#like i spin them around and i take photos at a million different angles and even if it's like well this edit isn't gonna look how i wanted

[mattodore]

boycrazy

+ i know the second photo is already sexy on its own, but i need everyone to know that matthias is holding theo's ankle like this <3

[kumkaniudaku]

Media Darling

I’ve been gone a while. I’m sorry. Thanks for asking questions and sticking with me. I hope you enjoy this late tale of the Oscar’s Red Carpet. 

"Girls, I think we've done it. We've created a star." Deidra, CoCo's handpicked stylist, stepped back to join the rest of her glam squad and smiled. "You ready to see the finished product?" 

"Oh my God, I'm so nervous. Give me a second to breathe." 

Truthfully, there was no amount of breathing exercises or affirmations that could adequately douse the flame of anxiety building in Tasha's chest. She's been on plenty of red carpets, but none with the same prestige as the Oscars red carpet. She also had never been the plus one of arguably the biggest star expect to attend the award show. In roughly an hour, she would go from unknown businesswoman to most-searched person in internet forum history if she had a lash out of place. The thought was overwhelming. 

Several seconds passed until Tasha finally worked up the nerve to turn and face the floor-length mirror in front of her. She twisted and turned to examine her reflection, taking note of every sparkle on her dress and coil in her mane. 

"Am I giving Diana Ross glam or Tracee Ellis Ross doppelganger," she asked without looking away from the mirror. 

"Is either considered a bad thing?" 

A chorus of different answers sounded from the team as they all shared their opinions on the matter. 

"I see a bit of 80s influence with modern touches. The high neck and shoulder pads are just enough not to be out of my mother's closet and, paired with the cutouts in the midsection, bring a bit of class to the look." 

"And your hair! It's giving Whitney shape with Diana volume." 

"Now wait a minute, we talking 80s Whitney or mid-2000s Whitney? 'Cause you know there's a difference." 

"Shut up, Shay!" 

Tasha listened to her squad playfully argue in the background while she continued to go through her mental checklist. She had all of the makings for a great night and a few pictures if she got swept into the hype of the moment. Smiling at herself in approval, she turned to face her team. 

"This is really happening. Am I ready to be a thread on Twitter?" 

"Hopefully, they mention how good your ass looks in that dress. Who knew Miss CoCo was draggin' a wagon?" 

"I know, right! I'm learning how to twerk again. Look!" 

While Tasha turned around to demonstrate her new abilities, an unexpected visitor snuck into the room to observe the spectacle. 

"Ooop, I think we have a spectator." 

"And he is highly intrigued." 

"Wha-" A glance over her shoulder brought Tasha eye to eye with the reason she was in this predicament. "This isn't what it looks like." 

"That's too bad. I was enjoying the show." 

As the room cleared to allow the couple some privacy, Chadwick took a few long steps to close the gap between and his partner. He took her hand in his to spin her in a circle for a complete view of her ensemble. 

"Wow. I mean...woah. You look amazing." 

"Yeah? You sure it's not too much? I don't wanna have you blasted on social media." 

"If anyone can find something wrong with you tonight, I'll give them one million dollars. You're perfect." 

Chadwick smiled with his entire face, his eyes shining with sincerity. He didn't look away as he nodded toward an empty chair in the room for Tasha to take a seat. In all the time spent nervously considering every single detail that she hadn't noticed that she had yet to slip into her shoes. Once seated, she watched her man with thoughtful consideration as he took his time carefully fastening the straps of her heels. 

"Be honest with me. What should I do out there? How should I act?"

Chadwick sat in hyper-focused silence until he completed his task. When he was satisfied with his work, he looked up at her to offer a small smile. "All of this bullshit is fake." 

Tasha's mouth dropped hung open at the blunt nature of his statement before they both threw their heads back in laughter. "Well, then," she spoke as she attempted to catch her breath. "Tell me how you really feel." 

"I say it like that because I love you, and I don't want you getting caught up in this...circus." Reaching up, Chadwick gently used his hand to cup CoCo's chin. "It's a long carpet we walk on, people take pictures and ask questions, then we go and have a seat. Nothing more, nothing less. Be your beautiful self, Nippy." 

Tasha's adoration manifested into a tiny 'aww' as she leaned in to press her lips to his nose and mouth. "Thanks, babe. One last thing, though."

"Yes?" 

"Am I giving you 80s Whitney or 2000s Whitney? Shay says there's a difference." 

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

The glitz and glamour of red carpet life that Tasha had imagined quickly became a cramped logistical nightmare. Her hand felt like it would break under the pressure of Chadwick's tight grip as he led her through crowds of media members and guests. At every corner, a new flash emerging from the group temporarily robbed Tasha of her vision. Every step of the way alternated between fears about her appearance and keeping up with her partner's long strides. 

When their walking finally slowed, she found herself in front of a long row of cameramen and women practically screaming for her attention. 

"Over here! Smile!" 

"Can we get a smile over here!?" 

"Chadwick, is this your new girlfriend?" 

CoCo's brain had begun to turn every word into white noise as she stood for the onslaught of pictures until she heard the last question above the rest. In a knee jerk reaction, she turned to the photographer and made a face. 

"Girlfriend? I don't know this man. I'm here for Lupita." 

In jest, she lightly pushed Chadwick away to pose for solo pictures. Her exaggerated movements drew attention from everyone in the area, taking some of the focus from more recognizable entertainers beside her. 

From the corner of her eye, Tasha caught the image of Chadwick's eyebrows knitted as he struggled to find an angle that would capture her entire body. When he found the perfect position, knees bent and leaning slightly backward; his eyes flickered up to catch a glimpse of her smiling back at him. Though the moment was brief to them, cameras in every direction captured their loving gazes. 

By the time they were away from the step and repeat and nearing the crowd of journalists, low rumbles of the mystery woman with the big hair were preceding their arrival. 

Stepping onto the E! podium, Tasha felt a surge of pride as she stood back and watched her man navigate yet another interview. 

"It's a big night for you and the Black Panther cast. What's it like being on this carpet with everyone knowing that next year, you could be walking away with some major hardware?" 

"Ah, man, it's amazing. The energy here is great and it feels good to see meaningful work be recognized. I think I can speak for all of us when I say we hope we can be recognized when it's our turn." 

While Chadwick answered questions and dished out Wakandan salutes for what felt like the 100th time, Tasha busied herself with scrolling through various social media applications. Her absent-minded scroll on the Instagram explore page came to an abrupt halt when she spotted an admittedly flattering photo of her backside. 

Before she could take a peek at the photo's caption, her ears picked up on what sounded like a repeated request for her attention. 

"I'm sorry, what was that? I was too busy telling my mama that I'm famous for washing the dishes when I visit now."

"Oh yeah? What'd she say," Michael Strahan inquired, his eyes twinkling with his signature smile spread across his face. 

"Mmmm, I don't know if I can say that on national television." 

"I guess it's a good thing we've gone to commercial then."

As the group shared a laugh, Chadwick used the distraction to pull Tasha's body closer to his. They shared a quick glance that said more than words ever could before attempting to tune into the conversation. Quick pleasantries and a request to enter the theater cut Michael's questioning short and sent the pair into the frenzy of bodies flooding to their seats. 

For hours, Tasha sat in unbearable boredom. She knew that a room stuffed with Hollywood's elite drooling over asinine accomplishments wouldn't be the time of her life, but she expected to enjoy a performance or two at the very least. Instead, she spent most of her time whispering comments to Chadwick and praying someone would walk by with a champagne flute so that she could drink her way out of her misery. 

At some point between the 50th commercial break and someone she didn't recognize giving a long-winded speech onstage, Tasha took to her phone for some form of happiness. Bright red notification icons lit up the screen across several apps leading CoCo to believe that someone had died or Beyonce had dropped an album. Scrambling, she chose to open Twitter for answers to the mayhem. 

To her surprise, her face was the first image at the top of the newsfeed. 

"Oh shit." 

Her quiet mumbling caught Chadwick's attention, and he leaned over to get a better look at what had grabbed her attention. As she frantically scrolled through the app, the screen became littered with images of her face with various expressions and commentary. 

"You know, I caught that look while I was up there, but I didn't wanna believe you would be actin' up like that in public." 

CoCo paused to shoot her partner a look before her eyes darted back to the screen. "It's okay, girl, we all look at him like this. That look when you know about to tear ya man up when he's done talking. Get you somebody that looks at Chadwick Boseman the way his girlfriend does." 

"Oh, I like this one," Chadwick laughed as he pointed to a tweet that caught his attention. "If she don't look at me like this, I don't want it. That's good advice." At Tasha's expense, Chadwick fell into a fit of hushed laughter until he noticed that he was alone in his amusement. "Oh, c'mon, it's not that bad. Laugh a little!" 

"I'd like to see you laugh when your debut to social media is people meme' ing your lusty lip bite. What am I supposed to do?" 

Leaning in, Chadwick placed a quick kiss on CoCo's cheek and smiled, "Enjoy the show. You'll be fine." 

If the anxiety of knowing the whole world had witnessed her inappropriate behavior in real-time, the array of notifications continuing to build across her phone had nearly induced full-blown panic. Responses ranging from requests to follow her accounts to an article on the '10 Most Important Things to Know About Chadwick Boseman's Oscars Date' kept Tasha on edge until the lights in the theater lit up the room to signal the end of the event. 

Her assumption that her usually predictable man would attempt to dart out of the crowd as soon as possible could not have been further from the truth. Instead, CoCo's pleas to exit the building and ditch the afterparty were, leaving her to awkwardly stand and grin behind Chadwick as she tried to decide who was silently judging her during each interaction. 

"You're Tasha, right?" 

Initially, Tasha was relatively content with playing the background but, the voice calling her name was far too familiar to ignore. 

"I'm sorry. Wait. Did Regina the King just call my name?" 

"Only if you're Tasha," she laughed. "Heard a lot about you in the last few minutes." 

"Hopefully, about how you can kinda see a six-pack forming in this dress and nothing about weird faces on social media." 

"Ya know, I think it was a little of both." The awkward nature of the moment seemed to fade away by the second, only leaving room for shared laughter amongst the trio. 

"Damn, I fucked up. I'm sorry, baby," CoCo apologized through laughter. 

"Oh girl, you have done everything but fucked up. You're a damn meme. You got white people doing E! features on your Red Carpet look." 

Tasha's mouth opened to speak, but no words came out while she watched Regina be escorted away with her eyes wide as saucers. As Chadwick wrapped up a side conversation, he noticed the look on his girlfriend's face. 

"Are you-" 

"Is it hot in here to you? I can't breathe." 

"Co. Focus on me. What's the matter?" 

"I need fresh air. We have to go!" 

Together, they made a beeline for the nearest exit in search of their vehicle for the night. While feeling the cool breeze of the Los Angeles night air began the process of soothing her frazzled nerves, the loud chatter and flashes of light that greeted them as they rounded a corner sent Tasha back into a small spiral. 

"Is it true that you two are secretly married?" 

"Are you pregnant?" 

"Tell us about the fight between you and his ex!" 

The ridiculous nature of the questions climbed in frequency and intensity as the pair used long strides to reach their destination. 

When Chadwick swung open the door for CoCo to enter the backseat, a reporter shouted over the crowd, "How does it feel to be on every major best-dressed list tonight? Designers are begging to style you." 

"Say what?" With one leg already in the car, Tasha turned her body toward the crowd. "Who wants to style me?"

"Christian Siriano posted pieces he thinks you would look great in on his Instagram. Rihanna wants you in Fenty." 

Chadwick could sense her shift in energy and allowed a smile to creep across his face, one that Tasha caught from the corner of her eye before mirroring the expression. 

Tasha took a quick second to toss her clutch into the waiting SUV before taking a step forward and smiling. 

"Well," she started, fluffing her hair and smoothing the front of her dress. "I guess we better give them some full-body shots to work with." 

