When I was brand new to NovelAi I had no idea how 2048 tokens really looked as text. So for anyone looking at the tiers, trying to decide how many tokens they want for Clio with the new update, I've tokenized Part of The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald (public domain since 2021).
That way new users can more easily visualize what the AI's maximum context is for each tier. According to the UI Clio uses the NerdStash Tokenizer, as different tokenizers will convert text to tokens their own way.
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In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.
I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.
It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighbourhood.
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.
I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.
Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.
Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.
Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it—I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.
And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.
“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.
Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped the tide offshore.
“It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.
“I’m p-paralysed with happiness.”
She
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laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)
At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.
I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically.
“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all night along the north shore.”
“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.”
“I’d like to.”
“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”
“Never.”
“Well, you ought to see her. She’s—”
Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.
“What you doing, Nick?”
“I’m a bond man.”
“Who with?”
I told him.
“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.
This annoyed me.
“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”
“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”
At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”
“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.”
“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry. “I’m absolutely in training.”
Her host looked at her incredulously.
“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.”
I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.
“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.”
“I don’t know a single—”
“You must know Gatsby.”
“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.
Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.
“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”
“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.
“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly: “What do people plan?”
Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.
“Look!” she complained; “I hurt it.”
We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.
“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to, but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—”
“I hate that word ‘hulking,’ ” objected Tom crossly, “even in kidding.”
“Hulking,” insisted Daisy.
Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase towards its close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.
“You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or something?”
I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—”
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”
There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned towards me.
“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?”
“That’s why I came over tonight.”
“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose—”
“Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss Baker.
“Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position.”
For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear, whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.
Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbour—” I began.
“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”
“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”
“I don’t.”
“Why—” she said hesitantly. “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”
“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly.
Miss Baker nodded.
“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don’t you think?”
Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.
“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gaiety.
She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing away—” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”
The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.
The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.
“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”
“I wasn’t back from the war.”
“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”
Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she
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didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.
“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.”
“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
“Very much.”
“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’
“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!”
The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the Saturday Evening Post—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamplight, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.
When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in our very next issue.”
Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.
“Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy, “over at Westchester.”
“Oh—you’re Jordan Baker.”
I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.”
“If you’ll get up.”
“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.”
“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—”
“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a word.”
“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let her run around the country this way.”
“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly.
“Her family.”
“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.”
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.
“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—”
“Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?” demanded Tom suddenly.
“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.
I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called: “Wait!”
“I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.”
“That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were engaged.”
“It’s a libel. I’m too poor.”
“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be true.”
Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumoured into marriage.
Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.
Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.
I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
II
About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to
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Just a heads up, this guy is used in a universe where hawkmoth treat crime more like a bossiness and as such akumatizes criminals and villains rather than peeved teenagers and disgruntled citizens... basically hawkmoth isn't stupid

OC details:

Name: jonathan hughes
Alias: shadow spider
Miraculous: none/ tech based hero
Symbolism: death and creation

Backstory:

Johnathan was raised by his dad as a single man, An estranged sister, and a mother who died giving birth to john, as such his dad gave him all the love that he could in the small town in the middle of kent england where his dad made hid money as an engineer before moving off to paris with john who was just 3 years old. Life took a swift turn for the best, quickly establishing his talents for weapon creation and design, johnathans father quickly folded a company called Hughes industries where he designed weapons for the parisian military, rubbing shoulders with the elites of france including the agreste's, the tsugurgi's, and the Bourgeois's leaving john to become good friends with both adrien and chloe(shes still a bitch though). All the while johnathans technological prowess also grew, he was making his own video games at 4, designing web browsers at 5, and age 6 made a military grade AI for hid own amusement called SpyDar(spy radar, also sounds like spider😁) with his dad using johnathan on occasion to help implement some of the code to his more advanced weapons. Hawkmoth had wanted johns father to supply his goons with new weaponry, when he refused.... so, at age 10 johnathan watched as hawkmoth crushed his beloved fathers head between his hands like it were a balloon forever traumatising him and essentially killing the boy as well. He since spent his days training to become as strong as possible, his evenings developing his tech to make up for his short comings, and his evening trying to find out who hawkmoth is and where to find him. He's softened up a bit over the course of those 5 years, from wraithful vengeance to a dark defender of the night having even turned his base of operations(which is a big empty warehouse) into a hostel for families who have lost everything to villain attacks, and doing what he can to protect the hurt and innocent

Appearance:

