#I could have searched many more quotes and give more examples

[tocomplainfriend]

BIG POST ABOUT ACE REP IN HB/HH

ALASTOR:

I'm ace spec and I hate this shitty mix of stereotypes

So many people see Ace or Aro (and both) people as people who must not have feelings. That if you don't feel romantic or sexual attraction for example "you must be broken" in the same way people connect that to people like serial killers like Alastor. The not having feelings or empathy for people also connects to of all that. And the automatic connection of "no feelings, no empathy" = "ace", Because of the usual conflation of Ace and Aromantic. (Specially cause a lot of people have heard more about Asexual than Aromatic, and can't separate sexual and romantic attraction and empathy)

Again, the general canon treatment and vivs treatment of Alastor also leads to the idea of Complete sex repulsed Ace and Complete romance repulsed Aro. But when ask about his romantic attraction, she doesn't state it as much as she states his Asexuality.

"If I give the real cannon answer...it's gonna... it's gonna... I don't want to ruin anybody's fun, so..."

Old post about this, plus the video of the quote:

Crew notes for Al:

MAMMON:

What!? Yeah! Came out of nowhere! Now we got two Ace characters that are extra terrible people that hurt others cause of the idea of shitty with empathy connected to Asexuality is all around... "Too bad/selfish of a person" = ace

I think they really just put this in at random. I don't think it was pre planed to have him as Ace because of how Octavia and Al are written.

Al is written with the simplicity of him being so not into sex that they portrayed him as if he didn't know about it in Hunicast. But Mammon is constantly profiting of the sexualization of Fizz, now Glitz and Glam. Constantly using prude language as well. I think if there was an intention before, they wouldn't have done that. Viv hasn't shown me a deeper understanding of Ace spectrums at all, I don't trust this. She picked the fat character, the series and merch doesn't sexualize like the others. He always had clothes on and nothing kinky. (for example...Viv also doesn't show a deeper/ or non-basic/non-stereotyped understanding of pansexuality)

But if it was an understanding of Ace spectrum, I'll take that. Mammon being ace, but he can understand and feel comfortable with people feeling attracted to him in that kind of way, like portrayed in the sexy merch?

BUT he is the only fat character and the only one never portrayed as naked or with fewer clothes in comparison to literally all the characters (including one offs) isn't this Viv and crew searching something to not having to sexualize him like they do with all the others? The two other Ace characters in this list don't get sexualized at all (thank god, Octavia is a kid) with the idea that Ace = 0 interaction with anything sex or attraction related....

REMEMBER, ACE IS AN SPECTRUM.

ACE PEOPLE CAN STILL HAVE SEX OR VIEW THEMSELVES AS SEXY AND WEAR SEXY CLOTHES.

They are also only using the Ace flag? Mammon is using the color for his clothes, so it could be Demi or Grey too, I wouldn't know, but it doubts it... Demi could match his actual outfit cause of the diamond shape things are like the triangle in the flag too tho!

That he is not treated like he doesn't know how sex works is surprisingly/sadly good. When the only thing you got is how Viv treated Al in Hunicast.

(Hopefully there is no weird implication that he is only at pride as a shitty rainbow capitalism thing, and that he is not connected to the cause of pride because he is Ace and implicated as "not to being connected as much". Really don't think so, but is always a worry that there could be a treatment of you are not as LGBTQ+ because you are ace so...!)

OCTAVIA: oh brother, I think she only got put on this because she is a minor, not to be sexualized in the heavily sexualized media. I mean, thank god.

I guess she's spilling her coffee at Stolas being sexual in the phone to Blitz in front of her, and telling them to get a room is the implication of Asexuality? Likewise, I think everyone doesn't want to hear their parent do dirty talk and attempt flirting in front of them.

Are any of these gonna matter or have an exploration or mention it? In the same way, there is a mention of (mainly male) gayness? No.

I don't think so...

Btw also no nonbinary? No gender-fluid or... nothing? No? Damn...

[askganon]

Great King, in the past you took care of a great bird you called "Helmaroc King." What is he a king of if I may ask. There are countless, though very rare and valuable, feathers as well as capes MADE of said feathers called "Roc's feather" and "Roc's Cape," typically electric blue in colour. Many copies of the legendary Pegasus Boots also use said feathers to achieve the speed they offer and in some cases temporary flight. There are countless mentions of these artifacts through out every era in every timeline, yet not ONCE in any record or account does a "Roc" or "Helmaroc" exist beyond your avian king. Let me be clear, I do not doubt the validity of the dear bird's royalty nor your judgement to recognize it, I am just baffled by this elusive magical creature known as "Roc" and how it has managed to avoid any and ALL documentation and whether or not it TRULY exists! There are sparse mentions of "Kargarocs" but none of them have feathers matching the features of ANY of the relics, blue or otherwise, in addition to lacking any ability to make ones body, quote "light as a feather" so SURELY they cant be said legendary "Roc" or "Helmaroc." I figure should anyone in any realm or land know the answer to this mystery, surely someone as wise and experienced as yourself would know. I didn't want to ask you at first because why trouble you and take away your time to hand me an answer with no effort put in on my part when I could find the research myself through hard work and effort, but I have poured YEARS of my life into this research, been to practically every land, kingdom, realm and island searching for any record of this elusive blue bastard and I am confidant I have followed every possible lead and have found NOTHING. Please Mr. Dragmire sir, please tell me you know what a "Roc" even is and its relation if any to the Helmaroc King...

A Roc in Hyrule is a large predatory bird, with many branching subspcies. Kargoroks are a common subspecies.

To give you an example of my meaning, a Mol is simply a large beast that burrows in the desert, but there are many forms such as Twinmold, Molgera, and Molduga.

The Helmaroc King was the largest and mightiest Kargoroc. He is more akin in size to a true Roc, though he is a Kargoroc.

Does this give you the answer you seek?

[ice-sculptures]

Okay well I’ve already forced u to look at most of my pets so I’m kinda just gonna copy u…what r ur favorite buck and/or eddie quotes?? I can NEVER think of any when I’m making graphics and u remember the show so much better than I do LOLL

OHHHHH MY GOD THERE'S SO MANY

some off the top of my head:

"two cut lines" - like. okay. i still maintain that the rest of the firefam doesn't actually know how close buck & eddie are and definitely do not fully realize the extent of buck's role in the diazes' life, but one thing that the rest of them Do know is that buck would rather die than leave eddie behind and i love tht these three simple words encapsulate the strength of that undying devotion

"and that started with you. whatever happens to him next, you gave him that second chance. maybe that's the point." i will never ever ever ever ever ever be over this scene and how buck found the exact words to bring eddie back from the brink and show him that what he does matters, that there's still hope, that there are things worth living for and that he made a difference in someone's life. and i think that this right here is more than romance more than love this is just. soulmatism right here. i mean....to be seen to be found isn't that what we're all searching for?

AND ON THAT NOTE. BUCK. THERE'S NOBODY IN THIS WORLD THAT I TRUST WITH MY SON MORE THAN YOU. makes me fucking INSANE because what do you mean eddie forgave him instantly?? in any other show with any other pairing this would be a season long arc with the two of them tentatively reconciling at the very end of it all. anybody else would be (understandably, i might add) nervous to leave christopher with buck after what happened, but eddie forgave buck immediately. eddie, who adores chris with all of his heart and soul, who loves that boy more than anything else in this world, saw not that buck wasn't able to hold onto chris, but that he loved him enough to try. he didn't hold it against him for chris getting swept away, he only focused on the buck that spent all day bloody and bruised, searching for his heart. but more than anything, i think he saw all of that love and heartbreak and guilt and the self doubt that matches his own reflected in buck and decided to give his best, truest friend the chance that was never given to him 🥺😭

"comes in handy when you have a bunch of holes in the wall" i can't explain why i love this bit of casual reassurance so much but i just. i think it's so simple and so sweet and a testament to how they make each other feel so loved so easily :(

i don't remember the exact quote right now but do you remember that scene where eddie and hen are gossiping about hen's mom and eddie says that his abuela would love the tea bc she loves telenovelas and buck beams at him w the fondest grin ever and teases eddie about loving telenovelas too? i know they're soulmates and in love and all of that shit but they're also Best Friends and i love all these little reminders of how well they know each other and how much they genuinely like each other. also this being in the same episode as buck's look of complete confusion when his long term gf tells him she loves him was a Choice™️

"just gonna be you and me" from the LS crossover episode for no reason other than it was cute & i love buck's subsequent jealousy

"guess all that company must've wore you out" bc of the obvious Implications that maddie tried to rope eddie into her plan of sending buck visitors to cheer him up and eddie straight up said no because he knew that wasn't going to help. yet another one of the million examples of these two knowing exactly what the other person needs & also Being exactly what the other person needs

"three minutes and seventeen seconds" because what do you MEAN he knows the exact amount of time buck was dead for. what do you mean he counted the seconds that he lived in this world without his best friend, praying and begging that he could outrun the clock and he wouldn't reach the time that would make it permanent. what do you mean he memorized the amount of time and then he threw out that line so casually because he couldn't stand the way they were talking about buck's death as something fascinating instead of as the worst three minutes and seventeen seconds of eddie's life...

the one-two punch that is "you don't need to pretend with me" and "you don't have to be anything for anybody" because both of them have spent so much of their lives not feeling good enough and not truly living for themselves...and yet around each other they've never had to do that and are free to be nothing but themselves and still be loved not despite it, but for it.

and finally last but not least....the very thesis of their relationship: "you can have my back any day" / "yeah. or, you know, you could… you could have mine" because it's stayed true ever since the first day they met and will remain true for the rest of their lives. also i'll never stop thinking about how 911 straight up said "isn't that what we all want in a partner? knowing that they have your back?" in the season five finale and have shown time and again that buck and eddie have tried to accomplish this in their previous relationships but have only ever been able to have a full and true partnership with each other...yeah that shit will Haunt me forever

this is probably incomprehensible but my mind is running at a million miles an hour right now so i am not going to go back and edit it

[wistfulweaverwoman]

I love deep diving into the symbolism in The Hunger Games, there's so many layers in the writing, so much thought placed in seemingly unimportant narrative that it boggles the mind if you go searching for meaning. Classic literature is rich with symbolism, especially Christian symbolism. Suzanne Collins is a master at writing and crafted these books to bursting.

