text:
Imagine if you will a building, tall and tattered,the higher you go the brighter it gets, the lower you go the
darker it gets. You wake up in a room with three others; shadow figures you cant make out. You exit your room
to the lobby. There are people here in this building, people you know, loved ones and acquaintances. The
elevators don’t work and there are only stairs to the lower levels. Standing there you here the faint sound of
music coming from below. Think about that person who means the most to you, that person who you love more
than life itself. You love them so much that it isn’t a stretch to say that your souls are connected. Your first
thought is to follow them, you head down the stairs, and you quickly notice that the room gets dimmer. Your
body feels intoxicated, you feel dizzy, and unable to think properly. People are lined shoulder to shoulder lying
on the ground. There is a bar in the corner of the room, and you see them sitting at it, hunched over with there
back towards you drinking a drink. You tip toe around the body’s and on your way to the bar, you notice the
music is no longer playing. “How long was is stopped? Maybe the whole time I was down here.” You sit beside
them at the bar, and turn in your stool to tell the bartender that, you’ll be having what they’re drinking. But the
bartender isn’t there. So you turn the other way to say hi, and start a conversation. When you prompt the
question. They turn and you notice that there face is blurry and a mixture of the colors their face is supposed
to be, almost like someone just swirled it and then made it really blurry. You say their name and they look at
you but say nothing. Your drink has just appeared in front of you.
You grab there hand and get out of the bar. When you turn around you notice two more people,
with normal faces walking around. They had just gotten off the ground. One of them walks up and ask you;
“Where am I?” You reply with “I don’t Know Some kind of hotel or apartment building.” You hear shuffling and
speaking from the floor beneath. So you grab the arm of your loved one, and follow these strangers to the next
floor. Every thing is darker, everyone is just a black silhouette. They are just standing there chattering amongst
them selves. You shout out; “What are you doing?!” They reply in a mass conglomeration of words and
sentences. Its hard for you to make out but a few. Then without question they all chant “Minutes turn into
days, days turn into weeks, weeks into years, and years into centuries.” The others you are with have slowly
walked into the crowd without you noticing and have turned into black silhouettes. Your loved one is pulling on
your hand and pointing to her stomach, and then too the stairs you came from. You remembered about the cash
you had in your wallet. Walking towards the stairs back to the upper floor, you notice the crowd following you,
not talking just walking as a mass group towards you. Your halfway up the stairs, turn back and notice one
lonely shadow maybe the size of a young girl, walking towards you but when her foot touches that first step
she fades away, like blown sand. A sad image; you move on and make your way to the floor where you originate
from. You notice the double doors leading outside, but walking towards them becomes harder the closer you
get. Its like your in a wind tunnel, there is so much opposing pressure pushing you.
You hug the wall and shimmy your way to the doors, once outside you hold the doors open for
them, and they follow your routine and make it outside with you. For that moment the doors stayed open, and
in an instant they drop to they’re knees and get pulled back in. Sliding', they reach they're arms out and the
only time you here them say anything is when they shout your name while being dragged back in. You race to
them but the doors are slammed shut. You go over to the door and see them huddled and grabbing there knees.
Rocking back and forth. Banging on the glass does nothing they cant hear you. But you mouth to them . “Don't
worry, I'll be back with food. Everything is going to be OK.” They didn’t even notice you. You didn't even try to
open the doors, because you were too scared that whatever pulled them in, might pull you in and it wouldn't
let you leave. So you venture out to look for food, then you hear someone say your name, they sound friendly,
and only a few feet away. You follow their voice until it leads you to the building next to yours. You notice a
black figure almost like before. You think you may know this person but you aren’t quite sure. You walk up the
stairs to only find out that this shadow is bigger and bulkier than the others. They walk closer and say in a
voice deeper and more snarling than before “I know what you’re here for, you little fuck” By this point you get
scared and are already heading back down the stairs. You reach the bottom and immediately you’re weighted
down. Like all your energy is depleted, crawling ever so slowly towards those double doors. “You're hungry, huh
piggy, I've got food and plenty of it. Get back here you quivering little cunt!” You have gotten halfway there
when you hear him at the bottom of those steps. “ You want some fucking Cheetos, you want some goddamn
food. Here take it take it all.” He started hurling bags of them at you, getting closer with each toss. You reach
the doors but collapse, you touch the glass and use all your will to bang on it.
Imagine how it it would feel to not be able to open your mouth because you don’t have the strength,
knowing what you want to say, and the words banging at the inside of of your mouth trying to find an opening
to explode out from your lips. Knowing what to say, but the words just wont come out. Ever so often you
garnish enough will and power to pry those lips open and all that slithers out is a squeak or a moan. I imagine
this is how a baby or a mute person feels. So much Frustration, and all that you can muster is a fucking squeak.
They are still there inside walking around like they are waiting for something. Sand is Getting blown around
,you're at the doors but don’t have the strength to get off the ground. You feel vibrations coming from the
ground as he stomps those few feet until he is hovering over you blotting out the sun. You are reduced to tears
and your thoughts. Your immediate thought is “This man is going to murder me,and I am going to die. All That
will remain is blood and pulp.” You are helpless, glued to the ground, and releasing your bowls. You pray to god
for forgiveness, and tell everyone you are sorry for the things you have done. Your stomach is churning out shit
Ice cream. You ask god to save you one more time. Then he says hovering and blotting out the sun standing
there so menacingly. “ No one can hear you, your just thinking all of this, no one is listening, you wont be
saved, and even worse you wont save them.” He points to your loved one walking around. He picks you up and
slams your body, then proceeds to kick and punch your body. He has endless stamina, the sounds of bones
cracking and flesh being punched are being echoed down the street. His heavy breathing feels like flames to
your body, and when he spits on you it boils the skin it touches.
One last smack to the head is the last thing you feel, then your body goes numb,you are paralyzed
completely. You watch him take a few steps to the right, only to see him come back with a saw and a knife.
You watch as he dismembers your body, sawing off your arms and cutting your tendon’s with the knife. Your
laying in a pool of your own blood. Then you see him take the knife and carve one eye out, now your vision is
blurred. Then he proceeds to strike down your other eye with ungodly force. Your last thought before
completely blacking out are the words. “I love You.” Then everything goes black you loose all thought,
everything is black, no noise, no smell no feel, nothing just black. A moment passes, then your able too see
hints of color and light, through your eye lids. You open your eyes and see everything is blurry. You have this
new found strength, you feel alive and awake. Imagine if you will a building, tall and tattered,the higher you go
the brighter it gets, the lower you go the darker it gets. You wake up in a room with three others; shadow
figures you cant make out. You exit your room to the lobby. There are people here in this building, people you
know, loved ones and acquaintances. The elevators don’t work and there are only stairs to the lower levels.
Standing there you here the faint sound of music coming from below. Think about that person who means the
most to you, that person who you love more than life itself. You love them so much that it isn’t a stretch to say
that your souls are connected. Your first thought is to follow them, you head down the stairs, and you quickly
notice that the room gets dimmer.

title: Posting again for a friend under actual name.

question: Summarize the negative events of the story.

answer: The narrator tries to escape the building along with their loved one. They get past the glass door themself but just as their loved one tries to do the same, they are pulled back into the building with full force and the door shuts. The narrator is left alone outside. Soon, they enter another building looking for food where a huge shadow dismembers their body part by part until they die.

question: Summarize the primary source of tension in the story.

answer: The primary source of tension in the story begins when the narrator enters the second building and is standing before a rather huge shadow. The shadow starts behaving aggressively with them and brings a saw and a knife to torture them. The shadow starts sawing the narrator's body parts one by one until they die.


split: test

text:
[Justin McCandless]

[Image for post]

When it first clicked for me that Flutter gives me full control of everything on the screen, right down to the last pixel, I immediately wanted to go beyond the fixed and predictable world of most app UIs. The fully custom widgets that I could draw using CustomPaint begged to be broken out of the typical ScrollView or Container. I wanted to move around, zoom in on things, and navigate the world that Flutter makes it possible to create. The Transform widget was my vehicle for navigating this world, and GestureDetector provided the controls.

[Image for post]

GestureDetector gives easy access to most gestures, and Transform provides the ability to modify the perspective in which a child widget is seen. Both are simple, independent widgets that follow Flutter’s pattern of composability. When we combine the two, every gesture on a widget becomes a way to explore.

An introduction to transformation

Despite its power, all that the Transform widget really does is to take a transformation matrix and apply it to its child. This results in the translation, scale, rotation, and even skew of the child with respect to the parent, all specified by one simple Matrix4 object.

Matrices are very convenient to work with when doing transformations because they are composable. Storing separate translation, scale, rotation, and skew parameters is intuitive at first, but it’s easy to run into ambiguity with things like order.

Imagine the user performs a series of gestures back to back. If the gestures are simply a series of drags, then we can easily store the final transformation as the resulting location Offset. However, if the user drags, then rotates at the new location, and repeats this several times, how do we keep track of the final state? An offset and a double of radians is not enough, not even if we include a focal point as well. We would have to keep track of an ever expanding list of operations that the user has performed and iterate the whole thing just to get to the final state.

A transformation matrix can be combined with any number of other transformation matrices indefinitely, and the result is always another single matrix of the same size. The GPU is very fast at doing this sort of math, even massively in parallel, such as for every pixel on the screen. This makes it great for storing the state of a widget like Transform, and the result is a very straightforward widget for Flutter developers to use.

[Image for post]

Detecting gestures

If we tie some user gestures into updating the transformation matrix using a GestureDetector, then the user has the freedom to navigate the scene that we’re displaying to them. GestureDetector provides easy access to gestures like drag, which we can use for translation, pinch, for zooming, and even a two-finger rotation.

GestureDetector provides lots of different callbacks for various gestures and their start, update, and end states. However, if you’re implementing something like the pictured demo that combines several, the scale callbacks are all you’ll need. The onScaleUpdate callback provides a focalPoint, both horizontal and vertical scales, and rotation, all in one. This allows you to respond to multiple gestures at the same time, such as if the user is rotating and scaling in one gesture. See the ScaleUpdateDetails for everything provided in the onScaleUpdate callback.

