#Accessing a Margin Calculator

[stockexperttrading]

Maximize Your Forex Profits: A Guide to Margin Calculators for Funded Traders Global

Discover how margin calculations are essential for successful forex trading, especially for Funded Traders Global members. This article explores the significance of margin, the risks associated with margin trading, and the role of margin calculators in optimizing trading strategies. Learn how to use margin calculators effectively, choose the right type for your needs, and avoid common mistakes. Join Funded Traders Global and elevate your forex trading with precision and profitability.

[reachartwork]

HOW TO SMELL AN ENTIRE APPLE: A SHORT STORY

Inspired by this post by @thatnordicguy and @anphivenas

Step #0 - Input the molecular formula for apple scent into the chemosynthesizer. Check against standard atmospheric regulations.

Step #1 - Inhale from the olfactory vent.

Step #2 - Step away in dissatisfaction, shake your head, put your hands on your hips. Purse your lips a little bit. Document discrepancy against memory file.

Step #3 - Ask Arto why he thinks real apples smell different. Listen to him talk about dirt while he mops, even though hydroponics hasn't used soil in sixty years.

Step #4 - Adjust temperature to match hydroponic bay specifications. Modify humidity levels to Earth-standard apple growing conditions. Calculate optimal dispersal timing.

Step #5 - Spend three months adjusting the ratio of esters while the Father AI logs your overtime as "personal research."

Step #6 - Request access to historical apple cultivation records. Compare against current hydroponic yields that you keep insisting aren't quite right.

Step #7 - Accept illegal thermos coffee from Arto while explaining why you're trying to simulate apple stem rot. Ignore his comment about how your genetic mother used to sneak him fresh apples during maintenance shifts.

Step #8 - Visit the hydroponic bay during off-hours. Stare at perfectly engineered apple trees while holding your latest formula.

Step #9 - Get caught by Arto in the hydroponic bay. Pretend you're doing official atmospheric maintenance.

Step #10 - File your three thousandth chemical variation attempt while children from the education deck eat fresh apples during their biology lesson.

Step #11 - Listen to Arto's story about his great-grandmother's apple trees on Earth while pretending to calibrate environmental controls. Make detailed notes about soil composition that aren't relevant to hydroponics. Make a note to yourself to request synthetic dirt.

Step #12 - Run formula past the station's other atmospheric engineers. Ignore their suggestions that the hydroponic apples are chemically identical to your synthesis.

Step #13 - Request video logs from the hydroponics bay from 14 years ago. Watch your own face.

Step #14 - Realize you're no longer sure what real apples smell like. Spend a week comparing your formula against hydroponic samples (to get back to square one) while Arto watches silently.

Step #15 - Submit research proposal for expanded apple volatiles study. Receive approval with note: "Recreational research permitted within standard atmospheric duties."

Step #16 - Calculate that you've spent more time perfecting this formula than an Earth apple tree takes to mature. Continue adjustments.

Step #17 - Watch Arto retire from maintenance duties. Inherit his illegal thermos and refuse to acknowledge why you keep it.

Step #18 - Access archived footage of the education deck from your childhood. Focus on analyzing environmental conditions instead of your own face.

Step #19 - Visit Arto in the elder care deck. Bring him hydroponic apples that you both agree aren't quite right.

Step #20 - Find Arto's old maintenance logs with notes about the original hydroponic bay installation. Ignore the drawings in margins made by children who are now atmospheric engineers themselves.

Step #21 - Input your final formula into the chemosynthesizer. Tell yourself it's for the sake of documentation.

Step #22 - Inhale from the olfactory vent while holding a fresh apple from the hydroponic bay. Compare the two. Bite an apple. Chew. Swallow. Inhale.

Step #23 - Step away in satisfaction, shake your head, put your hands on your hips. Smile a little bit. File formula in public database under "standard atmospheric maintenance". Take a seat in your motorchair, satisfied. Rub your achey legs.

Step #24 - Watch new generation of children eat apples during their biology lesson.

Step #25 - Die.

[lostintransist]

The Boys' Home | Part 6

*If you asked to be on a tag list and you haven't been, please ask again. Somtimes I think Tumblr eats my comments.

Part 1 | AO3

You loved them. Swear to any God you love your boys but FUCK! Sometimes the urging from childhood, the lizard brain screaming for peace, made it really hard to not lose your mind at them. All four of your boys were whining, fighting, and being a general nuance to each other and you. The grocery store would never be the place for them to fight like this.

Once a week during the summer you had to make a grocery run. Four growing boys at home every day meant they roved through any accessible food like locusts. If your local store offered pickup you would pay a decent amount to use it. It would save you from days like this.

Seth, at eleven, should have known better than to let Darren, at six, cause him so much distress. But being a preteen is a bit like being in hell so who knew how much he could hold back the yelling? Darren also fought with Sam, also six, and Reggie, ten.

Frankly, they all needed a nap and would argue they didn’t. The full moon incoming tonight helped only to fuel the chaos in their small bodies.

They had argued over who got to sit where and then during the drive over Reggie looked too long at Darren who screamed about the offense. Sam had started screaming that Darren was being too loud and then Seth tried to make them stop, by yelling. The nitpicking and annoyance at the others existing continued into the store. Halfway down the freezer aisle and that much closer to freedom. Glancing down at your list you curse in your head— you forgot about the milk and butter you needed. Of course, those marketing masochists had to put them in the back corner of the building.

As always you made note of where your boys were in relation to each other, the cart, and any other customers. Not many people in the freezer section today; a teenager who slowly read labels through the glass, two old men, shock white hair figuring them to be grandfather age, and the one man in a hat who ran numbers on the calculator on his phone.

Pushing the cart, and all four boys who have lost the privileges of walking without holding on, just beyond the freezer you needed you turned your focus away for two hells-damned seconds. No sooner than the blast of chilled air cooled against your skin than the yelling started.

The crinkle of the vegetable bag below your fingers did not drown out the sound of a different plastic screaming and small, roundish objects hitting the ground. Side-stepping and slamming the door shut you held back the yell by the thinnest of margins.

“Boys!” The mom voice came out in full force. “Enough! Clean up every grape you spilled.”

Four panicked faces stared up at you.

“Now!”

They scrambled to pick up each of what now appeared to be one hundred-plus tiny fruits rolling away in every direction. Movement had you looking up from the offending mess you see every man but one disappearing around the corner. You would call them cowards but you were interrupted.

“Powerful mum voice you have there,” John remarked as he watched your boys pick up every grape flung wide in their tomfoolery.

Glancing at your new neighbor you gauge the sarcasm as low. The tilt of his brows reads more as impressed and slightly annoyed than anything else.

“It’s a talent. My mom voice is stronger than my teacher voice.”

When Sam lifted a handful of grapes, bad intentions in his eyes, you let out two quick hisses of air. All the boys paused and glanced at you. Everyone but Sam turned back to their task as they realized they were not the child in trouble. Eye contact with your boy and a quick head shake were enough of a redirect to avoid further problems.

“Never could quite figure out how my mum could call us all to order so easily. Watching you do it makes me wonder which is stronger, my captain voice or your mom voice.” John has now joined you as the boys scoop and deliver their mistreated goods back into the bag.

A light smile drifts over your lips, even as your chest remains tight.

“I bet the mom voice would work well on your Johnny, and probably Kyle. Jury’s out on Simon,” you wink when John catches your eye. “Bet if I caught you with it I would get a reaction though.”

John let out a belly laugh, big enough to drift. An older woman toddled past the other end of the aisle. Well guess the conversation would be town-wide by desert.

“You know what? I’ll take your bet. What are you offering?”

The boys were nearly done. Thinking fast you blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“If I win you agree to man the grill for the neighborhood meetup you can make it to. Next one is in two weeks.”

They were always hosted at your house, which is fine but that meant you were in charge of the grill. Mostly you were in charge of the grill because the last time any of the men had touched it they left it so gross you banned them from touching it again. You hated cooking meat. It freaked you out that everything might not be fully cooked.

Folding his arms John nodded slowly, as if thinking it over.

“Seems like a good offer. If I win I ask for deserts for our next poker night.”

A fair offer. Equal in labor, skill, and expectation as to what you would demand as your winnings.