So, Peeta Mellark.

His first name, Peeta, a Greek flatbread (pita), but also a nod at Saint Peter. The feast of Saint Peter is also called Lammas Day or Loaf Mass Day, a harvest festival. It’s customary to bring to a Christian church a loaf made from the new crop, which began to be harvested at Lammastide, which falls on August 1, at the halfway point between the summer solstice and the autumn September equinox.

Mellark, a combination of the word malarkey and meadowlark. The meadowlark is a yellow breasted song bird that makes its nests on the ground rather than trees, in small hallows, covering it with grasses or animal hairs. Basically tiny bird caves.

Malarkey: most commonly defined as speech or writing designed to obscure, mislead, or impress; bunkum, BUT also thought to be derived from Greek μαλακός (malakós, “soft; compliant, meek; gentle, mellow, mild, mild-mannered”

Not long ago I came across the Bible quote while researching more deeply into the symbolism of pearls.

“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”

After a fair amount of analyzing I've come to believe it's actually one of the most important themes in the series. The gist of it means don’t give away what is precious to those that can’t appreciate its worth.

Symbolically Peeta offers himself to Katniss, repeatedly, throughout the series. The words

“neither cast ye pearls before swine lest they trample them under their feet,”

are what first caught my attention, both symbolic and literal, reminding me of the scene when Peeta burns the bread. His mother beats him and then instructs him to feed the bread to the pigs. Instead he passes the loaves along to Katniss.

Katniss describes the bread Peeta gives her

“It was good hearty bread, filled with raisins and nuts.”

But a pearl isn’t bread, is it? Pearls symbolize a lot of different things, but specifically in the Bible it can symbolize anything Christ-like, from Christ himself, to the gospel of the church. Christ said

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven”

Thus a pearl could symbolize bread, in the right context. When I went to research this train of thought further I was shocked to find a whole bunch of recipes instead of a whole bunch of quotes. Christ’s Bread, or Christopsomo. A Greek Orthodox bread made at Christmas. A rich bread filled with raisins and nuts.

I always thought it curious that the author would choose a name with a Greek origin when so many in D12 have the last names that seem British in origin (Everdeen, Hawthorn, Cartwright, Abernathy), and that there must be more to the name. Therefore I believe it’s no coincidence then, that this Greek bread is so similar to the bread that Peeta gifts to Katniss. It’s further evidence that the author purposefully meant to represent Peeta as Christ-like. Peeta offering his body as sacrifice to save Katniss is a theme that repeats over and over in the series. The strongest example of this, in terms of Christ-like symbolism, was his sacrifice of facing Cato in front of the tracker jacker tree to allow Katniss to escape and hide. That tree is a nod to the Hanging Tree, specifically the line:

Where the dead man called out for his love to flee.

“What are you still doing here?” he hisses at me. I stare uncomprehendingly as a trickle of water drips off a sting under his ear. His whole body starts sparkling as if he’s been dipped in dew. “Are you mad?” He’s prodding me with the shaft of the spear now. “Get up! Get up!” I rise, but he’s still pushing at me. What? What is going on? He shoves me away from him hard. “Run!” he screams. “Run!”

The Hanging tree itself is symbolic of both the Tree of Life, and the cross that Christ was crucified on. With TBOSAS we know the origin of the song, but the actual song written by Suzanne Collins was most likely inspired by the song The Hanging Tree (written for the movie of the same name back in 1959) and the song Strange Fruit made popular by Billy Holiday and became a popular civil rights ballad. I am planning a separate post about the song and how Peeta is symbolically the lover in the song.

This death and resurrection of Christ imagery continues with Katniss later bandaging Peeta and bringing him to a cave where he nearly died, and then left the cave healed three days later. There's so much more, but I'll leave that for another post.

But what about the other part of that quote?

“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, [lest they] turn again and rend you.”

This applies to Katniss, rather than Peeta. Peeta is what's holy, symbolically, as reinforced by the pearl that he gives her in Catching Fire, and that represents him symbolically in Mockingjay. He was literally rended by dogs at the cornucopia in The hunger Games, but she doesn't cast him aside till the end of the book.

“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”

There is metaphorical meaning in the entire quote as well as this theme continues in both Catching Fire and Mockingjay. Peeta offers himself to Katniss and she "casts" him aside. She realizes this towards the end of Mockingjay.

Seeing it in his hands, it’s like Finnick’s echoing what Haymitch just said, that I’ve cast off Peeta.

She finally realizes his true value, even after he's been hijacked, and refuses to allow him to be killed, and instead of casting him away she does her best to keep him.

It’s a long shot, it’s suicide maybe, but I do the only thing I can think of. I lean in and kiss Peeta full on the mouth. His whole body starts shuddering, but I keep my lips pressed to his until I have to come up for air. My hands slide up his wrists to clasp his. “Don’t let him take you from me.” Peeta’s panting hard as he fights the nightmares raging in his head. “No. I don’t want to . . .” I clench his hands to the point of pain. “Stay with me.” His pupils contract to pinpoints, dilate again rapidly, and then return to something resembling normalcy. “Always,” he murmurs.

This is not to say that she never values him or cares for him before the end of Mockingjay, there is plenty of evidence to suggest she fully loved him by the end of The Hunger Games, only that she did not learn the lesson to "cast not what is holy" till then.

I wrap my arms around his neck, feel his arms hesitate before they embrace me. Not as steady as they once were, but still warm and strong. A thousand moments surge through me. All the times these arms were my only refuge from the world. Perhaps not fully appreciated then, but so sweet in my memory, and now gone forever.

This theme is also apparent in the narrative in that the Rebellion abandoned Peeta, representing both which is holy and the pearl, to the Capitol. The Capitol did not value his worth, nor see him as a treasure. They tortured and hijacked him "trample them under their feet" , and used him to "rend" the Rebellion by programing him to kill Katniss, the symbol of the Rebellion.

[ancientprettythings]

Graeco-Roman Art: A Cautionary Tale

There is nothing more common than seeing a statue or painting from Ancient Rome described in these terms:

Roman, 1st-2nd C CE after a Greek original.

The Greek original is almost always lost, so the supposed connection to the assumed original is built around the following approaches:

1. The scanty literary evidence of ancient authors who saw the works themselves and described them to a greater or (generally) lesser degree. The main sources called into service for the Classical period are Pliny and Pausanias.

2. By comparing the statue/painting to others with a similar form; the assumption being that, if there were multiple versions of the same statue/image made, then there must have been an original on which they are all based – and that original is always assumed to be Greek.

3. Drawing conclusions from comparisons of style with that of known artists. Does the statue have similarities in physical composition? Similarities in how, for example, leaves are carved or the way musculature is rendered?

All of these methods are vexed with problems which I will try to break down a little with examples.

Literary Evidence

The literary evidence is never, in my opinon, clear enough to be describing one image, and one image only.

Take the Medea from the House of the Dioscuri at Pompeii.

[Photo is from Wikimedia Commons]

She is assumed to be a copy of a (lost) painting completed by Timomachus of Byzantium, bought by Julius Caesar and hung in the Temple of Venus Genetrix in Rome at enormous expense.

Nine Greek epigrams exist describing the work, and it’s on this basis that the painting is considered a copy.

I give an example from the first century CE:

‘Murderous Medea. When the hand of Timomachus was painting her,

as she was dragged in opposite directions by spite and by children,

he took on himself infinite pains to inscribe her schizophrenia,

He got both in full measure-look at the figure: in threats

tears re-surface, and temper in pity.

'Deferral will do just fine', as the sage put it. The blood of children

was right for Medea, but not for the hand of Timomachus.’

[Antiphilus of Byzantium, quoted in Classical Art: From Greece to Rome.]

Such descriptions could just as surely describe any image where Medea hesitates before carrying out her deadly intent as much as it describes this particular scene. Could it not be that a Roman artist, familiar with the mythological story, might come up with such a composition for themselves, without recourse to an original Greek version of the painting?

Comparison with Similar/Other Copies of the same Statue/Painting

While this is perhaps the most likely to lead us to imagine that there is an original which must have been in demand, and hence why there are so many copies of the one subject (the Discobolus, for example; or the Aphrodite of Cnidus), this must surely be approached very cautiously.