Another thing that is often implemented in physical transformations like these is inertia. After the user finishes a gesture, they might expect the transformation to continue for awhile before slowly coming to a stop. Flutter provides a “velocity” parameter in the ending callbacks of all of these gestures, including scale. As you might guess with physics-based movement, this value is larger if the user is moving their finger quickly and smaller if the user is making a slow gesture.

You can create this inertia effect with another great piece of Flutter infrastructure, the Tween animation. Using the velocity and position at the end of a gesture, and a basic knowledge of physics, you can come up with a final position and duration to provide to the Tween, and let it handle everything else. Flutter even includes a friction simulation class to handle some of these calculations for you and make things feel very realistic.

Conclusion

Combining Transform and GestureDetector gives us an incredibly powerful tool. So much is possible, from moving around a game board, as shown in the screenshots, to navigating a map, to providing an interactive image viewer, and beyond.

The app shown here is currently available as a demo in the Flutter Gallery app. All of the code is a part of the main flutter open source repository, and can be found in the transformation demo source. Most of the transformation logic is in the GestureTransformable class, including the inertia animation.

question: What does the text say about Graphic Design?

question: What does the text say about Flutter?

answer: Flutter is a program for creating apps that give users full control of everything on the screen, right down to the last pixel. The program lets users create custom widgets using CustomPaint. Navigation is done by the Transform widget and GestureDetector provides the controls.

question: What does the text say about the two most important tools/functions in Flutter?

answer: According to the author, Transform and GestureDetector can be combined to become an incredibly powerful tool. It allows users to move around a game board, navigate to a map, be used as an interactive image viewer, and more. GestureDetector gives easy access to most gestures, and Transform provides the ability to modify the perspective in which a child widget is seen. Both are simple and independent widgets that follow Flutter's pattern of composability.


text:
The APOSTOLIC NUNCIATURE TO YEMEN is an ecclesiastical office of the Catholic Church in Yemen. It is a diplomatic post of the Holy See, whose representative is called the Apostolic Nuncio with the rank of an ambassador. The Apostolic Nuncio to Yemen is also the Apostolic Nuncio to Kuwait and resides in Kuwait City.

Before the Holy See and Yemen established diplomatic relations, the Holy See represented its interests in Yemen through delegations with regional responsibilities, first the Apostolic Delegation to the Red Sea Region established by Pope Paul VI on 3 July 1969[1] and then the Apostolic Delegation to the Arabian Peninsula established by Pope John Paul II on 26 March 1992.[2] The Holy See and Yemen established diplomatic relations on 13 October 1998.[3]

Papal representatives to Yemen

-   Giuseppe De Andrea (28 June 2001[4] – 27 August 2005)[5]
-   Paul-Mounged El-Hachem (27 August 2005[6] – 2 December 2009)[7]
-   Petar Rajič (27 March 2010[8] – 15 June 2015)[9]
-   Francisco Montecillo Padilla (30 July 2016[10] – 17 April 2020)[11]

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

title: Apostolic Nunciature to Yemen

question: What is meant by "ecclesiastical office"?

answer: It's a place having to do with religion and/or church.

question: Why might a Christian place of worship or council be rare in Yemen?

answer: It is an Islamic country.


text:
In the world of radical identity politics, two groups with very different philosophies have been ignoring science in the name of advancing equality: gender feminists and transgender activists.

Gender feminists — who are distinct from traditional equity feminists — refuse to acknowledge the role of evolution in shaping the human brain, and instead promote the idea that sex differences are caused by a socialization process that begins at birth. Gender, according to them, is a construct; we are born as blank slates and it is parents and society at large that produce the differences we see between women and men in adulthood.

The idea that our brains are identical sounds lovely, but the scientific evidence suggests otherwise. Many studies, for instance, have documented the masculinizing effects of prenatal testosterone on the developing brain. And a recent study in the journal Nature’s Scientific Reports showed that testosterone exposure alters the programming of neural stem cells responsible for brain growth and sex differences.

Gender feminists often point to a single study, published in 2015, which claimed it isn’t possible to tell apart male and female brains. But when a group of researchers reanalyzed the underlying data, they found that brains could be correctly identified as female or male with 69% to 77% accuracy. In another study, published in 2016, researchers used a larger sample in conjunction with higher-resolution neuroimaging and were able to successfully classify a brain by its sex 93% of the time.

  Distortion of science hinders progress. When gender feminists start refuting basic biology, people stop listening, and the larger point about equality is lost.

Even if male and female brains _were_ identical structurally, this would fail to say anything about differences in brain functionality. Indeed, studies have shown sex differences across a wide variety of cognitive domains, including verbal fluency (the ability to generate many different words starting with a given letter) and mental rotation (the ability to rotate three-dimensional shapes in the mind). In one study using functional MRI, women outperformed men on the former, while men outperformed women on the latter.

In my experience, proponents touting the “blank slate” view are willing to agree, in private conversations, that neurological sex differences do exist, but they fear that acknowledging as much publicly will justify female oppression. This is backward. As it stands, female-typical traits are seen as inferior and less worthy of respect. _This_ is the real issue the movement fails to address: Nobody wants to be female-typical, not even women.

Distortion of science hinders progress. When gender feminists start refuting basic biology, people stop listening, and the larger point about equality is lost.

Unlike gender feminists, transgender activists firmly believe that gender is a biological, rather than social, reality — but of course they don’t believe that it’s necessarily tied to sex at birth. They also believe that gender identity is quite stable early on, warranting a transition not only for transgender adults, but also young children who say they were born in the wrong body.

From a scientific perspective, they’re partially right: Gender identity is fixed, but only in adults; the same can’t be said for children, whose gender identity is flexible and doesn’t become stable until puberty.

Currently available research literature — including four studies published in the last nine years — suggests that 61% to 88% of gender dysphoric children will desist and grow up to be gay adults. (Or, in my case, a straight adult). They won’t continue to identify as the opposite sex in adulthood. In one study of 139 gender dysphoric boys, 122 (88%) of the boys desisted.

While transitioning can be beneficial for transgender adults, it therefore doesn’t make sense to treat trans children in the same way.

Nevertheless, transgender activists and their allies have branded desistance as a “myth,” and those who suggest otherwise are called bigots or, dismissively, trolls. It’s not hard to understand why. The idea that some gender dysphoric people may grow up to be comfortable in their birth sex is interpreted as a threat to the community. Acknowledging that reality may seem like a slippery slope to denying the need for gender reassignment surgery even in adults.

But ignoring the science around desistance has serious consequences; it means some transgender children will needlessly undergo biomedical interventions, such as hormone treatments. Even detransitioning from a purely social transition can be a difficult process for a child. In one 2011 study of 25 gender dysphoric children, 11 desisted. Of the desisters, two had socially transitioned and regretted it. They struggled to return to their birth sex in part because of fear of teasing from their classmates, and they did not dare to make the change until they enrolled in high school.

Both the gender feminist and transgender movements are operating with good intentions — namely, the desire to obtain the dignity women and transgender people rightly deserve. But it’s never a good idea to dismiss scientific nuances in the name of a compelling argument or an honorable cause. We must allow science to speak for itself.

_Debra W. Soh is a sex writer and sexual neuroscientist at York University in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @debra_soh_

FOLLOW THE OPINION SECTION ON TWITTER @LATIMESOPINION AND FACEBOOK

MORE FROM OPINION

WE MAY LIVE IN A POST-TRUTH ERA, BUT NATURE DOES NOT

APPEALS COURT BLOCKS TRUMP’S TRAVEL BAN. AT LEAST ONE PART OF THE GOVERNMENT IS STILL FUNCTIONING PROPERLY

DON’T BELIEVE TRUMP’S SPIN. THE WAR AGAINST SAME-SEX MARRIAGE IS JUST GETTING STARTED

TRUMP’S TRASH TALK ON JUDGES MAKES TROUBLE FOR GORSUCH

question: What does the text say about male and female brains?

answer: The text mentions that gender feminists refuse to acknowledge the role of evolution in shaping the human brain. They instead promote the idea that sex differences are caused by a socialization process. There are studies that have documented masculinizing effects of prenatal testosterone on the developing brain. There are other studies that show researchers correctly identifying brains as female or male. However, gender feminists are persistent that it is impossible to tell male and female brains apart.


text:
Hello, I've never done anything like this before, but ive always wanted to try, so igot the above prompt generated. i hope you enjoy.

