsying the bodies of dead inmates and hostages alike. They had directions, more or less explicit, to stick with the official story and tell the set tale—that the inmates, in a maximally brutal fashion, had killed the hostages. And yet they did their job. At 3 _p.m._, Edland stepped forward and told the world the truth: that all the dead had been killed by the gunfire of the advancing troopers and guards. It is an act of historical imagination to have recovered their unostentatious courage. It also requires, for us to see such acts as heroic, getting past the language of masculinity and assertion that had entrapped both the prisoners who took hostages and then the guards who would kill them. To call men of smaller official obligations, carried out in the face of intimidation, heroes is, perhaps, to change the meaning of what we mean by heroism. It may be time for that, too. ♦

question: Where did the violence occur?

answer: In prisons, notably Attica.

question: Under whose administration did the uprising occur?

answer: In the Nixon administration

question: What was the turning point in the takeover at the prison?

answer: When one of the guards dies and the prison is stormed

question: What did medical examiner, Edland reveal?

answer: That all the dead were killed by gunfire of the advancing troopers.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: A takeover occurs at Attica when prisoners take 42 hostages during a negotiation session. The uprising that began out of panic and confusion triggered paranoia all the way to the Nixon administration.


text:
Project Description

MBTA Contract No. Q09CN01

The Project includes upgrades to the train control systems for both the Red and Orange Lines, the Columbia Junction Signal Replacement Project (Phase 2), and the Southwest Corridor Wayside Signal Replacement (Orange Line). The MBTA has evaluated options for rail traffic automation and will be implementing Automatic Train Operation (ATO). The ATO system will be provided by others. Based on the timing of implementation, the ATO system may be an interfacing contract for which information and cooperation would be required from the Design Build Entity.

-   Submittal Information: The MBTA will be re-signaling the Red Line and Orange Lines with the next generation Digital Audio Frequency Track Circuits. Currently there are approximately 396 track circuits on the Red Line and 271 track circuits on the Orange Line that require upgrades.  The track circuits will be designed with the capacity to add additional speed commands, 3 for the Red Line and 2 for the Orange Line, in the future to take advantage of the improved Red Line No. 4 Vehicle and Orange Line No. 14 Vehicle performance technology.
-   Columbia Junction Phase 2 is the replacement of the existing central instrument houses (CIH) and equipment with new central instrument houses (CIH) with the latest generation of train control equipment to interface with the Phase 1 wayside equipment. The scope not only includes the upgrade of the equipment but the addition of a bungalow between Columbia Junction and North Quincy at Tenean Beach.  The existing electric lock crossover at Andrew Station is to be converted to a Columbia Junction remote controlled crossover with a full complement of signaling equipment for powered switches.
-   The Southwest Corridor Equipment Replacement consists of the replacement-in-kind of all cabling, switch machines, and signals along the southwest corridor of the Orange Line.

Submittal Information

One electronic copy of an LOI from Design Build Entities or firms interested in receiving a notice of the availability of the RFQ should be received by the MBTA at 2:00pm on September 28, 2017. All responses must be submitted via email to RLOLSignalsDB@mbta.com with the subject line labeled "Letter of Interest – RL/OL Signals Systems Upgrade Project".

LOIs must provide a mailing address, telephone number, and email address for each Design Build Entity's designated primary contact in order to ensure that a notice of the RFQ's availability will be received by the interested Design Build Entity. Design Build Entities are advised to provide an email address for a secondary contact, in case the primary contact is inaccessible.

Documents

Request for Letters of Interest - Revision 1 _(September 14, 2017)_

List of Letters of Interest Respondents _(October 4, 2017)_

Request for Qualifications

This Request for Qualifications is being posted for INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.

Request for Qualifications _(October 2, 2017)_

Request for Qualifications, Addendum No. 1 _(October 17, 2017)_

Request for Qualifications, Addendum No. 2 _(October 19, 2017)_

Short Listed Respondents

-   Barletta Heavy Division, Inc.
-   MEC-J.F. White , A Joint Venture

Apparent Successful Proposer

-   Barletta Heavy Division, Inc.

If an entity intends to submit a Statement of Qualifications (SOQ), it must submit a Letter of Interest in accordance with the Request for Letters of Interest prior to submitting the SOQ.

question: What lines does the Project include upgrades for?

answer: The Red and Orange lines.

question: What is Columbia Junction Phase 2?

answer: The replacement of the existing central instrument houses and equipment with new central instrument houses with the latest generation of train control equipment to interface with the Phase 1 wayside equipment.

question: What does the Southwest Corridor Equipment Replacement consist of?

answer: Replacement-in-kind of all cabling, switch machines, and signals along the southwest corridor of the Orange Line.

question: What is the MBTA Contract Number?

answer: Q09CN01

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: The text describes upgrades to train control systems for both the Red and Orange lines being done by MBTA. It lists the kinds of upgrades needed, the locations necessary, and the types of equipment and materials which will be used.


text:
LUNA E-1 NO.2,[1] sometimes identified by NASA as LUNA 1958B,[2] was a Soviet spacecraft which was lost in a launch failure in 1958. It was a Luna E-1 spacecraft, the second of four to be launched,[3] all of which were involved in launch failures.[4] It was intended to impact the surface of the Moon, and in doing so become the first man-made object to reach its surface.