For one thing, this search tends to lead art historians to making arbitrary determinations about quality - they seek out those versions which are most similar, and then decide which is the best within that group in the belief that this gets them as close as possible to what they perceive to be the superior original.

This functionally depends on factors which are entirely questionable.

First, that the original was in fact the best; that no one who was imitating the style and form of the projected original couldn’t improve upon it, but would naturally produce an inferior work.

Second, that the original may in fact not be the one of which there are the most examples – a variation made to suit Roman tastes may in fact have been more in demand and hence there would be more copies left behind.

Third, who decides which is superior? On what criteria? Any judgement of this kind is naturally imbedded in the ideology in which the art historian is functioning – for example, French scholars in the 1600’s viewed quality in very different terms than an American scholar might do today.

Finally, the conclusion is almost always that the original must have been Greek. There is no reason whatsoever to believe this, except the cultural snobbery that promotes the belief that Roman sculptors didn’t have the creativity and skill to make their own original work in a Greek style. This is frankly insulting but entirely typical of the dim view many academics take towards Roman art.

Stylistic attributions

This is always a shaky basis for judging art, even in the modern day. We need only look at how many frauds are sold as the works of modern masters to know exactly how easily style can be imitated; but it is even more so when we’re talking about an extremely limited pool of known artists. The temptation will always be to shoe-horn a work alongside a known name.

A case in point is the Belvedere Apollo.

[Image is from Wikimedia Commons.]

The Belvedere Apollo was discovered before the beginning of the sixteenth century somewhere in Italy – ‘near Antium’ is generally accepted.

He evokes the perennial questions – where was he made? Was he of Italian craftsmanship or was he looted from Greece? Was he a Roman copy or a Greek original? Can we match him to any masterpieces in bronze or marble described in the literary works of Pliny or Pausanias?

But most importantly here, how firmly might he be placed in the stylistic language of a known famous sculptor?

The fact is, we know nothing about this work other than it was found in Italy probably near Antium; everything else from this point onwards is academic speculation which is in no way fact. Yet looking online, you will find these details everywhere:

Roman copy of a Greek bronze statue of Leochares 350-325 BCE.

Date: 2nd C CE/Imperial Roman.

The fact that there’s no other version of this work known from antiquity, by Leochares or anyone else, is ignored entirely; the attribution has been made on stylistic bases alone, from an assumed similarity to the Diana below.

[Image from Wikimedia Commons.]

Apollo Belvedere is as likely, as far as real evidence can prove, to be a Roman original as it is to be a copy from the Greek. It is as likely to have been crafted by an unknown artist as it is by Leochares or any other known artist.

That’s the truth – we don’t know either way.

Conclusion

This particular commonplace in art history is one of many that afflict the world of historical studies, and ancient history in particular.

Unfortunately, we are the inheritors of an academic tradition in which the phrase ‘we can’t be sure’ was absolutely precluded. We desperately need to put that uncertainty back into our thinking.

[For a much more comprehensive analysis of the problems around this topic, I highly recommend Classical Art: From Greece to Rome by Beard and Henderson.]

[hollygl125]

yo umm i was wondering and couldn't find on google so i think you could help me

the shifts in csi (like day shift, graveyard shift etc) are around which times?

Hello, lovely anon,

First of all, my sincere apologies for not having responded to your query in a timely (or, you know, remotely helpful) manner. Not as an excuse, but as an attempt at an explanation, I will tell you that I have been kind of a disaster person lately (much more so than indicated in the linked post, and even much more so this past fall than now) and don’t always have a ton of control over where my mind chooses to focus.

I should also acknowledge that, while I carried out my fall 2021 CSI rewatch (when I didn’t realize I was subsequently going to care about any of these details) with sort of rapt attention, in my (yes, many) subsequent rewatches I have often skipped scenes or storylines that don’t really interest me (e.g., where neither Sara Sidle nor Gil Grissom is anywhere to be found), and I am almost always doing two or three things at once while watching. So it’s certainly more than possible I have missed some non-GSR details in there.

In response to your question, the two things I can tell you with certainty are these:

The CSIs of CSI have three shifts: day shift, swing shift, and night/graveyard shift (this last being what the lead characters of CSI are generally working). Logic would dictate that, with three shifts and 24 hours in a day, the shifts most likely start (and end) eight hours apart. (I will not, however, state that logic necessarily dictates that the shifts each be eight hours, and I will discuss that more below.)

At the end of “Mea Culpa” (05x09), after Warrick, Nick, and Catherine are transferred from night/graveyard shift to swing shift, Warrick tells Grissom, “Well, I got to get some rest. Swing shift starts at four in the afternoon. That’s a big change.”

Based on the above (and what I will discuss below), the best answer I can give is that the shifts should start at the following times (and end approximately, though not necessarily exactly, eight hours later):

Day shift: 8:00 a.m.

Swing shift: 4:00 p.m.

Night/graveyard shift: 12:00 a.m. (midnight).

(I will also note some contradictory information below the cut, although I don’t know the source of that information.)

But the other thing I will note (and for which I will give some possibly excessive examples below the cut) is that CSI does a pretty terrible job of keeping track of these kind of workplace logistics. You might have thought the writers and showrunners of what was for a time the most popular scripted TV show in the world (or something like that) would have added a few notes to their show bible about workplace logistics (shift times, scheduling, etc.) but . . . nope, not in any way that is apparent to me! (I find wanting to write a story that is compatible with the internal logic of the show and finding there really is no internal logic of the show to be terribly frustrating.)

Shift times:

Okay, to be honest, the first place I looked for an answer to your query was in @addictedtostorytelling’s wonderful meta, both because she is an expert in (among many other things!) these finer details (e.g., dates on documents shown in the show) and because I was pretty sure I had seen a post from her that addressed shift times.

The only post I could find on the topic was this one, in which the asker states that “we know there are 3 csi shifts: day (7am to 3pm), swing (3pm to 11pm) and night (11pm to 7am).” I don’t know the source of information for that statement. (If anyone else knows, I’d be most grateful if you shared in the comments, so I can update this post!) Honestly, it’s more than possible that CSI has given contradictory information on this subject. But the one place I personally know of a shift start time being given in the show is in Warrick’s statement quoted above.

I also did a general google search on shift times (not specific to CSI or even real-world CSI-type employees). The most common answers I saw were days = 8:00 (or 7:00) a.m. to 4:00 (or 3:00) p.m., swing = 4:00 (or 3:00) p.m. to 12:00 a.m. (or 11:00 p.m.), night/graveyard = 12:00 a.m. (or 11:00 p.m.) to 8:00 (or 7:00) a.m.

In this post on Talk CSI, you can see people trying to answer your question way back in 2006, when the show was airing. One board member there noted that their (forensic, as I understand it) agency had three ten-hour shifts (with two hours of overlap at each end). Another noted that, where they worked (also apparently in the forensic context), the shifts were “12:30 to 8:30, 8:30 to 4:30 and 4:30 to 12:30 working 8 hour shifts.” @figsr kindly advised me that in her (non-forensic) experience shifts would have a half-hour overlap for handover.

I have no personal experience with this, but to me also just logically it would make sense for these shifts to have some sort of overlap for handover—so that, e.g., one team can be dealing with their beginning of shift housekeeping (shifts, assignments, memos from upper management, etc.) while the other is still primarily responsible for calls to the field.

Anyway, based on the above, I can’t give a conclusion on exactly how long the shifts are/when they end. But, as for when the shifts start, my best answer is as given at the top.

The other thing I should probably note here is that the CSIs of CSI do not stop working just because their shifts have ended; when they are in the middle of something that needs to be addressed in a timely manner, they tend to keep going, and they seem to work a lot of double shifts. They also apparently help out other shifts sometimes when necessary. (You’ll note that we see them working during the day a lot, but I don’t know how much of that can be attributed to the issue I discuss below.)

Shift times + scheduling + lack of internal logic (i.e., WTF, CSI?!):

As @addictedtostorytelling discusses in the meta I linked above (which I highly recommend reading, if you’re interested in this topic!), CSI doesn’t make much effort to depict the characters’ work schedules in any sort of realistic way, and drawing inferences about the logistics of the their work schedules is kind of a crapshoot.

Here are a few examples of CSI seeming to ignore its own shift times:

In 01x10, Sara’s asleep with her head on the table in the break room. It’s daylight (looks like morning). She wakes up as the kettle starts whistling. Grissom asks, “Did you sleep here?” Sara responds, “I was working till 4:00 a.m.” —> 4:00 a.m. should be their lunch time. None of this makes any sense.

In 07x08, Sara spends her day waiting to testify in court; they never get to her. Afterwards she goes to talk to Grissom in his office; based on the foregoing it must be late afternoon (maybe around 4:30-5:00 p.m.). Grissom has been working on that episode’s case and must have been on shift since at least the night before. He’s now sitting there reading Thoreau, and she tells him, “I won’t wait up.” —> I know he’s traditionally been a workaholic, and maybe they both have the night off, but it always strikes me as odd (and maybe a bit irresponsible?) that he’s still not heading home, given how long he must have been up and the fact that their usual shift time is in probably close to seven hours (and I always imagine him, as supervisor, arriving early).

