profnicsnort

[profnicsnort]

Blind betryal essay comic :)

[profnicsnort]

in the end I named the file "BG3_PetitAstarionette".

[profnicsnort]

I use the Religious Landscape study a lot as a basis for my research. Pew Research Center does amazing work. I am so excited about this new round of research - especially the number of Nones leveling off on the whole as that's the primary group I study! It looks like fewer people are deconverting but any growth of the Nones will be due to generational cohort effects as younger people are less religious over all.

[profnicsnort]

PEOPLES POLICY PROJECT

Preface

Addressing Wealth Inequality

When discussing the inadequate and unequal structure of the economy, progressives tend to focus on things like poverty, income inequality, and wages. These are seen as the stuff of people’s everyday experience with the economy and as the areas that deserve our most pressing attention.

But the most unequal aspect of our economy is actually the way in which our national wealth is distributed. The top ten percent of American households own around three-fourths of the nation’s wealth while the bottom fifty percent owns virtually none of it. While the precise distribution of wealth has changed a bit over time, in the data that we have, the vast majority of the national wealth has always been in the hands of a relatively small slice of the population.

Most efforts to tackle wealth inequality focus on the national level. But states can and, in at least one case, have had a huge impact on the way that wealth is distributed among residents of the state. In this section, we look at wealth inequality in Washington and propose that Washington create an Alaska-style Permanent Fund aimed at gradually reducing wealth inequality in the state.

It is difficult to precisely estimate the level of wealth inequality in Washington state using public data sources.

The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances (scf), the nation’s preeminent wealth survey, only interviews 6,500 families across the entire country and does not reveal the states in which those families reside. The Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (sipp) interviews around 24,000 households across the entire country, but only around 700 in Washington state. The sipp also understates wealth levels at the top of the distribution through the use of topcoding and by failing to get survey participation from very wealthy households.

In order to overcome the limitations of these surveys, researchers are typically forced to make somewhat speculative adjustments that go beyond the survey microdata. For example, a recent WA report “hot decked” data from the American Community Survey (acs) with the Survey of Consumer Finances in order to overcome the scf’s low sample size and lack of residency information. This kind of hot decking works by assuming that acs and scf households that are similar in some respects—such as number of vehicles, home ownership status, and age—are also similar in other respects, such as wealth.

Hot decking allows the researchers to combine the big sample size and residency information of the acs with the wealth information of the scf, but the method basically amounts to assuming that WA’s wealth inequality is no different from wealth inequality in America as a whole. This is a reasonable assumption, but it also makes the whole exercise somewhat unnecessary. If WA’s wealth inequality more or less mirrors American wealth inequality, then one could achieve roughly the same insights by looking directly at the USwide scf data without the intermediate hot decking step.

In what follows, we take a somewhat different approach to overcoming the limitations of these wealth surveys. In our approach, we pool all of the responses from the four waves of the sipp survey that cover the years 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. Pooling these waves increases the WA sample size to around 2,400 households. As a proportion of WA households, this sample is 16 times the size of the scf sample as a proportion of US households. In the below graph, we compare the US wealth distribution in the 2019 scf to the US and WA wealth distributions in the pooled 2017–2020 sipp.

Overall, the three distributions look similar. In each, the bottom half of the distribution owns 1 to 2 percent of the wealth while the top half of the distribution owns 98 to 99 percent of the wealth. In the scf, the top 10 percent of US families hold 76 percent of the wealth while, in the sipp, the top 10 percent of US households hold 69 percent of the wealth and the top 10 percent of WA households hold 62 percent of the wealth.

This divergence is consistent with the fact that the sipp topcodes its wealth variables and does not get as much participation from very wealthy households as the scf does. The two figures may also differ because the scf family unit is not defined the same way that the sipp household unit is defined.

Here is another visualization of wealth inequality in WA using the sipp, graphed as a proportion plot.

One way to partially overcome sipp’s limitations when it comes to reporting the information of the very wealthy is to add information from lists of the wealthiest Americans, such as the Forbes Billionaires List. Adding the Washingtonian billionaires included in the Forbes list increases the wealth share of the top 10 percent of WA households from 62 percent to 66 percent.