“You’ve got yourself a deal,” offering John your hand, you shake on it.

“Got a good grip there teach,” he patted you on the shoulder.

Something about that interaction tickled your brain. But as the boys were finally finished cleaning up the mess they had made you needed to leave it.

“Good. Hands on the cart,” you fired off the command.

“But mom!” Seth cried, affronted in only a way an eleven-year-old can be.

“But Seth!” You whined back before dropping into a deadpan expression. “Kid we have two things left to grab. You can grab the cart or I can ask John here to take you home.”

Neither looked terribly impressed with the option. They made eye contact before Seth grabbed the wire of the cart with a sigh.

John lifts a brow at you.

“Welcome to small towns John. You can and will be used as punishment by other people’s parenting,” you reply with a shrug and a grin. “Alright boys, let’s go.”

He chuckles behind you as you push your full cart and the four dour-faced children who want nothing to do with the buzzing lights of the store. Once the milk and butter were secured the boys convinced you to buy some popcorn. Shareable snack acquired you were able to direct the chaos toward check out.

This step moved fast. Seth and Reggie both scampered to the end of the second conveyor belt and bagged all the groceries the cashier sent their way. Darren and Sam touch every fucking thing within their limited reach until you threaten them with getting put in the cart.

Mary Ann is your cashier today. She had been one of your students two years ago, passing math and even taking online math courses through the community college two towns over. Her dad, Richard, talked about her going off to a fancy college once her associates were done. You had offered to write her a letter of recommendation if ever she needed or wanted it. Mary Ann was a good kid. She might now be twenty but until you were dead, she would be one of your kids.

“Heard you snapping at the boys in the freezer aisle. Everything going okay?” Her hands don’t stop moving even as Mary Ann asks the question.

The eye roll is unstoppable.

“The hooligans need a nap,” Darren and Sam start to protest but you ignore them and finish your sentence. “There was an incident with the grapes. We got it all cleaned up though.”

“Oh good,” Mary Ann scanned the last item and tapped a few buttons on her side. “Your total is—”

She got cut off by Reggie wailing like a hot brand had been taken to his ass.

Slamming your card against the reader you cursed the heartbeats until it beeped. Reggie was now screaming for you and Seth was yelling. Once the awful beep that always made you think your card declined sounded you were snatching Sam and Darren by the hands and snapping at Seth and Reggie to ‘push the fucking cart and if you don’t quit screaming in here.’

The violence of their voices continues. Reaching the van you turn it on, plug in your phone, turn on the most bass-heavy song you can find in a short glance, and up the volume. Seth and Reggie climb in first, to the way back followed by Sam and Darren who click themselves into their booster seats. They all know that if you are turning on the bass it is to drown them all out and screaming will do nothing but cause you to roll the windows down and turn the volume up even higher.

Was it good parenting? No. But it kept you from wrecking the fucking van so it wasn’t the worst choice you could make. Loading the groceries in the back you give in to your anger a tiny bit and slam the door closed. Angrily stalking the cart back to the corral and sending it careening in also helps a bit.

Parenting is the hardest thing you’ve ever done, and most of that comes from confronting your own damn issues. Sometimes though? It is hard because it’s hard to be near a person learning to be a person.

Each child is given a bag or two to take inside and deposit on the counter before they are free to disappear into the woods or up to their rooms. The absence of them in your space and face lets you take the deepest breath and scream into your hands. The small bones shake from the force of your yelling.

“Okay. You can do this. Fuck, the full moon is tonight and then you should get your children who don’t hate that someone breathed near them back.” Taking another deep breath you start putting everything away, still talking to yourself. “We can have chicken nuggets, mac’n’cheese, and salad. Popcorn and a movie before bed and then a large glass of something for me.”

Face in the freezer as you rearranged everything to fit as Simon’s voice from outside scared you into a shriek.

“Do you always talk to yourself?”

Boys Masterlist | Masterlist

@leahnicole1219 @harperstyles @sigynxlokiwifelover @fluffysmiko @lily-bug3 @demothers-empty-blog @literallegendicon

[reasonsforhope]

"At HarperCollins, a lot of attention and thought is given to deciding exactly what combinations of margin measurements, font, and layout feel most appropriate for the genre, and writing style.

But in a case of do-your-part environmentalism, designers at the publishing house have now standardized a series of subtle and imperceptible alterations to normal font style, layouts, and ink that have so far removed the need for 245 million book pages, totaling 5,618 trees.

Telling the story in Fast Company, representatives from HarperCollins, one of the four largest publishing houses in the world, explained that the idea first arose in Zondervan Bibles, HarperCollins’ Christian publishing division. Being that the Bible is 2,500 pages or sometimes more, saving ink and pages was not just an environmental consideration, but one of production costs.

A new typeface called NIV Comfort Print allowed Zondervan to shave 350 pages off of every Bible, which by 2017 had amounted to 100 million pages, and which, as Fast Company points out, would be four times higher than the Empire State Building if stacked.

The production and design teams then wondered how much they could save if they applied the same concepts to other genres like romance and fiction. Aside from the invention of the eBook, publishing hasn’t changed much in the last 100 years, and the challenge was a totally novel one for the teams—to alter all their preconceived ideas and try and find a font and typeface that resulted in fewer pages without being harder to read.

They eventually standardized 14 different combinations their tests determined were the most environmentally friendly, and which delivered an unchanged reading experience.

But the challenge didn’t stop there. Printed books, one might not know, are printed in large sheets which are then folded into sections of sixteen pages, meaning that Leah Carlson-Stanisic, associate director of design at HarperCollins, has to calculate the savings of space, words, and ultimately pages with the help of her team to fall in multiples of sixteen.

Nevertheless, they have been successful with it so far, and in the recent print run of one popular book, 1 million pages (or a number near 1 million that coincides with the 16 times tables) were saved.

“We want to make sure our big titles, by prominent authors, are using these eco-fonts,” Carlson-Stanisic said. “It adds up a little bit at a time, saving more and more trees.”"

-via Good News Network, April 4, 2024

--

Note: Great! Waiting to see this on the rest of their books and at the other big publishers!

Actually, though, it's worth noting that this may not come quickly to the other large publishers, because Harper Collins almost certainly owns that font - meaning that other publishers would have to pay HarperCollins in order to use it, on an ongoing basis.

More on publishing shit and more realistic solutions here below the cut!

What I'm hoping for and think is more likely is that this will inspire the development of open source eco-friendly fonts, which would be free for anyone to use. That would make it far more likely other publishers would adopt eco-friendly fonts.

I'm also hoping it would inspire other publishers to create similar eco-friendly fonts of their own.

Ideally, there would be a whole new landscape of (hopefully mostly open source) eco-friendly fonts. And/or to see calculations of the eco-friendliness of popular existing fonts, compared to each other.

If we could have a publicly accessible list of calculations for different fonts, including fonts designed to maximize eco-friendliness, I really do think that it would affect which fonts publishers choose to use. Here's why:

Most people in publishing are on the left (notoriously, actually) and really do care about the environment

People in publishing are plenty aware of these issues re: paper and trees, I promise

Shorter books means smaller production costs - and possibly smaller shipping costs as well, over time! So it would save them money too.

Eco-friendly fonts could also be combined with other measures for greater effect, such as bamboo paper (already in use for a lot of projects where page color/quality is more flexible) and thinner paper (aka paper with a lower weight) that uses less trees.

Don't expect books to all move to just one or two different fonts, though. Publishers and typesetters and font designers will innovate to create more options instead, though it will take longer. This is because different books really do use different fonts for various different reasons - one new font to rule them all isn't really a solution here.

"Every book is in the same font" may sound like a "whatever" deal to a lot of people, but as someone who works in publishing - trust me, it would actually make your reading experience worse, even if you could never quite put your finger on why.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Secret Service: "Use the Gate." Jimmy Carter: "Hold my Peanuts." Life is full of obstacles. Pres. Carter showed us how to jump them like a boss. RIP #JimmyCarter

* * * *

Jimmy Carter’s final gift to America.