The spacecraft was intended to release of sodium, in order to create a cloud of the metal which could be observed from Earth, allowing the spacecraft to be tracked.[5] Prior to the release of information about its mission, NASA correctly identified that it had been an attempted Lunar impact mission.[6]

Facing continued political pressure to beat the US, Sergei Korolev lost his temper and exclaimed “Do you think only American rockets explode!?” Once again, he knew that the Pioneer 1 probe was set for launch on October 11, but again decided to wait. Just like with the attempt in August, the US Moon shot failed to attain orbit.

Luna E-1 No.2 was launched on 11 October 1958 atop a Luna 8K72 carrier rocket,[7] flying from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.[8] One hundred and four seconds after launch, longitudinal resonance within the rocket's strap-on booster rockets caused the vehicle to disintegrate.[9] This was the same problem which had caused the loss of Luna E-1 No.1 three weeks earlier.[10]

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

title: Luna E-1 No.2

question: How did the Soviets feel when they had lost LUNA 1958B?

answer: The Soviets were upset about this loss and were pressed with a lot of political pressure as well.

question: What could have happened to the Soviet spacecraft that was lost?

answer: Quite possibly, the Soviet spacecraft could have combusted in space or simply the cameras on the spacecraft could have broken, resulting in no communication on where the spacecraft could be.


text:
Hour 60 without power:

As I awoke this morning from the brief respite provided by the sweaty sleep, it occurred to me just how forsaken we were. The ritualistic sacrifices of vegetables from our fridge had clearly appeased no power god known to man, our choreographed dances and songs to the same purpose were unheard and unseen, and charging my iPhone™ from the car was just plain annoying. We had realized about 20 hours after the power was out that we would have to fend for ourselves for food – and to this end we had begun to drive around 15 miles to the Tysons area for food. Forsooth, we were a ragged crew. The locals had, for the most part, abandoned our powerless village for more fluorescent pastures, and the choice few that remained had sold their family members for generators and the requisite gas to make them run. And yet we had stayed, clinging to order in a brutish world; and yet we had stayed, when the hours turned to days and the gluttonous eating of food before expiration had begun; and yet we had stayed, and harbored hope that Prometheus would once again bring us fire. Perhaps you’re right – we were foolish. A though that had more than once occurred to us as we looked about or shelter, vestiges of power hauntingly lacking that jolt which gave them their life, their purpose. But we were young. We were foolish. We were naïve. And while you sit swaddled in cooled air, your electric addiction fueled by your latest hit, think of us powerless ones. Remember us fondly. Because a world in which I can’t crank up the AC, reach into the cool fridge for a chilled beverage, and watch trashy television is a world I cannot long endure.

title: I lost power for a total of 114 hours over the weekend. I wrote a fake survival diary. This is the first entry.

question: Who is the narrator?

answer: This information can't be found

question: What realization does the narrator have in the morning?

answer: The narrator realizes that nothing that they had done so far was good enough to bring power to his home.

question: Why was there no power?

answer: It may be assumed that the narrator lived in a backward area that did not have power.

question: Where did the narrator belong?

answer: The narrator belonged to a village.

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer:
The narrator wakes up realizing that nothing they had done so far was good enough to get power to his village.
The narrator's crew had stayed despite everyone leaving. He sarcastically calls themselves foolish for staying.


text:
GODFREY EDWARD ARNOLD, born as GOTTFRIED EDUARD ARNOLD (Olmütz/then Austria-Hungary, January 6, 1914 – Vienna, July 5, 1989), was an Austrian American professor of medicine and researcher. His studies centered on speech, speech disorder and clinical communicology.

Early life

Arnold was a son of Anton Arnold, tenor at the Vienna Court Opera, and attended the Theresian Academy in Vienna. He completed his studies (as a medical doctor) at the University of Vienna and (as pianist) at the State Academy of Music and Performing Arts. Several internships with Hermann Gutzmann jun. (1892–1972) in Berlin deepened his phoniatric knowledge. His case studies at the Voice and Speech Ambulance of the Vienna Ear Clinic at the Vienna General Hospital led to a fundamental publication describing traumatic and constitutional disorders of voice and speech (_Die traumatischen und konstitutionellen Störungen der Stimme und Sprache_, Vienna 1948). He coauthored the fundamental textbook on voice and speech medicine (_Lehrbuch der Stimm- und Sprachheilkunde_, first edition Vienna, 1949) together with the Swiss phoniatre Richard Luchsinger (1900–1993).