This modification helps bring the wealth distribution closer in line with reality, but the resulting distribution still likely understates the percentage of wealth held at the top. For the remaining analysis, we will only use the data contained in the pooled 2017–2020 sipp. Rather than try to partially correct for its understatement of top wealth by adding in a handful of billionaires or imputing higher wealth levels from the scf, we think it is clearer to simply note that the sipp has limitations when it comes to accurately reporting wealth at the top end of the distribution and to ask readers to incorporate that fact into their interpretation of the following sipp statistics.

The SCF assigns assets and liabilities to families not persons. So, for example, in the case of a married couple with two children that owns a home, the value of that home is assigned to the family as a whole, not to one or the other spouse or the children. The demographic characteristics of each family, and thus the demographic characteristics of the wealth they own, are derived from the information of the reference person in the household. So, if the reference person in the above homeowning family is a Black, college-educated, 35-yearold man, the value of the home ends up characterized as Black wealth, college-educated wealth, millennial wealth, and male wealth, even if other members of the family unit have different demographic characteristics.

Unlike the scf, the sipp assigns assets and liabilities to persons, with household wealth being the aggregate wealth of the persons of each household. When assets and liabilities are owned jointly by multiple people, as in a family, sipp assigns their values fractionally to each of the joint owners. Thus, in the example above, if the Black, college-educated, 35-year-old, male homeowner is married, half of the home’s value is assigned to him, while the other half is assigned to his spouse. This means that, if his spouse has a different race, age, educational background, or gender, those demographic characteristics will show up as owning half of the value of the home. Because wealth is almost always analyzed on the household or family level, person-level distributions of wealth are rarely reported, even by researchers who use the sipp data. But the person-level distribution is also interesting and so we will include that distribution alongside the household-level distribution in this analysis.

In the following graph, we can see the difference between the person-level, adult-level, and household-level distribution of wealth in WA state over this period.

The adult-level distribution is more unequal than the household-level distribution and the person-level distribution, which includes the wealth of children, is more unequal than adult-level distribution.

The table below shows the wealth level of these three distributions at various wealth percentiles.

Across all persons, including children, the median wealth is $17,000. Across adults, the median wealth is $71,340. Across households, the median wealth is $174,880.

Race And Class

When comparing differences in wealth across race, it is common to look at the gap between mean and median wealth. The following table sums up these gaps for the person-level, adult-level, and household-level distribution in Washington.

On all measures, Black and Latino people have far less wealth than White people have. However, because White people are far more numerous in Washington than Black or Latino people are, the bottom of the wealth distribution still primarily consists of White people. This is true whether looking at the person-level, adult-level, or household-level distributions.

(Continue Reading)

[profnicsnort]

Hey it’s ace week and you’re local ace has something to say! I’ve been out as ace for 3 years now and it’s still a big part of my identity that I’m proud of so here’s a lil something for those who need it!

[profnicsnort]

Glimmers of hope.

[profnicsnort]

It's been a long time since I posted anything, two months probably 😅

Anyway, here's some fancy Raphael for the Nine Hells fashion series ✨✨

[profnicsnort]

the anomie of our times

Anomie is a term in sociology. Its literal definition is "normlessness."

Anomie is what we are living through. This first 100 days especially. Anomie results when people are overwhelmed.

In sociology class, my professor explained it thus: we wake up in the morning, we take a shower, we brush our teeth, we pick out our outfit for the day, then we sit down and eat food that has been designated as "breakfast food" by whatever culture we live in. We have our routines to help stave off anomie. Because as human beings we have free will and we can choose to wake up, walk out naked, poop on our neighbors yards. It's a bad idea, which is why have norms, to discourage people from doing terrible things and also to help us narrow down our choices.

Because one of the results of anomie is literally mental illness. If you can't make sense of things, if you don't know what you can or are allowed to do, if you become so overwhelmed you become numb and depressed and anxious, all the time. It's while one of the founding fathers of sociology, Emile Durkheim, who studied suicide extensively, listed anomic suicide as one of the four kinds of suicide, or reasons people end their own lives.

Turecki and Brent define anomic suicide thus: "Anomic suicide is a type of suicide that occurs when there is a breakdown of social norms and values, leading to a sense of purposelessness and a lack of direction in individuals' lives."

What our government is doing to us now is pushing us into a state of anomie. If you are feeling your mental illness getting worse because of the news, it's by design.

They are overwhelming us with horror constantly to provoke a feeling of helplessness in the hopes that their opponents will simply give up. A sort of political version of anomic suicide. Or in the case of some people, very real anomic suicide has happened and will happened because of our current politics and the state of our society.

