#AND EVEN THEN. EVEN THEN DATA CAN BE FOUND

[areyoufuckingcrazy]

“Theoretical Feelings”

Tech x Female Reader

⸻

“Tech, you’re smarter than you look,” you said, fingers flying across the datapad as you recalibrated the long-range scanner’s neural relays.

Tech didn’t even glance up. “Is that a compliment for my intelligence or an insult for my appearance?”

You smirked, biting the inside of your cheek. “Maybe both. You’ll never know.”

That got him. He looked at you over the rim of his goggles, blinking once. “You are remarkably cryptic for someone so precise in data analysis.”

“And you’re remarkably dense for someone with a photographic memory.”

He opened his mouth—no doubt to deliver a factually loaded rebuttal—but Omega’s groan from the doorway cut him off.

“Ugh, will you two just kiss already?”

Wrecker let out a bark of laughter from the other side of the room. “They’re both so smart and yet so stupid. It’s kinda impressive, honestly.”

Hunter passed by without even looking up from his weapon check. “I give it three more arguments before one of them short-circuits.”

Echo, lounging at the gunner’s console, rolled his eyes. “I’ve seen better communication from malfunctioning droids.”

You turned bright red. “We’re not—! I mean, it’s not like that.”

Tech, completely deadpan: “I fail to see the logic in a kiss solving anything.”

“Oh my stars,” you muttered, pinching the bridge of your nose. “You’d think two geniuses wouldn’t be so emotionally… constipated.”

Omega laughed as she flopped into a chair. “Is that what it’s called?”

“Yes,” you said, shooting Tech a sidelong glance. “He’s got a whole datacard full of tactical strategy, but apparently no folder for feelings.”

“I have folders,” Tech protested, indignant. “I just haven’t… opened them.”

You crossed your arms and leaned back in your seat. “Well, maybe you should. Before I go flirt with Echo just to see if he can keep up.”

Tech’s goggles glinted as he straightened, spine stiff. “That would be inefficient. Echo’s humor is marginally less compatible with yours. Statistically, I am the superior match.”

The room went dead silent.

Even Hunter looked up.

“…What?” Tech asked, genuinely confused. “Was that not the correct response?”

You blinked, lips parting, but nothing came out at first. Finally, you leaned forward, resting your elbows on the table.

“Tech,” you said slowly. “Are you… trying to court me via statistics?”

“Well, that is the language I am most fluent in,” he said, as if it were obvious. “I have also calculated the probability of your reciprocal affection to be relatively high, based on prolonged eye contact, increased heart rate during proximity, and your tendency to brush your hair back when speaking to me.”

Your face went completely warm. “You noticed that?”

“I notice everything about you,” he said plainly. “I simply haven’t known what to do with the information.”

Your heart stuttered—because for all his clinical language, there was vulnerability behind it. Soft. Honest. Tech didn’t lie. He just struggled to feel out loud.

You offered a small smile. “You don’t have to do anything… except meet me halfway.”

He tilted his head. “Can you define halfway in this context?”

You stood up, stepped in front of him, and placed your hand gently on the side of his face—just enough pressure for his breath to catch. He froze like a statue.

“This,” you whispered, “is halfway.”

“Oh,” Tech said softly, eyes wide behind his goggles. “I see.”

And then—slowly, cautiously, with all the finesse of a man defusing a bomb—he leaned forward and kissed you.

Echo let out a low whistle. Wrecker whooped. Omega cheered.

Hunter smirked to himself. “About time.”

When you pulled back, Tech looked dazed. Awestruck.

You grinned and nudged his shoulder. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”

Tech adjusted his goggles. “I must say… I found it remarkably agreeable.”

“You’re so weird,” you whispered, grinning.

He smiled back. “Yes. But apparently, I am your kind of weird.”

⸻

[exoflash]

the only thing that irritates me as badly as new agers is western christians trying to explain away the spiritual with pseudoscience

[hellyrossum]

you know in all the posting about irving and helly’s friendship after last ep, i haven’t seen anyone mention yet that he was one of the two people who first saw her, who watched her (through the screen, on the other side of the wall) as she woke up for the first time, confused and scared and burning with anger. and then he was the one who brought her back; he was the one she first saw (holding her in his arms), as she was confused and scared and freezing. he was there for her start, and she was there again just in time for his end.