December 29, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

Dec 30, 2024

One of the most decent men ever to hold the office of President of the United States passed away in his 100th year on December 29, 2024. I am not a historian, so I will leave the assessment of his presidency and equally consequential post-presidency to others who are better equipped to make those judgments. But one does not need to be a historian or student of politics to know that President Jimmy Carter was a good man whose decency acted as a balm for a troubled nation following a time of crisis.

It impossible to reflect on Carter’s decency, humanity, and humility without experiencing a foreboding sense of dread about the lack of integrity and amorality of the incoming presidency. Many tributes make oblique references to that contrast. President and Dr. Jill Biden issued the following statement:

[T]o all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning – the good life – study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith, and humility. He showed that we are great nation because we are a good people – decent and honorable, courageous and compassionate, humble and strong.

If there is any lesson in the life and passing of President Carter, it is that we are a good people capable of electing good leaders. We should not surrender to a false sense of inevitability that lies and narcissism are permanent fixtures of the American political landscape.

Over the coming weeks, I will highlight commentary regarding President Carter that deserves the attention of readers of this newsletter, and I invite readers to use the Comment section to post links to non-paywalled articles.

As of Sunday evening, James Fallows has published a freely accessible version of an article he previously published in The Atlantic. See James Fallows, Breaking the News (Substack), Jimmy Carter: Unlucky President, Lucky Man.

Fallows’ article is a bracing reminder of how much has changed since Carter’s presidency. Fallows reminds us:

In office [Carter] also had the challenge of trying to govern a nearly ungovernable America: less than two years after its humiliating withdrawal from Saigon, in its first years of energy crisis and energy shortage, on the cusp of the “stagflation” that has made his era a symbol of economic dysfunction. It seems hard to believe now, but it’s true: The prime interest rate in 1980, the year Carter ran for reelection, exceeded 20 percent.

Imagine running for re-election when 20% interest rates put home ownership out of reach for all but the wealthiest Americans.

And the political landscape in 1980 is unrecognizable today:

The South was then the Democrats’ base, and the West Coast was hostile territory. Jimmy Carter swept all states of the old Confederacy except Virginia, and lost every state west of the Rockies except Hawaii. In Electoral College calculations, the GOP started by counting on California.

The Democrats held enormous majorities in both the Senate and the House. Carter griped about dealing with Congress, as all presidents do. But under Majority Leader Robert Byrd, the Democrats held 61 seats in the Senate through Carter’s time. In the House, under Speaker Tip O’Neill, they had a margin of nearly 150 seats (not a typo). The serious legislative dealmaking was among the Democrats.

Writer and journalist Steven Beschloss published a tribute to Jimmy Carter in America, America (Substack), Jimmy Carter's Enduring Humanity. Beschloss writes:

At a time when too much of our political sphere is poisoned by cruelty and hate and malignant narcissism—and where too many self-described Christians appear driven by grievance and self-righteous aggression—the good works of Jimmy Carter offer a refreshing antidote and a necessary reminder of the power of humanity.

Beschloss quotes Jimmy Carter on the role of immigrants in America’s tradition of service to others. Carter said,

America is the most diverse or heterogeneous nation, comprised primarily by immigrants who were not afraid of an unpredictable future in a strange land. Almost all of them had great need when they arrived here and were then inspired to be of help to others. This concept of service to others is still a crucial element in the American character and has always prevailed in overcoming challenges and correcting societal mistakes.

“Service to others” as a defining trait of an immigrant nation. The difference between Carter's and Trump's views regarding immigration could not be more stark.

There is much more to be said, but I would like to end on a personal recollection of the unfairness of media coverage of Carter’s presidency. I was in law school as Carter’s presidency sputtered and groaned under the weight of serial international crises: the oil crisis, the Iranian hostage crisis, and international recession.

Carter worked tirelessly to navigate crises that were beyond the control of any global leader. The media—recently emboldened and vindicated by reporting on the Watergate scandal—was merciless. For understandable reasons, the media no longer trusted American presidents. Journalists were keenly aware that the road to Pulitzers and lasting fame ran through aggressive reporting on the president.

Even when Carter did everything right, he could do nothing right—at least according to the media. When the media learned that Carter shooed away a swamp rabbit from his boat while fishing in a Georgia pond, the story became front-page news on the Washington Post, New York Times, and all three broadcast news networks—at a time when Carter was successfully negotiating the SALT treaty limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The “killer rabbit” story dominated major media outlet coverage for a week—often with the self-serving angle, “President Carter can’t shake bad press over the killer rabbit story.” Carter couldn’t shake bad press over the rabbit story because the media had settled on a negative narrative about Carter—and they wouldn’t let it go.

[Sigh. Even today, on the day of his passing, the NYTimes has an above-the-fold story, “That Time President Carter Was Menaced by a ‘Killer Rabbit’ - The New York Times.”]

Watergate broke journalism—and the profession has never recovered. As will become plain in the coming weeks, the re-assessment of Carter’s presidency will show that he was a strong president who accomplished great things. For example, the Camp David Accords created a framework for peace between Israel and Egypt that remains in place today.1

At the time, a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt seemed impossible. Carter achieved the impossible because sworn enemies put their trust in Jimmy Carter. Few presidents can claim an achievement solidly built on their universally recognized reputation for integrity.

President Jimmy Carter was a good and decent man whose presence elevated the office of the presidency.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

I waffled a bit about making this but I don't have much else to be doing and it is only 10:30 in the morning and I already feel like I've been up for 22 hours so let's talk about Shu S3 versus Saria S3.

An important note I'm going to bring up here is that while Shu S3 is very good, it does technically lose out on heal coverage to Blemishine S3 under ideal circumstances. A Blemishine who is constantly attacking and taking pressure will cycle through her skill way faster than Shu ever will, even with her talent in play. It is a bit difficult to compare Blemishine's Offensive + Defensive recovery skills to an Automatic Recovery skill on principle though, and IMO the skills are meant to do different things. Blemishine's S3 is meant to turn her into an offensive threat while giving her the stats she needs to tank enemies. Shu is a healer and support unit. They aren't working on the same axis.

In looking at Shu's S3 compared to Saria's S3, I'm going to compare them directly. They are built in a lot of ways to do exactly the same things, with Shu being a much newer version of Saria's skill. I'll be comparing them on:

Range of their skills

SP Cost

Healing efficacy

Buffing capabilities

Support capabilities

Crowd Control

Range

If we compare the ranges of Shu's S3 to Saria's S3, Saria's range is bigger, having four more tiles of access than Shu. Shu does get the ability to cover a ton of tiles with her Sowing, however, so the range advantage is pretty marginal for Saria.

SP Costs

The biggest advantage for Shu is the SP costs of their skills. Saria's skill will be faster on deployment, taking only 10 seconds to charge compare to Shu's 15, but Shu's 45 SP cost on her S3 means it will be active a little less than twice as often as Saria's S3. This is huge for Shu, as one of Saria's problem is that she doesn't have great coverage with her S3, and so this skill often takes a back seat to S1 or S2 if you're using Saria for healing reasons.

Healing Efficacy

Shu blows Saria pretty much completely out of the water. She has a HPS of roughly 1,289 with her talent going at max power, and it's even higher if she's healing a target with under 50% HP. Saria's skill will usually only heal roughly 275 HP a second, bumping to 316 with her GUA-X module trait, and 286 HP a second with her GUA-Y module, and this is assuming she's been on the battlefield for the full 90 seconds she needs to reach that juicy passive +40% ATK buff. Shu's passive 85 HP/s regen and 17% Sanctuary really makes the comparison worse. Mitigation is damage you didn't need to heal after all.

Buffing Capabilities

Shu's advantage here is that she will buff operators no matter what damage type they are using: Physical, Arts, True, Elemental, they all benefit from Shu's buffs. Saria, however, provides better numbers for Arts damage, and this might initially seem like it shouldn't be true. For an Arts operator, Shu's buffs would give them an additional 56.25% DPS, which is better than Saria...by a very slight amount. But, this is assuming an operator has no ATK or ASPD buffs active at that time.

Let's take Haze for a minute as a clear example of this. Haze's normal DPS with her S2 active is 1,092.8 damage per second. Haze over the course of her skill deals about 25k damage, which is not too shabby for a 4-star! With Shu's buffs, her DPS will improve to 1,461.0, which is an impressive jump! However, it is only a 33.69% improvement on her damage, because the ATK and ASPD buffs get diluted by diminishing returns. Saria meanwhile always gives a 55% improvement on DPS, because her buff is a damage multiplier, which is applied after the other parts of the damage calculation.

