Split (1)

train · 2.6M rows

text stringlengths 9 72.5k
The abuse started a few years after he first found Lara Croft. First, it was with his dad. Then his dad left for the National Guard, but that didn't matter. His stepmother continued the abuse. "She was more vicious I think," Miltenberger told me in an email. Eventually she'd take him to a runaway shelter. He was still ...
He managed to find his way back to his family, but from there, things started getting worse. He developed anger issues, developed depression. He couldn't get his dad out of his head.
"Tenth grade was probably the worst year. I started drinking secretly, and even had a cutting [phase]. Also while I was in school there were so many rumors going around that I was gay...but they didn't use the kindest words to say so," he said.
He dropped out, he started considering suicide. But then he started hearing news of the new Tomb Raider. He was always compelled by Lara as a "strong, independent woman." This time, what compelled him was the idea of being rebooted—of being reborn, if you will. The new Tomb Raider, after all, is a departure from earlie...
"I had tears welling up in my eyes the moment I opened that survival tin...to me Lara was this young, inexperienced woman who didn't know what she was doing, and that was like me," he explained to me.
"When I [saw] her commit her first kill, I watched as she started crying. I had never seen that in a Tomb Raider before. I was shocked. But she picked herself up quickly, I loved that she had so much bravery especially when she was scared the most. Like Rhianna Pratchett [lead writer on Tomb Raider] said, "You can't ha...
"You can't have bravery without fear."
On his blog, Miltenberger explained how Lara's journey affected him. "That kind of sat in my head, of how someone can start over...completely become a new human being who actually cared about things...cared about surviving."
Something clicked—Tomb Raider, in its new form, came at exactly the right time. He resolved to stop drinking, to stop cutting, and he's process of getting his GED. He's also coming to terms with his sexuality. It's like a complete turn around. "Lara was my strength at times when I didn't feel like being strong," he exp...
What next? His plan is to one day work for Crystal Dynamics—that's just how much the game means to him.
"Lara had told me to 'Just keep moving.' Those words saved my life."
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. — Dow High graduate Adam Fitzgibbon went 3-for-6 with a double, four RBIs and three runs as Saginaw Valley State beat Hillsdale 16-9 to open the baseball season on Sunday.
The Cardinals had 18 hits, including five players with multiple hits.
The second game of the doubleheader was halted due to darkness after four innings with the score 5-5, and will be resumed Monday at 9 a.m. After that game, the two teams will play a regularly scheduled doubleheader of two seven-inning games.
Bolton League cricket clubs have agreed to press forward with exploring potential changes to the league format they play in.
Local cricket is facing revolutionary change in the area with 10 leagues in Greater Manchester discussing the idea of scrapping the current traditional leagues – which include the Bolton League and Bolton Association – and joining together in one large multi-division league incorporating promotion and relegation.
'At the Bolton Cricket League Meeting held on Monday 1st December the clubs of the league had a full and frank discussion on the issues facing recreational cricket and in particular the desire to improve standards in the BCL.
The clubs discussed a range of options in how best to respond but all agreed that the league must look to change with the aim of improving its standard of cricket, its grounds and facilities and to consider the playing structure that we currently operate under.
The League management committee will now consider how best to respond to the need for change and will continue to discuss these options with the clubs.
Although there is further work required to develop the concept of a Greater Manchester approach to cricket the clubs mandated league officials to maintain a dialogue with the other 10 cricket leagues in Greater Manchester who are meeting regularly to develop the principles of this idea.
Sounds like the lineup of the Country Music Association awards or a big festival in Nashville, Tenn. But these two acts are headlining the Great Frederick Fair.
Kicking off this weekend, the 145th annual fair will offer nine nights of carnival rides and games, food, agricultural education and, of course, live entertainment.
In past years, the fair has attracted such popular acts as George Jones, Boxcar Willie, LeAnn Rimes and the Charlie Daniels Band.
According to Jim Grimes, chairman of the fair's entertainment committee, the caliber of artists at the fair is a big draw for people from Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington.
"We have an exceptional music lineup this year, and we're fortunate to still be able to attract some of the biggest names in country music," Grimes says. "But ultimately, getting such big-name artists to play at the fair is a lot harder than one may think."
According to Grimes, it depends on who's available. Grimes says because most artists don't visit or travel through Frederick on a regular basis, performing at the fair requires them to go out of their way.