You have to battle the anomie any way you can. Don't let them think you're powerless. You're not. If you have a phone and a computer you can do something by flooding government officials with your complaints. Turn the anomie right back on them.

[profnicsnort]

A toothy smooch for a toothy lad

[profnicsnort]

[profnicsnort]

Rage Against the Machine @ Madison Square Garden, NYC

[profnicsnort]

It is pretty normal for video-game fandoms (see Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Diablo, Soulsgames, etc.) to find clues to expand or confirm things about the characters/stories/lore in the code, interviews with devs, and auxiliary materials. Those games do have much more content than BG3, so they have a lot more to juggle and cross reference - they are used to dealing with conflicts in the game lore vs other lore. While there will be debates on how the conflicts work - is there a canon way to rectify the conflicts? Which version is more accurate to the rest of the lore? etc. But mostly, people view non-game material or scrapped material as tangential canon or unconfirmed canon.

But I think what might be the problem is BG3 had video-game fandom crash into what I'll call the "character fanromance" people (of which I am one) - and a lot of these fanromancers also were not previously video game fans! (that's the important point). Fanromancers like to deeply understand their fan character's motivations, backgrounds, and anything about them. Based on that, headcanons are often created around small tidbits of information, and then these are shared and become fancanon/fanon.

So when this fanromance behavior smashes into video-game fandom behavior with people unfamiliar with video-game fandom, what happens? They see lots of small conflicting details arise between interviews, the code, etc. because it is a video game, spawning tons of different headcanons and possible fanons for a favorite character. And for people who aren't used to having a fandom in a video game, some of them might see this tangential and non-confirmed canon found in the code/interviews and think that IS canon. Which is something that has happened with Astarion fans.

Now, why did I write this whole thing to basically say, "Yeah, your original post's larger point was right; some Astarion fans do take non-confirmed canon details and act as if they are canon"? Because all fan interpretations are equally valid. Just because you prefer only what is presented very clearly to you in the game and only that doesn't mean that other people are wrong to bring in the side details.

Because BG3 changed so much and because we know there was cut content, it is perfectly fine if fans want to explore that - and they should (so long as they don't mistake it as 100% confirmed canon). Astarion being a corrupt official makes a lot of sense for his character, but so does his being super punitive (though again, these are not mutually exclusive) - he also could have been perfectly normal, and the trauma that Cazador put him through over 200 years means his outlook on punishment changed. There is a lot we don't know about Astarion and all of the others, so looking for those answers in code/interviews/auxiliary content is perfectly normal video-game fan behavior.

Maybe it’s an unpopular opinion, but I think everything there is to know about Astarion—and this applies to the other characters as well—is already abundantly present in the game, without necessarily having to dig through comments, scripts, interviews, or whatever else. The game is there, and it’s clear. The informations are all there—in the scenes, the dialogues, the notes written by characters within the narrative. Why would writers and developers hide anything? It doesn’t make sense! What isn’t there simply isn’t there.

That said, I won’t deny that creating theories or knowing what the director, actor, writer, artbook, or D&D manual have to say is fascinating! But sometimes, it really feels like people are desperately trying to grab onto this or that piece of information and forcefully drag it into the game when it simply isn’t there…

Like the idea of Astarion being a corrupt magistrate, when, based on what happens and what he says in the game, Astarion is actually more like a judge so severe and ruthless that he’d sentence a starving man to death just for stealing an apple! That’s the complete opposite of corruption—he’s inflexible, merciless, a bastard in his position as the enforcer of the law (and therefore the one holding the power to make decisions, which he may have once enjoyed), yes, but not corrupt! And this is just my conclusion as well, something the game suggested to me, but nothing definitive since there’s no confirmation.

And even his supposed affiliation with Cazador is never mentioned anywhere. If there had been any connection, Cazador could have easily exposed him when facing a heroic Tav/Durge, saying something like: “Do you know what this filthy magistrate used to do for me?” But instead, nothing—what Cazador emphasizes over and over again is how he was the one who made Astarion what he is.

And when it comes to the Gur attack, the only information we have is either pure coincidence (Cazador might have followed the scent of Astarion’s blood) or a vague possibility that the vampire lord had already been watching him for his own reasons and simply appeared at the right moment to “save” him. That’s it.

And that's it, as usual, it's just my thought.

[profnicsnort]

The nation is REALLY anti-trans. It's a big part of what got President Trump elected. Don't you think the gay community would be better off if you cut the T out of LGBT? You're only bringing hardship on yourselves by associating with them.