So is Saria better for buffing Arts damage? The answer, genuinely, is that it depends. Saria will often give you the biggest numbers possible, but Shu has better cycle times with her buffs that Saria does. If you need your buffs to align better or you need them more often, Shu is definitely going to be the pick. If you need a big burst damage moment or your DPS points are far enough apart, Saria will be better.

Support Capabilities

Strictly speaking, neither S3 really supports outside of buffs, but the benefit from talents is important here. You need to compare Shu's Sowing with Saria's SP generation talent. Shu's tiles will give an 85 HP regen and 17% Sanctuary buff, while Saria will provide 1-2 SP every time she heals. This is another point where Saria really isn't strictly better or worse than Shu is. Shu's talent remains actively constantly, and provides an ok regen along with some damage mitigation. Saria's talent only applies if the target is healed (if they are at full SP, they do not gain SP) and can be tricky to set-up, but potentially triples the speed in which they will be able to access their skill. A common skill pairing is Saria and Shalem, which have great synergy with each other. Shalem's skill is Defensive Recovery, and burns most of his HP away. Shalem's HP is just high enough that he will recover most if not all of the SP he needs off of Saria's 10 heals, at which point he can activate his skill during the last 20 seconds and take full advantage of Saria's buff. Stages with DoT are great for Saria, who can pump an entire squad full of yummy SP.

Crowd Control Capabilites

Saria and Shu both have access to potent crowd control abilities, with Saria having access to a chunk movement speed reduction while Shu has access to her teleportation gimmick. Shu's teleportation is a bit difficult to understand from her description, but essentially, if an enemy steps onto a sowed tile while Shu has skill active, and then moves 2 tiles away from the original tile, they will be teleported directly back to where they started.

Two tiles seems like a lot, but remember that enemies typically enter a tile from its edge, and suddenly Shu's crowd control aspects become very powerful. If Shu has a sowed tile 2 tiles in front of the objective box, enemies will not be able to enter the objective box for the entire 30 seconds her skill is active. They'll just reach the edge of the box but not enter it before being teleported back. This makes Shu a much better crowd control option than Saria, although Saria is not bad by any means. This skill has a TON of unintended interactions with various boss and enemy gimmicks, on top of clustering enemies very tightly together and making them vulnerable to AoE and splash damage.

It's really good. I initially wrote this off as a funny gimmick ability but it's a great piece of crowd control and makes Shu a much more well rounded operator for having it.

Conclusion

It's often the case in gacha games, and typically in any long running game content, that after four and a half years, game pieces released by this point thoroughly outclass game pieces released at launch. Is Shu better than Saria? Yes, for the most part. But it is worth saying that Shu does not necessarily completely replace Saria. Saria has good niches to fit in as a support operator in her very powerful Arts damage buff and SP charging capabilities, but even more than that there is an entire conversation to be had about Saria's better ability to tank physical damage. Saria can have almost 1000 DEF with her talent at full power and has a 15% damage reduction on top of that.

In addition, Saria is definitely better at using her S1 than Shu is, thanks to her higher ATK and SP charging capabilities. It's not a huge niche but Saria's S1 packs a pretty potent punch that Shu's doesn't.

Shu's S3 is definitely mostly better, but Saria has moments where she shines and Shu does not.

[howtofightwrite]

This might not be in your line, but I was thinking about teleportation magic, and the fact that the earth is moving extremely quickly through the universe, while also rotating at an intense speed. Assuming a teleportation spell has to be cast from a fixed point to a fixed point, what school of math would be required to determine the second point?

Physics. Usually writers think of teleportation as a fixed relationship to a point of reference on the other end.

The earth rotates at about 1.6k km/h. So, that's “relatively,” easy to calculate. The earth orbits the sun at slightly under 30 km/s. The sun (along with the rest of the solar system) is moving at about 720,000 km/h. Oh, and the galaxy itself is moving at about 2.1m km/h.

So, all you need to do is take the trajectory of the galaxy, adjust for the movement of the solar system, then account for the orbital speed of the planet, and finally remember to account for the rotation of the earth. Once you've done all that you're ready to accidentally teleport yourself into hard vacuum because of a rounding error, or because you forgot to account for how velocity results in temporal lensing, and your perception of time is very marginally distorted, which wouldn't be a problem until you're dealing with speeds in excess of two million km/h. (For reference, the closer you get to the speed of light, slightly under 300m km/s, the slower time moves, or the perception of time, anyway. Normally, we're all on the same planet and moving at roughly the same speed, so the distortion is uniform, but when you're talking about calculating exact, non-relative points in space, the movement of the galaxy, and solar system, will throw your numbers off. Not by a large number, but enough to drop you outside of a breathable atmosphere.)

So, yeah, the short answer would be physics, but you'd be plotting a lot of vectors to work it out.

It's easier to work with teleportation when you can start taking some of those values off the table. Either by fixing your teleportation points with a fixed relation to one another (which would still have issues when trying to jump between planets, but should be fine if you're staying on earth), or based on fixed relations to a specific point. Untethered teleportation is a lot of math.

-Starke

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[owl-with-a-pen]

The 21st century was abundant with challenges; indeed, Brainy was starting to believe it had yet to crawl its way out from the dark ages.

The technology was a joke, buckling under his own vastly superior interface every time he tried to connect with something mentally. Until he’d made the necessary adjustments to his own internal network – a task he was not looking forward to - the old-fashioned way was the only method these so-called computers seemed to respond to.

Being here was… uncomfortable to say the least. Though the hardware in these backwards machines was easy enough to decipher, the information they held within was wholly alien to him. Social media, dating profiles, in-app purchases; the state of the internet had been reduced to a shallow caricature of its true potential. The only data this generation seemed to care about were the gigs on their mobile telephone devices – crude little rectangles that weren’t even capable of hosting a low-level hologram.

It was all necessary, of course. His discomfort paled in comparison to the enormity of their mission here. Mon-El had been predictably frosty since learning the truth about he and Imra’s… omittance of certain crucial details surrounding their arrival in this century, though Brainy knew it wouldn’t last. He’d calculated the odds - another few days, and Mon-El would have well and truly thawed.

Despite how important their being here was, it didn’t mean he had to like this century by any means. He’d been accessing all he could on the history of this time since Supergirl’s mission to Fort Rozz had gone sour, adding any and all significant events to his thought tracks on the slim chance he might be caught off guard again. He did not want to suffer the same humiliation as before. Being usurped by this Winn Schott on a technicality was nothing short of mortifying. Besides, how was he meant to have known about some ancient probe, anyway? How was he meant to know anything about how this backwards, primitive, exhausting time period operated?

But that was in the past. Winn had proven himself marginally more useful than Brainy had initially calculated, and though his teammates may have suspected he was avoiding the DEO for that reason, the truth was far less convoluted.

In all honesty, the DEO was a loud and chaotic hive of a building, flocked with soldiers who paraded themselves about this self-proclaimed masterpiece of modernity as though the technology there wasn’t outright laughable. Nothing responded to him as it should, in fact, nothing responded to him at all. It made his skin crawl being so isolated within his own network, to be so far removed from everything he had once relied on as indisputable fact. Imra and Mon-El had certainly noticed his discomfort, because they made no objection to his many transparent excuses to remain inside the ship.

Another recent and far more concerning discovery of the 21st century… were the people. Brainy had at first considered them a positive. After all, the likelihood of anyone recognising him for the stain that was his family name in this century was incredibly low. As far as the history books recorded, Brainiac had not visited Earth to date.

What they had failed to state was that the humans of the 21st century were not yet accustomed to sharing their planet with the outer universe.

Human/alien relations were not sturdy by any means, leading to an alarming trend in the acquisition of image inducer technology. Brainy was no stranger to such gadgets, they were sold as cheap toys where he was from, although there was little need for them in the 31st century. Perhaps on an occasion where the Legion were needed for a covert mission, although even those were usually operated by the espionage squad.

But to use an image inducer out of personal safety on an every-day basis? It sounded downright archaic.