The cost of acquiring a performer is another aspect to consider.
"When you go after certain artists," Grimes says, "you expect to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get them to perform." But because only 4,000 to 5,000 people can fit in front of the grandstand, it's not cost-effective to book super-expensive acts.
"These restrictions limit the number of tickets we can sell and how much we can spend on a performer," Grimes says. "In order to keep the ticket prices affordable for fairgoers, we have to take everything into account."
Despite such restrictions, Grimes and the rest of the committee have been able to attract popular country music performers year after year.
Although the fair features some great entertainment, Grimes says it still exists mostly for the promotion of agriculture.
"Our main goal for organizing the fair is to produce and present [as many] agriculture-based educational opportunities as possible," he says. "We need to develop the fair with the best interest of the general public, the county and the community in mind."
Opening night for the Great Frederick Fair is 7 p.m.-10 p.m. tomorrow, and the fair runs through Sept. 22. Events are 9 a.m.-10 p.m. daily after opening night. Admission is $5 per person. Ages younger than 18 get in free before 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and those older than 65 are admitted free before 3 p.m. Monday...
Westbound traffic to the Bay Area from the Central Valley is already at a crawl by 5:45 a.m. on Interstate 205 near Mountain House Parkway in Tracy.
STOCKTON — Jared Rusten saw the tide turning.
He had been renting a warehouse in San Francisco’s Mission District, where he worked and also lived with his then-girlfriend and another tenant, when they got their first rent increase in 2014: It doubled. The next year, his landlord wanted to increase the rent by another 30 percent. Rusten could see what was coming.
Chance brought Rusten and his now-wife, Emily Oestreicher, to downtown Stockton in 2015. They were dropping her brother off at the train station, and everywhere they turned, it seemed, there was one abandoned warehouse after another, exactly the type of space growing scarcer every day in San Francisco and Oakland.
It was a city they had dismissed as downtrodden and crime-ridden, but now all they saw was potential. Stockton was close enough to maintain ties with his clients and suppliers and offered a historic downtown that would surely be on the rise, Rusten thought.
As thousands in search of cheaper housing descend on far-flung cities such as Stockton, Lathrop, Tracy and Merced to the east, they’re changing the northern part of the vast Central Valley from a region with a distinct identity to a vast suburb of the Bay Area, whose economic and cultural life is inextricably linked to...
That transformation offers Bay Area workers the opportunity for cheaper housing in communities that now are adding the cultural amenities these workers have come to expect. But the trade-off is a crippling commute along a handful of clogged corridors, with few practical alternatives.
If the transportation challenge could be met, it would benefit not only Central Valley residents braving grueling drives down I-205 and I-580 on their way to Silicon Valley, the Tri-Valley and elsewhere in the Bay Area, said Jim Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council, a business advocacy organization. It ...
Davinder Sohal rises every weekday in pre-dawn darkness, heating water for his morning chai and spreading peanut butter on slices of wheat bread before slipping on shoes and sliding out his garage door around 3 a.m. for his job in San Ramon, a 45-minute trek — if he leaves before 3:30. It’s a ritual Sohal has honed ove...
In September, the family of four moved from the city’s east side to a five-bedroom, which they purchased for $570,000, in a new development called River Islands. The master-planned community will double the size of Lathrop with 11,000 new homes over the next 20 years. Cambay Group, which is leading the development, has...
“The commute is getting much worse,” Sohal said, adding that if he leaves after 4 a.m., the time he spends sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic more than doubles.
The evidence is on the roads.
More than 86,445 workers traveled a minimum of 60 miles, but oftentimes 120 miles or more, from the northern end of the Central Valley, which includes San Joaquin, Merced and Stanislaus counties, to jobs in the Bay Area in 2017 — a 43 percent increase since 2010, according to the Bay Area Council. The fastest-growing a...
San Joaquin County residents averaged 73-minute commutes each way, getting to jobs in the Bay Area in 2017, according to Census data compiled by the Bay Area Council. Motorists from Stanislaus County averaged 96-minute, one-way trips, coming in and out of the Bay Area. And commuters from Merced County averaged 98 minut...
But people are coming in from all over. Nearly 170,000 commuters from 12 neighboring counties, including those in the Central Valley, poured in for work in 2017, strong evidence the Bay Area’s reach is spreading far beyond its nine-county borders into a vast, 21-county megaregion, Wunderman said.
