text:
I am not a particularly good writer, but this is the dream I just had, I felt the urge to post it somewhere and found this subreddit.
~

The air was frigid with cold on the dark January day. Seattle is far enough north that the winter and summer day lengths are disproportionate. Usually during this time of year dusk will be at four o'clock. The result is darkness, and rain, and even depression. The dark days seemed to mess with my head, make my sleeping patterns go crazy. Oddly enough I was going to sleep in the very early hours of the morning, and waking up past noon whenever I could. Tonight was no different as I went to sleep at almost 3 in the morning.

Like any night I missed her to no end. I would likely never see her again, yet i clung to the very thought of her. Like most nights I fell asleep crying into my pillow, curled in my blankets as the rain drizzled down just outside. I was in a dark haze, not sure if i was asleep or awake. Suddenly I was awoken with a feeling of dread; my very insides were churning, my pulse quickened and adrenalin kicked in. I felt a sudden agony in my head; it felt as if my head was on fire. I twisted in my blankets and felt my stomach drop, the feeling you get when you’re on a roller-coaster on that first drop. A bright light filled my eyes becoming stronger every second, I felt my bed drop from beneath me and suddenly I was floating in nothing, light surrounding me.

I was on the dry grass beside a busy road, my eyes adjusted then I saw her, waiting to cross the street just 5 yards before me. I was behind her she did not see me, nor did anyone of the cars rushing past. Somehow I was in Arizona. I began to pick myself up from the grass watching her as she started to cross the street. When something else caught my eye, it was a large truck, speeding through the previous intersection. I saw it, she did not. I shouted her name, attempting to warn her. I sprinted towards her just as she turned around to see the truck hurtling towards her. I jumped, pushing her out of the way and we both hit the ground hard. The trucks tire caught my leg and suddenly it was on fire. I looked again at her calling her name again as my head gave out.

Yet I quickly came out again and I was on the side of the road. She held my head as I looked up at her amazing brown eyes, she was so fucking beautiful. I cried a bit, heard a siren and passed out again. I could tell my leg was in a bad shape as I woke on my hospital bed. I looked and saw she was beside my bed, sitting beside me on a chair gently sleeping while holding my hand. I lay there for an hour until she woke, we acknowledged each other silently then I leaned over and hugged her. My held felt numb and my sight went dark again, followed by pure light.

I was in my own bed again, back in Washington listening to the sound of the rain fall endlessly outside.

title: I have never written a short story, nor do i consider this to be one. Rather, the recollection of a dream.

question: Who is the narrator missing?

answer: Not stated.

question: Where is the narrator transported to?

answer: The narrator is on the grass near a busy road in Arizona.

question: What happened to the narrator's leg?

answer: The narrator seems to have been hit by a car, in an attempt to push the woman out of the way of it.

question: Who is the woman that the narrator is laying next to?

answer: Not stated.

question: Write a ~6 sentence summary.

answer: The narrator has a trouble sleeping, their thoughts clouded with the memories of a woman. The narrator has a dream in which they are on the side of a busy road. They push the woman out o the way of a speeding truck. The narrator's legs are injured, and they stare into the woman's eyes. However, they wake up soon after. 3


split: train

text:
[Sam Hill House pictured in 2009.] SAM HILL HOUSE is a historic, privately owned home located in Seattle, Washington's Capitol Hill neighborhood. The property forms part of the city-designated Harvard-Belmont Landmark District.[1]

The concrete building was constructed between 1909 and 1910 by railroad magnate Sam Hill in preparation for a planned visit to Seattle by a member of the Belgian royal family. Following Hill's 1931 death, the home remained vacant until its purchase in 1937 by Theodore and Guendolen Plestcheeff. Guendolen Plestcheeff, a notable local preservationist, remained resident at the property until her death in 1994.[2][3]

In 2016 the home went on sale for $15 million.[4]

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

title: Sam Hill House (Seattle)

question: How many Capitol Hill neighborhoods are in the U.S.?

answer: The text doesn't day.

question: What material is Sam Hill house's exterior made out of?

answer: Concrete.

question: List Sam Hill House's listing price in 2016.

answer: $15 million.

question: Who is Sam Hill?

answer: He was a railroad magnate in the 20th century.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: This text offers a few details on the historic Sam Hill House in Seattle. Named after railroad magnate, Sam Hill, the house was built for him by the Belgian royal family in the early 1900s and went up for sale in 2016 for $15 million.


text:
The director’s face was the first I saw upon returning. I had hoped it would be my mothers. His bifocals were constantly sliding down that pointy nose, and I could tell he was nervous from the constant smoothing of the stringy hair around his ears. Several emotions flickered across his face at once: fear, joy, excitement, jealousy. The last made me uncomfortable, and I shifted under the large man’s eager stare.

“Well… what did you see?” he asked, rubbing his forehead with a handkerchief. His voice was higher than normal; normal being already slightly feminine. The others in the room stared expectantly, pen and paper ready in each pair of hands. Reporters, news camera crews, journalists, and anyone else who wanted exclusive information was jammed into the already cramped room. If I had more of an ego, I may have enjoyed the attention. Perhaps even more so if I had anything to tell them.

They thought I was the perfect candidate, considering my experience. Every trip to the past had included me, either on my own or accompanying a person or group. They thought that I was good luck. I knew better, knew that I was the opposite. The first time, I had caught cholera, and had nearly died in Nottingham. The second, a stray Mongol arrow had all but pierced my heart. The rest are a jumble of disease, famine, natural disasters, and war casualties. Each time, as I was about to die, I was brought back to the present and the ailment cured. They told me it was worth it, for science and history. None of them ever volunteered to join me.

If it hadn't been news of the meteor, I may have continued my disastrous missions into history. It had been kept quiet at first, but news leaked out, as it always does. People began to panic, rioters hit the streets, and religious extremists gained billions of followers. Of course, nobody knew if the meteor would actually hit; it all depended on the timing. Either a direct collision, pulled by our gravity, or else it will pass extremely close and shoot towards the sun. Impossible to tell.
Then the director had his brilliant plan; if we could see the past, why not the future?  In the state of panic, everybody jumped on board. The director became a sort of celebrity, and funding was raised quickly. And who better, he asked, to lead this mission, but the one who had been a part of all previous missions. I tried to oppose, of course, but they wouldn't hear it. I was going.

I knew all along there was nothing to be seen. Even as they were inputting the coordinates, I was trying to decide what to say. You cannot predict the future; you cannot know it, because it does not yet exist. There are many possibilities, many different ways it could run. Astrologists and prophets appear successful, because they predict the most likely outcome, and brag intelligence or giftedness when it comes about. But there was no likely outcome, no easily discernible pattern to follow. It was one or the other, left or right, death or life. Heads or tails.

I glanced down, as the face of George Washington stared mockingly up at me. With a practiced smile and show of relief, I proclaimed that we would survive; the meteor will pass close enough that offshoots will create much damage, but Earth will remain intact.

Celebratory whoops and hollers filled the room, and the director did something of a dance. I smiled, shaking hands and giving hugs as everyone came to congratulate me. There was no happiness, no excitement, as I wait until the day the meteor would arrive. If I were to be honest with myself, I hope it hits us.

Nobody will judge you when you are dead.

title: Our Future, or Lack-Thereof

question: Why is the protagonist not looking forward to seeing the director?

answer: Because he was pressured by him to time travel to the future.

question: Why were there so many reporters?

answer: They wanted to know if the meteor might actually hit Earth.

question: Is the narrator able to travel in time?

answer: Only to the past.

question: Did the narrator lie about the meteor?

answer: Yes, he did, because he felt pressured by everyone else.

question: Write a ~1 sentence summary.

answer: The narrator is pressured by the director as well as everyone else to time travel into the future to see if a meteor would actually hit Earth.


text:
NDTV on Friday decided not to air any views questioning the strikes and dropped an interview with former home minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on the issue.

Even as the Centre and the Opposition are at loggerheads over the validity of 29 September surgical strikes by the Indian Army along the Line of Control (LoC), _NDTV_on Friday, decided not to air any views questioning the strikes and dropped an interview with former home minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on the issue, _The News Minute_ reported.

"National security cannot be compromised by politics. The current political debate threatens to do this. _NDTV_ will not air any remarks that risk security for political advantage," _NDTV_ had tweeted on 6 October.

  pic.twitter.com/KRLwjeimXJ

  — NDTV (@ndtv) October 6, 2016

On 3 October, the Congress had asked the government to put forth credible evidence of last week's surgical strikes to expose Pakistan's false propaganda.

[NDTV drops Chidambarams interview on surgical strikes says Indias security cant be compromised]

The graphic by NDTV that played on the 9 pm. Courtesy: Twitter/@ndtv

Senior Congress spokesperson Anand Sharma had said Pakistan was misleading its people by claiming that no such attack had taken place.

In that backdrop, it would be necessary for the prime minister to "expose" Pakistan by putting forth credible evidence about the surgical strikes on the intervening night of 28 and 29 September, Sharma said.

"The government must expose Pakistan's denial. It has all the tools and instruments to do so," he had said.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal too had asked the prime minister to present evidence of the strike to give a befitting reply to Pakistan.

"Since the last two days, Pakistan is taking international journalists to the border and trying to show that surgical strikes never took place. Two days back, the United Nations gave a statement that there was no such activity on the border," he had said.

"My blood boiled over these news reports (of the international media). Pakistan is indulging in smearing India's image at the international level. I appeal to the Prime Minister that the way he and the Army taught Pakistan a lesson on ground, he should also unmask the propaganda by Pakistan at international level. The whole country is with you. I also appeal to the countrymen not to believe in the false campaign by Pakistan," Kejriwal had said.

Cornering the Centre, former home minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Monday had also said that a major surgical strikes was carried out in 2013 but the then Congress government chose not to publicise it, reported India Today. However, Chidambaram did not ask for any evidence from the government.

Seven terror launch pads across the LoC were targeted by the Army on the night of 28 September in a nearly five-hour-long operation during which heli-borne and ground forces were deployed.

The announcement of the strikes came 11 days after the attack by Pakistan-based terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad on an Indian army camp in Uri in Kashmir, after which Modi had said the attackers will not go "unpunished" and that they will not be forgiven.

Meanwhile, _NDTV _put up an expanded editorial policy in a post on Sunday:

  NDTV'_s unflinching and non-negotiable commitment to reporting the news without any filters or allegiance will always be the core of what we stand for and do. It has led in the past to boycotts and threats from parties which had no impact on our journalism - nor will they._

  _Interviews find space on our channels based on their relevance and newsworthiness in a continuum of developments. An interview that ran in part or in whole during the day may not make the cut for prime time news. This is standard for any newsroom._

  _On matters of wild and unsubstantiated allegations, of which there is no shortage today in the country's politics, we will not report them without the accuser offering proof that has been verified by us and found to be news-worthy._

  _This is our policy for matters of national security as well as for the daily grind of politics. Each interview and press conference that we report on is subject to the same criteria. We cover LIVE press conferences and we repeat newsworthy excerpts only after we have independently verified the facts._

  _The army's deep courage and sacrifices will be reported on, as will, when and if they occur, transgressions which bear investigation and examination that are based in fact and not speculation._

  _At a time when anything goes as far as the news is concerned, it is gratifying that_ NDTV_'s standards have impelled a debate among and outside news organisations._

_With inputs from PTI_

_Find latest and upcoming tech gadgets online on Tech2 Gadgets. Get technology news, gadgets reviews & ratings. Popular gadgets including laptop, tablet and mobile specifications, features, prices, comparison._

question: Which Congress person said that Pakistan was misleading people?

answer: Anand Sharma.

question: How were they misleading people?

answer: Claiming the air strikes never happened.

question: Where did these strikes take place?

answer: India.

question: What did NDTV decide on Friday?

answer: Not to air any views questioning the strikes, dropping an interview planned with former home minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on the issue.

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: Several legislatures are at odds in India over whether or not air strikes have happened recently. This contestation is resulting in some media agencies such as NDTV refusing to air interviews regarding said strikes. There's the underlying notion that Pakistan has been and is currently running a smear campaign against India.


text:
The PALE or PALLID HARRIER (_Circus macrourus_) is a migratory bird of prey of the harrier family. The scientific name is derived from the Ancient Greek. _Circus_ is from _kirkos_, referring to a bird of prey named for its circling flight (_kirkos_, “circle”), probably the hen harrier and _macrourus_ is “long-tailed”, from _makros_, “long” and _-ouros_ “-tailed”.[1]

It breeds in southern parts of eastern Europe and central Asia and Iran and winters mainly in India and southeast Asia. It is a very rare vagrant to Great Britain and western Europe, although remarkably a juvenile wintered in Norfolk in the winter of 2002/2003. In 2017 a pair of pallid harriers nested in a barley field in the Netherlands; they raised four chicks.[2]

This medium-sized raptor breeds on open plains, bogs and heathland. In winter it is a bird of open country.

Description

[] This is a typical harrier, with long wings held in a shallow V in its low flight. It also resembles other harriers in having distinct male and female plumages. Adults measure long with a wingspan of . Males weigh while the slightly larger females weigh . The male is whitish grey above and white below, with narrow black wingtips. It differs from the hen harrier in its smaller size, narrower wings, paler colour, and different wing tip pattern. The female is brown above with white upper tail coverts, hence females and the similar juveniles are often called “ringtails”. Her underparts are buff streaked with brown. It is best distinguished from the female hen harrier on structure. It is very similar to the female Montagu's harrier, but has darker and more uniform secondaries from below.

Diet

Pallid harriers hunt small mammals, lizards and birds, surprising them as they drift low over fields and moors.

The nest of this species is on the ground. Four to six whitish eggs are laid.

Gallery

[1]

[2] The pallid harrier, a new breeding species for the Netherlands

title: Pallid harrier

question: Why does the Pallid Harrier bird drift low over the fields and moors?

answer: In order to hunt for small mammals, lizards and birds which make up for its diet.


text:
[]

Honey is more than a little bit of sweetness for your tea, toast, or yogurt. It can also be a part of your skin care routine and help you have beautiful looking skin.

Honey has antibacterial properties and is rich with antioxidants. Honey also is known to be an humectant which helps the skin retain and regain moisture. Apart from all these wonderful benefits honey is very gentle even on sensitive skin.

Below are a few ways I incorporate honey into my skin care routine:

HONEY FACE WASH

This face wash is great to use one or two times a week to help your skin relax and rejuvenate in between your normal skin care routine. You can even use this face wash daily as a cleanser, but keep in mind that it will not remove makeup or sunscreen it’s best to use it in the morning and will leave your skin feeling fresh and clean.

[]

                                                                        []

Ingredients

Honey

Warm Water

Simply pour a quarter size amount of honey on your finger tips and run your fingers under some warm water. The warm water will heat the honey slightly making it easier to place on your skin. Using your finger tips work the honey and water into your skin in a small circular motion. Then rinse off with warm water. Don’t worry about it getting into your hair a little warm water will take it right out.  At first, I thought it would be a sticky mess but it wasn’t sticky and it leaves my skin feeling great.

*For variety you can use warm chamomile tea or milk in place of the water.

HONEY OATMEAL MASK

Using ingredients you probably already have in your pantry this mask is a wonderful way to give yourself an at home facial. The oatmeal adds more moisture and helps calm the skin. I try to use this mask at least once a week. To help speed up the prep time you can ground large amounts of oatmeal and keep it in a sealed container so it’s ready for you to use anytime.

[]

Ingredients

¼ cup of ground Oatmeal

1 tablespoon of Honey

Warm water

Use a blender, food processor, or coffee grinder to grind the oatmeal until it’s the consistency of a powder. Then in a bowl combine the honey, water, and oatmeal until it turns into a thick paste. Then apply it to your face by patting the paste gently. Make sure your do this over the sink because some might fall off your hands or face while you are applying it.  Then leave it on your face for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove with warm water and a cloth.

[]

I hope these two honey beauty tips will find they’re way into your skin care routine. Honey is the natural, inexpensive, and easy way to make your skin radiant.
Next Post….Honey Cake, Yum!

question: What can honey be used for other than to sweeten food?

answer: It can be used in skincare.

question: What are the ingredients for honey face wash?

answer: Honey and water.

question: How long should you leave a honey oatmeal mask on your face?

answer: 15-20 minutes.

question: Why is honey a good pick to put on your face?

answer: It is rich in antioxidants and has antibacterial properties.

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: Honey is not just for eating-it has antioxidants and antibacterial properties that make it great to use on the skin. One can use it as face wash with just water, or grind up oatmeal and honey in a blender or coffee grinder to make a mask intended to coat the face for 15-20 minutes. Honey will give you radiant skin.


text:
My long walk in the dark began with a sobbing girlfriend and two barking dogs in the neighbors back yard. My jacket hung loosely on my shoulders as I fiddled with some loose change and a key in my pockets. For the first ten minutes, I expected her to come running behind me and ask me to come back home. An hour after that I had forgotten what we were fighting about in the first place.

The city lights flooded my vision, creating a contrast with the shadows. I felt them move, like a wanderer with nowhere to go, pacing back and forth. My tired feet approached a particularly black intersection. A large van slowed to a stop in front of me. The driver, a man in his forties, had a baseball cap on shadowing his eyes. He didn’t notice me and pulled out into the street as I waited to cross. I stared at his face as he passed, it was angry. Impossibly angry, he was searching for someone. ‘I’m glad I’m not on that guys bad side,’ I thought to myself once the van was gone from my sight.

As I continued along the lonely path I noticed the shadow on the wall at the next allyway move, ever so slightly. My eyes fixed on it as I made my somber approach. I’d never been mugged before and was preparing to run if I had to. Out of the shadows stepped a tall man, middle aged and wearing a lab coat. His right hand clamped around a small metallic device. I jumped back assuming a pistol was pointing at me. His other hand clutched the growing red stain on his chest.

“It’s… Stuck...  … … No.. Going… Back.” He collapsed in front of me.

I don’t remember anything after that. My mind went blank for a while, just switched off.

When my brain came back online, I was holding a small metal machine in my hand. I stared at it for a minute. It was completely, amazingly, fantastically… unremarkable in any way. Rectangular, shaped like a tv remote, but buttonless. It had a smooth stainless steel casing. The only thing protruding out was a knob. The knob was black plastic and had a notch at the top.

I headed back home quickly.

The front door creaked as I opened it. My expectation was that my girlfriend had calmed down and gone to bed, but I was mistaken. Within a minute we were at it again. Arguing about nothing, using anything as an excuse to try to hurt each others feelings. She noticed me holding the device and slapped it to the ground. The knob turned two clicks to the right.

Immediately the hate in her eyes dissipated. I was still furious and grabbed the gadget back up off the ground. I set it in my jacket pocket and as it slid in the knob turned once more to the right. She couldn’t contain herself anymore and grabbed me by the neck pulling me in for a passionate and heavy kiss, moaning against my bottom lip. She pulled me back into the bedroom and we had life affirming, wonderful sex.

The next weeks were marvelous. Jennifer, my girlfriend, was in love with me again. My coworkers were happy to see me. My boss even gave me a raise! I was flying high and loving life.

Something tugged at me though, curiosity reared its ugly head. The gadget hadn’t left my side since I had found it. I had made sure that the knob stayed two clicks to the right of center. My incorrigible side tugged at me relentlessly with what if’s.

One evening, Jennifer was cooking me another delicious dinner. I worked up the courage to test my hypothesis, and reached into my pocket. The smooth device fit snugly in my hand as I pulled it out of my pocket. Jennifer was looking away, half consumed with the steaks on the fryer. She used the rest of her attention to hurl verbal accolades at me. I took a deep breath and turned the knob all the way, counter clockwise to the left. The notch on the knob hit found its end.

Immediately Jennifer ended all movement, stopping her sentence jarringly. She breathed in deeply and began shaking. “Honey, are you ok?” I asked.

The silence was deafening. She took a large breath and grabbed the frying pan. The pan came flying to my face with a force I didn’t think my petite girlfriend could muster. It missed by an inch as I fell back in surprise. Her eyes were wild with a level of hate I had previously only seen in my nightmares.

My back landed on the hard linoleum flooring and I skirted backwards in horror. She wound the pan back behind her head again, and with both hands swung it down toward my face. In a move of self preservation I turned my head away and held my hands out to take the blow. The pan crashed against the steel and plastic of the device, shattering the knob into a hundred evil pieces. The shock reverberated through my hands, shattering the bones in three of my right fingers.

I kicked as hard as I could into her kneecap. She fell, howling in pain. My gut told me to get out of there but I couldn’t just leave her lying there in pain. I got up and walked over to her, I put the broken device back in my pocket and knelt down beside her.

“Honey, it’s over now.” I said, attempting to reassure her. She took her focus off of the broken leg and turned her gaze toward me. My blood boiled as her eyes met mine. My beautiful Jennifer was gone. All that was left was rage in her eyes. In a split second, her hands came up to my neck, choking me with all the force she could rally. She couldn’t even bring herself to speak. Nothing but guttural hisses and whines escaped her clamped jaw.

I panicked and struggled for breath. Her thumbs collapsing my esophagus and shutting off the blood to my brain. My vision blurred and became dark as I began to pass out. I saw the frying pan, still on the floor. With my precious seconds of life still clinging to me, I grabbed it with my unbroken hand and smacked her on the top of the head. She let go of her death grip and I collapsed onto her chest. I heard her heart, still beating furiously in her chest.

I gathered my strength and picked myself up. Everything was ruined. My only option was to call the police. I knew once they got there they would fall under the spell of the device as well, but I had to get Jennifer help.

From inside the garage I could hear the sirens as the ambulance and police found their way to my house. The sound of the first responders closing their doors was muffled by the sound of my hammer whaling against stainless steel.

title: [RF] How I Lost Control

question: Summarize the relationship the narrator had with his girlfriend.

answer: The relationship that the narrator had with his girlfriend was quite rocky. They were both fighting, and fighting a lot. The narrator had even forgotten about what they were fighting about and was in a miserable state of mind. When the knob came into the possession of the narrator, it can be seen that the girlfriend softens and longs for him. But then, when the narrator tries to use the magic of the knob, his girlfriend becomes a monster who is trying to kill him.

question: Summarize the plot twist in this story.

answer: The plot twist in this story comes in the form of a knob. The narrator came into possession of this knob when he saw a middle aged man collapse in front of him, holding on to the device. Before the narrator knows it, the device is in his hand and he realized the power of it when he has a fight with his girlfriend and she knocks the knob over. The knob turns two clicks to the right and his always arguing girlfriend seems to love and long for him. That is when the narrator slowly comes to understand the power of the knob.

question: Would the narrator use the knob to fix his girlfriend's hate towards him once she is in prison?


text:
-   Publisher: Atari , Atari SA
-   Release Date: Jun 16, 2009
-   Also On: PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

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  Buy On   []
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-   Critic score
-   Publication
-   By date

1.  Spooky ghost hunts, intense battles, and rewarding captures all make Ghostbusters one fine gameplay experience.

    -   Read full review

2.  Final words? Ghostbusters the video game definitely recreates the franchise perfectly and everything from the story to music and characters makes you feel like you are part of this supernatural world.

    -   All this publication's reviews
    -   Read full review

3.  There are some flaws, including the lack of a local co-op mode, however there is just so much that was done right that you can't help but have a blast. It may not be everything you ever wanted out of a Ghostbusters game, but it's as close as you're going to get to perfection at this point.

    -   All this publication's reviews
    -   Read full review

4.

5.  One of the better uses of movie license. [Dec 2009]

6.  What can I say - Ghostbusters: The Video Game succeeds in being a proper Ghostbusters game with a good storyline and gameplay that fits the setting and gets a thumbs up for that. On the other hand, it is embarrassingly linear with almost zero replayability and the PC version omits multiplayer modes found on the consoles. At least it is priced accordingly, offering reasonable value.

    -   All this publication's reviews
    -   Read full review

7.  8.  9.  10. 11. If you know the movies you'll feel right at home. Egon Spengler still talks like a scientist, Ray Stantz still has his love handles and Peter Venkman can't walk past a woman without trying to flirt. The game is also full of insider jokes regarding the movies. But it's to short and the PC version lacks the co-op mode.

    -   All this publication's reviews
    -   Read full review

12. Worth a bash, but lacks the multiplayer support to hold your attention throughout. [Oct 2009, p.90]

13. Still – there is a lot to be said for the ability to sling on a proton pack and stand shoulder to shoulder with the four members of the Ghostbusters, to catch a ghost in your beam and drag it down towards a trap.

    -   All this publication's reviews
    -   Read full review

14. 15. For Fans of the Ghostbusters movies is Ghostbusters - The Video Game a must have. It is definitely one of the better movie adaptions. Even so the humor is like the movies and shows off in some very good cutscenes you can not deny the fact that it would have been a better movie, than a video game.

    -   All this publication's reviews
    -   Read full review

16. Remarkably entertaining, if limited and repetitious, thanks to the comedy spark of the original movie cast and writers. [Aug 2009, p.76]

17. Ripped straight from the movie, you warm up your Proton Pack and do battle with some of the film icons, plus a few new ones. A heap of ectoplasmatic fun for anyone who still smiles at the siren sound and the iconic “who you gonna call” theme song.

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    -   Read full review

18. 19. 20. 21. In a disappointing move, we don't get to play any of the Ghostbusters. [Oct 2009, p.64]

22. Finally a movie-game developers do not need to be ashamed of – action and adventure parts are well balanced so missing multiplayer is the only pain this game suffers. [Dec 2009]

23. Terminal Reality did well to capture the atmosphere of both Ghostbusters movies, but failed to include captivating gameplay. On the other hand, it’s way better than the Riddick game sequel from the same publisher.

    -   All this publication's reviews
    -   Read full review

24. I just wish that there weren't so many frustrating problems to go along with these enjoyable parts … and it would have been nice to include the multiplayer version of the game in the PC release.

    -   All this publication's reviews
    -   Read full review

25. 26. A competent, entertaining single-player experience true to the franchise but marred by the shoddy port to PC. [Issue#26, p.48]

27. Another victim of the curse of the port, but the golden Ghostbusting heart still shines through. [Christmas 2009, p.58]

1.

    Ghostbusters the Video Game
    Decent but dated.
    It’s so rare to find a licensed game actually worth playing through... and thankfully this isGhostbusters the Video Game
    Decent but dated.
    It’s so rare to find a licensed game actually worth playing through... and thankfully this is one of them.
    In Ghostbusters the video game you play as a nameless and voiceless recruit…
    Perfect opportunity to have a customizable character... but no... You’re just some generic dude that joins the ghostbusters squad.
    Your journey starts checking out a hotel and ends up in a chase to shut down this giant ghost portal by taking care of different points across Manhattan.
    This game is about 7 and a half hours long, and is varied and well-designed preventing repetitiveness to kick in…
    You’ll visit spooky libraries, different dimensions, and a graveyard just to name a few...
    But this game is from 2009 and it definitely shows with its grainy texture…
    It’s very hard on the eyes after being so used to the graphics and textures of modern day games 7 years later…
    The actual gameplay here is engaging enough to force your eyes to just deal with it…
    You have a proton pack and a scanner..
    As you progress through the story you’ll gain new abilities and modes for the proton pack which tie into level progression itself, like being able to make a slime tether to pull items, and you of course have attacks and ways to capture the ghosts you run into…
    To capture a ghost you have to weaken it, shoot out your capture stream and try to wiggle it into your ghost trap…
    There are also possessed creatures that you can just straight up kill and not have to capture.. which I found to be way more fun to deal with…
    The ghost capturing sections of the game for me were by far the worst…
    they take way too long to complete and bring the game to a crawl… they are spaced out more the deeper you get into the game, but are still an eye roll when they pop up…
    And with the scanner you can scan a ghost or enemy to learn its weakness so you know which mode to use... but it also rewards you with cash, as do the collectibles in the game, giving true incentive to capture stats and seek items out to upgrade your proton pack modes…
    And at the end of each spooky location is a pretty awesome boss battle.. all of which feel unique from each other, and the game does a great job of hyping them up with their story as your progress through the levels
    there wasn’t one I didn’t have fun trying to defeat or capture…
    most if not all being fan favorites as I’ve never really seen a ghostbusters movie.
    There is a game save bug here though so be cautious…
    I Turned my ps3 off right before the final 2 bosses and when I woke up in the morning the game wasn’t reading my save.. Thankfully it did after I reinstalled... but be warry of this glitch going in…
    And this games multiplayer is lost in time, it’s no longer works.
    Other than dated grainy textures, this is a really solid game worth checking out if you’re a ghostbusters fan.
    I give ghostbusters the video game
    a 7/10… Full Review »

2.

    It is a great homage to Ghostbusters Fans:
    a) All of the actors in the films lent their voices for the game.
    b) Lots of references GameplayIt is a great homage to Ghostbusters Fans:
    a) All of the actors in the films lent their voices for the game.
    b) Lots of references
    Gameplay is fun, action oriented, has variety of stages and good story. I liked it, it's only issue is that this game was not completely polished but it is an enjoiable experience.
    Gamepad recommended (and I usually prefer mouse + keyboard)… Full Review »

3.

    The gameplay is great- wrangling ghosts and shooting particle beams is fun, but it gets old after some time. That, and the fact that the sameThe gameplay is great- wrangling ghosts and shooting particle beams is fun, but it gets old after some time. That, and the fact that the same music from the movie is rehashed on every level (it's fun the first three times or so, but then you get tired of it) are the only downsides. The voice acting is good, the humor is pretty solid, and it's definitely an all-around ghostbusters experience.… Full Review »

question: What is the biggest complaint about the Ghost Busters' video game?

answer: The PC version doesn't have a multiplayer option.

question: Why is the game most often complimented?

answer: It is a close version of the movie and one of the better franchise games.

question: What weapons does the player have at the start of play?

answer: A proton pack and a scanner.

question: What is the objective of the game?

answer: Capturing ghosts

question: What incentives does the game offer?

answer: It rewards you with cash and collectibles so that you can upgrade your proton pack


text:
The setting is a medium sized room in what could be a hospice, or maybe a nursing home. The room is sparsely furnished, without anything uunnecessary giving the room an empty feeling. On one side of the room there is a Queen sized bed, the sheets are made perfectly, with what could only be practiced methodicism. On the other side of the room there are some bay windows, the windows are closed and the light curtains are drawn letting in little light, outside it is twilight, giving the room a dark yellow tinge . In one corner there is a dresser, the dresser top has been organized in such a way to draw the observer's attention to one picture in specific. The majority of the light from the window hangs on the top of the dresser, which is filled with picture frames and pictures from what seems like another universe, next to the pictures are letters and medals for honor and bravery.

 Next to the dresser is a rocking chair with an old man sitting in it. His frame is well built, with broad shoulders and a thick neck. The Man's best years behind him, his skin now hangs off of him much like the drapes from the top of the bay window. The Man is slowly rocking back and forth muttering truths the world has long forgotten, but remain true to him. His face looks as though he just swallowed something very bitter, a grimace of sorts.
The door to the rest of the building slowly creaks open and The Lawyer walks in. The Lawyer is a skinny man, with pale, almost transparent skin. His suit is unimpressive, the most interesting accessory is his tortoise rimmed glasses, which frame his empty pale eyes. The Lawyer's face is devoid of any wrinkles, much like that of a baby, and if he wasn't fully grown it wouldn't surprise The Man if he started crying and asking for his mother's breast. When The Lawyer shuts the door quietly behind him the room takes on a cool eerie feeling, much as if it had transformed from a home to a cold, damp graveyard. The light from the window seems to bend towards The Lawyer, and the dresser top dims noticeably as The Lawyer takes a seat near the door.
There is a moment of silence before The Man begins, with a voice that needs convincing:

The Man: It's not so bad, you know.

The Lawyer says nothing, just giving the same unblinking stare as before.

The Man: At first I was worried, scared even. It isn't everyday that I have been so closely acquainted with my mortality. I can count the number of times on one hand, in fact... But this time I don't think they'll give me a metal hahaha!

The Lawyer remains motionless, simply watching the man. The Lawyer is so still to the audience it would seem he isn't even breathing. Clearly unsettled the man argumentatively continues:

The Man: Not much of a talker, are you? Well, that's alright. I don't feel like having a conversation anyway.

There is a silence for a while before The Man shifts uncomfortably in his seat. It is clear that The Man does want a conversation. The Man by turns takes glances at the dresser top and The Lawyer before continuing:

The Man: It really isn't so bad... It's Father's day, if you don't already know. I am a father myself. I have two boys, well, they were boys. It seems silly calling them that now, they could toss me over their shoulders if they chose to. (The Man laughs a little, not robustly like before, but knowingly. Confidently.) Yeah, they've grown up... I won't pretend I was the perfect father, in some ways I was the worst. I look at all these pictures and I noticed something, would you like to know what I noticed?

The Lawyer moves for the first time, slowly dropping his head into a nod. The Lawyer's hair doesn't move, his suit doesn't crinkle, almost as if he were a plastic replica of a real man.

The Man: Alright, I noticed that, in all these pictures everyone is always smiling.  No one ever takes pictures of the times when no one is smiling. But that isn't the truth, is it? (The Man clears his throat awkwardly it is clear that he isn't used to talking about something so personal)
No. No one takes pictures of the bad times, only the good times. Why should that be? It should be easy to remember the good... It seems to me, that the good always fades behind the bad, it's easier to remember the hard stuff. There's some irony in that. And now here I sit, close to the end, and all I feel is regret. All the bad sticks out in my mind and the voices of the mistakes I made call out to me across the years, but then, I look at these pictures, and I remember the good stuff. Like, like this one (The Man enthusiastically points to the picture in the middle of the dresser, the picture is faded, but four figures can be made out. Three men and a Woman)

That's my family, or, it was before my wife died. And then I just couldn't keep them together. I just had too many expectations. I wanted something else for my sons, and all they wanted was to be their own men. I regret that I hadn't let them live their own lives I thought I knew what they wanted, but my desire for them overrode what I should have been doing: let them grow on their own. That's what I am doing now though, right? (The Man's eyes haven't left the picture, a pause) I lived my dream. Now they live theirs. I'm passing the torch. When I realize that, I know the only truth: I lived the dream. It's time for them to do it on their own. I think that, and I can only be happy. This is one of those times that a picture should be taken. So people can remember the happy time.

The Man's face curls into a smile, a genuine smile. The Man kept rocking, but the rocking was less lively. Next to him the heart monitor goes dead. A monotone beep is heard throughout the room, and nurses rush in to see if they can save The Man. They pay no attention to The Lawyer, almost as if he isn't there, going around him like a large rock in a river. The Lawyer gets up and looks more closely at the picture on the dresser. The four people are smiling, everyone is happy, like the best kind dream you could have. The corner of The Lawyer's mouth curled up into a whimsical smirk before he left to a room just down the hall.

title: First share, wanna know what you guys think

question: What is "not so bad, you know"?

answer: When the man says that "it's not so bad, you know." He's referring to his death.

question: Who are the main characters?

answer: The main characters are the man and the lawyer, who is actually Death.

question: How do the main characters feel about each other?

answer: The man is accepting of Death. Death doesn't have feeling.

question: Whose death is the story about?

answer: The story is about the man's death.

question: Write a ~4 sentence summary.

answer: An elderly man sits in a rocking chair contemplating his inevitable death. The Lawyer (Death) enters his room. The man reminisces about his life and how he feels that he failed his grown sons; Death doesn't have anything to say. The man dies, and Death leaves.


text:
The light turned red. I slammed on the brakes, and was in turn slammed into my seatbelt as my BMW M3 slowed. my bumper stopped only inches short of the crosswalk, and a group of half-stoned teenagers cursed at me as they jumped back. I waved impatiently and revved my engine. The straight-six roared, like a savage creature under the hood was waiting to be unleashed. As soon as the light switched, I popped the clutch and the roadster shot forward. Five seconds later, I was roaring down the country road at sixty miles an hour. Loud as the engine was, however, it was drowned out by the screaming in my head. Because, truth be told, I was running away. Away from my home and my wife and everything I knew, with nothing in the trunk but a tire iron and a suitcase with clothes for three days. The last words she had spoken to me as I threw jeans and shirts into my bag rang in my head. “Bastard!” She had called me as I ran out the door, a glass of whiskey nearly missing my skull. “Shithead!” “Asshole!”  She said, over and over again in my head. Much as I tried to dredge up a memory, any memory of her that didn’t involve having profanity and heavy things thrown my way, I just couldn’t. So I ran. I ran to the driveway and my M3, throwing my suitcase in the back, banging my head on the opened trunk. I jumped in and turned on the engine and drove away and... Holy shit!

The deer seemed to take flight, nearly missing the hood of my car as it ran into the woods. I shook my head and tried to concentrate on the road. By now, I realized, I was far into the mountains, farther than I had ever been. I had missed the turnoff which led to the interstate, and was heading deeper into the Arkansas highlands. The road was smoother now, but there was fog creeping onto the sides. I kept my high beams on to watch for deer, and opened my windows. The engine screamed through the straight pipes and, spurred on by the sound, I upshifted into fourth and took off, my tires rumbling and squealing over the asphalt. The road widened to four lanes, and just in time, because just as I came around a blind corner, there appeared an old Ford truck. As I came up behind it, I could hear its old engine straining to get up the hill. I flashed my signal and passed the old wreck and crested the hill. As I did, a set of headlamps flashed in my rearview. I flinched  as the lights disappeared behind me, only to flash again as the car they were attached to crested the hill a few hundred yards behind me. I looked over my shoulder to identify the car, but its lights suddenly turned off. Then I saw the Ford roll over the hill. Or, more accurately, what was left of the Ford. It was skidding on raw rims, its tires shredded and sparks flying in a grotesque fireworks display. The man behind the wheel had been blown away with a 12-gauge, and his blood obscured the windshield. The old truck flipped once as it slid off the road, landing in a thicket and catching fire as its gas tank ruptured. Over the cacophony of the crash, I heard the throaty growl of a big V8 through straight pipes. Even louder, though, was a banshee-like scream. Both were growing louder, and I decided to make my getaway. I planted my foot on the gas, and accelerated away. Even as my M3 put down its 333 horses, I could hear the other car coming on fast. I hit the brakes as I rounded a turn, and the shrieking only grew louder. As I came out of the turn, I got my first look at my pursuer. The car was a jet-black 1967 Camaro SS, its sliver racing stripes shining in the light of the full moon. The headlights abruptly came back on, and I could see skull-shaped cutouts over the lamps, throwing eerie white silhouettes on the road behind me. I cursed and dropped down a gear, my engine screaming as the car jumped forward. The Camaro shrieked as it accelerated. It had a monstrous hood scoop, and a silver glow emanated from inside. The muscle car swerved left, and came alongside me. I gunned my engine again, and pulled ahead. Then, and God help me for doing it, I saw the driver.

His head was smoky grey skeletal, with white fire blazing in his empty eye sockets. He wore a matte black firesuit, a skull-and-crossbones insignia adorning the shoulder. I looked, horrified, into the face of Death, and my vision tunneled. In a split second, I saw my family and friends standing by my graveside, growing older and dying before falling into the open pit. I blinked, but a vision of my wife appeared. She held a flaming stick, and cursed me as she swung it at my head. I screwed my eyes shut once again, and the shrieks of my dead friends were replaced with the banshee-scream of the supercharged car beside me. The death’s-headed driver looked at me and smiled, his moon-bleached teeth as bright as welding torches. He raised a black sawn-off shotgun, and I turned away, shifting into high gear and accelerating away. The Camaro was hot on my heels, but I could hear the wailing of his supercharger recede as I powered down the straightaway. His V8 roar mixed with the hair-raising sound of his supercharger,  but my car was faster through the corners, and I took full advantage. I could see Death, his evil, hollow face twisted into an angry grimace as he slammed on the gas. I hit the next corner hard, drifting around the hairpin as my rear tires spun and cried out in protest. I could hear myself cursing and screaming in abject terror as my tail end almost hit the guardrail, but I managed to recover and my tires miraculously regained traction. My straight-six belted out its gravelly song and, emboldened, I mashed the clutch and upshifted just as Death’s Camaro cleared the turn. He let his V8 do its work, putting down what had to be 500 horsepower, but I had the advantage this time. Looking down the road, I saw another hairpin corner leading into a long, winding descent. I stood on the brake and put the clutch in, sliding smoothly through the turn, and let the clutch out as I opened the throttle. My M3 screamed down the mountainside, leaving Death in the dust. I didn’t slow down for ten minutes, when the lights of my small town appeared around a shallow turn. I looked behind me and saw the black Camaro, stopped about a mile back, smoke coming out of its hood scoop. Death stood regally in the moonlight, his arm up in a terrifying salute. I turned the corner and, when I next looked back, the car and its driver had disappeared.

I arrived back at my small house, and pulled the M3 into the driveway. I climbed out, a grin on my face. After all, I had just faced down Death and won. How bad could a whiskey-throwing woman be?

title: The High Drive

question: Summarize the emotions the narrator goes through during this drive, and how they motivate the narrator's course of action.

answer: At first, the narrator seems impatient-perhaps they are a little angry. This is shown by their slamming their breaks and being more impulsive in driving. Someone, a woman, had been chasing them, throwing a glass at them. Then they feel a bit of relief for having gotten away. When a Ghostrider-esque figure chases them, there is fear, but accompanying it is excitement from the adrenaline rush. Finally, the narrator feels accomplished, as they have gotten home and successfully evaded death.

question: What kind of a person does the author's inner monologue reveal them to be?

question: Describe how the narrator cheats death.

answer: Essentially, the author is able to outrun Death. Their quick thinking and confidence lead them to outpacing death by revving their engine and maneuvering their car to get away. They are also aided in part by coincidences, such as traction where there might not have been any.

question: Summarize the domestic dispute that led to this scenario.


text:
To many people, there is no such thing as a “happily ever after”. These people never get to experience what many do in movies and in stories of love and happiness. There is never a prince charming or a wonderful princess with a kind heart to save them from the turmoil their hearts are bound to; someone to sweep them off there feet. This story is no different. I begin this story with my death. It’s an untimely death that could have been prevented had I listened or perhaps had more options available. Or maybe it was fate that brought me to this point. The last seconds of my life were dramatic and suspenseful. There was a glimmer of hope here and there of me surviving the final blows that ended my life. Unfortunately that is not the case now as I am gone from the living. I could hear the doctors yelling to the nurses for more ‘O negative’. I could feel there hands on my chest pushing down hard as I slipped further and further away. The sound of my sisters cries before the ambulance was called to take me away. I could see the hopelessness in her eyes as she stood over me trying desperately to put pressure on the wound he created in my neck. That’s when I knew that the hope was lost, when I saw her eyes. She was a good sister, always had a heart of gold, room for others. Before the lost hope, before the pressure on my neck there was an argument. He was drunk, I was tired. My two children slept as I was getting home from work. That’s how it began though. He was drunk…

	Men. My entire living life I found no real use for them, not one, except my children. My father abandoned me as a child and the men my mother tried to replace him with were harsh and abusive. Perhaps this is what attracted me to my children’s father. He was charming, at first, everything I had been looking for while looking for my prince charming. Tall, dark, handsome, kind, and funny, these were the most attractive to start. His name was Tanner Williams; I met him on a cold November night at a house party. My sister, Maggie, didn’t like him at all, even then she saw the real him. She warned me before I went to him, ‘He’s no good. I’ve heard of his family, none of them are any good.’ I, however didn’t heed this warning, no, I went to him anyways with my confidence boosted by the third rum and coke of the night I held in my hand.

	‘Tanner right?’ I said coolly, he nodded. ‘Janice Mitchell.’ I smiled and so did he. ‘Just wondering if you wanted to get a drink?’
	His voice was low but soft, he sounded innocent, sweet. ‘Yeah, sure. What are you drinking?’

	We continued on the rest of the night on the front porch. It was quieter outside then in the house.  He told me of his family. Two older brothers, both with records and doing time; their father was a single father since his mother died when Tanner was very young, he never re married, never wanted to. Tanner worked construction to help his father pay for bills and they seemed to be a fairly functioning family. A pretty typical life for a twenty six year old man, graduated high school and decided college wasn’t for him, besides, he said, ‘Some one’s gotta help dad.’ I believe this was the point when I knew I liked him.

	I told Tanner of my family. ‘I have one sister, and a mother who lives with a douche of a boyfriend. They kicked me out when I was seventeen for dabbling in some harmless teenage experimenting.’ Though we still had a relationship I was only really close with my sister. I pointed to her as I talked about her. She was in the living room of the house. There was a large window with no curtains so it was easy to see her. She was surrounded by people. She had a heart of gold, letting anyone have one chance at her friendship and only those who really deserved it a second. The kind of girl who was the life of the party, smart, funny, pretty, but she just didn’t know it, which made her humble. I think that’s what attracted most people to her, the sweetest bitch you could ever meet. Then I told Tanner of my life. How my father left when I was young, and how my mother chose terrible men to be around two young girls as well as the abusive nature in which they controlled her. I dropped out of high school, and was now just living off of the welfare system. I had no thoughts or desire to go back to school. I was content, at the time, with the way life was going.

	We ended that night with a goodnight kiss and exchange in phone numbers. I was sure. He was it.

title: New Story I'm working on. Let me know if you think it's worth pursuing.

question: What are the key events in the story?

answer: The protagonist dies, and begins recounting her past where she meets the father of her children at a house party, they talk and then exchange numbers.

question: Who is the protagonist?

answer: Janice Mitchell, who is also the narrator

question: Who are the main characters?

answer: The protagonist, Janice Mitchell, her sister Maggie, and Janice's children's father, Tanner Williams

question: What is the protagonist's backstory?

answer: She was abandoned by her father as a child and her mother's subsequent partners were abusive. She was kicked out of home at seventeen, dropped out of high school and was on welfare when she met her children's father.

question: Write a ~5 sentence summary.

answer: The story begins with the narrator, Janice, dying while medics try to revive her. She recounts her life, from her abusive childhood to when she meets her children's father, Tanner Williams, at a house party. Her sister, Maggie, dislikes Tanner, but Janice and Tanner begin chatting. He works in construction to support his father; she has been kicked out of home at seventeen and is unemployed. They exchange numbers.


text:
_TIRATHABA FUSCISTRIATA_ is a species of moth of the family Pyralidae.[1] It was described by George Hampson in 1917. It is found in New Guinea.[2][3]

The wingspan is about 30 mm. The forewings are ochreous grey tinged with purplish red brown and the veins of the costal half are streaked with blackish. There are traces of postmedial and subterminal series of slight brownish spots and the apical part of the costa and termen has a series of dark striae. The hindwings are dull ochreous, the costal area tinged with brown.[4]

[1]

[2]

[3] “_Tirathaba_ Walker, 1864” at Markku Savela's _Lepidoptera and Some Other Life Forms_. Retrieved June 11, 2017.

[4] _Novitates Zoologicae_. 24 : 34

title: Tirathaba fuscistriata

question: Where is the Tirathaba Fuscistriata endemic to?

answer: New Guinea.

question: Who discovered the species?

answer: George Hampson.

question: How does the creature look?

answer: The species has a wingspan of 30 mm with ochreous grey tinged with purplish red-brown forewings. There are traces of postmedial and subterminal series of slight brownish spots.

question: What larger organizational unit does this species belong to?

answer: The species belongs to the moth family Pyralidae.

question: Write a ~5 sentence summary.

answer: Tirathaba Fuscistriata is a species of moth of the family Pyralidae. It was described by George Hampson in 1917. It's endemic to New Guinea. The species has a wingspan of 30 mm with ochreous grey tinged with purplish red-brown forewings. There are traces of postmedial and subterminal series of slight brownish spots.


text:
I don’t remember how I got there or where it started. So, in a way, it started off like most dreams do. I was running. But not in solidarity; with a group. I wasn’t exactly sure who they were, I just felt a deep camaraderie with them as if they were close to me. It’s hard to explain. None the less, we trekked on. The barren, gray landscape made me feel empty and thirsty inside, like I knew something better than this was out there somewhere. Or was it somewhere in the past? Was this the aftermath of a dispute between our territory’s leader with another? Regardless, I knew that there was something better than this. It was eating at me.

We ran for what seemed like hours, passing abandoned houses, ransacked for their valuables. Finally, we stopped in a small neighborhood. Three houses stood there seemingly untouched by the madness of what the earth was now. It was a comforting feeling to be back home. We set down our valuables and watched the sun slowly make its dissent over the orange horizon. We felt closer than we ever have before to each other. Quickly afterwards, we all wished each other good night. I lied in my bed wishing for this to be over. Whatever “this” was, I don’t know.

The next morning, I awoke with a kick of my own leg. This seems to happen every time I die in a dream.

The rest of my group awoke, and we packed up again. This time though, we carried only the necessities as if we would come back. Maybe I could call this place home again. It’s been so long since I could. I kept that from the others. I found it difficult to show much weakness to them. Not now. One must be callused and strong in these times.

The morning sun was beautiful, it was the only thing that gave me hope, as we marched onward. We didn’t talk about the past much, but when we did, It was certainly a touchy subject. You can only joke and play around for so long before conversion turns serious. It’s what we needed to keep sane, none the less, as we walked on this abandoned interstate. The hours were long, but I felt as if we were coming up to something big..something worth our while. Just then, our leader, average in height with a weathered face and wrinkly brow, raised his binoculars that hung around his neck. He trembled as he said, “There! Over there! Something… miraculous!”. Every one of us immediately perked up at the thought and made a mad dash towards the undiscovered locale.

We stopped and gazed in awe of what we saw, a large neighborhood of houses. What struck them as odd though was their toy-like appearance. The orange and green houses looked almost gelatin-like. Maybe they were? Relishing at the thought, I was the first one down the steep hill that separated me and this mysterious village, but before I could make it, a married couple from my group had already beaten me there and had sunken into the gelatin-made streets. It was the most peculiar thing we had all ever seen, but at the same instant, it was beautiful. We laughed, and we became children again. I didn’t look back or even think of the home that I left behind.

At that very moment, my leg kicked. I awoke in my bedroom; It was all a dream.

**Note:** I am in high school and a very amateur writer, and I'm sure that is apparent by my grammar. I would love to hear some feedback though. The good and the bad, I want it all! Thank you!

title: A dream that I had.

question: What does the story say about how to wake up from a nightmare?

question: What does the story say about the narrator?

answer: The narrator is in a dream where he is running with other people he feels a deep camaraderie with. He doesn't know where he is or how he got there, like in most dreams. They stop and rest in a small neighborhood. The narrator's leg kicks every time he dies in his dream, but this time he wakes up and finds himself still in the house where he slept with the group, which meant he was still dreaming. He doesn't want to show weakness in front of the group and is convinced he must be strong and calloused. The narrator ends up in a village made of gelatin and his leg kicked again, but this time he awoke in his bedroom. Everything was just a dream.

question: What does the text say about the setting of the story?

answer: The setting seems to be apocalyptic: a gray and barren landscape. It looked like the aftermath of some war between two territories. There were a lot of abandoned buildings ransacked for their valuables and plenty of destruction brought about by the madness of what the Earth had become. The weirdest part of the setting is the town made from gelatin, but then again, this is all a dream.

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

answer: The narrator belongs to a group that he feels a deep camaraderie with. but doesn't know who they are. They are so close that the narrator finds it hard to explain. The group is led by a man average in height, had a weathered face, and a wrinkly brow. Other than the narrator and their leader, the group also has a married couple as members of their ranks.


text:
\    	In the backroom we're arranged in a sort of triangle, Meagan and I are parallel, equidistant from  Samantha, our manager. We're discussing a very delicate situation. Roughly twelve minutes ago, two twenty something girls ran out of the store's bathroom screaming that there was blood all over the walls. I was   confused, because this is a coffee shop and we don't serve blood of any kind but I wasn't surprised, because this is Philadelphia and that shit just happens. Meagan, Samantha and I brainstorm how the blood got there until we decide on the most logical solution: someone was shooting up something, probably smack, and didn't quite get it right.
	Samantha says, “Someone has to clean it up and I'm on my lunch break.” then she laughs.
	Megan says, “Well, I'm not doing it. No way, nope.” Meagan folds her arms across her chest, shaking her ponytail left and right and touches her hat, like she's on the mound signaling a pitch.
	“I'll do it.” I offer quickly, almost immediately. Then, maybe too melodramatically, sigh in an attempt to shade my excitement because I'm thinking, This will kill at least a half hour.
	Samantha looks up from her free range, cage free chicken salad and the glow of the computer screen gives her face a serious look. “Okay Jake, go clean up the junkie blood.”
	I follow Samantha's careful instructions to double glove my hands and stick them to my wrists with rubber bands all for the sake of avoiding infectious diseases.
	My excitement fades just a little when I enter the bathroom, I wasn't really expecting this much blood. It's pretty much everywhere, covering a good portion of a wall and the low ceiling.
	I put down the bleach bucket and the rag, and sit down on the toilet. I imagine shooting up, I even mime the motions. I tighten my imaginary belt, slap for the vein. Things I've only seen in movies. I build a motion picture in my mind of the blood spraying out and this violent display of desperation moves nothing inside of me. Though i'm young and idealistic I've long ago grown cold to the collective suffering of the city. My own cup runneth over with despair and I can't relate at this nameless, faceless projection of the city's downtrodden. I can only scrub at the bum's stubborn blood, dried and crusted black on the off white walls of the bathroom.  /

title: Junkie Blood - Flash Fiction

question: How serious is Philadelphia's drug problem?

answer: Must be quite serious if the narrator isn't moved by the scene, it's commonplace to them.


text:
_SHPRITSZ_ (the name derives from a colloquial German word for “syringe”) is the second studio album by Dutch rock and roll and blues group Herman Brood & His Wild Romance. The album produced two singles. The first, “Rock & Roll Junkie,” did not chart. The second, “Saturday Night,” charted in Europe and the United States. On the Dutch album chart, the album reached #8 on 3 June 1978, and stayed on the chart for 28 weeks.[1] It was certified gold in 1978,[2] and platinum in 1980.[3]

_Shpritsz_ was re-released on CD in 2000 by RCA/Ariola. In a 2008 poll by _Muziekkrant OOR_, the leading Dutch music magazine, _Shpritsz_ was voted the fourth-best Dutch album of all time.[4]

Track listing

Singles

“Rock & Roll Junkie” was released (with “Street” on the B-side), but never charted. “Saturday Night” was released as a single (with “Phony” and “Pop” on the B-side); it peaked at #17 in the Dutch Top 50 on 16 September 1978, and was on the charts for eleven weeks.[5]

In the United States, “Saturday Night” was released as a single in 1979, and rose to #35 in the _Billboard_ Hot 100; the single is referred to in the Billboard charts as “Saturdaynight.”[6]

Personnel

-   Herman Brood – piano, keyboard, vocals
-   Monica Tjen Akwoei – vocals
-   Bertus Borgers – saxophone
-   Freddy Cavalli – bass
-   Josee van Iersel – vocals
-   Danny Lademacher – guitar
-   Cees 'Ani' Meerman – drums
-   Robert Jan Stips – keyboards
-   Floor van Zutphen – vocals
-   Robin Freeman – sound engineer

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

title: Shpritsz

question: Who is the album's artist?

answer: Herman Brood & His Wild Romance

question: When was the album released?

answer: 1978

question: What singles were on the album?

answer: "Rock & Roll Junkie" and "Saturday Night"

question: Who sang vocals on the album?

answer: Herman Brood, Monica Tjen Akwoei, Josee van Iersel, and Floor van Zutphen

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: Shpritsz is the second studio album by Herman Brood & His Wild Romance, a Dutch rock and roll and blues group. The album contained two singles, "Rock & Roll Junkie" and "Saturday Night." It was certified platinum in 1980.


text:
Russian president Vladimir Putin has flown to Cairo for a two-day visit, in a move nominally aimed at bolstering bilateral ties with Egypt that also allows both countries to send pointed messages to the US.

As Russian and western diplomats struggle to reach a peace deal over the conflict in Ukraine, Putin will spend Monday evening at Cairo’s opera house. In meetings on Tuesday, the day before the resumption of Ukraine peace talks, Putin is expected to hold discussions about ending the use of the US dollar in bilateral trade between Egypt and Russia. Collaboration between a Russian and Egyptian newspaper is also reported to be scheduled for discussion.

Analysts believe both sides, though interested in forming stronger relations, primarily seek to signal to the international community that their foreign policies are not to be dictated by others. In the middle of negotiations that have left him with few friends, Putin wants to show that he still has allies, said Ben Judah, a chronicler of Putin’s life, and the author of Fragile Empire, a book about Putin’s Russia.

“He’s making a show of highlighting how he’s not isolated,” said Judah, who noted how Putin has visited China and India when previously under pressure. “It’s also a way of undermining the US, since Cairo is piece of America’s imperium.

“Russia would like more of a relationship with Egypt. But right now building a stronger relationship is not one of the top 500 priorities for Russia when they’ve got so much else going on.”

For its part, Egypt may desire some kind of small-scale arms deal with Russia, but its primary interest in hosting Putin is to show that it is not beholden to US foreign policy, said HA Hellyer, an Egypt specialist at Harvard University’s Kennedy school. “There are going to be political benefits to showing that they don’t need to be tied and bound to US – they can look to China, and they can look to Russia,” said Hellyer.

In a telling development, hundreds of posters of Putin were put up across Cairo this weekend, emblazoned with the word “Welcome”. Many pro-regime Egyptians are fond of Putin for his unconditional public support for Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, and this weekend Egypt’s flagship state newspaper printed a long feature about Putin that called him “a hero of our era”. But the fact that the posters were mostly written in English, rather than Russian or Arabic, suggested their target audience lies overseas.

Though the US has ultimately stood by Egypt’s authoritarian government, it has angered Egypt by holding up the delivery of several Apache helicopters coveted by Egypt’s army – and Egypt may hope Russia could fill the gap at some point in the future. “But the main issue with arms deals with Russia is that this is primarily an American-built military and to change that would take substantial amounts of time and investment,” said Hellyer. “If you’re sitting in the Egyptian military, you want the best – which means you want US arms, not Russian. And for all their huffing and puffing, the Egyptian establishment wants to be a part of the western axis.”

An arms deal has continually been mooted between Egypt and Russia over the past two years, but has not been conclusively sealed.

question: What was Russian president Vladimir Putin doing in Cairo?

answer: He was there for two days to discuss ending the use of the US dollar in bilateral trade between Egypt and Russia and the collaboration between a Russian and Egyptian newspaper.

question: What does Ben Judah say about Putin building relations with the international community?

answer: He thinks Putin wants to show that he is not isolated and still has allies.

question: What does HA Hellyer think about Egypt hosting Putin?

answer: He thinks Egypt hosted Putin to show that they don't have to be bound to US foreign policy.

question: Summarize everything about the arms deal between Egypt and Russia.

answer: Hellyer said that Egypt wanted an arms deal with Russia to change their primarily American-built military, as Egypt was upset that the US held up the delivery of the Apache helicopters coveted by Egypt's army.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: Russian Vladimir Putin had a 2-day visit to Cairo to strengthen Egypt and Russian's bilateral ties. Both countries don't want to be bound to US foreign policy.


text:
Our eyes lock from across the bar. It’s tattered, run-down, out of sorts; a plethora of synonyms running rampant throughout a bar that's memories are a rollercoaster of emotion...she lights a cigarette, and the soft glow from her lighter sets aflame her red lipstick. She shuts it with a faint clap and the smoke lingers around her, tiredly, softly. The bartender approaches her, his drink-soaked rag painting spirals of soft mahogany and liquor. He asks with gentle kindness if she’d like a refill, and, without skipping a beat, her fingers tap the glass in acknowledgement. I watch the slow, steady pour of gold flow from the bottle as he tips it into her glass. It tidal waves momentarily and crashes amongst itself and she whispers a thank you, her gaze never leaving mine.

Fighting the urge to get up and approach this situation we’ve gotten ourselves into, I disengage our stare momentarily to take in my surroundings. New-comers and men whom are infinitely secured to barstools alike are strewn across this tavern. The hum of conversation floats around as, every once in a short while, the door opens and let’s a barely audible inhalation of air and the dispersed patter of rain flicking pavement outside coat our world of lost hopes, dreams and love.
And then I get up.

I walk towards her, calm and cool, as my heart inside plays a mixed melody of heavy drumming and de-escalating jazz. Time slows as I get my first full glimpse of the ravishing woman I’ve been ever falling for in the last hour. Her slender legs crawl upwards toward an almost too short skirt of deafeningly black silk. This silk ripples upward and explodes into hips, stomach and chest that would give the word immaculate a respectable run for its money.

My greeting comes out in silence; it’s as if I’m watching everything fold out from above, an audience member cheering on his favourite fighter. I lead with a heavy blow to the heart as I lean in; close enough for her to smell the wet and whiskey emanating from a long night of wandering from bar to bar in the drizzle that hasn’t seemed to let up in recent memory.

I watch myself ask her name, and the sound is turned up just long enough for me to hear her whisper back: Maxine. And a faint smile spreads across her lips as if she had been waiting to tell me that her entire life. As if the rain had lead my feet from a tiresome day at work, lifting me on invisible strings like a marionette throughout the night to this very bar, to that very seat, and shuffled them in dim-light and soft music across the floor to stand in front of her, to lean into her, to whisper to her, all for me to know the name of Maxine. A woman of explosive subtleness, impeccable taste in single-malt scotch, and, as I lock eyes with hers for the second time tonight, the soul of an angel.
She takes another long drag of smoke as we circle around the ring of attraction. She takes a swing back and feels the lapel of my trench coat. She comments on how very wet I seem to be. The hairs on my neck pulsate. She finishes her drink, the ice cut in half from having slightly watered down several drinks. I quickly raise two fingers in the air, not knowing if the bartender would see or not; truth be told, in that very moment I could not have been positive if gravity was even still anchoring us to earth. She catches me by surprise, my heartbeat tumbling, and pushes down my wrist, negating the drinks I had or had not ordered.

And she grabs my hand.
And she stands.
And she leads me towards the back of the bar.
And I could hear my veins digesting whiskey, my heart digesting emotions, and, once in that very short trip to the back, the doors of the bar swung open, the room inhaled, and I could hear the now heavy sheets of rain washing away the streetlight outside.

title: Sheets

question: To what does the title refer?

answer: 'Sheets' refers to the heavy rain pouring outside. It is a double entendre, also referring to bedsheets because it is implied the narrator and the woman, Maxine, are going to sleep together.

question: Describe the main characters.

answer:
The narrator is focused on Maxine and their shared attraction.
Maxine is heavily described as an object of the narrator's attraction; she smokes a cigarette, drinks whiskey, and wears red lipstick and black silk.

question: What is Maxine drinking?

answer: Single malt scotch whiskey.

question: Summarize the final scene.

answer: Maxine and the narrator leave the bar together, into the rainy night.

question: Write a ~1 sentence summary.

answer: The narrator meets a mysterious, ravishing woman named Maxine in a bar, who seems to share his attraction and leads the narrator outside through the back of the bar.


text:
ALAMILLO is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Socorro County, New Mexico, United States. Its population was 102 as of the 2010 census.[1] Interstate 25 passes through the community.

Geography

Alamillo is located at .[2] According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the community has an area of , all of it land.[3]

[1]

[2]

[3]

title: Alamillo, New Mexico

question: Where is Alamillo?

answer: Alamillo is in Socorro County, New Mexico.

question: What is the population?

answer: The population was 102 according to the 2010 census.

question: How large is the community?

answer: This information is not mentioned.

question: Which highway passes through the community?

answer: The interstate 25.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: Alamillo is an unincorporated community located in Socorro County, New Mexico. Its population was 102 according to the 2010 census.


text:
This image was removed due to legal reasons.

This week, I did something very dumb: I got into a Twitter fight with a bunch of venture capitalists.

The proximate cause of my fight was this _Wall Street Journal_ article about 21, a secretive Bitcoin start-up that has raised $116 million in venture capital, with much of it coming from Silicon Valley mega-firm Andreessen Horowitz. What made this particular story interesting was that 21’s co-founder, Balaji Srinivasan, has a day job as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, the same firm that funded his company. I've since learned that Srinivasan was working on 21 _before_ he took a job at Andreessen Horowitz (and is moving to a part-time role at the firm in order to focus on 21 full-time), but at the time, the whole thing had the feel of a venture-backed ouroboros. So I tweeted this:

https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/575327668159188992

The answer, I was quickly informed, is that not only are self-dealing arrangements considered kosher in Silicon Valley, they’re _everywhere_. Khosla Ventures partner Keith Rabois is also the co-founder of house-hunting start-up OpenDoor, which raised $9.95 million in a Khosla-led round last year. Workday co-founder Aneel Bhusri was a VC at Greylock Partners when the firm led Workday’s $15 million round in 2005. Peter Thiel, the consummate player-coach, has played both the investor and co-CEO roles at Palantir.

These aren’t like Entrepreneur In Residence arrangements, in which a VC firm hires a start-up founder in order to incubate his or her fledgling company in-house, using the firm’s connections and resources in exchange for a hunk of equity. And they’re not strategies like the ones employed by "start-up studios" like Betaworks, where the entire point of the firm is to find promising sectors in which to plop down new businesses. These are a different beast altogether—big, established VC firms using outside money to fund new start-ups run by their own investing partners.

In trying to explain why deals like these seemed ethically suspect, I invoked a (dated) pop-culture analogy:

https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/575486009888002048

At which point the invective really started. VCs alleged that I was ignorant about the mechanics of VC, that I didn’t get why a VC firm would invest in a partner it trusts over one it doesn’t know, that I was simply stirring shit. (For a bunch of dudes with more money than Croesus, venture capitalists sure are tetchy!) So, in the interest of taking on all my Twitter foes as a consolidated whole, I put together a list of some of the criticisms I got and responded to them.

G/O Media may get a commission

WHAT DO YOU MEAN _UNFAIR_? VC INVESTORS ARE UNIQUELY POSITIONED TO CREATE GREAT START-UPS! AND ALL OF THESE START-UPS HAVE GONE ON TO MAKE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS!

This was the most common response I got, and I have to say, it puzzles me. Because it doesn’t really address the central conflict of interest. As I put it on Twitter: Sure, maybe Simon Cowell is an incredible musician, and would win American Idol on his own merit. But you still wouldn’t trust a system that awarded him the top prize. Because Simon Cowell has information about American Idol that most of us don’t. He knows which judges like which Aretha Franklin songs, which judges are suckers for Kenny Loggins ballads, and exactly how to structure an audition to make it to the next round. And, more to the point, in the early rounds, _he’s one-third of the people doing the choosing._

In venture capital, unlike in TV competitions, unfair advantages are seen as a good thing. (In his reply to me, Rabois touted “asymmetric ability & info” as a crucial part of what makes VC investors qualified to start companies.) Part of the reason you would invest in a VC’s start-up over a non-VC’s start-up is that the VC knows things others don’t. He has an informational edge.

But how do you think he got that edge? In many cases, it was by sitting through hundreds of pitches by entrepreneurs who _don’t_ work at venture capital firms, and who may have divulged proprietary information about their businesses in the course of asking for VC money.

Looked at through the eyes of a spurned start-up founder, the ethical conflict is clear as day. How does an entrepreneur know whether the VC he’s pitching his burrito-delivery app to is earnestly hoping to invest in him, or whether he’s fishing for trade secrets to start a burrito-delivery app of his own? (One start-up founder, whom I spoke with after 21's $116 million funding total was announced, told me, “If I'd been in [Andreessen Horowitz] pitching a consumer Bitcoin wallet or chip-based service in the past year, I’m throwing up.")

Not all of these fears are founded, of course, and the best VC firms have conflict of interest policies that mitigate some of these risks. (A person close to Andreessen Horowitz tells me, for example, that the firm hasn't taken any Bitcoin wallet pitches since it invested in 21 and Coinbase, another Bitcoin start-up.) But these policies don’t exist everywhere, and even the ones that exist aren’t totally reassuring to start-up founders. And I don’t blame them. Now, in the most competitive start-up environment in history, these founders no longer just have to worry about being beaten by other start-ups in their space. They have to worry about potential investors picking off their ideas and using them for personal gain.

VENTURE CAPITAL ISN’T SUPPOSED TO BE FAIR! IT’S SUPPOSED TO GENERATE RETURNS FOR INVESTORS. AND THE INVESTORS DON’T CARE ABOUT SELF-DEALING, SO WHAT’S THE ISSUE?

Many of the responses I got boiled down to, “So what?” As long as both the LPs (the investors in a venture capital fund—who can include public pensions and endowments, along with sovereign wealth funds and other institutional investors) and the GPs (the investing partners who work at the venture capital firm) are okay with the self-funding arrangement, what’s the harm? Many of the companies started by VCs have gone on to make billions of dollars for their early backers, after all. And isn’t that a VC firm’s mandate—to get into top-tier deals and multiply investors’ money by any means necessary?

Well, first, we don’t know that all LPs know what’s being done with their money. I would love to ask the investment officers at a firefighter's pension fund in Wyoming what they think of venture capital GPs using their money to fund their colleagues' personal projects.

But even if all LPs know about self-dealing and have signed off on it, that doesn’t cleanse the conflict of interest. (To use a different analogy: Goldman Sachs’s shareholders would love it if the bank could tear down the Chinese wall separating its investment banking division from its research division—they would make a lot more money!—but the bank isn’t allowed to do it, because we’ve decided that having those walls in place is in the public interest.)

There’s also no guarantee that venture capital LPs will be happy with these arrangements forever. It’s easy for an LP to support self-dealing when everything is going up and to the right—the start-up’s making money, the investors are making money, incentives are aligned, everyone’s happy. But when the company goes downhill, the incentives get tangled. Now, the founder’s job is still to keep the failing company afloat, but the VC's job, in part, is to _get the VC firm’s capital back_. If OpenDoor is failing, do Khosla's LPs really trust that Keith Rabois will run the business in a way that allows them to recover their capital, rather than running it to preserve his founder's stake?

VC ISN’T A ZERO-SUM GAME. ONE PERSON’S WIN ISN’T ANOTHER’S LOSS.

Chris Dixon, an Andreessen Horowitz partner whose opinions I respect, said this in a reply to my original tweet:

I can see his point. In theory, venture capital is a benevolent capital allocation scheme that enables the growth of companies whose products improve society. And if those companies happen to be started by venture capitalists, so what? The good start-ups will rise to the top naturally, benefiting everyone, and the bad ones will be destroyed by the market.

But in practice, venture capital is a battle like any other, with winners, losers, referees, and a finite supply of money to go around. Before the market gets to choose which start-ups succeed, there are a series of gatekeeper institutions that give their imprimatur. And these institutions matter. A dollar from Andreessen Horowitz is worth much more to a start-up than a dollar from a no-name venture capital firm, simply because Andreessen Horowitz has so many connections and resources that it can create successes where others can’t. The same is true of Y Combinator, which accepts fewer than 3 percent of the companies that apply, and greatly increases their chance of survival.

If the tech industry is as important to America’s future as Silicon Valley thinks it is, they should want these gatekeeper institutions to be as meritocratic as possible. And that means making sure that they operate with as little in-group prejudice as they can. Sometimes, that might mean missing out on a big deal over a conflict of interest. But it would give aspiring tech founders some confidence in the integrity of the system they're entering.

Also: given the amazingly homogenous nature of the VC industry's senior ranks (_96 percent men!_), we should oppose the self-funding VC trend out of diversity concerns alone. VCs are already a clubby, cliquish bunch. Why should we institutionalize one more way for rich men to throw money at each other?

BUT EVERYONE IN VC DOES IT!

I got this one a surprising number of times. And I guess I don’t know what to say in response, except that universal corruption is still corruption.

Right now, the VCs who are self-dealing are mostly well-known investors at top-tier firms. But what happens if this trend spreads down-market? Would all the people supporting Keith Rabois and Balaji Srinivasan’s new ventures be okay with a mid-level VC taking investor money to make yet another Snapchat clone? What if the VC wanted to start a Mexican restaurant? What if the VC made a really, really convincing pitch to his fellow investment committee members, and promised them that his restaurant would be a $50 billion unicorn that would blow away Chipotle and Taco Bell? Would they be willing to shovel a few million dollars from the Oklahoma Teachers Retirement System into his pockets?

I don’t think they would. And I think that, as more venture capitalists strike these kinds of deals, there will be a backlash from start-up entrepreneurs, who will see it as both a barrier to their success and an ethical morass in its own right. As one astute observer put it to me recently, “It's a tight group of millionaires giving each other outsiders' cash to buy lottery tickets that might make them billionaires.”

SO, VC IS CORRUPT AND CLUBBY. DUH. WHAT ARE YOU PROPOSING WE _DO_ ABOUT IT?

This was the portion of the Twitter fight that flummoxed me the most. Because I don't think venture capital investments should be regulated by the SEC in the same way that, say, hedge fund investments are. And I don't necessarily think that the solution to VC self-dealing is more regulation.

But I do think that top-tier VC firms should take the ethical high ground, and institute some conflict-of-interest rules around these deals. Maybe it's as simple as "we won't invest outside money in start-ups in which our current GPs hold executive-level positions." Or maybe it's a little more nuanced—something like "if we've taken a pitch in a given space, we won't invest in a GP-led start-up in the same space for a period of at least two years." Maybe it's a financial arrangement that preserves the ability to invest in GP-led start-ups while reducing the temptation to double-dip: "If we invest fund money in a GP's start-up, that GP forfeits a corresponding amount of his carry from that fund, and is no longer allowed to attend pitch meetings in the same space."

Rules like those might produce some weird externalities, but they'd be better than nothing. Most big venture capital firms already have conflict-of-interest policies that prohibit certain GP activities, so adding a rule preventing self-dealing would be easy enough. And really, what's the harm of having fewer self-deals? That amazing, GP-led companies won't get funded? If Peter Thiel's next start-up idea is so hot, there will be plenty of people lining up to invest—there's no reason the money _has_ to come from Founders Fund.

Changes like these wouldn't fix venture capital's clubby, back-scratching tendencies overnight. But they would go a long way toward making the system fairer for entrepreneurs. And they would reassure venture capital LPs that their money is truly being spent finding and funding the best start-ups in the world, rather than simply being funneled into the pockets of a preordained few.

question: What mistake did the author make this week?

answer: They got into a Twitter fight with some venture capitalists.

question: What is "21"?

answer: A secretive Bitcoin start up co-founded by Balaji Srinivasan.

question: What has the author uncovered about Bitcoin dealings?

answer: Self-dealing arrangements are everywhere and considered acceptable in Silicon Valley.

question: What was the most common response the author got when probing the matter?

answer: It's totally fair for big establish venture capitalist firms to use outside mone to fund new startups run by their own investing partners.

question: Write a ~4 sentence summary.

answer: The author has recently been engaged in a Twitter war regarding the self-dealing arrangement dealings and Bitcoin. The author has found that many venture capitalists' response to their criticisms is to insist that it's totally fair for big establish venture capitalist firms to use outside mone to fund new startups run by their own investing partners. Basically, the author is critical of the fact that a lower-tier business person pitching a smaller idea to a big-time investor can't know if the investor sincerely believes in the product or if they are just fishing for trade secrets in a strategic, and, according to the author, clearly unethical way. The author contends that if venture capitalism isn't "supposed to be fair" as some proponents of it have argued, we should still be privy to how their money is made and how funds are allocated.


text:
[Two men died and several others were seriously injured in a two-vehicle crash early Saturday, July 1, near UC Irvine.] IRVINE – Two men died and three others were seriously injured in a two-vehicle crash early Saturday, July 1, near UC Irvine.

Irvine Police Department and Orange County Fire Authority officials responded to the collision at Harvard Avenue and Michelson Drive shortly after 3 a.m., according to authorities. They found a 2015 Infiniti Q50 on fire and extinguished the blaze, and transported the male driver in critical condition to a local hospital.

Kesean Herrera, of Irvine, drove the other vehicle in the collision, a 2014 Hyundai Elantra. He and passenger Jeremy Shankling, of Los Angeles, were pronounced dead at the scene. The men were identified in an Orange County coroner’s office press release.

Two female passengers in critical condition were transported to area hospitals.

-   []

    Two men died and several others were seriously injured in a two-vehicle crash early Saturday, July 1, near UC Irvine. (Photo by Southern Counties News Service)

-   []

    Two men died and several others were seriously injured in a two-vehicle crash early Saturday, July 1, near UC Irvine. (Photo by Southern Counties News Service)

-   []

    Two men died and several others were seriously injured in a two-vehicle crash early Saturday, July 1, near UC Irvine. (Photo by Southern Counties News Service)

-   []

    Two men died and several others were seriously injured in a two-vehicle crash early Saturday, July 1, near UC Irvine. (Photo by Southern Counties News Service)

-   []

    Two men died and several others were seriously injured in a two-vehicle crash early Saturday, July 1, near UC Irvine. (Photo by Southern Counties News Service)

-   []

    Two men died and several others were seriously injured in a two-vehicle crash early Saturday, July 1, near UC Irvine. (Photo by Southern Counties News Service)

-   []

    Two men died and several others were seriously injured in a two-vehicle crash early Saturday, July 1, near UC Irvine. (Photo by Southern Counties News Service)

-   []

    Two men died and several others were seriously injured in a two-vehicle crash early Saturday, July 1, near UC Irvine. (Photo by Southern Counties News Service)

-   []

    Two men died and several others were seriously injured in a two-vehicle crash early Saturday, July 1, near UC Irvine. (Photo by Southern Counties News Service)

-   []

    Two men died and several others were seriously injured in a two-vehicle crash early Saturday, July 1, near UC Irvine. (Photo by Southern Counties News Service)

_Staff writer Hannah Madans contributed to this report._

question: What is the news article about?

answer: It's about a car crash that killed two and injured many more.

question: What specifically happened in the crash?

answer: Two cars collided with each other.

question: Who were the people who died?

answer: Kesean Herrera and Jeremy Shankling.

question: When did the crash happen?

answer: Around 3 a.m. on Saturday, July 1st.

question: Write a ~1 sentence summary.

answer: A news article details the collision of two cars at Harvard Avenue and Michelson Drive at 3 a.m. on July 1st which caused the death of Kesean Herrera and Jeremy Shanking as well as critically injuring three other people.


text:
We hadn't spoken for miles. I couldn't tell if you were sad, or angry, or both. The whole way the Chevy Nova had to fill in the silence for us. There you were, staring out the window, and there I was, driving us deeper into nowhere. Behind us, the hills cradled the sun, and we drove farther into the night. Of course, the trusty steed managed to blow a tire and neither of us had remembered to bring a spare.
We had sat on the side of the road for hours, and yet, the sun refused to fall. The golden hours stayed put. It was then we noticed our watches had stopped. And oh, insult to injury, I couldn't help myself and longer, I had to say it, "I'm hungry!" We were stuck between these hills, in this grassy valley, and time had managed to stop. And I was hungry.
Mercifully, peach orchards dotted the landscape. With nothing better to do, we walked into the orchard. After another hour or so, the sun still hanging in the sky, you opened up. You spoke, I understood, I apologized.
At that moment, we noticed our walking had led us into a loop. You reached for my hand. It was probably three in the morning and still sunny.
We forgot about the car, the sun, and our hunger, and settled on walking among the orchards in our moment frozen in time.

title: Something I wrote a while ago, first post here!

question: Who is the narrator?

answer: That information can't be found

question: Who is the narrator addressing?

answer: They are telling the story to the person who was in the car and walked through the orchard with them

question: What is "the trusty steed?"

answer: The car, a Chevy Nova

question: Where is the story set?

answer: In a car, and then in a peach orchard during a frozen moment in time

question: Write a ~5 sentence summary.

answer: The narrator is driving with someone when they get a flat tire and have to stop on the side of the road. Hours pass, but the sun doesn't set, and the narrator and their companion notice their watches have stopped. The narrator says they're hungry, and they walk into a peach orchard. The narrator's companion starts talking, and the narrator apologizes for something. They walk in a loop and forget about everything else.