Brainy had learned the hard way how humans took to his less-than normal appearance the first time he had ventured out on his own. Though Supergirl and her friends took no alarm to his natural visage, outside of the DEO, people were far less understanding.

A quick review of recent marketing trends had led to his own acquisition. Though there were changes to this century he was willing to make for the greater good - for Imra - he did not wish to do anything that might destabilise the already rocky relationship mankind had with their alien compatriots. Progress was around the corner, and Brainy very much wanted to keep it that way.

And so, not only was he to make nice with the technology here, but he was also made to adhere it to his own flesh.

The first chance he got, Brainy found himself alone in his quarters, fiddling impatiently with his newly acquired children’s toy.

He stared nervously at his reflection in the holographic mirror, making miniscule hand gestures across his face as he adjusted the inducer’s settings for human features. Even in this century, image inducers were a small but clever gadget, working on a psychic wavelength that affected the viewer’s perception of the user’s chosen presented image. Fortunately, that also made it the perfect tool for Brainy to connect with his own interface.

The device had, ironically, been designed first by L-Corp, a technology giant once owned by the notorious Lex Luthor - a name that had made it all the way to the 31st century in more than one sense of the word. Since Luthor’s incarceration, the company had been acquired by his sister. Lena. Brainy had heard Kara mention her name in passing already, enough that he understood her as an ally in this time. Though, a quick but thorough check of recent news articles circulating her endeavours showed that not everyone was on her side.

He could certainly relate to that.

From his research, he was confident that Lena’s mind was every bit as brilliant as her brother’s, perhaps more-so considering her pursuits towards good over ill. Though image inducers were still in a local testing phase, the plan was to release them worldwide within six months. No matter how Brainy felt about that, he couldn’t deny the results. The image inducer had done exactly as is had described.

Stood before him was a Querl Dox he no longer recognised.

It was still inarguably him, for his physical features had only been hidden behind a thin veil of human toned hair and skin. It was easier that way for human minds to adjust to the telepathic suggestion, and certainly made it simpler for Brainy to digest.

It was odd to say the least, and the longer he stared dumbfounded at his new reflection, the more he began to notice not what had been changed - but what was missing.

Silently, Brainy drew a hand across his forehead, watching the resultant frown lines that appeared across his freshly unblemished skin.

His inhibitors. Of course. How strange; he'd nearly forgotten what he looked like without them. It had been so long since…

No.

A shudder passed down Brainy’s spine. That was not something he was allowed to indulge. His appearance was his strength, his inhibitors his courage. To think of it as anything else was illogical. Wrong.

Besides, he’d dismissed the notion of dreaming a long time ago.

And yet, in that moment of vulnerability, he felt his mind relax, allowing a single thought to surface. One that he’d kept buried for far too long.

As Brainy continued to stare into the soft glow of his reflection, he watched as his image inducer latched onto that one renegade thought, spinning it into reality.

His human toned flesh was human no longer. Instead, it blossomed with green pigment, surfacing in blotches through his pores. The black hair he had decided upon was already lightening again, abstaining from its leeched colouring by halting a few shades short of pure white. Instead, after a few moments, it fell about his shoulders in a soft, free flowing blond, curling inward at odd ends, no longer coarse in appearance, but rather smooth and velvety.

His forehead remained bare, reinstated with the deep and healthy green of his people.

Brainy didn’t dare breathe, holding himself so still that his eyes began to burn.  

He couldn’t see his inhibitors, he couldn’t see them, and with that realisation, his chest swelled with an emotion that was hard to describe. It felt light and airy, rising to his head with a giddy thrill.

But the image inducer could only do so much. Invisible or not, he could still feel them beneath the illusion, a hum of energy in his ears he’d long ago taught himself to drown out.

They were heavy. It wasn’t something he thought about often, but they were. They pinched and irritated his skin, causing undue strain at his neck - yet more discomforts he’d learned to live with over the years. Because so long as they were there, he knew he posed no danger to anyone.

They would all be safe.

Don’t you want that, Querl?

Brainy flinched hard, revulsion twisting his stomach. With that, the image dispelled, and the next time he blinked his eyes open, he was blue again.

His inhibitors glowed hot on his face, as though spiting him for what he’d just done.

What had he just done…?

Brainy shook himself, jerking a hand to the side of his jaw, eager to continue his original preset. He ignored the tremor in his wrist, the telltale churn of nausea in his gut, and focused solely on finishing what he’d set out to achieve.

It was a silly toy, he reminded himself. Nothing more. It would help him present as human when necessary. That was all.  

He could not allow himself the comfort of such an absurd illusion again.

Besides, the feeling would pass, just like every intense emotion that had come before it – it would be curbed and then controlled.

And then, this uncomfortable sensation would go away.

Brainy made another hasty gesture, pre-emptively deleting the Coluan preset from the inducer’s memory file. It would not be needed.

Once he was satisfied with his human visage, he saved the settings for future use, waving away his holo-mirror with a certain level of relief.

Now that the trivial had been dealt with, he could sink his twelfth level mind into matters that were sure to take some of those nerves away.

After all, he still had a mission he needed to complete.  

[skloobles]

how many people are there in bunnyville?

ive been a little bored today so i thought i'd crunch some numbers quickly to figure out just how big bunnyville is. now of course most of this is wildly unsubstantiated so don't take what i say as gospel or really anything within an ounce of truth. but it's fun thought experiment so bear with me.

quick warning — this is a bit of a long post. proceed with caution.

i'm solely basing this on the episode "community service" as it's a) the only time we see democracy in action in the whole series and i'm a nerd; b) has numbers! and c) i can't remember if they touched on this anywhere else in what remains of the english dub

part I - the poll

so as a quick reminder at the beginning of the episode there's a "judicial phone-in" where citizens vote a la x factor/big brother/other tv show to decide bunny's fate. i've compiled a nifty table for the results, shown below:

So we can gather that at least 1,537,768 people voted in that very short poll. which is a lot, all things considered.

but there is also the issue that we don't have an exact number for how many votes that third option got. the government of bunnyville doesn't keep records on account of being a fictional nation with a dictatorial government but i'll lowball a little and say it's around 1,250,000. additionally, we should account for stan calling the fourth option 1,000 times a second.

so how long was the poll? i hear you cry. the timer shown on screen is very fast, and would probably only amount to four or five seconds maximum. in the episode, there's about a minute between the polls opening and the results being shown, so we'll say it's around a minute and 15 seconds to account for some margin of error. this means stan would've made a whopping 75 thousand calls for life imprisonment. this leaves us with a number of around 1,712,768 people – 1,712,759 of whom wanted bunny to be punished in some way.

so how does this help us calculate bunnyville's population? we can account for cell phone usage in 2009, average turnout for this sort of thing, etc. and that'll hopefully lead us to a number.

part II - what's in a vote?

at its core, this poll is a form of direct democracy. in a direct democracy, citizens vote directly on laws and issues, with the will of the majority (or even just the plurality) making the decision, sometimes in spite of an elected government. good examples of direct democracies (or representative democracies with direct elements) include switzerland, liechtenstein, and ireland. so let's use some turnouts to decide what percentage of bunnyville's population voted in the poll

one problem is that turnout in referenda varies wildly. the average referendum in switzerland has a turnout of about 45–50%, but referenda in singapore and scotland have had turnouts as high as 80–90% – so how important is the issue of bunny maloney to the general public?

on the whole, it's clear the protecteam have a tendency to dominate the news cycle a little, so we'll place the referendum at a bit higher turnout. obviously not too high, maybe just around 60%. i'm sure that's reasonable.

doing a reverse percentage calculation on this number gives us a result of 2635027.692, which we'll round up to 2,635,028.

part III - mobile telephony

there's a lot of statistics to deal with in terms of phone sales and phone ownership, but as i live in the uk and the world revolves around me i'll be using figures from the uk.

uswitch states that in 2009 only 28% of people used their mobile phones to access the internet, suggesting quite a low usage. however, according to statista, in 2009 81% of households in the uk had access to a mobile phone, quite the increase from even just a decade before. however, this number only accounts for households and doesn't take into account individual people. another statista figure states that only 44% of people used a smartphone in 2011, a few years after the show's premiere.

so which of these numbers do we use? all of them! i took the average of the three and got 51%, which may seem a little low for a population as tech-obsessed as the bunnyvilleans but it'll do.

so doing a reverse calculation with this percentage gives us an answer – 2,635,028 is 51% of 5166721.569, which we'll round up to 5,166,721.

part IV - a minimum age

if there's one thing that telephone polls and referenda have in common, it's a minimum age to vote. as is standard across most of the world, we'll be setting this at 18 years old. according to the 2021 UK census, 20.7% of people in the uk are aged between 0 and 17. that is to say, 79.3% of people were over 18.

this is a farely simple one – 5,166,721 is 79.3% of 6515411.097. we'll round this down to a final number of approximately 6,515,411 citizens.

part V - what does it all mean?

so – bunnyville has a population of around 6,515,411 people. this is quite a respectable size for a city and indeed a country – bunnyville would be the 46th largest city (with a population slightly larger than zhengzhou and rio de janiero) and the 109th largest country (with a population a bit smaller than all of serbia) in the world. while it's not the largest in terms of cities, it is very large in terms of city states (though only because the bar is so low). it far exceeds states such as the vatican, monaco, and even macau in terms of population, and is even larger than singapore. by my calculations, only hong kong is larger in terms of citystates.

could this mean bunnyville has the cultural impact some of these other countries have? maybe! but given how insular the city tends to be (both literally and in the sense that we don't really see much of foreign lands in the series) i'd argue that the little dictatorship serves more as an oddity the rest of the earth gawks at rather than some powerhouse of culture and advancement.

or i could be entirely wrong. you decide!

part VI - tl;dr

it's around 6 and a half million people

[brucenorris007]

Zero

Summary: In a world literally on fire, a robot encounters a hedgehog wearing boots half a size too big. The meeting becomes a catalyst that breaks the cycle Zero's been caught in.

1430 words

(For extra context, scroll down to previous post before reading.)

Zero trudged through the city, optics scanning at regular intervals for any indication of magmaggots or fried chicken. The hours he could safely operate at the peak of day grew shorter as coolant became harder to find. He could make do with functioning at night for a while, and he’d done more with less, but he’d have to move on soon. Traveling between the ruins of civilization without adequate supplies posed too great a risk.

Zero couldn’t spend the day in standby mode out in the open, and he couldn’t defend himself all hours of the day if his components were overheating. His internal fans hadn’t been up to the task for decades.

Options limited, he ventured into the depths of the city, returning to the dilapidated structure that’d once been a multi-story mall. He’d investigated it once already, but he’d been working quickly and thus less thorough than he would have been otherwise. Odds that he’d overlooked something were marginally better than that he’d miraculously stumble across an auto repair shop.

He briefly inspected the integrity of what remained of the entrance–the skeleton of a revolving door, chunks of thick glass scattered outward on the pavement, steel warped and several precarious cracks in the ceiling–before carefully making his way inside.

He accessed his RAM, called up the snapshot of a degraded mall map from his last venture. The details of the mall’s contents were spotty, but it provided a grasp of the building’s layout at least, so he wouldn’t waste time going over locations he’d already searched.

He’d discovered a hardware store in the southeast sector of the second floor; while he scoured over the lawn mowers and chainsaws, his receptors registered heavy footfalls from somewhere beneath him. He had a good guess as to the cause. . .

“AAAAH!”

. . .he was somewhat less certain as to the source of the screaming that accompanied them.

After stashing what meager supplies he’d found, he left the hardware store and treaded slowly to the banister overlooking the main lobby.

Below, as he suspected, a cindaruma lumbered and lurched, hoisting and hurling molten rock as it went.

“C’mon, c’mon!”

And its target was a young, scrambling hedgehog with bright fur and quills. One who, for some reason, kept waving his hands out in front of him and over his head as he ran. If his objective was improved aerodynamics, his methods were highly counterproductive. All that racket wasn’t doing him any favors, either.

Rmbl.

It only attracted more creatures; a second cindaruma grunted and crawled up out of the ground, embers and smoke marking the spot it had spawned from.

Worse, it was the blue variant; significantly hotter and thus more lethal.

Zero ran through numerous calculations. He prioritized evasive maneuvers in the city and an offensive defense in the wastelands; he didn’t carry ammunition with him when he was gathering resources. Had he been dealing with any other monster, he could have easily interfered; cindaruma boasted an obnoxiously sturdy rock armor, though.

He’d just about resigned himself to jumping down and improvising when the hedgehog’s hand emitted a strange glow; one of the fixtures of what might have once been a fountain in the lobby teetered and smashed down against the blue cindaruma’s shoulder. The sudden impact caused it to drop the fiery boulder it’d been about to throw.

Determining that the kid would somehow manage for a moment, Zero ducked back into the hardware store.

When he returned and leapt over the banister, it was with a roaring chainsaw in each hand.

The monsters turned their attention to the new, louder and larger target Zero presented.

He twisted his frame, aiming for the red cindaruma’s head.

VRR-R-R-GK-GK!

He caught its shoulder instead; the saw in his left hand sparked and whined. Stuttered after cutting two inches into the rock before stopping short.

He pivoted upon landing and drove the other chainsaw through the glowing red gap in the armor around its right knee.

The monster groaned.

Toppled down and crashed against the floor.

Zero didn’t wait to see how the blue variant would respond.

“Run.”

“Who-wha–? Wait, I gotta–!”

He grabbed the hedgehog’s arm; turned west toward the entrance he’d used to get into the mall.

“Not a suggestion.”

Zero pulled the boy along until he started running on his own.

The blue cindaruma’s thunderous footfalls echoed behind them, distance shrinking every moment.

The boy suddenly loosed the sort of whooping cough that rattled the chest. His pace faltered.

A sharp spike in heat behind them.

Zero dove, snatching the hedgehog under his arm and throwing himself to one side.

Flaming molten rocks careened past them; glass melted on contact. The fiery missiles exploded, leaving craters behind in the building’s cement foundation.

The cindaruma loomed over them, lunging with one hand outstretched.

Whack.

PSSSH.

A bottle of precious coolant exploded against the monster’s face.

The liquid evaporated instantly; steam sizzled and covered it from head to toe.

Their pursuer roared furiously.

Kid still in hand, Zero engaged his afterburners.

He raced through the lobby.

Heard the beast give chase.

Calculated how much of a lead he had.

Broke through the warped steel frame of the door with a loud

CLANG.

Finally braked and turned his optics back.

Watched the cindaruma charge at him–

Crack.

Just as structural integrity of the entrance failed. Zero retreated further as the initial collapse gave way to more.

Twenty-four seconds later, the rumbling stopped; and his opponent buried, flame suffocated under the rubble.

“Whoa.”

His passenger muttered from under his arm. Zero deposited him on the ground and scanned the area.

“Um, than–”

“Do not stay here. The noise will attract charmanders soon.”

The hedgehog blinked. Having provided sufficient warning, Zero turned and began his circuitous route back to his base.

“Char–? Hey, wait up!”

Zero did not wait up. He heard the kid tailing him regardless.

– – – – –

“So, uh, what’s your name?” 

“. . . Designation: Zero.”

“Oh! Uh, my name is Silver. I”

“You are stupidly reckless.”

“. . . I-I need to be able to fight them.”

“. . .”

“If I can’t handle his minions, I won’t stand a chance against Iblis.”

“. . .”

“W-well, somebody has to beat him! And no one can do what I can!”

“Run around screaming and flailing?”

“Mrrr. . . I just need practice. My psychokinesis works most of the time, it’s just hard to concentrate in a fight.”

“. . .”

“Wh-what?”

“Follow me.”

– – – – –

After a bit over an hour and some largely one-sided conversation

(“Charmander. . . is that what you call the fragments of Iblis?”

“Copyright has long expired.”

“Copy-what?”)

They arrived at Zero’s base. More of a temporary storage and hideout than anything, the nearest to furnishing were his ammo stock, spare coolant and the few other things he could carry without excessively burdening himself. Subterranean, as all his bases were, for the cooling effect of being underground.

Ironic that a day had come when Zero actively sought out basements.

“Conjecture: You require equipment.”