It’s a trend the Regional Plan Association, a national urban research and advocacy organization, first picked up on a decade ago. The association identified 11 emerging megaregions across the country, including the Pacific Northwest region of Seattle, Portland and Vancouver; the Arizona “Sun Corridor” of Phoenix and Tu...
Like the borders of metropolitan areas, Jones said megaregions can be hard to define. But, he said, they are generally large geographic areas with a constant flow of people, goods and information that begin to behave as one coordinated economy.
Whether that growth means more opportunities for both housing and jobs or complete gridlock will depend entirely on creating a functional commute, Wunderman said.
“It’s really at the point where it becomes functional that you get an economy of scale going in the Central Valley,” he said.
That “economy of scale” means a better balance of jobs closer to where people can afford to live, stronger ties between the Central and Silicon valleys, and alternatives to driving, Wunderman said. It’s why the council last year hosted a half-day forum with leaders from UC Merced, Merced city officials and others to ta...
And in the northern part of the Central Valley, local leaders hope a different train network — called the Valley Link — will provide more immediate relief to Interstate 580 commuters. The proposed 47-mile train route would run from BART’s Dublin/Pleasanton station to Stockton. The goal is to have trains running all day...
If all goes well, the train will begin carting passengers in 2026.
Only then, Wunderman said, will companies consider establishing satellite offices or relocating. “The companies are not going to do it if they can’t get their managers out there for meetings,” he said.
For that rare combination of leisure and excitement, discover the luxury of Colonial Grand at Valley Ranch. This gorgeous community is located at the gateway of prestigious Valley Ranch and brings townhome living to a new level. Ultimate luxuries include unique 1, 2 and 3 bedroom floor plans with custom home-style fini...
KARACHI - Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Monday warned that under the National Water Policy (NWP), no new water storage facility or dam on River Indus is acceptable until and unless a consensus is developed among all the stakeholders, particularly the lower riparian.
This he said while presiding over a preparatory meeting for CCI scheduled meeting to be held in Islamabad in which National Water Policy would be discussed.
Secretary Irrigation Jama Shah briefing the chief minister said that the amendment proposed by the Sindh government has been incorporated in the proposed NWP. They are securing katcha areas and economy thereof; preservation of delta area by proving sufficient supplies regularly and rainwater disposal arrangement in pla...
He said that the proposal given by Sindh chief minister that to implement water apportionment accord 1991 in true letter and spirit and prevent its provision in para-2, from amendments/distortions at any level of forum.
The irrigation secretary said that the amendment proposed by the chief minister that: “Provinces are responsible for routine repair and maintenance of flood protection dykes, flood fighting and drainage. However, in case of major catastrophic like 2010 floods, the federal government will provide supplementary funds,’ h...
The chief minister was also told that his amendment ‘Build large dams for system augmentation with consensus of all federating units,’ has not been incorporated.
On this the chief minister said that he was writing a letter to the prime minister with the request to formulate a policy under which new storage/dams would not be allowed without the consensus, particularly of the lower riparian.
He went on saying that the preface of the NWP should be “This National Water Policy recognises the internationally accepted right of lower riparian on water. Any diversions/intervention in the smooth flow of water would not be allowed until and unless the consensus of all federating units, particularly the lower ripari...
It was informed that another amendment was proposed by Sindh government that for establishment of a National Water Council (NWC).
It would comprise of prime minister chairman along with federal water & power minister, federal minister for climate change, federal minister of national food security & research, deputy commission Planning & Commission, chief ministers of provinces, provincial irrigation ministers, private sectors members from water r...
It would recommend legislation, policies and strategies for water resources development and management in the country.
It main objective would be to achieve national planning and coordination for water resources development and management activities among concerned organizations at federal as well as provincial government level. The council would create an enabling environment that shall promote broader multi stakeholders participation...
It would coordinate with concerned organization responsible for controlling pollution of water bodies, including rivers, streams, lakes and ground water and would further manage centralized water resources database service.
He declined to identify internal or external candidates under consideration and deflected questions about specific names including Florida State defensive coordinator Charles Kelly, Auburn linebackers coach Lance Thompson and former assistant Travaris Robinson.
Malzahn wants to hire someone “sooner rather than later,” but a quick timeline isn’t a driving force in the search. He was adamant that he hasn’t offered the position yet to any coach.
His top priority is finding a candidate that will bring continuity to a defense that is looking at its third different coordinator in four years.