Civilian form
Jonathan is a mix between max and kim, he's tall with an athletic build though tends to wear geeky clothes, not much caring for fashion. He wears his super suit under his shirt, the black sleeves clearly visible, though wears a green comic shirt over it, making it look like a more estethical choice. He also wears brown cargo pants and plain black runners. His shield compacts down into his watch with most of his gear ready to go at a moments notice. His only bit of equipment that is missing is his helmet which is kept in his bag which he takes every where with him. His hair is a plain black with blue high lights, his skin is extraordinarily pale and his eyes are a very dark blue.
Hero form
An almost entirely black suit with a white outline marking holes in his mask, they are sharp looking eyes that are pointed to look like a permanent scowl with a thin white outline. small holes that allow him to breath through the mask (ill give him a water upgrade later) which leads into a grey chest piece that covers and created the illusion of pecs, Abs, and runs down to his crotch to protect that as well. On his chest is a large spider web that forms a semi circle, and hanging from it, a large black spider with sharp edges and somewhat realistic anatomy. On my shoulders are thick metal plating which is also present on his knees and elbows, a blue LED strip denotes wheres the endoskeleton is which is his most armoured point and is meant to draw fire, it can also be turned off either by removing his helmet or per his request. His bottom half is quite plain bar the same black runners he wears in his civilian form, shiny black metal knee guards, and blue LED that runs down the side of his legs. The shield is a mat black with a web pattern on it that has 4 lines that go through the centre and create 8 segments with 3 webs between each larger thread. The webs are white.

Personality:

Johnathan is ultimately altruistic but reserved, knowing that showing off could get him discovered as shadow spider, pretending to basically be a weak coward so no one would suspect him to be shadow spider. Quite nerdy, he's a part of multiple super hero fandoms, usually using them for inspiration for tech and techniques. Johnathan is also prone to bouts of anger where his facade will drop and he'll act more like shadow. Also as johnathan has a high pitched voice with a notable french accent.
As shadow spider he's a different person entirely, even his voice becomes much lower, slightly gravely and distinctly english. His altruistic nature subsides somewhat and has little compassion for criminals and villains, often brutalising them so badly that without immediate medical attention they'd likely die of their injuries. With that being said, he'll only do that to someone who has taken a life, if you didn't understand the weight of you're actions, or you were otherwise justified in his eyes then he will put his life in the line to save yours.

Powers/abilities:

Web generation
Through the use of specialised gauntlets he is able to generate a strong web like substance which is also used for transportation and through the use of various nozzles can be adjusted suit any given need.
Spiked gloves/soles
Through specialised tech his shoes and gloves can produce extremely sharp claws which can be used in combat, but are primarily used to climb walls and other surfaces. These claws also have small injectors that allow him to inject a villain with a neurotoxin that causes paralysis for 24 hours.
Parkour
Jonathan is adept at utilising his environment in order to maximise his mobility options, able to beat an olympian in a race across paris due to his parkour prowess this is just to give him reason to be able to be able move that quickly)
Exoskeleton
A lightweights exoskeleton hidden beneath his suit allows for super human strength feats, up to roughly 3x peak human strength, though only about half as strong as a miraculous holder, also allows for super speed whilst running, hits like a truck, and 5 meter high jumps
SpyDar
An ai that jonathan developed to help analyse his environment including xray vision, internet access, telecommunications access, hacking and many other abilities. He formed his hero identity after his SpyDar systems.
Tech wizard
He's good with computers
Titanum weave suit
Though not impervious to damage jonathan is still able to take hits from your average akuma victim and keep fighting. This weave is light and breathable, though some areas are clearly better armoured including the full metal face shell, the knee and elbow pads, and thicker padding around the chest area.
Repulse canon/ explosive shield
And finally jonathan's shield, though it is made from the same titanium as his face shell it has a web pattern 'engraved' on it. Though these engravings are in fact outlets for a repulse canon which is strong enough to knock down a brick wall without having to use his main suits power supply. Along its edges are another outlet except this one for c4, allowing jonathan a chance against akuma victims with real fire power. The back is also equipt with some smaller devices including trackers, additional cameras to scope an area out more effectively, web grenades, audio lures and an electromagnet to both summon the shield when needed and attach it to his arm or back. It also has small spikes that can inject a neurotoxin into his opponents that will paralysise them for the nest 24 hours

Weaknesses:

Low battery
If jonathan's shield runs out of power he can still carry it around with him, however if his suit does the same then not only does he loose his powers but he's now weighed down and essentialy trapped inside of a metal tomb during a fight
Emp blasts
See above
Fatigue
Jonathan is only human without any additional powers and general combat will slow him down quickly and leave him tired and unable to operate
Being hacked
A simple computer virus is enough to stop most of his powers except for the endoskeleton and web shooters, beyond that he is helpless afterwards
Hand to hand combat
Jonathan knows very little about combat and relies on his gear and environment to neutralise an opponent, getting up close and personal is a great way to deal with him.