Silver tilted his head; somehow, gravity seemed to have no effect on whether or not his quills remained erect on his head.

“What sort of equipment?”

“You experience lapses in control of your psychokinesis under duress, correct?”

Silver frowned; lowered his eyes and gave a jerking nod.

Zero turned to his stash.

“Surmise that streamlining the process of channeling psychic energy will expedite your progress on the learning curve,” he said, digging through his things. “A pair of gauntlets would be appropriate.”

Silver already channeled his psychokinetic powers through his hands, after all.

“Wait,” Silver said, head popping back up with wide eyes. “You can help me?”

“Statistically probable.”

The kid’s face nearly glowed. Zero retrieved a worn yet well-kept tablet and turned it on; his CPU was still efficient, but an external backup was always prudent.

And not solely for practicality.

Zero did not possess any great inherent kindness. He couldn’t articulate precisely why he felt inclined to aid Silver in his frankly foolhardy desire to battle the Flames of Disaster.

A prompt for an administrator name and password blinked onto the tablet’s screen.

Perhaps Zero felt moved to do something of more significance than surviving.

He typed into the onscreen keyboard; matching entries for both prompts.

In the deepest corners of his motherboard, Zero might confess that it had to do with attempting to compensate for past wrongs; the boy being a hedgehog of all things. . .

Zero Michigan Three Nine Alpha

He tapped enter.

The prompts fell away, and a prerecorded audio sample of a slightly sultry, nostalgic voice greeted him.

“Welcome back, Omega.”

@generic-sonic-fan

[horsesource]

“There is no one left; only numbers silently chasing numbers, numbers which cannot be questioned because they are insensible and mute. At the end of the day, the operators get up. They have nothing to show for their day's work, no physical, visible, measurable achievement: they have created nothing. Yet this nothing has drained them: during their day's (or night's) work they have imposed upon themselves that self-denial which consists in repressing their sensory existence: existing as pure intellect, eliminating and suppressing all living contacts with the lifeworld in and through their bodies, as so many potential disruptions of the function they must fulfil. The world as conceived by Hobbes is finally embodied in these people: only mathematical properties are held to be 'real' and really to exist in the natural world, just as, on another level, the 'reality' of all things is, in economic thought, their price (exchange value) as commodities. Only what can be calculated, quantified and expressed in figures is 'real'. Everything else has only a 'subjective' existence, that is, it is in a sense added on to the world by subjectivity and must be relegated to the margins of thought. The repression of all that does not stem from the intellect and from mathematical calculations is deemed to give access to 'truth'; only homo œconomicus and his twin brother and shadow: the computerized worker, inhabit the region of the true.”

Andre Gorz Critique of Economic Reason

[zyrafowe-sny]

August 21st WIP Wednesday Game Community Answered Asks: Fluff 7 — Hoodie Weather (15/15)

I got the Big Bang lines done, and here are some Hoodie Weather lines:

@kallisto-k Thanks so much!

He shrugged. “I’d give it at least another month.”

This was apparently enough to rouse Nimona-the-lizard, who'd been sunning on the windowsill.

@violet-prism-creatively Thank you! <3

“Seven weeks and” — she flicked out her tongue — “three days.” 

“Wanna bet?” Ambrosius grinned in her direction.

@whimsicalmeerkat here you go!

An arc of pink sparkles shimmered through the air, and Nimona-the-shark appeared before him, fin ready for a handshake.

“Sure thing, Nemesis.”

***

It was seven weeks and two days, actually, but Nimona still won the betting pool by a good margin. (Meredith was next-closest at six weeks and four days.) 

@aparticularbandit Many thanks!

Much depended on the precise definition of hoodie weather, of course. Weather sufficiently cool for Ambrosius to wear a hoodie for a day was deemed insufficient — he spluttered at the implication that he would cheat, but was easily overruled. 

Meredith proposed — soundly, in Ballister's opinion — a wider sample of Kingdom residents with a minimum threshold of 40%. As her personal tastes ran more towards sweaters, she also recommended counting any form of outerwear. 

@somefishycat Thanks so much!

Administering this visual survey could have been another potential headache, but Ballister and Ambrosius conveniently still had connections that could give them access to the (former) Institute’s security camera system. It wasn't typically used to calculate rates of jacket, sweater, and hoodie-wearing, but it could be. Nimona wasn't terribly happy about the existence of the cameras in the first place and was of the opinion that using them for any reason would be supporting the police state — and Ballister did admit that she had a point — but he noted that public surveillance was significantly toned down from what it had been and that he could make certain other “adjustments” to analytics while he was at it.  

[bitcoinaidiamox]

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[poppyandzena]

Zena:" The stalkers who claim to be experts on Poppy's story don't even know shit about sexual health. This is just clowning around. I just can't these people seriously. I told Poppy to get testing to protect herself because after someone violates you, they're is zero reason to trust their history."

1.) Literally no one has claimed expertise on Poppy. This is yet another false claim. See, people paid attention to Poppy's behavior and Poppy's words. People are just observing Poppy's publicly abusive meltdown. People are simply tracking a smear campaign. Poppy provides that data. A LOT of data. Poppy continues to incessantly and obsessively make false claims of sexual assault, as if hundreds of people didn't witness Poppy serve us with a linear timeline of rejection. People aren't experts on anyone, that's silly. Poppy put out a fuck ton of information publicly. It's getting difficult for people to silence their own critical thinking. Luckily, there is public access to entire archives documenting Poppy's willfully malicious campaign to destroy another Trans woman. Because of rejection. It's revenge. Thanks to Poppy's unhinged antics across Tumblr and Twitter, people can analyze the data for themselves on their own time. And there-in lies the rub for this sneaky tyrannical goblin -- your arguments are getting more nonsensical. Zena is throwing up diversions. It's getting a bit pitiful.

Zena: "I guess I'm going to be posting sexual health articles to educate these fucks now. Just how much these people know about sex is both astounding and telling. This is a self report on their part."

Zena: "These are just more signs that Poppy's story is actually true AND that she has love and support to help her after this awful shit.

2.) The only link between public discussions on sexual health and Zena's false expertise claims is Poppy's word-vomit. The UTI was splattered all over her TL after having consensual sex & getting rejected. That's it. Zena, this disjointed, bizarre gotchya connection you made with sexual health is not a sign that Poppy's story is true. This deeply goofy statement is almost as bad as me saying, "Oh wow my cat actually has asthma, not a hairball." Then going on to say, "This is a sign why I know my neighbor married a raccoon." Y'all have lost the plot and if all this wasn't so potentially harmful to folks in an already marginalized community, this shit would be funny.

On to the next point the goblin tyrant attempts to slip in subtlety. Folks may have left out the BACTERIAL VAGINOSIS part during sexual health discussions. Hell, some folks might not even know what BV is. NOT knowing what BV is or forgetting to mention BV aren't indicators of a total lack of knowledge on sexual health. Leaving out BV doesn't mean folks need to be educated by this tyrannical goblin Zena. What she's trying to do is divert attention away from Poppy's very transparent attempts to further humiliate Noeh. Everything Poppy puts on her TL centers on smearing Noeh. She literally HAS NOT stopped tweeting @ Noeh since she publicly disclosed her tweets made Noeh uncomfortable when they were partners. It is deeply unsettling that Poppy continues to try to talk to Noeh behind the scenes while routinely @ing Noeh from the YT account. This is all calculated and this community is not dumb. They're catching on. Trust that there are doubts that even her most fervent defenders are experiencing -- OF COURSE they have doubts, but what would happen if they just got brutally honest and disclosed that Poppy is indeed out of control. Poppy has gone against SO many things she advocates in her streams. Rapejacketing and targeting a trans woman is pretty disgusting. Attempting to cut of a homeless trans man's only source of revenue in the middle of winter in MICHIGAN. Shitting all over asexuals because Noeh slipped up and made a controversial statement.

BPD will NEVER be an excuse for abuse. An abuser is actively being coddled to the point where her supporters are enabling more abuse. I think it's pretty clear this therapist has not gotten treatment like DBT for her BPD. This person is a public figure. She is lending more stigma to this diagnosis. There are so many folks with BPD in my life who put in the work and are determined to be well. It is unbelievable what they face and I have so much respect for these survivors. I also feel incredibly protective over them. That impact of these far extending stigmas ACTIVELY cause HARM to people with BPD.

Listen, it's very obvious how Poppy is shitting on survivors of rape and havers of BPD. She's not an imperfect victim. She's a spiteful, vengeful, scorned woman. Zena is also shitting on folks with BPD by enabling Poppy's behavior Her supporters are enabling Poppy's behavior. You are lending to stigma and shitting on other BPD survivors. Coddling this woman while she loudly and publicly continues on with her harmful actions is not a loving act. Enabling is not an act of love. If you truly supported her, you would not lend momentum to her smear campaigns. You'd see that, at this point, Poppy is actually a liability. She is causing REAL harm to your community. Adding insult to injury, she really is out here publicly shitting on y'all, underestimating y'alls knowledge base and ability to recognize lies, abuse, danger, and malice. Some of y'all are leaning into that and at some point, you'll have to come to terms with your choices.

Anyway...

I just want to acknowledge the work and time y'all archivists have put into this. I really do appreciate being able to have access to the information I've needed to form my own opinions. Okay. That is all.

Have a beautiful night, beautiful people.

"Whoops lotsa typos there" 🥴💩

^

[mtlibrary]

Rohl v Parr: A blog post by Middle Temple Library Intern Natasha Southall.

For the past few months I have been transcribing and cataloguing MS17, ‘Cases at Nisi Prius’, containing nominate reports of cases at Nisi Prius. The manuscript belonged to Sir Vicary Gibbs (1751-1820), and may have been written by him. The cases date from the 1760s to 1810s and vary in nature, from libel charges and indictments of fraud, to actions of trover and bills of exchange. I came across several insurance claims for ships that had been damaged at sea. In most of these cases, the contents of the cargo were not specified. One which caught my attention was a case brought by the slaver named Rohl in 1796, where two significant details of the circumstances of the claim are provided: at one point during the voyage there was a slave insurrection, resulting in the death of eight enslaved Africans, and the ship was “destroyed by destructive worms that infest the River of Africa” (folios 128-129). Both factors were integral in determining the success of the insurance claim in court.

1. Rohl’s voyage from Saint Barthélemy to Cape Coast (original map from www.freeworldmaps.net)

On 1st September 1792, the Zumbee sailed from St Bartholomew (Saint Barthélemy) to the River Gombroon on the coast of Africa [1]. Here, it was reported, a slave insurrection resulted in the loss of eight slaves (seven were killed and one died from falling) out of a total of forty-nine. The report claimed that the ship then struggled to get to Cape Coast because the bottom had been “taken by the worm”, likely to be toredo worms/shipworms, which were a common cause of damage to wooden ships in this period. At Cape Coast, the ship was “condemned as irreparable” and sold.

2. Rohl v Parr, folio 128 with ‘worms’ in the margin

The insurance claim was predicated on the policy of damage due to ‘peril at sea’. However, Lord Kenyon and the special jury agreed that the destruction by shipworms, being “an animated substance moving to destroy [the ship]” rather than “an inanimate substance striking against the ship’s bottom”, did not meet the terms of the ‘peril at sea’ policy. Consequently, the counsel for the plaintiff tried instead to recover the partial loss of the enslaved cargo resulting from the slave insurrection. Luckily for Rohl this was granted, as the loss was calculated as more than 5% at the time when the slaves were killed.

3. Figure 2 Rohl v Parr, folio 129

The transatlantic slave trade witnessed the forced transportation of over twelve million enslaved African men, women and children from Africa across the Atlantic to the Americas. Portugal, Brazil, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Uruguay, the United States of America and Denmark were all involved. One way we are able to catch a glimpse of the mechanisms underpinning the transatlantic slave trade is through legal records like those in the Gibbs manuscript. The records documenting these horrific and treacherous voyages have been made accessible to the public by the SlaveVoyages initiative [2].

This case of Rohl and Parr does not shed much light on the lives of the individuals who were enslaved and travelled on board the Zumbee; the horrors they must have experienced can only be imagined. The case does make clear, however, the financial risks involved for slavers who embarked on the voyage across the Atlantic to Africa. The underlying threat of insurrection was always on the horizon. Yet it would be the workings of the ‘destructive worms’ that rendered slavers like Rohl defenceless both at sea and in the English courtroom.

Citations

[1] Rohl v Parr, Saturday, Feb. 27th 1796, 1ESP.444., Reports of Cases Argued and Ruled at Nisi Prius.

[2] Slave Voyages, https://www.slavevoyages.org/ (last accessed 26/03/2024).

Natasha Southall,

King’s College London

[72-votes]

🦞SAVE LARRY, KILL LARRY🦞

The 1988 poll to kill Batman's child sidekick, Robin, was inspired by an early example of interactive television: a 1982 Saturday Night Live stunt starring Eddie Murphy and a live lobster.

The April 10, 1982 Saturday Night Live show opened with a chef grabbing a live lobster from its tank, making it dance while humming the Star Wars theme, and then laughing while lowering it into a pot of boiling water. Just before the lobster was placed into the pot, Eddie Murphy appeared, grabbed the lobster out from the way of certain death, and turned to address the audience.

Rather than being boiled alive without protest, Larry the Lobster's fate was submitted to the arena of popular opinion and disposable money. The show's audience was presented with two premium-rate "900" phone numbers"—one for those who wanted to spare Larry, and another for those who wanted to see it boiled alive. Each call cost $0.50, and each caller could call multiple times.

The lobster's televised ordeal can be seen below in a compilation video. (Warning for human cruelty toward an animal.)

Updates on the vote count were given by other cast members throughout the live broadcast; by the end of the show, viewers had made over 400,000 calls. Ultimately the "Save Larry" supporters managed a narrow win against the "Kill Larry" supporters.

To kill a Robin

The SNL stunt stuck with DC Comics editor Denny O'Neil, and he proposed to fellow editor Jenette Kahn that they could reserve a similar stunt for killing off a high-profile DC Comics character. By the time of 1988, Batman's colorful child sidekick Robin had been considered a divisive character among the creative forces behind Batman and among Batman fans. After Batman writer Jim Starlin's unsuccessful campaign to kill off Robin in a HIV/AIDS storyline, O'Neil decided the problematic Robin was the perfect candidate for a "Larry the Lobster" stunt. Sales manager John Pope began calling AT&T to secure the two 900 numbers on October 1, 1987; it took him until March 1988 to reserve them.

Like in Larry's case, the voting results were extremely close. Unlike Larry, the outcome supported Robin's death over his survival.

Fun facts!

Larry the Lobster predates Jason Todd's existence. "Larry the Lobster" aired on 10 April 1982. Jason Todd first appeared in the Batman comic in 1983, and he made his first appearance as Robin several months later. This might add credence to the idea that the idea for a DC Comics death poll wasn't specifically conceived with Robin in mind.

Within a span of a single SNL show, a total of 466,548 premium-rate calls were made to decide Larry's fate.

Within a span of 35 hours, a total of

At a cost of $0.50 per call, callers spent a total of $233,274.00 on Larry's poll. (After adjusting for inflation since 1982, this amount would be about $751,420.05 in 2023 dollars.)

At a cost of $0.50 per call, callers spent a total of $5,307 on Robin's poll. (After adjusting for inflation since 1988, this amount would be about $13,541.75 in 2023 dollars.)

Larry was spared by a margin of 11,644 votes. These votes cost a total of $5,822.00.

Robin was condemned to death by a margin of 72 votes. These votes cost a total of $36.00.

Both polls were decided by a margin of less than 1%.

A lobster's probable end

In the aftermath of the sketch, Murphy received letters protesting Larry's treatment. One letter made a racist jab at Murphy: "that man is sick, and I thought those people didn't like seafood."

To spite this racist comment, Murphy ensured that Larry's stay of execution was only temporary.

Credits

Thanks to the Internet Archive @internetarchive for access to old SNL episodes. https://archive.org/details/saturday-night-live-s-07-e-16-daniel-j-travanti-john-cougar-mellencamp

"Larry the Lobster" on Wikipedia

"A Death in the Family" (comics) on Wikipedia

CPI Inflation Calculator https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl