text:
The Los Angeles Convention Center was being transformed Sunday into a federal field hospital to prepare for an expected surge in coronavirus cases in Southern California.

California's National Guard helped prepare the center Sunday, placing rows of hospital beds and medical supplies on the convention floor in an effort to relieve the pressure facing medical centers treating COVID-19 patients. The transformation was a dramatic change for a space that hosts major showcase events like the Los Angeles Auto Show.

It was not immediately clear when the field hospital would begin treating patients.

"The more we do, the quicker this will be over. The less we do, the longer it will be,'' Mayor Eric Garcetti said Sunday.

Garcetti said the city is in the process of opening up five new emergency shelters to move the homeless indoors. Currently, the city is operating 540 shelters, which are about 91% filled.

"We also expect that by tonight, those shelters will have reached between 97% and 100% capacity," he said.

He announced that the city was working with UPS and Everlywell to get coronavirus test kits to seniors and community healthcare providers on Skid Row.

He commended the City Council for requiring businesses to provide supplemental sick leave for employees suffering from coronavirus or caring for someone in their home with the illness.

The first homeless person who tested positive for COVID-19 turned up at Dockweiler State Beach, he said. That person was taken to a medical facility for treatment.

The U.S. Navy medical ship Mercy, which contains beds and which arrived Friday, has received its first three patients. Mercy will not be taking coronavirus patients, he said.

He said the city's logistics officer is working to get 1 million masks to first-responders.

[]

[]

Garcetti is also asking hotel and motel owners to provide rooms for Angelenos who are homeless or who need to isolate with coronavirus. He said he believed those rooms would be paid for out of funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"The owners will be paid by the city for the rooms. We're not asking them to donate the rooms," Garcetti said. "We believe these expenses will be reimbursed by FEMA. It's a reimbursable expense."

He urged hotel and motel owners to go to Coronavirus.LACity.org/Rooms.

He said 6,741 coronavirus tests have been conducted by the city, and that he expects to triple that number by the end of the week. He also said a fifth test site will be opened Monday.

He said the FBI completed a report showing an uptick in hate crimes against the Asian Community, he decried the attacks and emphasized the area's law enforcement agencies will jail anyone who commits a hate crime.

"This virus does not discriminate based on race, ethnic origin, age or gender," he said. "And there is no place for hate crimes in this city or in our community."

The rise in hate crimes against Asians may likely be traced back to President Donald Trump and some of his loyalists attempting to rebrand the coronavirus, the "China virus."

Garcetti said a Loyola Marymount University survey indicated that a third of people live with someone above the age of 65 or with underlying health problems, in other words, people at high risk of dying of COVID-19. He cited the survey, saying 80% of Angelenos are "worried" about getting sick, but only 40% "think" they will get sick.

Finally, he announced that Los Angeles County launched four new online dashboards covering COVID-19 proclamations, Parks and Recreation closures and service updates. Angelenos can access it at covid19.lacounty.gov/dashboards.

question: What does the text say about the measures taken against the coronavirus?

answer: The Los Angeles Convention Center was transformed into a field hospital. There are five new emergency centers being opened for homeless people in LA, and the city is trying to get coronavirus test kits for seniors and healthcare providers. The businesses are required to provide supplemental sick leave for employees or care for someone in their home with the illness. The hotels are also asked to provide rooms for the sick people to isolate them during their infectious period. The city also aims to provide one million masks to first-responders. Finally, almost 7000 tests have been conducted, and the number is expected to triple within the week; another test site will be opened in a few days as well.

question: What does the article say about the problems caused by the coronavirus?

answer: The sick people need to be isolated, and the homeless need to be taken indoors. A convention center needed to be converted to a field hospital, and hotel or motel owners were asked to provide their rooms to sick people for isolation purposes. The city of Los Angeles is trying to procure more tests and masks. There's also an increase in hate crimes against Asians, spurned by President Trump's attempts to brand the virus "the China virus".

question: What does the text say about whether COVID-19 is an experiment gone wrong?


split: test

text:
Someday I want to be able to walk the earth, just like the greatest minds through history have. Think about it, Albert Einstein, Julius Caesar, Isaac Newton and in the future, me, Mike the fish. It will happen, i am fully convinced it will. I just need to find out how to get up there.

Some people might wonder why, but the answer is very simple... Fish, are not particulary smart. I have yet to meet a fish whom I can have an intellegent discussion with. It seems that noone possess a deeper mind, a more profound way of thinking. I have searched every corner of the Atlantic ocean for answers. I have talked to every kind of creature that exists in this otherwise marvelous place, only to be met with more questions. All they seem to care about is food and procreation, what about the big questions. What about the purpose of evolution. What about the fearful afterlife. To fish or not to fish?

To me it is obvious that I need to find a way to get up there, with the land-fauna, or at least that is what I call them. Although, I'm sure they have a more sophisticated name for themselves.
If you wonder how I know that they are smarter than fish, it is because I have seen it.   I have seen their faces, their tall and not very fine prospected faces. Most of them have have big goggles surrounding their small marble eyes. Some have this big plastic gadget in their mouth that produces bubbles every once in a while. I'm certain that the goggles and the bubble-gizmo is of external constructions and not a natural part of their body, however I do not know what their purpose is. At first, I believed that the mouth-device was used for them to breathe under water. To my surprise, I some time later found out that they can indeed breathe in this, to them, foreign realm.
I know because I have met a land-fauna who did not have a mouth-gizmo. It was somewhere in the southwest Atlantic, not too far from the shore. I was of course thrilled to see him, however as it seemed, unresponded. He was rather rude to me to be honest. I introduced myself but he did not respond. He just stared at me with his seemingly fearful eyes. His pale white face appeared to be apathetic to my presence. He was not moving a single limb, he was not responding to anything I did. He did not put an effort to communicate. Not even a single bubble. There was not much I could do, so I left.

I suppose land-faunas can be as dumb as fish.

I have a plan on how to reach the other realm. The only problem is that it is slightly, just slightly based on luck. The plan itself is rather simple, it does not require much of me. The plan is as follows:
1. Find the right land-fauna.
2. Get the land-fauna to pick me up.
3. Use land-faunas ship to travel to shore.
4. Find answers.

See it is very simple.

I have seen land-faunas use these lines with a shiny metal figure on the end of it. I reckon it is to give us fish opportunity to get to the upper realm. I need to search long enough and not give up. Tenacity is the key to success, is what my father used to say, he was great fish.

Right there! My fate has finally crossed the path of the right land-fauna. He is the one. His line is right over there. I swim ferociously to it, I will not miss this opportunity. I examine the metal figure thoroughly. It is quite sharp and the only way to grip it is with my mouth. The metal figure pierce through my jaw. The excruciating pain that ensues is beyond comprehension, however not in vain. The line is rising, it is working. We are going towards the surface. I try to ignore the pain as much as possible, I drown the taste of blood with the soothing thought of lifelong fulfillment. Slowly but surely we reach above the surface. There he is, the land-fauna in his rightful realm. Majestic. My head is dizzy and it is getting darker. It must be from the pain and the loss of blood. I just hope he hurries to get aid.

I will be greater than Mozart, Julius Caesar and Albert Einstein combined. I am Mike the fish, is the last thought before everything disappears.

title: [MF] Mike The Fish

question: Who is the narrator?

answer: Mike the fish is the narrator. He thinks he is the smartest fish in the Atlantic.

question: What is the setting of the story?

answer: The Atlantic Ocean is the setting of the story.

question: What is the plan?

answer: Mike the fish wants to find a way to get up the land and live with the "land-fauna". He knows that sometimes the "land-fauna" throw a line, with shiny objects attached, into the water to give fish an opportunity to reach the upper realm. He just needs to be diligent about finding one.

question: Is there a conflict in the story? Is it resolved?

answer: Finding the "land-fauna's" line is difficult. He finds one, inspects it carefully, and notices the metal piece is very sharp. Knowing the only way to grab it is with his mouth, he decides the pain will be worth it. He bites the hook and is taken the upper realm.

question: Write a ~7 sentence summary.

answer: Mike the fish is the narrator. He thinks he is the smartest fish in the Atlantic. Mike the fish wants to find a way to get up the land and live with the "land-fauna". He knows that sometimes the "land-fauna" throw a line, with shiny objects attached, into the water to give fish an opportunity to reach the upper realm. He just needs to be diligent about finding one. He sees his chance, and decides to bite on the sharp, painful metal object. He's taken to the upper realm.


text:
Something I wrote yesterday. I don't know! Tell me what you think.

My legs were as quick as a mule hauling a dead body. Deadly slow in other words. Like I was trudging through mud whenever my duck-like legs began getting up to speed. Sure I was a danger to everyone and everything around me, likely to fall flat on my face if I kept up my trot.

My sister, Macha on the other hand, could run like a horse with tapers on. Quicker than all the girls in our school so she was, even our P.E teachers were jealous.

I overheard them one day as I stuffed my shoes into my bag.
“That Macha’s parents must shove rocket fuel up her arse,” Ms Donnan had said, “The goes of her! Is she even from this planet?”
I had wanted to kick her a boot up her own arse myself but had no rocket fuel handy.

Macha just laughed when I told her.
I had always wondered if we’d been brought up differently. She was three years older, taller and quick to forgive. I was small and quick to anger, more rage than a bull Da had laughed.

Macha said it was because I was a midget and I needed to grow up.
We got on well enough as sisters do, and her being some kinda heavenly white knight always took the blame for my fuck-ups and defended me like I was her King. I couldn’t live without her in fact.
I can’t even remember the last time she was angry at anything. She had this everythings-gonna-be okay attitude that could always make me smile no matter how down I was.

Even when Da made us seed the entire 10 acre lot with Gwamp fruit seedlings, she never even made a squeak. Meanwhile I grunted and groaned until my throat was as raw as a frostbitten toe.

Nasty things they were though. Zero to mush in 10 seconds flat and quicker still if you boiled them.  Ill stick to my bread and cheese thank you very much!

“That’s why your so tiny Banba,” Macha smiled, “You eat enough for a mouse and its three brothers.”

“That fruit is like a wet shite! I’m not touching the stuff.”

Believe me it was horrific. Ever taste something so foul that even thinking about it sends shudders through your whole body? Yeah that was this fruit except it was the hydrogen bomb of shite food.
Ma should of never shown me that old-earth cook book. The thing would glow in my hand whenever I opened it. Me and Macha would read it all night, marveling over all the different recipes and ingredients. I’m telling you, if a tomato had jumped from the page, called itself god and said follow me to the sun, I would of done it.
Ma just said I was ridiculous and we had to live with what we got. Well, what we got was acres of runny fruit and a house that was falling apart.

“I’m not a carpenter love, I’m a scientist.” Da said. Just get used to it they kept telling me, you’ll eventually learn to like it.
Did I have any other choice? Last time I checked I was living and breathing it. It was all of our realities and it didn’t make it any easier to comprehend.

The first generation all had a choice to make. Take the voyage or not. My choices were all laid out for me the moment I was born. If I had the choice to take the voyage, I would of turned, high tail with a swish and a flick and walked away like an action hero. If only the ship exploded behind me I would have been the coolest girl in the universe. In fact I wouldn’t of just been cool, id of been the most liberal, casual, free-spirited girl ever. And if that wasn’t the purest definition of cool, I dunno what the fuck was.

Ma and Da saw it differently though. Pioneers they called themselves. Vikings and settlers, colonists, explorers and frontiersmen. Establishers, originators, instigators and founders. I’d heard it all before, but call it what you like, it was still an abandonment of everything they once had. Not to mention the dictatorship the second generation now had to endure. They said it was their dream… “A home among the stars Banba, you should be proud.”
Of what?
“Paving the way for humanity.”
Well, I’d said, I’d rather pave the way to our farm than for humanity or this fuckin’ rock.”
Ma slapped me backwards for that and funnily; I never thought to mention it again.

Never had I thought I’d ever had any purpose on this planet, only that my life was some sorta ridiculous experiment. I was a disconnected pioneer floating underneath the laughing stars with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide when the universe started gawking at my mind. If I was a puppet and the First Generation were the puppeteers then the jet black sky was the strings of my existence.

You’ll understand when your older they said. Ha! I knew full well that no one, not even the adults fully understood anything. I was content with my ignorance though, if only I had been given freedom, but not them, they grasped at an estranged longing for infinity that I just could not care any less about. I just wanted to live a life.

Macha wasn’t just ignorant, she was euphorically so with a dash of bliss to top it off. Nothing could get the girl down and I envied her.
“What are we doing here Macha?”

Picking fruit you goat,” she giggled, ruffling my hair with her mud caked gloves.

“No I mean on this planet.” Flicking the melting mud back in her face.

“Does anything Ma and Da say to you break through that think helmet of hair? Just trust them Banba, and don’t think about it too much.”
That was that and she refused to answer any more questions.

I always found it funny that a scientist could trust a machine so easily, as if mechanics and engineering were infallible deities in there musings, unfettered by the restraints of our brains and emotions. The adults trusted them because it was all they’d ever known. Rockets and spaceships brought them here, rovers and spacesuits allowed them freedom out on the surface and oxygenators gave them the breath of life. Sure, the technology was amazing, but not something you deify with servings and slatherings of blind faith.

If the intensity of a rocket was anything like I’d heard there wasn’t a hope I’d ever get on one. No sir, not in half a heartbeat or ten million of them.
Da explained it to me and Macha one night. Crosslegged we were, perched on the ground in inquisitive innocence, staring up at his moon-like face. Behind him the solar nightlamp cast shadows that lounged forward in a lethargic daze, heavy and black like the sky that lurked outside.
“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, CLICK!” He exclaimed, speaking as much with his hands as he did with his voice.

“The ignition fired and I was punched against my seat in an unfathomable force. You wouldn’t believe it girls, it was like my whole body was being compressed into a singularity.”

“What’s that?” Inquired Macha.
“Just imagine if all the mass of your body was condensed into a tiny sugar cube, it was that intense.”

“That’s a lot of diabetes.” she laughed

“True enough love, but I’ll tell you, that force was nothing compared to the rumble. Ah! The rumble… Frequencies so high that you would grit your teeth and squirm in agony and long, low ones that would maraud across your chest in a reverberating death march. It was exhilarating.”

The shadows cast on his face had gotten longer and the light had gotten dimmer.
“Aww, Da’s gonna cry!” I shouted, jumping up and slinging my arms around his neck.

“Just one more journey,” He longed, “Even further this time.”

“You wouldn’t leave us Da, would you? Asked Macha, a worried twang shook her voice.

“No love, these are an old man’s dreams. Don’t listen to me.

One month later is when we heard it. An awful screaming quake of unhappiness that resonated through our entire colony. We all cried in unity that day as the one and only space shuttle levitated into the sky with a fiery explosion.

We ran. Faster than we’d ever ran before, Macha hurtling ahead with her gazelle like speed, and me trailing behind in futile horror. Each step was a rap on the door of abandonment. I cursed him, with all of my sorrow and rage. My thoughts cascaded through my mind like planets dancing to the music of gravity, unable to form coherently or comprehensibly. I grasped and grasped but nothing ignited. There was no spark or light, only darkness.

The nearer we got to the surface exit, it was evident that things were much worse than they had first appeared. Mikel Morheim, the rover engineer lay slumped on the ground, the door mechanism to his right, much like the man, was smashed and obsolete.

Macha’s knuckles were bruised and cut by the time I caught up to the Bubble-Wall. The closer I got the more intense the light from the jet fuel explosion became. Macha was swearing furiously as she hammered on the Bubble-Wall, her face contorted in a mixture of malice and distress. I tried to stop her, grasping at her flailing arms but that only made her punches harder, her rhetoric even more furious.

I slid to my knees and covered my ears from the pain. The tears streamed from my eyes hard and fast. Macha punched and I cried, lamenting a harmony of discord and grief as we watched our father hurtle away from our home towards the gleaming blue pebble that hung low on the horizon: Earth. From dust to daylight, from death to dawn. Gone instantly.

title: [SF] Colony

question: What does the story say about the narrator's relationship with her sister Macha?

answer: The narrator's older sister is the complete opposite of her. She's a lot taller, can run as fast as a horse with tapers on, is three years older, and even-tempered. Her running speed made even the P.E teachers in her school jealous of her and suspicious that her parents put rocket fuel inside her to make her the way she is. The narrator and her sister always get along, and Macha is mature enough to take the blame for her little sister's misbehavior and always defend her.

question: Describe the story's emotional ending.

answer: The narrator's family resided in the colony, and their parents were scientists. As a scientist, their father, like the others, moved about space on rockets and spaceships, wearing rovers and spacesuits and breathing on oxygenators. He once told them tales of the experience of being on a rocketship, unknown to them that he would be leaving them soon. Sadly, their father left their planet a month later in a space shuttle to earth. The narrator and her sister, Macha, desperately tried to catch up to him, to no avail. Overwhelmed with frustration, Macha began punching on the Bubble-Wall. Although the narrator tried to soothe her, instead, she became on the receiving end of her grief and distress.


text:
[]If one is of a certain age, one recalls the Daisy commercial.

Found now on You Tube —  HERE — the commercial ran in the fall of the 1964 Johnson-Goldwater presidential race. Put together at the instance of LBJ aide Bill Moyers and the advertising firm of Doyle Dane Bernbach, the commercial opens with a little girl innocently plucking the petals off of a daisy, counting to ten. Midstream her voice is replaced by that of an ominous-sounding male, and her image vanishes as a nuclear bomb explodes in the famous mushroom shaped cloud. Another male voice is heard —  that of President Lyndon Johnson. Says the President and then-candidate for re-election:

  “These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God’s children can live. Or to go into the dark. We must either love each other. Or we must die.”

The screen fades to black, with white letters appearing that read simply: “Vote for President Johnson on November 3.”Then it said: “The stakes are too high for you to stay home.”

The ad was run by the Johnson campaign only once, on the evening of September 7, 1964. It was run only on NBC, during the NBC Monday Night Movie. NBC was one of the only three broadcast networks in existence in the day, its audience massive. (There was no cable.) Barry Goldwater’s name was never mentioned.

In fact, there was also another, less remembered, ANTI-GOLDWATER COMMERCIAL that year. This one. It featured another little girl, this one licking an ice cream cone with a woman’s voice in the background patiently explaining that radioactive fallout from nuclear bombs had killed lots of children. Then the woman —  unseen — goes on to explain that Barry Goldwater had voted against the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which keeps radioactive strontium ninety out of ice cream.  With a geiger counter loudly ticking in the background, as with the “Daisy” commercial the screen faded to black with the same ending message to vote for LBJ.

The Daisy ad, while only running once, was immediately Topic A in the media of the day and was covered heavily on the network news and the Sunday TV talk shows, run in its entirety. The media was in essence doing the Democrats’  advertising work for them. There was absolutely no doubt as to the intent of the two commercials, taken either alone or together. It was to frighten voters about Barry Goldwater and lead them to believe Goldwater was so reckless that he would plunge America into a nuclear holocaust.

Goldwater himself would say this about the commercial in his memoirs.

  Those bomb commercials were the start of dirty political ads on television. It was the beginning of what I call ‘electronic dirt.’ Moyers and the New York firm will long be remembered for helping to launch this ugly development in our political history.

Without doubt. But the key fact here is that NBC quite willingly ran the Daisy commercial. They didn’t refuse it. They didn’t say the commercial was a lie. They simply took it —  and the money they were paid —  and ran with it.

And even more to the point? Notice what the conservative Barry Goldwater did not do. He did not support the idea of restricting political ads that the target considered as a lie. Those two LBJ commercials were both flat out lies. But it is also a fact that there were Goldwater opponents aplenty who in fact believed that Barry Goldwater was a reckless man who would indeed plunge the country into nuclear war. That they were wrong doesn’t negate the fact that it was believed by many.

Which is to say, in the eyes of those people the two commercials were not lies at all. They were the truth.

[]Which brings us back to Facebook and Twitter and their respective policies on political ads. Here is this on Twitter’s decision from _THE WASHINGTON POST_. Here's the headline:

  Twitter to ban all political ads amid 2020 election uproar. The social network’s decision sets it apart from Facebook, which has defended its controversial policies.

From the article:

  Twitter on Wednesday said it would ban all advertisements about political candidates, elections and hot-button policy issues such as abortion and immigration, a significant shift that comes in response to growing concerns that politicians are seizing on the vast reach of social media to deceive voters ahead of the 2020 election.

  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced the move in a series of tweets, stressing that paying for political speech has the effect of “forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people.” The ban marks a break with Twitter’s social media peers, Facebook and Google-owned YouTube, which have defended their policies on political ads in recent weeks.

  “While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions,” Dorsey said.

Got that? Jack Dorsey is terrified that the free exchange of political speech in ads “can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions.” (Particularly if conservatives - read the Trump campaign - advertises about illegal immigration and abortion.)

Let’s be real here. This isn’t about anything other than silencing conservatives.

Facebook, on the other hand, has taken exactly the opposite approach, with founder Mark Zuckerberg taking a boat load of criticism from lefties furious that he is not silencing conservatives by shutting down political ads. Good for Mr. Zuckerberg - he gets it.

But since Twitter has chosen to go down this path, the obvious question occurs. Why not do the opposite of Barry Goldwater, who never called for shutting down the liberal TV networks of the day. Why not take down Twitter altogether —  just abolish it outright? Quite obviously Twitter all by itself, without any political ads, can “influence votes.”

Here, for example, is the TWITTER ACCOUNT OF SENATOR KAMALA HARRIS. It is instantly clear that Harris, a Democratic presidential candidate, is using her account “to influence votes to affect the lives of millions.” Which is to say, she is using Twitter to influence people to vote for her.

Among the many things Harris says on her account is this: “To my Republican colleagues: is this lawless president worth betraying our democracy?”

Suffice to say, there are people aplenty, starting with the 199 House Republicans who opposed the House impeachment inquiry, who believe there was nothing  “lawless” in the president’s conduct. So to use Twitter’s own reasoning, Harris has used her account to spread a deliberate lie.

Should Kamala Harris be banned from Twitter?  If a political ad that “lies” is dangerous because it can influence the votes of millions, what about a United States Senator and presidential candidate who lies to her 3.2 million followers?

OVER HERE is Senator Elizabeth Warren’s campaign Twitter account, on which she says of her health care plan: “My plan won't raise taxes one penny on middle-class families.”

This is laughable. Suffice to say there are plenty of critics out there who believe this is a flat out lie. Should Elizabeth Warren be banned from Twitter? Newsflash: Not going to happen.

Nor should it. The hard fact of the matter is that there are all kinds of liberal lies floating around on Twitter, and Jack Dorsey lets it all go by with a wink and a nod.

He should. But he needs to stop the hypocritical untruth that he is forbidding political ads on Twitter because he is so concerned about untruths influencing voters. Twitter is swamped with liberal lies and Dorsey never blinks.

What Dorsey is really about is silencing conservatives, so that the liberal media — social media and all the rest —  can put out their modern day equivalents of that old LBJ “Daisy” commercial out there and, in Dorsey’s own phrase again, “influence votes to affect the lives of millions.” With the liberal media, as was done in 1964, doing the Democrats work for them.

OVER HERE, Media Research Center Founder and President Brent Bozell has summed up the reality of Jack Dorsey’s real motivations exactly:

  To pretend Twitter is taking the moral high ground in banning political ads is laughable. Twitter sees the backlash Facebook has received for embracing free speech in advertising and with this ban, hopes to force their hand into doing the same.

  A key reason organizations and individuals buy ads is to promote an issue that they cannot get covered by conventional means. We have seen how the social media giants have used their content policies to suppress conservative speech. Because of this, liberal messaging dominates Twitter and by restricting ads, Twitter can further limit the ability of conservatives to get their message heard.

  By including ‘issue ads’ in this ban, Twitter has given itself the power to draw the lines on what is and is not ‘political.’ Make no mistake, this is not an easily defined space and with Twitter’s history of liberal activism, conservatives should be very concerned.

Exactly.

And here’s the irony in that Bozell statement. Brent’s namesake Dad worked for Barry Goldwater, and doubtless saw the impact of the Daisy commercial close up and personal in that 1964 campaign. Along with Goldwater himself he could see just how the liberal media of the day played the game.

The technology of the media is today light years from the media technology of 1964. But as the statement of Brent Bozell of todays MRC  illustrates precisely, what has not changed is that liberal media’s left-wing bent, whether in 1964 or 55 years later in 2019 has not only not faded away, it has gotten worse.

Or simply put? The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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question: What does the text say about how to film a commercial?

question: What does the text say about the 1964 Dasiy commercial?

answer: The Daisy commercial ran only once on NBC during the Monday Night Movie, on the evening of September 7, 1964, during the Johnson-Goldwater presidential race. It was put together by LBJ aide Bill Moyers and the advertising firm of Doyle Dane Bernbach. The commercial features a little girl plucking the petals of a daisy and counting to ten. Her voice is replaced midstream by an ominous-sounding male (also counting) as her image vanishes, replaced by the famous nuclear bomb explosion and mushroom cloud. The commercial's message was to either vote for Johnson so the children can have a future, or face nuclear extinction. As NBC was one of only three broadcast networks in existence at the time, the audience was massive. Despite the ad running only once, it was the media topic of the day and covered everywhere, from network news to talk shows. Goldwater's name was never mentioned, but the message was clear: the Democrats were using the media to frighten the people into thinking that Goldwater was so reckless, he would plunge America into a nuclear holocaust. According to Goldwater, the Daisy commercial (and the other lesser-known bomb ad) was the start of dirty political ads on television.

question: What does the text say about Twitter's ban on political ads?

answer: Twitter banned all political ads about political candidates, elections, and hot-button policy issues such as abortion and immigration in response to growing concerns that politicians are using the vast reach of social media to deceive voters ahead of the 2020 election. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced the move in a series of tweets, saying that paying for political speech has the effect of "forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people.” The ban has allowed Twitter to break away from other social media platforms like Facebook and Google-owned YouTube, which have defended their policies on political ads. Dorsey adds that political ads on the internet can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions. However, Media Research Founder/President Brent Bozell says that Twitter pretending to take the moral high ground in banning political ads is laughable. Twitter sees the backlash Facebook has received for embracing free speech in advertising and hopes this ban forces Facebook's hand in banning political ads as well.

question: Summarize the author's thoughts and opinions on the media.

answer: The author thinks that since the Daisy commercial aired in 1964, the Democrats have been using the liberal media to spread their lies and silence the conservatives, especially on topics such as abortion and illegal immigration. NBC willingly took the money and ran with the Daisy commercial, never saying it was a lie, and the same thing is happening now with Twitter and other liberal media networks. Jack Dorsey claims that Twitter bans political ads because they can "influence votes", yet the platform allows the accounts of Senators and Democratic presidential candidates like Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren to tweet whatever they want, including lies, to influence their millions of followers. The author says Dorsey should "stop the hypocritical untruth" that Twitter bans political ads because he is concerned about the misinformation that may influence voters. Twitter is flooded with liberal lies and Dorsey allows it just to silence conservatives, who should be alarmed due to the platform's history of liberal activism. Liberal media’s left-wing bent, whether in 1964 or 55 years later in 2019 has not only not faded away, it has gotten worse.

question: What does the text say about Barry Goldwater?

answer: Barry Goldwater ran against Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 Presidential elections. He was painted by the Democrats and liberal media as "reckless" and would plunge America into a nuclear holocaust, which frightened the voters. Goldwater said in his memoirs that the bomb commercials were the start of dirty political ads on television and an ugly development in American political history. Along with the Daisy commercial, there was another less remembered Anti-Goldwater ad that was released the same year that featured the same message (nuclear extinction) and made sure to mention that Goldwater voted against the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Despite the negative ads, Goldwater refused to support the idea of restricting political ads that peddle lies to the public.


text:
A bust of Richard Cushing by James Rosati, sometimes called _RICHARD CARDINAL CUSHING_, is installed in Boston's Cardinal Cushing Memorial Park, in the U.S. state of Massachusetts.[1]

Description and history

The bronze sculpture was completed during 1980–1981 and measures approximately 24 x 20 x 16 in. It rests on a red granite base that measures approximately 61 x 24 x 24 in. The work was surveyed as part of the Smithsonian Institution's “Save Outdoor Sculpture!” program in 1996.[2]

[1]

[2]

title: Bust of Richard Cushing

question: Who made the bust of Richard Cushing?

answer: James Rosati made the bust of Richard Cushing.

question: Where is the bust of Richard Cushing installed?

answer: The bust of Richard Cushing is installed in Boston's Cardinal Cushing Memorial Park in Massachusetts.

question: When was the bust of Richard Cushing made?

answer: The bust of Richard Cushing was completed in 1980-1981.

question: What material is the base of the bust of Richard Cushing made of?

answer: The bust of Richard Cushing's base is made of red granite.

question: When did the Smithsonian Institution survey the bust of Richard Cushing?

answer: The Smithsonian Institution surveyed the bust of Richard Cushing in 1996.

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: The bust of Richard Cushing was made by James Rosati, and is installed in Boston's Cardinal Cushing Memorial Park in Massachusetts. The Smithsonian Institution surveyed the sculpture in 1996 as a part of their "Save Outdoor Sculpture!" program.


text:
[Spinal Blade Pack.png]

Spinal Blade Pack

Type
    Back item

Skin
    Spinal Blade Pack

Prefix
    Selectable

Rarity
    FINE

Req. level
    20

Binding
    Account Bound

Item link

Skin link

External links
    GW2Efficiency

API
    API

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Gallery                                                               |
+=======================================================================+
| [Spinal Blade Pack.jpg]                                               |
| Click to enlarge                                                      |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

  “

  Can be combined in the Mystic Forge with Blade Shards, Luminous Dust, and Steel Ingots to create a Twin Spinal Blades back item. NOTE: Cannot be used in the Mystic Forge if transmuted.

  _This item allows selection of stats. See below for a list of available prefixes._

  [Upgrade Slot.png] _Unused Upgrade Slot_

  — In-game description

Spinal Blade Pack is a back item created in the Mystic Forge using components earned while participating in Escape from Lion's Arch. It can be upgraded numerous times, with each upgrade step adding another pair of blades to the pack. It is important to note that transmuting this item will prevent it from being upgraded.

Contents

-   1 Acquisition
    -   1.1 Sold by
    -   1.2 Recipe
-   2 Used in
-   3 Available prefixes
-   4 Notes

Acquisition[edit]

Sold by[edit]

  Vendor                                                                  Area   Zone   Cost
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ ------ -------------------------------------------
  [Black Lion Commemorative Sprocket] Black Lion Commemorative Sprocket   —      —      5 [Black Lion Commemorative Sprocket.png]

Recipe[edit]

Spinal Blade Pack

Source
    Mystic Forge

Output qty.
    1

Ingredients

1
     [Spinal Blade Pack Blueprint.png] Spinal Blade Pack Blueprint

25
     [Blade Shard.png] Blade Shard

10
     [Pile of Radiant Dust.png] Pile of Radiant Dust

50
     [Iron Ingot.png] Iron Ingot

Show base ingredients

Used in[edit]

+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+
| Item        | Rarity      | Discipline( | Rating      | Ingredients |
|             |             | s)          |             |             |
+=============+=============+=============+=============+=============+
| [Twin       | MASTERWORK  | Mystic      | 0           | 1           |
| Spinal      |             | Forge       |             |     [Spinal |
| Blades.png] |             |             |             |     Blade   |
| Twin Spinal |             |             |             |     Pack.pn |
| Blades      |             |             |             | g]          |
|             |             |             |             |     Spinal  |
|             |             |             |             |     Blade   |
|             |             |             |             |     Pack    |
|             |             |             |             |             |
|             |             |             |             | 50          |
|             |             |             |             |     [Blade  |
|             |             |             |             |     Shard.p |
|             |             |             |             | ng]         |
|             |             |             |             |     Blade   |
|             |             |             |             |     Shard   |
|             |             |             |             |             |
|             |             |             |             | 10          |
|             |             |             |             |     [Pile   |
|             |             |             |             |     of      |
|             |             |             |             |     Luminou |
|             |             |             |             | s           |
|             |             |             |             |     Dust.pn |
|             |             |             |             | g]          |
|             |             |             |             |     Pile of |
|             |             |             |             |     Luminou |
|             |             |             |             | s           |
|             |             |             |             |     Dust    |
|             |             |             |             |             |
|             |             |             |             | 50          |
|             |             |             |             |     [Steel  |
|             |             |             |             |     Ingot.p |
|             |             |             |             | ng]         |
|             |             |             |             |     Steel   |
|             |             |             |             |     Ingot   |
+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+

Available prefixes[edit]

-   The following prefixes can be selected:

  Prefix      Stats
  ----------- --------------------------------------------
  Healing     +4 [Healing Power.png] Healing Power
  Malign      +4 [Condition Damage.png] Condition Damage
  Mighty      +4 [Power.png] Power
  Precise     +4 [Precision.png] Precision
  Resilient   +4 [Toughness.png] Toughness
  Vital       +4 [Vitality.png] Vitality

Notes[edit]

[Bug] BUG:

The copy about "cannot be used in the Mystic Forge if transmuted" is no longer accurate after transmutation system was changed to be charge based.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spinal Blades

Non-Ascended
    Spinal Blade Pack • Twin • Quad • Advanced

Ascended
    Tempered • Dynamic • Static • Synergetic

Infused
    Tempered • Dynamic • Static • Synergetic

question: What is the use of the Spinal Blade Pack?

answer: It may be implied that the pack can be used to safeguard your character in the game from enemies.


text:
VLADIM KAZANTSEV (; born April 14, 1973, Yarovoye, Altai Krai, Russia), better known by the stage name _Zaza Napoli_, is a Russian pop singer and artist.

Biography

Zaza Napoli was born on April 14, 1973 in Yarovoye, Altai Krai. In 1991, Vladim graduated from college and received a diploma as a teacher of primary school. Later he went to work at school. After working there for one year, he quit and entered the East Siberian State Institute of Culture in the department of theater art, specializing in theater and cinema.[1][2][3]

In 1997 he moved to Moscow, and in 1998 founded the Travesti Theater “Paradise Birds”. In 2002, he starred in the crime film “Ice Age”. In 2006, Zaza Napoli took part in the series “Do not be born beautiful.” Also starred in the thriller “Cursed Paradise”, the comedy “Kings of the Game”, etc. In 2007, he became a TV presenter of the program “Bitch-Love” on NTV.[4]

In 2017, he released his debut album called “Для тебя...”, which included 22 tracks. He recorded clips for the songs “Бабушки”, “Давайте выпьем” and “Подруга”. In the same year he released an album entitled “Это можно...”, it included 12 tracks. In 2020, the album “Бархатный рай” was released.[5][6]

He is the owner of such awards as: “Night Life Awards”, “Best Club Show” and “Silver Galosh”.

Discography

  ---------------------------------------------------------
  Year   Name              Detailed
  ------ ----------------- --------------------------------
  2017   «Для тебя...»     -   Released: 2017
                           -   Format: Music download, CD
                           -   Label: SuperMegaHit.com[7]

  2017   «Это можно...»    -   Released: 2017
                           -   Format: Music download, CD
                           -   Label: SuperMegaHit.com[8]

  2020   «Бархатный рай»   -   Released: 2020
                           -   Format: Music download, CD
                           -   Label: Perpetuum Music[9]
  ---------------------------------------------------------

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

title: Zaza Napoli

question: What does the text say about the skills needed to become a Russian pop star?

question: What does the text say about Zaza Napoli's career?

answer: After moving to Moscow in 1997, Zaza founded the Traversti Theater "Paradise Birds". In 2002, he starred in "Ice Age", a crime film. Zaza starred in several TV-series and became a TV presenter on the program "Bitch-Love" on NTV. IN 2017, he released his debut album, which included 22 tracks.


text:
SHAWN WILLIAM LITTLE[1] (October 16, 1964 – November 24, 2012) was a political consultant and Ottawa City Councillor in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, for the urban Kitchissippi Ward, consisting of neighbourhoods west of the City Centre. He was born in Ottawa and raised in its Westboro neighbourhood, where he attended Woodroffe Avenue and Broadview Public elementary schools followed by Nepean High School. He earned a bachelor's degree in history and political science from Carleton University, and a diploma in health sciences from Humber College. He wrote articles for the Newswest community paper in its early days.[2] He died in November 2012 while vacationing in Cuba.[3][4]

Political career

Little was involved in politics from a young age as a member of the provincial Ontario and Federal Progressive Conservative parties. He worked for Progressive Conservative MP Walter Baker when he was 16 years old. He first ran for election in Goulbourn outside of Ottawa in 1988 at age 24.

Little ran in newly formed Kitchissippi Ward (which included the former Elmdale and Queensboro Wards and finished second to incumbent Joan Wong. He helped lead the effort to oppose the National Capital Commission (NCC) plan to widen the Champlain Bridge,[5][6] and was a local community leader, volunteer and activist for local organizations, charities and community service groups. Little served as the founding president of the revamped Westboro Community Association, served as a board member for the not-for-profit community-based publication _Newswest_ and president of the Westboro Kiwanis Club. He also helped develop and worked with several initiatives reaching out to marginalized youth. As one friend put it: “He talked about the importance of reaching out to youth and getting involved with them before they go down the wrong path”.

Ottawa city council

On his second attempt, in 1997, for a seat on City Council Little was elected to represent Kitchissippi. Elected at age 33, Little was one of the youngest councillors in Ottawa's history (that honour now belongs to Rideau-Vanier councillor Mathieu Fleury, who was elected at age 25 [7]). He represented the City at the World Capitals Forum in Tapei, Taiwan in 1997 and was elected to the national Board of Directors as an Ontario Director for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. In his community, he was known to be a fiscally conservative and socially progressive politician.

During his subsequent nine year council career (1997–2006), Little chaired the City's Licence Committee and Animal Control Tribunal, was Vice-Chair of the Planning Committee and was a member of the Community and Protective Services Committee, Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee, the City's Task Force on Property Tax Reform and the Priorities and Planning and Budget Committee. He served as a member of the Board of the Ottawa Civic Hospital, a Trustee for the Ottawa Public Library, on the Board of the Westboro Business Improvement Association, Ottawa Board of Health, and as a City Council liaison to the Ottawa Youth Cabinet.

Second term

In 2000 the former City of Ottawa and surrounding municipalities and townships amalgamated to form the new City of Ottawa. Little again ran for election to represent Kitchissippi Ward against Regional Council member Linda Davis. During the campaign Little supported plans to build a new Loblaws store in the area.[8] The race was one of the most bitter in the city with Little's supporters accused of stealing lawn signs while Davis was accused of leaking libellous, frivolous and fictional material to _Frank_ magazine.[9] Little defeated Davis with close to 50% of votes cast compared to Davis's 40%. Little was one of only three councillors from the former City of Ottawa re-elected to the newly amalgamated Council.

When it was approved, the new Loblaws in Westboro was seen as a victory for the community and one that revamped and revitalized the many small businesses lining Richmond Road and West Wellington Street that had been in sharp decline.[10]

Third term and later career

At the 2003 elections Councillor Little sought re-election for a third term.[11] The race attracted many challengers, including Linda Davis. Little was re-elected, receiving a 27% plurality.[12] Little had decided to stand as a candidate in the 2006 municipal election, but had a change of heart before the elections took place, noting that he had accomplished all of the important goals for the area he set for himself when he first ran for office and endorsed candidate Christine Leadman instead.[13] One of these goals was revitalizing Hintonburg, a neighbourhood that once had 67 known problem rental properties, and drug issues among its population.[14] After leaving politics in 2006, Little managed an Ottawa-based tech company until 2010.

In August 2010, Little returned to politics as a candidate in Ottawa's 2010 municipal elections for the Bay Ward, which was held by incumbent Alex Cullen.[15] Although Little came in fifth place behind candidate Terry Kilrea, Cullen was defeated.[16] At the time of his death, Little lived in Calgary, Alberta where he managed his own political consulting company and remained active in political affairs.[17]

[1] http://yourlifemoments.ca/sitepages/obituary.asp?oid=661165

[2] “From the editor: You make it happen.”, Don McGillivray, Newswest, December 1980

[3]

[4]

[5] “NCC reconsiders widening of bridge after community group files lawsuit” Leonard Stern. _Ottawa Citizen._ Aug 16, 1996. pg. A.1.

[6]

[7]

[8] “Huge Loblaws approved for Westboro” _CBC News_, April 5th 2000

[9]

[10]

[11] “Little re-elected with just 27% of vote;” Bruce Ward, Erin Conway-Smith and Ken Gray. _Ottawa Citizen._ Nov 11, 2003. pg. B.3

[12]

[13] “Little bows out of race for Kitchissippi seat” Jake Rupert. _Ottawa Citizen._ Sep 14, 2006. pg. C.1

[14]

[15] “Little seeks return to council”. Susan Sherring. _Ottawa Sun._ Aug 19, 2010. pg. 15.

[16]

[17]

title: Shawn Little

question: How did Little get involved in politics?

answer: He was involved in politics from the age of 16, when he worked for Progressive Conservative MP Walter Baker. He first ran for election at the age of 24 in 1988. In 1997 on his second attempt he was elected to City Council.


text:
FURNAS COUNTY is a county in the U.S. state of Nebraska. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 4,959.[1] Its county seat is Beaver City.[2] The county was named for Robert W. Furnas, the second governor of the state of Nebraska.[3]

In the Nebraska license plate system, Furnas County is represented by the prefix 38 (it had the thirty-eighth-largest number of vehicles registered in the county when the license plate system was established in 1922).

Geography

Furnas County lies on the south line of Nebraska. The south boundary line of Furnas County abuts the north boundary line of the state of Kansas. The Republican River flows eastward across the upper central part of the county.

According to the US Census Bureau, the county has an area of , of which is land and (0.2%) is water.[4]

Major highways

-   [] U.S. Highway 6
-   [] U.S. Highway 34
-   [] U.S. Highway 136
-   [] U.S. Highway 283
-   [] Nebraska Highway 46
-   [] Nebraska Highway 47
-   [] Nebraska Highway 89

Adjacent counties

-   Harlan County – east
-   Norton County, Kansas – south
-   Decatur County, Kansas – southwest
-   Red Willow County – west
-   Frontier County – northwest
-   Gosper County – north
-   Phelps County – northeast

Demographics

As of the 2000 United States Census,[5] there were 5,324 people, 2,278 households, and 1,489 families in the county. The population density was 7 people per square mile (3/km²). There were 2,730 housing units at an average density of 4 per square mile (1/km²). The racial makeup of the county was 98.22% White, 0.08% Black or African American, 0.41% Native American, 0.23% Asian, 0.32% from other races, and 0.75% from two or more races. 1.15% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 45.6% were of German, 13.8% American, 11.4% English, 7.4% Irish and 5.2% Swedish ancestry.

There were 2,278 households, out of which 28.00% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 57.20% were married couples living together, 5.90% had a female householder with no husband present, and 34.60% were non-families. 32.50% of all households were made up of individuals, and 19.80% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.28 and the average family size was 2.88.

The county population contained 24.10% under the age of 18, 5.30% from 18 to 24, 22.80% from 25 to 44, 23.90% from 45 to 64, and 23.80% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 44 years. For every 100 females there were 92.30 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.00 males.

The median income for a household in the county was $30,498, and the median income for a family was $37,000. Males had a median income of $26,563 versus $19,918 for females. The per capita income for the county was $17,223. About 6.90% of families and 10.60% of the population were below the poverty line, including 14.50% of those under age 18 and 10.50% of those age 65 or over.

Communities

-   Arapahoe
-   Beaver City (county seat)
-   Cambridge
-   Edison
-   Hendley
-   Holbrook
-   Oxford (partial)
-   Precept[6]
-   Wilsonville

Politics

Furnas County voters have been strongly Republican since its beginning. In only one national election since 1916 the county been carried by a Democratic Party presidential candidate.

  Year                               Republican                                  Democratic                                  Third Parties
  ---------------------------------- ------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------- ----------------------------
  style=“text-align:center;” |2016   style=“text-align:center;” |82.1% _1,921_   style=“text-align:center;” |13.0% _304_     4.9% _115_
  style=“text-align:center;” |2012   style=“text-align:center;” |79.6% _1,782_   style=“text-align:center;” |18.9% _423_     1.6% _35_
  style=“text-align:center;” |2008   style=“text-align:center;” |74.1% _1,725_   style=“text-align:center;” |23.9% _556_     2.0% _47_
  style=“text-align:center;” |2004   style=“text-align:center;” |79.0% _1,950_   style=“text-align:center;” |19.9% _492_     1.0% _25_
  style=“text-align:center;” |2000   style=“text-align:center;” |76.1% _1,849_   style=“text-align:center;” |22.0% _534_     2.0% _48_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1996   style=“text-align:center;” |61.2% _1,475_   style=“text-align:center;” |27.5% _663_     11.3% _273_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1992   style=“text-align:center;” |48.7% _1,365_   style=“text-align:center;” |22.3% _624_     29.0% _812_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1988   style=“text-align:center;” |69.2% _1,830_   style=“text-align:center;” |29.9% _791_     0.9% _24_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1984   style=“text-align:center;” |79.7% _2,363_   style=“text-align:center;” |19.5% _579_     0.8% _24_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1980   style=“text-align:center;” |78.3% _2,483_   style=“text-align:center;” |16.9% _536_     4.8% _153_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1976   style=“text-align:center;” |60.2% _1,851_   style=“text-align:center;” |36.8% _1,132_   3.0% _91_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1972   style=“text-align:center;” |77.2% _2,282_   style=“text-align:center;” |22.9% _676_     style="text-align:center;|
  style=“text-align:center;” |1968   style=“text-align:center;” |69.8% _2,137_   style=“text-align:center;” |22.9% _701_     7.3% _223_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1964   style=“text-align:center;” |54.7% _2,011_   style=“text-align:center;” |45.4% _1,669_   style="text-align:center;|
  style=“text-align:center;” |1960   style=“text-align:center;” |72.3% _2,854_   style=“text-align:center;” |27.7% _1,091_   style="text-align:center;|
  style=“text-align:center;” |1956   style=“text-align:center;” |72.3% _2,894_   style=“text-align:center;” |27.7% _1,111_   style="text-align:center;|
  style=“text-align:center;” |1952   style=“text-align:center;” |77.3% _3,464_   style=“text-align:center;” |22.7% _1,018_   style="text-align:center;|
  style=“text-align:center;” |1948   style=“text-align:center;” |60.2% _2,258_   style=“text-align:center;” |39.8% _1,494_   style="text-align:center;|
  style=“text-align:center;” |1944   style=“text-align:center;” |68.4% _2,870_   style=“text-align:center;” |31.7% _1,329_   style="text-align:center;|
  style=“text-align:center;” |1940   style=“text-align:center;” |64.9% _3,316_   style=“text-align:center;” |35.2% _1,797_   style="text-align:center;|
  style=“text-align:center;” |1936   style=“text-align:center;” |52.4% _2,842_   style=“text-align:center;” |45.8% _2,482_   1.8% _100_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1932   style=“text-align:center;” |38.1% _2,087_   style=“text-align:center;” |60.3% _3,303_   1.6% _87_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1928   style=“text-align:center;” |73.2% _3,760_   style=“text-align:center;” |26.1% _1,339_   0.8% _40_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1924   style=“text-align:center;” |50.3% _2,378_   style=“text-align:center;” |32.5% _1,534_   17.3% _816_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1920   style=“text-align:center;” |60.5% _2,445_   style=“text-align:center;” |33.9% _1,371_   5.5% _223_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1916   style=“text-align:center;” |40.5% _1,163_   style=“text-align:center;” |55.9% _1,607_   3.7% _105_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1912   style=“text-align:center;” |13.8% _354_     style=“text-align:center;” |49.3% _1,266_   36.9% _947_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1908   style=“text-align:center;” |44.8% _1,400_   style=“text-align:center;” |51.8% _1,618_   3.4% _107_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1904   style=“text-align:center;” |61.7% _1,569_   style=“text-align:center;” |15.5% _393_     22.8% _580_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1900   style=“text-align:center;” |48.9% _1,321_   style=“text-align:center;” |48.8% _1,319_   2.4% _64_

  : PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION RESULTS[7]

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6] [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Precept,+NE+68977/@40.0677845,-99.7419255,15z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x879e55ddd538ce4d:0x8a5b82b2d85704dc!2sFurnas+County,+NE!3b1!8m2!3d40.121397!4d-99.9912254!3m4!1s0x879f0550b65c3105:0x8820a66e68b15e96!8m2!3d40.0678254!4d-99.7332001 _Precept NE_ Google Maps (accessed 21 January 2019)]

[7] Election Results

title: Furnas County, Nebraska

question: What commodity is vastly available to the residents of Furnas County, Nebraska?

answer: Space, particularly land, is available in vast quantities in the county with the average population density at 3 people per square kilometer.


text:
[Tikini between 1904 and 1919] RIA TIKINI or RIA TE KINI (ca.1810 – 19 July 1919), also known as MRS CHICKEN, was a businesswoman, cultural informant, and midwife from Kāi Tahu and Kāti Mamoe descent. She was an informant for ethnographer William Anderson Taylor's work on Kāi Tahu history, and is credited as one of the midwives who paved the way for the creation of the Plunket Society of New Zealand.

Personal life

Tikini was born around 1810 at Ruapuke Island. She was 17 at the time of Te Rauparaha's attacks on Kaiapoi,[1] whether this referred to the initial raid in 1827[2] or to the later capture in 1831.[3] She was variously said to be 20[4] or a young woman[5] in the early 1840s during the Wesleyan missions of Reverends Watkin and Creed at Old Waikouaiti.

Little is documented about her family, however Tikini had an elder sister.[6] She married Tikini Paha[7] and adopted (in the traditional whāngai way) a son Henare (Henry) Parata.[8] She lived in a small wooden house below the railway line on the slope of the Puketeraki hill.[9]

Tikini was tattooed in the _tuhi_ style, “each side of her face being adorned with two straight lines and from mouth to ear”.[10] By the twentieth century the ethnographer W.A. Taylor considered this an unusual and “ancient” style, which he dated back to the time of Tamatea 600 years previously.[11] Taylor photographed her in 1907 wearing a large korowai, probably a family heirloom, along with a feather in a headscarf as a symbol of high status,[12] and referred to her himself as a “rangatira wahine” or female chief.[13]

She was known as a “shrewd businesswoman”[14] who sold poultry. It was either this[15] or an attempt to transliterate her name into English[16] that led to her nickname of “Mrs Chicken”. She was particularly known for keeping back the wings when she sold whole dressed chickens, which she kept as a “delicious” perk of the job.[17]

When over 80, she was among the public who went to see the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall on their visit to Dunedin. Despite being several times pushed back by an “officious” policeman, she was brought forward by his superior and the royal party shook hands and spoke with her.[18]

By 1913, Tikini's elder sister had died. The sister's land in Kaiapoi was in the name of her husband, but as he was not a member of that area, Tikini attempted to have the title amended in her own favour.[19]

By 1915 Tikini was “very deaf”,[20] however she was active even in early 1919 entertaining a visiting group of invalid soldiers.[21] Predeceased by her husband, she died in the house of her son Henare Parata on Saturday 19 July 1919.[22] She was noted at the time as “probably the oldest inhabitant of the dominion”.[23]

Ethnography

W.A. Taylor often gathered with Tikini among others including Mere Harper on a slope on the Huriawa Peninsula to talk about historic events. He noted that she “could speak with authority on the earliest European days”.[24] She was also among those visited by Herries Beattie.[25]

Plunket

Tikini also worked among both Māori and Pākehā in the district as a midwife, tōhuka and healer. She worked for many years with Mere Harper, thirty years younger than her, to help with health issues in their community and deliver generations of children. In 1906, she and Harper delivered Thomas (Tommy) Rangiwahia Mutu Ellison. Tommy's older brother had died as a baby, so when Tommy also became ill the midwives brought him to Harper's friend, the doctor Truby King, where he thrived under their combined care. The Karitāne Home for Babies opened within a year, and, with the aid of the extensive networks established by Tikini and Harper, as well as Tikini's decades of experience and the traditional knowledge she held, soon developed into the Plunket Society.[26]

In 2016, David Ellison, Upoko of Kāti Huirapa Rūnaka ki Puketeraki, and the son of Mutu Ellison, sought recognition for Tikini and Harper. An interpretive panel overlooking the Waikouaiti River was updated as a result,[27] and in 2020, Plunket rebranded its logo to acknowledge its founding Māori midwives.[28]

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title: Ria Tikini

question: What was Ria Tikini best known for, according to the text?

answer: Ria Tikini was a "shrewd entrepreneur" who sold poultry. Her moniker "Mrs. Chicken" came from either selling chicken or transliterating her name into English. She was an informant for ethnographer William Anderson Taylor's study on Ki Tahu history and one of the midwives who helped establish the Plunket Society of New Zealand. Tikini has two straight lines from mouth to ear tattooed on both sides of her face in "tuhi style." By the twentieth century, ethnographer W.A. Taylor regarded this an "ancient" style, dating 600 years to Tamatea. She was noted for keeping the wings from whole dressed chickens she sold as a "delicious" benefit of the job.

question: Briefly discuss Ria Tikini's work experience as a midwife.

answer: Ria Tikini was one of the midwives who helped establish the New Zealand Plunket Society. She has served as a midwife, tōhuka, and healer among Māori and Pākehā in the district. She partnered with Mere Harper for many years to assist with their community's health issues and deliver generations of children. She and Harper helped deliver Thomas Rangiwahia Mutu Ellison in 1906. To help Tommy, the midwives brought him to Harper's friend, Dr. Truby King, where he thrived under their joint care. A year later, the Karitne Home for Babies opened. A combination of Tikini's decades of experience and traditional wisdom helped form the Plunket Society.

question: How did Ria Tikini become very deaf?


text:
DATAIX is an Internet exchange network between telecom operators and content generators in Russia, Europe and Asia. According to the Internet Exchange Report by Hurricane Electric Internet Services, DATAIX is the largest in Russia and is one of the five largest in the world by peak traffic, the size of which exceeds 3 Tbit/s.[1] The headquarters of the company is located in St. Petersburg.

History

DATAIX was launched in St. Petersburg in 2009. The first Internet exchange point was located in the Information Exchange Center in the building of the Saint Petersburg State University of Industrial Technologies and Design (18 Bolshaya Morskaya Street). The founders used their own money as investment. At the start, DATAIX purchased part of the fiber-optic network, and partly built it specifically for the project (for example, the route from the data centers on Tsvetochnaya Street, where VKontakte was hosted, to Borovaya Street). Also, they leased or purchased capacities in Moscow.[2] Peering LLC, which owned the DATAIX network, was closely connected to the relatives of Pavel Durov: half-brother Mikhail Petrov, who worked at Selectel, and his mother Albina Durova (the latter owned 25.5% of the company from July 2012 to November 2013).[3]

In 2013, a DATAIX point of presence was opened in Kyiv. DATAIX served the Ukrainian traffic of the VKontakte social network, with caching servers of the social network on the site.[4] In the following years, DATAIX became a major player in the Ukrainian traffic market. In 2016, the largest telecommunications companies of the country Kyivstar and Ukrtelecom were connected to the DATAIX exchange point, and at that time up to 2 Tbit/s of traffic passed through it.[5]

In 2015, the national operator of Moldova _Moldtelecom_ was connected, becoming the fourth in the group of connected national operators (_Ukrtelecom_, _Kazakhtelecom_, and the _National Traffic Exchange Center of Belarus_).[6] In the same year, _Novatel_, a member of Deutsche Telekom, joined the DATAIX network through a point in Frankfurt.[7]

In 2016 DATAIX participants got the opportunity to establish a direct session with Hurricane Electric, the largest operator in the world in terms of the number of IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes. The maximum network load in 2016 was 2.2 Tbit/s, the channel capacity between Moscow and St. Petersburg reached 0.4 Tbit/s.[8]

In 2017, DATAIX officially entered the Euro-IX Internet exchange association, and also launched points of presence in Sweden (Stockholm) and Latvia (Riga).[9]

In March 2018, it was announced that Global-IX and DATAIX are merging under the brand of the latter, but on the base of the GlobalNet infrastructure, which includes its own highway communication networks on the Moscow-St. Petersburg-Helsinki-Stockholm route. Companies are counting on the synergy effect of the GlobalNet MPLS network and the DATAIX traffic exchange point services.[10][11]

Network features

DATAIX connects the traffic of telecom operators and content generators in Russia, Europe and Asia. More than 30 points of presence in a united traffic exchange network are located in seven countries:[12]

-   Russia: St. Petersburg, Moscow, Samara, Ufa, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk;
-   Ukraine: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa;
-   Kazakhstan: Nur-Sultan;
-   Germany: Frankfurt;
-   Sweden: Stockholm;
-   Finland: Helsinki, Espoo;
-   Netherlands: Amsterdam.

The total length of the networks is more than 7 thousand km, and the total throughput capacity of external channels reaches 3 Tbit/s.[13]

The number of participants (ASN) exceeds 400, of which 80% are telecom operators and 20% are content generators. Peak load of communication channels exceeded 3 Tbit/s, while before the merger it did not exceed 2 Tbit/s. According to the results of 2018, the total number of ports in the DATAIX network is 3403, of which 247 are ports with throughput capacity of 100 Gbit/s (0.1 Tbit/s) each, 123 ports with capacity of 40 Gbit/s and 2930 ports of 10 Gbit/s.[14][15] As of September 2019, DATAIX is ahead of the Russian network MSK-IX in terms of the number of participants.[16]

Events

DATAIX regularly takes part in meetings of the Internet exchange association Euro-IX, at GPF conferences (Global Peering Forum),[17] EPF (European Peering Forum),[18] ENOG (Eurasia Network Operators Group).[19] The company also hosted the first large-scale conference for the telecom market in St. Petersburg — _GlobalNet Telecom Day 2019_.[20]

Owners and management

DATAIX is owned by GlobalNet. GlobalNet CEO is Natalya Lukina.[21]

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title: DATAIX

question: Which continents is DATAIX present in?

answer: Europe and Asia.

question: How many points of presence does it have?

answer: More than 30.

question: Where was DATAIX launched?

answer: In St. Petersburg.

question: Which company did DATAIX merge with in March 2018?

answer: With Global-IX

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: The text is about DATAIX, an internet exchange network between telecom operators and content creators. It has more than 30 points of presence in Europe and Asia, mostly in Russia.


text:
Once upon a time, there were two kingdoms.

To the west The Dredges.  Where sat a Parkinson king,  inhabited by foaming Neander folk.  At dawn, the king would greet his swaying congregants.  In showers of inflation yet undeserved.  And spin unverified tales of personal glory.

East the Queendom.  Ruled by a spider empress.  Neith her, a never\-ending coil of dagger toothed critics.  Each slitting the throat of the one ahead.  Yearly the Queen would list off personal annoyances, proclaiming the Queendom under attack.

The land boiled in war.  A tarry foe, built of lies and ignorance.  Steaming from the fringes of each kingdom, and sticking to everything.  Unnoticed.  Like silent magma pulsing from an underground volcano.

Ignorant or with intent, the kingdoms skirmished one another.  Resurrecting their dead, endlessly.  Continuously front lining the fallen.  Only to retreat confused by the others lack of empathy.   Stalemate.

Till one day came a prince.  With seven fools in tow.  That did taunt the two kingdoms from afar.  With vulgar displays and songs.  The two kingdoms both offended, set differences aside.  And laid a plan to destroy the prince.

Upon their unification, and marching drums of war.  The two saw what they had not.  The sticky tarry foe.  But not the prince or his band of seven fools in tow.  The kingdoms in agreement waged war upon that foe.  And won a long painful battle for the betterment of all.

THE END  Thanks for reading.

title: [FN] The Two Kingdoms

question: Why do the two kingdoms unite?

answer: A common foe manages to anger them both.

question: Why do the two kingdoms fight?

answer: The reason for the wars isn't explained in the story.

question: Explain how the battles run endlessly.

answer: The two kingdoms resurrect their dead to fight for them.

question: State the central message of the story.

answer: A common foe may bring together lifelong enemies. The unification is better for everyone.

question: Write a ~4 sentence summary.

answer: Two kingdoms, one to the West and the other to the East, fight ceaselessly. Battle after battle, they resurrect their dead and fight on. One day a Prince appears, taunting them both with vulgar songs. The kingdoms unite and fight a long battle for the betterment of all.


text:
Please take a couple minutes out of your life to read a very short story I wrote (1-2 pages in word @ 12pt).

I guess I can only partially (IMO) take credit for the inspiration for the story. I wrote it almost two years ago, and I had forgotten about it until today. Within a couple days of writing it I had people who were close to me read it (mother, step mother, father, sister, GF, stepmoms daughters, buddy from college).

I had made very minor corrections to wordsthat were stucktogether<<< since I had written it hastily so as not to forget the important details, then saved it, only to eventually forget about having the copy. I would not call myself a writer. I don't write literature. I just wrote how I talk. So I put it all down the best I could in one go.

Please give me honest opinions. I want to know if this touches/affects other people like it does the people who know me well. Ok, so, thank you if you've made it this far. Please read on and leave feedback.

**I LIK WIL**

My name is Will. I have a brother named Jack who is, well let's say, different. He has always been upset/angry with/resented me, because I’ve always been “perfect” (normal/fine/regular/not sick), and he has always been “broken” (sick/crazy/stuck/hopeless/sees things/in his own world, and he has a hard time relating/conveying thoughts and feelings to the outside world). We’ve always got along and loved each other, but all that has mostly been masked by arguments, misunderstandings, and miscommunications.

Jack lives in a fantasy world, which-for all intents and purposes–lies mostly far away from people in the “real world”. He and I have always had an extra special brotherly connection, in that, when we are together I am able to enter his world (or he is able to project his world onto me). It is a mix of delight, wonder, imagination, nostalgia, loneliness, regret, desperation, fear and anger (etc.). As time went by, however, though the realism of the realm I shared with him grew ever stronger, my ability to stay constantly present there faded. I would get sucked in so strongly, so fast, but get spit out just as quick. I can remember happier times in his room, in his world, where his toys performed the way they would when he would play with them, all on their own. Model planes and cars would zip through the air, drawings would be cast on the walls and ceilings, seemingly coming to life, dinosaurs roamed the miniature forests, and toy soldiers waged their meaningless wars.

Given his lack of ability to convey his feelings properly/accurately to others—although slightly easier to me with our special bond—Jack found ways to project or imprint the scars/outcomes/effects of his all-too-real fantasies into the real world. Toy soldiers would be left broken, smaller dinosaurs left mangled from the mighty t-rex, toy planes obliterated, walls damaged and even Jack himself would be left with minor cuts, even scars from time to time.

The nature of the arguments we had mostly pertained to his frustrations with me having all the advantages of a normal life, and him left broken, scarred and shit on, and my frustrations with him being somewhat of a burden, or annoying/irritating/etc. Like I said, Jack practically hated me—in a way—for these reasons, and could never really explain to himself how/why he was the way he was. So unlucky, whereas I had more than enough luck than one man needed or deserved.

Jacks powerful fantasy world grew stronger over the years, and with it, grew our special connection, his projections onto the real world, and the level of our “battles” within said world. I will never forget the biggest argument/battle that took place in his/our special world. We were in our mid-forties at the time, and much too old for all this nonsense. Had I known it would have been the last time I would ever see my dear brother, I’m sure I would have done everything in my power to create a different outcome. The dispute was over the same old topic. Although my love for him would never and has never changed, I could not help the growing resentment inside that my selfishness has caused me to create. The fights were annoying, arguably pointless. He was shouting the same old lines. I too was guilty of this broken-record behavior. In this particular battle we each wielded a toy light saber, made ever so real in our growing fantasy realm. Growing quite frustrated with all this bullshit, and him advancing on me, I made one precise strike to his neck with my furious blade. He began to bleed, as was the way in his world. Imagination can be quite a powerful thing. When he turned to retreat to the corner of the room, reality came back to me. As far as I was concerned, we were simply in his normal/real room, in the middle of our argument. However, this time, Jacks physical projection of what had happed was portrayed by his cutting of the surface skin of his neck with a razor blade. I could see the blood dripping down to the floor as he remained facing the corner. I was angry. Why would he cut himself? It was just another frustrating action to add to the situation. He turned around with tears in his eyes, anger and confusion in his face. I turned and left the room.

Planning to step out for a smoke, I reached the back door when I was suddenly flung around by my shoulder. Jack stood there with his bloody razor held firmly to my throat. He was hysterical. Sobbing. Trying to yell at me, he conveyed his usual frustrations yet again. Worried at this point, I tried to calm him, urging him to sit down with me to talk it out. He complied, but all the while, forcing the tip of the razor into the surface of my s.kin. Realizing the severity of the situation, I started pleading with him, not to do anything rash. He then proceeded to pour his heart out to me to the best of his ability. While doing so, he pulled a second razor out of his pocket and pressed it to his own neck. I was absolutely terrified. Crying, he tried to convey his feelings of despair, which only came out as anger towards me and confusion about himself and the shitty hand dealt to him at a very young age. He was trying to think, contemplating how to end his misery. Kill himself, or kill me. No other option existed. At this point his hatred of me was clear.

After one final desperate sob, Jack sliced deep into his own throat. A look I will never, ever forget came across his face. As he slumped lower to the floor, the razor withdrawing from my pierced skin, his left hand came from behind him. He looked at me in his final moment, with a look of regret and sadness on his face. Sitting in his lifeless hand was a book he had written himself… for me… Sobbing uncontrollably I looked at the sloppily written, misspelled title… I Lik Wil…

The book described all of my poor, sweet, helpless brother’s thoughts about himself, about me, about life. He never hated me. Jack hated himself. He could not understand why he was the way he was. Although jealous of my normality, he loved me deeply. He was filled with regret that I had to deal with him my whole life, and how he could do nothing but project his torment onto me, as many people are guilty of. Though, he had an unimaginable difficulty—above all others—accurately conveying his feelings. He resented the way he was and how he caused me so much heartache… I was destroyed… There was no way around feeling that I was to blame for letting it get this far, for getting so frustrated, for building up my own resentment. I killed my brother. The one I loved most in life. I put him to death. I’m sorry Jack. I miss you. I Liked You Too…

*This is a story of a* **dream** *I had that played out in a perfect sequence of a couple scenes. I had 40 years worth of memories. I don’t know what I think about dreams. Are they random images/smells/etc. thrown together with some logic sometimes, sometimes not so much? Or do they have deep rooted meanings? This dream was so powerful at the time that I woke up absolutely sobbing and basically continued like that, off and on until sometime after getting to work (several hours). This dream had meaning to me, or at least, caused me to give it meaning. I can only explain it by my own resentments of my personal shortcomings in life. My faults, my let-downs, to myself and to others, the mistakes I’ve made, the disappointments… all the things I don’t like about myself that have ever appeared in my life, all projected into this alter-ego. The other me. The “bad” me. Will represents me, all the good in me, with the bad mixed in. Jack is the me I wish had done better, studied more, made the phone call, been there for the friend, cleaned up after myself… the list goes on and on. Normal human things that any number of people I’m sure are guilty of, all brought down on me at once because of a couple ‘big’ personal disappointments and worries that have happened recently. Take this story and apply it to your life. Do good. Be good. Be happy. Appreciate the good in your life and the people around you. It’s worth it, and we don’t have a lot of time. Thank you. MtM. 10.16.2010.*

title: Will you cry? I still do after 2 years...

question: What does the story say about Will's relationship with Jack?

answer: Will, the author of the story, and Jack are brothers. They love each other deeply but they are quite different. Jack lives in his own world, sees things, has a hard time conveying thoughts and feelings to the outside world, is a mix of delight, imagination, nostalgia, loneliness, regret, desperation, fear, and anger. Will is normal. They used to fight because of Jack's frustrations with Will having all the advantages of a normal life. During an argument, Jack kills himself in front of Will. Will feels guilty because he thinks he could have prevented that if he had been gentler to Jack.

question: What does the story say about Will's writing the story?

answer: Will says that he wrote the story almost two years ago and had people who were close to him read it. He would not call himself a writer and asks the readers to give him opinions about the story.

question: What does the story say about child-rearing?


text:
_THE KING IN YELLOW_ is a book of short stories by the American writer Robert W. Chambers, first published by F. Tennyson Neely in 1895.[1] The book is named after a play with the same title which recurs as a motif through some of the stories.[2] The first half of the book features highly esteemed weird stories, and the book has been described by critics such as E. F. Bleiler, S. T. Joshi and T. E. D. Klein as a classic in the field of the supernatural.[3][4] There are ten stories, the first four of which (“The Repairer of Reputations”, “The Mask”, “In the Court of the Dragon”, and “The Yellow Sign”) mention _The King in Yellow_, a forbidden play which induces despair or madness in those who read it. “The Yellow Sign” inspired a film of the same name released in 2001.

The British first edition was published by Chatto & Windus in 1895 (316 pages).[5]

Stories

The first four stories are loosely connected by three main devices:

-   A play in book form entitled _The King in Yellow_
-   A mysterious and malevolent supernatural and gothic entity known as the King in Yellow
-   An eerie symbol called the Yellow Sign

These stories are macabre in tone, centering, in keeping with the other tales, on characters who are often artists or decadents, inhabitants of the _demi-monde_.

The first and fourth stories, “The Repairer of Reputations” and “The Yellow Sign”, are set in an imagined future 1920s America, whereas the second and third stories, “The Mask” and “In the Court of the Dragon”, are set in Paris. These stories are haunted by the theme: “Have you found the Yellow Sign?”

The weird and macabre character gradually fades away during the remaining stories, and the last three are written in the romantic fiction style common to Chambers' later work. They are all linked to the preceding stories by their Parisian setting and their artistic protagonists.

List of stories

thumb|upright=0.75|Illustration of Tessie in “The Yellow Sign”, from a 1902 edition of the book The stories in the book are:

-   “The Repairer of Reputations” – A weird story of egotism and paranoia which carries the imagery of the book's title.
-   “The Mask” – A dream story of art, love, and uncanny science.
-   “In the Court of the Dragon” – A man is pursued by a sinister church organist who is after his soul.
-   “The Yellow Sign” – An artist is troubled by a sinister churchyard watchman who resembles a coffin worm.
-   “The Demoiselle d'Ys” – A ghost story, the theme of which anticipates H. G. Wells' “The Door in the Wall” (1906).[6]
-   “The Prophets' Paradise” – A sequence of eerie prose poems that develop the style and theme of a quote from the fictional play _The King in Yellow_ which introduces “The Mask”.
-   “The Street of the Four Winds” – An atmospheric tale of an artist in Paris who is drawn to a neighbor's room by a cat; the story ends with a tragic touch.
-   “The Street of the First Shell” – A war story set in the Paris Siege of 1870.
-   “The Street of Our Lady of the Fields” – Romantic American bohemians in Paris.
-   “Rue Barrée” – Romantic American bohemians in Paris, with a discordant ending that playfully reflects some of the tone of the first story.

The play called _The King in Yellow_

The fictional play _The King in Yellow,_ has at least two acts and at least three characters: Cassilda, Camilla and “The Stranger”, who may or may not be the titular character.

Chambers' story collection excerpts some sections from the play to introduce the book as a whole, or individual stories. For example, “Cassilda's Song” comes from Act 1, Scene 2 of the play:

The short story “The Mask” is introduced by an excerpt from Act 1, Scene 2d:

It is also stated, in “The Repairer of Reputations”, that the final moment of the first act involves the character Camilla's “agonized scream and...awful words echoing through the dim streets of Carcosa.”[7]

All of the excerpts come from Act I. The stories describe Act I as quite ordinary, but reading Act II drives the reader mad with the “irresistible” revealed truths. “The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect.” Even seeing the first page of the second act is enough to draw the reader in: “If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second act I should never have finished it [...]” (“The Repairer of Reputations”).

Chambers usually gives only scattered hints of the contents of the full play, as in this extract from “The Repairer of Reputations”:

  He mentioned the establishment of the Dynasty in Carcosa, the lakes which connected Hastur, Aldebaran and the mystery of the Hyades. He spoke of Cassilda and Camilla, and sounded the cloudy depths of Demhe, and the Lake of Hali. “The scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill forever,” he muttered, but I do not believe Vance heard him. Then by degrees he led Vance along the ramifications of the Imperial family, to Uoht and Thale, from Naotalba and Phantom of Truth, to Aldones, and then tossing aside his manuscript and notes, he began the wonderful story of the Last King.

A similar passage occurs in “The Yellow Sign”, in which two protagonists have read _The King in Yellow_:

  Night fell and the hours dragged on, but still we murmured to each other of the King and the Pallid Mask, and midnight sounded from the misty spires in the fog-wrapped city. We spoke of Hastur and of Cassilda, while outside the fog rolled against the blank window-panes as the cloud waves roll and break on the shores of Hali.

Influences

Chambers borrowed the names Carcosa, Hali and Hastur from Ambrose Bierce: specifically, his short stories “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” and “Haïta the Shepherd”. There is no strong indication that Chambers was influenced beyond liking the names. For example, Hastur is a god of shepherds in “Haïta the Shepherd”, but is implicitly a location in “The Repairer of Reputations”, listed alongside the Hyades and Aldebaran.[8]

Brian Stableford has pointed out that the story “The Demoiselle d'Ys” was influenced by the stories of Théophile Gautier, such as “Arria Marcella” (1852); both Gautier and Chambers' stories feature a love affair enabled by a supernatural time slip.[9]

In Raymond Chandler's 1938 detective story, also titled “The King in Yellow”, the protagonist says “The King in Yellow. I read a book by that title once.”

The first season of HBO's _True Detective_ television series revolves around a string of crimes committed by the elusive “Yellow King” with Carcosa also being mentioned on numerous occasions. Black stars are also prominent in reference and imagery during the series.

The Yung Lean song “Yellowman” references _The King in Yellow_, using the lyric “I'll be your yellowman, Carcosa land.”

In his 1984 novel _Thinner_, Stephen King makes a passing reference to The King in Yellow, a head shop in the small (fictional) town of Fairview, Conn.

The Mask that the Stranger is instructed to remove but turns out not to exist at all in the excerpt from The King in Yellow play (in Chambers' short story “The Mask”) evokes the scene in Edgar Allan Poe's “The Masque of the Red Death” where Prince Prospero demands that the stranger dressed as the Red Death should remove his mask and robes, only to find nothing underneath. Given the recognition of that short story, this might be an inspiration or even a tribute from Chambers to Poe.

Marion Zimmer Bradley drew a number of names from _The King in Yellow_ for her Darkover series, including Hastur, Hali, Camilla, and Cassilda. Bradley mentioned Chambers as an influence in a 1980 interview.[10]

Swedish writer Anders Fager's short stories “Miss Witt's Great Work of Art” and “The Queen in Yellow” features the Stockholm-based “The Carcosa Foundation” as it turns a performance artist ino an avatar of the Yellow King.

Cthulhu Mythos

[“The King in Yellow”, illustration by Earl Geier in Richard Watts' scenario “Tatterdemalion” for the _Call of Cthulhu_ role-playing game published by Chaosium. The Yellow Sign adorning the back of the throne was designed by Kevin A. Ross for the scenario “Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?”] H. P. Lovecraft read _The King in Yellow_ in early 1927[11] and included passing references to various things and places from the book—such as the Lake of Hali and the Yellow Sign — in “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1931),[12] one of his main Cthulhu Mythos stories. Lovecraft borrowed Chambers' method of only vaguely referring to supernatural events, entities, and places, thereby allowing his readers to imagine the horror for themselves. The play _The King in Yellow_ effectively became another piece of occult literature in the Cthulhu Mythos alongside the _Necronomicon_ and others.

In the story, Lovecraft linked the Yellow Sign to Hastur, but from his brief (and only) mention it is not clear what Lovecraft meant Hastur to be. August Derleth developed Hastur into a Great Old One in his controversial reworking of Lovecraft's universe, elaborating on this connection in his own mythos stories. In the writings of Derleth and a few other latter-day Cthulhu Mythos authors, the King in Yellow is an Avatar of Hastur, so named because of his appearance as a thin, floating man covered in tattered yellow robes.

In Lovecraft's cycle of horror sonnets, _Fungi from Yuggoth_, sonnet XXVII “The Elder Pharos” mentions the last Elder One who lives alone talking to chaos via drums: “The Thing, they whisper, wears a silken mask of yellow, whose queer folds appear to hide a face not of this earth...”.[13] This thing with a silken mask of yellow also features in _The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath_.

In the _Call of Cthulhu_ roleplaying game published by Chaosium, the King in Yellow is an avatar of Hastur who uses his eponymous play to spread insanity among humans. He is described as a hunched figure clad in tattered, yellow rags, who wears a smooth and featureless “Pallid Mask”. Removing the mask is a sanity-shattering experience; the King's face is described as “inhuman eyes in a suppurating sea of stubby maggot-like mouths; liquescent flesh, tumorous and gelid, floating and reforming”.

Although none of the characters in Chambers' book describe the plot of the play, Kevin Ross fabricated a plot for the play within the _Call of Cthulhu_ mythos.

_The Secret World_, a Lovecraft-inspired massively multiplayer online role-playing game, quotes Cassilda's Song and other elements from _The King in Yellow_ during a quest.

The theft of a supposed manuscript of the play _The King in Yellow_ from the British Library forms a major plot element of Charles Stross's Lovecraft-inspired book _The Annihilation Score_.

In Alan Moore's comic series _Providence_, as well as in his previous story _Neonomicon_, Moore re-imagines the Lovecraftian mythos while referencing and borrowing heavily from _The King in Yellow_. The book is referenced by name throughout _Providence_, as well as referencing a fictional variation _Sous Le Monde_, French for “Under the World.” In both _Providence_ and its sequel, a recurring character named Johnny Carcosa appears as an avatar/speaker for a Lovecraftian entity, possibly Nyarlathotep or Azathoth.[14]

Game designer Robin D. Laws wrote a collection of Chambers-inspired stories entitled _New Tales of the Yellow Sign_ after converting the story “Repairer of Reputations” for _Trail of Cthulhu_. He subsequently wrote Yellow King Roleplaying Game that takes place in four Chambers-inspired “realities”, including Belle-epoque Paris, Chambers' fictional European war, the United States after the fall of the Castagne regime, and an apparently contemporary setting subject to subtle incursions from Carcosa.

Dan Abnett's novels _The Magos_, _Pariah_, and several connected short stories feature an ominous character called “Grael Ochre, or the Yellow King,” whose nature is expected to be revealed in the last two parts of the _Bequin_ trilogy (which began with _Pariah_.) These works are set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, which has many Lovecraftian elements.

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[2] “Robert W. Chambers” in

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[9] Brian Stableford, “The King in Yellow” in Frank N. Magill, ed. _Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature_, Vol 2. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Press, Inc., 1983. (pp. 844-847).

[10] Marion Zimmer Bradley (1980), “A Darkover Retrospective”, The Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, San Francisco. Online at http://www.mzbworks.com/Darkover-Retrospective.htm

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title: The King in Yellow

question: What does the text say about the stories found in the book "The King in Yellow"?

answer: The book is comprised of 10 stories. The first four stories all mention a play entitled "The King in Yellow", the entity known as King in Yellow and the Yellow Sign. The first and fourth stories are set in 1920's America while the rest are set in Paris. The stories start off with a macabre tone that fades away during the last stories and are usually centered around artistic protagonists.

question: What does the text say about the play "The King in Yellow"?

answer: The mentioned play is part of the fictional world the author Robert W. Chambers wrote. In his texts, the play induces despair or madness in whoever reads it. While the full text of the play is not revealed, it is known the play has at least two acts and three characters. It is described that the first act is quite ordinary but reading even 1 page of the second ask drives people insane.

question: What does the text say about the influence the book "The King in Yellow" had?

answer: The book was referenced in works produced by Yung Lean, Stephen King, Marrion Zimmer. It was referenced in the HBO series "True Detective", where a string of crimes were connected to an elusive criminal called "Yellow King".