Let me share something about queer history and gaining legal rights

The Mattachine Society, a gay rights group for men, was founded in 1950. The Daughters of Bilitis, a gay rights group for lesbians, was founded in 1955. They led what was known as the Homophile Movement, which took the approach that if we convince straight society that we're like them and don't pose a threat, then they'll give us legal rights. Members of the two organizations were encouraged to assimilate as much as possible into the prevailing heterosexual culture.

These groups held occasional protests for rights, but the participants had to be well dressed in conservative fashions, a business suit for the men and dresses or blouse & skirt for the women. Their signs had to be approved, and even the lettering on the signs had to adhere to strict standards. Always the emphasis was on showing we're upstanding, decent people, no different from you. This is known as Respectability Politics.

Guess what, politely asking for rights didn't work.

The events of 1969 is what brought change. Instead of politely asking, this was a riot, this was a fight, it was an explosion. People demanded liberation, not assimilation. They wanted to dress how they wanted, they wanted to love who they wanted, they wanted to be who they are. Trans people were there fighting at Stonewall and also in the decades since for queer rights.

The thing about progress is there's always a backlash, and we are currently experiencing this. Barack Obama was elected president, becoming the first non-white man to hold this office, and two women have been the presidential candidate of a major political party. And the backlash has been a decade of Donald Trump. Trans people were gaining legal protections and visibility in popular culture, and this caused a backlash. The thing is, these backlashes are temporary, they delay progress but they won't permanently stop it, they never do.

To quietly abandon the trans community in the hopes that the rest of queer people will be left alone is a false premise. The arguments used against trans people today were used against gay people in the past. The same individuals and groups leading the fight against trans people also are targeting gay people.

While the fight against accepting trans people is strong and has the current momentum, it is fueled by hatred, prejudice, and ignorance. If a group of people can only feel good about themselves when they're standing on top of other people, you already have them beat. They don't make rules & laws to hold down people who are losing, they try to sabotage those who are winning because it is upsetting the social order they were comfortable with and from which they were benefitting. Unfortunately, the longer the backlash continues, the more people are hurt.

Truth is on our side. Trans rights are human rights, meaning they are part of the fundamental rights belonging to every person. We all deserve to live and flourish in society. We should get to learn, work, love, and build our lives at home, at work, and in public settings without fear for our safety and survival. We fight for what is right and move forward regardless. Have hope because we won't lose if we keep moving forward.

We know the fruits of homophobia and transphobia are dead queer kids. We also know that there is no form of protest against homophobia and transphobia that is acceptable to homophobes and transphobes. Rights for gay people won't be preserved by willingly giving up the fight for equal rights for all queer people and by sacrificing an important part of our community. Remember, if we were losing, they wouldn't be so desperate to entrench a system rigged against us.

The promise of the United States is that all are created equal. Over and over, oppressed and marginalized groups have found hope in that promise and fought for the nation to live up to that ideal. Over and over, those who already had the rights and freedoms of this country, fought to keep others from also enjoying them.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, said, "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

Which side do you want to be on? The oppressor, or the oppressed? Because the oppressed are on the side of light and truth and eventually will win. In 20 years, will you want to say you were part of the 13% of queer voters who helped elect Donald Trump in the hopes if he takes away other people's rights, then maybe he won't come after yours? Or do you want to be able to say that you voted for human rights, and you contacted your representatives to voice your opposition to the actions of the administration, and that you volunteered with groups which help the queer community, and that you were part of the fight against this anti-queer agenda?

[profnicsnort]

[profnicsnort]

Ten facts about the tiefling refugees that you may not know, from the dialogue files (as of Patch 7)

Arabella is nine years old, per Zevlor if she dies. (Edit: Per Arabella's own speak with dead, she's nine and a half. As anyone who has dealt w kids knows, that half MATTERS!)

Danis and Bex want to name their cat Geoffrey, per a dialogue with a Githyanki Tav (who may get cats and gnomes confused)

Okta (the cook) has unique dialogue if you steal her cauldron.

Speaking of: Ikaron is Okta's son (in files for the goblin attack, the pair are referred to as "ChefAndSon" respectively)

Doni (the grunting kid) does not have a single line of traditional dialogue - but DOES have a line with Detect Thoughts ("Got to keep watch... but it's so bright and noisy here. Want to be back in the hideout")

If Cal and Rolan both die but Lia survives in Act 2, there are no fewer than four dialogue lines, ambients, or devnotes suggesting Lia plans to imminently kill herself. Despite arguing with her siblings the loudest, she is the one who takes losing the others hardest - even moreso than Rolan. Rolan endures to Lorroakan but goes bad, while Cal just...shuts down. But Lia plans to walk off into the shadows and let them claim her. She does not appear in Act 3 in this scenario. (See also: Why Rolan, Cal, and Lia won't truly have their happy ending unless they split up post-game)

Zorru survives to Act 3 by having escaped AFTER being captured alongside Lia/Cal/Danis/Lakrissa. Given this means he survived the Absolute's forces AND the Shadow Curse (unprotected) AND the Githyanki, this makes Zorru just about the luckiest low level NPC in the game

Alfira, a tiefling bard of at least moderate skill and knowledge, knows next to no songs or stories featuring tiefling heroes, just ones with tiefling villains, in Act 1. (A good reason to convince her to write a song about tieflings at the party!)

During the Goblin Battle, Memnos prays to no fewer than four gods - in order, Torm (for courage), Helm (protection), Tymora (Good fortune), and Kelemvor (for mercy, as god of the dead)

The devnote for the famous 'Don't be greedy' line is 'Slight smile - half joking'. Yes, dear reader, Rolan is flirting with you or teasing you just a tiny little bit.

[profnicsnort]

Allow me to present a page from the official artbook published by Larian and available in the "DLC" or for those who bought the EA version of the game.

If you can't read the text: "Two hundred years ago, Astarion was a corrupt elite of Baldur’s Gate with a taste for power and a hunger for eternal life. It wasn’t long before these desires became a nightmarish reality. Transformed into the vampire spawn of a sadistic master, Astarion was kept as a slave to lure fresh noble blood to the palace of Cazador – all while subsisting on the putrid blood of rats."

So, yes, it isn't stated outright in the game that Astarion was a corrupt offical, but it is there in the official material about the character. Could the artbook have been finished before they decided to remove that aspect from Astarion and they never went back and removed it? Totally. But it is still official material saying that Astarion was corrupt.

A corrupt elite doesn't mean he also couldn't be punitive in his rulings. It just means that some of those rules could be swayed with money or favors. And for a man poor enough to steal an apple to eat Astarion wouldn't show lenience because that man couldn't pay.

Here's a link to the book on archive(dot)org if you wanted to look for yourself

I'm not even a fan of a corrupt mortal Astarion - I don't think it matters - I agree who he is in the game and what is show there matters most. But like there is clear evidence for corrupt mortal Astarion for the fans who like it.

Maybe it’s an unpopular opinion, but I think everything there is to know about Astarion—and this applies to the other characters as well—is already abundantly present in the game, without necessarily having to dig through comments, scripts, interviews, or whatever else. The game is there, and it’s clear. The informations are all there—in the scenes, the dialogues, the notes written by characters within the narrative. Why would writers and developers hide anything? It doesn’t make sense! What isn’t there simply isn’t there.

That said, I won’t deny that creating theories or knowing what the director, actor, writer, artbook, or D&D manual have to say is fascinating! But sometimes, it really feels like people are desperately trying to grab onto this or that piece of information and forcefully drag it into the game when it simply isn’t there…

Like the idea of Astarion being a corrupt magistrate, when, based on what happens and what he says in the game, Astarion is actually more like a judge so severe and ruthless that he’d sentence a starving man to death just for stealing an apple! That’s the complete opposite of corruption—he’s inflexible, merciless, a bastard in his position as the enforcer of the law (and therefore the one holding the power to make decisions, which he may have once enjoyed), yes, but not corrupt! And this is just my conclusion as well, something the game suggested to me, but nothing definitive since there’s no confirmation.

And even his supposed affiliation with Cazador is never mentioned anywhere. If there had been any connection, Cazador could have easily exposed him when facing a heroic Tav/Durge, saying something like: “Do you know what this filthy magistrate used to do for me?” But instead, nothing—what Cazador emphasizes over and over again is how he was the one who made Astarion what he is.

And when it comes to the Gur attack, the only information we have is either pure coincidence (Cazador might have followed the scent of Astarion’s blood) or a vague possibility that the vampire lord had already been watching him for his own reasons and simply appeared at the right moment to “save” him. That’s it.

And that's it, as usual, it's just my thought.