At the end of 07x18, the TV reporter says that the suspect confessed earlier that day to the murders of the six showgirls. (The TV newscast is supposedly live, and it’s dark outside where the reporter is. He also states, “The families have organized a candlelight vigil that will begin here tonight.”) Grissom brushes a tear off Sara’s cheek then walks her out of the lab with his arm around her/hand on her back. The hallway has dim lighting and is empty aside from someone (not Natalie Davis!) mopping the floors. It’s giving very “end of the day so the lab’s deserted” vibes. —> But it’s literally never the end of the day there! They work the night shift, and the lab is always humming!

Similarly, in CSIV 1x05, Sara and then Grissom as well (“the matched set”) run into their suspect (Martin Kline) while leaving what is very specifically (i.e., with several establishing shots) shown to be a dark and empty lab. (Like, it’s clearly supposed to feel creepy when Kline first confronts Sara and she’s all alone.) —> But, again, the original CSI showed us that place was never dark and empty! It was always humming!

In 08x01, the security guard at the parking lot from which Sara was abducted says that Sara “eats at the veggie place downstairs a couple times a week.” When Catherine asks when she was there that night, he says, “I don’t know, like 7:30, maybe. That’s when she usually comes.” —> Sara eating at 7:30 p.m. is like someone who works a 9-5 job eating at about 4:30 a.m. (I also feel like their working hours are so erratic that, if she were able to pull off anything regular a couple times per week, it would be something regular she could do with Grissom—like maybe sitting down to a nice relaxed home-cooked rather than take-out meal twice per week.)

Shift times aren’t the only issue, though.

In 02x15, for example, Sara’s “Request for Leave of Absence” form states that her work week is “Tue - Sat grave.” Now, I don’t pay much heed to the CSI props department. (They did give us these nonsensical ID cards, after all.) But this would make a lot of sense to me—the CSIs all having a staggered work week, with two regular, consecutive scheduled days off each. Only . . . we don’t ever really see anything like that?

At the end of 03x22, Sara notes that the schedule says Grissom has the night off, and, when he confirms, she then adds, “Me, too.” It certainly doesn’t sound like this is a regular (weekly) occurrence. But in truth I can’t remember ever actually seeing two of our CSIs have the night off together. We almost never see them having a night off at all. Even in 03x03, when we are told Sara had the night off, it’s in the context of Grissom having called her in to work.

(I think there are a very small number of examples of one of the CSIs actually having a night off—e.g., in 03x09, Catherine has a couple days off but stops by the lab to pick something up for Lindsey’s birthday.)

Admittedly, I get this one, because of course the showrunners want for the most part for the whole cast (especially its major players, the CSIs) to be onscreen throughout every episode. So the subject of days off would have to be fudged. But it strikes me as funny that, in 04x12, when Nick is absent for the entire episode, they don’t take the opportunity to show someone having their regular days off; instead, Sara tells us he’s at the “American Academy of Forensic Science convention” (even though it’s about a month early for the AAFS conference).

Another matter that makes no logistical sense to me is the staffing changes that go on during and immediately after season 05.

In the pilot, the graveyard shift is five CSIs (including Holly Gribbs) plus Brass, who presumably does a lot of paperwork. Then Sara takes Holly’s spot and Brass is transferred out, so it’s just five very qualified CSIs (and no wonder Grissom is always behind on his paperwork, with Brass gone).

By season 5, graveyard shift is up to five and a half CSIs, basically, with Greg’s inclusion as a CSI-in-training. Then Ecklie decides to mix things up (i.e., punish Grissom and his pals), and he splits them into two shifts, adding only Sofia (to the graveyard shift). So then graveyard has three and a half CSIs (four once Greg makes CSI I), and swing shift has three CSIs. In 05x11, Ecklie acknowledges swing shift is short a couple bodies and blames budget constraints. But, if swing shift is short a couple bodies, graveyard shift must be short a body, too, even once Greg makes CSI I. How can budget constraints suddenly necessitate them being down that many bodies—especially when by season six Ecklie can somehow justify letting them now have six full CSIs on graveyard shift? Also, we know the swing shift supervisor was transferred to days to replace Ecklie, but what happened to the rest of the previous swing shift?

Now, my petty headcanon would be that the entire day shift save for Sofia quits when Ecklie gets promoted because the thought of him as assistant lab director is unbearable to them, as a result of which he moves the entire swing shift to days and pretends the staff shortages are due to budget cuts. But I find it kind of funny (again!) that, during the fifth season, when CSI really was on top of the world (e.g., ratings, cast winning the SAG award, Tarantino directing “Grave Danger”), the showrunners couldn’t at least have found a couple warm bodies to show up occasionally to round out the swing shift (even if Ecklie was punishing Grissom and his shift by leaving the graveyard shift understaffed). (In 05x16, Catherine is shown talking to three randoms in “forensics” coveralls, one of whom calls her “boss,” but no explanation is given as to who they are, and I think that’s the most we ever see in that regard.)

Anyway, thank you so much for your question, and my apologies for rambling with some of my CSI logistics grievances. My best answer to your question is as given at the top. If you should have another question, please feel free to send it my way—barring any acts of God, etc. (unforeseeable future events), I will most almost certainly be able to manage a more prompt response!

[twig-gy]

tumblr could be so much better of a website. here’s (some of) what i’d add:

- add basic search operators like without, precise quotes, search by username, only ones with these tags, and other suchlike. make these work on your blog search too. also fix popular to actually be highest notes to lowest and fix whatever is going on w the chrono

- make settings just. more sensible in general?

- remove paid badges, make them all free, also achievement badges. put something in settings to where badges will not display or be visible in any way and will not be read out on screen readers

- fix Whatever Is Up with alts while i’m here

- be able to give titles to any user. also have categories for them, so you can have Trusted Mutuals or like Best CCCC Posters n suchlike

- make it so you can see which titles you’ve been given (maybe not by who just for funsies) unless it’s been marked private

- automatically sort followers into groups by follow time, such as ‘0-2 Weeks, 2 Weeks-1 Month’, etc. also do this for mutuals. and then be able to pick which stat is more important or show both

- sort which groups of users can see or interact with a certain post, for example, only your Trusted Mutuals can see your ventpost now. also do this for tags so you can have a ‘#trusted mutuals only’ tag

- also you can sort your notifs by the user categories so you might only see your notes from your mutuals or whatever you want

- give your blog a theme song that plays whenever someone scrolls it unless they disable theme songs in settings.

- add MORE sound effects like the messaging ones. i want a sparkle sound when i like a post

- in settings there should be a dial for how many sound effects you want from ‘zero’ to ‘please give me random jackpot sfx’

- make everyone put in a headnoun and then enable/disable the sitelen pona of that headnoun showing before their username

- make fun autocorrect to musi /joke

[klayfruit]

ouh.... i had never heard of goblet grotto but i googled it, & the artstyle looks so charming. would love to hear u talk abt it sometime, when u get the chance or feel like it ^_^

THANK U OH MY GOD nows my chance …. idk if u wanted me to explain it in ur dms or anything so im just gonna infodump here!!!

goblet grotto is a game made by thecatamites (who still actively posts games, just mostly under the name garmentdistrict) in 2012. the main Thing abt the game is that you play as a little swamp toad knight (probably) named swampy, who ventures into the grotto for their search for goblets. the game itself though is absolutely giant, branching paths at nearly every corner and the “story” becoming more bizarre as time goes on. goblets become less of a collectable, and more of an item of worship

the moment youre thrown into the game and it begins, there are already several noises screaming into your ears. first thing you notice is the glyphs popping up at the top of the screen, each one appearing accompanied with a Horribly Loud “BWAH”. you take in the side menu, looking at swampy’s little avatar and noticing how one of the options is just “pray”, and seeing how theres a Whole Ass Paragraph describing your surroundings right now. halfway through reading the paragraph, you are killed by wolves. you have eaten 0 meats and collected 0 goblets. the game is absolutely ruthless to the player, sometimes it will just throw an unkillable enemy at you, force you to crawl around slowly without an explanation, completely destroy your save file, etc. theres also just moments where the games like Oop You Fucked Up! like if you pray too many times it completely destroys the side-text into becoming incomprehensible screaming nonsense, along with just randomly spawning pyramids that make a horrible buzzing noise that you cant turn off. also theres an npc where if you interact with them it makes all your side-text start saying weird shit.

how ruthless the game is is what makes it so enjoyable to me, its so just unabashedly itself. youre thrown into this world screaming and bleeding, and you have to figure out how everything works to even manage to survive. the glyphs mentioned earlier are a whole ass language, the translation of each and every single glyph being in the guide book that comes with the game. you need to manage to memorize a good amount of them to realize that they have An Actual Meaning and Mechanic in the game. whenever swampy collapses and starts crawling, its not for no reason, its because theyre hungry/havent collected goblets recently and theyre screaming this at you through the glyphs. also would like to mention that praying too much also leads the glyphs to become more panicked and almost trivial, eventually them turning into symbols that Arent even seen in the guide book and i had to ask thecatamites directly what the glyphs meant.

theres so So much damn story in this game, and at the same time theres little to none. the moment you see something that seems like it could be a reoccurring theme, its instantly thrown out the window. its extremely rare for something to be consistent through a small section of the game, nevertheless the whole ass game. the only example i can think of is the game’s depiction of god, who speaks in funny little typing quirks and says shit like “UP AND ATEMCOWBOY!!!!!! WORLD IS HYOU OYSTER ;^)”. its heavily implied that, once you pray too much and the side text becomes all fucked up, its god speaking to you in their fucked up little way of speaking, screaming at you to keep on moving and collect goblets and have horrible dreams and Replace all files in your computer with a list of Swears (direct quote from god). there are also altars in several areas through the game, purple hooded people surrounding each altar. if you pray at it, god just straight up appears and gives you goblets. what’s special though about the inconsistency is that, at the very “end” of the game, seemingly all the vaguely important characters that you only see once in the whole game appear once again. it just like makes it special and really sends it home. god, along with the purple hooded people appear in this area, i just thought that was fun.

also want to mention the sound design and music is so unique and honestly fantastic. i am specifically talking about the glyph’s “BWAH”s, and also how everytime you collect meat, swing your axe, and collect goblets, you hear a man say in your ear “MEAT.” “KILL.” “GOBLETS.” aside from the sfx though the music is genuinely so fucking good im not even joking. its got such an amazing vibe to it, my personal favorite is world end because of how melancholic it feels compared to every other song in the ost

theres honestly so much i could say about this game, but i have autism and cant properly put my thoughts into words, so all i can say is just Pleaaaaase check out goblet grotto, even just for a moment. the gameplay sucks complete ass if youre not familiar with it, but the newest vers of the game DOES have an immortal mode (press L at the start screen and it brings you to Secrets Menu). if you dont wanna play it i recommend vinny’s small vid of him playing it, it gets the main thing abt it across pretty well! ALSO i made a whole ass website of me just talking about everything i know about goblet grotto, its like a sort of guide for the game as theres no other good guides of it online due to how obscure the game is.

anyway thank you so much for listening to me. autism be damned i can write essays about mediocre game

[antitheticaldreamgirl-13]

I wrote this thingy…it’s like a Taylor 101 for people who hate her. I would love any comments/suggestions that would make it better!:

So, Taylor Swift. Let’s talk about her.

People say she is ditzy and stuck writing songs about her long list of ex-boyfriends. Her music is meaningless, popular but not spectacular in any way.

Hmm. That is actually a quite strange point of view.

She’s won 12 Grammys and been nominated for 46. She’s the most awarded artist in the American Music Awards and received more Billboard Music Awards than any other woman. She has won 23 MTV Awards, second only to Beyonce. 

But, sure, she’s just an idiot who only writes shallow pop songs. That makes tons of sense. (As you can see, I have no patience for Taylor-haters). 

Now, you might argue that these awards are often rigged and not a true marker of musical quality. You might argue that, for some unknown reason, most of us have been put under a magical spell, rendering us incapable of realizing the utter lack of quality of Taylor’s music. You’ve listened to perhaps five of her songs at best, and are more qualified to judge her excellence than any person well-versed in Taylor’s discography and certainly more knowledgeable than musical experts.  

Sorry to burst your bubble, but that’s not how it works. In fact, perhaps before declaring that Taylor Swift’s music is garbage, you could actually listen to it and try to, although perhaps uncomfortably, push through your instinct to hate it. Listen to her album Folklore (which, by the way, won Album of the Year), or Evermore, or any of her other albums. You may be surprised to hear this, but she has written more songs than Bad Blood and Shake It Off. Crazy, I know. 

Examples of her lyrics:

“I want auroras and sad prose / I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet

/ 'Cause I haven't moved in years.” - Lakes

“I’d meet you where the spirit meets the bones / In a faith forgotten land / In from the snow / your touch brought forth an incandescent glow / tarnished but so grand.” -Ivy

“If clarity's in death, then why won't this die? / Years of tearing down our banners, you and I / Living for the thrill of hitting you where it hurts / Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first.” -Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve

“You drew stars around my scars / But now I’m bleeding.” -Cardigan

“From when your Brooklyn broke my skin and bones / I'm a soldier who's returning half her weight / And did the twin flame bruise paint you blue? / Just between us, did the love affair maim you too? / 'Cause in this city's barren cold / I still remember the first fall of snow / And how it glistened as it fell / I remember it all too well.” - All Too Well

“Now I'm searching for signs in a haunted club / Our songs, our films, united we stand / Our country, guess it was a lawless land / Quiet my fears with the touch of your hand / Paper cut stings from my paper-thin plans.” -Death by a Thousand Cuts

These quotes are from 5 separate albums and are only a few of the many examples I could pull out. But yeah. She’s a horrible songwriter.

One might argue that most are uneducated and have only listened to her most famous hits, and I would completely agree. But, might I add that….her hits are not bad? Sure, Shake It Off and Bad Blood are definitely not her best ones, but what about Cruel Summer? Lover? Style? These are in no way bad. 

For example, here are some Cruel Summer lyrics:

“So cut the headlights, summer's a knife / I'm always waiting for you just to cut to the bone / Devils roll the dice, angels roll their eyes / And if I bleed, you'll be the last to know.”

Ummm..are these horrible lyrics? Hardly. The music itself, separate from the lyrics, is also good, so what exactly is the objection?

The Objection: It doesn’t matter if her individual lyrics are better than most songwriters out there, I’m annoyed that she’s talking about ex-boyfriends because I’m a sexist jerk!

Hmm. Perhaps this is just me, but I don’t find that argument particularly convincing.

Let me frame it this way. If I were to ask you What’s wrong with writing about breakups, about falling in love, about one of the most beautiful aspects of life?, what would you say? There is no concrete answer to this question.

And, anyhow, that’s the genius of Taylor Swift: while a majority of her songs are about relationships (although by no means all or even close to all), she writes about them in a different way each time. What does it matter if a songwriter talks about, say, the meaning of life but the way the meaning of life is discussed is utterly simplistic and cliche? We would discard it, call it garbage. More than anything, the way a songwriter writes the individual lyrics is more important than the overall topic.

The irony comes in when people claim that Taylor Swift is simplistic and one-dimensional, and yet the way people view her is just as simplistic and one-dimensional. They’ve listened to about five of her songs, from perhaps two or three of her albums, and then they proclaim she is bad. Meanwhile, they also claim that all her songs are simply meant for commercial success. Clearly, if one only listens to her most successful hits, then they could be excused for not knowing she writes songs that are not simply meant to appeal to the masses (although…like I said…her hits aren’t bad). They say she is bad because her hits are bad, and yet they are the ones who are focusing on her hits. Do they not realize the hypocrisy of this? 

Furthermore, why are we so averse to having fun? Why are we so afraid of anything not highly intellectual? If a song sounds good, why must we label it bad? Lyrics matter, yes, but what does it say about ourselves if we must constantly be original, unique, clever, philosophical? Are we really trying to learn, to think, to enjoy the complexity of the world, or are we, rather, trying to ignore our deepest fears, our insecurities, that tells us we must prove ourselves to the world? Not everything needs to be smart, and certainly not everything needs to be changed to seem complex. We supposedly view simple facts in a complex way so as to avoid dumbing down the truth, so as to avoid making the truth a piece of entertainment devoid of meaning, and yet, isn’t the act of complicating what does not need to be complicated so often the root of frivolous entertainment?  In fact, I would argue that Taylor’s best lyrics are often the simplest ones, ones that are direct and, as she would say, “cut to the bone.”

If you, dear reader, are a Taylor-hater, may I ask why? Which singers are you listening to instead who are so clearly superior to her? Name them for me. We’ll compare them to Taylor Swift. It’ll be fun.

Actually, I already regret saying this. I can already hear people screaming out the absolute best artists and songwriters of all time—John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell. Please. Why are acting so all-or-nothing, so black and white? To quote Taylor herself, stop “Comparing all the girls who are killin’ it.” Nuance. It’s a thing.

But, of course, is Taylor Swift so below these famous, incredibly culturally-impactful singers? Of course not. The point is that even if she was, that doesn’t automatically make her bad. After all, if everyone besides Michael Jackson was bad, then Michael Jackson wouldn’t have been incredible. Logic. It’s a thing.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not expecting everyone to love Taylor Swift or even simply like her. But I do expect people not to call her garbage regularly simply because they don’t feel like listening to anything beyond Bad Blood or simply because they can’t stand successful women or simply because they think she’s a slut. Some people just don’t like her style of music, but they should be able to respect her songwriting prowess. 

So, I’m asking, when you hear someone dissing her, don’t agree with them.

So, I’m asking, when you hear Taylor Swift on the radio, swallow your instinct to groan to everyone around about how horrible you think she is. 

So, I’m asking, to examine your motives for hating her and perhaps admit to yourself that your beliefs about her come more from a place of ignorance or even sexism than a true dislike of her music.

[quaranmine]

You put so much research and detail into Incandescence of a Dying Light and it's amazing. Do you have any tips for someone trying to research for a story? One of my characters is an elderly Floridian lifeguard but the best sources I can find are some NYT articles about Long Island lifeguards

Oh thank you! I appreciate that.

As for researching, I think the best way to go about it is to try to research specific parts of your problem. You might not be able to find resources for an elderly Floridian lifeguard, but you can probably find resources for lifeguards, lifeguards in a particular area, and elderly people doing swimming/rescues. I can try to give you some pointers but without knowing your story or specific needs some of these tips might not work. Just use them as a jumping off point! Specific problems can be easier to research than broad problems--unless it's too specific, and then you lose all your results. Researching is a balancing act between those two.

Are they a lifeguard at the ocean, or a pool? If it's the ocean, where in Florida? I'd look up information about the sea currents in that area. That might give you an idea of the kind of risks your lifeguard is looking at, like if they work at a beach in a place known for rip currents or something. That will add some realism and you can probably find resources on what your lifeguard character is looking for. If it's a pool, your job is probably much easier because I have to assume most of the same rules apply for elsewhere.

Is there a specific time period you are looking at? I'm no lifeguard, so anyone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I imagine the profession hasn't changed very much in the past few decades or longer. If someone is a lifeguard in the 80s my gut feeling is that their job is still pretty similar to what it is today. So, that might make your research easier if you can expand the time periods you are looking at. My story is set in 1989 so I'm always looking for info from that time period. But most of what I'm doing is looking at fire lookout resources from the 50s or early 2000s, and then matching the technology in my fic to the late 80s.

I would also look up things like lifeguard handbook, lifeguard skills, lifeguard employee handbook, lifeguard training materials, etc. For example, just by looking up "florida lifeguard" I found the Jacksonville Beach Ocean Rescue Lifeguard Academy, which gives some details about the requirements and steps to become a lifeguard there. Could be useful information. I also found a 400 page Red Cross lifeguarding manual pdf. For more personal information, perhaps add stuff like "interview" to the search? I'm sure you would be able to find people talking about their jobs.

As for your character's age, that might not require much research. Being older does not mean a character can't be fit or strong (but I don't know if you mean 60 or 90 when you say "elderly" and that matters.) You could explore sources about active elderly people too, if you wanted. This will just depend on the details of your character though.

I would also recommend using some advanced search techniques. For example, if you only want examples about Florida, write it as "florida" with the quotes around it, and you'll only receive pages that contain the word Florida. Or, if you want to exclude something that is muddying your search results, put the word with a minus. Tragically at one point during my chapter 8 research i had to add -maui to the search to try and exclude news articles associated with it.

Generally though I would just look for lots of sources of many types, and then add them together. It is unlikely you will find sources that match everything you need. Break down what you need to know into smaller pieces. I may have 20+ tabs open for information that amounts to....a few paragraphs. Vary your search queries a lot, try different key words. My research for Firewatch AU has been helped by the fact that the job involves the federal government, which is great at recordkeeping and often has a lot of publicly available information. Your mileage may vary with other subjects. Watch your sources for accuracy. Or, if you rely on sources from a different location (Long Island vs Florida) be prepared to try and identify and fill in the gaps where there are differences between the locations.

Good luck!

[osterby]

Constructing effective searches is a skill that was taught to me by librarians at the public library and by my father (a programmer), which I then honed on my own as I explored the internet as a teenager. Up through like 2010ish, this was an essential skill for doing anything at all on the internet.

And then Google got better.

In the olden days, you had to put recipe "french toast" in the search bar, quotes and all, to get a bunch of french toast recipies on the first page, but Google improved and was able to give reasonable search results to people to entered how do I make french tost?, with a question mark and a typo and without quotes.

This was a good thing, it meant that casual users (including your granny and your kid sister) could use a search engine and get what they were looking for without having to understand how computers think and without having to isolate the keywords themselves. And french toast recipes are a very simple example, Google's improvements also meant that people could use natural language to search for images, news articles, and location- or time-relevant information; you could search pictures of cats, what were last week's sportball scores? or weather warnings near me and get what you were acutally looking without having to use special search parameters.

This was a meaningful improvement that meant that a lot more people could use search engines, and thus the internet, effectively without having to learn special skills, but it also meant that the average internet user who was just here for recipes and cat pictures and sportball news no longer had the special skills needed for searching a lot of more specific websites. If you want Ever Given/Suez Canal fanfic, you can just type where do I read evergiven fanfic? into Google and the first result is the ship tag on AO3.

But if you want to search AO3 itself and narrow down that tag, you can't just type questions and requests into the search bar, you will have to teach yourself how to actually use a search.

The same is true for places like Twitter, Youtube, any wiki, Amazon and other online stores, your local library's website, The Internet Archive, Pixiv, Deviantart, all those image boorus, heck, even Pornhub. You can even search the backlog of that stupid Discord server that makes you join because they forgot what a wiki is. Some (like AO3) have very good search functionality and extensively tagged content, others are janky and bare bones or fiddle around with your keywords on the back end and mix in suggested crapola, but they've all got search functions that you can learn to use to find the specific thing you're actually looking for. (Tumblr is excluded from this list; no amount of searching skills will save you from their inability to index their own site)

I feel like I need to end this with a simple lesson on how you, too, can put together a better search query, but it really has been over two decades and I don't really remember how I learned all this in the first place.

But to give you the basics: 1.) Approach it as searching for where a specific word or phrase appears, not as requesting a type of thing. eg you are searching AO3 for instances of the tag trans!Jaskier, you are not asking a robot for Witcher fic where Jaskier is trans,

2.) Take some time to explore a website's advanced search page. Click around and see what the options are, read the tooltips (if you're on mobile, long pressing on something will usually bring up a tooltip that mousing over on a desktop does), check out what kinds of things get autofilled where, and if there's no good tutorial and the descriptions aren't very clear, just fool around with searches until you figure out what does what.

3.) Many search boxes, even on fancy modern websites, will accept a few basic boolean operators. If you're not sure if a website you use a lot takes them, it's worth testing it out. "Boolean operators" sounds like scary programmer-speak, but they're actually pretty easy. Here are some of the more useful and easily remembered operators.

- the minus sign is probably the one I use the most often, and is something that more websites seem to accept. It simply excludes the minused word. french -toast will turn up "french vocabulary practice" and will not show you "Grandma's best French toast recipe". Use this one to list all your squicks.

Enclosing something in quotaton marks will search for that exact string; "french toast" looks for things that have those exact two words in that exact order.

AND will search for things that have both the terms: french AND toast searches for anything that has those two words, in any order. The phrase "a toast to the French army" and "Grandma's best French toast recipe" will both show up with an AND search.

OR essentially performs two searches at once. french OR toast will turn up any mention of either word, you'll get "hot buttered toast" and "french vocabulary practice" with an OR search.

The asterisk is a wildcard. Trans* will turn up any word that starts with those five letters, including "transgender", "transsexual", "transition", "transcontinental", "transmission", and "trans*" itself.

And finally, AO3 has a lot of their very own search operators that let you narrow your search by pretty much any criteria you can think of https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/10851

thinking about that post of people assuming ao3 has an algorithm and also about how bonkers persistent the view is that ao3 is social media lite. like with startling regularity I get comments saying something along the lines of "it's probably weird to comment on a fic this old--" no it isn't!!!! this is an archive I am literally just assuming you searched for a selection of specific tags or sorted by kudos or looked back on my pseud or any other number of completely normal ways to use an archive site ?? kill the tiktok ghost in your brain and comment on old stuff it's NOT weird

[kavrillia]

A Pain of Thrones

(Yeah, I went there.)

ARGGGH I'm thisclose to giving up and not naming the throne of the Lanarian Empire, after all. Everything I Google is already taken, sounds stupid, or has connotations I don't want.

"Sapphire Throne" would be perfect but apparently that's a biblical thing.

Azerite is really soft and not suitable to build anything out of, and doesn't age well.

Tri-moon was some social media celeb in the wrestling fandom who died to suicide. Triple Moon brings up all kinds of neopagan stuff.

"Pearl Throne" mostly brings up ads for drum accessories, and obits for old ladies with that as their actual name. A few fictional universes use the term, but not any that seem super well-known. So that's not completely out of the realm of possibility, I guess.

"Triple Pearl Throne" brings no search results (with quotes around it,) but strikes me as too wordy. Ditto for Tri-Pearl Throne. Regardless, those don't work well because Kavrillia basically has the equivalent of Earth's Moon, plus Mars' Phobos and Deimos. Only one resembles a pearl.

Nacre or Nacreous Throne isn't horrible, but doesn't thrill me, either. Pearlescent Throne is okay-ish. But it's not like the whole thing is iridescent, just the trim, so that imagery doesn't really do it for me.

I even entertained the idea of grekk teeth being incorporated into the throne somehow, as they can't be killed by Kavrillians, and a dead one washing up is considered a good omen in Lanarian culture. So Melsar the Conqueror could have found one in his travels and claimed some of the teeth. A grekk's jaw wouldn't even fit in the throne room, but a fang or two would--or they could cut off part of one to make it fit better. But what would that be called? The Grekk Tooth Throne is silly. Grekk's Fang Throne sounds more like an orc thing. Grekk's Bite? Grekk's Edge? Throne of Pearl and Fang? No. Just no.

(I've noticed soooooo many fantasy novels lately with titles in the format of "A ______ of _______ and ______." I don't know if it started with A Song of Ice and Fire, but there are a ton out there. At least my working title is "The _____ of ______." Totally different. Heh.)

Sigh.

I just thought it would be a cool bit of worldbuilding to have the Lanarian throne be named, especially since a major plot thread is the struggle to seize and reclaim said throne.

Maybe it's not that big a deal, since the actual throne is only used for photo ops in modern times, and it's the desk and office chair that hold the power now. I suppose I could follow the example of the White House's Resolute Desk and name that, but it's only a few hundred years old and not nearly as symbolic as The Throne.

And arguably the most famous real-world monarchy still in power is the British one, and their throne doesn't have a name as far as I know.

...

It's a good thing nobody reads this blog because if you were judging my writing based on these stream-of-consciousness brainstorming rambles, you'd never want to read the actual book. LOL

[seoconsultant-1]

Using Technology In The Classroom - Is The Operation Is Happening?

As technical and complicated as it sounds, the interactive board is actually easy and fun the. Basically if you know the way to use a mouse on the computer, could certainly operate it with relief. It is used with a projector and a laptop. On this board, one make use of a pen or obviously any good finger to activate with you will find that or the board. Associated with the computer and to be able to data and software can be done on this board. Using its viewable size, it excellent for to be utilized in classrooms, board rooms, training rooms and the like.

Don't neglect the basics. Being a speaker our role would be entertain, motivate, inspire, persuade, cajole or inform an audience. No matter the sophistication of the application we have at our finger tips the prime role we play is not different. If for example the software gets in the way of our main role we ought to not the idea. All the speaker techniques and effects remain totally applicable when PowerPoint can be.

I possess a friend who works for the Vietnam office of an english architectural firm and he was quoted saying their counterparts in England were worried that the Vietnamese staff might not be able to open the AutoCAD documents they sent, because surely the Vietnamese end up being using some ancient version. In fact, because among the lax enforcement of copyright laws, the exact opposite was true. The Vietnam office had the latest version, whereas the British office only had a mature version! Since all geared towards software is actually free inside Vietnam, it is common for customers to have $20,000 worth of software to their computers, or maybe more.

Take a search at the traffic police. Here in Vietnam your traffic cop lacks the radio, no computer, many don't have guns. Technique often be pacified by using a hundred-thousand Dong ($6). Found an ordinary policeman contains fast car with a working computer and is armed to your teeth. Disobey one small traffic law and instantly your entire criminal record is to the screen.

Marilyn Snyder is the "PowerPoint Lovely women." She reinvents PowerPoint slides for her clients and makes them come interactive projector living. She showed us the pros and cons, outdated and new methods to give with impact using this Microsoft package.

Make sure you stick to a stupid layout just because this is the it's always done in your organisation. And also include the projector and screen making the vast majority of the space, along with the speaker, the one that actually provides deliver the material, squeezed to one for whites of area. You might also consider overheating area to certain by mid afternoon qualification is going to meltdown. Oh, and absolutely ensure there is one of the above you "U" shaped tables set-ups. You know the sort, where individuals on one side get cricks in their neck, along with the people in the strain their eyes discover you. On no account think about altering this room to something a good deal more involving, interactive or conducive to a gathering.

You should check the market thoroughly before you choose to buy such solutions. You should check on the advantages you usually receive throughout the item and the variance from the price associated with the package. You should try to get the best product at most affordable benefit.

Attention-grabbing skills are your tool for helping the target audience tune interested in your matter. These skills for grabbing audience attention is not about your ego, you're just helping them to tune wearing. When you have something worthwhile saying, also as your audience consider you're actually guiding them and helping them focus on your topic, they will appreciate this and reward you with eager attention and active participation. Then at finish you will feel elated as they clap to exhibit their knowledge.

[tearsinthemist]

Library  search

okayto

I’m still mad about this because it happens frequently. Students at all levels of education need library and research instruction–they should get it before graduating high school, they should be getting it in several different classes in college, and there should be something in grad school–seriously, there are people in my master’s program who don’t know anything besides Google.

And don’t say “they should have learned in [previous level of university education].” Do you think every person continues education within a few years of their first degree? THEY DON’T. Even if they did get a then-good introduction to research, you think nothing changed between 2008 and 2018? How about the doctoral student I met today whose last degree–and last experience with academic libraries–was in 1996? How about the guy in my master’s cohort who got his bachelor’s degree in 1987?

Because look. See that very specific topic the student wanted? There may or may not be actual scholarly articles about it. But here are a few things you can do:

First, zoom out. Start broad. Pick a few phrases or keywords, like “tech companies” and “culture.” See what comes up.

Actually, back up. First, does your library’s website search include articles, or do you have to go into a database? My library’s website searches some of our 200+ databases, but not all. And you’ll need to find (in advance search or adjustable limiters that pop up after your initial search) how to limit your search to scholarly and/or peer-reviewed articles.

What other keywords are related or relevant? For the search above, you could use a combination of “silicon valley,” “company/ies” or “organization/s,” “sharing,” “collaborative,” “workplace culture,” “social culture,” “organizational culture,” and those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head.

Did you find something that looks promising? Great! What kind of subjects/keywords are attached (usually to the abstract, sometimes in the description section of the online listing)? Those can give you more ideas of what to search. Does it cite any articles? Look at those! Some databases (ilu ProQuest) will also show you a selection of related/similar articles.

If you’re researching a very specific topic, you may not find any/many articles specifically about your subject. You may, for example, have to make do with some articles about west-coast tech companies’ work cultures, and different articles about creating sharing/collaborative environments.

That said, this student did the right thing: they tried what they knew to do, and then reached out for help.

thebraveandthebroiled

Goddammit there is so much information and so many way to access it that it burns my biscuits when we don’t give students the tools they need to succeed at this. Hell yeah all y’all above!

And here’s what I’ve got to add:  

Ask a Librarian

Seriously guys librarians are here to help. We would love to help you find the right resource for your particular informational need and we’ve been trained to do so as efficiently and effectively as possible. Nowadays you don’t even have to go to the library in person as many libraries offer online chat services as well as the option to contact via email. Further, and I think very importantly we are dedicated to our patrons rights to privacy. To quote the American Library Association the “rights of privacy are necessary for intellectual freedom and are fundamental to the ethics and practice of librarianship.”  

Search the Stacks

This is one of my favorite ways  to immerse myself in an area of study. While a good subject or keyword search will lead you to some good results sometimes is just as fruitful to go the library and plunk yourself down in section and browse all the books in a topic area. Libraries will label the (book)stacks based on whichever classification system they use and you can use the links below to figure out which area of the stacks you’ll want to look through.

Dewey: used in public libraries

LOC /Library of Congress: classification system used in university libraries

Online Books

Some websites like gutenberg project are dedicated to making public domain books accessible to the public. Using the search term public domain books is a good way to go about looking for more sources of them. Open sourced is another good term to use when trying to find freely accessible books online and that’s not just limited to fiction books but textbooks are also offered by various sites.

Project Gutenberg is an online archive of tens of thousands of  books that have enter the public domain that can be freely accessed.

Openstax is one website that provides access to Higher Ed and AP open sourced textbooks.

Libguides and Pathfinders

As stated above librarians are in the business of connecting people to resources. If we can’t do so in person then we also do so by creating guides that can be found and used when we aren’t around. These guides are filled with search terms, books, articles, reviews, lists, links, and anything else we think would be helpful for patrons trying to explore a particular topic area. 

Pathfinder is a particular term used for these guides. Libguides is a particular platform which to host these guides. Using either word at the end of your search terms online will bring up guides that have been created in that particular subject area. Or you can explore libguides directly with your search terms to find what guides librarians across the country have created.

Note: Using pathfinder in your search terms may pull up resources about Paizo Publishing’s same titled tabletop RPG series and while dragons are cool you can modify your search to library pathfinder to exclude these resources.

Other than using a search engine or libguides directly I find a great many pathfinders on university library sites. Usually what I do is find a university’s library webpage, find their pathfinder/research guides/guides section, and then browse through their lists of guides. These are generally organized by field of study so just pick the one you are interested in and look through the resources they have listed.

Some of the resources will be accessible for anyone while some might be locked for students of the particular university.  If the article, book, or resource is locked by a school portal you can either search for it online outside of the university portal or you can go to your own university/public library to see if they have access to the resource there. Even if they don’t have it currently in their collection libraries are often connected with other branches and may be able to request an interlibrary loan of what you need.

Online Reference Resources

Sometimes the problem isn’t finding information but finding good information. Below are two sites that I use regularly to help me with this issue when searching online for resources.

The Reference and User Services Association of the American Library Association gives a list of the best free reference sites on the internet

The Ipl2 is a good authoritative source to find general information on a variety of topics. Even though the website is no longer updating there are still a plethora of subject guides that can be explored.

Open Sourced Journals and Articles

Just as there are open sourced books and textbooks so too are there open sourced journals and articles available. Again  you can add the term open sourced when searching for these resources.

DOAJ is the Directory of Open Access Journals and you can search through here to find both articles and journals freely available to access.

Journal Article Tips

Finally whenever I’m searching through journal articles there are a few things I always like to keep in mind.

