#Network IDs

[grand-line-shenanigans]

For those of us who cannot comprehend big numbers (me) I have done the math. FOUR FUCKING YEARS. SECUNIT WHAT THE FUCK.

[8-bitbasil]

adventuretober day 4 “yellow” + day 12” “time” thinking about Finn’s hair over the years. esp Finn and Jake hairdresser therapy sessions. then there was no Jake

[goryhorroor]

childhood shows + favorites

[we-dont-talk-about-potato-nonono]

Blue Pearl & Yellow Pearl! 🩵💛

[doyouknowthisdisabledcharacter]

Do You Know This Disabled Character?

Mamoru Urakawa has a heart condition and is a wheelchair user.

[amazing-spiderling]

Hey everyone. How are we doing? If you stumbled on this post because you follow me on Tumblr, I'm guessing the answer is NOT GREAT. Me either. Hoof.

But something that makes me feel a little better is taking action, and turning bits of my skill and time to something productive, which is why I've decided to offer ongoing decorated toploader commissions to you, the fine folks of the internet. For the low (well, reasonable) price of a ten dollar or more donation to one of the listed organizations (or the vetted Palestinian fundraiser of your choice, there's too many for me to list, but you can certainly find some reblogged here and elsewhere) I will decorate a toploader holding a trading/photo card of the character/celebrity/pet/etc of your choice.

You may have seen some of my deco jobs here on my blog, but if not, here's an a few pieces of my work. (You can find more by searching my blog for "decorated toploader")

These are just a few I've done in recent months!

I currently have HUNDREDS of vintage Marvel and Sailor Moon trading cards in my possession, but if I don't have your favorite character, I am happy to make a custom card (like how I printed out Hannibal and low-poly Otacon above). I'm tagging the fandoms I know, but I'm more than willing to do whoever your favorite is. (I may just need a little context to get the vibe right.)

I will be mailing your card to you (domestic or international) in a standard envelope, this way I can use a regular stamp instead of fussing with postage/customs/etc. And you don't have to pay shipping (unless you really want to have me send it as a tracked package). I haven't had any issue with cards arriving this way thus far, especially within the US.

If you are interested (and I hope you are) send me a proof of your donation (dated 11/9/24 or after) of $10 or more to one of the following:

The Trevor Project

Trans Lifeline

National Network of Abortion Funds

ACLU

OR the personal fundraiser of any Palestinian in need!

I can usually knock these out fairly quickly (2-3 in an evening if I'm in the zone) but you can always check with me if you need them ASAP. (Say, maybe for a holiday gift for your fandom friends? Eh? EHH?)

I hope you'll consider helping out these organizations as we brace ourselves for a difficult time. Even if you can't donate at this time, a signal boost is ALWAYS welcome.

Thanks again for checking out this long long post- wishing the best for all of us. <3

[sunsetcurveauto]

carmy is such a walking panic attack i think competing on guys grocery games would break him for good. who do i need to talk to for this to happen. guy fieri if youre out there

[wondersmile]

softly it falls on a house by a stream and over the garden wall to thee

banner by @tinyowlet

[bemodreamy]

I hate all these reboots but hear me out:

Beetlejuice the animated series run by and starring Alex Hirsch.

[thenightfolknetwork]

I study maths at uni, and you would be surprised at how often all the arcane-looking symbols mathematicians manipulate cross into being actually arcane (in a thaumaturgically potent sense). It’s an absolute pain if you, like me, are from a genus with… shall we say intense thaumaturgic sensitivities. 

Things have been coming to a head with the graph theory class I’m taking this term. I absolutely love graph theory, in fact I want to do my thesis research in it someday, but my allergies have been getting so bad that I’ve been considering abandoning the field entirely. 

See, graphs, the formal mathematical sense, are objects  consisting of verticies connected by edges. These can be visualised by drawing a bunch of dots (representing the verticies) connected by lines (representing the edges). Many common shapes and symbols are visualisations of graphs! Take, for instance, the complete graph on five vertices (K5 for short). To visualise K5 you can draw your five dots equally spaced in a circle, draw a straight line between each pair of these dots, and… arrive at a little known symbol called a pentagram. 

Which is exactly what I did when working on a homework problem a couple of weeks ago. I was so focused on the maths I didn’t even realise what I had drawn until my hand started smouldering. I managed to put out the blaze, but not before my work was burnt to a crisp. I was working on the assignment the night before it was due- I know, I know- so I didn’t have time to rewrite it. Needless to say, my professor was not particularly interested in marking the pile of ash I turned in, and I was curtly informed that “I’m allergic to my homework” is not a valid excuse for failing to turn in legible coursework. 

I’m at an impasse. K5 is an extremely mathematically important graph- it’s the smallest complete graph that’s not planar. That is, you can rigorously prove it’s impossible to draw K5 without your edge lines intersecting, even if you are allowed to curve the lines however you want as long as you don’t lift your pencil. This results in K5 having some rather interesting pathological behaviour that makes it an important counterexample in many graph theory proofs …but I digress. Point is, that (quite literally) infernal K5 graph is ubiquitous in graph theory, and it’s far from the only thaumaturgically reactive symbol in the field. I’ve had some other near misses - once I even started to spark during lecture, though no fire broke out that time thankfully. The professor is getting increasingly impatient with me and has given me an ultimatum: get my thaumaturgic allergies under control or drop out of the course. I don’t know what to do. Please help. 