So I just moved into an apartment with a roommate two weeks ago and ever since I've had almost no appetite. I feel like some of this stems from social anxiety since I dont know the person that well and get really anxious going to the kitchen, nevertheless cooking. however today I tried to cook some penne rosa and when it was done I just felt not hungry at all. I'm really tight on money and still have more spinach and mushrooms to use and was hoping i could make more penne rosa when i finish this but i dont even know if i will finish it since it seems so unappetizing. I normally love cooking, it's one of my favorite things to do and I consider myself a pretty good cook too so I've always loved eating my own food. But ever since moving here, everything seems super unappetizing. I know some will jump to depression but I am medicated and aside from this, I havent experienced any issues with the move. please help

I just got diagnosed yesterday by a clinical psychologist. Low working memory, low cognitive flexibility, and inattentive. My symptoms have always been very internalized and I am intelligent so no one saw it, until I brought it up to my therapist a few months ago. She was always validating of my symptoms, but skeptical until I told her I once went ten years without wearing socks because managing them was too tiring. Anyway I am going to the doctor tomorrow for meds. I have real difficulty doing easy tasks (opening apps on my phone feels overwhelming) and focusing at work, especially writing and reviewing my work. It feels like my brain gets wipe every 60 seconds. I get stuff done but am always stressed that I won’t have the focus to do it. I always feel like everything is just about to fall apart. The psychologist diagnosed me with anxiety too, but I think that is 100% due to my fear of not getting tasks done.
I am open to stimulants and non. I am nervous about side effects. I would love to hear people’s advice aboutwhat to start with. Are there certain meds that might help more with my specific issues in your experience?
Also, I have a new adhd focused therapist and I already feel like I am doing great on coping skills. I sleep, exercise, eat well. I could benefit from more meditation and social interaction.

It might be Neil’s most personal song since Needle and the Damage Done. In hindsight, the lyrics seem thinly veiled at best. The lead guitar work is superb even by Neil’s standards. It’s channels all this pain and sorrow he must have been experiencing as his marriage was falling apart. One of my favorite Neil tunes but you can’t just listen to it whenever you want.

Hi, I moved into a new apartment a little over a year ago. Before I moved in my landlord told me there had been mold but it had been professionally treated. It’s an old building and the roof had leaked. They thought the roof was patched but it leaked again and there are water stains on my ceiling. The roof is now brand new and never leaks. I have had a constant stuffy nose and shortness of breath since a little after I moved in. Every time I bend over my nose drips. I can exercise as normal but when I breathe in it feels like I can’t get a deep breath. At first I chalked it up to the cold weather but now that it’s warm out I’m starting to get concerned. I live in western pa and have my whole life. I also have had routine blood work and nothing was flagged as wrong. Would mold exposure show up on that? The problem is I got a kitten shortly after I moved in. I’m not sure if I’m allergic to my cat or if there is mold. I’m fairly certain it’s one or the other. However I grew up in a household with four shedding animals and never had an issue. Should I be concerned this is mold and what should I do about it? I am just concerned about my health and I don’t think this would have ever crossed my mind if I didn’t know it was a previous issue. Thanks!

I havent slept for 2 days. My girlfriend left me. I had a small panic attack after she left. The past few days ive been a tiny bit delusional but only short lived moments with tiny things like “shes plotting on me” or when my dad talks to me. I feel a little “different” right now but not too bad. My eyes are getting the sharp pointing pain feeling I always get before I enter episodes. Ive had a few small short lived flashbacks today but thats it. Now the bad part? I had a break in December to January. Now the whole world seems like super super… nostalgic and the break started right outside my apartment which is where im at. The nostalgia feeling is extremely strong. What is this? Please help me. Whats going on? Is this just bad bad mania?????

Is this enough? Thinking of putting in in the living room/dining room area. It’s a 2 room+den apartment with 9’ ceiling, open kitchen, east facing. The living area is a contiguous open space with kitchen/dining/living room just under 400 sqft. To put a second unit in the bedroom would double the price. We’re in the Pacific Northwest so fairly mild temperature, compared to the rest of the planet.
I know a lot of this is personal preference but just looking for some outside opinions. We mostly hang out in the living area so figure it might be enough to have just a single unit and crack the bedroom door open with a fan on at night. Thoughts?

