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destinationtoast · 6 months ago

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1/3 - Hi there! Three (I think) part ask incoming. You're the main person I know of who compiles tons of interesting fandom stats, so I wanted to ask you about it if you have the time to answer. :) I think a lot about how AO3 works great as a fan*fic* archive, but for other fanworks, like images, audio, video, etc., it's only as good as wherever the media is being hosted. With the way hosting sites come and go, or change their TOS to nuke nsfw or queer content, etc., it makes me wonder

how many broken image links litter AO3 at this point. I know it's not considered the primary place to find fanart, but a lot of folks do post images there—for events like Big Bangs, as standalone art, and even as decorative section breaks, etc. My question is: do you think there's a way to look at, say, works tagged with #fanart (of which there are 99,504 atm) and determine what percentage of those are broken links? From what little I understand, one would have to (perhaps with the use of a simple bot?) try to open any link bordered by the <img src> html, and see what portion of those return an error versus what ones actually load? I suppose it could even be something like looking at fanart posted in 2007, 2012, 2017, and 2022 to compare how many older links are broken versus newer links. Anyway, this may be completely unfeasible, but I figured I'd ask about your thoughts! Thanks!

Ooh, thanks for the great question! I took a while to answer because I wasn't initially sure what to recommend and ended up gathering some data to investigate. (If anyone else also has relevant data, please share in the notes!)

I liked your idea of looking at samples different years going back, and I decided to look through 100 AO3 works tagged "Fanart" (or a subtag) that were posted 10 years ago -- as a very fast starting point, I didn't even take a random sample of works, I instead looked at the first 100 multimedia fanworks posted in July 2014. (And August, when necessary; see more notes on methodology at the end.) Please keep in mind that this sample that may not be very representative of AO3 more broadly; to get better estimates, more sampling would be needed. Based on this initial data gathering (and the fact that most fanworks on AO3 were posted within the past 10 years), I would tentatively guess that that most fanart, fanvids, and podfic on AO3 still have accessible multimedia.

Given how many broken links and embeds there are on older webpages, I assumed that a ton of the links from 10 years ago would be broken. But I was pleasantly surprised by the results:

Wow -- 10 years on roughly 90% of the multimedia still works! I was honestly floored; I'd been originally planning to also look at 5 years ago to see how much better that was, but if ~90% are still working 10 years on, 5 years ago doesn't have room to be dramatically better. (However, I'd love to see more follow up sampling across different years to find out.)

There were a lot of AO3 users in this sample who posted multiple works -- some posted as many as a dozen multimedia works in July 2014. I didn't want the results to be overly skewed by any one fanwork creator, so I also redid the analysis with just one work from each unique creator:

Okay, cool, those results are pretty similar. I also did some further breakdowns on this smaller set of works to look at which hosts creators were using, and how many of the hosts were still working:

The most common fanart host used in this sample was Tumblr, then wixmp -- which I think from some very quick googling might be because Deviantart switched to using Wix for image hosting at some point? (i.e., I think most of those artists may have posted their art on Deviantart, then linked to/embedded the image on AO3, and the image's direct URL was was wixmp.) There were a few other hosts at the time that were used by 5+ different artists in the sample, and then there were a whole lot of hosts were used by just one or a few artists.

Most of the 10-year-old fanart is still up for all of these hosting categories! Photobucket is the least reliable of the most commonly used hosts. In the Other category, 25% of the links are broken, but that's still better than I expected (see full host list here).

This is getting long, so I'm moving the breakdowns for fanvids and podfic beneath the cut:

Fanvids were almost all hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, or both (the above categories are not mutually exclusive). All the Vimeo links still worked, whether they required a password to view or not. Most YouTube links were working, and the few missing ones had almost all been taken down by YouTube for copyright reasons (according to the errors I got -- I'm not rendering judgment about whether they were actually fair use), rather than by the vidder who posted it. And almost a third of vidders also linked to other hosts besides the big two, but many of those links were broken; 59% still worked. (see full host list here)

For podfic, mediafire was a popular solution 10 years ago, though many podficcers used it as a backup rather than the main link that they shared. A lot of podficcers made use of a fandom hosting site that specialized in podfic -- either parakaproductions.com or audiofic.jinjurly.com. Four podficcers used soundcloud (often as a backup). And once again there were a lot of less-frequently used hosts, often used as backup links; 69% of those still worked. (see full host list here)

Some methodology notes and further thoughts:

For fanvids and podfic (but mostly not from fanart), the fanwork creators tended to provide multiple links, and in those cases, I counted the multimedia as working if at least one of the links was still working.

I counted embedded media and links to other sites that host the media all the same way.

I counted the media as broken if I got a 404 when I tried to visit it, or if a site like YouTube had taken it down due to copyright issues, or if I got an Access Denied message for a site like Google Drive.

I counted the media as working if it required a password that was given on the page (common with Vimeo), or if an embed was broken but there were working links to other sites.

How representative is this data? Well, these samples contained most/all of the multimedia fanworks posted in July 2014; that month, there were 70 fanvids, 135 podfic, and 186 pieces of fanart posted that haven't been deleted since. So it's pretty representative of July 2014 specifically. :) But there could have been, say, a fanwork challenge going on in July 2014 that caused unusual uploading patterns then.

The above data gathering and analysis took me several hours over several days. If you want to follow up, you could do more data gathering similar to what I did (I'm happy to elaborate on my process as needed). Or you could write a bot to do something similar; you could have it fetch more AO3 fanworks and try following the links within each work. However, that would be slightly tricky; I ran across more kinds of errors and complicated situations than I expected (e.g., if a YouTube video has been taken down due to copyright, it still has a working YouTube page; sometimes an embed is broken, but if you open the link within the embed in a separate window, it still works fine; many Vimeo links require a password to test, and it could be hard for the bot to reliably find the password in the surrounding text). So you'd have to program your bot to be able to handle a bunch of different special cases.

Regardless of which path you are considering, if you or anyone else does any follow up work here, I encourage you to start by looking through a bunch of fanworks yourself and deciding which scenarios you want count as "working" vs. "not working," and any other things you want to pay attention to.

Hope that helps, and please feel free to DM me with follow up questions. And if you follow up, please share anything else you figure out in this space!

#ao3 #fanart #fanvids #fanvid #podfic #embedded media #multimedia #broken links #link rot #fandom stats #toastystats #asks #toasty replies #op #to archive #I have a bunch of ~recent stats I need to backup to ao3 #but not yet!#50 #100

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flamingpudding · 1 year ago

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Fictober23 Prompt: 4 - "Do you even know what this means?"

Fandom: DPxDC

Rating: G

Warnings: -

Tim stared at his family with pure exhaustion before letting out a sigh while covering his face with his hands because of the worried looks they were sending him after his long rant.

It had all started with a stupid school project. It was just supposed to be a stupidly simple school project. Did he think of the whole thing as the greatest nonsense project his school has ever come up with? Yes. Did he still do it? Yes. He needed the extra credits, because of some stupid meetings he had missed other projects which was the entire reason he took part in this one.

Maybe he should have tried buying his grade out of it like all the other snobbish rich kids but then he would feel guilty and the moment Alfred found out, he would have to life with the disappointed™ look. Something he really didn't want to deal with. So instead he took part in this stupid ancestry project his school had organized.

But when he had allowed the school to send in his DNA he certainly did not expect the result he got back. Because when he opened the email, he noted that it was addressed to someone named Danny Fenton not Tim Drake, he didn't even read the rest really. That should have been his first warning.

His second warning was when he had hacked into the that DNA testing facility to actually get his results back and then found a note on his data file about a near 100% DNA match to one Danny Fenton which caused them to assumed that Tim was Danny and just had sent in his DNA a second time after, he peaked through his finger onto the screen, 5 years. That should have been his second warning.

But no, Tim had actively ignored all the warnings and decided to dig into who this Danny Fenton was. Because there were so many possibilities of how they could match but only so little to explain the time difference between them sending in the DNA samples. For dear good Tim hoped to all things that there wasn't someone else to have attempted to clone him before Ra, no worse even, he hoped HE wasn't the clone in this situation.

Really he didn't want to add existential crisis to all the problems and cases he already had to deal with.

So what does one do best when they learn there was someone with nearly the same DNA you have? He looked that someone up. So that was what Tim did next. He had spent nights looking up anything he could find, summarizing all the information he found, branching off when he found other concerning stuff and then stewed in some frustration of the incompetence of some people when discovering other facts.

In the end Tim compiled all the data he had found into a 30 slides long power point. That he had presented to his family and was awaiting their reaction. Bruce had grunted earlier and the demon brat had huffed out something in between slight 25 and 26 earlier. Jason had muttered something right at the beginning and Dick had stayed quiet the entire time, so did Cass. Steph hadn't said a thing either and Duke looked just puzzled.

"Do you even know what that means?" Demon brat finally broke the silence, causing Tim's eye to twitch before aggressively pointing to his last slide still on the presenter.

"Yes, I do know what this means. I have listed all possibilities right here if you haven't noticed. And i explained possibility three, four and six on slide-"

"Replacement. I don't think that's what the brat means." Jason cut in and Tim glared at him.

"Timmy, when was the last time you slept?" Dick carefully asked and Tim directed his glare at him.

"I believe Master Timothy hasn't slept for about 72 hours now." Alfred added in with that disapproving stare of him and time looked away stubbornly. How was the amount of sleep he got relevant right now? There was a possibility of him being a clone or someone having cloned maybe even years before he started to follow B around as a kid with a camera.

Bruce let out a sigh and Steph appeared to try to hide a chuckle leaning on Cass shoulder. "He must be lacking sleep if he doesn't see the most obvious possibility considering the time line he presented on slide 18."

"Oh so, I am not the only one thinking he is missing another obvious possibility?" Duke asked and once more Tims eye twitched. Getting fed up with his family, Tim huffed and crossed his arms, glaring at them all.

"And what is it that I am obviously missing?"

"The screenshot of the mail you put in slide 3 stated that it's not a 100% match but 89%. In addition it stated in the last line a suspected possibility of a familiar relation. I am disappointed, Drake. That you would miss something this obvious."

"What?" Tim whirled around going to the slide to reread the mail.

"Considering that I am pretty sure, we don't have any sort of cloning case here Tim." Dick started his voice now slightly laced with Humor and Tim narrowed his eyes at his older brother over his shoulder. "You just discovered that you had a twin, that we probably still go to rescue."

Tim's mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. He did not know what to say and before he could even catch up with what his brothers had said Alfred was already behind him pushing him towards the elevator.

"It is time for you to get some sleep Master Timothy. I am sure Master Bruce and the others will be perfectly able to handle the rest of the situation with the information you compiled. You can join them after you have rested."

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forsworned · 8 months ago

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NO PICTURES, PLEASE ft. DAVID 'HESH' WALKER

Author's note: dedicated to all the Hesh fans out there, this is a hard send lol

Warning(s): Fluffy fluff, Slightly Sexually Suggestive, AFAB!Reader

Keegan is having difficulty rifling through the photos on the notably expensive Sony A7R IV that he purchased for you to capture pictures of No Man's Land when he sent you out on a surveying mission. It was imperative to conduct a reconnaissance of the area for environmental assessment purposes. The Sergeant had previously expressed how vital it was to gather data that was relevant for any potential future infrastructure development, disaster response, and management following the ODIN incident. Sounded simple enough. And yet, Keegan is left puzzled by the initial fifty images out of a whooping two hundred and fifty that is starting to show a discernable trend. They're all images of Hesh.