I've been everywhere, or at least that's what it feels like. However, out of all of the places I've been, one thing always seems to have one thing in common; everyone always ignores me, or at least until they see what I've got in my briefcase.
   Let me start by saying that I don't assume I'm immortal, however I've been around for a while. Never having a real origin story I tend to just make one up on the spot whenever needed, not that its ever mattered. You may have even met me at some point in your life, but you just cant remember. You could say it was my superpower, once you're not in physical contact or having a conversation with me; i might as well have never existed in the first place. As for the briefcase, at first glance it's nothing special; your normal brown rectangle with gold clasps. It's what's inside it  thats the important part; whatever the hell you want.
     You see I'm nothing but a simple merchant, people pay for what they want and I've always got it, all I have to do is name my price, maybe a bit of haggling but they almost always come around. Like any profession it has definitely had it's high points. There came a point in time where i would hang around hospitals and sell medicine to desperate patients who couldnt afford the hospitals price. I was making a profit of course, but I felt like i was saving money whilst doing it. Hell, i bumped in to a down on his luck man last week and all he wanted was a ring to propose to his sweetheart, sure enough I just happened to have a beautiful piece at least 3 times the quality of anything you could find in a jewelry store. I let him have it for an extreme fraction of its worth, all in a days work for super merchant right? You would think so, but sometimes the job has low points as well. I happened upon a house fire on my way home from a movie one night and being practically invisible i walked past any set boundries by the fire department to get a better look. I saw a man sitting on the ground by the curb, tears streaming down his face clearly distraught by losing everything. I opened my briefcase to see if there was any way i could help but the thing that this man wanted more than anything was just one more photo of his family. i looked around not seeing any women or children and my heart sank, they were still inside. Now I've never had anything close to a family or even an acquaintence so i cant even begin to imagine the pain this man was going through, i tapped him on the shoulder and he looked up at me in a daze i handed him the wallet sized photo and he took it without even looking, i apologized for his loss and i walked away. I've always wanted a family.
     Times got a little dark back in the day, countries racing each other to be number one, espionage more common than ever. I've sold a few launch codes here, a couple classified secrets there, but hey; if you got the chance to be a villain for a while and never be remembered for it wouldnt you? Nothing but a phase i guess you could call it.
     Flash forward to now, I've been on a bit of a vacation, got a little bored with business need some time away. Took an escape to New York City, "exciting" right? rented a roomy penthouse that overlooked the city thought i would treat myself. not feeling the lavish lifestyle i went to go see a film, couldnt tell you the name of it they all seem the same nowadays. As i was walking in I noticed a young woman: probably mid to late 20s naturally brown hair dyed blonde with piercing green eyes that you could see from a mile away. I couldnt keep my eyes off of her as she bought her ticket and went to her theatre, I ended up watching her more than the movie. I had never developed enough of a connection to have feelings for someone, and yet now After all of these years in an instant, i can never go back. I've spent so much being invisible to the world the world had become invisible to me. the movie ended and everyone hustled out of the theatre, i couldnt stop myself, I walked up to her and introduced myself; today i was Jack, from Maine, she told me her name; Alice. i told her that i had something she might be interested in as i pulled my briefcase around to open it, interest piqued she couldn't keep her eyes off of it. Empty, this has never happened before theres always been something there. could she already have everything? I apologized very obviously flustered and told her that i must have grabbed the wrong briefcase when i left the house this morning. To diffuse the awkwardness of the situation i asked her how she enjoyed her movie, hated it; i replied in agreement that personally i had a hard time concentrating on the film.  I thanked her for her time and apologized once again for taking up her time, she smiled and carried on her way. Not wanting the conversation to end i reached out to tap on her shoulder but it was too late, i was already forgotten, i covered by saying i thought she was somebody else and left. The loneliness of an eternity alone can really chip away at you over time, in all these years I've never opened this damned thing for myself, i didn't want to ruin the surprise. Well i figured out what i want and when I opened those clasps i wasnt the least bit surprised at what i saw. A silver revolver with one bullet. quite an elegant design actually, whoever put it in that briefcase has good taste. Now like I saod earlier; "i dont think im immortal".

Well, there's only one way to find out.

title: [FN] An adventure with a travelling salesman, a mysterious briefcase, and the phrase " everyone's ignoring me'

question: What does the text say about the briefcase.

answer: The narrator seems to be carrying around an ordinary brown rectangular briefcase, but what's inside is what sets it a part. The briefcase contains whatever a buyer wants or needs when the narrator opens it. When desperate patients at hospitals couldn't afford hospital prices, the briefcase would contain the medicine they needed. When a down on his luck man needed an engagement ring, the briefcase was able to provide a beautiful ring of high quality for him. Once when the narrator saw a man whose family was dying in a house fire, the briefcase was able to provide a photo of his family. At the end of the story, the narrator realizes he is lonely. When he opens the briefcase, there is a gun for him to end his life with.

question: Summarize the relationship between Jack and Alice.

answer: "Jack" is only a name the narrator uses for one day when he introduces himself to Alice. Alice is a woman in her mid to late 20s that the narrator sees at a movie theatre. He ends up developing an interest in her, which is unusual as he never has really developed a connection enough to have feelings for someone. He watches her throughout the movie and ends up introducing himself after. He opens his briefcase to sell her something, but becomes flustered due to its emptiness. It's possible she has everything she needs. They talk about the movie to diffuse the awkwardness, and she then she carries on her way. The narrator wants to continue the conversation, but when he taps her shoulder she's already forgotten who he is.

question: What does the text say about loneliness

answer: The narrator notes that many people have met him but just can't remember him. Once you're not in physical contact with him or having a conversation, you forget he ever existed. This ends up making the narrator feel lonely. This point is driven home once he finally finds interest in a woman named Alice. As soon as she leaves him, she doesn't remember him. He feels that an eternity of loneliness can really hurt you over time. He ends up opening his suitcase, and it reveals he needed a gun to end his life.

question: What does the text say about the narrator's parents?


text:
In the safety of my apartment

It was cold that night. I rode home on my bike. Mist was surrounding me like cobwebs in a spiders den. I buried my chin deep in my collar to protect my neck from the cold. My fingers frozen, red and wrapped tightly around the handlebar. One more block, two more turns and I was home. but coming home would only start the shit that I got into. I can’t sleep and continuously relive that night. How I relive that night is how I write it down.

My apartment is in a district just short of being a ghetto. The walkways are partially lit by still unbroken fluorescent lights. Through the mist I  that the light of the apartment below is still flickering. Nobody lives there and our rich tenant has dozens of other apartment buildings he rather maintains. He gets our rent anyway, and that is all he cares about. This flat will deteriorate until the cracks in the concrete grow enough to bring her down. Nonetheless I am actually happy with my apartment. It is my first house and my room itself is neat and cozy.

In the entrance I can hear a lone junk coughing. I try to pass him unnoticed, but the echo of my footsteps through the hall give me away. From under a dirty brown hood, the pale face stares at me. It mumbles something, but I can't make anything of it. Evading his stare, I quickly ascend the stairs. The encounter made me more nervous than it should. Arm hair is raised under my coat. It feels like the echoing taps of my footsteps draw the attention from nightly visitors. On the third floor I stop and look left to the walkway. Someone stands there. Ten metres away, in front of the of the apartment below mine, number 34. His silhouette appearing and disappearing with the flickering fluorescent light. I freeze as he sees me. A flickering later he stands in the open doorway. Another flickering. The door slams shut and the silhouette is gone. An eerie chill climbs up my spine. I glance away from the apartment where I would normally see cars and people passing, just to comfort myself with reality, but this time there are no cars, no people, just faint streetlights glowing in the thick mist.

I feel cold and vulnerable on the open walkway. The freezing air creeps up my neck as I grab the keys from my pocket. My frozen fingers lose grip before sliding the key in the hole. With a ringing sound the keys drop to the ground. As I bow down to get the keys, I feel eyes watching me closely. I feel them stalking me, but I don’t look. I have seen enough creepy shit tonight.

A warm stream of air greets me when I open my door. This is my safe haven. My neat home protecting me from the rest of the cold, eerie flat. At the end of my dark hallway, from a small table, shining eyes of a cat greet me. Stuart is the best roommate I could wish for. He guards the house, keeps me company, and all he wishes in return is catfood and an occasional stroke. Stuart buries his head between his paws to hide from the lights as I turn them on. As usual I take a glass of whiskey and get ready for bed. 11 pm. While brushing my teeth I think about what happened. Staring in the sink, I think about the man with the pale face, about the silhouette that entered the apartment below me. There were often junks and tramps in this building, but this feels different. The chill in my spine is back. A sudden fear of looking up in the mirror creeps into me. I keep brushing, all the while looking in the sink. What if I look in the mirror and don’t see my own face? What if I do not see what I expect? I don’t know where this fear comes from, but it doesn’t seem to make sense. Come back to senses, you pussy. I look up. I realise I was right. I was right being scared. A pale face gazes into my eyes. The face is filled with the same horror as mine, but it isn’t my face. God fucking dammit. With shaking hands I push myself away from the sink and stumble back. I rip the shower curtain down with me as I fall into the sink. My head slams hard against the back of the bathtub. Dazed, I get up and force myself to look again. The mirror now shows my own, pained face. I should sleep. It has been a long day and I am exhausted.

Stuart sits in the bathroom doorway, meowing for food. I just fed him when I came home, how can this thing be hungry now? While I fetch him some food, he strokes my legs with his flanks. Before heading to bed, I check the time on my phone. My phone! It is not in my pocket. My wallet and keys, gone too. As if the night couldn’t get any worse. One more time, I pull myself together. I will just go to bed. I probably put my stuff on the table or something and forgot. Tomorrow I will check, now I must sleep.

I wouldn’t get any sleep that night.

I’m lying in bed, staring into the blackness above me. My eyelids don’t want to shut. As if my eyes told them something bad will happen if they do. As pitchdark as my room is, fooling myself that my eyes are closed doesn’t work. At least, not enough to sleep. I have to sleep. I need to. With force, I squeeze them shut, losing my awareness of the room.

Bang. A sound hits me. My eyelids spring back open. Staring at the ceiling, I hear a shoving sound repeating near my bed. I can’t help but to breathe heavily when my heart pumps this heavy. Looking right, I see my nightstand standing to the wall more than a metre away from the bed. It is not supposed to stand there. What the fuck? My own fucking nightstand is screwing with me now? While right next to me? I like to believe I am rational. I want to explain this. I can not explain this. Well, Apart from that I’m going crazy, I can not explain this.

I’m done. I’m getting Stuart. My heart is still pounding when I open the door. A shock stops it for a moment. In the faint moonlight, the cat sits in front of my bedroom door on an eighteenth century dining chair. The dining table is over to the side of the balcony. This chair had moved all the way across the room. Something is screwing with me. Stuart looks at me. A questioning face. I feel like he wants to tell me what happened, but he can’t. I paranoidly glance across the moonlit livingroom, dragging the chair behind me. Stuart jumps off and follows me, seeking comfort at my feet.

The chairs around the dining table are neither how I left them. They all stand just too awry. The room is silent. Probably just like it is where you are, while reading this. But my silence is an unsettling silence. Like something is there, holding it’s breath, observing me. My own apartment doesn't feel safe anymore. As if a burglar is in the house, I feel a presence. A burglar… As I’m thinking, I fear that this presence is worse than any kind of burglar. I am alone and being haunted.

I would call a friend of mine now, if I just had my phone. I should look for it. I turn on the lights. Somewhere, a door closes. The click sends a shiver down my spine. Stuart looks at me with his eyes wide open. I need my phone. It isn’t on the dining table. Not on the coffee table either. Frustration and desperation are growing inside me. I throw open cupboards and drawers, clashing the cutlery inside them. I don’t want this to be true. I want to wake up in the morning sun, far away from this nightmare. Some more alcohol in my blood might give make me sleepy enough to get there. Giving up the search, I take  whiskey from one of the opened cupboards. The whiskey pouring into the glass now is the sole thing breaking the silence. Somehow it comforts me a little. Half a glass should do it.

I shamble back to my bedroom, switch the lights back off and suddenly it hits me. I fell in the bathtub. How stupid could I be? My stuff probably fell out of my pocket and is still in the tub. With the glass in my hand and Stuart at my feet, I stand in front of the bathroom door. It is closed. “Did you do that, Stuart?” He looks at me, than at the door. His back arches. His fur rises. “What the fuck? Stop that” I whisper it to him, but he doesn’t listen. As if stepped on, he spurts back into the living room and hides on a seat under the dining table. Stuart always behaved so carefree, opening one eye when the neighbor’s barking dog ran into my apartment. Yet now he is nothing more than a little, black ball of rolled up fear. The bathroom light, glowing at the edging of the door, stands out against its dark surroundings. I should turn it off and get my stuff. For a moment I look back at the shining white dots staring at me from under the table.

Fear grabs a hold of me. I don't want to know what hides behind the door. I chug the glass of whiskey and grab Stuart from under his hiding place. Shared sorrow is half a sorrow? I guess that works with fear as well. Back in my bedroom I notice the nightstand being back at its original spot. I’m sure some people would have lost it by now, but I won’t. I shut the door. I tell myself everything will be better in the morning. I hide under the duvet, with Stuart at my feet. I wait until the drowsiness kicks in. The alcohol is fighting the adrenalin inside me. For a moment the alcohol gains the upper hand and I close my eyes.

title: Ice fishing [part one]

question: How does the author of the text describe their neighborhood?

answer: The narrator rides a bike through the winter to their apartment located in a district that is seemingly ghetto. The apartment building is mostly vacant but some suspicious junkies occupy the surrounding area. The area is also described as creepy when the narrator begins to hear banging sounds just outside of his room.


text:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Twelve Russian military intelligence officers hacked into the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic Party and released tens of thousands of private communications in a sweeping conspiracy by the Kremlin to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election, according to an indictment announced days before President Donald Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The indictment represents special counsel Robert Mueller’s first charges against Russian government officials for interfering in American politics, an effort U.S. intelligence agencies say was aimed at helping the Trump campaign and harming his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The case follows a separate indictment that accused Russians of using social media to sow discord among American voters.

The 29-page indictment lays out how, months before Americans went to the polls, Russians schemed to break into key Democratic email accounts, including those belonging to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Stolen emails, many politically damaging for Clinton, appeared on WikiLeaks in the campaign’s final stretch.

The charges say the Russian defendants, using a persona known as Guccifer 2.0, in August 2016 contacted a person in touch with the Trump campaign to offer help. And they say that on the same day Trump, in a speech, urged Russia to find Clinton’s missing emails, Russian hackers tried for the first time to break into email accounts used by her personal office.

Mueller did not allege that Trump campaign associates were involved in the hacking effort, that Americans were knowingly in touch with Russian intelligence officers or that any vote tallies were altered by hacking. The White House seized on those points in a statement that offered no condemnation of Russian election interference.

It was unclear whether the indictment might factor into Trump’s meeting with Putin on Monday.

Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism about Russian involvement in the hacking while being accused by Democrats of cozying up to the Russian president. Trump complained about the Russia investigation hours before the indictment, saying the “stupidity” was making it “very hard to do something with Russia.”

The Kremlin, meanwhile, denied anew that it tried to sway the election. “The Russian state has never interfered and has no intention of interfering in the U.S. elections,” Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said Friday.

The indictment identifies the defendants as officers with Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, also known as GRU. If that link is established, it would shatter the Kremlin denials of the Russian state’s involvement in the U.S. elections, given that the GRU is part of the state machine.

The Russian defendants are not in custody, and it is not clear they will ever appear in American court, though the Justice Department has recently seen value in indicting foreign hackers in absentia as public deterrence.

The indictment accuses the Russian hackers, starting in March 2016, of covertly monitoring the computers of dozens of Democratic officials and volunteers, implanting malicious computer code known as malware to explore the networks and steal data, and sending phishing emails to gain access to accounts.

One attempt at interference came hours after Trump, in a July 27, 2016, speech, suggested Russians look for emails that Clinton said she had deleted from her tenure as secretary of state.

“Russia, if you’re listening,” Trump said, “I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

That evening, the indictment says, the Russians attempted to break into email accounts used by Clinton’s personal office, along with 76 Clinton campaign email addresses.

By June 2016, the defendants, relying on fictional personas like DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, began planning the release of tens of thousands of stolen emails, the indictment alleges.

The Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks displayed the campaign’s private communications, including deliberations about messaging that played into attacks that Clinton was calculating and a political flip-flopper. Private speeches she gave to financial industry firms were particularly damaging within the left wing of the Democratic party and among independents frustrated with the influence of Wall Street in politics.

The indictment alleges that Guccifer 2.0 was in touch with multiple Americans in the summer of 2016 about the pilfered material, including an unidentified congressional candidate who requested and then received stolen information.

On Aug. 15, 2016, the indictment says, Guccifer 2.0 reached out to someone in contact with the Trump campaign and asked the person if they had seen anything “interesting in the docs I posted?” Guccifer 2.0 said it would be a “great pleasure” to help.

Prosecutors say weeks later, Guccifer 2.0 referred to a stolen DCCC document posted online and asked the person, “what do u think of the info on the turnout model for the democrats entire presidential campaign.” The person responded, ”(p)retty standard.”

The indictment doesn’t identify the person, though longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone acknowledged Friday, through his lawyer, a “24-word exchange with someone on Twitter claiming to be Guccifer 2.0.”

“This exchange is now entirely public and provides no evidence of collaboration or collusion with Guccifer 2.0 or anyone else in the alleged hacking of the DNC emails,” said lawyer Grant Smith.

In addition, someone at Wikileaks contacted Guccifer 2.0 before the Democratic National Convention asking for Clinton material, court papers show.

The charges come as Mueller continues to investigate potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. Before Friday, 20 people and three companies had been charged in the investigation.

Defendants include four former Trump campaign and White House aides, three of whom have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate, and 13 Russians accused in a powerful social media campaign to sway U.S. public opinion in 2016.

Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said on Twitter that it was time to end the investigation since “no Americans are involved” in Friday’s indictment. But with Mueller still investigating, it’s not known whether further indictments are taking shape or will.

Meanwhile, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein called for a unified approach to countering foreign meddling.

“When we confront foreign interference in American elections, it is important for us to avoid thinking politically as Republicans or Democrats and instead to think patriotically as Americans,” he said. “Our response must not depend on who was victimized.”

___

Associated Press writers Darlene Superville, Richard Lardner, Desmond Butler and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington and Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report.

__

More AP reporting on Russian hacking: https://www.apnews.com/tag/Russianhacking

question: What was the nature of the indictment announced days before President Donald Trump met with Russian President, Vladimir Putin?

answer: It was an intelligence briefing in form of thousands of private email communications indicating that the Kremlin meddled in the 2016 US elections.

question: What was the second indictment about?

answer: It accuses Russians of using social media to sow discord among American voters.

question: What was President Trump's attitude to the Russian revelation?

answer: Trump repeatedly expressed scepticism about Russian involvement.

question: How many people and companies were charged in the Mueller probe?

answer: 20 people and three companies.

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer:
A few days before President Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, it was revealed that 12 Russian men hacked into Clinton's Presidential campaign and leaked tens of thousands of private communications.

An indictment was brought forward with charges against the Russian government for meddling in the American election and aiding President Trump's campaign.

By the end of the Mueller probe, 20 people and three companies were found guilty and charged.


text:
The Google Eye is the nightmare of my life. I cant stop thinking about it. Everyone expects me to be used to it by now but I just can't. I can't shake off that feeling that next week I might not be here. They just discovered apparently that when you die, pass away or bite the dust that your soul sorta resets itself and you are re-born into another body.  Science has really turned into its own hell.

When I was younger I remember science being amazing, I could bring out my “tablet” ( I know i'm old, right?!) and Google anything I could think of, and just fill my brain with as much information as I could ingest. Now, we are beginning to find out things that we would probably as a society be better off not knowing.

Before science found out what really happened to us when we died, we were dreamers and religion followers. We dreamed of a place formerly known as Heaven, a beautiful utopia of anything your mind can think of. There was no sin in heaven and no hurt. But we soon found out that we were wrong, and science was right.

So now, with science we discovered how to give ourselves everything we have ever wanted. We can transport through time, we no longer die. Well, we almost got that last part right.
I dont think we realized that we were meant to die because now we are overpopulated and ran out of places to store the people. Everything is cluttered and small and the air is dense of fog, that is no longer toxic because people no longer get sick.

We live in a world where everyone is healthy but everyone keeps reproducing. And now the government has decided that something must be done.
I am what they call an “elder.”  I have been alive longer than most of them, almost 255 years and have officially done everything there is to do in life. I have been a mom over and over again, I have over 40 grandchildren and only one young daughter, Riley, living with my husband and I. She is going to be 2 in September, and will be living a long long life of unhappiness if this keeps up.
I was 45 when they discovered how to stall growing old. Why couldn't they do that when I was younger? My body was a bit more spry back then.
So earth age stays at 45, any my mind keeps growing. Everyone else gets to plug in (stall aging) at 20.

My second husband plugged in at 20. My first, Mark, passed away just before they discovered it. I was stubborn in finding a new mate, but our children insisted I couldn't be alone forever so I began to date and found M35.
M35 and I have 27 children, all of them are grown up except 1.
Unfortunately, Riley will be plugged in at 19 months forever. They discovered that now women are giving birth to children who are now biologically programmed not to age, but the chances of that happening are slim but we got “lucky”.
Shes a beautiful baby girl , really intelligent. She speaks in full distinct sentences, which normal 19 month old kids are only putting two words together at that time.
Her earth-age is 4.
Once plugging-in was discovered, they had to figure out how to deal with overpopulation. We have 2 Google Stations hovering outside Earth, but they had to cease all women from getting pregnant. They don't even shuttle family back and forth from the stations anymore due to fear of pregnancy.

And its not right how they stop that anyway. They just inject the water with an oral contraceptive, sort of like fluoride in water to prevent tooth decay. The government didn’t warn anybody, and all of a sudden pregnancies were cut short and moms were giving birth prematurely. The  Stations hospitals became so flooded that week that mothers were giving birth on the streets while waiting in line. The more water they drank that week the sooner they were having contractions.

5 children died which was the most we have had in a century and when our country found out, everyone grieves. Most of them never understood what death was and when they caught word of this incident, they went through a horrible depression. The streets were dark and the laughter was scarce.

The Belt 2.3 project began.
The Google Eye is this giant chrome object hovering high in the sky, it has one really long pole with cameras and a project protective system. The cameras have been there for a while but they recently added the protective system which we think consist of some sort of rail gun or something destructive. We dont have any violence here so we thought why do we need a protective system?

The cameras knows where everyone all the time. It has face detection and follows your person around. If your children get lost, the Google Eye knows where he/she is.
Soon enough we found out what the protective system really was, something along the lines of a laser nuclear bomb, and thus began the “Life Lottery”.
The Life Lottery is the government's solution for overpopulation. Each year, 10 random social security numbers are drawn and the Google Eye demolishes that person, along with a 100 mile radius of land around that person. They don't tell anyone who is chosen, we just wait for the day to come and look up at the Google eye where you see a light change from Green to Yellow to Red, and each light has a beep that turns into a solid beeeeep for a brief second before the Protective laser streams from the Eye.

Last year was absolutely horrible. I woke up in my apartment around nine am and went into Riley's room and pulled her out of the crib to change her diaper. It was beautiful outside, the fog was at a low and the rain had stopped. We got dressed and went to the park where Riley played on the playground. I called Harry and asked him how he was, he said everything at work was going well, and then he reminded me that today was Lottery Day. “Ugh again? but I was having such a great day.”
Later that evening when Harry was home, the Lottery was going to begin right after dinner. We were sitting in our living room, in our 6th floor apartment watching the news. Outside our big front window we have a good view of the Eye and we sat there enjoying our time together, but also stressed and worried as to what might happen.
I put Riley in her room and put the baby gate up so she could play and left the monitor on so I could see her okay. My sister called me and we talked about how we were both worried and especially me because I have the little one in the house.
It finally began, the tv switched over to the Government channel and they began to explain the same bull crap they do every year, about how this is for the better of our own population and about how we were meant to die eventually. And finally, how when we do die, if we are chosen, that it will be quick and painless and we will reincarnate into a new form, a new journey. Not so bad right? I still felt queasy.

The lady comes on to the tv and prepares us for the first lottery and I begin to wonder, what if it isn’t a fair lottery? I mean what if this lady on the TV is chosen? Then how would they broadcast the rest of the lottery? Its been this same lady for over 15 years on this same channel on this same tv. I begin explaining this to Harry and before I know it I hear that high pitched “BEEEP. “
We look out the window and see the green light is lit up.
“Beeep” It switches to yellow, and I grab Harry's hand and squeeze while also closing my eyes.
“Beeeeeeeeeeeeep” and a blinding flash of light which happens to be the thing that I open my eyes to.
We feel a slight rumble in the foundation of our apartment, and look at each other and embrace like we haven't seen each other in a month.
The lady on the tv begins to explain that the person chosen was named “ Ben H35” and lives in Parkside, N-42 Pennsylvania. My phone rings and its my sister.
“Phew, you answered” she said
“Aren’t you watching the news? It was in Pennsylvania, thats no where near us”
“No, im too busy cooking dinner.”
“Your cooking dinner at a time like this?”
“Listen, my family is hungry regardless and if we are ‘winning the lottery’ they are going to have full tummies”
“Hahha Okay Michelle.”

The lady comes back after a really long commercial break. This is the most watched program all year so the cable company makes so much profit on these Lottery Day Commercials. They even have stores, and car companies that use “Lottery Day” as times to have “50 percent off” sales.
She begins the countdown to the next Lottery drawing. Then we hear “Beep” and see the green light on the Eye switch on.
“Beep” Yellow light”
“BEEEEEEEEP” The room gets filled with a large flash of blinding white light. I hear a large crashing sound and feel my lungs get sucked into my neck. I grab my chest, its really tight I can't breath in. I feel around for the couch and my coffee table and fall to the carpet floor. I begin to crawl to the hallway, I am sucking for breath and getting nothing, my heartbeat is in my eyeballs and my body is throbbing with each movement I make. My vision is blinded with with and I hear nothing but a high pitch screeching.
I feel the wood flooring in the hallway with my hands and continue to crawl to Rileys room. I bump into her gate , still not breathing , and fumble around with the latch. I quickly realize that the latch would take too long and fumbled clumsily over the gate, falling over hard onto the carpet floor of her room. I reach out as I begin to see things around me. I see dark outlines of her crib, her dresser and her bookshelf.
I panic as the seconds feel like hours searching for her, and finally I feel her small foot.
That moment my vision, my hearing and my breathing all snapped back at once and I grab my chest and gasp hard for breath. I realize where I am in an instant and grab Riley, who was laying on the floor, into my arms. Her body is limp. I scream as my eyes swell up with red.
Warm liquid trickles down my cheeks, my neck, I wipe my cheek thinking it was a bug and realize its blood. I take Rileys rag doll body and flip it over so shes laying across my thigh and I begin to press her back with my palms in a rhythmic strong but gentle motion.
I hear her gasp for breath and I pick her up with both my hands and hold her face in front of mine. As she begins to blink her eyes I pull her body towards mine and squeeze her.
Harry runs in from the living room.
“Sarah, are you alright , is Riley alright? I think I just passed out.” he says as he runs over to us and wraps his arm around us.
“ I love you sweetie, im okay.“
“Beep” we hear again, this time I flinch at the sound.
“Beep” I placed my head on Harry's chest and hold Riley close.
“Beeee......

title: [SP] Life Lottery

question: What does the story say about the supernatural?

answer: Science has discovered that when a person dies, their soul is reset and born into another body. Before this was discovered, people dreamed of a place called Heaven, where there was no sin and no hurt.

question: What does the story say about the losers of the lottery?

answer: Every year, 10 random security numbers are drawn and the Google Eye destroys those people along with an 100 mile radius around them. One of the victims was named Ben H35, who lived in Parkside, N-42, Pennsylvania. It is implied that Sarah and her family are also destroyed.

question: What does the story say about who Sarah was before she was reincarnated?


text:
“Don’t get me wrong, it had to be done. The man had to die; he would have destroyed the world, even if he wore that mask to fool his audience… Everyone loved him, but didn’t know of his true intentions.”

 Many years had passed since the great civil war. Countries collapsed, governments going into anarchy. It was a disaster, and no one knew how to reverse it. How could anyone fix this mess? It’s too much for one person alone to handle.  But one man had a plan, a plan to turn all of the disaster around for the better of the world. There would be no competition either; no one else knew how to revoke the attention of the people.  This man was to give a speech, outside the city of Arcadia in the hills of the Father, televised to the entire world to get a glimpse of this savior. Although the entire world had faith in him, to save the world from the point of no return, there was a small group of souls, people who knew the truth of this man. They were known as “The Resistance” an organization bent on taking this man from his throne over the people. The Savior protested that The Resistance were only terrorists; here to frighten the everyday soul into believing of the coming end. But The Resistance knew the truth, they knew the Savior’s true motives, to fool the world into his doing, so he can gain power, and live a life of luxury with the rest of “his world” as his slaves. How do they know of this? Well, 30 years before the war, the human race took its first steps in time travel. They built a machine capable of sending messages across time, to prevent crises from occurring, such as diseases, dictators, natural disasters. It was kept as a piece of property owned by the UN, but since the civil war, it had been confirmed to be MIA. The Resistance had acquired it before the rest of the world powers could even think to keep it under wraps. Merely minutes before taking hold of the machine, they received a message from themselves, many years after he took his throne. Their suspicions were confirmed when The Savior’s name was in the message, saying “ELIMINATE AT ALL COSTS.” The day had come, the hour that the world would be saved—or doomed.
    The man wore black suit with a calm demeanor, hard eyes and showing his determination for this—this one moment that will put him in power. He spent hours practicing the speech, running it over again and again, burning every error until there wasn’t a blemish left in his presentation. The scene he was presenting in was elegant too, on a hill top facing the masses with the sun setting behind him. This will surely win the hearts of all. He held his papers in his hands, reading over each line again and again.
	He stood on the podium constructed on the hill top, watching people from many nations flood around him. He was confident, almost too confident for the task at hand.  But power like that isn’t bestowed in everyone, maybe he had the right to be. The grass covered hill was now covered in a carpet of people, many bringing lawn chairs, others sitting on the sun warmed grass, others standing, applauding the savior on his perch. He cast a radiant smile that beamed like the sun over the viewers, even into the lenses of the cameras, sending the picture of his glow all the way to the audience at home.
	“Good evening, one and all. It is my pleasure to stand before you all today, all of the old, the weak, the weary, and give light of hope for a new future to all of us here on planet Earth today.” Cheers from the audience echoed around the hills that encased them all, like echoes of time bringing back the cheers of many other grand speeches given at this very spot.
    “We all know of our state, war torn, the feeling of insecurity, we can’t even look our friend in the eye anymore without a flavor of doubt in our mouths. But here tonight, I would like to put a rest to those fears, so we may live in peaceful existence, like we had before the Great War.” The cheers were let out again, whistles flying through there air like released turtle doves, finding their lovers, and soaring up and on into the sky.

In the empty city, two men lay on a building top, like a father watching his sleeping baby; they observe their target with hardened eyes through telescopes. One man scribbled down on a small piece of paper calculations shot out by his tablet computer, the other adjusting his rifle’s scope to pinpoint perfection.
 “We can’t miss this shot, Buck.”
 “I got that memo when they gave us the file, Luci.” Buck adjusted the dial on the rifle’s scope mere millimeters, growling in anguish at himself as he made an almost unseen error in his fingers. “What’s the distance?”
 “2 miles, give or take 50 yards.”
 “Wind velocity?”
 “Wind’s commin’ right for us, at about 15 miles an hour.”
 “Damn… That’s going to be a hard shot to hit, two miles? We’re gonna break a record if we pull this off.”
  “Don’t say if, rifles have a way of bending their barrels if you don’t have faith in them.”
“Lucifer, what kind of BS did the Colonel tell you when he was in one of his “Gin and Rum” trances?”
“They do! Like the time I didn’t think I could hit that 900 meter target that George bet me to hit, I didn’t have faith, and it missed.”
“Just like the time you couldn’t get the cherry in the cup a single time in a row.”
“Still more than you, son.”
“Alright you win that one.” He placed a hand on the magazine and slid it under the rifle, reaching his gloved hands for the two legs of the bi-pod, pulling the feet down, resting them on the parapet. Buck took a single telescope and pressed his eye to the dirty lens, watching the speaking figure of the man; shout his pleas to the crowd.
“We better make this soon, we’re already behind schedule.” Lucifer took a knee and looked over his data again, looking out into the glowing sunset that painted over the horizon.
“Just to think, we’re the ones about to save the world from the worst of all dictators.”
 “Something we can put on our resumes when if we get home.”
    “Life has the same concept of faith as rifle’s do, Buck. No such thing as an ‘if’ in the speech of a confident man.”
“Alright, enough blabber, I’m ready.”
“Pop the scope covers then, let’s save the world.”

The Savior was in his prime, the crowd stood and applauded loudly for his ideas to revert the world. His hands flourished about, painting a beautiful picture of perfect government. All the audience thought was, ‘Why haven’t we done this sooner?’ They rejoiced for this man. But soon he stopped, regaining his breath from all of his rants.
                 “Under me, there will be no war, no destruction that we have seen to our brothers and sisters, such as in the United States, where the country was terribly burned by the atomic war there. Under me we will live in harmony, our world will flourish, and humanity—WILL—RISE—AGAIN!!!” The earth shook with the rumbling of applause, the audience had decided this man will lead them to a new day, a new golden age for the human race. The Audience began to chant, “Long Live the Savior!” Over and over—again and again. It was certain, he had won their vote. But the churning thoughts inside the Savior’s mind began to bubble onto his skin. He smiled a little, the thoughts in his head taking over, his true dreams being envisioned. Those who were close enough on the top of the hill could see them, the—Illustrations to say the least, like paintings printed over and over to make a scene. They showed mass slaughters, men being whipped with shards of glass, covered in the blood of those tormented by those teeth, and a man on his forehead sitting in a golden throne encrusted with jewels of many colors. It was a scale of the Savior, sitting with a smug look on his face, a smirk as he watched unseen slaves bend their backs in determination, writhing with the stress put upon them.

 “What is the matter? You all look like you’ve seen a monster!”

  “We’re looking at one is why.” One audience member piped. The Savior looked at his skin, the pictures flowed from story of gore, death, and conquering like a movie without a plot, nothing but to shock the viewers into disbelief.
  “It’s  not what you think—,” But more and more flourished over his skin, telling tales of more and more carnages upon his flesh. But as the audience began to recede, calling up judgments to the falling king,

 “Was this your true plan for us?”

 “You can’t keep a truth from the people forever!” Soon it was like a runoff of water in spring, people returning home to the city.
  “You can’t leave!” He called, the images growing more and more vivid, “I am your ruler! You chanted my name!” His teeth grew to pointed tips, sharp as knives heated with hate and greed, His eyes glowing red with his new found power, “I—AM—YOUR—GOD!” A wave of unfathomable energy passed over the crowd, changing their perspectives, losing all sense of logic.
    “Long live The Savior!” The entire crowd called as one, bowing to this man.

  “Buck take the shot, before it’s too late!” Lucifer hollered, at the man, who still laid prone, crosshair aligned with The Savior’s head.
  Buck paused and withdrew his eye from the scope. “Why should I listen to you, Old man? How do you know The Resistance is right about The Savior?”
	 He looked at Buck with a look of shock, “You never believed did you?” Lucifer drew his revolver slowly from his side.
    “Long live The Savior.” He mumbled, going to his knees.
    “What was that?” Lucifer asked, about to aim down his gun’s sight.
    “LONG LIVE THE SAVIOR,” he chanted louder whipping his knuckle across the old man’s face.
    “What the hell are you doing?!”
    “LONG—LIVE—THE—SAVIOR!” With a final kick, he sent Lucifer off the building side, to the doomed streets of the city below; to the floor of the doomed world they will now inhabit.

title: [Heavenly Snipers]

question: What does the story say about the Savior?

answer: Everyone loves the Savior, but they do not know his true intentions. But The Resistance knows that the Savior wants to fool the world into his doing, so he can gain power, and live a life of luxury with the rest of “his world” as his slaves. People from the Resistance built a machine capable of sending messages across time. They received a message from themselves, many years after the Savior took his throne. Their suspicions were confirmed when The Savior’s name was in the message, saying “ELIMINATE AT ALL COSTS.” However, people do not believe the Resistance.

question: What does the story say about why the Great Civil War started?

question: What does the story say about the Savior's relationship with the Resistance?

answer: The entire world had faith in the Savior, to save the world from the point of no return. However, a small group of people knows the truth about him. They are known as “The Resistance” an organization bent on taking this man from his throne over the people. The Savior claims that people from The Resistance are only terrorists. But The Resistance knows that the Savior intends to fool the world into his doing, so he can gain power.


text:
GRANT COUNTY is a county located in the northern part of the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2010 census, the population was 24,662.[1] Its county seat is Williamstown.[2] The county was formed in 1820 and named for Colonel John Grant,[3] who led a party of settlers in 1779 to establish Grant's Station, in today's Bourbon County, Kentucky.

Grant County is included in the Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Grant County residents voted to allow full alcohol sales in the county by a margin of 56% to 44% in a special election on December 22, 2015.[4] In the 19th century, Grant County contained multiple saloons.[5]

The Grant County News, established in 1906 and published in Williamstown, is preserved on microfilm by the University of Kentucky Libraries. The microfilm holdings are listed in a master negative database on the UK Libraries Preservation and Digital Programs website.[6]

History

Grant County was established in 1820 from land taken from Pendleton County. The historic courthouse, built in 1939, replaced two earlier structures. A new judicial center was completed in April 2010.[7] In 1975, many residents reported seeing a UFO at Williamstown Lake.[8]

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (1.1%) is water.[9]

Adjacent counties

-   Boone County (north)
-   Kenton County (northeast)
-   Pendleton County (east)
-   Harrison County (southeast)
-   Scott County (south)
-   Owen County (west)
-   Gallatin County (northwest)

Demographics

As of the census[10] of 2000, there were 22,384 people, 8,175 households, and 6,221 families residing in the county. The population density was . There were 9,306 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the county was 98.31% White, 0.25% Black or African American, 0.23% Native American, 0.29% Asian, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 0.32% from other races, and 0.54% from two or more races. 1.04% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 8,175 households, out of which 39.60% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 60.10% were married couples living together, 11.10% had a female householder with no husband present, and 23.90% were non-families. 19.80% of all households were made up of individuals, and 8.20% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.72 and the average family size was 3.10.

In the county, the population was spread out, with 28.70% under the age of 18, 9.40% from 18 to 24, 31.50% from 25 to 44, 20.90% from 45 to 64, and 9.50% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 33 years. For every 100 females there were 97.10 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.80 males.

The median income for a household in the county was $38,438, and the median income for a family was $42,605. Males had a median income of $31,987 versus $23,669 for females. The per capita income for the county was $16,776. About 9.00% of families and 11.10% of the population were below the poverty line, including 15.10% of those under age 18 and 13.40% of those age 65 or over.

Education

[The Grant County Library]

Grant County has six schools: Crittenden Mt Zion (CMZ), Dry Ridge Elementary (DRE), Sherman Elementary (SES), Mason Corinth Elementary (MCE), Grant County Middle School (GCMS), Grant County High School (GCHS) and Williamstown Independent Schools (WES)- (WMS) – (WHS).

Grant County's only library is located in Williamstown.

Politics

  Year                               Republican                                  Democratic                                  Third parties
  ---------------------------------- ------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------- ---------------
  style=“text-align:center;” |2016   style=“text-align:center;” |76.0% _7,268_   style=“text-align:center;” |20.0% _1,910_   4.0% _381_
  style=“text-align:center;” |2012   style=“text-align:center;” |65.8% _5,664_   style=“text-align:center;” |32.6% _2,810_   1.6% _134_
  style=“text-align:center;” |2008   style=“text-align:center;” |62.9% _5,510_   style=“text-align:center;” |35.6% _3,112_   1.5% _132_
  style=“text-align:center;” |2004   style=“text-align:center;” |67.4% _5,951_   style=“text-align:center;” |31.9% _2,818_   0.6% _55_
  style=“text-align:center;” |2000   style=“text-align:center;” |62.0% _4,405_   style=“text-align:center;” |36.2% _2,568_   1.8% _130_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1996   style=“text-align:center;” |45.4% _2,697_   style=“text-align:center;” |42.8% _2,541_   11.8% _699_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1992   style=“text-align:center;” |39.4% _2,128_   style=“text-align:center;” |38.9% _2,097_   21.7% _1,170_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1988   style=“text-align:center;” |59.1% _2,835_   style=“text-align:center;” |39.5% _1,896_   1.5% _70_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1984   style=“text-align:center;” |61.7% _2,840_   style=“text-align:center;” |36.6% _1,685_   1.7% _78_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1980   style=“text-align:center;” |42.5% _1,779_   style=“text-align:center;” |54.3% _2,272_   3.2% _132_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1976   style=“text-align:center;” |33.4% _1,212_   style=“text-align:center;” |64.3% _2,336_   2.4% _86_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1972   style=“text-align:center;” |64.0% _2,086_   style=“text-align:center;” |32.4% _1,054_   3.6% _118_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1968   style=“text-align:center;” |39.4% _1,386_   style=“text-align:center;” |33.2% _1,169_   27.5% _967_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1964   style=“text-align:center;” |30.1% _1,068_   style=“text-align:center;” |69.4% _2,461_   0.5% _16_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1960   style=“text-align:center;” |53.3% _2,163_   style=“text-align:center;” |46.8% _1,899_   0.0% _0_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1956   style=“text-align:center;” |42.0% _1,680_   style=“text-align:center;” |57.6% _2,300_   0.4% _16_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1952   style=“text-align:center;” |38.7% _1,609_   style=“text-align:center;” |61.2% _2,545_   0.2% _7_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1948   style=“text-align:center;” |30.2% _1,154_   style=“text-align:center;” |68.9% _2,633_   0.8% _32_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1944   style=“text-align:center;” |40.1% _1,621_   style=“text-align:center;” |59.6% _2,413_   0.3% _13_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1940   style=“text-align:center;” |36.0% _1,535_   style=“text-align:center;” |63.9% _2,729_   0.1% _5_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1936   style=“text-align:center;” |34.4% _1,353_   style=“text-align:center;” |65.0% _2,560_   0.7% _26_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1932   style=“text-align:center;” |30.6% _1,407_   style=“text-align:center;” |68.6% _3,148_   0.8% _37_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1928   style=“text-align:center;” |59.5% _2,448_   style=“text-align:center;” |40.4% _1,662_   0.2% _6_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1924   style=“text-align:center;” |39.5% _1,404_   style=“text-align:center;” |54.0% _1,923_   6.5% _232_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1920   style=“text-align:center;” |37.2% _1,613_   style=“text-align:center;” |61.9% _2,686_   0.9% _38_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1916   style=“text-align:center;” |36.4% _1,078_   style=“text-align:center;” |62.2% _1,841_   1.3% _39_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1912   style=“text-align:center;” |32.4% _837_     style=“text-align:center;” |60.5% _1,562_   7.1% _182_

  : PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS RESULTS[11]

Infrastructure

Transportation

Public transportation is provided by Senior Services of Northern Kentucky with demand-response service.[12]

Notable attractions

Grant County, specifically in Williamstown, is the location of the Ark Encounter, operated by the Christian apologetics organization Answers in Genesis and opened in 2016.[13][14][15]

Communities

-   Corinth
-   Crittenden
-   Dry Ridge
-   Jonesville
-   Williamstown (county seat)

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

title: Grant County, Kentucky

question: What does the article say about the people of Grant County?

answer: In 2015, the residents of Grant County voted to allow full alcohol sales in the county. In 1975, many residents reported seeing a UFO at Williamstown Lake. As of the 2000 census, there were 22,384 people living in the county. The majority of those people were White, and 60 percent were married couples living together. The median age of the residents was 33 years.

question: What does the article say about rivers?


text:
MOHAMED KHALIL JENDOUBI (, born 1 June 2002) is a Tunisian taekwondo practitioner. He is scheduled to represent Tunisia at the 2020 Summer Olympics held in Tokyo, Japan.[1][2]

In 2018, he won one of the bronze medals in the boy's 48 kg event at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In 2019, he represented Morocco at the 2019 African Games held in Rabat, Morocco and he won the gold medal in the men's 54 kg event.[3]

[1]

[2]

[3]

title: Mohamed Khalil Jendoubi

question: What is needed for a Taekwondo practitioner to be considered as an Olympic contender?

answer: Based on Mohamed's previous performances in competitions in 2018 and 2019, earning a medal in two major events is sufficient for an athlete to represent their country in the Olympics.


text:
MICHAEL PETRONI is an Australian film writer and director.

Biography

Petroni worked in the early 1990s as a comedy writer and performer on Australian television, and appeared as “Psycho Bob”, an American serial killer character, in _The Big Gig_ and _DAAS Kapital_ (with the Doug Anthony All Stars).[1]

In 1994, he moved to Los Angeles to study screenwriting at the AFI Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1996. During his time at the AFI, he wrote his first feature film script, _Till Human Voices Wake Us_ which he subsequently directed as a feature film starring Guy Pearce and Helena Bonham Carter, winning several awards for the script.[2]

Since his debut, Petroni has also co-written _The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys_ (2002), _Queen of the Damned_ (2002) and _Possession_ (2009), an English language adaptation of the Korean film _Addicted_. He also co-created the 2003 TV series _Miracles_ with Richard Hatem, with the series based on his unfilmed movie script _A Course in Miracles_ which had been in development since 1998 with Jerry Zucker[3] and later Russell Crowe attached to direct.[4]

On 26 February 2008, Variety reported that Petroni was writing the script for _The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader_, the third installment in _The Chronicles of Narnia_ franchise.[5] Recently, he wrote the screenplay for exorcism horror movie _The Rite_ based on the book _The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist_ by Matt Baglio.[6] In March 2013, Screen Australia announced that it would be funding an Australian supernatural thriller, _Backtrack_, which Petroni would write and direct.[7]

In November 2017, it was announced that Petroni would be credited as an executive producer and creator for the Netflix thriller series, _Messiah_.[8] The series premiered on January 1, 2020.[9]

Filmography

Screenplay and writing credits

-   _Till Human Voices Wake Us_ (2002)
-   _The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys_ (2002)
-   _Queen of the Damned_ (2002)
-   _Possession_ (2009)
-   _The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader_ (2010)
-   _The Rite_ (2011)
-   _The Book Thief_ (2013)
-   _Backtrack_ (2015)

Television credits

-   _Miracles_ (2003; co-creator)
-   _Masters of Science Fiction_ (2007; episode “The Awakening”)
-   _Messiah_ (2019; creator)

Directing credits

-   _Till Human Voices Wake Us_ (2002)
-   _Backtrack_ (2015)

Acting credits

-   _DAAS Kapital_ (1991–1992; as “Psycho Bob”)
-   _Masters of Horror_ (2006; episode “Pick Me Up” as Ambulance Attendant)

[1] Maddox, Gary: Writer finds his voice in Hollywood, _The Sydney Morning Herald_, 5 September 2002.

[2] Australian Film Commission: Films and Awards: Till Human Voices Wake Us

[3] Fleming, Michael: Zucker Touchstone's 'Miracles' worker, _Variety_, 12 January 1998.

[4] Lyons, Charles: Revolution inks Petroni for thriller, _Variety_, 3 August 2000.

[5] Michael Petroni writing next Narnia movie: Voyage of the Dawn Treader

[6] Holden, Stephen: Giving the Devil His Possessive Due, _The New York Times_, 27 January 2011.

[7] Quinn, Karl: Screen Australia finds money for ghost thriller, _The Sydney Morning Herald_, 5 March 2013.

[8]

[9]

title: Michael Petroni

question: What are the screenplays Petroni has written?

answer: Till Human Voices Wake Us, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Queen of the Damned, Possession, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Rite, The Book Thief and Backtrack.


text:
*Preface: I was reading a lot of Bukowski a the time.*

“What’s up?” She questioned me.

“Oh, you know, the usual,” I said without looking.

I felt a cold presence in her stare.

“Feeling happy?”

“Not yet, get over here.”

“No…you let go.”

Over the past fifteen years she gained a whole lot of weight. I was more attracted to her sister. I decided to call her sister that night. When we first met she was seeing this guy name Phil. I think they got married. Her name was Angela.

”Angela,” I said into the phone.

”Uh, who is this?”

“It’s Joe.” She was trying me.

“Oh, how are you?”

“Good. Listen, I need a good nut.”

“Don’t we all?”

“Does Phil give it to your hard? Does he fuck you good?”

“Not like he used to. How’s your marriage?”

“Your sister has seen better times.”

“So is that what you do? You just move on when you don’t feel like it anymore? When it’s not there?”

“Life is a constant game of recycling.”

“Recycled condoms and used-up memories,” she said.

“My brain has enough of those.”

She sighed heavily into the phone.

“Can I come over at 8?” I asked.

“Ok well I just have to do the dishes first.”

“Ok, I’ll come at 8. See you later.” I hung up.

My wife was standing in the kitchen staring at the empty jar of jelly.

”Did you ever wonder how much power goes into making a glass jar?” She asked.

“I never thought about it.” I said. I went to the fridge and grabbed the carton of orange juice. I finished it, drinking from the spout. “I’ll be back later, I need to get a few things from the store.”

She walked into the bathroom and locked the door.

Angela was waiting at 7:55pm. I was there five minutes early. She was wearing a nightgown. The sidewalk in front of her building had no crab grass growing out of it. The door-knob was tarnished. I saw her standing in the window looking down but I knocked anyway.

She opened the door.

“Hello Angela.”

“Hey Joe.”

I leaned in to kiss her. She wrapped her arms around me. I did her right there on the floor. We moved to the couch when she complained of back pain.

She lit a cigarette. She lit mine for me.

There was a painting on the wall.

“I don’t get that painting on the wall. What is that supposed to be?” I asked.

“It’s Schubert,” she said, “it’s about a girl who lost her shoes.”

“Lost her shoes that’s a hell of a thing to paint about,” I replied honestly.

“Well, you should get going. Phil will be home soon.”

”You were a great fuck, you know that?” I told her.

“I know.”

“Well, I’ll call you soon.”

“Yes, Joe.”

I walked back home. It was a short walk. When I got home my wife was asleep. I watched TV on the couch until I passed out.

title: [RF] Recycled Goods

question: What makes the narrator cheat on his wife?

question: Since how long have Joe and Angela been seeing each other?

question: What was the painting on Angela's wall about?

answer: The painting on the wall is known as Schubert. It is about a girl who lost her shoes.

question: Do Angela and Joe plan on continuing their affair?

answer: Yes, they do plan on continuing their affair.


text:
[The Lumix DMC-F1 was Panasonic's first digital camera to use the Venus Engine.]

The VENUS ENGINE is an image processing engine for digital cameras. It is developed by Panasonic, and almost all of their Lumix cameras use a version of it. It is based on the Panasonic MN103/MN103S.

Image processors operate in four steps: receive data from the CCD sensor, create the Y-color difference signal (image processing), perform JPEG compression, and save the image data. Panasonic claims that its VENUS II processing engine performs all of these simultaneously.

Venus

Image processing engines are categorized as follows for each generation. The Venus Engine is a chip based on products. The image processing engine of the attached RAW image development software is made by Ichikawa Soft Laboratory and outputs images of a trend (Silkypix style) different from those developed by the Venus engine in the camera.

Venus – 2002

Developed to achieve both high image quality and high speed processing. Venus Engine Plus is based on this chip.

-   Improvement in resolution in oblique direction (usually 1.5 times of engine)
-   Concurrent processing by multitask image processing

Venus II 2004

This chip was limited to the top range models such as the DMC-FZ7, it was developed mainly aiming at high image quality. After this chip (excluding Venus Engine · Plus) the camera shake correction is hardware processed.

-   Enhanced camera shake correction (480 [times / sec] → 4,000 [times / sec])
-   Improvement in resolution in the vertical and horizontal directions (about 10%)
-   Improvement of color reproducibility (4 axis color correction → 12 axis color correction)
-   2DNR strengthening (reduction of dark noise and beautiful skin treatment)
-   Magnification chromatic aberration correction
-   Free consecutive shooting
-   Production process: 130 [nm]
-   Maximum operating frequency: 50 [MH]

Venus Engine Plus – 2005

A chip developed for mounting in an entry model. Reproducibility is inferior to Venus Engine II, but it realizes power saving and high speed processing comparable to Venus Engine II.

-   Power saving, high speed processing, cost reduction
-   Free consecutive shooting

Venus III – 2005

The Venus III engine used in the Lumix DMC-FZ8 and other cameras claims enhanced noise reduction at high ISO numbers and lower power consumption.

It is a chip realizing power saving based on the Venus Engine II, but we changed high sensitivity shooting, which LUMIX was the most difficult to do, to hardware processing.

-   Energy saving, strengthening NR
-   High sensitivity shooting
-   High-speed continuous shooting mode compatible
-   Add some aberration correction
-   Production process: 65 [nm]
-   Maximum operating frequency: 100 [MHz]

Venus IV – 2008

Panasonic claims that the 2008 Venus Engine IV gives higher-quality images, and includes more accurate detection and better correction for its Optical Image Stabilizer and Intelligent ISO Control functions than earlier versions. It works at 10.1-megapixel resolution. Panasonic published a detailed comparison of Venus III and IV,[1] claiming better noise response by preserving detail, quick-response shutter release time-lag of around 0.008 second minimum and high power-efficiency for Venus IV.

Reviews of cameras that compare the Venus IV engine to Venus III suggest that the newer engine is better, but the issue of noise reduction techniques losing detail, though improved, remains.

Intelligent ISO sensitivity control is changed to hardware processing. By incorporating the iA (Intelligent Auto) function, the name is also set to Random iA.

-   Improvement of NR at high sensitivity shooting (separation process by filter)
-   Accuracy improvement of intelligent ISO sensitivity control
-   Random iA scene recognition loaded
-   Blurring correction installed
-   Energy saving, strengthening NR

Venus HD – 2008

Venus HD is the processing engine used by the first generation Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 and Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 Micro Four Thirds System cameras with large sensor.[2] It supports HDMI output to a high-definition television screen.

-   2 CPU configuration
-   Available for AVCHD Lite movie shooting (compatible with MPEG 4 AVC / H.264, high sound quality of Dolby Digital)
-   HDMI output compatible
-   Highly accurate recognition possible (Advanced recognition processing including personal recognition is possible)
-   Increased speed of playback (Up to about four times the maximum when playing one image, up to about 8 times when playing 12 screens, up to about 17 times when playing back 32 screens)
-   Power saving (About 15% of Venus Engine IV)
-   High speed processing (about 2.4 times the Venus Engine IV ratio)

Venus V – 2009

As of February 2009 (based on all information available at official Panasonic Lumix Web pages), it appears that the LSI hardware chip-set that Panasonic Lumix refers to as the “Venus Engine V” is (substantially, if not actually) identical to the LSI hardware chip-set that Panasonic Lumix (also) refers to as the “Venus Engine HD” when describing their (released) DMC-G1, as well in all of the current Panasonic Lumix descriptions of the other (to be) released implementations of this image-processing LSI hardware chip-set.

It appears that the Panasonic Lumix marketing department has chosen to refer to this LSI hardware chip-set primarily using the phrase “Venus Engine HD” as a way to draw attention the capabilities of the included “Motion Picture” mode(s) of the upcoming camera models that will contain the LSI hardware chip-set. However, this choice of marketing phraseology does not (according to Panasonic Lumix's information as currently released) appear to indicate any identifiable difference in the LSI hardware chip-set that they have chosen to (also) identify as “Venus Engine V”. This use of dual phraseology appears to have generated a degree of (understandable) confusion on the part of consumers and reviewers awaiting the release of several camera models in 2009 that will (in addition to the already released DMC-G1) feature this LSI hardware chip-set. If, in fact, there exists an identifiable difference(s) (on the level of the internal LSI hardware chip-set) between “Venus Engine HD” and “Venus Engine V”, Panasonic Lumix has so far failed to identify it (or them).

Why the Panasonic Lumix marketing department (at the United Kingdom location, at least) has chosen to (in the lone case of the DMC-FX40) refer to the LSI hardware chip-set using the alternate descriptive phrase “Venus Engine V” is unclear, since the DMC-FX40 (as is the case with all the other upcoming models with the exception of the already released DMC-G1) is, indeed, advertised as featuring a “Motion Picture” mode that (it appears) will be a very similar implementation to that of all the other upcoming models to be released that will also include this LSI hardware chip-set. Perhaps the reasoning for this is that the Panasonic Lumix marketing department (at the United Kingdom location, at least) is (in part) describing the DMC-FX40 as a “digital still camera”.

It is a chip whose cost reduction of Venus engine HD is planned. For that reason, it is enhanced from Venus Engine IV in terms of specifications. 2 CPU configuration, cost reduction, high-speed playback speed, high-precision recognition, power saving, high-speed processing

Venus VI, Venus Engine HD II – 2010

According to Panasonic, Venus VI adds “Intelligent Resolution”, better Face Recognition and an advanced noise reduction system which applies noise reduction (NR) to luminance noise and chromatic noise separately. This engine is used in DMC-ZS5,ZS10.

There are many things in common, but in each case some functions have been added as a minor change from the previous chip.

-   HDMI output compatible
-   Available for AVCHD Lite movie shooting (Venus Engine HD II only)
-   Equipped with super resolution technology (such as NR at high sensitivity shooting)
-   Power saving
-   High speed processing
-   Accuracy improvement of new camera shake correction (POWER OIS)

Venus HD II – 2010

According to Panasonic, Venus HD II adds “Intelligent Resolution”, AVCHD Lite at a higher processing speed that utilizes twin CPUs and an advanced noise reduction system that applies noise reduction (NR) to luminance noise and chromatic noise separately. The only difference between Venus HD II and Venus VI are the AVCHD Lite improvements. This engine is used in second-generation Panasonic m43 cameras, the DMC-G2/DMC-G10 and DMC-ZS7/DMC-TZ10.

Venus FHD – 2010

This engine is used in third-generation Panasonic m43 MILC's cameras, including the DMC-G3, GF2, GF3, GX1 and the GH-2.

Based on the Venus Engine HD II, this chip was developed with the aim of strengthening the movie shooting function and achieving high-speed processing.

-   3 CPU configuration
-   Accuracy improvement of ISO sensitivity (High sensitivity shooting equivalent to ISO 10000 is possible)
-   3D image shooting support (mirrorless model only, optional 3D lens required)
-   Improvement of image processing capability by new and super resolution technology
-   Added intelligent D range control
-   HDMI output compatible
-   Available for AVCHD movie shooting (1080 / 30p movie shooting possible)
-   High speed processing
-   Highly accurate recognition possible (Advanced recognition processing including personal recognition is possible)

Venus VII FHD 2011

This engine is used in fourth-generation Panasonic m43 MILC's cameras, including the DMC-G5, G6, GF7, GX7, GM1, GM5 and the GH-3.

As a minor change of the previous year's chip, added several functions.

-   Accuracy improvement of iA (Intelligent Auto Plus installed)
-   Built-in creative control
-   Cost reduction, high speed processing

New Venus Engine – 2012

No numbering will be attached after this generation. First adopted in G 5 of Lumix G series.

-   Improvement of calculation processing
-   Enhanced ISO sensitivity installed
-   HDR photography compatible
-   AVCHD Progressive movie shooting (1080 / 60p movie shooting possible)

New Venus Engine – 2013

Suppressing large size noise that was difficult to deal with conventional chips, achieving grain-free image quality. First adopted by G6 of Lumix G series. It is mainly mounted on 4K incompatible models.

-   Improvement of calculation processing
-   Accompanied with extended ISO 25600 by improving accuracy of extended ISO sensitivity
-   Focus peaking function supported

New Venus Engine – 2014

Venus Engine IX is a quad-core processor first introduced in Panasonic's fifth-generation m43 MILC, the GH4, and later used in the FZ1000, LX100 and DMC-G7. In the GH4 the IX processor allows 4K video, 12 fps continuous shooting and 1080p shooting at bitrates as high as 200Mbit/s.[3]

First adopted by GH4 of Lumix G series.

-   Improvement of arithmetic processing by 4 CPU adoption
-   4K movie shooting supported (4K / 30p movie shooting is possible)
-   New multi process NR
-   New gamma correction processing
-   Diffraction correction processing
-   Broadband contour enhancement processing (broadband aperture filter)
-   3D color control
-   HDR processing, RAW development compatible
-   Expansion ISO sensitivity 100 installed
-   Space recognition technology (DFD * technology) installed

On May 18 Panasonic introduced the G7, which shoots 4K Ultra HD (3840*2160, 24/25/30p) and uses the Venus IX ISP.[4]

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

title: Venus Engine

question: Summarize the primary, long-term features of the Venus Engine.

answer: Various iterations of the Venus engine are all known to have high image quality and clear resolution. The engines have high processing speeds. They provide free consecutive shooting and good power-saving capacity.

question: What do the Venus engine and a car engine have in common?