#CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION

[byler-alarmist]

Mike found it harder and harder to date El the more feminine she presented, because it made it harder to lie to himself

🤷‍♂️

[bastionofbibliophiles]

[somechubbynerd]

Is there really a correlation between being trans and being a software developer?

There's a lot of alt-culture wrapped up in the software dev area because writing programs leaves you with a lot of free time, since the whole point of "software" is automation of tasks. If you're good, you aren't spending most of your job time doing much other than tinkering and thinking. Once I had free time to consider my identity actively, I comprehended that I was not the gender I was born with, and my identity has been slowly evolving ever since as I explore myself in new avenues.

[cosmogyros]

I, a huge fan of Tracy Chapman's first couple of albums, decided to listen to her 1995 album New Beginning while making breakfast today. I hadn't previously known this album – only the hit blues song from it, "Give Me One Reason", which rocks, so I was eager to discover what the rest of it was like.

It was awful. I was horrified. I felt betrayed. I addressed her aloud while chopping onions and making coffee: "Tracy, what happened? You've got this utterly gorgeous voice, you've got guitar skills, and you've been one of the most gifted songwriters of your generation up until now. The technical skills are still there, but what happened to the songwriting?"

Then I jokingly added to myself, "Maybe she got into a happy relationship or something." This wasn't really serious, of course, but there's a grain of truth in it – I have noticed that sometimes the greatest songwriters lose their edge when their yearning is satisfied (see also: Joni Mitchell, when she finally found her daughter).

Anyway I couldn't stomach listening through the rest of the elevator music that New Beginning was turning out to be, so I skipped to her next album: 2000's Telling Stories. And right away, I was rocking out to the first track. "All RIGHT!" I thought. "That's what I'm talking about! I wonder what happened? ...Maybe she broke up with her girlfriend?"

I chuckled at myself for thinking that. And then I stopped chuckling. I got curious. I couldn't help it. I looked up the "personal life" section of her Wikipedia article and...

THE MID-NINETIES. Exactly when New Beginning came out. I TOLD y'all.

[if-loki-was-a-fox]

As much as I love any life series content, ngl this whole real life thing has me just a little bit anxious for its discourse potential

I reeaallly want people to have fun with it and move on, and not turn people not taking it seriously into A Thing because it is objectively not at the same scale as any other seasons

[byler-alarmist]

I don't make the rules

SHUT UP RN I JUST SAW SOMEONE SAY THAT MIKE ONLY SAID HE FELL IN LOVE W EL WHEN HE FIRST SAW HER BECAUSE HE THOUGHT SHE WAS A BOY. IM LOOSING IT

[condescending-jerk]

but also even if your past self was actually better than you and you decide that you want to be more like that person again

the right way to do it is definitely not to just do the easy things which are also the worst things

sometimes if you want something you actually need to work for it

i guess i never really accepted that concept

[adharastarlight]

Slughorn: Mr Black, your homework is a day late

Regulus: I was off ill yesterday

Slughorn: you're conviently off a lot

Regulus: correlation does not imply causation

Slughorn: Mr Blac-

Regulus: listen sir, if you want to get onto this boat you should know that there are already six people here. One of them is screaming in the back, another is passed out and half falling out, two of them are rowing backwards, one of them is desperately rowing and wishing he could stick his head into the water and drown and the other is fucking critising everything he is doing. So if you want to pursue this conversation and get on this boat, you're fucking rowing

Slughorn: ...lovely to have you back in class, Mr Black

Regulus, sacrastically: wonderful to be here

[creature-wizard]

"I had a health problem but then I did [insert alternative health treatment], and it was miraculously healed!"

Wonderful! I'm so happy for you! But before you go prescribing it to people with similar problems, ask yourself - what does the overall evidence suggest about the efficacy of X? Are your results typical, or even common?

Correlation does not imply causation, and even if there was a causal relationship, it doesn't necessarily mean that other people will be able to get the exact same results as you.

I have no doubt in my mind that miraculous healings happen at least sometimes, because I've known of people who had these things happen. But, I've also known - personally known - people who literally died because they relied on what they thought was responsible for these other miraculous healings.

Thing is, we still don't know exactly why these things happen or not. We have lots of ideas, but the more we start looking around and looking into things, the less evidence we can find to suggest that any of them are correct. At this point, "they held their mouths wrong" is as good of an explanation as any.

[cherrybomb107]

After making that essay about all my gripes with act three, I wanna delve into what rubbed me the wrong way about episode seven. Now, don’t get me wrong, it is my second favorite episode of the season (right behind episode four) but everything just felt off, and now I’m able to explain why.

It felt fake. Artificial. Too good to be true. Too polished. Everyone in Zaun was basically a Piltie lite and I hated to see it. I know Zaun doesn’t even technically exist, as it never did officially get its freedom, but Piltover and Zaun are known as twin cities for a reason. They are intertwined, yes, but also completely different. Zaun has its own vibe. It’s punk, patchwork, unpolished, mismatched. But also vibrant, brilliant, thoughtfully crafted and beautiful in its own way. It’s unique. It feels so real, and for the au to strip all that away and make Zaun feel like a shell of its former self was not it.

Zaun has such a rich culture. Not without its own host of flaws ofc, but what culture is perfect? And obviously there are political reasons for why Zaunites do things the way they do (it’s because Piltover’s oppressions forces them to get creative). While I resent the reasons as to why Zaunites have to be so resourceful and creative, I adore the things they were able to build in spite of their hardships. Makes me identify with Zaun even more. The au took all that away. Everything that made Zaun what it is wasn’t there, and I didn’t care for it.

Furthermore, the whole au falls apart if you stop and think about it. Why would Vi’s death be anything more than a drop in the bucket to Piltover? They had been oppressing Zaun for centuries? Vi is not only a Zaunite, but she was also a teenager. There’s a lot to be said about how teenagers aren’t really seen as kids by a lot of folks, and are “less innocent” and their lives are seen as “less important” (though ofc no one would admit that have that kind of bias). Plus when you consider that by virtue of being a Zaunite, Vi would already be considered “less than”, her life would not matter to Piltover WHATSOEVER. Best case, and I do mean best case scenario, they give Vander some financial compensation so he could afford to give Vi the proper funeral she deserves. But I’d bet money they never would’ve even considered doing that if I’m being realistic.

Also, that’s just a horrible message to send. Vi, the parentified child, who spent her whole life fighting like hell to protect her loved ones, had to die in order for not just her family, but her city to flourish. HUH??? That’s an awful thing to imply! Vi dying would NOT have lead to everyone else being fine. It would not have led Vander and Silco to forgive each other. It would NOT led to Zaun prospering economically. It would not have led to Zaun becoming just like Piltover in the worst of ways. That doesn’t even make any sense! Correlation does not equal causation, but those two things have no correlation to begin with! Obviously I know that’s not the message the writers meant to convey, but that’s what they ended up doing imo, and I don’t like that.

Lastly, why are we acting like Hextech is the problem? The oppressive system of Piltover existed way before Hextech came along, so why would its lack of being there affect things that much? Cause if not Hextech, some other revolutionary technology would’ve been invented that somehow only benefits some and hurts everyone else who isn’t as privileged. And yes, ofc I know Hextech only exists precisely BECAUSE of the systemic inequalities between Piltover and Zaun, but it is by no means wholly responsible for these inequalities. Responsible for widening the gap between Piltover and Zaun? Yes! Responsible for the existence of the gap in the first place? Hell no! And it felt like it was framed that way.

Anyways TL;DR I wasn’t a fan of the au episode because I felt like it unintentionally sent a horrible message and didn’t stay true to what makes Zaun, Zaun. It ripped out all its best parts and functionally turned it into Piltover Jr. and a fan of that I am NOT

[xkcd-for-that]

I found this blog just a few days ago and today there was one in my uni lecture! The one about correlation and causation!! I had never realised how ubiquitous they are!!