Career in the United States

In 1949 he immigrated into the US and lived until 1963 in New York City, where he worked inter alia at the National Hospital for Speech Disorders[1] and as head of research at the Otolaryngology Department of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.[2]

In 1962, Arnold developed the method to inject teflon into the vocal cords[3] und coined the term “phonosurgery”[4] with Hans von Leden the following year.

Arnold was founding director of the Division of Otolaryngology[5] in the University of Mississippi Medical Center,[6] Jackson, 1963–79. His work included research on cancer.[7]

He is coauthor (with Richard Luchsinger) of the textbook “Voice - Speech - Language”.[8] A previous version of this work had been published in German in 1949. Although the text was now written several decades ago, the topics covered are quite similar to those in a contemporary voice textbook, which shows how advanced the study of phoniatry was compared to other subdivisions of Speech Language Pathology at the time. For example, topics covered in this text include: speech acoustics, observational methods, treatment of laryngeal electromyography, physiology of respiration and voice production, genetic factors in voice, development of voice throughout the lifespan, professional voice, voice therapy; pathology of the larynx, nodules, asymmetries, genetic defects of voice and laryngeal web, sulcus glottides, voice related endocrine problems, the effects of peripheral nerve lesions, the sympathetic nervous system; laryngeal myopathy, central lesions of the nervous system, laryngeal trauma, cordectomy, joint disorders, alaryngeal voice, vasomotor effects on vocal fold function, functional dysphonias, contact ulcers, ventricular voice, and psychogenic voice disorders.

Arnold also wrote the pertinent (and still current) articles on speech and speech disorder in the Encyclopædia Britannica.[9][10]

Personal life

Arnold married Isolde Reuter in 1941 and has a daughter, Claudia. After his retirement, he moved to Vienna, where he died in 1989. He is buried on the Zentralfriedhof. His wife, an opera singer and actress, died November 4, 2016 in Grinzing, a suburb of Vienna.

Honors

In 1982, Arnold received the Honors of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA).[11]

In 1988 he was bestowed the Medal of Honor of the Federal Capital of Vienna in gold.[12]

[1] Arnold, G. E.: Die Untersuchung zentraler Hörstörungen mit neuen Hörprüfungsmethoden. - European Archives of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology 157,5 (1951), 521-542

[2] Arnold, G. E: Electronystagmography. Problems of Recording, Evaluation and Interpretation. - Confinia Neurologica 20 (1960), 226-232

[3] Arnold, G. E.: Vocal rehabilitation of paralytic dysphonia. Technique of intracordal injection. - Arch. Otolaryngol. 76 (1962), 358-368

[4] Leden, Hans von: The History of Phonosurgery. In: Ford, C.N. und Bless, D.M. (Hrsg.): Phonosurgery. - Philadelphia, PA: Raven Press 1991

[5] Division of Otolaryngology

[6] History of the Department of Otolaryngology and Communicative Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Mississippi

[7] Bomer, Donald L., and Arnold, Godfrey E.: Rare tumors of the ear, nose and throat : uncommon malignant tumors of the head and neck. In: Acta oto-laryngologica 1971

[8] Richard Luchsinger and Godfrey E. Arnold: Voice, Speech, Language. Clinical Communicology: Its Physiology and Pathology. — 1965 Wadsworth Publishing Co., Belmont, California. LCCN Permalink.

[9] Britannica author

[10] articles on speech-language and speech-disorder

[11] ASHA Honors of the Association Recipients

[12] Letter of the Mayor of Vienna

title: Godfrey Edward Arnold

question: What does the article say about Arnold's achievements?

answer: He's the co-author of a canonical textbook in addition to inventing phono surgery, both the medical treatment and the term, with Hans von Leden. He's the founder of the Division of Otolaryngology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Finally, he's the writer of articles on speech and speech disorders in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

question: What does the article say about Arnold's piano style?


text:
I firmly believe in the existence of Santa Claus.

Mock me if you will, most non-believers do.  But I know, in my heart of hearts, that He is real and that He visits all the good children of the world and gives them toys on Christmas Eve while they sleep.  And try as I might to be a good person, I know that He does not consider me to be one. I know this because He hasn't given me a single present since I was eight years old.

My parents supplemented the absence of Santa's gifts with ones that they bought themselves, and they did their best to try and convince me that there really is no Santa Claus and that there never was. They did this to spare my feelings but I know the truth. That He lives on the North Pole with his helper elves and magical flying reindeer.  That He sees us when we're sleeping and knows when we're awake.  That He knows when we've been bad or good.  And that He finds me lacking despite my best efforts.  I'm naughty in his eyes.

I don't know what I did between the ages of seven and eight that was so heinous as to deserve such a fate.  I search my soul everyday for answers yet it is always for naught.  But I have faith that one day He will let me know what my transgressions were so that I may make amends.  Until then I will just keep praying that maybe this year my tree won't be empty on Christmas morning.

title: Empty Tree

question: When did the narrator stop getting gifts from Santa?

answer: They haven't gotten any gifts from Santa since they were eight.

question: Where does Santa Claus live?

answer: Santa lives on the North Pole.

question: Who tried to convince the narrator that Santa isn't real?

answer: The narrator's parents tried to convince the narrator that Santa isn't real.

question: What does the narrator pray for?

answer: The narrator prays for presents from Santa.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: The narrator fully believes in Santa, but they haven't received any presents from him since they were eight. They wonder what they did wrong, and they pray that they can fix it to keep getting gifts from Santa.


text:
The 152. FIGHTER ESCADRILLE was a unit of the Polish Air Force at the start of the Second World War. In 1939 the unit was attached to the Modlin Army. []

Equipment

9 PZL P.11c and 1 PZL P.11a airplanes.

Air Crew

Commanding officer: kpt. pil. Włodzimierz Łazoryk

Deputy Commander: por.pil.Marian Imiela

Pilots:

1.  ppor.pil.Jan Bury-Burzymski
2.  ppor.pil.Anatol Piotrowski
3.  pchor.pil.Mieczysław Babiański
4.  pchor.pil.Stanisław Kędzierski
5.  pchor.pil.Mieczysław Waszkiewicz
6.  plut.pil.Marian Bełc
7.  kpr.pil.Stanisław Brzeski
8.  kpr.pil.Antoni Joda
9.  kpr.pil.Aleksander Popławski
10. st.szer.pil.Mieczysław Popek

title: Polish 152nd Fighter Escadrille

question: What was the Polish 152nd Fighter Escadrille?

answer: A unit of the Polish air force.

question: To which army was it attached?

answer: The Modlin Army.

question: What was the Modlin Army?

answer: The article does not explain.

question: Who was the commanding officer?

answer: Captain Pilot Wlodzimierz Lazoryk.

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: The Polish 152nd Fighter Escadrille was a unit of the Polish Air Force at the start of the Second World War. In 1939 the unit was attached to the Modlin Army. The commanding officer was Captain Pilot Wlodzimierz Lazoryk.


text:
The Adventures of Mr. Paycheck

So, I know a guy. He’s a pretty good guy, but lately something just doesn’t seem right. His name is Mr. Paycheck. He comes to see me pretty regularly and is faithful about it too. But he never stays too long. Quite frankly, he’s a bit of a flake. Also, I think he steals from me.
He brings a gift of cash every time he comes over. He’s a bit stingy though. It seems that his generous gifts are directly related to how long I am gone from my house. I’ve almost developed a system to calculate just how much he will bring on his next visit, but I think this is where he flimflams me. After I do my calculations, I am joyous. “He’s bringing HOW much this time?,” I think to myself… Excited, I travel to his place of origin to pick him up and let our next adventure begin. But when I look at him, he seems thinner than I was expecting. He tells me that a feller by the name of Fica needed some immediate assistance and hell, Mr. Paycheck is a good guy so of course, he helps. “But what about the rest that I was expecting?” I ask. “Well, a Frenchman named Pension told me I should invest with him. And look! He gave me some beans too!” Ugh, alright Mr. Paycheck. What shall we do first? He said that he has some business to take care of before we go ANYWHERE and that I need to get my check book. More money? Why does he always need MY money? “Don’t worry,” he says “It’s for a good cause!” So I let the poor guy sign his name on a few of my checks. My side hurts a little, but it makes him feel important and grown-up. Alright! Let’s go buy some Snickers and tugboats! “Wait, wait, wait… I need to go to the grocery store.” I begin to cry because he ALWAYS spends just a LITTLE too much when he goes. But whatever, I’m used to it by now, so we go and get groceries. He gives them all to me, but if you ask me, the amount he buys SHOULD last until he comes again, but “F THAT!” he says. But my babies need shoes. AND WATER!!! “Maybe next time,” he mutters under his breath.
By now he has paid off his friends and went grocery shopping (and gas about two times) I turn to tell him a funny secret. I knew it would happen, but didn’t think it would be so soon this time. He was gone. All that he left was a little note with my bank account number on it.

The note reads as follows:

Dearest Chadrick,
“I know that we were supposed to have some good times on this visit, but I promise… NEXT time I come visit we can make your wildest dreams come true!
Regretfully so,
Mr. Paycheck

P.S. I left some peanuts in your bank account just in case you get hungry before I return. Just plain though, the honey roasted ones you enjoy so were just too expensive.”

And then it starts all over. I know he will return in 1 week and 6 days, and I look forward to it. So, I leave my house a little longer each time, hoping that he brings more with him on his next trip so that I can FINALLY go buy some Snickers and tugboats.

title: I sometimes write short (very short) stories.  This is one I wrote back when my paychecks were just a little smaller then they are now.

question: What does the story say about why Chadrik is upset?

answer: Chadrik is getting paid, but this time they gets less then expected. They asks for explanation and find out that is pension and groceries have to be paid. Chadrik is disappointed that they will not be able to buy Snickers and tugboats.

question: What does the story say about what Chadrik does for a living?


text:
"jesus christ," my mom said. "gary, ask your mother what temperature to cook this turkey to." the tension was thick. she needed an answer and a cigarette. "i have one recipe that says 165 and another that says 180."

i could tell my dad was wondering why she was following two recipes in the first place, but he knew better than to ask. she'd been putting a lot of effort into feeding a proper thanksgiving dinner to a table of six, and a half-spent pack of marlboro 27s proved the point. she took one outside, he went to find his mother.

"ma?" he asked. "krista wants to know what temp the turkey should be at. 165 or 180?"

"she wants to know what type it is?" grandma jan was hard of hearing.

"no," he said, "what temperature to cook it to."

"oh. well i think it depends on how big it is, doesn't it?"

"mom, she wants to know the temperature. not how long to cook it for."

"well, i can't remember... the last year i cooked a turkey was when we were on arlington."

my dad knew that wasn't true, but he didn't follow up on it. he walked back and poked his head out the door to tell my mom. "she doesn't know," he said.

"ahh, shit," she said as she exhaled smoke through her mouth and nose. she took one last puff and snuffed out the cigarette among a dozen others in a red ash tray resting on the deck railing. "well i don't want to send your whole family home sick. 180 it is." she came in, her stress only partly relieved.

"you don't think that's too high? that seems high," my dad said, following her into the kitchen. "we won't eat 'til saturday for crissakes."

"well 165 seems too low, gary."

"well i don't know what to tell you."

"then i don't know what to tell you, either."

their discussion ended there, leaving the problem mostly unresolved.

meanwhile, i had been watching all of this play itself out. first my mom freaking, then my dad asking, then my grandma forgetting, then my dad telling, then my mom freaking again. all the verbage was amusing, but i thought i could do something to put the issue to rest. so i fucking googled that shit.

"hey mom," i said, "google just told me that 165 is the new standard temp for turkey. 180 was the old one."

"oh, google told you?" she asked. i could tell she was a little surprised by my 'ingenuity' and that she was half doubting google.

"uh, yeah," i said. "here. look."

"18 million pages?'

"yeah. and this one is the most visited of all of them. it says 165."

"oh, cool. alright, cool. well it's time to eat then," she said, walking back into the kitchen. "really nate? google? how did you ever think to check google? and, gosh, who makes 18 million sites about safe turkey temperatures? they must be a bunch of weirdos."

title: My Poor Mother

question: What is the occasion for a turkey dinner?

answer: Thanksgiving for six people.

question: What is the narrator's name?

answer: This isn't mentioned.

question: Why does the narrator's father need to know the temperature for cooking a turkey?

answer: Because the narrator's mother is using two separate recipes that each specify different temperatures, so she asks the father.

question: What happened at Arlington?

answer: It's mentioned that this was the last place the narrator's grandmother cooked a turkey.

question: How is the problem solved?

answer: The narrator uses Google to find out the standard temperature.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: The narrator's mother is cooking a turkey for Thanksgiving, and is confused by two recipes that each specify different temperatures. The narrator's father asks Grandma Jan, but none of them come to a conclusion until the narrator uses Google to find out that 165 degrees is the current standard.


text:
Like Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon, I couldn't back down now. It was now or never and I had to make a decision. I was already covered in blood, he was half-dead on the floor. Do I give him mercy? Do I end his suffering now or do I let it drag in agony? He couldn't suffer for as long as I did. I was in pain for years. My body, my soul, me. It was all used as his punching bag for years. There was no way he had that long left. I would never be able to exact the same kind of pain on him. He had minutes at best.

We have kids. A boy and a girl. They are away at their nanna's house for the week. Smart and handsome, our boy has just finished middle school. He excels in math and science. Every time he looks up in the skies, he can point out the constellations. He can tell us the burning point of any liquid or chemical. He may be autistic but this has never stopped him. The very definition of what a child with a disability can achieve when they put their mind to it.

Our daughter is inquisitive. She's a stunner. The older of the two. She is a fantastic older sister and always wanted to hold her brother, change his nappy and feed him. Always held his hand. Side by side, they were the closest brother-sister couple you'd ever see. Even now, she's always there for him.

And what have I done? I've taken him away from them. Oh god. What will they think? They are going to hate me. Did they even know the suffering that I went through? Did they ever hear my yells or those fists? What about the glass plate the other week? Do they just pretend like it doesn't happen? They would have been next. I know it. I had no other choice.

We have pets. Well, had. They kept disappearing. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure he killed them when they pissed him off. I've always loved animals. I was never allowed to have pets as a child. My dad thought they were a weakness. Of course he would. He was a drill sergeant. Spent his time in Nam fighting those Viets. And for what? All it did was make him more evil. Coming home at night, if he even did, he would have us all line up and repeat the Pledge of Allegiance. The war fucked him up yet he still had loyalty to the country. He made us pledge our loyalty too. But what did this country ever do for me?

Dad would beat my mom. She'd always be wearing sunglasses to cover those black eyes. When he was home, you knew it. If I didn't see him come home, I always heard him throw mom around the house. All I could do was hide my head under the pillow and sing. That fucking bastard. He died before my eldest came along. Was the happiest day of my life. Drove himself straight off the bridge downtown and into the river. Nobody came to his aid.
Fuck! I always heard mom crying while dad beat the shit out of her. Obviously my kids heard him using me as a rag doll too. I'm a goddamn pussy. I should have done something. Said something to them. I tried going to the police about it. I never wanted my kids to see this. But what did the police ever do? They talked to him. He gave them a drink. They joked and laughed together. They then left. I remember that. It was as if I was a joke. When they left, I knew I was fucked.

I ended up going to hospital that night. A broken arm and bruised ribs. I told them I fell down the stairs. I bet they hear that all the time. How many times is it true, anyway? It should be the international code for "Help! My partner is beating me". The cops came again. I repeated the same story. I couldn't tell them the truth. They didn't believe me the first time. They let him put me back here. I knew they could never help me again. I lied. But I knew that time was running out.

It was going to be either him or I and I went ahead and made that decision for the both of us.

I arranged for the kids to spend the school holidays with their nanna. She always loved them. She became a better woman after dad died. I don't know if she ever had any part of it, but I wouldn't blame her. She never picked up on my own situation. Like events repeating themselves down a generation. She never missed the opportunity to have the kids in that huge Victorian-era house and the kids always took up the chance to be spoilt rotten.

Next, I bought his favorite whiskey for his birthday. I needed him to be at his absolute worst and he is a horrible drunk. A bottle of Jamison. I even put a fucking ribbon on it. A nice little "Fuck You" in a patronizing kinda way. He sat down in his favorite chair. A brown felt recliner. I hate that thing. The only time he ever got up from it was to berate me. Beat me. This would be the last time. He tucked into it. Enjoying it. I could see him slipping. Mutating from that semi-normal fuck, to that beast I needed to see to pull this off. As his speech started to slur, I knew it wasn't long until it was over. My heart racing, I could feel the adrenaline pumping. He started calling me names. I wasn't responding. Here come the physical threats now. Nope, still no luck. Out he comes, from the fucking chair. He can barely stand straight but if he caught me, that was it. I pulled out the knife I had sheathed tucked into my pants. He looked me square in the eyes as I drive it through his gut. For a brief, fleeting moment, I saw the man that I fell in love with but I knew it wasn't over. I dragged that knife up a little bit further. I read somewhere on the internet that's where the real damage occurs. That was it. He fell to the floor, the knife still there.

Now here I stand and him barely conscious. But he is no animal, and I'm no monster. If he is going to die, it will be with as little suffering as possible. So I grab that knife and pull it out. I decide that for all that hate I have for him. He is still the father to our kids. He needs a clean death. I look at him one more time. No words, but our eyes say all that needs to be said. The knife then does the rest as I plunge it between his eyes.

Free. Finally. Scared, but free. I hear the sirens now. Some one probably heard his scream before. I can't blame them. It was blood curdling. I'll probably never see my kids again but at least they are safe from him now. I take one last look at myself in the mirror as a free man. 3 day growth and short hair. Covered in blood. I admire my house one more time for tomorrow, I'll be in Attica.

title: Finally Free

question: What does the story say about the narrator's kids?

answer: He has a son and a daughter. His son is just out of middle school, is brilliant, and is on the autism spectrum. His daughter is the oldest and is curious, beautiful, and a good caretaker. They both probably know about the abuse in their home and now probably won't see either of their parents again. They are spending the school holiday with their nanna.

question: What does the story say about the narrator's relationship with his spouse?

answer: The narrator's relationship with his spouse is one marked by physical, verbal, and emotional abuse. The abuse is so bad that the narrator has had to go to the hospital and has called for help from the police. The narrator ends up killing his spouse as a means of escape from the abuse for him and his children.

question: What does the text say about blood?

answer: The text speaks of blood in two ways: that of bodily fluid and of sound. The narrator is said to be covered in his spouse's blood after having stabbed him. The narrator's husband's scream is referred to as blood-curdling, speaking of the terrible quality of its sound.

question: What does the story say about how the narrator met his partner?


text: Sitting at the bar babying my drink I turn to notice a beautiful woman sitting alone in the corner. She seems solemn and desperate, I can't help but feel like there is something I can do to help so I approach her table. Walking toward her I notice a tear rolling down her face “Are you alright?” I ask “No, I have recently lost someone very close to me” she replies burying her face in her hands as the tears stream from her eyes. “I'm very sorry to hear about your loss, would you like me to leave?” “Actually I could use some company, but could we go somewhere more private?”nothing about this seems right but before I stop to gather my thoughts the words were already out “My place is not far from here” I said with nervous excitement. Opening my front door she is all over me, we fall onto the couch kissing and groping. My hand slides to her inner thigh, she pushes me away with a look of disgust “Is something wrong?” I blurt feeling foolish and confused “This just doesn't feel right, it's too soon” she said looking down with mauled eyes. Without thinking I ask “Are you a lesbian?” she glares wide eyed as her vulnerable demeanor quickly turns to rage, she slides a knife from her boot and replies “No, I'm a necrophile”

title: Tonight's the Night

question: Where does the story begin?

answer: At a bar

question: Who are the main characters?

answer: A man and a woman who meet at a bar

question: Where do the man and woman go after leaving the bar?

answer: The man's home

question: What is implied to happen to the man after the story ends?

answer: The woman kills him with the knife from her boot

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: A man sees a solemn-looking woman at a bar, and she tells him she recently lost someone close to her. The man suggests they go to his place. There, she takes a knife out of her boot and tells him she is a necrophile.


text:
I woke up to the ranting of an angry lady outside the streets. I gazed upon the clock as the sunlight dazed my face. It’s 9:53. I am late for work. I quickly prepared myself, skipping breakfast. I hurried outside to call a cab. Strangely, there was none. I overheard the radio from a store on the other side of the road. There was a strike. It answered my questions about why there no cabs passing by. ***Everything’s seemed familiar.*** I went to grab my bicycle and rode my way to work. On my way to work, I tried to recall the dream I had last night. It was like any other day. I got late, there was a strike, and I rode my bicycle to work. Though, I can’t seem to remember the rest of it. Things start to get hazy. I had a feeling that my phone would ring. I took my phone from my pocket and it did.  It was from my girlfriend. She said she was breaking up with me. Somehow, I was not surprised. I got mean to her last night. I’ve seen this coming, but I was still hoping it won’t. As I arrived to work, my boss was waiting for me by my cubicle. He shouted and scolded at me for being late again. He said he’ll be decreasing my pay. *Again.* This happened yesterday too. I suddenly felt monotonous.

I finished my work late. It’s 12:28 pm now. I was getting ready to leave the office and head back home. I went to the area where I parked my bicycle. It was gone. I forgot to chain the bicycle by the post. There are still no cabs to ride till now. I had no choice. I decided to walk back home. As I was near my neighborhood, I stared on the dark alley. I had a sudden feeling that something bad is going to happen, but I ignored it and insisted on walking. There were three guys looking at me. Two of which holding a knife, the other one smoking a cigarette. They started to head toward me. I felt a cold drop of sweat run through my face. I can hear my heart pumping so fast. I began to run. Sadly, the guy smoking a cigarette has a gun. He shot my leg. The pain was intense. I fall to the hard cold concrete of the street. I start to panic. I can hear their footsteps getting louder as they walk towards me. “You can’t run away from us kid.”, one of them said. They searched for anything valuable from my pockets. They took my phone and wallet and left. I lay down for minutes, still shocked. As I regain my senses, I tried to stand up and walked to my apartment. I noticed something odd. The door was already unlocked. I felt uneasy as I opened the door slowly. Everything’s a mess. The Furniture were scattered everywhere. Closets and wardrobes all opened. I got robbed. I sat down and took a glass of beer. I remembered my dream. *No, it wasn’t a dream. It was a memory*. A sudden burst of memories blew onto me. As if I was experiencing a déjà vu. I’ve been living in this hell for long. Everything’s still the same. I finally gave up. I stood up and decided what to do. I stared at the starry night sky as the cold wind brush through my face. This should stop everything. I looked down to the streets, closed my eyes, and felt the wind rush through my face as my body falls down. I heard a crack and a loud ringing came after. It was painful. I can feel the cold fluid flowing out of my body. I tried to open my eyes. I could still see the peaceful sky. I lost consciousness slowly. Everything is cold. This should do.

*I woke up to the ranting of an angry lady outside the streets.*

title: Again?

question: Why is everything so familiar to the narrator?

question: What is the narrator's goal?

question: Write a ~0 sentence summary.


text:
_PSYCHOPOMP_ is the debut studio album by Japanese Breakfast, the solo musical project of Michelle Zauner of Little Big League. The album was released in the U.S. through Yellow K Records on April 1, 2016, and internationally through Dead Oceans on September 19, 2016.

Background

Prior to her solo project, Michelle Zauner fronted the Philadelphian emo band, Little Big League.[1] Zauner fronted the band between 2011 and 2014, before returning to her hometown of Eugene, Oregon in 2013. Zauner made the trek back home in the wake of her mother being diagnosed with cancer.[2]

While at home, tending to her family in Oregon, Zauner began recording solo music. Zauner described the project as having much more to say following _Tropical Jinx_, the 2014 studio album by Little Big League. Originally, Zauner had begun to record early samples of music as a self-meditative and “instant-gratification” feeling.[3] Two years later, the solo project itself eventually became the work of _Psychopomp_, the debut album by Japanese Breakfast. The name of the band, according to Zauner, is a juxtaposition of Asian exoticism and American culture. Despite the name, Zauner is not of Japanese descent, but of Korean descent.[4]

Zauner described the debut album as quite “dark and heavy-handed”, although she had a desire to make the music urgent[5] and “sonically upbeat.”[6] In the album, she discusses regret of not being there with her mother and her decision to get married before her mother went into a coma.[7] She hopes that her work can help expose more Asian-Americans to be involved in music.[8]

Composition

_Psychopomp_ is a dream pop,[9][10] indie pop and lo-fi album.[11] According to AllMusic's Tim Sendra, “the album has all the hallmarks of a homemade lo-fi album, but also has the feel of a wobbly '80s pop album played on a long-lost cassette.” Sendra also wrote that the album's sound shifts between “guitar-lashed indie rock with swooping synths (”Rugged Country“), melancholy ballads played on tear-stained keys (”Jane Cum," “Triple 7”), driving pop/rock with pumped-up hooks (“Everybody Wants to Love You”), and bass-heavy, almost painfully heartfelt indie rock (“Heft”)".[12] Nina Corcocan of _Consequence of Sound_ wrote: “It's lo-fi heart with detailed production, the type of pop that feels homey and familiar — which is doubly surprising given Zauner’s other band, Little Big League, is full of jock riffs and chunky guitar rock.”[13] _PopMatters_{{'}} Jasper Bruce thought that the album serves “cocktails of electronic, garage rock and lyrical vocals.”[14]

Critical reception

Upon its release, _Psychopomp_ received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 76, which indicates “generally favorable reviews”, based on 5 reviews.[15] AllMusic critic Tim Sendra, who described the record as “an impressive work by an artist well worth watching in the future”, stated: “Zauner's songs don't need dressing up; time and again she and Eisenberg make the right choices that allow the melodies to breathe and the emotions to flow unhindered by artifice.”[16] _Consequence of Sound_{{'}}s Nina Corcoran commented: “_Psychopomp_ chases joy while replicating it in the process, leaving you full of the belief that this could be your year after all.”[17] _Pitchfork_ critic Laura Snapes thought that the record “offers much more than that: at once cosmically huge and acutely personal, Zauner captures grief for the perversely intimate yet overwhelming pain it is. Long may she keep at this music thing.”[18] _PopMatters_{{'}} Jasper Bruce wrote that _Psychopomp_ “juggles spacy soundscapes with insistent, driving grooves. For the most part, the record pulls off this balancing act seemingly effortlessly and with style.”[19] _Spin_ critic Anna Gaca described it as “a sharp-edged exploration of how loneliness and longing form into brittle personal shields.”[20]

_PopMatters_ listed the album as number 3 on its list of “The 10 Best Shoegaze and Dream Pop Albums of 2016”.[21]

Track listing

Personnel

MUSICIANS

-   Michelle Zauner – guitar, keyboards, vocals
-   Peter Bradley – bass
-   Nick Hawley-Gamer – guitar
-   Colin Redmond – percussion, clarinet
-   Ned Eisenberg – keys
-   Adam Ponto – strings
-   Sam Cook-Parrott – backup vocals on “Everybody Wants to Love You!”

PRODUCTION

-   Ned Eisenberg – producer, mixing
-   Michelle Zauner – producer
-   Colin Redmond – engineer at CR Ensemble in Eugene, OR
-   Alex Santilli – mastered at Spice House Sound in Philadelphia, PA
-   Ben Pubusky – art design

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title: Psychopomp (album)

question: When was the Philadelphian emo band Little Big league formed?

answer: It is not stated.

question: When did Michelle Zauner leave the Little Big League?

answer: It appears she left the band between 2013-2014.

question: What was Michelle's inspiration behind the creation of the psychopomp album?

answer: It appears her life experiences, such as her mother's health and her decision to get married, inspired the project.

question: How well was Michelle's debut solo album received by the public?

answer: It appears it was well-received by critics because it received positive reviews.

question: Why did Michelle name her new band "Japanese breakfast" despite not being of Japanese descent?

answer: It can be deduced that she intended the band to mix Asian exoticism and American culture.

question: Write a ~4 sentence summary.

answer: Michelle Zauner, former lead artist for the Philadelphian Emo band Little Big League left the band in the wake of her mother's ailing health back in Oregon. While there, she began recording solo music, and after two years, the result was the debut studio album Psychopomp by her new band, Japanese Breakfast. Michelle decided to name the band Japanese Breakfast to mix Asian exoticism and American culture even though she's of Korean descent. Finally, the inspiration behind the album centered explicitly on her regrets about not being there for her mother and her decision to marry before she slipped into a coma.