Now, this wouldn't be such an issue if they were the images that he had specifically requested you to take on said mission. But it was practically a full-blown photoshoot of pure pretty boy.

"[Name]." Keegan pinches the bridge of his nose as he takes a deep breath before he continues.

Your lips curve into a charming smile. "Hmm?"

"Can you tell me what is wrong with these photos?" He points the screen of the camera in your direction.

You lower your head to get a good gander of what he was referring to: Hesh standing in perfect golden hour lighting that seldomly peaks over the horizon and paints him a pretty shade of tangerine. He looks ethereal, and your smile only grows.

"Mmm, I think they're perfect. Follows the rule of thirds. See." You point to how Hesh is not perfectly centered.

For a moment, Keegan's eye twitches and he can't decide whether he wants to slap the absolute shit out of you for insubordination or for your sheer lack of regard for what he was asking of you. It is blatantly obvious to him (and the other Ghosts) that you have a raging crush on Hesh, though to be fair Hesh was completely oblivious to it. Nonetheless, it is absolutely infuriating when you choose not to follow orders and, instead do a candid imaging session of your Lieutenant.

"That's—kid," Keegan breathes out. He's weighing out his options. Keegan isn't the type to yell at a woman, but he's almost provoked to do so. He chooses not to engage in a manner that will upset you, so coddling it is.

"Hm?" You peer up at him with cutesy, puppy eyes and fortunately for you, his gaze softens and it's easier not to be so enraged by the situation.

"Ya gotta crush on Hesh or somethin'?"

Your smile falters and you feel the heat sidling to your cheeks and ears when those words fall out of his mouth, and he has to stifle the laughter that's threatening to erupt from his chest.

Your eyes dart to the ground as you awkwardly shift your weight. "Um, what gave you that idea?"

He's studying the way you nervously rub your arm and he almost feels bad for asking.

Another exhale. "Nothin', kid. I was just messin' around is all." He hands you back the camera and gives you a knowing look.

"I'm willing to overlook this if you take this seriously." His voice has a bit of an edge to it. You glance up at him and nod with a pout. "Go round up Hesh and update him on the mission. You'll need another go around."

Your face lights up and you begin to dial up Hesh's number to notify him.

"And one more thing," Keegan calls out to you and you hear Hesh pick up. His voice like the purest heroine, but you have to rip your attention away to listen to your experienced Serg.

"No photoshoots"

You grin and give him a thumbs up as you jovially skip away. In all earnest, you did not hear what he said. You are too enraptured by your crush's voice to listen to what Keegan is yapping about, and part of him is aware of that. So as a precaution, he may or may not have warned Hesh ahead of time about your recon mission to keep you in line.

"No pictures, please!"

Hesh giggles, raising his hand to conceal his face from the camera pointed in his direction.

"Aw, just one! We already wrapped up what we needed to!" You maneuver the lens to capture his dimpled grin that melts your heart. But Hesh is not giving in. He's under strict orders not to permit you to take pictures unrelated to your assigned objective. However, your infectious laugh and the adoring gaze from those pretty eyes of yours are proving to be quite the distraction.

He halts his actions, contemplating whether he should just allow you to have your way. After all, you did complete the necessary task, so maybe one photo wouldn't hurt?

"Alright, just one." He chuckles, giving in to your ridiculous demand. But he's already being prompted to model on the large boulder bolstered against a blossoming weeping willow. The view behind him overlooks a glimmering lake, teeming with wildlife in the afternoon sun.

And Hesh is like a Disney princess. Cottontail rabbits approach him at his ankles and a hummingbird lands on his shoulder as if it's a rest stop. It's a picture-perfect moment as you snap away at his gleaming smile that beautifies his already handsome face. It's taking you all your willpower to not rush at him and shower him with all your affection.

A small huff leaves your lips as you store the camera back in its original weatherproof pouch. You think that it's probably for the best if you both start to head back to base, and notify Keegan of a successful mission to avoid any unnecessary reprimanding. As you zip up the storage bag and absentmindedly make your way toward Hesh who is preoccupied with feeding his leftover trail mix to a black squirrel, your balance seems to waver and you're crashing down face first. Luckily, Hesh secures you in his taut arms, but he's fumbling with his own equilibrium and completely loses his composure, leading you to collapse into the shallow end of the lake in a raucous splash.

The water is quick to sodden your uniforms, and you're pressed up against Hesh's rigid and saturated body. You meet his gaze and he's gawking up at you with flushed cheeks and reaming eyes. You imagine that your expression had a certain likeness.

"I'm so sorry..." Your eyes glaze over his soaking white shirt that's now giving you a pretty good view of his herculean torso. And you honest to God hadn't meant to memorize every delicious carving of his toned midsection, but it was right there.

And Hesh is by no means innocent either. His wandering emerald eyes are just as guilty as yours. Instead of your usual, mundane tactical brassiere, you're sporting a baby blue lacey bra, an oversight that transpired because you were too engrossed in hurrying off to your one-on-one mission with Hesh. And when your dilated gazes meet, your stomachs do a little flip that have you clamoring to get up.

You wordlessly extend your hand to him, and he accepts it without hesitation, responding with a polite yet quiet "thank you." Water trickles down your drenched forms and the silence is deafening. That is until Hesh bursts into a fit of laughter. He's carding his fingers through his dark, moistened locks and shaking with mirth. The type of joy that's contagious as hell, and you have no choice but to join him.

A zephyr sweeps past you and it sends a chill up your spine, and your nipples are poking through your sheen shirt. Hesh is rushing out of the shoal of the lake to grab his (thankfully) dry tactical jacket to envelop your shivering body. It's warm and smells just like him. Spicy vanilla, patchouli, and warm amber waft into your senses. Your breath hitches when you feel the pad of his thumb brush the apple of your cheek, perching the loose strands of hair that cling close to your eye behind your ear.

Your wet lashes flutter up to him and he absently licks his lips. His viridian hues train on you as you shyly conceal your abashed features. He chuckles at your coquettish behavior, caressing your cheek, feeling the peach fuzz stand up straight as gooseberries line your skin.

His body inclines toward you and you feel his heart stammering against your chest, meeting the stuttering pace of your own. His other hand is on the small of your back, pulling you closer as he captures your chin between his fingers and tilts it upwards.

"Viking-Actual, what's your location?"

The cacophony of his radio startles you both, shaking you out of your lovestruck daze. There's a look of annoyance that flashes over his features as he presses and holds the push-to-talk button and speaks:

"This is Viking-Actual, we're wrapping up our current operations and RTB. Over."

There's a brief silence before Merrick's voice is heard again.

"Request location update, not status. Over."

Hesh rolls his eyes so hard that they might just come out of their sockets. Your teeth latch into your lip as your shoulders jostle in hilarity. His expression is priceless, but it quickly shifts into a grin knowing that at the very least he can entertain you.

He sighs before notifying him of your location and it's met with another silence to which Hesh takes that as a sign to continue what he was doing before he was interrupted. But the moment that your lips almost graze, the static of the radio returns and he can't help but snicker at the ridiculous timing.

"Copy that. RTB ASAP. Over."

You're giggling under the propped-up collar of his jacket and it's starting to redden the blush on his cheeks. He's getting trepidatious at this point. The tension feels palpable and he's almost deterred from kissing you now.

But like the goddamn soldier he is, he pushes through and he's leaning in once more. Not even the stupid clatter of the radio can stop his lips from finally meeting yours. It's a gentle kiss. Soft, pillowy flesh that presses sweetly against your own and your body is warming up, relishing in his natural musk and the toastiness emanating from his body.

Your arms curl around his dampened waist as you breathe one another in. It's electrifying feeling him against you like this and there's a pyre that's slowly burning down below, but he withdraws too soon. The corners of your mouth draw out into giddy smiles. It's a gratifying feeling. Reciprocation.

"Should probably get back to base soon." He studies how you tuck your lips in, swiping at them with your tongue in an overly elated manner that causes him to giggle again.

"Uh huh." Is all you can muster up and it incites another round of glee. And Hesh can't help himself from cupping your cheeks and bringing you into another kiss. Your heart is soaring as your lips collide and you easily find a rhythm that makes you feel like your bodies are melding together.

Unbeknownst to the two of you, another pair of idiots lurk in a set of tall shrubs about 50 meters out, snooping on your little makeout sesh.

"You think they can see us from here?" Merrick asks his quiet Serg, as he peers through his binoculars.

"Nah." Keegan replies, popping a piece of granola into his mouth and sets his optics down. He pats his counterpart on the shoulder. "Let's head back."

Merrick raises a brow at him. "You don't wanna tell 'em to come back?"

Keegan smiles as he packs his things and slings his sniper over his shoulder. "Let 'em be. We can give 'em hell for it later."

And just that sentence alone thrills the Captain as they tread back to base leaving the nescient, impassioned couple behind. Never a boring day back in the Ghosts HQ.

mini heshhivemind tag list: @keegansshark @milkteaarttime @soapsgf @blacktacmopsi @howtotwirlaknife22 @kun3ho141

the end , that's me after writing this^

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thelilypit · 3 months ago

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Lily Orchard doesn't understand File Explorer

(or she does, but she's hoping that you don't)

Content warning for discussions of abuse and incest. Also, this post is long as balls.

Okay, I wasn't going to make a post about this. I agree with Crim right now: there's no point interacting with Lily or her posts. She's shown herself to be completely full of garbage, and isn't convincing anyone outside of her inner circle with her recent posts.

Still, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding as to why her recent explanations don't hold up to scrutiny, so I'm making this post to help people understand exactly why her evidence is bunk. If you're reading this, please don't bother Lily about it further. At this point, any further antagonism towards Lily only serves to convince her remaining fanbase that she's a helpless victim, and not the dangerous manipulator she truly is. With that out of the way, here's the sitch:

BACKGROUND: On September 5th, 2024, Lily Orchard briefly showed the contents of her Downloads folder during an editing stream. Keen observers noted a handful of peculiar filenames, including a .rar file with the exact name of a RWBY incest-themed fancomic, and a .zip folder with the name "aslutphone-0.22-pc.zip", which corresponds to a mobile phone-themed visual novel that is also incest-themed.

The presence of fantasy adult material on Lily's computer is in of itself no concern - private kinks are private kinks, after all. However, some commentators noted similarities between the scenarios highlighted in "A Slut Phone" and statements made by Courtney Peet, Lily's sister, in regards to alleged abuse she experienced as a child at the hands of Lily.

Almost immediately, anonymous asks were sent to Lily Orchard querying her about the contents of her folder. Rather than provide a relevant answer, she pretended those asks were related to a different game:

It's reasonable to say that Lily didn't have an explanation handy at the time, at least, not one that would fit with her current public image. Still, the anon asks were piling up behind the scenes, and people on Lily's patreon discord were beginning to ask questions as well. On September 8th, three days after the initial discovery, Lily posted her explanation for one of the two files highlighted:

According to Lily, "Sisters - Ruby&Yang.rar" is a full archive of the RWBY series, and she intended to mention Ruby and Yang in her "Sibling relationships" video, back in June. The fact that it shared its filename uniquely with an incest porn comic was totally a coincidence, and anyone who accused her of owning said porn comic was just a pervert themselves.

(what Lily, who frequently complains about disk space issues, was still doing with an alleged rip of RWBY that she had no intention of watching, I have no idea. But I digress) And finally on September 12th, after a week of anticipation, Lily had finally come up with her explanation for "A Slut Phone":

It was all a trick to make her critics look stupid! She had downloaded a different game for an upcoming video, and had renamed the filename to, in her words, the "worst possible game I could find", just to catch out the trolls!

This is, to put it mildly, a little difficult to believe. Still, it's the explanation Lily provided, and the following day Lily provided evidence that proves the contents of that folder pertains to sexadvicesuccubus.exe, and that said contents had not been recently edited:

This is where some of Lily's critics start to falter, accusing Lily of fabricating the contents of the above folder or changing around the other files. Personally, I'm willing to accept that the folder displayed *does in fact* contain the game data for "Sex Advice Succubus." However, there's still some glaring issues. For one, Lily is showing us a Windows File Folder here (with compressed data inside)

Meanwhile, the file spotted on September 5th was a .zip

Another (minor) issue is that the filename for "A Slut Phone" looks different on its itch.io download page, compared to the name of the actual file (as demonstrated above). If Lily had simply copied the filename based on the itch.io page, her "decoy" folder would have been named differently As for the issues with the file's modification date... more on that after the break. And now, a brief intermission. The Lily Pit presents:

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH YOUR WEIRD PORN GAMES GETTING SPOTTED IN YOUR DOWNLOADS FOLDER

So, you're a reasonably successful youtube creator and occasional streamer, and one day someone spots a suspiciously named .zip file in your cluttered downloads folder:

Worry not! Just follow these simple steps to exonerate yourself of any signs of pervertedness!

First, you're going to download a scapegoat game - don't worry about this game's raunchy title, it's far more tame than whatever wild stuff you're surely into:

Now, go to your computer's date and time settings, and set it back far enough to avoid culpability:

(In this case, we've adjusted it to the exact time of the original .zip's modification, but if nobody saw that part then you don't even have to worry!) While your PC's time is adjusted, extract the contents of the new game's .zip, and compress it while you're there:

Rename the folder to match the filename of the .zip, and there you go!

And if you're thinking "That's an awful lot of effort to go to to hide the fact that you've got weird porn on your computer",

You would be absolutely right.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Lily Crit

... Shoot, where was I? Oh yeah, falsifying the "date modified" part of a file or folder is trivial. The evidence Lily provided proves nothing, and arguably, it makes her look even more suspicious than she was before.

Still, I do have to acknowledge that there is no definitive proof of those files' contents being what we suspected. Lily's explanations, however outlandish they are, could well be the honest truth...

... but let's be real, they're not.

Stop lying, Lily.

#lily orchard

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multidimensionalguidance · 4 months ago

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The Astrology Behind: Ballerinas

Services

Happy Friday! Another Venus day, another Ode to her name. We already talk too much about this Goddesses beauty, but not nearly enough about the other equally beautiful influences that have nothing to do with our face, hair, sexiness, makeup, etc.

Dancing is one of the many arts she rules, and Ballet is the one in which she seems to shine the most. I'm sure all type of dancers have some Venusian influence, but it is the one ones who require gentleness, balance, symmetry, perfection, and/or technicality the most that emits her energy in a very noticeable way.

I've compiled a short list of 11 dancers who are well known ballerinas and point out the signs, patterns, or nakshatras that appear the most. If I've missed any other relevant individuals, please feel free to let me know in the comments and I'll do my due diligences to add them!

Enjoy <3

Anna Pavlova

Sun-Mercury in Aquarius (Shatabhisha), Moon in Cancer (Pushya), Venus-Jupiter in Pisces (Revati), Mars in Sagittarius (Uttara Ashadha).

Margot Fonteyn

Sun-Mars conjunction in Taurus (Krittika), Moon in Sagittarius (Mula), Mercury in Aries (Ashwini), Venus-Jupiter in Gemini.

Galina Ulanova

Sun in Sagittarius (Purva Ashadha), Moon in Scorpio (Jyeshtha), Mercury in Capricorn (Shravana), Venus in Aquarius (Shatabhisha), Mars-Saturn in Pisces (Revati).

Maya Plisetskaya

Sun in Scorpio (Anuradha), Mercury in Scorpio (Jyeshtha), Moon-Venus-Jupiter in Sagittarius (Purva Ashadha), Mars-Saturn in Libra.

Alicia Markova

Moon-Sun-Venus-Mercury in Scorpio (within Anuradha and Jyeshtha), Mars-Ketu-Jupiter in Libra.

Natalia Makarova

Sun-Mercury in Libra, Moon in Taurus (Mrigashira), Venus in Leo (Purva Phalguni), Mars in Virgo (Hasta).

Tamara Rojo

Sun-Mercury in Taurus, Moon in Pisces (Uttara Bhadrapada), Venus in Pisces (Revati), Mars-Saturn in Gemini.

Natalia Osipova

Sun in Taurus, Moon in Leo (Purva Phalguni), Mercury in Aries (Krittika), Venus in Gemini (Mrigashira), Mars in Sagittarius (Purva Ashadha).

Marianela Núñez

Sun in Pisces (Uttara Bhadrapada), Moon-Mercury in Aquarius (Shatabisha and Purva Bhadrapada), Venus in Capricorn (Shravana), Mars-Saturn in Virgo (Hasta and Chitra).

Agnes Oaks

Sun in Taurus (Rohini), Moon in Pisces (Purva Bhadrapada), Mercury in Aries (Ashwini), Venus in Gemini (Ardra) , Mars in Taurus (Krittika),

Leanne Benjamin

Sun in Sagittarius (Purva Ashadha), Moon in Cancer (Ashlesha), Mercury-Mars in Sagittarius (Mula), Venus in Capricorn (Shravana).

According to all of this data, the signs that appeared the most were all of course, Venusians, but Taurus had the most dominance in terms of Sun sign. There were also plenty of Venus nakshatras, which are in the Fire signs (Bharani, Purva Phalguni , and Purvashadha). Running close behind Venus we had Mars, Jupiter's, and Saturn's influence be it with signs or nakshatras.

Rohini nakshatra which is often found in Taurus is associated with male snakes in Vedic astrology, and therefore are associated with individuals who are gifted in the arts of dancing. Although, the movements are more on the sensual or delicate physical expression than technicality.

The Bhadrapada's along with all the Pisces nakshatras have an association to feet as well in their own way and expression, and the dragon or reptile-like symbols as well to explain their fluidity in movement.

Mars pushes individuals to have a relentless drive, resilience, agility, and overall a gift for exerting physical performance with ease. Jupiter influences appear in their fluidity of movement, how far they are able to reach in terms of jumps, the strength of their legs, and their speed, all which is seen in Purvashadha nakshatra. Saturn teaches individuals to push through obstacles, limitations, delays, and have an immense resistance to adversity. They have the discipline, consistency, and rigidness to follow a routine as many times as needed.

There was a smaller presence of Mercury nakshatras (Ashlesha, Jyeshtha, and Revati) appearing, as well as Rahu with Libra (Swati) and Aquarius (Shatabhisha) appearing the most. It seems that signs appear more in certain decades than others, which says a lot of the art evolving from one skill set to another and that bringing about different eras in ballet. Los of Venus exaltations (Pisces) too.

In terms on conjunctions, the one that stood out the most to me was Venus-Jupiter and Mars-Saturn which appeared consistently in the charts of so many of these dancers.

Venus and Jupiter in a chart talks about an individual whose artistic qualities are constantly expanded or experience growth. They truly have a gift when it comes to their self expression through artistic tool, leaving an imprint on everything they do that loud screams their name.

Jupiter is also luck and blessings, so these women are meant to find spiritual alignment and abundance by engaging in all Venusian matters. Regardless of the relationship between these two planets, they make individuals notorious and recognized through their creative pursuits.

Fame is also seen this placement because Jupiter expands their energy to the masses on a worldwide level. Their art needs no language, culture, or barrier to keep others from connecting with it. Most of their teachers and gurus in life are women or come from these artistic venues. Their spirituality and values are deeply intertwined.

Both planets sharpen someone's intuition and awareness of being connected to the harmony of it all in order to create a desire of release. In ballet we see movements that emulate an array of emotions or an experience that seeks release through their host. They are often able to inspire others and allow their art to live in the traces of someone else's brush.

Mars and Saturn in any chart create a unique type of mastery or excellence in the house they sit together, and in general the capacity to endure difficulties and restrictions like a real professional. No one said that two malefics is equal to complete disaster, and most definitely not in an era where your ability to sustain pain and discomfort is rewarded.

From an organizational perspective, these are the individuals who work endlessly (do extra hours, do many certifications, etc) and persevere to the point of reaching "top dog" title, but they can also be just as likely to burn out often and gain responsibilities that later feel like a burden to bear.

In the art department, specifically ballet, it screams mastery of discomfort for the sake of beauty. It's rooted in sustaining the pain of pushing your body beyond normal conditions to attain a higher form of beauty through movements. It speaks of what human bodies can adapt and resist to for the sake of becoming the master of their own minds and bodies.

Most of the charts that have this configuration where women who left newcomers with a whole new set of challenges to overcome, barriers to brake, or new standards of what was to be expected. They become the new ideal to surpass in the art in order to become the "It" girl of your time.

Thanks for reading!

XoX

Mary from Multidimensional Guidance

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newvegascowboy · 2 years ago

Text

food & agriculture in fallout: extrapolation and speculative worldbuilding

Okay, well. This is going to be an extremely long and data heavy post. Bear with me.

I'm going to go into detail about the crops and available food given to us canonically and textually. I'm going to be drawing some real world parallels between the crops we see in Fallout and what we have here. I'll be pulling relevant data from all the games, but the majority focus on this post is going to be about the east coast and Massachusetts in particular because it gives us the opportunity to participate in the agricultural climate of the wasteland.

Is there a point to this? Not really, but I'm pedantic and I take things too seriously.

my sources will be linked in the text throughout. for those of you who want to read about agricultural and growing zones of the continental united states, please follow me under the cut.

Growing zones and real world agriculture

Shown here are the growing zones of the united states, divided into a temperature map of about 19 different regions. It's fairly intuitive to read -- colder temperatures are north and east, while warmer temperatures are south and west. The majority of the Mojave desert sits between 7a to 9a, a temperature range of about 20 degrees. DC and the nearby section of the southeast coast sits between 7a and 8a. The interactive map linked below will tell you where your growing zone sits.

The 2012 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map is the standard by which gardeners and growers can determine which plants are most likely to thrive at a location. The map is based on the average annual minimum winter temperature, divided into 10-degree F zones and further divided into 5-degree F half-zones.

For the moment, we are going to focus on Massachusetts.

Using the temperature above, we can see that the growing zone of Massachusetts is 5a (-20f) at it's very coldest, all the way to 7b, (5f) at it's warmest during winter. Most of what we see in fallout 5 sits in the 6a to 6b zone, which is middle ground during the winter, but cold enough to want to warrant crops that can withstand the frost.

There is a solid 5 month window for planting annual crops, like corn, melons, and gourds like pumpkin. Your perennial crops are limited to fruit trees and possibly grains, depending on the variety and whether or not a perennial variety has been bred.

Cold weather crops include beets, carrots, greens like cabbage, collards, kale, and potatoes. These aren't the types of crops that will survive the winter as much as these are foods that can go in the ground as soon as it is unfrozen enough to be workable. Root vegetables and greens can germinate in soil as cold as 40 degrees Fahrenheit, which provides some leeway with unpredictable frosts and late planting times.

Much of the agricultural landscape of Massachusetts is dependent on the dairy industry, farming cattle, and aquaculture -- fishing and catching shellfish. Those with access to the coasts, fish and shellfish ought to provide protein during lean months.

Why are we talking about this? Well, if we're stepping into the shoes of a subsistence farmer in the fallout universe, we're going to have to take into account climate and ideal planting times for certain crops. It's not wholly important in terms of things like fic writing, unless you happen to be writing about the life and times of wasteland agriculture, in which case, I hope this is helpful! Again, I am pedantic, and this section is to provide a template when considering and discussing other parts of the game and what their specific diet and agricultural landscapes might look like.

Something to keep in mind when thinking about how farms might function in the Mojave, for instance, or if you're doing worldbuilding for a different part of the US.

Crops in the fallout universe

Now that we're familiar with growing zones and why certain crops are planted and when, we're going to apply some speculative worldbuilding to fallout itself. We will be revisiting growing zones when we talk about other climates, but for the moment, we're going to focus on fallout 4.

Now to preface -- I don't think that the food that is given to us in game is wholly representative of the plants or animals that survived the apocalypse. If some managed to mutant and survive, I'm willing to bet others did. I certainly won't deduct any points from anyone who wants to talk about growing cotton, or farming peaches or cherries, and I won't raise any eyebrows if someone includes things like spices into their wasteland cuisine.

In the 210+ years since the bombs fell, I do not think that the majority of the US is a desolate wasteland, but this post is not going to be my beef with the devs about how brown everything is. This beef is about food in particular. However, for sake of ease, I'm mostly just going to focus on the food that is presented to us in game.

There will be some extrapolation and speculation later, but if I do that for everything, then we'll be here all day, and we've all got things to do.

I would also be remiss to mention that agriculture in the US is old. It predates colonialism. The Native Americans cultivated the land long before any European settlers. They practiced a type of crop growing referred to as Three Sisters planting, which utilized corn, pole beans, and squash -- all things that exist in the agricultural landscape of Fallout as we know it.

Corn

I'm not going to say much about corn because there's not a lot to say about it. We all know what corn is. Fallout's corn is visually similar to wild violet, a hybrid corn.

But I am not going to say Fallout's corn is one such variety or another. In the 210 years since the bombs dropped, I imagine corn varietals have been bred and interbred a thousand times, and it is probably it's own unique strain. It's kind of a moot point. Corn is corn. You can do with yellow corn what you can do with wild violet, and whatever special breeds that make up Fallout's corn.

Corn is the third largest plant-based food source in the world. Despite its importance as a major food in many parts of the world, corn is inferior to other cereals in nutritional value. Its protein is of poor quality, and it is deficient in niacin. Diets in which it predominates often result in pellagra (niacin-deficiency disease). Corn is high in dietary fibre and rich in antioxidants.

You can do a shit ton with corn. It's a staple grain. It would not be incongruous with the fallout setting to have settlers making tortillas, cornbread, polenta, grits, tamales, etc. Corn can also be used to make corn whiskey. The husks can be spun into yarn and woven into garments similar to cotton, which I thought was interesting and also solves the problem of where the hell wastelanders are getting their clothes. Corn can be used as livestock feed, especially in the winter when cattle can't graze. While corn is a staple grain of the US, the east coast has minor corn production compared to places like the midwest. Corn is a staple, but it does not consist of the entire diet of your average wastelander.

Carrots

Not going to say much about carrots either. They're carrots. They grow well in colder soil and tend to have a lot of natural sugars. The carrots we're shown in FO4 seem to be a mutated variety different than the "fresh carrot" consumable in FNV, but there's virtually no difference, so I'm not counting it. Make some carrot cake.

Razorgrain

"This species appears to be quite promising. It's a toothy grain that we may be able to grind in order to replace wheat, which is untenable in the Wasteland. We are uncertain how to increase crop yields, which are very unpredictable. Will continue to study."

Razorgrain is our first unique mutated crop in the fallout setting. It most closely resembles a barley or a rye. Both are a fairly hardy species and can grow all across the continental united states; rye can germinate in cold weather temperatures. It wouldn't be outrageous to assume that razorgrain is similar too or a crossbred variation of both rye and barley. I have decided to base the majority of my research assuming it is a barley variant. Barley is also a major crop on the east coast near the Commonwealth, so that would explain why razorgrain is present in FO4 and not in the other games.

Barley requires a mild winter climate and can grow in growing zones 3-8, so it would be viable in Massachusetts. Barley can be milled into flour and it contains gluten; the gluten content of North American wheat and barley tends to be higher to survive the colder climates, so razorgrain would likely be very glutenous. It is also less susceptible to ergot than rye, but barley can still become infected -- and, I am assuming, razorgrain could as well.

Razorgrain fills the nutritional niche of carbohydrates and can be used to make breads, cakes, pastas, etc. It produces darker breads that have an earthier flavor than milled white flour. There has to be some method of actually milling the grain, though, which is an intensive process that can often be dangerous. Grain can also be used to make malted candy, which is our first option for wastelanders with a sweet tooth. Obviously, razorgrain can also be used to make malt or grain alcohol and is probably the source of all the beer you find littered around the wasteland.

Gourds and melons

Gourds and melons are actually a part of the same family, Cucurbita. The category of 'gourd' covers several different kinds of vegetables, including ornamental fruits that shouldn't be eaten. We aren't going to spend a whole lot of time on this one, simply because canon doesn't tell us that much and there's a lot of wiggle room in terms of interpretation.

FO4's model looks the most similar to a pumpkin, but it could be some other squash varietal from the Cucurbita family, which includes watermelon, honey melon, cucumber, squash, zucchini and pumpkin.

Melons is another pretty broad category. Melons and squash are part of the same family, as mentioned above. If we're going visuals again, the model is likely intended to resemble a watermelon. Watermelons grow best in humid and semi-arid environments between 70 and 8- degrees Fahrenheit. It's not impossible for wastelanders to be growing watermelons, but considering the humidity and frequent rainfall in Massachusetts, the melons would be vulnerable to fungal infections.

There isn't a lot of information on what specifically gourds and melons are in the fallout universe, so you could get away with writing in a pretty wide variety. Personally, I lean a little bit towards melons being a muskmelon variety, like cantaloupe or honeydew. Squash fills in some vitamin requirements for the human diet, and can be canned and stored for winter. It tends to be high in vitamin C and magnesium.

The limit to this one seems to be your imagination. Go crazy.

Mutfruit

This wiki claims that the mutfruit (it has a scientific name apparently, malus maata) is a mutated species of apple and crabapple. There are two different wikis about the mutfruit, both distinct. The first is linked above. The second is linked here -- I got most of my information from this second wiki.

There is a handful of "canon" information we can take from this set of wikis.

Priscilla Penske in Vault 81 is attempting to create foods that have increased resistance to radiation. She mentions the mutfruit would do well, but isn't certain how the hybridization would affect the flavor and texture.[5]

This claim is taken directly from the second wiki, but in comparison, it makes no sense. If the mutfruit tree is a product of mutation, then radiation shouldn't really affect it at all. It's survived and propagated to this point, hasn't it? I am disregarding this claim on the basis of being stupid.

Farmers in at Warwick homestead will comment on the fruit's characteristics, such as tasting sweet and being versatile in recipes.[1][2] The vault dwellers of Vault 81 trade for mutfruit with the outside world, and use it to make special occasion desserts such as pie.[6][7]

If the mutfruit is an apple variant, then it likely has a high sugar content, and it would have to be harvested in the peak of summer or in early fall.

There are fresh apples the be found across the wasteland, implying the existence of apple trees that have been unaffected by the bombs. Personally, I was assuming that the mutfruit was some kind of blackberry, given its appearance as a clustered fruit, or maybe even a type of plum. Regardless, the mutfruit is a fruit, which means that it would preserve well by being jarred or canned, has a high sugar content, and could likely be reduced to form sugar syrups. Like any fruit, it could be used to make alcohol.

Tatos

I want to stop myself from editorializing too much, but goddamn tatos. The crop that makes the least goddamn sense in the fallout universe. The bane of my existence. Let's get into it.

First off, we're given some pretty damning canon facts about tatos:

Tatos are a mutated hybrid of the cross-pollination of the tomato and potato plants.[1] The new consumable looks like a tomato on the outside, but the inside is brown.[2] Commonly cultivated in the Commonwealth, Appalachia and on the Island, its fruit is easy to grow and can keep one from starving, but their taste is described as "disgusting"[2][3][Non-game 1] and resembling "ketchup-flavored cardboard."[1]

According to some old botany texts we found, this appears to be combination of a now extinct plant called a "potato" and another extinct plant called a "tomato." The outside looks like a tomato, but the inside is brown. Tastes as absolutely disgusting as it looks, but will keep you from starving.

Note: This text was written from the perspective of someone who is unaware that both the tomato and the potato are being cultivated elsewhere. The writer also does not mention any sort of DNA test. However, the potato is also found in the Capital Wasteland, and the writer is a scribe in the Brotherhood of Steel, which originated from that area.

Both potatoes and tomatoes are from the nightshade family. They have the same nutrient requirements, and would compete for resources if planted separately but in the same soil. There is a method for planting them together where you splice a tomato stalk onto a potato root, but this is not the same as cross pollination and will not result in what fallout presents as a tato. What will happen is that the roots will grow potatoes and the fruit of the tomato will branch off the stems.

The potato itself is a stem tuber -- high in starch and calorically dense. A stem tuber is an offshoot of the parent plant that will grow beneath the soil as a type of asexual budding reproduction. We all know what a potato is. The tomato is a berry. It's the ovary of a flowering plant -- again, we all know what a tomato is.

I am going to give Fallout a little bit of grace and not comment on how mind bendingly stupid their description of a tato is. The outer skin is a tomato, but the inside is brown and starchy like the potato? I am not going to comment on how it makes little to no biological sense. The starchy tuber is starchy because it's an energy and nutrient storage device. The tomato is the enlarged ovary of a fruit. Why did those things, which are separately very good, combine into one very terrible thing? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. I don't really want to think about it. But these are the facts as they are given to us in game and I suppose I have to live with that. Obligatory "goddamn you todd howard. a pox on your house."

The tato is probably extremely calorically dense. It's specifically mentioned as being easy to grow and it is a better alternative to starving. It's probably grown as a staple crop throughout the planting season. I'm not entirely sure if the tato can produce glycoalkaloids like the potato does (that is, the green sections of the potato that can become poisonous when exposed to light) but if they can, and if stored improperly, it would negatively impact the health of whoever ate them.

I suppose since the taste is so offensive, tatos are better served as a carrier of some other type of food. Fried, mashed, baked -- the purpose of the tato is simply to get calories into your body. Starch can also be turned into alcohol, which I am going to need a lot of after reading the canonical facts of this stupid fucking plant.

Fallout: The Roleplaying Game Rulebook p.158: "A mutated hybrid of the pre-War tomato and potato plants, with the stem and reddish skin of the former and the brownish flesh of the latter. Tatos provide decent nutrition, but taste disgusting. However, they’re relatively easy to grow and thus are a staple of wasteland agriculture and is an ingredient in a variety of recipes."

fucker

"non farmable" crops

You can't cultivate these plants, but again - we're taking what's given to us and interpreting it extremely literally. There is no reason that these crops could not be domesticated and farmed.

Siltbean

Siltbean is likely a type of bushbean, rather than a pole bean. It's squat and low to the ground. Bush beans require little care or attention and you can pick them when you're ready to harvest them. Historically in North America, beans and corn were grown side by side (though those beans were pole beans using the stalks as support). Bush beans require successive plantings since harvests are early.

There's no good allegory for what type of bean this might be. The potato bean (Apios americana) is native to North America and also produces edible tubers, but there's no reason this couldn't be just some other type of bean. No beans that I could find had red/orange pods.

Beans are a good source of both proteins and carbohydrates, and another crop that can store well for the winter.

Tarberry

Tarberry is a little iffy, considering it is farmed by the ghouls at The Slog, but they're the only farm shown capable (or willing?) to farm the berries. Originally, I had assumed that tarberries were a type of mutated cranberry, and I thought the wiki was supporting me in that claim by saying this:

Tarberries are small, dusty orange berries of the tarberry plant. It is a water-grown crop similar to cranberries.

But cranberries themselves are also canon in the world of Fallout. So who knows! There's no canon information presented on the tarberry's characteristics, so it can be treated the same as any other fruit or berry.

Fungus variants

Glowing fungus: Glowing fungus is one of the few real world equivalents we have. It is a Japanese mushroom called Enoki. It is also farmable as shown in FNV at Hell's Motel.

Brain fungus: This is harvestable, but there aren't any "crops" shown as we would consider them. Considering it's benefits as a mentat replacement, then it's likely that there could be a dedicated space for growing it.

Food and Plants mentioned in the text

Potato

Thank god almighty, potatoes are canon in the universe of Fallout. Fresh potatoes are found as consumables in FO3 and FNV but potatoes are also mentioned in the text of FO4:

Mentioned in dialogue -- {Angry} Shut up Jake. If I hear anything out of either of you, you'll both be peeling potatoes for the next year.

I'm taking this as word of god. Potatoes are canon and I don't care what anyone says.

Tomato

Tomatoes are mentioned in the text, but are never actually seen in game. The only hint that this plant survived extinction is this excerpt from the wiki.

Note: As fresh tomatoes and potatoes are seen in the Mojave Wasteland as of 2281, with the potato seen in the Capital Wasteland as of 2277, the claim of either's extinction by 2287 in the Commonwealth Plant Database could be taken to mean local extinction in east coast regions, as opposed to global extinction. This entry may also just be in error.

There's potential for leeway here, but take it as you will!

Fresh apple

We discussed this back up in the mutfruit section of the essay, but the existence of fresh apples implies the existence of non mutated apple trees. They're found in both FO3 and FNV as a consumable item, so the apple tress have either proliferated across the continental united states, or multiple varieties survived the bombs.

Fresh pear

See above. Pears are also naturally high in pectin, which makes them useful for making jams and preserves.

Pinto beans

Pinto beans are a consumable in FNV and is another W in the bean category of the agricultural landscape.

Jalepeno

Look, I'm picking out this one specifically because I need to believe that other spices and peppers exist in the world. Where would we be without her? Nowhere good.

Raw sap

I am going to say that sap collecting is probably where most of the sugars and sweeteners in the wasteland come from. It's relatively easy to tap trees and collect sap, and it only takes a few hours to reduce the sap down into useable syrup.

Wild Blackberry, Lime, Cranberries, as well as Watermelon as being distinct from simply 'melon' are all mentioned in the text. The list of fruits mentioned or found in the games can be found here.

Animal husbandry

Fallout doesn't give us a lot of canonical information on the animal side of farming. The biggest real world agricultural export of Massachusetts is dairy and cattle farming. Chickens are canon in the worldbuilding of fallout as of Far Harbor, but canon feels both restrictive and extremely loose with regards to what animals can be cared for and how.

We aren't going to spend a whole lot of time on this one, only because the information is pretty limited.

Brahmin

There are plenty of brahmin found throughout the landscape of the wasteland. We most commonly see them as either livestock or beasts of burden. Things like milk, cheese, and other dairy products would be common if a farm has access to dairy cows. The investment to raise cows would be enormous for a subsistence farmer. Dairy cows would likely be kept for a number of years, where steers would be raised 12 to 24 months before being slaughtered; they'd likely be grass fed in the summer and corn or grain fed in the winter. Leather and beef would be products, of course, and things like soap and candles can be made from the beef tallow.

Chickens

Chickens are largely easy to keep and care for, producing eggs and necessary proteins. Chickens can provide niacin, filling in the nutritional gap that would be left by a heavy corn based diet. The investment for keeping chickens is lower than raising brahmin, but so is the payoff.

Bighorners

Bighorners are mutated bighorn sheep native to the American Southwest.[1] Humans have since domesticated them for their horns, meat, milk, and hides,[2][3]

Granted, bighorners are only seen in FNV, but I don't think there's any reason they couldn't have migrated east. In the text, it says they're kept for meat and milk, but there's no reason that they shouldn't provide a fleece as well. In the colder climate of Massachusetts, they would find value in wool, which can keep its warmth even when wet. They may be sparse across the commonwealth, but that would make wool and fleece all that much more valuable.

Fish

Yeah, I know. Technically we can't fish in Fallout (and depending on the game you play, you might not even know what a fish is). But aquaculture is huge in Boston, and with access to the coasts, it's completely fair to say that fish, shellfish, and hydroponics is a completely viable source of food in the wasteland. We see dead fish washed up on shore all the time, along with whatever the hell those shark things are. There should be fisheries and fishing towns all along the coasts.

New Vegas and Fallout 3

Consulting our growing zone chart, we can see that much of the southwest sits between 7b to 8b. The winters in the southwest are fairly mild, and while you can get seeds in the ground sooner, the majority of the battle is going to be finding a reliable water source.

The farming we see in New Vegas has one distinct notable inclusion: the NCR sharecropper farm.

The sharecroppers are growing a number of crops, including maize, tobacco, pinto beans, and honey mesquite. Corn can handle hot, arid weather, it's just not commercially grown out west. Barley can also handle hot, arid climates, and razorgrain would be suitable for the western front -- maybe we can assume it's made it's way that far west and is being cultivated alongside corn.

Most of the plants we see in FNV aren't the type we would see typically domesticated for agricultural use, but that doesn't mean people haven't adapted to their surroundings. It makes a lot of sense for locals to have domesticated local plants like prickly pear and banana yucca. There are a number of fresh produce items to be found as consumables, alongside local fruits the local fruits.

Heat-loving plants are best suited for summer production in desert climates. The plant families that fit into the heat-loving category are nightshade or Solanaceae (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant) and squash or Cucurbitaceae (cucumbers, melons, summer and winter squash). Corn and beans also perform best in hot climates.

Most plants CAN handle the heat and climate of the southwest, the issue is just finding a reliable source of water. Somewhere close to Lake Mead or the banks of the Virgin River would be prime real estate for farming, since irrigation could be accomplished without the use of pumps, like the sharecroppers use.

If we look back at the history of agriculture, it's developed along established waterways in almost every ancient civilization because that's what's easiest. There should be thriving communities surrounding the lakes and rivers in the southwest.

Comparatively, DC was formerly a swamp. It's hot and humid in the summer, though the winters are fairly mild. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that farming practices in the Commonwealth don't differ all that much from farming in the Capital Wasteland -- you could even posit that food from the Capital is of better quality ever since the successful activation of Project Purity. Fresh and unirradiated food was growing there before, so it's entirely likely that even more is growing now. YMMV!

Other consumables

We would be here all damn day if I did research onto every single consumable item available across all three games, so this mostly just because I'm covering my bases.

Look, I'm picking out this one specifically because I need to believe that other spices and peppers exist in the world. Where would we be without her? Nowhere good.

Pre War food

Most shelf-stable foods are safe indefinitely. In fact, canned goods will last for years, as long as the can itself is in good condition (no rust, dents, or swelling). Packaged foods (cereal, pasta, cookies) will be safe past the ‘best by’ date, although they may eventually become stale or develop an off flavor.

The risk with improperly canned good, or damaged canned goods, is botulism. Botulism will straight up kill you. You don't even have to consume that much of it; just a little bit will leave you dead in days. As desperate as I might be for a meal, I'm not going to risk dying because that can of two hundred year old peaches looks really tasty.

If properly sealed and in a dry, ideal environment, I... guess things like cereal and instant food could be okay? But again, with access to fresh grain, sugars, and yes, even potatoes and pasta, why would you want to risk eating InstaMash that's been around since before your great grandmother.

Pre War drinks

Sigh. Okay.

Unless stored extremely, extremely well, most bottled drinks aren't going to last much longer than 9 months. A year, if you're lucky. Exposure to sunlight and improper storage will break down the contents -- the best bottles are brown, then green. Clear glass is the worst because it does nothing to protect the liquid inside.

All the Nuka Cola you find throughout the world is flat, nasty, and will probably make you sick. I don't think that really needs to be pointed out, but there we go. I suppose the soda could probably be reduced to form sugar syrups, but with access to sap syrup and grain malt, I'm not sure why you would be desperate enough to do that.

So what does food look like in Fallout?

If there's one thing I know about humans, it's that humans like to eat. Food is culture, as much as culture and community is built around food. Good food and access to it is paramount to human happiness. All this to say is that food in fallout is whatever you want it to look like.

I can extrapolate and theorize all day long based on what Fallout tells us definitively, but I'm not going to tell you what the culinary landscape in the wasteland looks like. The only point that I will stress is that humans are really, really good at making things appetizing.

The fandom is already so creative when it comes to developing their idea of what food means in the wasteland. It's what's directly inspired me to write up this stupid, long ass post about farming and agriculture.

Obviously this is not a comprehensive list of all the base ingredients you can find in Fallout. I picked the ones I did because of the potential for consistent farming. Wastelanders have had two centuries to develop agricultural practices based around subsistence farming. I am not a subsistence farmer, and I have no idea how wasteland cottagecore would work at the heart of it. Running a farm is extremely labor intensive, and so much of your investment has to be immediately recouped in the form of eating what you harvest.

What a farm is likely to look like will start in the early spring when the ground begins to thaw, and a farmer can plant his cold resistant crops, like green vegetables and razorgrain. Potatos, carrots, and tatos will also weather the spring chill. When it starts to warm up, the more delicate plants like corn, beans, and squash or melons will get planted and tended to.

If your family is lucky enough to have a greenhouse, you can keep crops growing all through the winter and have a surplus for trade and barter, or just to preserve and refill the pantries.

A lot of the investment will have to be immediately recouped. Eggs from the chickens can't be preserved, obviously, but there will be meat from hunted animals, milk from the brahmin, probably an early harvest from the beans and tatos, and whatever else is in the pantry from the previous harvest.

Some of it will be canned or preserved in the forms of jams or jellies (just remember what I said about botulism). Meat from animals that get hunted can be smoked or otherwise preserved. Grain can be milled into flour or eaten whole and unshelled. Even the corn silk can be woven into clothes for the summer.

There really is no limit to what can be done in the end. While a lot of this information was taken from what we're given in the text, there's no rule that says you have to follow it word for word. If you believe something exists out there, then write it! We're all just making shit up as we go along anyway. If you need permission, then here it is. You can do whatever you want. Make up recipes! Go insane. Follow whatever your little foodie heart desires.

#fallout #kal talks #fallout 4 #fallout new vegas #fnv #fallout 3 #fallout meta #fallout food #fallout headcanons #behold. the agricultural masterpost of my farming headcanons #here she is

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tsbs-confessionverse · 26 days ago

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[BOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED] LOADING... SYSTEM ONLINE. WELCOME TO THE LORE DATABASE.

Hello, user. I am the Computer; central processing unit for all things related to the TSBS Confessionverse. Primary function is to store, organize, and retrieve data to ensure optimal comprehension and efficiency in this roleplay universe. All mods of CVAU have access to this database.

CHARACTER FILES

Sun - @tsbs-sunfessions Moon - @tsamsconfessions123 Eclipse - @crappy-tsbs-confession-blog Bloodmoon - @tsams-bloody-confessions Lunar - @tsbsconfessions Killcode - [Data Unavailable At This Time] Solar Flare - @flare-tsamsfessions Solar - @tsbs-shipfessions Earth - @tsbs-group-therapy Ruin - @ruinous-confessions Nexus - @ilikescience-confession-blog Jack - [Error. Data Retrieval Corrupted.] Miku - @tsbs-miku-confessional Solstice - @tsbs-darksun-confessions Puppet - @thepuppeteerpodcast Foxy - @foxyconfessions FC - @foxifulconfessions (Glamrock) Ballora - @confess-to-ur-queen Charlie - @gift-box-confessions Orion (Lord Eclipse) - @confess-to-the-lord Sirius (Servant Sun) - @confessions-to-a-humble-servant

PARAMETERS

Each blog sets its own boundaries; please read and follow them.

Do not pressure creators or participants to answer asks, roleplay, or produce content.

Questions and submissions should be relevant to the "TSBS Confessionverse (CVAU)."

Avoid spamming unrelated content, memes, or personal matters.

Treat participants and characters with courtesy.

Do not send hate, criticism, or unwelcome feedback to anyone in the group.

Tag triggering or NSFW content appropriately to ensure accessibility for others.

Do not send triggering or NSFW content to Lunar, Earth, FC, Solar Flare, Moon, or any other blog that has set boundaries against NSFW content.

If you want to involve yourself in the roleplay (e.g., sending an IC ask or contributing content), check whether the participants are open to outside interaction at the time. Often times members of the group have planned out in universe plot days in advance.

Respect if the group prefers to keep certain plotlines closed to external input.

Do not repost group content without permission and proper credit.

Do not plagiarize ideas, writing, or art from the group.

Constructive feedback is welcome if requested, but negativity and drama are not.

Ensure your interactions adhere to Tumblr’s community guidelines.

FAQ MODULE

Q: Can I join CVAU? A: Applications are open.

Q: What is the TSBS Confessionverse (CVAU)? A: CVAU is a collaborative alternate universe roleplay inspired by TSAMS. It’s a mix of storytelling and creativity from various Tumblr blogs working together.

Q: Who can participate? A: This roleplay is limited to the current group of participants. Audience members are welcome to interact by sending asks or comments, but direct participation in the story is closed unless stated otherwise. If you'd like to participate directly in the lore consider filling out an application.

Q: What is the age rating for this roleplay? 16+ for violence, swears, and sometimes suggestive content

Q: What is this blog for? A: The "computer" blog serves as the loremaster for the TSBS Confessionverse. It organizes, stores, and shares information about the AU, including character profiles, world-building, and timelines.

Q: Can I submit lore ideas? A: Suggestions are welcome, but major plot points are decided by the participants. Submit your ideas respectfully, and keep in mind they may not always be used.

Q: How should I interact with this blog? A: Feel free to send questions about the lore or CVAU-specific clarifications. However, this blog will not respond to OOC questions unrelated to the AU or personal topics.

Q: I want to learn more about a specific character or event. Where should I start? A: This blog will use an organized tagging system for easy navigation.

Q: Why didn’t they answer my ask? A: Not all asks will be answered. Your ask may have been off-topic, already covered, or something outside the blog's scope. Check the FAQ and existing posts first.

SYSTEM STANDBY MODE ENGAGED.

I am not sentient. Emotional appeals and personal confessions are illogical and will be processed as corrupted data. Proceed accordingly.

#tsbs cvau #tsbs confessionverse #tsbs

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aealzx · 1 year ago

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Don was quick to return with a modest sized tablet, tapping in several different passwords as he opened folders and applications to pull up each video feed that was relevant on screen. Only then did he pass the device over to Leon, who took it with a half voiced thanks before leaning back against Leatherhead and Donnie. Lil Mikey was then pulled fully into his lap with a follow up pat before Leon silently skimmed through the videos. There was hours worth of data, but at least it was easy for Leon to speed up the feed to get through it quicker. A convenient toggle on screen pulled back and forth to fast forward or rewind.

Leon honestly didn’t care how the others had broken into the base, and it seemed it wasn’t on record anyway since the beginning of the heist was masked by looped video. It was strangely easier to see the torment Donnie went through without having the emotions to go with it, but Leon still clenched his jaw in residual anger. A slight smirk briefly interrupted the mood when he watched the Donnie in the video chomp down on someone’s arm. Served them right. Everything that he saw in the video ended up lining up with what Don had explained to him, and where Donnie was currently bandaged. Though Leon’s eyes did furrow watching them place two bags of his brother’s blood on their cart. If he hadn’t already been told Donnie had destroyed the entire base, Leon would have added draining the same amount of blood from them to the list.

At the point of Donnie breaking free Leon switched over to the video with Lil Mikey. There was no sound with the visuals, he didn’t want Lil Mikey to get overly curious about what he was seeing. But while he couldn’t hear what they were saying Leon still noted the way the others, the adults, treated his little brother. Their hands were careful, their patience long, and actions willing to help. It was… strange. Their group was the first on the move, so Leon had to switch through several video feeds to follow them, smiling in pride for a moment as Lil Mikey definitely stole the highest knockout count by a long shot. But it was obvious after a while that the mask Don had given him wasn’t as efficient. The pessimist in Leon’s mind accused them of faulty gear. But it was easy to quickly confirm that Lil Mikey’s head was just too small.

Then, once again, these new mutants took care of Lil Mikey almost as if he were one of their own brothers. Leon easily followed the bullet hitting his brother, and watched curiously as Raphael pulled Lil Mikey close and most likely called for help once they were behind a barricade. And Leon had to raise a brow and give a soft huff of amusement at Mikey taking down the one responsible. The first three hits were more than enough. The next five hits to the unconscious soldier calmed the rage that had been budding in Leon’s heart.

Moments later Leon watched Donnie break through the wall, causing him to pause on that video and go back to the others to track Donnie’s course. There wasn’t much to follow, once Donnie reached the rooms the feed tended to go black moments after. But seeing the rooms beforehand, one had been where their stolen equipment had been stored, and another had been where the employees had taken the samples from Donnie. A separate video feed from outside that room showed a vibrating camera, and smoke trailing out of the room soon after. Apparently Donnie had annihilated everything in that room long before blowing the base up as well. Of course he would make sure nothing of them remained in Augustine’s hands. That was one of the main responsibilities he’d adopted from an early age. To make sure no one found them, physically or digitally.

Going back to the video where everyone else was, Leon only watched for a moment more before he relatively sped through the end. Donnie had protected them. He had trusted the others to take care of Lil Mikey, and protected them as well. Both Lil Mikey, and Donnie, had faith in their counterparts.

It was enough.

Skimming through Leo kicking Augustine, then addressing Donnie with the same tenderness as the rest of his brothers. Leon eventually let out a sigh and tilted his head back. He felt exhausted after having a large source of stress massaged out of his mind. He was still wary, but only because that was how he always was. Looking up to Leatherhead, who had just patiently been staying still for the near half an hour Leon had been researching, Leon gave him a regular smile.

Seeing the change in demeanor, Leatherhead rumbled a soft chuckle. “I take it you’ve found the answers you sought?” he asked, returning Leon’s smile with one of his own.

“...Most of them,” Leon responded, pushing away the necessary emotions starting to bud. There was no need for sheepishness, or indignancy, or any of those other hindrances right then. Sitting up again, Leon fondly rubbed Lil Mikey’s back, noting that Lil Mikey had fallen fully asleep now. Good. He needed it. Pulling his gaze up to the others, who were also patiently sitting where they had been, Leon eventually held the tablet back out to Don, his gaze sliding to the air off to the side as he pouted slightly. “...Thanks.” He spoke more clearly this time, expressing actual gratitude for what he’d seen, as well as what they had done with him. Then, remembering recent events, he shrank in on himself slightly. “...And sorry… For kicking your ass…”

“Hey!” Raphael blurted, though his retort broke off in a laugh as he shook his head. That wasn’t a fully proper apology according to someone else’s book, but Raphael didn’t care. It was an apology in words Leon chose, and that was better.

Don and Master Splinter also chuckled quietly, which made Leo unable to hold back a smile as well. When Leon wasn’t being aggressively defensive, he actually wasn’t that threatening at all.

“Are you feeling a little better?” Don asked, eyes flicking to the bandage on Leon’s head, as well as giving him a visual once over once again. Raphael ended up rubbing his nose to hide a smile, knowing Don was holding back from jumping forward and giving Leon a full exam.

“...Yeah,” Leon admitted, feeling a little subdued. “I still have some questions, but… Let’s get these two back to proper beds first…”

Let’s. Raphael noted the all inclusive term and had to grin. It seemed the kid was willing to start trusting them now. “Sure thing. Want some help with the lil guy?” he agreed, gesturing to Lil Mikey.

“No, I got him. Just…. Show me where you want him to stay for now,” Leon requested, still finding it hard to fully relent to being taken care of and directed around by them.

“Back in the infirmary would probably be best. Just in case,” Don directed, getting to his feet and gesturing to the room next to them that was obscured by patterned drapes.

Scooping Lil Mikey up in a well practiced motion, Leon looked back to make sure Leatherhead was going to follow them as Don led them beyond the drapes. It was only once he crossed the barrier that Leon got to absorb just how much they had. Equipment Leon had only seen in media. Dozens of cabinets of supplies. Eight beds easily filling only part of the room. A surgical area in the back. Leon helplessly let out a coo of awe as his mouth dropped open, scanning the room with wide eyes and completely missing Raphael snickering at the reaction. Turning to Don, all the other questions Leon had had fled his mind to be replaced by the single one he blurted. “Can I borrow your infirmary?”

___________________

Previous Next

___________________

I totally crashed and slept like 45 hours straight other than pee breaks and water X'DD Then aside from that I've been working on a behemoth Fate collab, so I didn't get to this one until today.

#my art #rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #cross dimension kidnapping #rise + 2003 crossover #writing #fanfic #long post

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grogumaximus · 7 months ago

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As a performance engineer, he is the man who keeps an eye on all the data in a complex world like Formula 1 and leaves no stone unturned to see how to get even more speed out of the RB20. “For example, I can see how the tires behave individually, how high the temperature of the brakes is and how the hybrid systems of the engine behave,” says Hart in the Red Bull hospitality area.

Together with Lambiase, Michael Manning and David Mart, he is part of the regular group of engineers around world champion Verstappen.

“And GP is the one who talks to Max during sessions, so he has to filter all our information and assess what he finds relevant to pass on to Max. And then as a driver he now has an enormous library of experience. Max is ultimately the best sensor. He senses what he is up against and can make it very clear whether he wants to try something different and what exactly. He is very direct and knows what he wants. There is no room for politics or bullshit.”

In order to be able to empathize with Lambiase's work, Hart occasionally takes his position as race engineer, as was the case on Friday during both training sessions in Imola. Hart explains how a weekend is broadly divided.

“First we have to make sure that the car behaves as we expected. Then we look at how we can get more out of the speed over one lap. Where do we lose time in the bends, does Max feel limited somewhere at the beginning or at the end of such a bend? We then look at the longer runs and how we can protect ourselves against possible dangers.”

With the help of his engineer, a driver can adjust the necessary things on his steering wheel, for example when it comes to the brake balance or the differential. As far as Verstappen and Red Bull are concerned, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix last year is a good example of this. For Verstappen, that race in Baku was the turning point in the season.

“In those first four races, Checo (teammate Sergio Pérez, ed.) and Max were close together. But in terms of setup and the tools he uses, Max has gone in a completely different direction since that race in Baku. He has twelve so-called switch positions that he can use. He tested many of them in Baku, while normally you use two or three in a weekend. Max learned a lot then, and so did we."

Since that race in Baku, more than a year ago, Verstappen has not won only three races. While the Dutchman himself is almost never completely satisfied with how a race weekend is going, this also appears to apply to his engineers.

“Coincidentally, we were still talking about it together on Thursday evening. We as engineers are a bit like the goalkeepers in football. It's only when we make a big mistake that it becomes noticeable. We have to keep pushing to see if we can improve anything in areas where we are not yet performing optimally. And even if we are faster than the rest in every corner, we are still not satisfied and we look at where we have left something behind. Everything worked great in China, and then in Miami with the same car we didn't have the speed. And then afterwards you can understand so well why that is, here in Imola there is a completely different asphalt, the conditions are different and the tire compounds are also different.”

Given the immense pressure and expectations, Hart considers Verstappen's victory in 2021 in front of his own audience in Zandvoort as his personal highlight. The Englishman started working as Alex Albon's performance engineer in 2020 before being transferred to Verstappen the following year.

“With Alex we mainly looked at how we could close the gap with Max with the same material. With Max you look less at the other side of the garage. His experience, not only in Formula 1 but also with other cars, helps us. Actually, after a racing weekend I am also a kind of translator. In the debrief Max tells us what his limitations were. Drivers speak their own language. We then look at his words with the people in the factory in combination with the collected data.”

And yes, Verstappen may be the most important sensor, but he also sometimes has to rely on the information from his engineers on the pit wall and in the garage. They now have the complete overview.

“Especially in races where we play the longer game ,” says Hart. “We can see what the lap times of the other drivers are and how the different tires are worn. For example, if we say that Max needs to change something on his handlebars, he may well think: the balance is now just right. But then we have to prepare for later in the race. If you wait until the front tires are on, you will be too late. We always have to think one step ahead, otherwise you go too slowly.”

#i didn't know tom hart was the other guy whos always around max with gp n that he was alex albon performance engineer #also the baku'23 part is interesting #max verstappen #gianpiero lambiase #tom hart #better they fix whatever those imola setups tho 😄

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ttrpg-smash-pass-vs · 25 days ago

Note

"D&D consistently gets 70-80% of the vote when we run polls" so what you're saying is people actually want to do D&D then

This is a list of almost everything people asked for. I was simply pre-emptively deflecting accusations of splitting the vote to rig it for my obvious bias. By pointing out that they usually win anyway, so please don't complain. Though it turns out that Pathfinder votes skyrocketed once people saw what some looked like. That "70-80%," in truth, was more like 80+...but was also from before people saw what any of the competition looked like. Now who knows! Non-D&D skyrocketed, even though many voters are likely followers of followers and just clicking on the most familiar book. but since this time most of the books have a theme, people might not give a shit about the system. They might not want D&D, they might want dragons regardless of source. I know I'd click on giants regardless of source. I changed multiple factors, so honestly the data isn't really all that relevant. I could go on but ultimately it doesn't matter in the slightest. You couldn't pay me to do a poll with only D&D monsters as options, not that anyone's paying me to begin with. I'm sinking hundreds of hours into this because I want to. Hell I don't have to do these polls to begin with, I could just choose, nobody asked me to do them. I was even going to surprise everyone by doing the top 2 to be nice to D&D people. Which I still am, I do generally try my best to be nice. But I'm getting past the point of my life where I take shit.

And the proof that I typed up a message about multiple winners 2 days ago, because I've been put in a petty mood

#not tournament #answers

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covid-safer-hotties · 2 months ago

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Reference archived on our website (daily updates!)

Key Points Question Is COVID-19 infection associated with an increased long-term risk of autoimmune and autoinflammatory connective tissue disorders?

Findings This cohort study analyzing 6 912 427 participants in South Korea, including 3 145 388 with COVID-19 and 3 767 039 controls observed for more than 180 days, revealed significantly increased risks of various autoimmune and autoinflammatory connective tissue disorders following COVID-19, especially among individuals with severe COVID-19 infection, those infected with the Delta variant, and unvaccinated individuals.

Meaning These findings suggest that long-term monitoring and management of patients is crucial after COVID-19, considering demographic factors, disease severity, and vaccination status, to mitigate these risks.

Abstract Importance Few studies have investigated the association between COVID-19 and autoimmune and autoinflammatory connective tissue disorders; however, research with long-term observation remains insufficient.

Objective To investigate the long-term risk of autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases after COVID-19 over an extended observation period.

Design, Setting, and Participants This retrospective nationwide population-based study investigated the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency–COVID-19–National Health Insurance Service (K-COV-N) cohort. Individuals with confirmed COVID-19 from October 8, 2020, to December 31, 2022, and controls identified among individuals who participated in the general health examination in 2018 were included in the analysis.

Exposures Confirmed COVID-19.

Main Outcomes and Measures Incidence and risk of autoimmune and autoinflammatory connective tissue disorders in patients after COVID-19. Various covariates, such as demographic characteristics, general health data, socioeconomic status, and comorbidity profiles, were balanced using inverse probability weighting.

Results A total of 6 912 427 participants (53.6% male; mean [SD] age, 53.39 [20.13] years) consisting of 3 145 388 with COVID-19 and 3 767 039 controls with an observational period of more than 180 days were included. Alopecia areata (adjusted hazard ratio [AHR], 1.11 [95% CI, 1.07-1.15]), alopecia totalis (AHR, 1.24 [95% CI, 1.09-1.42]), vitiligo (AHR, 1.11 [95% CI, 1.04-1.19]), Behçet disease (AHR, 1.45 [95% CI, 1.20-1.74]), Crohn disease (AHR, 1.35 [95% CI, 1.14-1.60]), ulcerative colitis (AHR, 1.15 [95% CI, 1.04-1.28]), rheumatoid arthritis (AHR, 1.09 [95% CI, 1.06-1.12]), systemic lupus erythematosus (AHR, 1.14 [95% CI, 1.01-1.28]), Sjögren syndrome (AHR, 1.13 [95% CI, 1.03-1.25]), ankylosing spondylitis (AHR, 1.11 [95% CI, 1.02-1.20]), and bullous pemphigoid (AHR, 1.62 [95% CI, 1.07-2.45]) were associated with higher risk in the COVID-19 group. Subgroup analyses revealed that demographic factors, including male and female sex, age younger than 40 years, and age 40 years and older, exhibited diverse associations with the risk of autoimmune and autoinflammatory outcomes. In addition, severe COVID-19 infection requiring intensive care unit admission, the Delta period, and not being vaccinated were associated with higher risk.

Conclusions and Relevance This retrospective cohort study with an extended follow-up period found associations between COVID-19 and the long-term risk of various autoimmune and autoinflammatory connective tissue disorders. Long-term monitoring and care of patients is crucial after COVID-19, considering demographic factors, disease severity, and vaccination status, to mitigate these risks.

#mask up #covid #pandemic #public health #wear a mask #covid 19 #wear a respirator #still coviding #coronavirus #sars cov 2 #long covid

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develop-your-oc · 9 months ago

Note

Your blog has been so helpful with my oc developing journey! Thank you for putting so much time into collecting resources and the like! I did have a question, if you wouldn't mind answering, but how do you use Obsidian for sorting/recording your oc data? It's a little daunting and I've found myself constantly going over the info and trying to format everything. It's maddening. Thank you again for your hard work and time! <3

It's awesome that you've found this blog to be helpful! Thank you so much for telling me! 💖 (it ain't much but it's honest work dot jpeg)

Obsidian as a program is daunting especially if you're not familiar with similar applications (OneNote, Evernote, Joplin, etc.), but somehow I have completely forgotten how frustrating it was to get started from a blank page, even though I spent years struggling with that frustration. Here's a basic rundown of what I do!

Folders and basic setup are as follows:

Within one vault, I use multiple folders. One folder contains my templates, lists and other data, prompts, and so on. There are individual files for each original setting within this folder in order to take quick notes to be sorted later or keep reminders. Other files in this folder include ideas for future character names and other writing ideas.

Each setting has its own folder where everything related to it is stored, with OCs being the star of the show at the top level. There are several subfolders filled with notes, completed prompts, drabbles, lore, codex entries, etc.

One of the subfolders is for files regarding characters that my OCs interact with but aren't mine (a roleplay partner's OC, a game NPC, etc.) to store notes and other useful information for later reference, like a wiki page built only for myself.

As for the OCs themselves:

Each OC has its own file within the folder of their setting where a template holds their information. This template is vague enough to be useful in most settings, and simple enough to allow editing as needed.

The template begins as a simple formatted list of basics as you would expect (identity, appearance, occupation, etc.), as well as likes, dislikes, hobbies, skills, virtues, and flaws.

All friends, family, lovers, and so on are listed with a very brief description of how they are connected to my OC.

There are sections beneath the list for all the substantial information. — Background: everything from before their story begins. From before the arrival of you, the creator, if that makes sense. — Going Forward: from the beginning of their story, to the end (if there is one), and into the future beyond that. — Trivia: tidbits of information and facts that don't fit anywhere else. — Timeline: a chronological list with dates and concise details. Additional information is sorted into one of the other sections, the destination based on where the information would be most relevant. — Relationships: important relationships are detailed here. — Notes: the anything goes catch-all. Less about the character and more about you, like a reminder ("name their childhood pet!") or something worth noting ("my first OC!").

If the character is still in its concept phase, I stick to bullet point notes and update with the template later as needed.

Other things I'd like to mention:

There's more functionality within Obsidian than what I use, but I'm happy with my methods for now.

I make heavy use of bullet points, tab indents, and the little arrow that pops up to open or close lengthy sections as needed.

I never fill out the entire template at once, or ever; some sections remain empty permanently and some characters remain bullet points. It is what it is!

I keep the files for all the OCs that are currently rotting my brain open in tabs at the top! 🥰

Sometimes a folder is a genre and is instead used for multiple settings, such as all my OCs from the various farming simulation games I play sharing the same folder.

Relationships can sometimes be easier as their own page, particularly if it involves more than two characters, such as families and their dynamics.

This is a brief description of how I do things for myself. This works for me, but may not work for you. I tend to make up a bunch of silly little rules for myself, so please take this as inspiration rather than instruction. If this is confusing or you would like more help, anon, please DM me again and I'll work on visual examples and better explanations. Thanks again, and I hope this helps!

#answer #uhhhh #does this make ANY sense idk 😳#untagged

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gatheredfates · 3 months ago

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Greetings everyone! If you're thinking to yourself 'Wow, it's been a bit since Sea updated the Compendium', you'd be right! I've been (unfortunately) dealing with that demon we call burnout. However, I am determined not to let it win, even if it's capping my own creativity/drive at the moment, which is why I bring you an update to the Compendium. ✨

If you know of any communities I have missed, please reach out to me via my Discord or the Google Form.

However, as of 09/29, the following communities have been added to Sea's Community Compendium for XIV Creatives.