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

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[pyotatochip]

just like dancing | hyunjin x reader

what’s up losers. this one goes out to @starhhj​ thanks for always hurting me so good <3

just like dancing | hwang hyunjin x gender neutral reader wordcount: 4k inspired by: sidekick by walk the moon summary: meeting up with a photographer for a day of modelling turns into making a maybe forever friend.

ur a model

well. aspiring model.

ur instagram is a buncha pictures that u make ur friends take of you whenever y'all hang out

u have booked a couple photoshoots and submitted them to magazines

u even got published a couple times!!!!

not in anything big, just photography journals and portraiture mags

BUT IT'S SOMETHING!!!!

photoshoots are hella expensive tho fuckin. rip ur wallet

so u join a facebook group, which is something u never thought u would do

the idea was that aspiring photographers and aspiring models would meet up, get experience, and maybe make professional relationships

you? young and cute

all these photographers? 36 yr old dudes

they always invite you to their studios in their houses

to do artsy half nude shoots

so u were pretty unwilling to meet up with most of them

(understandable)

but then this one schmuck posts in the group, just when u so happen to be looking for weekend plans

“looking for a model this saturday, autumn themed shoot at han river. the leaves are really pretty right now, i wanna catch them before too many fall”

han river was a pretty public place, so u DEFINITELY felt safer

and like, ur school is pretty close to there, so ur familiar with the area

u comment “i'm free all day, give me a time and i'll meet you there”

after it posted, you clicked on his profile and

fuck

he was not 36

and he was CUTE

u freaked the fuck out

this kid looked like he was ur age. and he was hot.

should u delete the comment?

why would u do that?

bc ur nervous?

why are u nervous?

bc the photographer is a hottie?

is that really a good excuse?

before u could debate with urself much longer, ur comment received a like and u got a private message

hyunjin: hi! u look great! meet at the main gates of yeouido park at 9am?

“u look great!”

“U LOOK GREAT!”

(jooe sunbaenim is quaking)

screech

you: so early! okay! what kinda look are u going for?

hyunjin: haha i wanna get that fall morning light!!! i’d like it to be pretty autumnal. warm colors, maybe a sweater/scarf/jacket combo? if u have something like that. minimal makeup & hair, if you're into that stuff. hopefully that's all okay (^ム^)

you: sounds good! see you saturday!

you spend the next few days at school literally just thinking about how ur meeting up with a cutie on saturday

u rlly dont know what to do with urself

i show ur friend a pic of him and she's like “HOOYKY FUXKJGN GODJ”

which was basically your initial reaction too

but then shes like “he looks familiar??? is he a model too???”

u have literally no idea but it's completely possible

like, it's a waste to have that face exclusively behind the camera

and suddenly the two of u are like. obsessively going through his instagram bc WHAT THE FUCK he’s like….. REALLY GOOD

like, he does a lot of portraits, but the focus isn't necessarily always the person in the photo

the composition and background are just as important in every shot and it…. shakes u

there’s a few pictures of him too, all of which are v aesthetic

but how could they not be??? have u seen his face????

he also tags literally every person in his pictures whether they’re models or just his friends while they’re hanging out

and he photocreds everyone who takes pics of him!!

you are literally…. fallin’ in love

because he was cute and had a good eye and wrote cute captions and was so humble!!!

ur friend is like “wow we stan a pro”

“he looks seriously familiar tho, right?”

she's like “yeah i'm confused why have i seen his face before”

and ur shook bc like… if u had seen this boy irl there's no way you would forget how cute he is

finally,,, it's the weekend

you get on the train and head to han river early in the morning, dressed up and made up for your ~autumn photoshoot~

as soon as you get to the gates ur like.. holy fuck

it's so pretty

the leaves are a mix of orange and red and green and there's a couple dusting the ground too

no wonder hyunjin wanted to shoot here

ur kinda aimlessly wandering around the gate when u suddenly spot

him

he’s wearing a bomber jacket and has a camera bag over his shoulder

and his neck is literally at a 90° angle while he's looking at his phone

ur like…. that cant be ok

u get a notif while ur walking up to him and its a message from him asking if u were on ur way

“actually, i can't make it”

he looks up and immediately laughs. “hi! y/n?”

u wave. “hi hyunjin!! nice to meet you!!”

y'all exchange pleasantries and he's suddenly like

“your outfit is literally perfect” he steps back to look at u. “exactly what i had in mind”

u put up a peace sign. he laughs again.

uh oh

u really like his laugh

and his smile

and his everything

uh oh

he leads you further into the park where there's less people and more trees

“i brought another jacket and a couple of scarves in case u wanted something different” u say as he's helping you take off ur backpack

“oooooo a professional”

“not even”

he asks you if he can take a boomerang of u for his instagram story and u do a lil twirl

he gasps

“that was cute!!!!”

he giggles while he's posting it

what is with this kid and his giggles

u cant

if he keeps doin it at this rate, it'll probably be the death of u 

which is

cool

he puts your backpack on and pulls his camera out of his bag. “let's take some pics in this outfit and then i'll peek at the other options. i like this look a lot”

and then… he just starts taking pictures

u literally laugh

“where do you want me?”

“wherever,” he goes, checking the pics real fast. “i tend to go for candid shots”

suddenly,,, his entire instagram flashes in your brain

the pictures of people laughing and mid walk and reading books

u thought all the models were just. really comfy and professionals and shit

IT WAS ALL A LIE

“so uhhh…” u literally dont know what to do

u have Never done a shoot Like This

“just walk,” he said. “look around. i'll follow”

you: no fear

hyunjin: just walk

you: one fear

u nervously laugh again and he's hitting his shutter like A MILLION TIMES A SECOND

“okay…… i guess i'll walk then”

u push his shoulder while u walk past him bc he's cheesin at u way too hard for u to handle

“ow”

“that didn't hurt”

“it hurt my heart :(“

ur walking backwards and laughing and he's just. only looking at you through his camera.

so. u wander.

u take a lovely morning walk down the pretty paths at han river

u really were so scared that u would be completely directionless, but hyunjin ends up asking you to do specific things also

“go up on those rocks”

“i'm literally wearing slippery ass boots do you want me to die”

“do it for the shot, y/n”

sIGHHHHHH

so ur up on some rocks trying not to fall into a fucking river

and when hyunjin shows u the pics he takes….

okay

yeah

he was right

the entire time he was shooting, he would just strike up conversation to make you comfy

asking how long you've been pursuing modelling

if u wanna do it as a career or if its just a hobby

about ur family

about ur pets

(he asks a lot about pets)

ur sitting on a bench and he's crouched a few feet away to get those ~angles~ when he asks

“where do u go to school?”

“kyunggi”

hyunjin gasps. “no way! me too!”

you fuckin ALMOST DIE

because u fuckin brainblast and have a recovered memory of seeing hyunjin In Your School's Uniform in the lunchroom and suddenly IT ALL MAKES SENSE

you hop up from the bench and like. YELL.

“OKAY I THOUGHT YOU LOOKED REALLY FAMILIAR ARE YOU KIDDING”

he stands and literally screams and u are. so shocked. “i thought you looked really familiar too!!!! i figured i just had seen your pics on the facebook group!!!! i highkey stalked ur instagram bc i couldn't figure out where i knew you from!!”

okay, wig

he stalked you also which is….. great

“what year are you???”

“i'm a junior!”

you push him.

“boi what the fuck! me too!”

“no way!!!” he's laughing “that's crazy!”

he literally pulls out his phone and opens instagram

u have never seen a person use instagram stories as much as this bitch

like, he intermittently pulls out his phone to get shots for his story

u almost threw hands when u were sliding around on some stupid wet rocks bc he was like “JUMP AGAIN I NEED IT FOR A BOOMERANG”

he does this cute lil hair flip and adjusts his bangs before he starts recording and u…. kinda wanna cry

“I KNEW Y/N LOOKED FAMILIAR”

he spins so ur in the shot with him and puts his arm over your shoulders

“WE'RE LITERALLY IN THE SAME YEAR AT THE SAME SCHOOL”

u laugh out loud

he laughs with you and u have to cover ur mouth so an uwu doesn't fall out

u try not to focus on his literally perfect eye smile as he hunches over his phone to post to his story

like,,,

those crescents

are so cute

and he has this lingering grin every time he laughs

and like. wow. lips. amirite. ladies and gents.

“i cant believe u go to kyunggi,” u say. bc u cant.

“what are the odds. out of all the people in that group, we end up meeting up”

u almost made a joke about it being destiny but then u were like oo no thats creepy dont say that

then hyunjins gasps

and u look at him

and he just looks at you wide eyed

and fucking

whispers

“destiny”

you scream laugh

he's laughing too

but on a real level ur like why would that have been super creepy if u said it but it was cute as hell (and a little heart fluttery) when he did?

he goes on saying it's crazy that you had never had any classes together over the years

“or any clubs,” u said

“yeah!!! what clubs do you do??”

“photography! which is why i'm shocked!!!”

hyunjin gasps again

wtf is up with this boy and his gasps

“i was gonna do photography but they meet the same days as dance!”

BITCH

WHAT THE FUCK

“I DONT DO DANCE BC THEY MEET THE SAME DAYS AS PHOTOGRAPHY”

his entire jaw drops off his damn face

“YOU DANCE TOO?”

“I’M JUST AS SHOCKED AS YOU ARE”

u literally can't believe

“we've been barely missing each other all this time when we could have been best friends :(“

oh ow

ouch hyunjin

that got u right in ur weak heart

like literally u might have a heart condition now bc he just hit u with the “we could have been best friends”

“sorry i already have a best friend”

DGDGSH WHY DID YOU SAY THAT

then he's laughing and ur like… oh fuck wheew

“well, sorry, i'm replacing them now. we have to catch up on lost time.”

and honestly………. he's right

number 1: y'all are both photography nerds

even tho you have begun to skew on the modelling side of it, u always loved taking pictures of scenery and u knew way too much about how cameras worked

and hyunjin really was like a pro

u had watched him adjust settings on his camera for white balance and exposure and everything

and judging by his instagram, he set himself up for some flawless editing too

number 2: y'all are both dance nerds

he tells u basically all his friends are in the dance club and have formed a lil dance crew bc of it

u say u used to take classes when u were younger but now u just go to the gym and hide in a practice room for a few hours every week

he does hip hop! which is so predictable but u still act all surprised

u tell him u used to do ballet but ur much more into urban dance these days

number 3: y'all both don't know how to stop laughing

like literally if either of you do anything remotely funny the other one is fucked for five minutes

ur pretty sure 90% of the pics hyunjin was taking were of you covering your face because ur literally GUFFAWING

and like, y'all ain't even that funny

but the more you laugh the less funny shit has to be for you to be crying

hyunjin told u to stop making him laugh bc his fingers were getting weak and he didnt wanna drop his camera

you, trying not to giggle: its ok u have a strap around ur neck u can drop it

hyunjin, tears flowing freely: PLEASE LET ME BREATHE

number 4: y'all both LOVE UR PETS

like idk man he tells u about kkami and u freak the fuck out because he's just SO EXCITED ABT HIS PUP

and hyunjin almost ditches u right then n there when u say ur more of a cat person BUT he forgives u because ur cat is literally named hot dog

this is highkey the most fun you've ever had on a shoot

like, you feel so comfortable with hyunjin

and every time you take breaks to peek at the pictures he's been taking

u like … literally stop breathing

he's so talented ;;

you eventually swap jackets and scarves and wander around more

and literal hours later hyunjin's like

“are u hungry”

u stare. “always”

he laughs. “do you wanna go to the convenience store and make ramen”

“i thought you'd never ask”

so y'all go to the conbini and pick out ya fave ramen packets

(and some chips and candy bc u have literally no self control)

hyunjin really tries to buy your food for you but you yell at him while ur checking out bc Boi. No.

the cashier: watched the two of you look at food and bump into each other constantly, touching each others arms and giggling the whole time

you: leave me the fuck alone hwang hyunjin or i'm calling the cops!!!

the cashier: ????????

u make ur ramen at the handy dandy hot water dispenser and carefully bring it back to a seating area in the park

“be careful it's hot!!!”

“hyunjin please, u act like i'm not a ramen pro”

“i just didnt want u to burn ur cute lil mouth, damn”

ur entire being goes WEE WOO WEE WOO

u literally almost choke on nothing and you just cough to try to play it off

hyunjin is having none of it

he's laughing his ass off

“wow that got you better than i expected”

“fuck off hwang”

he stands up to leave and u laugh and grab his sleeve

he's giggling before he even sits again

y'all eat ur ramen and chat more about school and hobbies

he tells u about this one time he almost got admitted into a cult

you: wow… pretty AND dumb

hyunjin, flustered: h-hey!

you tell him about how your cat is a rescue and his heart melts

there's a minute where you're staring at nothing in the distance eating chips

and hyunjin is just staring at you

his brain: hoe dont do it

his heart: doki doki

his brain: oh my god

“hey… are you still free all day?”

u look at him. “yeah, why?”

he opens a bag of gummies. “i'm supposed to meet up with some friends to go bowling in like an hour but i wanna keep hanging out. wanna come?”

you groan. “i'm so bad at bowling”

“we can be on a team,” he offers you a gummy bear and you take it. “i'll carry you.”

pls explain why an image of him holding you bridal style popped into ur head sgdhhf

“haha okay. as long as ur friends aren't lame.”

“they are, but i'll be there so it's fine”

“fair enough. i'm in.”

so y'all hop on a bus and head to the bowling alley that (apparently) hyunjin and his buddies frequent

(he's playing pickles with you in the back of the bus and you're giggling so hard that ur struggling to tell him to cut it the fuck out so you don't disturb the people sitting next to you)

((but also feeling his entire body press against you isn't the worst))

you've been to this bowling alley before

it's popular among younger folks because it's cheap lol

the two of you walk in and one of his friends immediately starts yelling

u freeze “dude i thought u said we were gonna be early”

he looked at his phone “we literally are”

this blonde kid is yelling hyunjin's name and ur wide eyed while u follow

“UR LATE”

“I'M NOT”

“IT'S 2:20”

“WE SAID 2:30!!!”

“TELL THAT TO LITERALLY EVERYONE WHO SHOWED UP AT TWO!!!!!”

hyunjin looks over to the group of his friends already bowling a game “oh”

u bust out laughing

hyunjin gets all flustered like “i-i thought it was 2:30!!!”

“who's ur friend, my perpetually late son”

“o-oh,,, this is y/n”

his friend sticks out his hand for you to shake. “hi, i'm chan. were you the model today?”

you grin “are you saying i look like a model?”

“OKAY!” hyunjin grabs your shoulders and you giggle when chan stutters without responding while hyunjin drags you to the counter to rent shoes and pay for a game

hyunjin is: flustered

he's all embarrassed because he was late and got yelled at by his fake dad

and then u went and,,,, u were so smooth with chan

he wondered if you had been flirting with him all morning because you actually liked him or,,, ur just a flirt

he grabbed your wallet out of your hand and shoved it in his pocket so that he could pay for your shoes and game for you.

“hyunjin!!!!!”

“you wouldn't let me buy you food and you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me if you argue i swear i'll throw you down a lane”

you pout but you let him pay

and ur heart,,, it goes off, dude

like,,,, maybe,,,,,,, u would let him throw you sgdgshsh

y'all walk over to the lane his friends are on, bowling shoes in hand

“y/n!”

your face lights tf up. “seungmin!!”

hyunjin looks between the two of you probably six times while you hug before finally going “w-what”

you and seungmin look at each other, then at hyunjin

hyunjin: you know each other

you and seungmin, in sync: photography club

hyunjin: alright, well,

he announces to everyone your name and you were his new best friend and that if any of them had a problem with it they could talk to his fist

you, softly, but with feeling: f-fuck

y'all change your shoes and watch as his friends finish up their game

while they play, hyunjin points each person out and tells you their name, helping you learn all these new people

since u guys were twenty (20) minutes late, they were already almost done with the first game

they were all pretty good. 

well. most of them were.

the guy hyunjin pointed out as jisung kept getting gutter, but he was having fun

everyone else kept getting strikes or spares and u were like oh god

you keep telling hyunjin that ur really bad at bowling

hyunjin: i'll teach you. it'll be like ghost.

you, softly, but with more feeling: f-fUck

you, realization washing over you: wait how would you even-

hyunjin: *giggles*

hyunjin's giggles.

send tweet.

the entire time you were entirely too conscious of how close he was to you

you could feel the burning on your shoulder, thigh, knee - all the contact points where his body bumped into yours

your knee bobbed involuntarily while you watched the game end, nervously anticipating your turn to hit the gutter

and suddenly, hyunjin's hand was gently placed on your knee

it stopped bobbing

you looked at his hand, then at him

he smiled, but kept looking forward

“relax. even if you're bad, i'll hype you up.”

it was barely above a whisper so you wondered for a sec if he was even talking to you

hhhhHHHHH THIS BOY

yall start bowling.

he was. not all talk.

like who the fuck is good at bowling

hyunjin, apparently

he fuckin. chucked that ball down the lane

it made a smooth curve and took out. every. pin.

you stared at the empty lane in disbelief as hyunjin got a couple high fives from his friends making his way towards you

"not bad, right?"

"bro what the fuck"

he laughed and held out a hand to help you up "we bowl a lot"

you didnt even process fully that he was pulling you out of your seat because it was your turn. 

ur hands: sweaty

ur arms: spaghetti

ur vomit: on ur sweater already

not actually

u picked up the ball hyunjin had helped you pick and looked at him like a deer in headlights

"bro i havent bowled since i was six"

he giggled. "you can do this"

he walked with u and showed you his starting stance, gently adjusting the way your wrists twisted and patting your hip

u. tried to not blush. no word on how well you did.

he guided you through your walk up and when u let go of the ball..

…

……

YOU DIDNT HIT GUTTER

you SCREAMED 

"BRO I HIT A PIN!!!!!!!!!!!!"

hyunjin gave you a Sick High Ten, laughing "now you gotta hit the other nine!"

you froze

fuck

the others were starting to calm down from the excitement of your first half-frame, anticipating your second hit

you watched your ball return from the lane n went over to grab it

hyunjin looked at you Once and was likr….. is that caspar the ghost

the color had DRAINED from you

u…. u hit a pin…… thats like the best u've ever done

n now you gotta TOP THAT?

"its like dancing," he said suddenly. u looked at him, desperate to hear advice in terms u understood. "even if you can go through the motions, it doesnt necessarily make you good. you have to trust your body to remember the motions, give it a little finesse, and that's when you start to get Really good."

you blinked at him

"was that supposed to be helpful"

"can you Shut the Fuck Up and Bowl"

you took a deep breath, adjusting your stance as hyunjin reminded you of the steps you needed to take

another breath

steps

swing

let go…..

roollllingngg…………

*HIGH PITCHED WAILING*

"I HIT FOUR PINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

hyunjin scoops u up in a hug, spinning you around

ur too busy SCREAMING to register whats happening until he puts you down

u stare at him a second

he stares at you

"GOOD JOB Y/N!!!!!"

you turn to seungmin, who also scoops you into a hug, the rest of the boys crowding around you

you didnt even have a chance to be embarrassed about the weird eye contact you n hyunjin made

or about how. everyone in the bowling alley was staring at you guys.

because like…… suddenly

you just made a bunch of new friends

and one of them

helped you hit a pin for the first time.

and maybe….

he was still holding your hand

and maybe that felt really nice.

[sciencespies]

An Alien Comet From Another Star Is Soaring Through Our Solar System

https://sciencespies.com/news/an-alien-comet-from-another-star-is-soaring-through-our-solar-system/

An Alien Comet From Another Star Is Soaring Through Our Solar System

Something strange is sailing toward us. Something small and cold and extraordinarily fast. No one knows where it came from, or where it is going. But it’s not from around here. This is an interstellar comet – an ancient ball of ice and gas and dust, formed on the frozen outskirts of a distant star, which some lucky quirk of gravity has tossed into our path. To astronomers, the comet is a care package from the cosmos – a piece of a place they will never be able to visit, a key to all the worlds they cannot directly observe.

It is only the second interstellar interloper scientists have seen in our solar system. And it’s the first one they’ve been able to get a good look at. By tracking the comet’s movement, measuring its composition and monitoring its behaviour, researchers are seeking clues about the place it came from and the space it crossed to get here. They have already found a carbon-based molecule and possibly water – two familiar chemicals in such an alien object.

As the Sun sinks behind the Tennessee mountains, and stars wink into view, astronomer Doug Durig climbs onto the rooftop of his observatory, powers up his three telescopes and angles them skyward.

Every night, the comet grows bigger and brighter in the sky, expelling streams of gas and dust that may offer up clues to its history. On Dec. 8, it will make its nearest approach to Earth, offering researchers an up-close glimpse before it zooms back into the freezing, featureless void.

Far below in the darkness, Durig will be waiting.

Each star in the night sky represents a possible solar system. Every light in the universe is, more likely than not, some alien planet’s sun.

This is the chief lesson of two decades of studying exoplanets. Scientists have identified thousands of worlds beyond our solar system: gas giants and tiny rocky spheres, worlds lit by dim red suns and ones that orbit the spinning remains of collapsed stars. There are even planets circling medium-size yellow suns like ours – though nothing found so far can match the breathable atmosphere and deep, blue oceans of Earth.

Yet even when viewed through the most powerful telescopes, exoplanets are not discernible as anything more than specks of light. And no human alive has a hope of travelling to another star – merely approaching the nearest one would take 40,000 years.

Scientists’ best hope for closely examining another solar system was to wait for a piece of one to come to us.

It was August 30, in the quiet moments before dawn, when a self-taught astronomer in a Crimean mountain village spotted a faint smudge low on the horizon, barely distinguishable against the glittering background of stars.

Gennady Borisov submitted his observations to the Minor Planet Center, the astronomers’ clearinghouse for information about small bodies in the solar system, so other scientists could take a look.

One night later, halfway across the planet, the strange report caught Durig’s eye.

“I was the second person to observe it,” Durig said. “That confirmed the comet was real.”

Within a couple of weeks, scientists had collected enough observations to calculate the comet’s orbit. But they did not find the oval path that comets typically make around the sun. Instead, the orbit was hyperbolic – it did not close in on itself. The object was also traveling at the blistering speed of 93,000 miles per hour, far faster than any comets, asteroids or planets orbiting our sun.

“Wow,” said Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who was among the first people to determine that the comet came from another star. “I was not expecting to see anything like that.”

Comet’s straight path slightly deflected by the sun’s gravitational pull (L), position relative to Earth (R) Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Olmsted, F. Summers (STScI)

There has been only one other interstellar object spotted in our solar system: a cigar-shaped rock named ‘Oumuamua, a Hawaiian word that translates to “messenger from afar.”

But ‘Oumuamua was already on its way out of the system when it was discovered in October 2017, and it was so faint that scientists were never able to view it as more than a single pixel of light. They were not quite sure what they had seen – was it a metallic, rocky asteroid or an icy, dusty comet? And they were unsure whether the detection was just a lucky fluke, never to be repeated, or a harbinger of things to come.

So researchers were thrilled when, less than two years later, another interstellar traveler arrived.

The new comet, which has been named 2I/Borisov (indicating its discoverer and its status as the second known interstellar object), is expected to be within reach of telescopes until fall 2020. At its closest approach, next month, it will be twice as far from Earth as Earth is from the sun.

Though it entered the solar system from the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia, scientists do not know yet where 2I/Borisov came from, or how long it has drifted through the desolation of interstellar space. Given its current speed, it has certainly been traveling for millions, if not billions, of years.

As the object gets closer to the sun’s warmth, ices on its surface turn into gas. This creates the characteristic halo-like “coma,” which scientists can scrutinize to determine what the comet is made of. Already, 2I/Borisov has been observed more than 2,000 times.

“That’s going to be fun, in terms of looking at this object . . . as it comes in from the deep freeze for the very first time,” said Michele Bannister, an astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast. “Let’s open it up and see what we have with this particular present from another star.”

Astronomer Doug Durig waits in darkness for images of the celestial object 2I/Borisov Photo Credit: Washington Post photo by Sarah Kaplan

Exoplanet discoveries revealed we live in a crowded cosmos. But they also awakened Earthlings to how lonely we are. Mostplanetary systems discovered in recent decades are wildly unfamiliar, and the most common type of exoplanet – a body larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune – doesn’t exist near our home.

When astronomers had only our own solar system to go by, “it used to seem like planet formation was solved,”said Malena Rice, an astrophysicist at Yale University. “And then all of a sudden there are all these strange systems that don’t fit our picture.”

Interstellar comets are uniquely useful for confronting this conundrum. They are born of the same swirling disk of gas and dust that produces planets around an infant star. But then they get stranded at the icy edges of solar systems, where they can preserve the early ingredients of planet formation.

Comets in our own solar system have been found to contain some of the basic ingredients for life: water, carbon, even complex organic compounds. Now 2I/Borisov could tell us whether life’s essential molecules were among the building blocks of a world beyond our own.

This fall, Bannister’s colleague Alan Fitzsimmons produced the first-ever detection of a chemical compound emitted by an interstellar comet. Separating light from 2I/Borisov into its component parts, his team found a signature of cyanogen, a molecule made of a carbon atom and a nitrogen atom bonded together. The gas is common in comets around this sun.

“When I saw that, I shouted in my office . . . something not repeatable in a respectable newspaper,” Fitzsimmons recalled.

A few weeks later, astronomer Adam McKay detected oxygen streaming off the comet, an indicator that sunlight is striking water on the surface and breaking up the molecule. If confirmed, this would be the first-ever detection of alien water in our solar system. It is also another sign that 2I/Borisov is much like the comets we know.

“Even in these other systems where their architectures are very different, maybe the underlying physics and chemistry is still pretty similar,” said McKay, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Models of our solar system suggest that about 90 percent of the leftover material from planet formation was ejected into interstellar space. The space beyond Neptune still harbours millions of icy bodies, which over millennia can be knocked out of orbit and slung away from the sun.

If any of these scattered fragments happen to be pulled into another system and start to glow in the heat of its star, they will appear as interstellar comets to whoever might be watching.

“There’s a universality to that, which is amazing,” Bannister said. “Our planetary system is woven together with another planetary system by these little wanderers roving across the galaxy.”

With just an hour to go until daybreak, 2I/Borisov is due to appear above the horizon and make its way across the eastern sky. Durig’s long night is almost over.

Sewanee: The University of the South, the 1,600-student liberal arts college where Durig works, does not have the massive instruments needed to resolve faint night-sky objects. Instead, he must take hundreds of images of the same spot, then use a computer program to layer them so dim lights become clear.

The astronomer checks the focus of his 12-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and sets it to work, snapping pictures of the place where the interstellar comet is expected to be. He rubs a hand across his eyes, itchy from hours spent beneath the dim red lights he uses to protect his night vision.

It is tiring and often tedious work. Unlike discoverers, follow-up observers do not get to put their names on anything. And unlike researchers working at the world’s largest observatories, someone such as Durig faces real hurdles in achieving the findings that get published in prestigious journals.

Still, extraordinary discoveries must be confirmed and refined, again and again, by ordinary people. News may be made by breakthroughs, but knowledge is cemented in the follow-ups.

Here in Sewanee’s cramped observatory, cluttered with stacks of observation records and piles of broken equipment he hopes to one day refashion into something usable, “we’re doing essential science,” Durig says. “We’re filling in all the gaps.”

Once his telescope has captured an hour’s worth of snapshots, Durig compiles them into stacks of 100. In the images that emerge, colours are inverted, so stars appear as black smears on a white background. In the lower left is a dark dot encircled in a halo of fuzz.

Durig clicks forward to the next stack, and the dot moves by a centimetre. Another click, and it moves again.

That’s how he knows he is looking at the comet, something swift and surrounded by dust, something that does not behave like anything else in the sky.

Durig sends his images and a record of the comet’s location to the Minor Planet Center – another drop of data in the bucket of scientific knowledge.

Consistent observations like this, conducted by the same people using the same instruments every night, will be even more important once the comet becomes visible in the Southern Hemisphere, where many of the world’s biggest telescopes are positioned. They need to be pointed with extreme precision, so astronomers must have a firm handle on the comet’s trajectory and things that might subtly alter it, such as outbursts of gas.

An accurate orbit is also key to astronomers’ most ambitious plan for the comet.

“If we can get the best possible trajectory, so we can trace it back with the exact direction it’s coming in . . . maybe we can find out what the origin system is,” said Farnocchia, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer.

Identifying the comet’s parent star would be a tremendous feat, the astronomical equivalent of tracing a message in a bottle back to the person who sent it millions of years ago from billions of miles away. It may not turn out to be possible, most scientists acknowledge.

But maybe that’s okay, they say. Because the comet will have already revealed so much else. It will have told us something about the birth of solar systems. It will have connected our home to the workings of the wider galaxy. And now that we have seen it, it is easier to believe that more are out there to be found.

Here on Earth, together in the darkness, Durig and his fellow astronomers will be waiting.

© The Washington Post 2019

#News

[popgoesthewiener]

Play Ball - Filmore Anderson/Firkle - SFW

Title: Play Ball Author: Daisy  Fandom: South Park Setting: Filmore Anderson’s Backyard Pairing: Filmore Anderson/Firkle Characters: Filmore Anderson, Firkle, Quaid, Michael Genre: Romance/Humor Rating: T Chapters: 1/1 Word Count: 1927 Type of Work: One-shot, Part of the Play With Me Series Status: Complete Warnings: Gay, Slash, Yaoi, Established Relationship, Innuendo, Headcanons Employed, Unbeta’d Disclaimer: I don’t own anything. Summary: Filmore just wanted to share everything with Firkle, including his football years. AN: Hey, everyone! It’s my birthday, today, so this is probably all that’s going to be written. xD I don’t think I have much more personal time. Anyway, this fic is for @filmoreandersonx, my good friend. ; u; I promised I’d have it done yesterday but some stuff happened. X.x Hope you enjoy!

Play With Me Series Masterlist Play Ball ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ “Come on, babe, it’s not that hard. I can do it.” Filmore chuckled to himself, tossing the football from one hand to the other, standing about ten feet from his loving boyfriend. The goth didn’t look very impressed with his explanation, crossing his arms over his chest and shifting his weight to one leg. Standing there in his black turtleneck, black jeans and too-large boots, he looked like a small stormcloud against the backdrop of the bright, sunny summer day.

“Yes, but you and I both know that you have no fear of balls raining from the sky. The only kind of balls I like are the ones I can fit in my mouth.” They both knew what he meant, and Filmore’s red cheeks showed it. Still, he readied himself to throw, form perfect, one leg back and arm poised, and Firkle’s first instinct was to flinch. “I’m not going to hit you.” The jock cooed sweetly. “You’re going to hit me because I can’t catch.” The goth replied with a cautious frown. “Just try for me? Please?” The pout that got Filmore out of more trouble than he knew slipped onto his face and that was the end of it. “Okay, fine, but if you hit me in the face, I’m going to make you sleep by yourself.” Firkle responded finally, sighing with defeat. Trying to get into a position to catch the football, he couldn’t deny he was embarrassed when his lover barked a genuine, enthusiastic laugh.  “I am definitely going to hit you in the face if you hunker down like that. Here,” Jogging over and showing off his muscles beneath the barely-there t-shirt he’d cut most of the side out of, the jock set the ball at their feet. Gently moving his hands over the other’s body, he turned his light caresses into easy angling, until he had Firkle positioned just right. “There. Now, I’m going to throw it, and you’re going to catch it perfectly because you don’t do anything in any way that isn’t totally flawless.” He winked, and Firkle’s eyes shone with adoration and acceptance. “Alright. Like I said, don’t hit me in the face.” “I won’t.” He promised, patting the ball Firkle hardly remembered watching him pick up again before getting into his best throwing stance. With that, he let it rip and the goth found himself trying his best not to flinch. Years of gym class where he’d been the target of rogue balls of all types left him fearful, even if he trusted his lover thoroughly. Sure, they had had their differences, there was that Month Of Swirlies bullshit from middle school… But Filmore had really grown since they had started this thing they had. He’d even told Quaid to fuck off when he’d been less than enthused to hear of their relationship. Still, a few months of trust did nothing to keep the goth from ducking and giving the world’s most Un-Goth Yelp ever as it finally hit the downward spiral that would lead it to his waiting arms. Instead, it bounced off of his ass as he cowered in the elder teen’s backyard. Filmore’s laugh was soft, this time, and he jogged right back over, picking Firkle up with his arms around his waist. Holding the slighter male against his chest in an almost crushing hug, he nuzzled his back gently.  “I told you I wouldn’t hit you in the face, didn’t I?” He chuckled, kissing the other’s spine. “You hit me in the ass, though!” But there was a laugh on Firkle’s lips, regardless. “I wouldn’t have if you would have tried to catch it.” He offered, grinning as the little goth began to wiggle in his arms. “Put me down, you meathead.” There was no bite to his words, and he yelped as the other fell back onto his ass, taking him down with him. Pinning Firkle down to the grass on his back, he nestled his face in the other’s neck. “Look, babe. I know you’ve had a lot of people that hurt you. Especially in gym, with footballs and--” “Quaid threw a medicine ball at my face once. It’s why my nose is a little off kilter.” Filmore made sure to press a gentle kiss into the bridge of it. “Your nose is beautiful. You’re beautiful.” And he’d say it a thousand times, in a million languages, until Firkle believed it just as much as he did. As much as all of his Instagram followers did. They had been pushing for Firkle to join in on videos and photos and things, and the goth just didn’t think he had a good side for the camera. It didn’t stop Filmore from making his favorite picture of them, the first one they took together, all snuggled up on his bed, as his lock screen on his phone.  “And you are known for false complements to get something you want out of someone.” Firkle’s smile didn’t falter, and he leaned in to nuzzle their noses together. Kissing him softly, the goth sighed, rather happy when his lipstick stuck and they both were smeared purple. “So, what do you want?” “All of your love is enough for me,” Answered the jock, before tapping his lip for a second like he was thinking, “Though if you didn’t chicken out when I threw a football for you, that would be a close second.” “I didn’t chicken out!” Though he knew he had, the goth wasn’t ready to admit to it. The look he earned was enough to have him looking away, decently shamed, “Okay, okay. I totally pussed out. If I try and catch it, now, will you stop pouting at me? Seriously, that look could make a tiger leave you alone.” “I always thought of myself as the tiger, not the prey.” Baring down and wiggling his ass playfully like a cat would, Filmore pretended to pounce on his lover, biting his bare shoulder gently and making him moan. Oh, he knew exactly what he was doing. And it was working, too. “So you’re going to eat me?” Squeaked the goth, writhing after those teeth only tightened on his flesh and his entire body seized after the grip grew vice-like. The choked moan that left him was enough to have Filmore giving an answering groan, and he knew suddenly that this was going in a bad direction to be so public. “I could.” He whispered, kissing the other’s ear, then the teeth marks he’d left behind, “But you have a ball to catch. I’ll tackle you and protect the sack once you’ve caught it. ‘Kay?” “Uh… Y-yeah, okay. You should have scrambled my brains after I caught the damn thing.” While he tried to sound grumpy, Firkle sounded more like he was pouting.  “Maybe with your brains scrambled, you won’t be so afraid.” Getting into a pushup position and then lifting off to a standing position, Filmore winked and ran to the ball, picking it up. “Come on, babe, I promise you I’ll toss it gently.”  Pushing up onto his hands, he brought his feet in slowly before finally getting them under him, he jumped a couple times and shook his head out. Trying to remember how Filmore had positioned him the first time, Firkle closed his eyes for a second, imagining the other’s hands on him, opening his eyes again when he was ready. “Throw it.” This time, instead of his All Star Throw, Filmore gave the football a gentle pass that landed against Firkle’s chest. He gasped as his arms instinctively shot up to grab it, and with wide-eyed wonder, he stared at the ball in his embrace. Excited, he looked up at the other with a blooming smile on his face, leaping for joy and throwing the ball down, watching it bounce off down the slight slope of the yard they were in. “And there he is, Firkle Ablah, number one, winning it for the Cows! And the crowd goes wild!” Filmore laughed, jogging over and picking the smaller male up around his waist again, facing him this time. Spinning them, he made loud hissing noises to imitate the crowd, .kissing the other’s stomach and up his chest a little bit. “Oh my Gods, Filmore Fucking Anderson put me down!” If Filmore made him laugh one more time today, Firkle was going to kill him. Maybe with love, however, before he cupped the other’s cheeks and leaned down, kissing him a la The Notebook’s DVD cover, minus the rain.  “I’m starting to think you actually believe my middle name is ‘Fucking’.” Filmore mumbled against the other’s lips, kissing him back softly and nuzzling their noses together slowly.  “Maybe it is. I sure call you it enough.” Firkle muttered, kissing the other’s cheek and rocking forward, pushing the other over towards the grass again. “Hey!” But that was all he got out before Firkle continued to kiss him. Tongues slipped wet and hot against one another, and the pair stayed like that for far too long. Possessively biting at Filmore’s lips, the goth made sure that his mouth would be very obviously claimed, much like his shoulder. Soon, their kisses turned to soft chuckles and giggles, hands wandering beneath the shade of the large tree in the back yard. Firkle eventually rolled off of his lover, snuggling up against him. “I’m never doing this sports thing again. You should have taken a video.” He informed, only half-joking. “Who says I didn’t? I’ve been streaming this whole thing, even if the angle might have messed up. My phone fell over.” “You what?” Shooting up, Firkle glared immediately at the other’s phone, frowning, “You ass, you didn’t even--”  Another kiss distracted him, and Filmore brought him into his lap, petting over his sides. “Shh, it’s okay, babe. Everyone wanted to see you. See us. I just wanted to prove that I’m with you, not Quaid. Since I only take pictures with him, they started to wonder.” “You are so lucky that your lips taste good and I love you.” That hadn’t been what he’d thought he was going to say. He had yet to say that out loud, and here he was, saying it for the internet to enjoy. “I mean-- I--” “You already said it, babycakes.” Filmore cooed, kissing his cheek gently, nuzzling him, “I love you, too.” He added, quickly, seeing the distress in the slightly younger male’s eyes. This didn’t, admittedly, help his fear, at least, not visually. “Quaid’s going to kill me, and Michael’s going to kill you.” He whispered softly into the other’s ear, pressing their cheeks together. “Let me think about them. You just relax in the knowledge that you’re mine, and I’ll protect you.” It was a comforting thought, but Michael wasn’t going to be an easy, open-and-shut case. “Alright.” He mumbled, kissing at Filmore’s cheek. “So, can we go back inside? I’m going to be on fire if I stay in all this sunshine much longer.” “I guess so.” Filmore pouted again, and Firkle wasn’t having it, leaning in and kissing him on the mouth.  “You mean ‘yes, Firkle, let’s go inside before you turn into a permanent tomato’, don’t you?” “Of course, babe.” Picking the smaller male up, he swung him over his shoulder and made sure to grab his phone and turn off the stream before carting the other up to his room to reward him for all he’d done this morning.  ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ AN: This was supposed to be a lot shorter. xD But who cares? I’m rather proud of this! I hope you guys like it. Happy Birthday to me!