Gonna have a mechanic replace the timing chains on my 2001 4.0. Since they’re gonna have to pull out the entire motor and take it apart, what other parts should I buy to have them replace while they’re at it?
Water pump? Any specific gaskets? Coil packs? Spark plugs?
Am noob, plz help

I moved from California to Florida a couple of years ago with the intent of being there for four or five years and then moving back to California. I kept my house in California, renting it to a friend for pretty low rent, kept the utilities in my name, and continued to have most of my mail sent there. But I also got a Florida driver's license and registered my car there, registered to vote there, opened a bank account and kept most of my liquid funds there, and bought a house there at the tail end of 2022. My intent was legitimately to be a Florida resident for the time I was working there. The only reason I had my mail continuing to go to California is that I was in an apartment for most of the time I was in Florida, and didn't want to bother changing my address once to the apartment and then again to the house. Once we bought the Florida house, I did change my address with the USPS.
Unfortunately, the job didn't work out. We also ran into some health issues, and we have no support system in Florida. So we're moving back in a month or two. I'll have been gone for barely over 2 years.
While working on my 2022 taxes, my tax person (whom I trust quite a bit) is telling me that California will probably require me to pay state taxes for that year even though I was in Florida the whole year, because they will likely think that I moved just to avoid taxes on a pretty significant chunk of income that came in last year. That's not why I moved, and I feel like I could show them that. But he says the fact that I kept my property and some of my bank accounts from California will work against me, and that the burden is on me to show that I wasn't trying to cheat, not on the state to prove I was.
Should I take his advice and just file taxes in California? If this is really not a battle that I can win, I've inclined to just go ahead and do that, because I know better than to pick a fight with the Franchise Tax Board. We haven't yet determined how much it would cost me to go that way, but given my inflated income from last year plus the fact that California has the highest state tax in the country while Florida has none, it seems like it's worth it to see what this community thinks.

So I need advice I dunno if it’ll even be reached but to ask for this advice y’all gotta know who I am and some details,possible trigger extremely toxic parents and living experience and SA . So I’m Faye for internet reasons and my birth mother is S, dad is D and mom is M. When I was little S and D went through a nasty divorce that resulted in broke bones homes and lives after a grueling two year period little me ends up living with D during this time up until my 15th birthday my father was a loving but hard parent the son of a military vet very big on corporal punishment but not a bad man well the first instances I have of my mother are Thursday visits that consisted of a park visit and her telling me how awful my father was and how he was keeping me from her so from the time I was 10 years old till 11 I heard once a week that my father was trash this was step one of her many year plan . Once I turned 12 and many more court dates later S gained weekend visits and holidays rotating those with D. At first these visits were semi harmless a trip four hours away to my grandparents house a new game for my DSI and the mention of her own house with a man let’s call him L . Well the semi harmless visits to my grand parents changed around the end of my 12th year and 13th birthday and thus begun a hell that would last until I was 14. Now I had met L a short stocky man with a son let’s call him J . Within the first visit I watched L break my mothers arm and J began molesting me and as any scared person would do we said nothing so from then until my 14th year early into it my mother suffered constant physical abuse and every other weekend and holidays I was being sexually assaulted by an older teen . L used to take my phone so I couldn’t call for help if I ever got brave. So one day I did I snuck my phone from L’s pocket and ran out of the house to a near by creek and frantically called my dad and told him of only my mothers abuse. The only thing I remember after that was him picking me up flash forward I’m 15 and living with S I know why she lived near a better school and I wanted the best for myself and thought I could just push through four years of her I was so wrong . Upon moving in with S and her new husband H she cut off all contact I had with D just radio silence that eventually turned into he’s forgotten about or hates you and after three years that included physical and verbal abuse from H and constant lies and mental manipulation from S I believed it . Flash forward in in my 20s I’ve escaped I have contact with S because she is all I had and I haven’t heard from D in years a huge life event involving cancer forces us all together and I find out that D never hated me and S told D I hated him , also untrue . So here I am a 21 year old with this broken family I after learning of My mothers lies did nothing and continued my life the way it was well when I turned 24 I worked out a big part of my life and began to transition I moved around 26 about two years into my journey and cut S out of my life completely I’m safe from her and free D knows of this and talks to me but hasn’t seen me since transition and doesn’t know me due to the circumstances above well I want to reconnect with D but it’s like meeting someone for the first time he knows nothing about the me I am now and no clue what I look like any tips do we go to dinner what do I say

Greetings, Reddit community!
I am a 17-year-old high school student from Canada, and ever since I was 15, I have been certain about my desire to become an entrepreneur. The driving force behind my passion is the exhilarating experience of tackling problems head-on and dedicating my thoughts solely to finding solutions. I have ADHD, and although I find it challenging to focus on uninteresting tasks, I enter a state of intense concentration when I'm engaged in something that captivates me. It's a deeply satisfying feeling.
It didn't take long for me to realize that entrepreneurship was my calling. At the age of 16, I also recognized a pattern in a country's growth and development. Typically, there are periods of conflict and numerous challenges before the nation gradually enters a more stable and progressive phase, resulting in exponential growth across various sectors. However, I felt discontented living in a highly competitive country where there were limited opportunities for creating something new, unlike countries that hadn't experienced rapid growth.
This led me to contemplate what I could do differently, and I had a realization. Since my parents and I are immigrants from Africa (I arrived at such a young age that I don't even remember my birth country), I became aware that although my original country is relatively stable now with no war, it still faces problems such as hunger, electricity shortages, and supply-demand imbalances. Additionally, I have an uncle who holds a significant position within the government.
With these considerations in mind, I thought to myself, "Why not leverage my circumstances to generate profit?" I know that my father owns extensive plots of land, some of which are being developed into farms while others remain vast, empty spaces. Moreover, the cost of constructing houses or buildings in my birth country is substantially different from that in Canada.
This sparked the following ideas:

1. As soon as I can manage it, I intend to work tirelessly for around 12 hours a day, taking on jobs like Ubering, DoorDashing, and remote work opportunities (given my language skills in English, Arabic, Turkish, and some Mandarin). By pushing myself to the limit and maximizing my earning potential, I believe I can generate a minimum annual income of $60,000. With that capital, I plan to construct a hotel or luxury homes within an affordable range. Furthermore, I intend to have a conversation with my uncle, exploring ways to operate more freely instead of being viewed solely as a foreign investor or an average citizen.
   
2. Simultaneously, I aim to save money diligently and pursue a degree in electrical engineering, mastering the subject thoroughly. My goal is to establish a solar energy company that addresses the growing demand for electricity.
   
3. My father possesses at least four plots of land spanning 10km to 15km, which he intended to convert into farms but hasn't taken action due to a lack of knowledge and motivation. These lands are exceptionally fertile. One of them is situated in an area where a city is currently under construction. I have the opportunity to purchase it from my father at a reasonable price and develop a farm for sale or export. Additionally, I could use another piece of land to construct apartment buildings within the same city. I'm also aware of Sudanese refugees and other individuals seeking homes in the area due to its convenience. Given that the region is predominantly occupied by my clan (which falls within a larger tribe), many clan members own land but lack the means to initiate projects. Consequently, numerous individuals are open to selling their land, providing me with potential investment opportunities.
   
4. I'm open to suggestions and ideas. What other avenues could I explore to maximize my entrepreneurial endeavors ?
   

I dont want to precise which country in africa it is but its somewhere between east , north and west africa. Its not congo or some other popular country

Background: I'm a senior in college, and my mom is 66. She has always been very "old fashioned", strict, and physically & emotionally abusive to me throughout my childhood. I had my first crush on a boy when I was 12 and she grilled me about his grades, his family, if he went to church, etc. She got on to me since his grades "wasn't good" (he made B's while I made straight A's) so she told me I wasn't allowed to date until I graduated FROM COLLEGE. Her being overbearing didn't stop when I became an adult: Even when I first got my apartment at 19, she threatened to "knock the teeth out of my mouth for being a smartass" all because I said I was going to go ahead and sign the lease and not wait for her to give me permission, especially since I was fully paying for it and never saw a dime from her since starting college. Her excuse was that at the time, I was still under her roof until I officially moved out and therefore I had to "listen to her advice". She didn't even give me advice, she just didn't like the fact that I was moving out. She felt that it was "too young" but my brothers literally got their apartments at the same age too.
My mom swears she had the same dating rules for my brothers, but their anniversary dates and when they said they met their wives (sophomore year of college) calls bullshit.
​
So the problem is, because of my upbringing, I don't feel safe or comfortable bringing up relationships to my mom, especially since the conversation surrounding them was always so negative and slut-shamey. The other (potential) problem is that we're an interracial couple and my mom has said racist/xenophobic things about many different racial groups before. I love my bf and we have been dating for almost 7 months, I hate feeling like I'm "hiding" him like I did with crushes when I was a child. My bf knows all about the abuse, and he's completely on my side and understands why I'm hesitant.
I told one of my brothers that I was in a relationship and he offered to bring up me dating my bf to my mom himself so that I'm not as anxious anymore (and also because my mom listens to my brothers more than she listens to me). I appreciated him trying to help, but as an adult I'm tired of continually walking on eggshells with my mom and I'd like to introduce my bf to her. I know she's going to have a problem with it since I'm "disobeying" her, but I'm no longer the scared child I used to be. Also, if anyone could give advice on what to say to her in case she's disrespectful about us dating, especially as an interracial couple, that would be really helpful too!

Today's map: R3ading is Ch3ating by geo goat (★★★ / 250+)

Link to the challenge here Deadline: June 8, 1.15 am UTC
Hello! Today I drew this map, and I have no idea what it is about. My best guess is that there is usually a helpful written clue at the start, but apart from that the locations are quite random, so it's pretty much a "world" game with clues at the spawn point. No photospheres, good luck!
Well done to solarsensei who won yesterday's map with 24993! They extended their lead in the June classification.
always remember to post your score in this thread if you want it to count towards the leaderboards!
Weekly leaderboard (June 5 - June 11)

solarsensei	1	0	0
giorgeauws_	0	1	0
gobluetwo	0	0	1

Monthly leaderboard (June)

solarsensei	4	0	0
giorgeauws_	2	2	1
MDspaceman	2	0	0
Milyly	2	0	0
gobluetwo	1	1	1
ParticularAirport217	1	1	1
fbrasseur	1	1	0
daniblonds	1	0	0

Recent winners

May 30	Costa Coffee's	Davey1473, fbrasseur, GeoFogg, giorgeauws_, gobluetwo, MDspaceman, solarsensei	25000
May 31	Japan Toyama 富山県 NIIKAWA 新川広域圏	exohugh, fbrasseur	25000
June 1	Province du Luxembourg [Belgique/Belgium]	Milyly	25000
June 2	An Urban World Nick Edition	giorgeauws_, gobluetwo, solarsensei	25000
June 3	American Horror Story Filming Locations	MDspaceman, Milyly, ParticularAirport217, solarsensei	25000
June 4	Comunidad de Madrid	daniblonds, fbrasseur, giorgeauws_, MDspaceman, solarsensei	25000
June 5	Outaouais-Eastern Ontario	solarsensei	24993

So, as the title says. A while ago, I uprooted the life I had after a bad breakup and my dad's declining health. I now live in a town in the middle of nowhere Europe and while I have my dad 5 a minute walk away, his health sadly makes it so we have to spend a lot of time apart. No friends. No other family. Feeling a bit cabin fever-ish. I've spent the better part of a year and a half only working and nothing else, really. When I don't sit at my desk for my day job, I sit at my desk doing commissions or personal projects. Being alone has been great for developing skills but absolutely terrible for pretty much everything else.
​
Now that the pity party is over, who am I?
​
I've been called a tech witch, thought that is pretty much exclusively by me. I just love everything tech related. Graphic design, art, 3d modelling, hardware, you name it. I'm also a big music nerd as I play instruments, produce music for my own enjoyment and listen to a metric fuckton of music. And my biggest sin is my Steam account. If we get far enough to exchange friend codes, you'll probably realize why. I also like to make random stuff. Seems like my biggest hobby is to gather hobbies.
​
If any of this sounds any interesting, shoot me a message. I don't bite! Mostly.

Posting for my sister!
1) Will this be your first dog? If not, what experience do you have owning/training dogs?
*This will be my first dog to personally take care of. We have a standard poodle as a family dog that I have helped take care of.
2) Do you have a preference for rescuing a dog vs. going through a [reputable breeder

• I prefer a reputable breeder

3) Describe your ideal dog.
A quiet dog good for apartment living, that is sociable and easy to train.
4) What breeds or types of dogs are you interested in and why?

• Bench type English Springer Spaniel and Whippet. I want an affectionate breed that isn’t toy or small sized and relatively easy to train

5) What sorts of things would you like to train your dog to do?
I would like to train my dog basic obedience as well as training my dog to go potty on cue and basic tricks.
6) Do you want to compete with your dog in a sport (e.g. agility, obedience, rally) or use your dog for a form of work (e.g. hunting, herding, livestock guarding)? If so, how much experience do you have with this work/sport?
I would not like to use my dog for work or competing, I simply want a companion that is ok going on an occasional hike.
Care Commitments
7) How long do you want to devote to training, playing with, or otherwise interacting with your dog each day?
I want to devote at least 3 hours of undivided attention for my dog.
8) How long can you exercise your dog each day, on average? What sorts of exercise are you planning to give your dog regularly and does that include using a dog park?
On average, I can exercise my dog for 2 hours. I plan on taking my dog on long walks as well as taking my dog to dog parks.
9) How much regular brushing are you willing to do? Are you open to trimming hair, cleaning ears, or doing other grooming at home? If not, would you be willing to pay a professional to do it regularly?
I am willing to regularly brush my dog, however I would prefer a dog with minimal grooming requirements.
Personal Preferences
10) What size dog are you looking for?
I am looking for a medium sized dog (30-60lbs).
11) How much shedding, barking, and slobber can you handle?
I would prefer a dog that isn’t very vocal and that has minimal slobbering. I can handle any amount of shedding as long as I may minimize it by brushing my dog daily.
12) How important is being able to let your dog off-leash in an unfenced area?
I would like to be able to walk my dog off leash, however it is not a requirement.
Dog Personality and Behavior
13) Do you want a snuggly dog or one that prefers some personal space?
I prefer a dog who loves snuggles.
14) Would you prefer a dog that wants to do its own thing or one that’s more eager-to-please?
I would prefer a dog that is more eager-to-please, but a dog that may also be independent at times.
15) How would you prefer your dog to respond to someone knocking on the door or entering your yard? How would you prefer your dog to greet strangers or visitors?
I would like my dog to be alert when someone knocks on the door, but to remain calm and not bark. I want my dog to be sociable and friendly with strangers.
16) Are you willing to manage a dog that is aggressive to other dogs?
No.
17) Are there any other behaviors you can’t deal with or want to avoid?
I would like to avoid severe separation anxiety.
Lifestyle
18) How often and how long will the dog be left alone?
The dog will be left alone 3-4 hours every weekday. I will be able to be with the dog all day on weekends.
19) What are the dog-related preferences of other people in the house and what will be their involvement in caring for the dog?
Other people in the house would prefer to have my dog be relatively quiet and calm. My sister who will be in the same apartment will help as needed, but I will be the primary caretaker.
20) Do you have other pets or are you planning on having other pets? What breed or type of animal are they?

• No other pets or plans to get other pets

21) Will the dog be interacting with children regularly?

• No, but I would prefer a breed that is comfortable around them

22) Do you rent or plan to rent in the future? If applicable, what breed or weight restrictions are on your current lease?

• my apartment has no restrictions

23) What city or country do you live in and are you aware of any laws banning certain breeds?

• I am from Texas and not interested in any breeds that are currently banned

24) What is the average temperature of a typical summer and winter day where you live?

• a bit humid and hot in the summer but not extremely cold in the winter

I forgot about this story about what seemed to be an all-around terrible mother. It was around midnight, and I get to an apartment complex to pick a woman up. Her apartment was on the far side of the building, away from the parking lot side, so she had to walk a few hundred feet to get to me. She comes around the corner with her little girl walking next to her. I'm thinking, "what kind of mother has a child this young awake at this time?" I was about to find out..... After the daughter is strapped in, she says she forgot something. There's a very quick back and forth between the two. Then the mother says, "I'll be right back!" and darts off to their apartment, leaving me no time to prevent myself from being ALONE WITH HER CHILD.... I have a 5 year old. I would never hurt a person, let alone a child, but this woman had no idea who I was. I exchanged some pleasantries with her to kill time. She seemed like an adorable little girl. Then her train wreck of a mom got back, and I took them to the destination. I'm not going to even get into the things she talked about on the ride, but let's just say I was seriously considering calling child protective services, but I decided against it. Maybe I should have. But I think this was the craziest thing I've experienced on a ride.

Howdy, y'all. In today's installment, we have our first in-person interaction with Lucy and I'm trying to remain civil. On the plus side, we meet Jack for the first time and Strike is finally able to review the fabled CCTV footage for himself.
If you're looking for the previous installment of this re-read, here ya go.
Chapter 3.02 - Bawling with Gusto
What happens:
Strike steels himself as he approaches his sister Lucy’s house in Bromley, his nephew Jack’s birthday present tucked underarm. Lucy greets Strike at the door with a friendly inquiry about Charlotte’s whereabouts, to which the latter responds with another lie about family crises drawing her away. Strike is ushered to the back lawn, where a small herd of children are playing some sort of yard game.
After a predictably awkward exchange with his brother-in-law Greg, Strike is approached by one of the mothers. While he endures a thoughtless, but innocent, comment about his leg, Strike’s patience reaches its limit when she brings up his estranged father Rokeby. After she is driven off by a brusque response, Strike quietly goes back into the house.
Making his way to the living room and its TV, he pulls the DVD of CCTV footage that had been included with the case file that Wardle sent over. Since the DVD drive on his office computer isn’t functional, Strike wasn’t able to review this evidence previously. The black-and-white footage begins with the camera overlooking the intersection of Bellamy & Alderbrook Roads. “The Runner” appears, hooded and wrapped in a white scarf. There is an indistinguishable logo on his jacket. He pulls something from his pocket and appears to examine it before disappearing from camera view at 01:39.
The next scene begins at 02:12 with two men running down Alderbrook Road. In front is the figure seen before, followed by a smaller man, also hooded and with “dark fists.” He is running notably slower than his ostensible partner and they show no sign of acknowledgement or communication. There is a brief moment when a design on the back of his sweatshirt is revealed under a streetlamp but, even with several replays, Strike isn’t able to make out clear details.
The next scene on the DVD is of the inside of a bus, showing a man that was possibly “The Runner”, in this instance a “GS” logo distinguishable on his chest. Then it cuts to a final scene on Theobalds Road, showing someone that resembles the man on the bus, albeit sans white scarf.
Done with his review of the footage, Strike calls first John Bristow and then Derrick Wilson, leaving a message for the first asking to meet again in the coming week and for the latter repeating his request to see the layout of one of the apartments in person.
Just as he finishes his calls, Strike is approached by Jack, who overheard his uncle while using the bathroom. Strike readily hands his nephew his birthday gift. Jack is delighted with the soldier toy and excitedly plays with it and Strike until Lucy storms in and reprimands the lad for opening a present early and not being out and playing with his friends. After seeing his sister thoroughly ticked off, Strike “behaves himself” for the rest of the party.
Commentary:
I was interested to see first thing in this chapter that there was a large magnolia tree in front of Lucy’s house. Not exactly the type of tree I would expect for London, but, after a quick search, it looks like magnolias as ornamentals are quite popular in England. The one described here seems to be a Star Magnolia (Magnolia stellata), which was imported from Japan, as opposed to the Southern Magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) that I think most people, at least in the US, picture when you say “magnolia”.
Ok, maybe it’s not that interesting, but it did distract for a second from the delight that is our first in-person Lucy scene! Ok…I don’t want this to derail, but I am not fond of Lucy. You could accuse me of being biased here since she is a “boring” (i.e. normal) person and she’s critical of my man Strike BUT…that’s not really it. I mean, I love ya Corm, but you definitely have issues and shit to work on. No, it’s really about her judgemental, dismissive, and presumptive attitudes.
Just as a taste, in this chapter we have:

Strike never wanted children…Lucy deplored his attitude, and the reasons he gave for it; she was always miffed when he stated life aims that differed from hers, as though he were attacking her decisions and choices.

and, on finding Strike actually playing (!) with Jack

‘For God’s sake, Corm, it’s his party, he’s supposed to be playing with the others! Jack, I told you you weren’t allowed to open any presents yet--pick it up--no, it’ll have to stay in here--no, Jack, you can play with it later--it’s nearly time for tea anyway…’

Please enjoy your birthday, kiddo…according to my strictly prescribed schedule of fun. Ok, look, I get wanting to organize a birthday for practical reasons, but that doesn’t mean you need to yell at a kid when they’re having fun with their uncle off-schedule. Yeesh.
Ok, I think I’ve already written more than enough about Lucy here. If anyone is ready to call me out for being too harsh on her, please comment.

Personally I want a Pokémon Snap ride. It would be a MIB Attack clone, but instead of aliens it’s filled with Pokémon animatronics and instead of guns it’s cameras. At the end Professor Oak reveals which team took the best pictures and displays them temporarily.

My life has been so chaotic that I am beginning to believe a curse is possible (I’m normally not into spiritual things) but I’m so desperate for a solution that I am considering this.
The things that happen are so odd that I cannot find another explanation.
Anything I do or plan ALWAYS goes horribly wrong, making things worse.
I’ve lost my car, apartment, credit, money, relationships, and even my family. Everytime without fail - anytime I was just about to get on my feet something 10x worse would happen; crushing me completely.
I go into trance like states where I make decisions that I only remember after it has already been done.
I have reoccurring nightmares every night, even sleep paralysis.
No amount of support or help has rid me of these problems. Electronics always break when I begin to interact with them (brand new appliances, batteries, metal breaks, even a metal car key had broken).
I’ve had almost 12 near death experiences (hit by car, hypothermia, attempted murder, strangling, sexual assault, robbery, stalking, homelessness, several types of illness like pneumonia + internal bleeding + starvation + dehydration + attempted stabbing as well as being attacked by multiple strangers at different times). I’m only in my 20s and I seem to be the only one who has this kind of thing happen - much less within such a short period of time.
I’ve been bullied at every situation I’ve been in (bullied at multiple jobs, schools, etc). I’ve only been in abusive relationships as well (whether it be emotional abuse, physical abuse or sexual abuse).
I’m not particularly unattractive or cruel to anyone and I always try to recognize my mistakes, but a lot of these situations were unprovoked so I really am trying to understand.