“That’s more important to me than anything,” Malzahn said of hiring someone that will stay at Auburn for a while.
Ellis Johnson was Auburn’s defensive coordinator for Malzahn’s first two years as head coach. Johnson was fired following a disappointing finish to the 2014 season that saw the defense give up more than 30 points in its final six SEC games.
Malzahn moved quickly to hire Muschamp and make him the highest paid assistant coach in the country with a three-year, $5.1 million deal.
The USA Today reported Wednesday the Tigers’ budget for football assistants was the second highest in the country at $5.3 million.
Malzahn was asked if he would have similar resources in replacing Muschamp, but talked around the question.
He said his focus is on identifying the right person for the job and coming up with a final plan for who will coach the defense for Auburn’s bowl game.
It leaves open the possibility if Auburn hires someone this weekend that person could coach the Tigers during its 15 bowl practices and the game on Dec. 30 at Legion Field.
Malzahn acknowledged the challenge in front of Auburn’s defense would a difficult one without a coaching search going on.
The Tigers face a Memphis team in the Birmingham Bowl that scored more than 40 points a game during the regular season and has a quarterback Paxton Lynch getting buzz as the country’s top NFL prospect at the position.
The coaching staff met with the team’s defensive leaders to make sure the group stays focused as the team regroups for bowl practice.
The Christian Bashers Defense team has pretty much taken over the comboxes on my recent post Constitutional Rights for Me, But Not for Thee.
They are as predictable as mosquitoes. Just say something really true about their behavior, and they show up, armed to buzz bomb you until you go inside and close the door.
In this instance, I asked the simple question: Do Constitutional rights apply to Christians the same as everybody else?
The answer should seem obvious. But of course it’s not. The reason it’s not is the bullies who want to limit other people’s rights always get mad and deny what they are doing when someone calls them on it. They do it every single time.
We’re all supposed to join them in their pretense that there’s nothing discriminatory or offensive in their attempts to drive Christians from the public square. No one is supposed to challenge their idiotic pretense that using government controls to limit the free exercise of religion in this country is actually a push...
If we can’t be agree with them, they want us to sit down and be quiet and stop contradicting them. If we don’t, well then, they’ll scream and shout until everybody gives up and lets them have the day.
It has always been thus. People who do things like this always deny it, and they always get mean when someone calls them on their facile denials.
That’s why this particular post ended up being dive-bombed by a whole troupe of angry combox mosquitoes. Even though the readership of this blog is heavily — and I mean heavily — Christian, the Christian defenders were outnumbered. In fact, only three stalwart souls tried to stand up for Christ in these arguments. In t...
For all that, this lone fellow managed to push the whole mosquito assault into a slow unwinding of their lies until, one of them just came out with it.
No one is forcing anyone to do anything. And no one is driving anyone out. But if it does not believe it can conscientiously comply with the law, the Catholic Church can sell its hospitals, schools, universities and charity organizations. And the church and its members have the right to protest and encourage that the l...
Of course, that would dramatically change the face of the church in the United States.
And then the commenter goes on, blah, blah, blahing with a lot of stats (which may or may not be accurate. I haven’t checked.) about the Church’s holdings.
How about that? Not, mind you, that forcing the largest denomination in the country to “sell its hospitals, school, universities and charity organizations” if it won’t violate its 2,000 year-old religious teachings due to government demands that it do so might be … ummm …. a slight violation of the principles of that f...
It’s just deserts for those who have the temerity to think that their individual rights as free Americans amount to a hill of beans to the post Christian, militant secularist demands for moral conformity (with moral being defined by them and them alone) that must govern us all.
I want to remind you that this is about birth control and abortifacients. Nowhere that I know of is there a Constitutional right to free birth control and free abortifacients. Also, nowhere that I know of is there a Constitutional right to force other people to pay for your birth control and abortifacients, even, or in...
There is, however, a pretty strong Constitutional right to the free exercise of religion. Not even President Obama is debating that. What he’s trying to do is re-define this Constitutional Right to the free exercise of religion along the lines of how it is defined in Communist dictatorships. He wants to say that freedo...
It takes a combox firebrand to just come out and say what all this truly means and where it leads. It is leading to stripping the Church of all its “hospitals, schools, universities, and charity organizations” in what would certainly amount to a fire sale. It means driving the Church out of public life, totally and abs...

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.