[OOC: thanks for bearing with the long mathematical infodump- I love your podcast, the premise leaves so much room for creativity and I have many thoughts about how the canon might tie into my favorite subject. It is true that mathematics historically could get weirdly occult-adjacent. In particular the pentagram, in addition to having interesting mathematical properties, was also the symbol of the delightfully bizarre secretive math cult founded by the Greek scholar Pythagoras- as in the Pythagorean theorem guy. I think in the MA universe there was definitely something liminal going on with the man. Also, for a proof that K5 is not planar- along with other graphs with certain properties- here’s a really cool open source resource! I do love graph theory a lot- this result in particular is really fun to play around with https://discrete.openmathbooks.org/more/mdm/sec_planar.html)]

First things first, reader – thank you so much for bringing me a question that reminds me how much I still have to learn about the world. I admit, mathematics has never been my strong suit, but I've always thought it was a fascinating field of study. Your letter makes me want to learn more!

Fortunately, your particular predicament is rather easier to solve than untangling the mathematical mysteries of the universe. You can deal with your thaumaturgic allergy on two fronts – both by treating the allergy itself, and by securing some additional support from your university.

For the allergy itself, it may seem obvious but have you tried taking an antihistamine before you start your homework? Thaumaturgic allergies function the same as any other allergic reaction, even if the physical response from your body is rather… different.

If over-the-counter antihistamines aren't effective, make an appointment with your GP. Depending on the severity of the allergy, they'll be able to explore treatment options with you or refer you to a specialist. This may include other medication or perhaps desensitisation therapy, where you will be exposed to gradually increasing levels of magic to build up your thaumaturgic tolerance.

As an aside, I must urge you never to attempt such desensitisation on your own. Quite apart from the health risk this poses to yourself, there is also the combustible nature of your allergy to take into account. Besides which, paying a magical practitioner to do random spells in your vicinity in the hopes of prompting a reaction strikes me as an especially dangerous way to waste one's money.

While you're pursuing the medical side of your issue, I encourage you to seek out proper support from your university. I'm pleased to say that your lecturer is thoroughly in the wrong here – being allergic to your homework absolutely counts as grounds for reasonable adjustments, including an extension on your missed deadline.

Your university should have a system in place for supporting students with disabilities and other additional needs. Get in touch with them at the earliest opportunity to talk through the options available for you. At the very least, they should be able to provide you with some thaumaturgically non-reactive writing materials with which to do your work.

Finally, a word of reassurance. Allergies can be extremely frustrating, and even frightening, especially when they aren't taken seriously by the people around you. But there are plenty of treatments available and I see no reason why this should get in the way of your chosen career. And if you do happen to make any breakthroughs in the wonderful world of mathematics, I'd love to hear – even if I might not quite be able to follow!

[For more creaturely advice, check out Monstrous Agonies on your podcast platform of choice, or visit monstrousproductions.org for more info]

[dogboner]

personal growth is crazy because it seems like nothing has changed until you're crying because you don't want to die. you learn something about yourself that ten years ago would have actually killed you, and now you're thinking about what you can do to heal and make peace with it. nothing may have changed to you, but to the person you were however long ago, you are the "it gets better"

[grand-line-shenanigans]

do-do-do-doot yeah

[8-bitbasil]

adventuretober day 2: music

[dzamie]

Detecting AI-generated research papers through "tortured phrases"

So, a recent paper found and discusses a new way to figure out if a "research paper" is, in fact, phony AI-generated nonsense. How, you may ask? The same way teachers and professors detect if you just copied your paper from online and threw a thesaurus at it!

It looks for “tortured phrases”; that is, phrases which resemble standard field-specific jargon, but seemingly mangled by a thesaurus. Here's some examples (transcript below the cut):

profound neural organization - deep neural network

(fake | counterfeit) neural organization - artificial neural network

versatile organization - mobile network

organization (ambush | assault) - network attack

organization association - network connection

(enormous | huge | immense | colossal) information - big data

information (stockroom | distribution center) - data warehouse

(counterfeit | human-made) consciousness - artificial intelligence (AI)

elite figuring - high performance computing

haze figuring - fog/mist/cloud computing

designs preparing unit - graphics processing unit (GPU)

focal preparing unit - central processing unit (CPU)

work process motor - workflow engine

facial acknowledgement - face recognition

discourse acknowledgement - voice recognition

mean square (mistake | blunder) - mean square error

mean (outright | supreme) (mistake | blunder) - mean absolute error

(motion | flag | indicator | sign | signal) to (clamor | commotion | noise) - signal to noise

worldwide parameters - global parameters

(arbitrary | irregular) get right of passage to - random access

(arbitrary | irregular) (backwoods | timberland | lush territory) - random forest

(arbitrary | irregular) esteem - random value

subterranean insect (state | province | area | region | settlement) - ant colony

underground creepy crawly (state | province | area | region | settlement) - ant colony

leftover vitality - remaining energy

territorial normal vitality - local average energy

motor vitality - kinetic energy

(credulous | innocent | gullible) Bayes - naïve Bayes

individual computerized collaborator - personal digital assistant (PDA)

[adultswimooc]

CN ID - Crank Call from Elroy (1995)

[opens-up-4-nobody]

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