They're very popular among STEM folks, that's for sure! The referenced comic, for those unfamiliar:

Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'.

[transmutationisms]

these tags annoyed me to be honest

1. PCOS is a bad point of comparison because despite the name, diagnosis is not *supposed to be* done on the primary basis of finding cysts in the ovaries; these are common and not inherently of concern. instead, the more indicative biomarker is the hormone test (high levels of testosterone *throughout the menstrual period*, with corresponding disruption to the expected/typical fluctuations in estrogen/progesterone) but often diagnosis is done more on the basis of a physical exam ('exam') confirming characteristics such as hairiness or adiposity. this absolutely DOES result in PCOS overdiagnosis for some demographics; while a real biological condition, PCOS is also a load-bearing diagnostic term in the enforcement of very specific standards of (white) femininity and its use also frequently masks, for example, the frequency of hypothalamic amenorrhea (HA) secondary to chronic energy deficiency (as in anorexia), which doctors are loathe to diagnose because they view weight loss as prima facie good

2. the reason it matters that psychiatric diagnoses do not have a 'biology' is not because every disease must have a single specific biomarker; it is correct that some do not. however, the way patient complaints are sifted into categories labelled 'psychiatric' versus '(otherwise) medical' begins essentially with determining whether the distress is 'physical' or 'mental'. in other words, in the case of, say, the chronic fatigue syndrome (famously, lacking a known specific biomarker), the symptoms being investigated by the non-psychiatrist physician are still physical (PEM; mast cell dysregulation; pain; etc) whereas a diagnosis of depression may be accompanied by, but requires no, physical symptoms or presentation. the psychiatric claim that its diagnoses have biological causes and correlates is specifically a claim about the role of neurobiology in the causation of affective states; thus, the comparison to physical complaints is meaningless here

3. this person goes on to claim that depressives do in fact share, though not universally, certain biomarkers such as mitochondrial dysregulations. such claims typically come from various imaging studies plagued with systemic problems in the selection and definition of patient populations as well as the subjectivity of result interpretation and analysis. these claims are not well supported and typically rely on circular selection and definition of patient populations

4. speaking philosophically, it is in fact often correct to challenge the notion that a physical 'disease' chronically lacking a specific biomarker is indeed a disease, in any sense besides the colloquial one. that is, diseases that cannot be correlated with one cause or presentation are often better understood as 'syndromes', which is to say, as a taxonomical heuristic that is likely grouping together multiple disparate physical (anatomical, physiological, functional, &c) problems with multiple disparate causes. this is almost certainly the case for chronic fatigue syndrome, for example. this is a philosophical distinction that matters for research and understanding, and does not mean or imply anything to minimise or contradict the patient experience of the syndrome or symptoms. it matters because, for instance, CFS triggered by the epstein-barr virus may indeed turn out to have different disease mechanisms to CFS triggered by, say, covid-19, or may have different specific mechanisms when running in certain families, and so on. distinguishing these much more specific presentations, and possibly distinct diseases, from the current discursive schema of the overlying syndrome is potentially very good for patients, who likely have different needs and treatments to one another despite currently all sharing the same label in their charts

5. which goes back to an overlying point, which is that (despite frequent defensiveness to the contrary), whether or not something is a disease does not inherently tell us anything about its reality, its severity, its cause, the moral status of its sufferers, &c

[lovemyromance]

Do people not understand first person POVs suddenly?

I hate this claim that Elain only started getting better when Lucien arrived because talk about correlation does not imply causation.

Did we forget this story is told in First person POV - through Feyre? We didn't even know there was a problem with Elain or what state she was in - until Feyre & Lucien arrived at the NC. Feyre narrates Elain's entire transformation from confusion/depression to figuring out she's a Seer and immediately beginning to contribute to their cause.

Lucien does not cause this change in Elain. He is simply there. It is not HIS arrival that gave us this look into Elain's issues - it was Feyre's narration. He did not do anything to actually change Elain's depressive state other than the obvious suggestion "get her outside or something idk".

If it were Lucien or Lucien's presence even that actually helped Elain get better - where do we see that in the text? Point to exactly how and where Lucien "makes Elain get better".

Because you know what I can point to?

Elain being uncomfortable. Elain avoiding Lucien. Elain calling the bond strange.

You know what else I can point to?

Azriel taking Elain to the garden. Azriel figuring out what was wrong with Elain - immediately making her feel better and bring her back to this realm.

That is an example of causation. Azriel directly taking action -> leading to the effect of Elain getting some clarity and starting to improve and break out of her depressive state. That is the exact moment she started to become more responsive and cognizant of her surroundings.

It was Azriel. Not Lucien who made Elain feel better.

Azriel, not her "fated mate".

It has always been Azriel written in these key moments with Elain. Yes Lucien might've been off on the continent or out searching for Vassa - but the point is he was NOT there. SJM wrote his storyline far away from Elain, and wrote Azriel's to intwine with hers.

And if people can't recognize that fact - then they're going to be in for a big surprise whenever the next book comes out.

[smile-files]

welcome home's character-color-coding, and what it might mean going forward... the color theory :D

hello neighbors!! last night i had an epiphany... perhaps someone's made it before, but either way, it struck me, and i just have to talk about it!!

in this latest update, eddie was absent for the majority of the homewarming media -- namely, he was MIA for basically everything new on the main site. his only time to shine was on the secret site, in which he was still isolated from all of his neighbors.

this was stewing around in my brain for a while, until i remembered... until the bug update, none of the text on the site contained purple.

this is the menu on the current site -- any purple in these options was not present in the original menu: the letters just cycled through a red-orange-yellow-green-blue-pink loop. oddly enough, certain pages present on the original site -- such as 'the neighborhood!' -- had their text in the menu updated to include teal and purple, while certain pages new to the bug update -- such as 'stickers' -- lack these new colors.

not to mention how the logo, containing only the red-orange-yellow-green-blue-pink color loop, was not updated to include the new colors.

this is all worthy of note because all of our characters are color-coded! julie is pink, wally is red, sally is orange, frank is yellow, poppy is green, howdy is teal, barnaby is blue, and eddie is purple. the absence of purple in the site's typography would suggest the absence of eddie, which we have certainly received -- of course, correlation does not equal causation, but it's still an odd coincidence.

though, if we follow this to its logical conclusion, then something is also bound to happen to howdy -- for his color, teal, was also absent in the site's original text.

another odd thing is that howdy, eddie, and wally are the only neighbors in welcome home to have non-alliterative names (howdy pillar, eddie dear, wally darling). this likely has no real significance, but it could imply some tie between the three -- and, if eddie and howdy are the victims here, given their colors were originally missing, wally being roped in with them despite having his color on the site since the beginning might imply that he was the one behind what happened to them.

i guess if we wanna really go crazy, home has no color assigned to them... so does that mean they're every color? or none of them? what would the former, or the latter, imply about their fate in the story, if this color theory has any real significance? if they're every color, then they're omnipresent... the mastermind behind it all. if they're none of them, their color was always missing from the website... they're the ultimate victim. though that's going a bit overboard, no?

anyway, please tell me what you think!!! thank you, and have a nice day :)

[jules-ln]

Its just a genuine question. I have seen most of patrochilles fan arts depicting patroclus with a deeper skintone and i wonder where that interpretation comes from. I think the Hades game is one of such interpretation but I wonder if there were like other sources which depicted him with dark skin (like how in many century old artworks achilles is depicted with blonde hair and so its common to see him with blonde hair)

If I remember correctly, I don't think there's an ancient source that explicitly describes the color of Patroclus' skin

Like, in the Iliad he simply is described as having a beautiful body and lovely eyes (I don't remember if beautiful was the word or was it masculine?)

So, I think the fact that Patroclus didn’t have a particular description in the Iliad lead to him not having a trend like Achilles

Though in vase paintings is a bit difficult to say what color his skin was supposed to look like, as they don't have a lot of color other than reddish brown and black. Like there are some vase paintings where Achilles is literally black as in the color black, but if you say that Achilles might be POC, watch how people come out of the woods to complain lmao (Troy fall of a city, am I right or am I right)

There are also some frescoes and mosaics that depict Patroclus with light brown skin

And with more "modern" paintings (like Neo classicism, romanticism, academicism) listen, there was a whole thing about painting poor people because people didn't like it, let's not even talk about POC lol, so nothing on that front

I think the depiction of Patroclus with dark skin started to get more popular in modern times; I won't say it started with TSoA, because I don't know, I don't believe it did (correlation does not imply causation). Like I think this was where people where heading to anyway, as depictions of characters evolve with time to reflect better the society around them. Like there was this version of Patroclus in DC that is a reincarnation, called Patrick Cleese that came out in 2010 I think, and he's POC

So, yeah, I can't say there are a lot of old sources/paintings that have Patroclus with dark skin, but there are a lot of Paintings with Patroclus being dead at least??

[kismetconstellations]

@sockdooe I first encountered this supposed explanation in the comments section of a fanfiction, so it is to be taken with a grain of salt, but I read that Shiro's design was primarily based on what the showrunners thought "looked cool". This includes the prosthetic grafted onto his person by his captors, the scar across his face, and the shock of white fringe in his otherwise naturally dark hair. And, I won't lie, his design serves its purpose. Shiro immediately draws the eye, and not just because of his usual placement front and center in the standard team line up.

It's reasonable for the sort of space soldier, G.I. Joe type of character the staff intended Shiro to be to have these sorts of physical characteristics.

It's also completely reasonable in a Sci-Fi/Action show for a villain as menacing and ruthless as Sendak to have a similarly distinct, eye-catching design. Such features as a sinister, gleaming, red bionic eye, and massive prosthetic arm powered by a core of glowing, magical electric energy pulsing in a line from shoulder to forearm stand out, are easily memorable, and make him instantly recognizable as a really Bad Guy.

The idea of Shiro being a sort of "light, heroic mirror" to Sendak, which the show introduced and continued to attempt to enforce all the way up to Sendak's death, sits incredibly uneasily with me, however. As I've made explicit several times, before.

Content Warning for discussion of sexual assault/rape.

We're shown the recurrent imagery of Sendak looming over and behind an incapacitated Shiro.

Shiro's instinctive response to seeing Sendak heading toward him is to back away out of fear before steeling himself and resolving to fight, if only to protect the Castle and an unconscious Lance.

The very first thing that Shiro says to Sendak is, "You're not getting in", to which Sendak replies, "Yes. I am".

Coran suggests that the Galra might keep him and Hunk as, "some sort of creepy pet to play with how they please", in an appeal to Shay and Rax for assistance concealing their presence on the Balmera.

There's genuine contempt in Shiro's voice when he asks Sendak, "What do you want?", prior to his torture at Sendak's hands.

Sendak delivers a stomach-churning gloating little speech after torturing Shiro via electric shock.

And, Rolo refers to Sendak as a, "real nasty bugger", a term that has an exceptionally crude colloquial meaning.

Now, maybe I'm a cynical weirdo who is reading far too deeply into this, and connecting dots that aren't there. But...

Shiro bears a much stronger resemblance to Berserk's Guts than the Takashi Shirogane from the original Go Lion! that he's named after. Guts is a famous survivor of childhood sexual abuse, having been sold by his adoptive father and purchased for use as a sex slave by an ugly hulking pederast.

There were obvious Neon Genesis Evangelion fans working on this show, and Rei Ayanami, the character that Shiro's story seems to reference with the sheer excess of clones created using his DNA, is also a victim of sexual abuse.

(There's even, arguably, influence taken from The Legend of the Blue Wolves, a relatively obscure yaoi OVA largely set at a military facility which trains soldiers and pilots for combat missions in deep space. It features an extended scene with a virtual flight simulator, and one of the two male leads is-- wouldn't you know it? Raped by an ugly hulking monster.)

Correlation does not imply causation, and perhaps the similarities are entirely superficial, and we're not meant to think too hard about them.

Yet, with the amount of scrutiny that a series as utterly wholesome and innocuous as Bluey is constantly under, I cannot buy for a minute that a series Netflix gave a TV Y7 rating to didn't undergo some level of screening to ensure that its content was appropriate for the intended child audience. Someone had to have asked the staff if bugger was the term they meant to use, aware of the disturbing, far less than child-friendly implications, and was met with a resounding confirmation.

Beyond that, extended proximity to even an imprisoned and inanimate Sendak sends Shiro spiraling into a psychological break down.

Shiro's intensely traumatic experiences in captivity, which his brain seems to have largely repressed in order to protect him ("It's all a blur.") would, by themselves, be enough to convince him that he's been broken and reshaped into something monstrous. His bodily autonomy was, unquestionably, brutally violated, and his innately altruistic, self-sacrificing nature was violently challenged when he was forced to kill or be killed for his captors' entertainment. His right arm was taken from him and replaced with a weapon, and he has the blood of who knows just how many innocents on his hands. He was, indeed, broken down in an attempt to reform him into the Galra Empire's "greatest weapon", and likely very much wars with himself over what he had to do to ensure his own survival, believing himself to be a monster.

What really stands out to me, though, is that this intense, primal terror and the accompanying feelings of "brokenness" and "monstrousness" only surface around Sendak. Despite also being associated with and direct causes of his trauma, neither Haggar nor Zarkon rattle Shiro to his core the way Sendak does.

Neither of them are insistent on drilling into Shiro's head how "broken" he supposedly is, as Sendak is shown doing over and over again. Including taunting Shiro over the non-consensual modifications to his body.

Harboring a deep sense of shame, and viewing themselves as something dirty, ugly, disgusting, broken, or even monstrous is an experience common among survivors of sexual abuse.

Having Shiro's physical condition repeatedly mirror his personal tormentor's would be sick and twisted enough.

Adding the context of rape or sexual abuse to Shiro's torment makes the creative decision to intentionally model his arm after his abuser's outright sadistic.

No one deserves to have a constant physical reminder of their abuser and rapist permanently attached to their person. And, attempting to paint Shiro as a "heroic mirror" to Sendak fails entirely when Shiro doesn't so much as get to best Sendak in combat once.

All of the points you've raised about the function and structure of prosthetics are amazing, informative, and highly appreciated. (The comment about Shiro's abominable floating arm looking like it wouldn't be able to support the weight of a grocery bag makes me laugh.) Sadly, there's a faction of the fanbase who are all too quick to fetishize that arm, like everything else surface-level about Shiro. I've seen a number of fics where its ability to be propelled a great distance with a single thought is used to pleasure a partner while Shiro, himself, is in a different room, where the arm is equipped with a vibrating function for use as a sex toy, and, of course, where the thickness of its fingers is sexualized for... the same reason the bulge in the crotch of Shiro's pants is.

(I beg this fandom to stop reducing this man to a seme stereotype because of his physical build and height. Nothing in his personality suggests that he would be anything even approximating that cursed archetype. Let him be a pillow princess, for God's sake, like he deserves.)

This reply took me forever, and I am sincerely sorry about that. I hope you find something worthwhile in this haphazard collection of thoughts.

And, "Sendick" is how I'm going to be mentally referring to that creep from now on.