[entergamingxp]

The Diamond Casino Heist is GTA Online’s most exhilarating score and an exercise in self-parody • Eurogamer.net

In one of the opening missions of GTA Online’s latest update, heist aficionado and lovable oaf Lester talks about how he was a good kid before he played Street Crimes Gang Wars, the in-universe version of Grand Theft Auto. As the bassline hums in the background, he starts to ramble about the gun-toting opportunists trying to lift your cargo, a set of arcade cabinets necessary to kickstart a run-down arcade business, a front for the game’s latest (and greatest) heist. “They must be gamers,” he says.

A walking parody of all things but especially itself, minutes later GTA Online treats me to a radio advert for Shark Cards, the game’s infamous microtransaction system that has made it the most profitable entertainment product of all time. Shutting my car door after a successful delivery, I get my usual daily text from Agent 14 about purchasing a million-dollar Mobile Operations Center to help with the efficiency of my Gunrunning business, one of many plates that need spinning if I’m to stay afloat in this demanding second life. I don’t even want the unnecessary vehicle but my brain, falling prey to the marketing machine, wonders whether completing this latest big score will afford me the currency necessary to get him to stop nagging me.

A packed-out patch for a six-year-old live service, The Diamond Casino Heist is designed to turn heads, all the way down to the balance tweaks that players have been begging for. The greatest issue addressed concerns the most hated (and loved) vehicle introduced in Online’s history, the Oppressor Mk 2.

Here I am posing with my very own Oppressor, which I definitely don’t use to blow up mortals when I’m navel-gazing.

For the uninitiated, the Oppressor is GTA Online’s forbidden fruit, a piece of powerful technology introduced to this virtual society without proper consideration, one that Rockstar can’t take back now that players have adopted it. A gateway to sin and loss of naivety, this flying motorbike can cross the map in minutes and has homing rockets bolted to the front, making it a virtual nihilist’s wet dream. It’s a four million dollar chrome-wrapped beacon of wealth and power that makes most of Online’s most difficult missions laughable.

Rockstar has stuck a five-minute timer on summoning this griefing machine, as well as supposedly reducing phone notifications (I haven’t really noticed) and limiting the ‘Kill Yourself’ command, making it harder to leave this late-capitalist dystopia on your own terms. This is for your own good though – it’s to address a common phenomenon where griefers would kill you and then shoot themselves to balance out their K/D and avoid punishment from Rockstar’s all-seeing eye of Sauron. At this point, it’s impossible for Rockstar to cut out the bad behavior at its root, but a few slaps on the wrist might refocus players into less trivial pursuits.

Speaking of which, now that the Arcade is set up I’m able to start preparing the heist, an innovative, multiple-phase ordeal that is nearly 20 missions long if you fulfill every optional detail. Crews will have to first scope the casino to see what information they can glean on a time limit. You can take photos of entry and exit points, security details and suspicious items, sending them to Lester who will respond with new methods of approach and optional side missions to make the final heist more creative.

This isn’t just the illusion of choice either – the number of security shipments you damage in one mission will directly affect the number of guards in the casino underbelly. Similarly, if you scope out the secret sewer exit you’ll be able to dart away from the cops through a series of subsurface tubes, Italian Job style.

You can choose, spray and upgrade which cars to use in the getaway, with low-brow vehicles equalling a smaller cut from your take.

As you may be able to tell, this latest heist is designed to be completely adaptable. One of the most infuriating aspects of previous heist missions is that if you fail a single objective you’ll have to start again, even if in reality it wouldn’t result in the end of the road. With The Diamond Casino Heist, you can switch tact on the fly and dip into three separate styles of approach if somebody drops the ball – disguised, sneaky or aggressive. This means all is not lost on a single missed headshot or dodgy pathing, you can just brandish a machine-gun and go guns blazing. It feels more reactive, the gameplay reflecting the tense, dynamic approach to heisting seen in Overkill’s Payday 2.

This adaptive style doesn’t transfer to the setup missions, however. What I liked was the space Rockstar allows for you to experiment and come up with your own canon, where I’d have my friends try and cut enemies off at certain map landmarks – one example involved heading to the airfield to steal a dodo to crash into an unruly helicopter that was leaving the mission area. Yet despite probing your imagination, almost all of the prep missions devolve into ‘Lose the Cops’, a crescendo that Rockstar loves to lean on.

There’s an economic angle to the bloat here in that Online enables those with more means to have far superior efficiency. If you’re lucky enough to own an Oppressor, some missions are a joke, asking you to simply race around the map, lock on to a set of targets and tap a button to win, whilst the mere mortals on terra firma have to suffer. The free arcade property you receive for having a Twitch Prime subscription is a welcome gift, especially given that it’s essential for starting the heist proceedings – but it’s also only available as a rebate, which means if you don’t have the million and change upfront you’re going to have to grind or buy a shark card. It’s also in Paleto Bay, a good six and a half miles from the casino…

It’s the litany of long drives to and from the property to the casino that takes the absolute Michael De Santa – even if they inevitably lead to moments of unpredictable candor. There are precious few games where a crew can cruise in a rental sedan and wail their way through the frisson bridge of “I Want It That Way” by The Backstreet Boys. Not even the rotting corpse in the trunk can dampen that kind of team spirit.

Danny Brown’s manic, likable character links with steroid-peddling Brucie from GTA 4 to chaotic effect

We were on assignment to burn a rental car in exchange for disguised casino access from Yung Ancestor, a successful walking satire of a new-wave Soundcloud rapper played by living rap legend Danny Brown. Brown (as himself) also hosts iFruit Radio, a new radio station lampooning Apple Music’s Beats 1. This follows Frank Ocean’s very own Blonded Radio which launched in-game in 2017 – itself a designated radio show on Apple Music. Ain’t it funny how it happens?

Brown waxes about the healing power of Psilocybin with UK grime hero Skepta as a rogue’s gallery of modern musical talent call in to introduce their tracks. Kenny Beats, AJ Tracey, hell even Slowthai makes the cut, the fired-up Northampton rapper who brandished a decapitated bust of Boris Johnson’s head on-stage at this year’s Mercury Prize. By carefully tapping chart-storming artists like DaBaby, Shoreline Mafia and Headie One, the curation team has managed to cram an absurd amount of pop culture catharsis into a two-hour show – the cherry on top of this iFruit salad being a set of exclusive tracks from Denzel Curry and Bauuer that are only available in-game.

Earlier in the week, I wrote about how by completing a quest in GTA Online you could conduct some cross-game archaeology and excavate a revolver in Red Dead Online’s Moonshining update. Further study has revealed that there is even more bleed between the Old West and the new – you can purchase a fortune-telling game for the arcade property that bears Madam Nazar’s likeness and name, the mysterious herald of the Collector role in Red Dead Online.

A lot of her predictions are tongue-in-cheek allusions to community in-jokes, duplication glitches and unsolved Red Dead Redemption 2 mysteries (namely “Where’s Gavin” and the mysterious time-traveler Francis Sinclair) but it turns out there’s actually some feasible bait for the Chiliad Mystery masterminds hiding behind the riddles. If you keep filling it with coins, you’ll eventually hear Nazar make mention of three sets of numbers, which when combined give you a number to call her through time and space in GTA Online, where she responds in even more cryptic terms.

Once you pull on the Emoji masks and embark upon your custom caper, The Diamond Casino Heist quickly proves itself to be the most exciting experience available in GTA Online. Whether you’re using stolen trash to infest the casino with cockroaches or tranquilizing guards with drones, you’ll make it to the vault with your heart in your throat. I’ve always thought that half the magic of a good Rockstar mission is the pulsing score, and this is no different, elevating the tension to almost feverish nausea, where all you care about is getting your cut.

Once in the vault you’ll have to scramble to shove cash in your duffel before the room fills with nerve gas. Paying for a better skeleton crew increases this timer.

Once I finally overcame the heist I felt a mix of relief and pride. I spent my hard-earned money like a true mark – on retail therapy. I’m the proud owner of one of Rockstar’s ripoff A Bathing Ape hoodies and a fancy new livery for my death bike. Come to think of it, Agent 14’s Mobile Operations Center never even crossed my mind. Maybe I’m the problem.

GTA Online is a game that demands more of its players than most, with layers of loading screens, nagging notifications and Daedalian business management systems refusing to let your attention wander. This noise can act as a smokescreen for new players, obscuring the satisfying content available to those who are yet to fight through the game’s service jank. But if you’re on the fence and you have some friends on-call, I honestly urge you to jump back in. Whether you’re a veteran who took an extended vacation from Los Santos or a rookie with a set of Twitch Prime rewards it’s still the most dynamic and limitless multiplayer open-world on the market.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2019/12/the-diamond-casino-heist-is-gta-onlines-most-exhilarating-score-and-an-exercise-in-self-parody-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-diamond-casino-heist-is-gta-onlines-most-exhilarating-score-and-an-exercise-in-self-parody-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[carasarakim-blog]

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[luxus4me]

GolfWRX http://j.mp/2tOfRGX

It’s time for our traditional GolfWRX PSA: Father’s Day (June 17) is rapidly approaching. And as we do every year, we’re rounding up the best gifts for dad.

This year, we’re doing something a little different with the guide. Instead of having one or two writers contribute to the guide, we got four distinct voices to share their opinions on what to get your dad — or, in some cases, what to get your husband on behalf of your children (assuming your toddlers don’t go shopping on their own).

But as we say every year: There’s no better golf-related Father’s Day gift than a round of golf with pops. Be it a country club or your favorite muni, take the time to get together to play 18 if you can.

Anyway, on to the WRX contributors and their selections.

Staff Writer Ben Alberstadt

Callaway Rogue/Rogue Sub Zero

Why not get dad the winner of our GolfWRX Gear Trials Members Choice: The Callaway Rogue Sub Zero? If your dad’s a better player, you may want to consider giving him the driver GolfWRX members liked best. If your dad is an average player with average swing speed, try the Callaway Rogue, our Fitters Choice for average golfers.

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Bushnell Hybrid rangefinder

The latest from the industry leader: Bushnell’s Hybrid rangefinder delivers distance to front and back of the green. Jolt technology will let dad know when he’s locked on to the flag. The combination of technology and ease of use make the Hybrid the right play.

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Titleist USA Flag Headcovers

These premium leather, classically embroidered, patriotic headcovers will add the perfect splash of red, white and blue to dad’s golf bag.

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UA Tuned Golf Propel sunglasses

The UA Tuned Golf lens features a proprietary tint formula for heightened contrast in bright conditions while offering exceptional clarity. Giving golfers a competitive edge, the technology improves depth perception and enhances definition of the fairway and greens to better plan shots and read putts. At least, that’s what Under Armour says. We just say, they look cool, and if they help dad play better golf, even better.

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Golftec lessons

Golftec teaches approximately 1 million lessons annually around the world with the average student dropping seven strokes from their game, according to the company. I say it every year, but giving the gift of better golf — the reasonable probability of improvement, at the very least — may be the best golf gift.

Find a location

Editor-in-Chief Andrew Tursky

Club Champion fitting

As Ben stated above, the best golf gift is improvement. The second best way to improve — or maybe the best way to improve depending on who you ask — is a club fitting. And Club Champion does it right. I recently went through a fitting at the Royal Oak, Michigan, location since I’m switching from righty to lefty. The guys there are top notch fitters, and they have Trackman, a Sam PuttLab, and all the shafts and heads you could need.

Your dad is going to buy new equipment anyway, so it might as well be fit correctly to help him improve his game.

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Custom Artisan lob wedge

The Artisan Golf wedges, ground by legend Mike Taylor himself, aren’t just wedges, but works of art. If you want to give a great gift, custom order an Artisan lob wedge. Take a few photos of his current lob wedge and send a Direct Message to Artisan Golf through their Instagram account. Taylor can essentially replicate the sole grind so your dad will get a wedge that looks great, and performs in a way that’s familiar. You can customize the stampings also, so leave him a message or just get his name engraved on the back. Trust me, pops will be happy with your gift.

Mevo launch monitor

Is the FlightScope Mevo the absolute most accurate launch monitor on the market? No, it’s not. But it’s a 3D Doppler Radar that’s only $500, and it will get close enough on club speed, ball speed, smash factor, launch angle, spin rate, carry distance and flight time to be valuable, and it’s a fun tool to use on the course with your buddies. It’s only about the size of an Altoids can, and can be used inside and outside. Dad will have fun with this gift, I promise.

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GolfWRX Store

If dad reads GolfWRX.com, it’s very likely he’ll appreciate a GolfWRX hat, divot tool or new headcover. We have some awesome designs made by the best manufacturers in the business, AND we’re offering 10 percent off for the holiday. That’s 10 percent off the entire store (use the code Father10WRX). The only problem is that if dad reads GolfWRX, that means he’s likely reading this story and will know you got a discount. He won’t care though, he’ll appreciate the smart shopping and great gift.

Check out our store here (and remember to use Father10WRX)!

Links and Kings headcovers

Check out these headcovers and tell me that dad won’t love one of these beauties. You can’t. They have a number of different designs, and you can customize them to your liking, too. Here’s a tip: Think of his favorite sports team and get a set of covers with that color scheme. He’ll think of you every time he plays golf and appreciate the awesome gift.

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Resident Fashion Expert Jordan Madley

Halo Sport headphones

If you’re trying to relax on the course, why not go all the way? These headphones literally help your mind and body work as one.

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Criquet golf shirts

These remind me of the shirts my dad used to wear, and if I get one for my husband as a Father’s Day gift from our kids, I can steal it for myself!

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Iliac Golf walking bag

I think bags traditionally are a bit overdone, but this bag is simply a piece of functional art.

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Rolex Day-Date 40

I couldn’t help myself! Let’s be honest, all the legends had a Rolex. If it’s in the budget, who wouldn’t want to have something in common with the King?

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The Grip Master kangaroo leather grips

Traditional, functional, and who can argue with Palmer and Nicklaus who played leather grips for years?

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Director of Original Content Johnny Wunder

Custom Jones golf bag

These bags are a throwback to my childhood, and the quality is second to none. The custom options are limitless.

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True Linkswear Original

This Washington-based shoe company is making extremely cool crossover kicks. Who doesn’t love a shoe you can wear on the course and on the street?

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Blast Motion Swing and Stroke Analyzer

The coolest golf aid I’ve seen in a while. It tracks your swing and stroke in three different ways: tempo, path, and pace.

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DST Compressor 8-iron

Henrik Stenson and Justin Rose train with it…they hit fairly well. Enough said.

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The Net Return Pro Series

For the northern golfer who longs to hit balls in the winter, this is as good as it gets.

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http://j.mp/2lE9y53 via GolfWRX URL : http://j.mp/2xIqpYD

[itsworn]

This Sick Cobra Blows Chunks on the Hoonigan Dock!

I’ve been asked a slew of questions about my experience since my Factory Five Challenge car aired on Hoonigan’s Daily Transmission episode 240 (LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za8PZorQoKk), so I figured that I could share it with the world.

  Larry Chen is an old photographer buddy, and I have been talking about him shooting my car for a long time. Our schedules constantly conflicted and it led to the suggestion of bringing my car on Daily Transmission instead. I stopped by the Donut Shop for unrelated business a few weeks before filming and met with Vin Anatra. Vin, who heads up business development as well as playing co-host, scheduled me two weeks out on a Thursday, which is typically when all Daily Transmissions are filmed.

Readied on the dock of Hoonigan’s back lot.

“We are always looking for cars that are different,” said Brian Scotto, Hoonigan’s CCO. “Whether it’s a million-dollar all-out SEMA car or a $2,000 backyard build, we want them if they are unique and down to party in the yard. While it’s not a mandate that you kill some tires when on the show. It’s strongly advised!”

  Uniqueness is really the way to win the hearts of the Hoonigans. “We love creativity. Take the Buick LeMons car as an example,” explained Scotto. “Easily the least cool car ever on the show that quickly became cool because not only did the owner have the best personality, he jumped it off the dock in reverse! Not that we really want anyone to destroy their car, but this Buick wasn’t exactly a gem. Some cars are just meant to be beaten! That’s what makes them fun.” Immediately after scheduling I received two documents to fill out. One was a spec sheet on the car and the second being a, “if you come break your driveshaft, it’s not our problem” release form. I obliged and was told to bring the paperwork with me.

This is a Factory Five Challenge car. Similar to their Roadster Cobra replica, it features a fully integrated, NASA-legal roll cage. The engine is a fully-built 5.1-liter Coyote with InnoV8 Racing Engines’ individual throttle bodies. It feeds 538 rear-wheel horsepower to the Moser 8.8-inch rear end that, in turn, spins a set of CCW Hybrid Series wheels wrapped in Toyo R888R tires. It’s a street car with nearly 2,000 miles on the odometer.

  The Donut Shop is located a stone’s throw from a large apartment complex and because of such, they are required by the city of Long Beach to have filming permits. Needless to say, this still doesn’t keep the cops from stopping by unannounced to see if the permit is valid for the day. To maximize their money, Hoonigan stuffs as many Daily Transmissions as they can in one day, which is typically 3-5.

  The start time for my filming was 3:30, but I arrived 15 minutes early to vacuum out my car and wipe it down. I drove the Factory Five to work that day and then to Long Beach for filming, so it needed a good cleaning from the 50-mile drive. I got about five minutes into my vacuuming and was told to bring my car onto the dock for beauty shots.

The Hoonigan operation is built into different sections. Follow the wall on the right side and you’ll end up in the gift shop. Directly behind the wall to the left is a giant bullpen of video editors and office staff, plus there are some editing stations in the mobile home.

  I hadn’t wiped my car down yet, but this served as a good means to shoot me performing the task. I actually use an ammonia-less glass cleaner to wipe down the satin paint job, and it works remarkably well. The crew spends a good 20-30 minutes shooting B-roll of the car. During this time, the crew figures out who is going to host the show. Vin, Dan, and Zac ended up being selected as the primary hosts who also act as floating cameramen. Virtually all Daily Transmission’s A-roll is done with a selfie stick and simple consumer based cameras.

  The conversation transitions from casual talk to filming the episode rapidly – there’s no rehearsal and questions are fired from the hip. The pace is quick and you’re getting asked about the car from all angles. It’s best to stick with the person who has the camera so the internal mic can pick up the best quality audio. The crew spends a good 15-20 minutes talking to you about the car and then you must pick from the pinwheel of hoonery. Are we jumping it? Burnouts? Donuts? Drifting? Jump the dock? Everything is on the table as long as it’s exciting. Yes, I have done a burnout, yes I used to road race, and drift, but I have never done it with a car this nice.

Some people have a hard time with the G-Stream wing. Ever driven a 625-horsepower car that weighs 2,400 pounds around a road course without sufficient downforce? Yeah, I won’t ever, either. The wing comes off with four bolts, and optional carbon plugs fill the slot.

  Being that the Cobra is naturally aspirated, it still makes a decent amount of torque (in the mid 400s), but Toyo’s R888Rs are very sticky. Compound that with the dock’s fresh rubber, which gives it about as much grip as a dragstrip without VHT. With all this in mind, I opted for the burnout. I backed the car to the end of the dock, everyone readied themselves, and the all-clear was sounded. A few revs, a 4,000 rpm clutch drop later, and a Bluetooth driveshaft was created.

  Aluminum is a very common material to use for driveshafts in excess of 2,000 horsepower, though the Internet seems appalled that aluminum was used. The problem I ran into is the weld on the rear yoke wasn’t strong enough and sheered away from the driveshaft tube. Once the driveshaft fragged, it took out my fuel pump wiring, which in hindsight was a good thing; the car shut off immediately, mitigating further damage.  Also, luckily, the driveshaft is so small that it really can’t come through the floor (jinx).

This is what a failed weld between the yoke and the driveshaft tube looks like. It took out my fuel pump wiring when it fragged, though everything was fixed and running three days later.

  The crew took great care of my car- dollies were placed under the rear wheels to keep the rear end from spinning and causing further damage. We raised the car on their lift and I unbolted the rear end’s side of the driveshaft. I also took the opportunity to measure for a new (steel) driveshaft. There were a few free tows left on my AAA account, so I made the call for a pick up. The first driver who showed up, declared my 100-percent-street-legal car a race car and reported me to dispatch. A subsequent call for service led to a snarky dispatcher calling me back to tell me my car has been black listed. I guess stickers, wheels, and a wing makes your car too highly modified to be towed? Shout out to Alva Affordable Towing in Long Beach for not price-gouging and getting me home before 10 p.m.

This is the shop side of Hoonigan. In the back is where all inactive projects are stored. With the Trufiber front fascia removed, I was ready to get the Challenge car towed home.

  So, how does one get their car on Daily Transmission? It definitely helps to know someone. Scotto explains, “We have been working on a way for people to contact us with their builds and just set up a new email for just that (dt@hoonigan.com). Photos are good. Proof you can and will roast tires is even better!”

  If The Hoonigans plan a special “Retribution” episode, count me in.

Despite breaking parts and having to pay for a tow, it was still a blast and I hope to do it (minus breaking parts) again someday.

The post This Sick Cobra Blows Chunks on the Hoonigan Dock! appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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[joannemaly]

'Perfect' sensors may be possible, but might not come to cameras

Fossum's team has created a prototype chip with a variety of pixel designs and readout methods. This included combinations with sufficiently low read noise to allow individual photons to be counted.

The future could include sensors that perfectly describe the light in the scene, that offer new computational possibilities and give film-like latitude in the highlights. And yet we may never see them in cameras, says father of the CMOS sensor, Professor Eric Fossum.

We spoke to Fossum shortly after he received, alongside three other pioneers of digital photography, the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering for his work on CMOS sensors. But the topic of our conversation is the future, rather than his past achievements. He now leads a group working on what he calls Quanta Image Sensors (QIS) and has recently published a paper announcing a breakthrough using the same fabrication process used to make CMOS image sensors.

The perfect sensor?

The principle is to use nanoscale, specialized pixels, called 'Jots' to capture light at the level of individual photons. They work in a binary fashion: they've either received a photon or they haven't (as opposed to conventional sensors which accumulate the charge generated by lots of photons during exposure). These jots are read repeatedly to see whether another photon has arrived since they were last checked.

While Fossum is keen to stress that other teams are having some success in the same field (using a slightly different approach), his own team's work is looking very promising. The paper in the journal Optica shows the team's technology has been refined such that a 1MJot chip can be read 1000 times per second while still exhibiting sufficiently low read noise that it can distinguish between individual photons.

We can count every photon: you can't do any better than that

"The Holy Grail is no read noise," says Fossum: "so that the read signal is proportional to the signal as it arrived." And the team's latest paper says they've got very close to this, with noise levels so low that the sensor can distinguish between individual photons without getting confused by read noise. This opens up the possibility of cameras that could perfectly describe the light in the scene, even in near total darkness.

A mathematical model showing how noise levels (measured in the root mean square of the number of electrons), affect the ability to interpret small signals. The lower the read noise, the more accurately you can distinguish between individual values in the signal. Diagram from the team's paper in Optica

Eliminating read noise from the sensor wouldn't mean totally noiseless photos, since the randomness of the light being captured is a key source of noise, but it's the best any sensor can possibly achieve. "We can count every photon: you can't do any better than that," he says.

The paper, perhaps conservatively, says the technology could be suited to scientific, space, security and low-light imaging applications, but Fossum has clearly also been thinking about conventional photography.

A classic response

"Because it's binary in nature, its response is comparable to old photographic film," he says. "In film, when the silver halide was hit by a photon, it's reduced to a silver atom that isn't washed away [during processing]. If it's hit by two photons, it doesn't make any additional difference."

This ends up meaning that in bright regions of the image there are ever fewer unexposed silver ions as the exposure goes on. This, in turn makes it less likely that the last few ions will be hit by a photon, so it becomes increasingly difficult to fully saturate the system. The same is true for the tiny, binary Jots: as more of them become saturated, it becomes increasingly difficult to saturate the last few.

"The response is linear at moderate exposure but it trails off to give significant overexposure latitude. It's a pattern first observed by Hurter and Driffield in 1890," says Fossum: "they showed the same curve that we measure, experimentally, in our QIS devices."

Diagram showing the Jots' exposure response, in comparison to mathematical models of different read noise levels. Note the roll-off at high exposures, comparable to the Hurter Driffield response curves of photographic film. Diagram from the team's paper in Optica

"That has obvious interest both for still photographers who're used to shooting film and for cinematographers who're looking for that kind of response."

The use of such tiny pixels has other benefits, too: "Jots are below diffraction limits in size. This means the resolution of the system is always higher than the resolution of the lens, which means we never have to worry about aliasing." While the group's prototype sensors feature one million Jots, Fossum says their target is one billion.

Beyond conventional photography

Fossum isn't just thinking about photographic history, though. The tiny size and the approach of repeatedly reading out the sensor challenges the existing concept of single exposures. "At the moment we make motion pictures by shooting a series of snapshots. With QIS it's more like the reverse process," he says: constructing still images from precisely captured movement.

Professor Fossum has already been responsible for one revolution in photography: the invention of the CMOS sensor. In December 2017 he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering for his work.

Essentially, taking lots of short, sub-frames during an exposure gives you an extra dimension to your images: time. "If you take a single frame, you get a bunch of ones and zeros. If you take another, you quickly build up a cube of ones and zeros," Fossum says: "For example, if you shoot 100 frames at 1000 frames per second, you get a cube that's x pixels wide by y pixels tall, but also 100 frames deep."

This presents some interesting questions, he says: "What do you do with that data? How do you create an image from that very faithful map of where photons arrived?"

"You could choose a number of pixels in x and y but also in the time axis. If you wanted a very sensitive pixel in low light you could combine 10 x 10 Jots in x and y and then maybe combine the data from 100 frames: it's essentially like increasing the grain size in a more sensitive film."

Of course you can achieve something comparable to this in conventional digital photography by downscaling an image, but Jots allow greater flexibility, Fossum says: "your pixel size could vary between different parts of the image, so in some places you'd have bigger but more sensitive grains."

What is the object of photography? Is it artistic or an attempt to perfectly recreate the scene as it was?

The time component also opens up additional possibilities, he says: "if an object moves during these hundred frames, instead of adding all the values from the same location, you could add them at an angle that corresponds to the movement," so that all the pixels relating to the same object are combined. "We could take out motion blur or remove the scanning effect of a computer screen in video."

The idea of combining multiple frames in interesting ways is, of course, already becoming a core part of mobile photography, and Fossum says finding all the things that are possible is a challenge he is leaving for others: "From my point of view, we're building a platform for computational imaging, it's for others to develop all the ways to use it. A camera would have to take account of the new sensor capabilities."

But it'll ask interesting questions, he believes: "What is the object of photography? Is it artistic or an attempt to perfectly recreate the scene as it was? Some of the things we associate with photography are artifacts of the way we capture them."

Not the only future

With all this going for it, it might seem odd that Fossum isn't promising to deliver a second revolution in digital imaging. But, having devoted a career to developing technologies and teaching about the challenges, he's realistic both about the work left to do and the competition any product would face.

"What we've already achieved is wonderful. The next challenge is adding color [awareness], but I don't think that's going to be particularly problematic. Then there's power: we've shown we can produce a large chip that doesn't consume or disperse a prohibitively large amount of power. We're currently at around 27mW but scale it up by 1000 [to get to one billion Jots] and that's 27W, so we need to cut that by about a factor of ten."

His concern is more about the current state of the rival technologies: "In order to bring a new technology to replace the existing one, it has to be compellingly better in a number of ways," he says. "For a few niches, [our technology] is already compelling." But for photography, the bar is already set very high.

I don't want our startup to be another esoteric imaging product that fails to find a market

"CMOS technology is pretty awesome right now," he says, before almost embarrassedly stressing that he's not claiming the credit for this: "where it is today is the result of the input from thousands of engineers from different companies who've contributed towards where we are now."

Professor Eric Fossum pictured with Dr Jiaju Ma, one of the co-authors of the Optica paper and a co-founder of the spin-off company, Gigajot Technology.

But, for all his cautious words, Fossum is convinced enough by the technology's potential to have created a company, Gigajot Technology, with his co-researchers. "Finding a sweet spot in the market is a really important part of challenge. It comes back to the things I teach: 'who is your customer?' 'what is your market?' 'how are we going to get there?'"

"I don't want our startup to be another esoteric imaging product that fails to find a market," he says.

While it's by no means certain that QIS sensors will make their way into mainstream cameras, it already looks like the technology has tremendous potential for niches such as scientific measurement. This alone shows just how far the technology has come from Fossum's original idea. As he readily admits: "When we first started this project I wasn't even sure it could be made to work."

[Read More ...]

The following blog post was originally published to available on : https://www.proton-pack.com/ 

'Perfect' sensors may be possible, but might not come to cameras was originally posted by https://www.proton-pack.com

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PowerLine -> Is It “Deeply Offensive” to Enforce the Law? – Why Is Saturday Night Live News?

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Illegals – I love the USA! NOT @ Hoax and Change

Daily Digest

Is It “Deeply Offensive” to Enforce the Law?

Why Is Saturday Night Live News?

Al Jarreau, RIP

The M-E-C Freakout Continues

Thinkin’ about “Lincoln” again

Is It “Deeply Offensive” to Enforce the Law?

Posted: 12 Feb 2017 04:41 PM PST

(John Hinderaker)

It is, apparently, if the law relates to immigration. At Penn State, someone put up posters urging students and others to report violations of the immigration laws. This is the poster:

It is, apparently, if the law relates to immigration. At Penn State, someone put up posters urging students and others to report violations of the immigration laws. This is the poster:

Is it a civic duty to report illegal aliens? That is certainly a defensible position. In general, citizens should cooperate with law enforcement. But Penn State’s administration didn’t see it that way:

“The posters are unsigned and appear to be designed to provoke anger, fear and hate. The university finds them deeply offensive,” Penn State said in a statement.

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Is enforcing the law really a sign of “anger, fear, and hate”? And why, exactly, is it offensive to suggest that citizens should cooperate in enforcing federal law? How did it happen that the American establishment became overwhelmingly, and enthusiastically, in favor of illegal immigration?

The university said in its statement about the posters that officials wanted to emphasize “that every student on this campus has earned the right to be here based on their academic qualifications and hard work.”

Hmm. Is there anything in the poster about academic qualifications and hard work? Not that I noticed. Whether a student has a right to be at Penn State (or anywhere else in the U.S.) depends in part, of course, on our immigration laws.

“Penn State is enriched by students and scholars from around the world and we will continue our work on providing a climate of inclusion for all, regardless of country of origin,” the university said.

But the poster says nothing about country of origin. It is fine to have a “climate of inclusion for all,” but if “all” includes people who are present in the United States illegally, it shouldn’t come as a shock if they are caught and deported. Does Penn State’s administration mean to suggest that it deliberately harbors illegal aliens, thereby aiding and abetting violations of federal law? I think that is the clear implication.

We are living in a very bizarre era, where large numbers of otherwise-respectable people consider it a point of moral superiority to commit, or aid in the commission of, federal crimes. This largely explains why Donald Trump is now our president.

Why Is Saturday Night Live News?

Posted: 12 Feb 2017 02:57 PM PST

(John Hinderaker)

Every Sunday morning, the Associated Press has a news story about the prior evening’s SaturdayNight Live show. Today’s story is headlined Host Alec Baldwin, ‘SNL’ cast skewer Trump White House. Well, yes, they do that every week. Last Sunday’s AP headline told us that someone I had never heard of–Melissa McCarthy–was mocking White House press secretary Sean Spicer. And it isn’t just the Associated Press. Many news outlets breathlessly recount the latest anti-Trump skits on SNL.

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So, why is this news? I don’t recall that SNL’s weekly dose of liberal spin was news during the Obama administration. Saturday Night Live is a comedy show. Comedy isn’t generally considered newsworthy. Is it because so many people are watching? Because SNL’s ratings are so stratospherically high? Evidently not: Saturday Night Live has a below average audience, ranking 139th out of 196 television programs during the 2015-2016 season.

The only explanation is that Democratic Party news outlets report on Saturday Night Live skits because they want to amplify SNL’s anti-Trump message. “Respectable” news outlets like the AP can’t publish absurd comedy skits ripping President Trump, much as they might like to. But by covering Saturday Night Live, they turn such meaningless attacks into fake “news.”

Here is some real news: Sean Spicer’s daily press briefings, broadcast live, are being watched by around 4.3 million people. That is several times the audience for Saturday Night Live. I assume viewership will die down once we get past the opening weeks of the Trump administration, but still, it’s remarkable. Once again, the Democratic Party press, in its desperate yearning to bring down the Trump administration, is missing the real story.

Al Jarreau, RIP

Posted: 12 Feb 2017 12:54 PM PST

(Scott Johnson)

I am so sad to observe the passing of the singer Al Jarreau today in Los Angeles at the age of 76. Matt Schudel does a good job of paying tribute to Al in the Washington Post obituary. Margalit Fox provides a more ambivalent take in the New York Times obituary. I want to add a local note on Al’s death.

Al was a native of Milwaukee. Once he was able to make his voice heard on record in the mid-1970’s, he developed fans all over the world, but he had a special following long before then in Minneapolis. Al came to town for a gig with his then guitarist Julio Martinez in 1970 and stuck around to date a local woman.

Everyone who heard Al perform back then knew he was an awesomely talented musician. My first and best friend through high school was Scott Sansby. When I got back from college in the summer of 1970, Scottie told me I had to see Al. He raved about Al’s talent. He was certain that Al was going to be a star.

Scottie anchored the rhythm section on drums in Zarathustra, the house band at Minneapolis’s old Depot club (the predecessor to First Avenue), and Al would occasionally sit in with the band. He approached Scottie about playing with him. Scottie talked him into using Bobby Schnitzer (guitar) and Rich Dworsky (keyboards) and Dik Hedlund (bass). Bobby and Rich subsequently moved out to Los Angeles with Al as he sought to make it big. Texting this afternoon, Scotty reminds me: “We knew how good he was the first time we heard him sing.”

We were thrilled when Al returned to perform at Minneapolis’s Pantages Theater in 2011. I think all his old fans came out to see the show. Al caught up with the musical contingent at a party after the show. From left to right in the photo below are Dik Hedlund, Rich Dworsky, Scott Sansby, Al and Bobby Schnitzer.

While we saw early on what Al had to offer, it took the music industry another five years to seize on Al’s talent. Scottie was recording for Shelter Records in the early 1970s and took Al’s demo tapes to Shelter president Denny Cordell. Scottie tells me that Cordell thought the tapes were “great but that he didn’t know what to do with Al as far as genre and marketing, so he passed.” Scottie adds that the Twin Cities’ own Pat Rains — former owner of The Prison teen club in Burnsville — became Al’s manager and finally got him signed to Warner Brothers, where he released his first album in 1975.

The rest is music history. Al won seven Grammys in three musical categories (jazz, pop, and R&B, respectively). According to the AllMusic Guide biography, Al is the only artist to win Grammys in three different musical categories.

Al’s music expressed infectious joy and endearing romanticism. You can hear the threads of his talent in his approach to Chick Corea’s “Spain.” It was an instrumental until Al put words to it (video below). As you listen to this I defy you to be unhappy. Can’t be done.

Al also put words to Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” (video below).

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In his lyrics to “Take Five,” Al wrote: “Stop your busy day and take the time out to see that I’m alive, I’m alive.” Indeed he was. RIP.

NOTE: My thanks to Scott Sansby for helping me bring back the memories today. The Star Tribune elaborates on the local angle here.

The M-E-C Freakout Continues

Posted: 12 Feb 2017 10:04 AM PST

(Steven Hayward)

The Media Entertainment Complex (MEC) is going all in to destroy Trump on behalf of the Democratic Party. I wonder how liberals would react if Saturday Night Live did a sexist sketch like the one last night about Elizabeth Warren (preferably in full native American regalia) instead of Kelly Anne Conway:

Paul has already noted the ruckus over the supposed ethics violation of Kelly Anne suggesting on air that people buy Ivanka Trump’s products, but I doubt this is a formal violation of ethics rules which are intended to prevent presidents or their staffs from appearing in product advertisements, etc. And what are Trump’s people supposed to do in the face of ostentatiously reported and organized boycott campaigns? I hope Ivanka’s sales soar.

But there are other ways of going about this. I recall a story Martin Anderson once told me about Reagan. Anderson, who had been a senior domestic policy aide to Reagan, had one of the first pro-Reagan books coming out in early 1988, while Reagan was still in office, called Revolution, in bright red letters on the cover. Marty had called Reagan and asked if the president would be willing to offer a dust jacket blurb. Reagan declined, citing the ethics guidelines against doing product endorsements while in office.

But then, when a book came out a few months later, Reagan did some thing better. Stepping off Marine One on the south lawn one afternoon, he was carrying Revolution under his arm, with the title prominently displayed to the cameras. And Reagan stopped to take a couple of questions from the press corps (which he usually did not do), and sure enough, the book title was plainly visible on the evening news broadcasts, and a picture of Reagan with Revolution under his arm appeared in the next issue of Time or Newsweek. Hard to get a much better product endorsement than that.

But remember, Reagan was a dunce. The media told us so. The Trump people might want to study Reagan’s subtleties, though. All the better to keep the liberal crazy at full boil.

Now, if only I can get Trump to do this:

Thinkin’ about “Lincoln” again

Posted: 12 Feb 2017 04:40 AM PST

(Scott Johnson)

Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film Lincoln seems to have dropped from our cultural consciousness. Perhaps the cognitive dissonance it induces on the left suppresses the memory of it. As we celebrate the anniversary of Lincoln’s birthday today, I want to take a look back at the film with the notes I offered at the time. I put just about everything important that I know about Lincoln into them.

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Until reading David Brooks’s obtuse column about the film, I was unsure that I knew enough to comment intelligently about it. Brooks persuaded me that I know at least as much as he does, however, and accordingly prompted me to offer the following comments for interested readers.

The film makes an important contribution to understanding Lincoln. Directed by Steven Spielberg, with a screenplay by Tony Kushner, the film focuses on the brief period in January 1865 after Lincoln’s reelection during a lame duck session of Congress when Lincoln moved heaven and earth to secure the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in the House of Representatives (where it had failed once previously). The film purports to be based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, but it expands greatly on a tiny sliver of that doorstop of a book.

A.O. Scott’s New York Times review describes the film with scrupulous accuracy, and I entirely agree with Scott’s witty conclusion:

Go see this movie. Take your children, even though they may occasionally be confused or fidgety. Boredom and confusion are also part of democracy, after all. “Lincoln” is a rough and noble democratic masterpiece — an omen, perhaps, that movies for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Kushner’s responsibility for the screenplay raised concerns on my part about the film. He does not portray Lincoln as a gay caballero, although he well might have. Kushner is rightly impressed by Lincoln’s greatness, but holds that “it’s a film where the political parties occupy the opposite sides of the spectrum that they currently occupy.” Republicans are the heroes of the story. Democrats are an obstacle to be overcome. How can this be? This is terribly confusing for an avant-garde liberal. Suffice it to say that a lot could have gone wrong here that didn’t. Despite Kushner’s confusion, the screenplay gets this gloriously right.

The movie powerfully rebuts the portrait of Lincoln that bright high school and college students absorb directly or indirectly from Richard Hofstadter’s incredibly influential essay “Abraham Lincoln and the Self-Made Myth,” collected in The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It. Hofstadter depicted Lincoln as essentially indifferent to the wrongs of slavery and disparaged the Emancipation Proclamation as a glorified nullity.

Among other things, Hofstadter famously observed that the Proclamation “had all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading” and “did not, in fact, free any slaves.” Eric Foner is Hofstadter’s successor at Columbia. Foner accurately noted that Hofstadter pointedly juxtaposed Lincoln’s 1858 speech in Chicago affirming the equality of man with his address the same year in pro-slavery Southern Illinois in which he insisted that he opposed “bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races.”

Hofstadter’s portrait of Lincoln cannot survive this film. It is a great vehicle for learning and teaching something true and important about Lincoln. To paraphrase Lincoln himself, all honor to Kushner for getting Lincoln’s hatred of slavery right and making it the centerpiece of this film.

The film accurately presents the Thirteenth Amendment — the amendment that abolished slavery — as the fulfillment and guarantor of the Emancipation Proclamation. Amazingly, at least to me, the film accurately represented Lincoln’s thinking on precisely this point. It provides a lesson in the acuity of Lincoln’s thought on things that mattered.

Following the promulgation of the Emancipation Proclamation, prominent Democrats whose cooperation Lincoln coveted in the war effort repeatedly urged Lincoln to rescind it. Lincoln simply responded: “The promise, being made, must be kept.” The Thirteenth Amendment assured that the promise would, in fact, be kept. Allen Guelzo presents Lincoln’s thought on these points in great depth in Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America.

Harold Holzer may be the only prominent Lincoln scholar to have commented publicly on the film, as he did in a New York Post column. Holzer testified to the perfection of Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance as Lincoln. It is a performance of surpassing beauty. At the end of the film, one feels gratified to have had the opportunity to spend a couple of hours in Lincoln’s company. One is struck by the sheer largeness of spirit on display. Here there is no pettiness. Here there is no triviality. Here one is elevated.

The film sets Lincoln’s political struggle off against brief depictions of the death and destruction of Civil War battles. Lincoln was the president who chose to fight the war rather than accept disunion. He was the president who turned the war into “a new birth of freedom.” He was the president who declined to accept anything less than the unconditional surrender of the forces of the Confederacy. This is all on display in one way or another in the film.

Two more notes. David Brooks touted the film as promoting a view of politics as “noble because it involves personal compromise for the public good. This is a self-restrained movie that celebrates people who are prudent, self-disciplined, ambitious and tough enough to do that work.” Yet there is no compromise to be seen in the film on any important point.

Tony Kushner to the contrary notwithstanding, the film allows one to reflect on the continuity of the film’s Democratic and Republican parties with their modern counterparts. The Republican Party was founded in the belief that it was “the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism — Polygamy, and Slavery,” as the party platform of 1856 put it. The party’s contemporary concerns about traditional marriage and the promotion of freedom have deep roots in the origin of the Republican Party.

Lincoln criticized slavery as embodying the tyrannical principle he called “the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it.” Don’t tell Tony Kushner, but the contemporary Democratic Party is preeminently the party of “the same old serpent that says you work and I eat.”

PowerLine -> Is It “Deeply Offensive” to Enforce the Law? – Why Is Saturday Night Live News? PowerLine -> Is It “Deeply Offensive” to Enforce the Law? - Why Is Saturday Night Live News?