[ganondoodle]

the company i work for decided that its switching from the german formal "You"(Sie) to the informal "you" (Du) in all of our websites so now we have to scour the entire database to change it and i quite frankly hate that, not just bc the unecessary extra work but especially bc its such a weird and unecessary change

i bet its bc everything here is getting englishfied (both literally and culturally it feels like, when my new boss talks its half in english bc every second german word is just replaced by an english one despite there being perfectly fine words for it in german too, its so annoying) and bc they want to sound more personal in hopes of getting more clients bc 'company is your fwiend uwu!!', i know this here is the amercian tm site so you wouldnt understand really but i do not want to be greeted with 'du' by companies, no, thats too personal, you dont know me and im not giving you my data, stay away!!

i guess thats how i would describe it .. the formal you is like a polite distance, like someone you dont know staying outside your personal space, but when its the informal 'you' it feels invasive unless i told you you can call me that, and that goes double for companies

maybe its a small thing that doesnt seem important but i cant stand it, im just a little part time worker doing data work so i got no say in it but the companies founder also announced hes giving his post to his kids some time ago so ...... since then theres been alot of changes and new projects that solely aim to imitate whats popular and whats done by other companies, despite ours being one that is, or used to be, intentionally different, like, that was the POINT, but i guess chasing trends is just too appealing for CEOs

[therentyoupay]

Hello, Kris! I think I might’ve already gotten the gist of it, but it’s been some time. What exactly IS Academia Mode? Are you still in school, or is this your actual job, and it just happens to be involved in the education system?

Many thanks!

hahah no worries!!! that is a good question 🤣😭😭🙏 for me, academia mode is currently finishing the 5th and final year of my doctoral program and includes (but is not limited to lol):

data collection, analysis, write-ups

writing python programs to support my data cleaning, data coding, stats, and data analysis/visualizations

applying for GRANT MONEYYYY

submitting abstract proposals to conferences (and applying for MORE GRANT MONEYYYY)

reporting research findings (writing journal article manuscripts, preparing conference slides)

writing my actual dissertation manuscript lol

supporting and instructing my research assistants

sharing my research with mainstream public audiences

writing my non-fiction book based on my ongoing dissertation research

teaching classes, grading papers, holding office hours, fielding emails, writing letters of recommendation for all sorts of students' fellowships/grad admissions/grant applications, teaching students how to strategize their personal statements, grant purpose letters, and other aspects of apps, etc.

peer-reviewing others' journal manuscripts, providing feedback to colleagues (blind review or not)

assisting with my advisor's research and textbook manuscripts (proofreading, copy-editing, internet sleuthing, finding more up-to-date citations, occasionally writing rough drafts)

writing chapters for edited volumes on various topics

READING. all the time. reading new literature and research articles constantly. ALL THE TIME. writing 1-pagers and mini-annotated bibs for future lit review use, etc.

WRITING. all the time. professional-speak, academic-speak, insructor-speak.

getting paid to travel to conferences to present my research (GRANT MONEYYYYYY)

by may 2025, i'll be a Ph.D.!!!!!! [screams]

academia mode! ✨🤣🤣🤣😭🤣💕 every day, i think about how lucky i am that i get paid to do what i do 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹 hope you are having a magnificent day, and thank you for the ask!!

[ribbitflings]

the absolute fucking letdown when youre excited af about something cool you found that pertains to your interests—thats like a gold mine or candy shop for you—and you try to share it with other people so they can enjoy it too, only to be met with disinterest or feeble attempts at feigning interest

[quitedisastrous]

i wish i could just do nothing for a few days straight. maybe even just sleep for a few days straight. sooo excited for constant misery over the next 20 days

ranting in the tags. i would just scroll past if i were you

[000marie198]

I hate it here

Nobody even overviews, let alone reads, the TOS or privacy policy of any new app or account or site.

Bruh, this thing you insistently recommended to everyone you know has spyware which mines and transfers your personal info, did you even stop to think for a moment

[hurricanek8art]

Okay, y'know what, instead of dwelling today... I'm posting a little bit of my SWTOR art. I'm sharing something that brings me joy, even if it's scary. The sun yet shines, and I want something good to think about.

[neonsbian]

deleted tumblr off my phone 😁

[nerdnag]

jfc i am so tired of always having to assume that there's an undisclosed, required app involved whenever i buy something these days

[primrosebitch]

So im still using my iphone 6s, which i got in early 2017, and why, you may ask, am i still using a 7 year old phone? I have 2 reasons for this, 1) i refuse to have a phone without a headphone jack, i will not suffer the indignity of it, and 2) i don't want to deal with learning a new operating system, because stupid apple doesn't sell phones with headphone jacks anymore i will need to get a phone that uses a different operating system

I have many reasons for wanting a headphone jack, i don't want to have to worry about charging my headphones, i have adhd i don't need to add more things to the list of things i need to do but won't remember, i like having the cord and its more convenient to just plug it in to use the headphones than to have to go into settings and bluetooth and all that, and sure in iphones without the jack you can plug it in to the charger part but what if i want to charge my phone and use my headphones at the same time, and like i know there are adapters out there that can make that possible but again i have adhd i will not be able to keep track of it.

So my next phone can't be an iphone, which tbh is good because apple is shit, but the issue with that is that any other phone i get will be using a different operating system, so i'll have to learn and get used to a new operating system, and i don't do well with change, so im going to use this old phone until it ceases to function

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

oh yeah that’s sims 3. each sims game is broken in its own extremely funny way and sims 3 just is so unoptimised it turns supercomputers into ovens

not my titkok but SDFKJSFDKSFDJFDLKJSFDLKFDSLJKFSD

[evitcani-writes]

“It seems like almost all of those people don’t have HIV,” said Jennifer Kates, HIV policy director at KFF, a health-research nonprofit. “If they did, that would be substandard care at a pretty severe level,” she said.

Ya’ll. United Health just got accused of $17 billion in medicare fraud.

Basically they made up diagnosis which are improbable or impossible, “forgot” to remove ones which had been cured, and overall allegedly stole billions from taxpayers.

The government pays insurers a base rate for each Medicare Advantage member. The insurers are entitled to extra money when their patients are diagnosed with certain conditions that are costly to treat.

… About 18,000 Medicare Advantage recipients had insurer-driven diagnoses of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, but weren’t receiving treatment for the virus from doctors, between 2018 and 2021, the data showed. Each HIV diagnosis generates about $3,000 a year in added payments to insurers.

… He said internal company data for 2022 showed a treatment rate for patients UnitedHealth diagnosed with HIV of more than triple what the Journal found. He said the pandemic disrupted care, lowering treatment rates during the period analyzed by the Journal, and that the analysis failed to account for patients who started treatments in future years.

The Medicare data, however, show UnitedHealth’s patients with insurer-driven HIV diagnoses were on the antiretrovirals at low rates even before the pandemic, and hardly any started the drugs in the years after UnitedHealth diagnosed them.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/medicare-health-insurance-diagnosis-payments-b4d99a5d

I bet United Health really wishes it was a different week right now.

UPDATE/EDIT: Article is from July. I didn’t notice myself since it came up in my news feed. Don’t always trust the internet to be time accurate. 😎My guess is it is getting promoted due to current events. However, there are some updates concerning actions taken based on the report which you can look into by checking the authors’ other articles.

[drdemonprince]

The data does not support the assumption that all burned out people can “recover.” And when we fully appreciate what burnout signals in the body, and where it comes from on a social, economic, and psychological level, it should become clear to us that there’s nothing beneficial in returning to an unsustainable status quo. 

The term “burned out” is sometimes used to simply mean “stressed” or “tired,” and many organizations benefit from framing the condition in such light terms. Short-term, casual burnout (like you might get after one particularly stressful work deadline, or following final exams) has a positive prognosis: within three months of enjoying a reduced workload and increased time for rest and leisure, 80% of mildly burned-out workers are able to make a full return to their jobs. 

But there’s a lot of unanswered questions lurking behind this happy statistic. For instance, how many workers in this economy actually have the ability to take three months off work to focus on burnout recovery? What happens if a mildly burnt-out person does not get that rest, and has to keep toiling away as more deadlines pile up? And what is the point of returning to work if the job is going to remain as grueling and uncontrollable as it was when it first burned the worker out? 

Burnout that is not treated swiftly can become far more severe. Clinical psychologist and burnout expert Arno van Dam writes that when left unattended (or forcibly pushed through), mild burnout can metastasize into clinical burnout, which the International Classification of Diseases defines as feelings of energy depletion, increased mental distance, and a reduced sense of personal agency. Clinically burned-out people are not only tired, they also feel detached from other people and no longer in control of their lives, in other words.

Unfortunately, clinical burnout has quite a dismal trajectory. Multiple studies by van Dam and others have found that clinical burnout sufferers may require a year or more of rest following treatment before they can feel better, and that some of burnout’s lingering effects don’t go away easily, if at all. 

In one study conducted by Anita Eskildsen, for example, burnout sufferers continued to show memory and processing speed declines one year after burnout. Their cognitive processing skills improved slightly since seeking treatment, but the experience of having been burnt out had still left them operating significantly below their non-burned-out peers or their prior self, with no signs of bouncing back. 

It took two years for subjects in one of van Dam’s studies to return to “normal” levels of involvement and competence at work. following an incident of clinical burnout. However, even after a multi-year recovery period they still performed worse than the non-burned-out control group on a cognitive task designed to test their planning and preparation abilities. Though they no longer qualified as clinically burned out, former burnout sufferers still reported greater exhaustion, fatigue, depression, and distress than controls.

In his review of the scientific literature, van Dam reports that anywhere from 25% to 50% of clinical burnout sufferers do not make a full recovery even four years after their illness. Studies generally find that burnout sufferers make most of their mental and physical health gains in the first year after treatment, but continue to underperform on neuropsychological tests for many years afterward, compared to control subjects who were never burned out. 

People who have experienced burnout report worse memories, slower reaction times, less attentiveness, lower motivation, greater exhaustion, reduced work capability, and more negative health symptoms, long after their period of overwork has stopped. It’s as if burnout sufferers have fallen off their previous life trajectory, and cannot ever climb fully back up. 

And that’s just among the people who receive some kind of treatment for their burnout and have the opportunity to rest. I found one study that followed burned-out teachers for seven years and reported over 14% of them remained highly burnt-out the entire time. These teachers continued feeling depersonalized, emotionally drained, ineffective, dizzy, sick to their stomachs, and desperate to leave their jobs for the better part of a decade. But they kept working in spite of it (or more likely, from a lack of other options), lowering their odds of ever healing all the while. 

Van Dam observes that clinical burnout patients tend to suffer from an excess of perseverance, rather than the opposite: “Patients with clinical burnout…report that they ignored stress symptoms for several years,” he writes. “Living a stressful life was a normal condition for them. Some were not even aware of the stressfulness of their lives, until they collapsed.”

Instead of seeking help for workplace problems or reducing their workload, as most people do, clinical burnout sufferers typically push themselves through unpleasant circumstances and avoid asking for help. They’re also less likely to give up when placed under frustrating circumstances, instead throttling the gas in hopes that their problems can be fixed with extra effort. They become hyperactive, unable to rest or enjoy holidays, their bodies wired to treat work as the solution to every problem. It is only after living at this unrelenting pace for years that they tumble into severe burnout. 

Among both masked Autistics and overworked employees, the people most likely to reach catastrophic, body-breaking levels of burnout are the people most primed to ignore their own physical boundaries for as long as possible. Clinical burnout sufferers work far past the point that virtually anyone else would ask for help, take a break, or stop caring about their work.

And when viewed from this perspective, we can see burnout as the saving grace of the compulsive workaholic — and the path to liberation for the masked disabled person who has nearly killed themselves trying to pass as a diligent worker bee. 

I wrote about the latest data on burnout "recovery," and the similarities and differences between Autistic burnout and conventional clinical burnout. The full piece is free to read or have narrated to you in the Substack app at drdevonprice.substack.com

[chridys-space]

Just in case it helps anyone, turn on airplane mode whenever you play a game on your phone or tablet that doesn't require the internet (most don't). This stops the ads from loading and typically skips trying to load them at all, giving you nothing but the game.

Something so profoundly fucked up between the inverse ratio of shrinking middle class and ever increasing aggression of advertisement