Build context. Once you find an article that is relevant to your search you can do this by exploring the citations. Both those that the article you are using references in its bibliography and those that reference the article itself. 

Every database is going to do this differently but generally with a few clicks you can find out who has cited an article that you have read. If nothing else try popping the title of your article into google scholar and you’ll see a blue ‘Cited by’ below the description. Also in some cases you can click on the author directly in a database to see what else they have written in the subject. Totally ask your librarian for help navigating the particular database you are using again they will be stoked to do so. 

Building this context of literature by finding and reading these extra articles is important to building a critical understanding of your topic and will allow you to build the best possible defense of your arguments. This will also allow you to see if the article you’ve initially selected is in itself a viable position or if it is an outlier of its field.

If you can try and find reviews of literature articles and special issue/special topic editions of journals. These are your best friends in the resource world as these types of articles and journals compile a great deal of information on particular topic in a tiny space. They are immensely helpful in building context in an area of thought and useful to finding out what to read further to be informed in an area of study. Add those words to your search terms to see if you can get some useful resources.

38,917 notes Jun 20th, 2023

This is why classes need library instruction

Student: I can’t find any scholarly articles on this subject!

Me: Okay, what’s the subject?

Student: Creating a culture of sharing in west-coast technological companies.

Me: Alright, and what/where have you tried searching?

Student: I searched “creating a culture of sharing in west-coast technological companies” on the library website!

Me:

[helpacademic]

Writing Academic Blog Posts

You were required to write a blog post for a class, or maybe you're excited about creating a blog post for your blog, school website, a local newspaper, or one of the many blogging platforms like Medium. Still, personal blogs are ranked the highest. However, there are better ways way to convey the research. Instead, academic blogs are the more suitable genre.

What is it?

An academic blog post is a space for you to share the results of your inquiries and your opinions on a topic you have devoted some time to. An academic writing blog post is more conversational and informal but uses evidence and analysis, as in an essay. You might not have a formal argument. Nevertheless, remain within the bounds of sharing your point of view on an issue, event, or idea.

Call to action: That is why blog authors often use direct speech at the end of their posts to encourage their readers to do something. One purpose of an academic blog post can be to enlighten, educate, or dispel myths. Thus, a call to action could be "Now that you know how important it is to vote in the next local elections" or "Next time someone tells you history is not important."

What does it look like?

Since blog posts are online, you must use various communication forms. Besides, you can do different fonts and formatting, put web links, include pictures or gifs, and even embed audio and video. The most attractive blog posts are the maximum use of the digital area and acceptance of this multi-modal communication.

Tip: Equip yourself with fonts that are no more than two in number. Instead of the normal sans-serif font (one without any 'tails' like Arial), you could use a serif font (one that does have 'tails' like Baskerville Old Face) for the headings because those fonts stand out and catch the eye, and then use a sans-serif font for the text because they are easy to read on the screen.

The blog readers anticipate finding focused paragraphs, photos, quotations, or even headings to create suspenseful and interesting content. This can make it easier for your followers to skim through the article and decide if they need to read it in depth. Avoid the impersonal tone using plain, unambiguous language (e.g., I, you, and we). These are the most important issues that blogging in academic design must address.

Block quotations: Emphasize a significant sentence or a quotation in another font or typography.

What is it about?

Whereas student blog posts may be on any topic they have taken an interest in, nonetheless, the core attention of the reader has to be instigated by the unique author's perspective. The real power of blog posts comes from a deep-seated analysis of the latest events that shape people's lives today. Keep your experience, identity, education, or even opinion in mind. Use them to inform your readers about a time-related topic, presenting a new viewpoint. For example, a college student majoring in recreation and leisure who has experience playing on a women's hockey team might be saying something clear and tangible about the unreasonable pay gap between women and men in professional hockey.

Reading

What should I read?

Dig into as many blog posts as you can and learn from the works of other bloggers.

Search for reputable sources like newspapers, articles, and books recognized as peer-reviewed.

Why should I read?

Choose different writers that you admire and read as many blogs as possible because there are many blog styles that you can choose. Yes, if yours would be hilarious, personal, formal, motivational, educative, or fairy-tale-like, then all of them? Go to our blog to savor some fine essays. Readposts on the same topic will automatically give you feedback on their views, so come back and reply.

You must use credible sources like newspapers, journal articles, and scholarly books. Whether the blog is informative or opinionated, it should include research to support ideas and arguments. Inquire with your instructor about how to quote and cite precisely.

Planning

What should I plan?

Find out your audience first. Highlight your main message and write out the supporting points you need to make to back up that message. Searching for images and creating metaphors and similes are good ideas.

Why should I plan?

There is a possibility that blog posts will go public. However, you must still identify a target audience to apply their knowledge. You are interested in choosing suitable language, arguments, and explanations.

All blogs, not necessarily with an explicit thesis statement, still express a core message relevant to today's life conditions. To summarize their message, many subtle blog posts have a call to action or a final word.

Illustrate your subject through photos, memes, gifs, written metaphors, and analogies that can easily connect with your audience. Mentioning what is going on now in the real world is a way of letting your reader know why she/he should read the post.

Drafting

What should I draft?

Write a first draft. Experiment with various hooks to latch on to your audience. Brainstorm different snappy titles.

Why should I draft?

The most successful blog posts often have an exciting opening sentence to 'capture' the reader's attention. This can be a funny or relatable story, insightful questions, surprising facts, personal secrets, or something special.

Blog posts, in fact, don't have a formal title like those in a journal article. Rather than that, they usually try to be simple and seductive. Think about the titles that make you click on something to read or watch: they are straight to the point, simple, and catchy.

Format

What should I format?

Utilize suitable fonts and formats for each section.

Provide links to other blog posts, websites, articles, and videos throughout the content.

The format of the documents becomes an issue.

Heading, key concepts, and words in a block quotation can be grouped by font, size, and style (bold, italics, underline, and strikethrough).

By referring to other online resources, you demonstrate where your information came from, which implies that your writing is connected with different topics.

Revise

What should I revise?

As you review your draft, make changes to establish clarity, conciseness, and relevancy.

Why should I revise?

Bloggers write hurriedly because such stations sound more lifelike and individualized. Find our "Active and Passive Voice" resource under "Writing Tips." Because blogging is another form of writing, you should revise your posts multiple times before publishing. Take a look at our "Revision" resource.

Ask a friend, teacher, or Writing Center representative to give feedback; make an appointment.

[elkement]

Found Poetry is a fantastic way to connect with your creative soul.

I have been creating found poems since 2012: from search terms, from spam comments, from error message. From snippets of my own science and tech articles, from titles of my blog posts. From physics textbooks by Paul Dirac, from novels like Foucault's Pendulum.

I set strict and sort of silly rules for myself, like: I have to pick one unedited snippet from each document returned by a search engine, and I must not go back nor re-shuffle the snippets. Or I demand I must jump from one link on a page to the next page. I have been struggling with the blackholes of big platforms that do want to keep you within the confines of theír realms.

A French group of experimental poets - Oulipo - likened this method to rats who construct the labyrinth from which they plan to escape.

I force myself to proceed rather fast, and I prefer to create Found Poetry when I am tired. It took me some time to discover that these poems have a certain drift that I vaguely recognize as a distorted images of thoughts that are mine nonetheless. My subconsciousness seems to choose some of the text snippets for me.

It's Friday evening, so I hope that my (typical :-)) not-so-business-y post is OK. But I find Found Poetry actually more useful in a business context, compared to other creative exercises I once had to take part in management trainings.

As an example, this is my latest poem! To escape the blackhole platforms and to avoid clichéd content, I've recently turned to using a long and hopefully unusual "seed phrase" - the name I've give to my digital artwork!

I hit the end of internet as some of my source pages were dictionaries! Quoting this poem:

Sparse Spaceport Morphs Into Curtain of Dancing Oscillations

I will do anything to get the truth We need to know how close we can get

A global timekeeping problem postponed by Common Sense

the unamplified human voice A space-borne Fourier transform

this manuscript may seem narrow in scope – and perhaps it is Shown here are shape, structure and size of the main mirrors

There will be shielded arenas left unpressurized We make sure you get the best results every time

‘death stars’ passing close to the Sun yearning for change, they desired to challenge one another

Our planet is just one among billions in the context of rapidly shifting realities

THE ROBOTS ARE HERE abutting abuzz abysmal(*)

explore dance or dance-like characteristics filled with the cloudy turquoise

zeta zigzag zilch (**) reorganized in a hierarchical fashion

THE AESTHETICS OF THE TRANSITORY sculpted sculpting (***)

(see my blog post for the * ** *** commentary)

The poem from 2022 which I linked at the top is one of my all-time favorites - sourced from Twitter in this case! Quoting it in its entirety:

They shall shine in the dark

The interstellar void going down much faster determined to take over

under renewed attack under the threat A reminder

do anything don’t wait for permission step into the gap

what we need these days protect those that are in danger.

Lives could have been saved Tragic and indefensible

subsidized fossil fuel Fuck off!

we’ll retake ground and get better.

I would like to believe every ending is also a new beginning

The unknown future ethereal and translucent

holding a compass find the map of our souls

_____

More background on Oulipo and another example - kind of live-documenting the creative process: