Puff and paint chicago

So, you saw the title, yes it really happened, and yes it really was by accident. How did it happened ? Well I m still smoking cigarettes, and I was in my car and there was a "cigarette" roach laying on the seat next to me ( I usually do that with cigs ), I took it lighted it and took one puff, directly I noticed the weird taste and threw it. So now what ? Is my progression totally fucked ? I m only on day 5 so this really frustrated me much, I didn't felt a lot but kinda something I don't know if it was placebo or not ( it was a spliff and before stopping I reduced progressibely to like 0.003g per spliff and it probably was one of those ) do you think i really messed things up ? or it's more like nothing ever happened ? The big sad here

Old Skool Racer is a complete racing game world that recreates the sheer thrill of classic arcade racing games such as Outrun, Screamer, Star Wars Pod Racer and WaveRace 64. It features racing using cars, speedboats, hoverpods and chariots.
Core Game Features
· Choose from four different vehicle types including cars, speedboats, hoverpods and chariots
· Over 20 day and night locations such as New York, Venice, Flooded City, Borneo, Canada, Mexico, Yosemite, Amsterdam, India, Africa, Norway, Switzerland, Egypt, Utopia, Suburbia, Tokyo, Ancient Rome, and Circus Maximus
· Win new vehicles by winning Championship races
· Singleplayer game modes include Quick Race, Time Trial and Championship
· Six player multiplayer, achievements, and 3D trophies
Garage Customisation
· Customise your vehicle’s appearance using a combination of special parts, paint colours, decals, and materials
· Choose the exact colour from millions of colours using a Photoshop-style colour pallette
· Select from multiple material types such as matte, fibreglass, glossy metal, gold, aluminium, and pearl
· Add decals to your vehicle from the included library or choose from your own personal collection
· Directly paint on the surface of the vehicle using a variety of custom paint brushes
· Customise your car using parts such as spoilers and wheel rims
Winner’s Island
· Unlock your own beautiful Winner's Island, a luxury mansion, and a toy train
· Decorate your luxury mansion using furniture, carpets, paintings and chandeliers
· Completely change the appearance of your mansion to suit your taste. Select from a collection of realistic wall paints, floor, and roof tiles
· Win Championship races and display the winning trophies in the 3D Trophy Room inside your mansion
· Wash your cars in your own private car wash

Is anyone looking for a roommate? I’m a junior male looking for an apartment around 600-1000 per month. I’m in computer science and my interests include lifting, running, cooking, baking, cooking, painting, video games.

Basically i'm a 22 year old trans woman stuck in a really awful situation with a transphobic abusive family that doesn't even let me paint my nails, in a conservative area that's still heavily dominated culturally by the Catholic Church, in a country (Argentina) that's collapsing in real time socioeconomically and politically and with mental health issues like clinical depression.
I'm extremely tired of having to suffer just to survive yet another single day like this, i want to get out. But the chances are extremely slim since my country's socioeconomic collapse makes it really had for me to get a job that pays me enough to get an apartment to live on my own, and also the province i live in is still heavily conservative and just bleh in general. I would like to at least live in a much more progressive place of my country, and i would prefer if i could get out of this hellhole entirely.

Roo friends, compare my list to your own list and let me know if I'm overlooking anything that I should bring! Major or minor, doesn't matter!
GA pass bracelet (important!)
Parking pass
Tent
Tarp and rain fly for tent
Cot
Rolled up camping mattress for cot
Sleeping bag
2 pillows
Blanket
Camping Canopy
Tent lock
Two (three?) folding camp chairs for visitors and new friends
Camp table
Guitar
Bike lock (for chairs/table)
Chess/checkers board
Art easel with paintbrushes, paint, and markers
Cooler
In the cooler: Food, beer to trade, ice for the road to be replenished at Centeroo
One good book (specifics undecided)
External battery for phone
Toothbrush
Two water bottles
Bug spray
Deoderant
Sunscreen
Sun hat
extra-fashionable Sunglasses
Camelbak and fanny pack
Light clothing for hot weather (1 full week's worth, so I have spares if needed)
Fashion accessories of many different varieties (kandi and pins)
Spare Croc-style shoes for visiting the public showers
Shampoo and soap with a little shower caddy to carry them in
Towels (3, maybe 4)
Bluetooth speakers
Battery operated fan
Flagpole? Camp flag? Need ideas
Light-up gloves
My high-fivin' hand
See y'all at the Farm!

PODCAST: https://ayearofwarandpeace.podbean.com/e/ep1572-hail-and-farewell-george-moore-vale-chapter-112/
PROMPTS: George does not care about you, whatsoever.
Today's Reading, via Project Gutenberg:
Borde could not enlighten him on that point, and I suggested that he should make application to the publisher of his Prayer-Book and get his money back. There is nobody. I said, like him. He is more wonderful than anything in literature. I prefer him to Sancho who was untroubled with a conscience and never thought of running to the Bishop of Toledo. All the same he is not without the shrewdness of his ancestors, and got the better of Archbishop Walsh, and for the last five years Vincent O'Brien has been beating time, and will beat it till the end of his life; and he will be succeeded by others, for Edward has, by deed, saved the Italian contrapuntalists till time everlasting from competition with modern composers. He certainly has gotten the better of Walsh. And I thought of a picture-gallery in Dublin with nothing in it but Botticelli and his school, and myself declaring that all painting that had been done since had no interest for me.... A smile began to spread over my face, for the story that was coming into my mind seemed oh! so humorous, so like Ireland, so like Edward, that I began to tell myself again the delightful story of the unrefined ears that, weary of erudite music, had left the cathedral and sought instinctively modern tunes and women's voices, and as these were to be found in Westland Row the church was soon overflowing with a happy congregation. But in a little while the collections grew scantier. This time it couldn't be Palestrina, and all kinds of reasons were adduced. At last the truth could no longer be denied—the professional Catholics of Merrion Square had been driven out of Westland Row by the searching smells of dirty clothes, and had gone away to the University Church in Stephen's Green. So if it weren't Palestrina directly it was Palestrina indirectly, and the brows of the priests began to knit when Edward Martyn's name was mentioned. Them fal-de-dals is well enough on the Continent, in Paris, where there is no faith, was the opinion of an important ecclesiastic. But we don't want them here, murmured a second ecclesiastic. All this counterpoint may make a very pretty background for Mr Martyn's prayers, but what about the poor people's? Good composer or bad composer, there is no congregation in him, said a third. There's too much congregation, put in the first, but not the kind we want! The second ecclesiastic took snuff, and the group were of opinion that steps should be taken to persuade dear Edward to make good their losses. The priests in Marlborough Street sympathised with the priests of Westland Row, and told them that they were so heavily out of pocket that Mr Martyn had agreed to do something for them. It seemed to the Westland Row priests that if Mr Martyn were making good the losses of the priests of the pro-Cathedral, he should make good their losses. It was natural that they should think so, and to acquit himself of all responsibility Edward no doubt consulted the best theologians on the subject, and I think that they assured him that he is not responsible for indirect losses. If he were, his whole fortune would not suffice. He was, of course, very sorry if a sudden influx of poor people had caused a falling-off in the collections of Westland Row, for he knew that the priests needed the money very much to pay for the new decorations, and to help them he wrote an article in the Independent praising the new blue ceiling, which seemed, so he wrote, a worthy canopy for the soaring strains of Palestrina.
Unfortunately rubbing salt into the wound, I said. A story that will amuse Dujardin and it will be great fun telling him in the shady garden at Fontainebleau how Edward, anxious to do something for his church, had succeeded in emptying two. All the way down the alleys he will wonder how Edward could have ever looked upon Palestrina's masses as religious music. The only music he will say, in which religious emotion transpires is plain-chant. Huysmans says that the Tantum Ergo or the Dies Irae, one or the other, reminds him of a soul being dragged out of purgatory, and it is possible that it does; but a plain-chant tune arranged in eight-part counterpoint cannot remind one of anything very terrible. Dujardin knows that Palestrina was a priest, and he will say: That fact deceived your friend, just as the fact of finding the Adeste Fideles among the plain-chant tunes deceived him. For of course I shall tell Dujardin that story too. It is too good to be missed. He is wonderful, Dujardin! I shall cry out in one of the sinuous alleys. There never was anybody like him! And I will tell him more soul-revealing anecdotes. I will say: Dujardin, listen. One evening he contended that the great duet at the end of Siegfried reminded him of mass by Palestrina. Dujardin will laugh, and, excited by his laughter, I will try to explain to him that what Edward sees is that Palestrina took a plain chant tune and gave fragments of it to the different voices, and in his mind these become confused with the motives of The Ring. You see, Dujardin, the essential always escapes him—the intention of the writer is hidden from him. I am beginning to understand your friend. He has, let us suppose, a musical ear that allows him to take pleasure in the music; but a musical ear will not help him to follow Wagner's idea—how, in a transport of sexual emotion, a young man and a young woman on a mountain-side awaken to the beauty of the life of the world. Dujardin's appreciations will provoke me, and I will say: Dujardin, you shouldn't be so appreciative. If I were telling you of a play I had written, it would be delightful to watch my idea dawning upon your consciousness; but I am telling you of a real man, and one that I shall never to able to get into literature. He will answer: We invent nothing; we can but perceive. And then, exhilarated, carried beyond myself, I will say: Dujardin, I will tell you something still more wonderful than the last gaffe. II gaffe dans les Quat'z Arts. He admires Ibsen, but you'd never guess the reason why—because he is very like Racine; both of them, he says, are classical writers. And do you know how he arrived at that point? Because nobody is killed on the stage in Racine or in Ibsen. He does not see that the intention of Racine is to represent men and women out of time and out of space, unconditioned by environment, and that the very first principle of Ibsen's art is the relation of his characters to their environment. In many passages he merely dramatises Darwin. There never was anybody so interesting as dear Edward, and there never will be anybody like him in literature ... I will explain why presently, but I must first tell you another anecdote. I went to see him one night, and he told me that the theme of the play he was writing was a man who had married a woman because he had lost faith in himself; the man did not know, however, that the woman had married him for the same reason, and the two of them were thinking—I have forgotten what they were thinking, but I remember Edward saying: I should like to suggest hopelessness. I urged many phrases, but he said: It isn't a phrase I want, but an actual thing. I was thinking of a broken anchor—that surely is a symbol of hopelessness. Yes, I said, no doubt, but how are you going to get a broken anchor into a drawing-room? I don't write about drawing-rooms. Well, living-rooms. It isn't likely that they would buy a broken anchor and put it up by the coal-scuttle.
There's that against it, he answered. If you could suggest anything better—What do you think of a library in which there is nothing but unacted plays? The characters could say, when there was nothing for them to do on the stage, that they were going to the library to read, and the library would have the advantage of reminding everybody of the garret in the Wild Duck. A very cruel answer, my friend, Dujardin will say, and I will tell him that I can't help seeing in Edward something beyond Shakespeare or Balzac. Now, tell me, which of these anecdotes I have told you is the most humorous? He will not answer my question, but a certain thoughtfulness will begin to settle in his face, and he will say: Everything with him is accidental, and when his memory fails him he falls into another mistake, and he amuses you because it is impossible for you to anticipate his next mistake. You know there is going to be one; there must be one, for he sees things separately rather than relatively. I am beginning to understand your friend.
You are, you are; you are doing splendidly. But you haven't told me, Dujardin, which anecdote you prefer. Stay, there is another one. Perhaps this one will help you to a still better understanding. When he brought The Heather Field and Yeats's play The Countess Cathleen to Dublin for performance, a great trouble of conscience awakened suddenly in him, and a few days before the performance he went to a theologian to ask him if The Countess Cathleen were a heretical work, and, if it were would Almighty God hold him responsible for the performance? But he couldn't withdraw Yeats's play without withdrawing his own, and it appears that he breathed a sigh of relief when a common friend referred the whole matter to two other theologians, and as these gave their consent Edward allowed the plays to go on; but Cardinal Logue intervened, and wrote a letter to the papers to say that the play seemed to him unfit for Catholic ears, and Edward would have withdrawn the plays if the Cardinal hadn't admitted in his letter that he had judged the play by certain extracts only.
He wishes to act rightly, but has little faith in himself; and what makes him so amusing is that he needs advice in aesthetics as well as in morals. We are, I said, Dujardin, at the roots of conscience. And I began to ponder the question what would happen to Edward if we lived in a world in which aesthetics ruled: I should be where Bishop Healy is, and he would be a thin, small voice crying in the wilderness—an amusing subject of meditation, from which I awoke suddenly.
I wonder how Dujardin is getting on with his Biblical studies? Last year he was calling into question the authorship of the Romans—a most eccentric view; and, remembering how weakly I had answered him, I took the Bible from the table and began to read the Epistle with a view to furnishing myself with arguments wherewith to confute him. My Bible opened at the ninth chapter, and I said: Why, here is the authority for the Countess Cathleen's sacrifice which Edward's theologian deemed untheological. It will be great fun to poke Edward up with St Paul, and on my way to Lincoln Place I thought how I might lead the conversation to The Countess Cathleen.
📷
A few minutes afterwards a light appeared on the staircase and the door slowly opened.
Come in, Siegfried, though you were off the key.
Well, my dear friend, it is a difficult matter to whistle above two trams passing simultaneously and six people jabbering round a public-house, to say nothing of a jarvey or two, and you perhaps dozing in your armchair, as your habit often is. You won't open to anything else except a motive from The Ring; and I stumbled up the stairs in front of Edward, who followed with a candle.
Wait a moment; let me go first and I'll turn up the gas.
You aren't sitting in the dark, are you?
No, but I read better by candle-light, and he blew out the candles in the tin candelabrum that he had made for himself. He is original even in his candelabrum; no one before him had ever thought of a caridelabrum in tin, and I fell to admiring his appearance more carefully than perhaps I had ever done before, so monumental did he seem lying on the little sofa sheltered from daughts by a screen, a shawl about his shoulders. His churchwarden was drawing famously, and I noticed his great square hands with strong fingers and square nails pared closely away, and as heretofore I admired the curve of the great belly, the thickness of the thighs, the length and breadth and the width of his foot hanging over the edge of the sofa, the apoplectic neck falling into great rolls of flesh, the humid eyes, the skull covered with short stubbly hair. I looked round the rooms and they seemed part of himself: the old green wallpaper on which he pins reproductions of the Italian masters. And I longed to peep once more into the bare bedroom into which he goes to fetch bottles of Apollinaris. Always original! Is there another man in this world whose income is two thousand a year, and who sleeps in a bare bedroom, without dressing-room, or bathroom, or servant in the house to brush his clothes, and who has to go to the baker's for his breakfast?
We had been talking for some time of the Gaelic League, and from Hyde it was easy to pass to Yeats and his plays.
His best play is The Countess Cathleen.
The Countess Cathleen is only a sketch.
But what I never could understand, Edward, was why you and the Cardinal could have had any doubts as to the orthodoxy of The Countess Cathleen.
What, a woman that sells her own soul in order to save the souls of others!
I suppose your theologian objected—
Of course he objected.
He cannot have read St Paul.
What do you mean?
He can't have read St Paul, or else he is prepared to throw over St Paul.
Mon ami Moore, mon ami Moore.
The supernatural idealism of a man who would sell his soul to save the souls of others fills me with awe.
But it wasn't a man; it was the Countess Cathleen, and women are never idealists.
Not the saints?
His face grew solemn at once.
If you give me the Epistles I will read the passage to you. And it was great fun to go to the bookshelves and read: I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.
Edward's face grew more and more solemn, and I wondered of what he was thinking.
Paul is a very difficult and a very obscure writer, and I think the Church is quite right not to encourage the reading of the Epistles, especially without comments.
Then you do think there is something in the passage I have read?
After looking down his dignified nose for a long time, he said:
Of course, the Church has an explanation. All the same, it's very odd that St Paul should have said such a thing—very odd.
There is no doubt that I owe a great deal of my happiness to Edward; all my life long he has been exquisite entertainment. And I fell to thinking that Nature was very cruel to have led me, like Moses, within sight of the Promised Land. A story would be necessary to bring Edward into literature, and it would be impossible to devise an action of which he should be a part. The sex of a woman is odious to him, and a man with two thousand a year does not rob nor steal, and he is so uninterested in his fellow-men that he has never an ill word to say about anybody. John Eglinton is a little thing; AE is a soul that few will understand; but Edward is universal—more universal than Yeats, than myself, than any of us, but for lack of a story I shall not be able to give him the immortality in literature which he seeks in sacraments. Shakespeare always took his stories from some other people. Turgenev's portrait of him would be thin, poor, and evasive, and Balzac would give us the portrait of a mere fool. And Edward is not a fool. As I understand him he is a temperament without a rudder; all he has to rely upon is his memory, which isn't a very good one, and so he tumbles from one mistake into another. My God! it is a terrible thing to happen to one, to understand a man better than he understands himself, and to be powerless to help him. If I had been able to undo his faith I should have raised him to the level of Sir Horace Plunkett, but he resisted me; and perhaps he did well, for he came into the world seeing things separately rather than relatively, and had to be a Catholic. He is a born Catholic, and I remembered one of his confessions—a partial confession, but a confession: If you had been brought up as strictly as I have been—I don't think he ever finished the sentence; he often leaves sentences unfinished, as if he fears to think things out. The end of the sentence should run: You would not dare to think independently. He thinks that his severe bringing-up has robbed him of something. But the prisoner ends by liking his prison-house, and on another occasion he said: If it hadn't been for the Church, I don't know what would have happened to me.
My thoughts stopped, and when I awoke I was thinking of Hughes. Perhaps the link between Hughes and Edward was Loughrea Cathedral. He had shown me a photograph of some saints modelled by Hughes. Hughes is away in Paris, I said, modelling saints for Loughrea Cathedral. The last time I saw him was at Walter Osborne's funeral, and Walter's death set me thinking of the woman I had lost, and little by little all she had told me about herself floated up in my mind like something that I had read. I had never seen her father nor the Putney villa in which she had been brought up, but she had made me familiar with both through her pleasant mode of conversation, which was never to describe anything, but just to talk about things, dropping phrases here and there, and the phrases she dropped were so well chosen that the comfort of the villa, its pompous meals and numerous servants, its gardens and greenhouses, with stables and coach-house just behind, are as well known to me as the house that I am living in, better known in a way, for I see it through the eyes of the imagination ... clearer eyes than the physical eyes.
It does not seem to me that any one was ever more conscious of whence she had come and of what she had been; she seemed to be able to see herself as a child again, and to describe her childhood with her brother (they were nearly the same age) in the villa and in the villa's garden. I seemed to see them always as two rather staid children who were being constantly dressed by diligent nurses and taken out for long drives in the family carriage. They did not like these drives and used to hide in the garden; but their governess was sent to fetch them, and they were brought back. Her father did not like to have the horses kept waiting, and one day as Stella stood with him in the passage, she saw her mother come out of her bedroom beautifully dressed. Her father whispered something in his wife's ear, and he followed her into her bedroom. Stella remembered how the door closed behind them. In my telling, the incident seems to lose some of its point, but in Stella's relation it seemed to put her father and his wife before me and so clearly that I could not help asking her what answer her father would make were she to tell him that she had a lover. A smile hovered in her grave face. He would look embarrassed, she said, and wonder why I should have told him such a thing, and then I think he would go to the greenhouse, and when he returned he would talk to me about something quite different. I don't think that Stella ever told me about the people that came to their house, but people must have come to it, and as an example of how a few words can convey an environment I will quote her: I always wanted to talk about Rossetti, she said, and these seven words seem to me to tell better than any description the life of a girl living with a formal father in a Putney villa, longing for something, not knowing exactly what, and anxious to get away from home.... I think she told me she was eighteen or nineteen and had started painting before she met Florence at the house of one of her father's friends; a somewhat sore point this meeting was, for Florence was looked upon by Stella's father as something of a Bohemian. She was a painter, and knew all the Art classes and the fees that had to be paid, and led Stella into the world of studios and models and girl friends. She knew how to find studios and could plan out a journey abroad. Stella's imagination was captured, and even if her father had tried to offer opposition to her leaving home he could not have prevented her, for she was an heiress (her mother was dead and had left her a considerable income); but he did not try, and the two girls set up house together in Chelsea; they travelled in Italy and Spain; they had a cottage in the country; they painted pictures and exhibited their pictures in the same exhibitions; they gave dances in their studios and were attracted by this young man and the other; but Stella did not give herself to any one, because, as she admitted to me, she was afraid that a lover would interrupt the devotion which she intended to give to Art. But life is forever casting itself into new shapes and forms, and no sooner had she begun to express herself in Art than she met me. I was about to go to Ireland to preach a new gospel, and must have seemed a very impulsive and fantastic person to her, but were not impulsiveness and fantasy just the qualities that would appeal to her? And were not gravity and good sense the qualities that would appeal to me, determined as I was then to indulge myself in a little madness?
I could not have chosen a saner companion than Stella; my instinct had led me to her; but because one man's instinct is a little more clear than another's, it does not follow that he has called reason to his aid. It must be remembered always that the art of painting is as inveterate in me as the art of writing, and that I am never altogether myself when far away from the smell of oil paint. Stella could talk to one about painting, and all through that wonderful summer described in Salve our talk flowed on as delightfully as a breeze in Maytime, and as irresponsible, flashing thoughts going by and avowals perfumed with memories. Only in her garden did conversation fail us, for in her garden Stella could think only of her flowers, and it seemed an indiscretion to follow her as she went through the twilight gathering dead blooms or freeing plants from noxious insects. But she would have had me follow her, and I think was always a little grieved that I wasn't as interested in her garden as I was in her painting; and my absent-mindedness when I followed her often vexed her and my mistakes distressed her.
You are interested, she said, only in what I say about flowers and not in the flowers themselves. You like to hear me tell about Miss —— whose business in life is to grow carnations, because you already see her, dimly, perhaps, but still you see her in a story. Forget her and look at this Miss Shifner!
Yes, it is beautiful, but we can only admire the flowers that we notice when we are children, I answered. Dahlias, china roses, red and yellow tulips, tawny wallflowers, purple pansies, are never long out of my thoughts, and all the wonderful varieties of the iris, the beautiful blue satin and the cream, some shining like porcelain, even the common iris that grows about the moat.
But there were carnations in your mother's garden?
Yes, and I remember seeing them being tied with bass. But what did you say yesterday about carnations? That they were the—
She laughed and would not tell me, and when the twilight stooped over the high trees and the bats flitted and the garden was silent except when a fish leaped, I begged her to come away to the wild growths that I loved better than the flowers.
But the mallow and willow-weed are the only two that you recognise. How many times have I told you the difference between self-heal and tufted vetch?
I like cow parsley and wild hyacinths and—
You have forgotten the name. As well speak of a woman that you loved but whose name you had forgotten.
Well, if I have, I love trees better than you do, Stella. You pass under a fir unstirred by the mystery of its branches, and I wonder at you, for I am a tree worshipper, even as my ancestors, and am moved as they were by the dizzy height of a great silver fir. You like to paint trees, and I should like to paint flowers if I could paint; there we are set forth, you and I.
I have told in Salve that in Rathfarnham she found many motives for painting; the shape of the land and the spire above the straggling village appealed to me, but she was not altogether herself in these pictures. She would have liked the village away, for man and his dwellings did not form part of her conception of a landscape; large trees and a flight of clouds above the trees were her selection, and the almost unconscious life of kine wandering or sheep seeking the shelter of a tree.
Stella was a good walker, and we followed the long road leading from Rathfarnham up the hills, stopping to admire the long plain which we could see through the comely trees shooting out of the shelving hillside.
If I have beguiled you into a country where there are no artists and few men of letters, you can't say that I have not shown you comely trees. And now if you can walk two miles farther up this steep road I will show you a lovely prospect.
And I enjoyed her grave admiration of the old Queen Anne dwelling-house, its rough masonry, the yew hedges, the path along the hillside leading to the Druid altar and the coast-line sweeping in beautiful curves, but she did not like to hear me say that the drawing of the shore reminded her of Corot.
It is a sad affectation, she said, to speak of Nature reminding one of pictures.
Well, the outlines of Howth are beautiful, I answered, and the haze is incomparable. I should like to have spoken about a piece of sculpture, but for your sake, Stella, I refrain.
She was interested in things rather than ideas, and I remember her saying to me that things interest us only because we know that they are always slipping from us. A strange thing for a woman to say to her lover. She noticed all the changes of the seasons and loved them, and taught me to love them. She brought a lamb back from Rathfarnham, a poor forlorn thing that had run bleating so pitifully across the windy field that she had asked the shepherd where the ewe was, and he had answered that she had been killed overnight by a golf-ball. The lamb will be dead before morning, he added. And it was that March that the donkey produced a foal, a poor ragged thing that did not look as if it ever could be larger than a goat, but the donkey loved her foal.
Do you know the names of those two birds flying up and down the river?
They look to me like two large wrens with white waistcoats.
They are water-ouzels, she said.
The birds flew with rapid strokes of the wings, like kingfishers, alighting constantly on the river, on large mossy stones, and though we saw them plunge into the water, it was not to swim, but to run along the bottom in search of worms.
But do worms live under water?
The rooks were building, and a little while after a great scuffling was heard in one of the chimneys and a young jackdaw came down and soon became tamer than any bird I had ever seen, tamer than a parrot, and at the end of May the corncrake called from the meadow that summer had come again, and the kine wandered in deeper and deeper and deeper herbage. The days seemed never to end, and looking through the branches of the chestnut in which the fruit had not begun to show, we caught sight of a strange spectacle. Stella said, A lunar rainbow, and I wondered, never having heard of or seen such a thing before.
I shall never forget that rainbow, Stella, and am glad that we saw it together.
In every love story lovers reprove each other for lack of affection, and Stella had often sent me angry letters which caused me many heart-burnings and brought me out to her; in the garden there were reconciliations, we picked up the thread again, and the summer had passed before the reason of these quarrels became clear to me. One September evening Stella said she would accompany me to the gate, and we had not gone very far before I began to notice that she was quarrelling with me. She spoke of the loneliness of the Moat House, and I had answered that she had not been alone two evenings that week. She admitted my devotion. And if you admit that there has been no neglect—
She would not tell me, but there was something she was not satisfied with, and before we reached the end of the avenue she said, I don't think I can tell you. But on being pressed she said:
Well, you don't make love to me often enough.
And full of apologies I answered, Let me go back.
No, I can't have you back now, not after having spoken like that.
But she yielded to my invitation, and we returned to the house, and next morning I went back to Dublin a little dazed, a little shaken.
A few days after she went away to Italy to spend the winter and wrote me long letters, interesting me in herself, in the villagers, in the walks and the things that she saw in her walks, setting me sighing that she was away from me, or that I was not with her. And going to the window I would stand for a long time watching the hawthorns in their bleak wintry discontent, thinking how the sunlight fell into the Italian gardens, and caught the corner of the ruin she was sketching; and I let my fancy stray for a time unchecked. It would be wonderful to be in Italy with her, but—
I turned from the window suspicious, for there was a feeling at the back of my mind that with her return an anxiety would come into my life that I would willingly be without. She had told me she had refrained from a lover because she wished to keep all herself for her painting, and now she had taken to herself a lover. She was twenty years younger than I was, and at forty-six or thereabouts one begins to feel that one's time for love is over; one is consultant rather than practitioner. But it was impossible to dismiss the subject with a jest, and I found myself face to face with the question—If these twenty years were removed, would things be different? It seemed to me that the difficulty that had arisen would have been the same earlier in my life as it was now, and returning to the window I watched the hawthorns blowing under the cold grey Dublin sky.
The problem is set, I said, for the married, and every couple has to solve it in one way or another, but they have to solve it; they have to come to terms with love, especially the man, for whom it is a question of life and death. But how do they come to terms? And I thought of the different married people I knew. Which would be most likely to advise me—the man or the woman? It would be no use to seek advice; every case is different, I said. If anybody were to advise me it would be the man, for the problem is not so difficult for a woman. She can escape from love more easily than her lover or her husband; she can plead, and her many pleadings were considered, one by one, and how in married life the solution that seems to lovers so difficult is solved by marriage itself, by propinquity. But not always, not always. The question is one of extraordinary interest and importance; more marriages come to shipwreck, I am convinced, on this very question than upon any other. In the divorce cases published we read of incompatibility of temper and lack of mutual tastes, mere euphemisms that deceive nobody. The image of a shipwreck rose up in me naturally. She will return, and like a ship our love for each other will be beaten on these rocks and broken. We shall not be able to get out to sea. She will return, and when she returns her temperament will have to be adjusted to mine, else she will lose me altogether, for men have died of love, though Shakespeare says they haven't. Manet and Daudet—both died of love; and the somewhat absurd spectacle of a lover waiting for his mistress to return, and yet dreading her returning, was constantly before me.
It often seemed to me that it was my own weakness that created our embarrassment. A stronger man would have been able to find a way out, but I am not one that can shape and mould another according to my desire; and when she returned from Italy I found myself more helpless than ever, and I remember, and with shame, how, to avoid being alone with her, I would run down the entire length of a train, avoiding the empty carriages, crying Not here, not here! at last opening the door of one occupied by three or four people, who all looked as if they were bound for a long journey. I remember, too, how about this time I came with friends to see Stella, whether by accident or design, frankly I know not; I only know that I brought many friends to see her, thinking they would interest her.
If you don't care to come to see me without a chaperon, I would rather you didn't come at all, she said, humiliating me very deeply.
It seemed to me, I answered, blushing, that you would like to see ——, and I mentioned the name of the man who had accompanied me.
If I am cross sometimes it is because I don't see enough of you.
It seems to me that it was then that the resolve hardened in my heart to become her friend ... if she would allow me to become her friend. But in what words should I frame my request and my apology? All the time our life was becoming less amiable, until one evening I nipped the quarrel that was beginning, stopping suddenly at the end of the avenue.
It is better that we should understand each other. The plain truth is that I must cease to be your lover unless my life is to be sacrificed.
Cease to be my lover!
That is impossible, but a change comes into every love story.
The explanation stuttered on. I remember her saying: I don't wish you to sacrifice your life. I have forgotten the end of her sentence. She drew her hand suddenly across her eyes. I will conquer this obsession.
A man would have whined and cried and besought and worried his mistress out of her wits. Women behave better than we; only once did her feelings overcome her. She spoke to me of the deception that life is. Again we were standing by the gate at the end of the chestnut avenue, and I remembered her telling me how a few years ago life had seemed to hold out its hands to her; her painting and her youth created her enjoyment.
But now life seems to have shrivelled up, she said; only a little dust is left.
Nothing is changed, so far as you and I are concerned. We see each other just the same.
I am no more to you than any other woman.
She went away again to Italy to paint and returned to Ireland, and one day she came to see me, and remained talking for an hour. I have no memory of what we said to each other, but a very clear memory of our walk through Dublin over Carlisle Bridge and along the quays. I had accompanied her as far as the Phoenix Park gates, and at the corner of the Conyngham Road, just as I was bidding her goodbye, she said:
I want to ask your advice on a matter of importance to me.
And to me, for what is important to you is equally important to me.
I am thinking, she said, of being married.
At the news it seems to me that I was unduly elated and tried to assume the interest that a friend should.

I'm 29 ans I've been a fan of the Games Workshop IPs for a good two decades now but only through video games.
I've recently been playing a lot of Blood Bowl 2 and was thinking about buying a set of minatures to paint.
Is there a list of reccomended tools/brushes/paints for people who are just starting? I know GW always recommend citadel but also understand (through some YouTubers I watch) that these aren't always the best.
Any advice would be much appreciated

I have a nice 2009 Street Triple 675, non R. It's got 25k miles and I'm very particular about keeping it clean and nice. It also has mods that are no longer even for sale. Like Gold Top nut from British Customs, their black bar risers and Rental bar pack, also no longer sold. And other things. Only problem is for years the tach is stuck at Zero and LCD are faded from sun. Cosmetically looks fantastic. Black paint is great and wheels are great.
I was thinking asking $4,100 knowing it will be low balled around $3000 to $3500 and actually wanting that.
What do you guys think?
Also if anyone knows of somebody who refirbs speedos that would be rad. I've emailed many of over the years from Google search and no one wanted to touch a Triumph modern cluster.

The University of Chicago’s Market Shaping Accelerator, led by Rachel Glennerster, Michael Kremer, and Chris Snyder, is offering up to two million dollars in prizes for new pull mechanisms and applications.
Our inaugural MSA Innovation Challenge 2023 will award up to $2,000,000 in total prizes for ideas that identify areas where a pull mechanism would help spur innovation in biosecurity, pandemic preparedness, and climate change, and for teams to design that incentive mechanism from ideation to contract signing.
Participating teams will have access to the world’s leading experts in market shaping and technical support from domain specialists to compete for their part of up to $2 million prize during multiple phases. Top ideas will also gain the MSA’s support in fundraising for the multi-millions or billions of dollars needed to back their pull mechanism.
…Pull mechanisms are policy tools that create incentives for private sector entities to invest in research and development (R&D) and bring solutions to market. Whereas “push” funding pays for inputs (e.g. research grants), “pull” funding pays for outputs and outcomes (i.e. prizes and milestone contracts). These mechanisms “pull” innovation by creating a demand for a specific product or service, which drives private sector investment and efforts towards developing and delivering that product or technological solution.
One example of a pull mechanism is an Advance Market Commitment (AMC), which is a type of contract where a buyer, such as a government or philanthropic organization, commits to purchasing (or subsidizing) a product or service at a certain price and quantity once it becomes available. This commitment creates a market for the product or service, providing a financial incentive for innovators to invest in R&D and develop solutions to meet that demand.
The first round of prizes are $4,000 for an idea!
The submission template asks applicants to identify a market failure where the social value exceeds private incentives and where we know the measurable outcome we want to encourage (e.g. the development of a vaccine, capturing carbon out of the air, etc.). Submissions are accepted from individuals 18 years and older and organizations around the globe whose participation and receipt of funding will not violate applicable law.
See here for more.
The post Identify a Market Failure and Win Prizes! appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
[

Comments

](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/05/the-innovation-challenge.html#comments) - I’d be more impressed if the idea was to identify government ...by Rich Berger

Related Stories

• Do tax increases tame inflation?
• Selective reporting of placebo tests in top economics journals
• Can the Shingles Vaccine Prevent Dementia?
  
  

Like I kinda wanna know so I don't pressure myself that much on being good.
Like anatomy for example does artist like TB Choi still uses references for her work especially during when she's working with a client?
Does Ross Draws still gather environmental references for his environmental concept art and paintings and storytelling pieces?
Do Splash Artist still gather references for the pose, environment, folds of the clothing, perspective and objects for their splash art?
I really like to know so I can take it easy since I'm also aiming to get into the professional field.

“The shield that defends needs a sword by its side”
- Mech Core Pilot's Motto.
----
Churk was going to die.
He was going to die, and his brood left behind were going to be enslaved.
He was going to die, and with him his race’s history, achievements and technology would also die out.
They would all be turned into the organic robots his enemy used to power its military might.
Churk’s people were known as the Algeen’s. The Algeen’s were frog-like people, they had four arms and two legs, with large hands and feet. Fiercely intelligent, obscenely democratic, unbelievably green.
Their whole population got an equal vote on any measure of policy or governmental decision, a slow and ponderous system, but one which worked. Once they had gracefully colonized over a thousand planets. Then the Tide came and generations later, on their battered and bruised Homeworld, they were making their final stand. One world left of the most civilized civilization.
The Tide were slavers, but they had been at it for millennia now. Absorbing, enslaving, and breeding thousands of species and races. Making them all part of a homogeneous whole. No one outside of the Tide themselves knew who the original species was, and maybe no one in the Tide knew either. It was possible that they still existed, at the very top of the slavery food chain, being served by those they considered lesser and treated horribly. But it was equally possible that a slave lead rebellion had seen fit to absorb them as they had been absorbed. An ouroboros of cultural erasure and brutal labour camps.
Five hundred metres from Churk’s position, stood the product of those labour camps. Two Tide mech’s which were currently powering towards him and his squad, Churk had little delusions about how effective his semi-fortified engineer’s depo was going to be in protecting their lives. Suddenly his neural link lit up with new high priority information, he was not to engage the enemy, reinforcements were on their way.
While he was glad he didn’t have to engage the enemy (as the ordinance he had at his disposal would have been ineffective against the heavy armour of the Tide machines) the order didn’t make any sense, and so he queried it.
“Reinforcements? What reinforcements? Who’s left?” He responded. As there was no one currently available to respond to his query the over-stretched AI superintendent replied in as basic and succinct method as possible.
“An orbital drop-pod enroute. Contents: One mech. Mech rating: Classified. Mech model: Classified. Mech origin: Classified. Pilot: Anna ‘Sustain’ Finand. Species: Human.” Rattled off the AI in his head.
A mind-numbing list containing more questions than answers. Human? The Algeen’s had included as many species as possible in their attempts to create a force equal to that of the Tide’s, but as far as he knew all of them apart from the Roc’s had been wiped out. He hadn’t heard of humanity before, and how the hell had they managed to get orbital assets in position? The battle for their home world’s skies had been lost months ago. Most importantly, how the hell was one mech going to win against two Tide models?
The Tide had a clear technological advantage over the Algeen’s, most prominently displayed in any of the many mech battles which had taken place throughout the war, whether that be on the ground or in the void. The Tide’s powerplants were three times as efficient as Algeen models, and their anti-gravity/ inertia damping technology was twice as efficient. This allowed the Tide’s mechs to pack on armour and energy shields, creating hulking tanks which moved as easily as the Algeen’s mechs but had a one to four advantage in a fair fight.
A massive crash signalled to Churk that he was about to get his answers, and he eagerly peered into the dust cloud that had formed around the human mech, waiting to see the sort of beast which had come to his (and indeed his entire species) aid. Hope flared ever so briefly, only to be crushed when a familiar silhouette appeared: That of an Algeen mech.
The rounded, purple armour. The gleaming blue sensor nodes. The dome like head. The large feet. Algeen through and through, maybe even an older design from mid-way through the war. One that prioritised speed over armour, a costly mistake. There were however a few differences:
For one, the mech had been heavily modified. Additional armour had been removed from the torso and right arm. A weird cage-like attachment had been crudely added to the front of the mech's thighs and shins. The mech still had its energy shield, but it was now held in the left hand instead of being permanently attached to the mech's chest.
The shoulder armour had been replaced with a series of tubes which looked rather spikey when grouped together, some sort of smoke or grenade launchers perhaps?
Its only armament was a single sword in its right hand. This was particular. For one, it was the only item on the mech that was clearly neither Algeen nor was it of the Tide. It was a dull grey blade, looking more like an oversized cleaver then a sword. Its handle was unadorned and had not even been painted to separate its likeness from that of the rest of the blade. The entire thing was made of one single piece of metal, and while Churk did not know it at that very moment, it had been simply pressed into shape.
Its edge was barely sharp enough to cut, leaving the entire weapon closer to a bat them a knife. By Algeen and Tide standards it was brutally crude. Utterly remorseless in its hatred for elegant craftsmanship. It was a pipe bomb in comparison to a hand grenade. But like a pipe bomb: it was lethal.
Churk watched with equal parts dread and (what he felt to be) misplaced hope as the Algeen mech charged its superior counterparts.
He didn’t know it at the time, but he would speak of the following battle for many years to come.
The human mech launched towards the Tide machines; dust flaring underneath it’s artificially lightened footsteps. It’s strategic removal of armour had made the machine’s already impressive performance even more pronounced, and while its speed surprised the two Tide operators, it did little to unnerve them.
These two operators had seen enough fighting to know one Algeen machine was of little concern, and its missing armour only further reinforced their confidence.
They must have pulled that thing straight out of a repair bay. Thought the pilot of the foremost Tide mech.
These Tide mechs represented a standard advanced scouting group, consisting of one heavy, ranged mech and one light, melee machine. As scouts these mechs would only engage when they had the advantage. But on Algeen Prime, there wasn’t a single Tide scout group that didn’t have the advantage. How the two would operate was simple, the light mech would push out to the front and engage any oncoming mechs, closing quickly to force the enemy into a melee fight. Meanwhile the ranged mech would perform counter-battery and point defence operations: shooting down oncoming missiles and retaliating in kind with its own.
Tide mechs wanted a melee. They always wanted a melee.
Churk didn’t know why exactly. For while it was true that the Tide saw a distinct advantage over Algeens in melee combat, many of their mech units would choose to engage in a melee fight even when they could have as easily dispatched their enemies from afar. Maybe they just found it fun? For the Algeen race it was obvious that the Tide mech operators had been trained extensively on sword combat, even before this war had taken place, and no Algeen could win against a Tide in a fair fight.
As the war progressed the Algeen’s had tried to level the playing field in this aspect, bringing in veterans to teach new operators how to properly utilise a blade. But the icy fact was that swordsmanship had died out long ago in Algeen society (for what modern, enlightened society could possibly keep such a thing alive?) and could not be resurrected in a timely matter. At least, not on the sort of scale they needed if they were to compete against the Tide.
Of course, neither an Algeen nor a Tide Thrall had seen a human wield a blade before. Human swordplay techniques had been forged in the flames of thousands of battles; and like a candle lit from that flame, had been preserved generation after generation. No one had expected that the fires which forged such skill would ever be relit, but it was on Algeen Prime that one small candle found the sort of kindling its ancient creators could not have even imagined.
The Algeen and the Tide machine finally met on the field of battle, with the Tide’s long-range support not having fired a single shot. The Tide machine used its superior power output to slash its sword down, the piloting hoping to knock the sword from the human mech’s clearly loose grip.
It was a surprise to all when the human mech flicked its blade up to deflect the blow, keeping its grip loose as it did so, letting the momentum of the blade do the necessary dirty work. Had a human been deflecting a blow like this, doing so would have reduced the amount of force (and hence, energy) necessary to block the blow. Allowing the fighter to keep their strength up, to persist in the melee for far longer than a less skilled counterpart.
On a mech muscle fatigue was less of a concern. However not resisting the full force of the blow vastly reduced strain on the framework, motors, and anti-gravity pods of the machine. In a long battle the kind of strain that comes from blocking each and every blow can destroy a mech far more thoroughly than even the most devastating sword or missile strike.
Furthermore, deflecting the strike had another key advantage: It positioned the Human's blade for a slashing follow up. Like a snake striking the human's blade leap for the Tide mech, a potent mixture of surprise and heavy armour preventing the operator from recovering in time: The Human's blade connected with a stunning yet well aimed ferocity. The blow exploited the gap in the Tide mech's armour at the armpit. A well-known weakness which the Algeen were rarely able to exploit.
The blade cut deep, severing several of the thick black cables which sent power down the opposing mech's arm. Like cutting into a ligament, the Tide Mechs right arm (sword included) slumped down, as the antigravity modules cut out due to lack of power and its motors struggled to lift the now considerably heavier arm. Completely blindsided by the ferocious attack and now lacking an effective sword arm, the Tide pilot responded in sudden desperation: twisting his mech at its hips, the pilot slammed his own weak and heavily armoured arm into the Algeen mech which had wounded it so.
This may have seen the Tide mech retake the initiative in battle, and with it the advantage. But the Tide pilot wasn't facing an Algeen pilot, and the human who had been training for this mission for the past three years saw the wild attack coming from a galaxy away.
Ducking before the Tide mech even began its twist, the human pilot successfully dodged the incoming attack. Only instead of leaving it there she followed up the movement by striking the upper thigh of the Tide mech with the pommel of her sword.
The ball joint located there had been studied by human engineers who, it must be stated, had a better grasp on how to break things then their Algeen counterparts: the joint shattered under the force of the well-placed blow and the stresses the wild swing with an overloaded arm had placed on the machine.
Churk couldn't believe his eyes as the machine crumpled into an awkward heap: with just two well placed blows the mech pilot had managed to take down a significantly better equipped target. His men behind him cheered, but he didn't. The friendly mech wasn't out of the woods yet, and there was still a lot of ground to clear between the fallen melee mech, and its ranged counterpart.
Churk could scarcely breathe as the Tide ranged mech readied itself for a missile salvo. A single Tide missile was capable of wiping out the Algeen mech, but they never fired a single missile. Churk clenched his teeth tight as his men stopped cheering and looked on with horror as smoke began streaking over the battlefield, signalling the death that was currently barrelling for their only hope.
Inside the outmatched Algeen mech however, the human pilot only smiled.
---- Want to support me? Join my patreon! (You'll get to name chapters and characters!)

So I was playing Rocket League with a friend and my PC shut off mid-game. I pressed the power button and it wouldn't turn on. I changed the socket it was plugged into from an extension cable directly into the wall outlet and it came back on for a couple of seconds. It then shut itself off and I saw smoke coming from the back of the PC.
I'm not sure what to do next. I've unplugged it and opened the case up and can't see any obvious damage. Is it safe to try again or am I screwed and it's broken for good?

Why so much terribly done graffiti in and around Waterloo? Lambeth council need youth on detention to paint over it. Really degrades the area.