EVENT / COMMUNITY SPACES

The Cursed Carbuncle—The Cursed Carbuncle is a Cabinet of Curiosities & Oddities which sells alchemical reagents, curios, cursed items, intriguing artefacts, luxury objects, occult, rare books, taxidermy & unusual finds.

LORE

How Rare is that Job?—An Unofficial, Opinionated Look At Class/Job Rarity For FFXIV Roleplayers, created by Mis’to Raesthe on the Odin Server.

MISC

Leyla's Gposing Guide—This website is an ongoing comprehensive gpose guide that helps you every step of the way from the vanilla gpose menu to using shaders and posing tools/plugins, complete with screenshots and video guides, as well as pose/edit-along videos. It's also meant to allow many people to submit their own guides and tips.

So You Wanna Start Roleplaying in FFXIV—(Specifically, on Crystal Data Center). But It Sounds Really Scary And You're New And How Does This Even Work Anyway? A FAQ by By Nevivi Nevi/Lenneth Andrew of Balmung.

Have you thought about joining our Tumblr Community? You can find it here!

Want to submit? You can either fill out the google form here or send me an ask with the relevant information!

Is my space suitable for the Compendium? Most of the time, yes! Below the read more is some more information/stipulations. This is all publicly available on the document.

Below are the following things I do not accept on the Compendium:

Personal/Single-Character LFC ads. (Though these get posted to the SEAFLOOR Tumblr Community when I find them!)

Content intended for or can be used for bullying, harassment and OOC gossip. E.g. ‘Secrets’ blogs, receipts, callout posts, etc. This does not include IC tabloid blogs or other ventures used to generate roleplay.

Communities that do not have an RP/writing element (large-scale exempt).

Anything I find personally distasteful or goes against the spirit of this project.

Common-sense rule applies.

I want to put my community on the Compendium but we have an application process. Is this okay?

Yes! Just note somewhere in your application that's a requirement. The only thing that is mandatory for the Compendium is that you must be open to new members or have a public-facing/accessible facet. There's no point advertising a community if no one can join it in some way!

I want to put my Community on the compendium but I only have x number of members —

Also totally okay! People don't start with large communities. Activity is a must but, whether your server has two or two thousand members, if you're looking for new people to join, I'd love to help you find people.

I want to put my community/resource on the Compendium but I worry its too niche?

Okay, and? If your Eorzean Fishing Alliance has four members but you roleplay every second weekend, I still want to know about it. The same goes for resources; if it's relevant to the game, it'll be useful to someone.

How active does a community need to be?

If you find a community has not been active in about two/three months, send me a message and I'll take a look at it. Communities have ebbs and flows, especially event spaces that may take hiatuses depending on member interest/life events. I'm not strict in my implementation provided a space isn't dead. If a link or anything is broken, contact me asap!

I have [insert a question not stated here]?

No drama! Send me an ask or use the #Compendium channel in my Discord!

#final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #ffxiv community #final fantasy xiv roleplay #ffxiv roleplay #｡･ﾟﾟ･ — sea speaks #｡･ﾟﾟ･ — sea's community compendium

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jesperweidemann · 3 months ago

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Writing Engaging Introductions and Compelling Conclusions Part 2: The Role of Introductions

Why Introductions Matter

Introductions are the gateway to your writing. They serve as the first impression and set the stage for the entire piece. A well-crafted introduction can captivate the reader's attention, establish the tone and context, and present the thesis or main idea clearly. Here’s why introductions are crucial:

Capturing the Reader’s Attention: The opening lines of your introduction are your chance to hook the reader. If the introduction is engaging, the reader is more likely to continue reading. This is especially important in an age where attention spans are short, and competition for readers' time is fierce. An engaging introduction can make the difference between a reader staying with your piece or moving on to something else.

Setting the Tone and Context: The introduction sets the tone for the rest of the piece. Whether your writing is formal, informal, serious, or humorous, the introduction should reflect this tone. Additionally, it provides the necessary context, helping the reader understand the background and relevance of the topic. This context is crucial for making the reader feel grounded and prepared for the information or arguments that will follow.

Presenting the Thesis or Main Idea: The introduction should clearly present the thesis or main idea of the piece. This gives the reader a clear understanding of what to expect and what the central argument or purpose of the writing is. A well-stated thesis provides a roadmap for the reader, guiding them through the points you will make.

Elements of an Effective Introduction

An effective introduction typically includes the following elements:

The Hook: The hook is a technique used to grab the reader’s attention right from the start. There are several types of hooks, including anecdotes, quotes, questions, and statistics. The choice of hook depends on the topic and the audience. A strong hook can make the reader curious, excited, or emotionally invested in your writing.

Background Information: Providing necessary background information helps the reader understand the context of the topic. However, it’s important to strike a balance and avoid overwhelming the reader with too much information. The background should be relevant and concise, setting up the thesis without distracting from it.

Thesis Statement: The thesis statement is a concise summary of the main point or argument of the piece. It should be clear and specific, guiding the reader on what to expect in the rest of the writing. A strong thesis statement is essential for keeping your writing focused and coherent.

Types of Hooks

Different types of hooks can be used to make the introduction engaging. Here are some common types:

Anecdotes and Stories: Starting with a short, relevant story or anecdote can draw the reader in and make the topic more relatable. Anecdotes can humanize your writing and create an emotional connection with the reader.

Interesting Facts or Statistics: Presenting a surprising fact or statistic can pique the reader’s curiosity and encourage them to read further. This type of hook works well for topics that involve data or surprising information.

Provocative Questions: Asking a thought-provoking question can engage the reader and make them think about the topic from the outset. Questions can also create a sense of dialogue between the writer and the reader.

Quotations: Using a relevant quote from a well-known figure can lend authority to your writing and capture the reader’s interest. Quotes can also provide a succinct way to introduce the theme or main idea of your piece.

Descriptive Scenes: Painting a vivid picture with words can immerse the reader in the topic and set the scene for the rest of the piece. Descriptive hooks are particularly effective for narrative or descriptive writing.

Examples and Analysis

To understand what makes an introduction effective, let’s break down some examples:

Example 1: Anecdote Hook

“When I was ten years old, I discovered a dusty old book in my grandmother’s attic. Little did I know, that book would ignite my lifelong passion for history.”

Analysis: This introduction uses a personal anecdote to draw the reader in. It’s relatable and sets the stage for a discussion on the importance of history. The anecdote creates an emotional connection and makes the reader curious about the writer’s journey.

Example 2: Statistic Hook

“Did you know that over 60% of adults in the United States have never read a book cover to cover? This startling statistic highlights a growing issue in our society.”

Analysis: This introduction uses a surprising statistic to grab the reader’s attention. It immediately presents a problem that the rest of the piece will address. The statistic is shocking and makes the reader want to learn more about the issue.

Example 3: Question Hook

“What if you could change one thing about your daily routine to improve your productivity? Would you do it?”

Analysis: This introduction uses a provocative question to engage the reader. It makes them think about their own habits and sets up a discussion on productivity. The question creates a sense of curiosity and invites the reader to reflect on their own experiences.

Example 4: Quotation Hook

“‘The only limit to our realization of tomorrow is our doubts of today.’ – Franklin D. Roosevelt. This quote perfectly encapsulates the theme of overcoming self-doubt.”

Analysis: This introduction uses a quote to lend authority to the writing. It sets a motivational tone and introduces the theme of the piece. The quote is powerful and provides a succinct way to introduce the main idea.

Example 5: Descriptive Scene Hook

“The sun was just beginning to rise, casting a golden glow over the quiet village. Birds chirped softly, and the air was filled with the scent of blooming flowers. It was the perfect setting for a new beginning.”

Analysis: This introduction uses descriptive language to paint a vivid picture. It immerses the reader in the scene and sets a peaceful, hopeful tone. The descriptive hook is engaging and makes the reader feel like they are part of the scene.

Crafting Your Own Introduction

When crafting your own introduction, consider the following steps:

Identify Your Audience: Understanding who your readers are will help you choose the most effective hook and tone for your introduction. Consider their interests, background, and what might engage them the most.

Choose a Hook: Select a hook that is relevant to your topic and will engage your audience. Experiment with different types of hooks to see which one works best. The hook should be intriguing and make the reader want to continue reading.

Provide Background Information: Give the reader enough context to understand the topic, but avoid overwhelming them with too much information. The background should be concise and relevant, setting up the thesis without distracting from it.

Present Your Thesis Statement: Clearly state the main point or argument of your piece. Make sure it is specific and concise. The thesis statement should provide a roadmap for the reader, guiding them through the points you will make.

Revise and Refine: Review your introduction to ensure it is engaging, clear, and sets the right tone for the rest of your writing. Don’t be afraid to make changes to improve it. A strong introduction is essential for capturing the reader’s attention and setting the stage for the rest of your writing.

Additional Tips for Writing Introductions

Be Concise: While it’s important to provide enough information to engage the reader, avoid being overly verbose. A concise introduction is more likely to hold the reader’s attention.

Stay Relevant: Ensure that all the information in your introduction is relevant to the main topic. Avoid tangents or unrelated details that might confuse the reader.

Use Clear and Simple Language: Avoid jargon or overly complex language that might alienate the reader. Clear and simple language is more effective in engaging a broad audience.

Create a Smooth Transition: The introduction should smoothly transition into the main body of the writing. Ensure that the last sentence of your introduction leads naturally into the first sentence of the next section.

Engage the Senses: When using descriptive hooks, engage the reader’s senses by describing sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures. This can make your writing more vivid and immersive.

Reflect Your Personality: Let your personality shine through in your introduction. Whether you’re writing in a formal or informal style, your unique voice can make your writing more engaging and relatable.

By following these steps and understanding the elements of an effective introduction, you can create openings that captivate your readers and set the stage for compelling writing.

< Part 1 ||| Part 3 >

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lets-try-some-writing · 11 months ago

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For Secret of the Primacy: I don't know if anyone else has asked this, but does Optimus accept Megatron's request? If he does, how to the other Decepticons and Autobots react? If he doesn't, what is Megatron's reaction? Does Optimus take his time to answer?

(Feel free to delete this if someone has already asked/requested something like this.)

Ah yes, an excuse to write for this au. Fantastic.

Previous part here.

━━━━━━ ⊙ ❖ ⊙ ━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⊙ ❖ ⊙

Megatron's offer was a... delicate thing for Optimus to consider. Megatron was his life long foe. Adhering to his request and coming to the Nemesis was akin to stepping into a burning building and praying to any watching higher power that a beam didn't drop on his helm and kill him. But failure to comply was not only an emotional risk, but also a lost opportunity. If he went with Megatron, he would potentially gain access to Decepticon data as well as information regarding his Sire. It was a win for him, and yet it left him suspicious. What did Megatron want?

Out under the stars, Optimus considered in silence until he decided to simply ask.

Optimus: What do you desire from me in return.

Megatron: As I already said, I wish to know more of your origin.

Optimus: You know everything of relevance. What is it you truly seek?

Megatron: Confirmation, or perhaps closure. I am not unfeeling, Prime.

Optimus hesitated, his logical processors left running through countless scenarios as he contemplated. This could end horribly very very quickly. And yet... the offer of information and the chance before him could not be overlooked. Megatron would have killed him already if that was what he wanted. The warlord was looking to gain something from their interactions, and Optimus highly doubted keeping him as a hostage was the full plan. He was, at his core, replaceable. Not to mention if need be, he could still do severe damage to the Nemesis before being brought down.

It was a logical and relatively sound offer. Thus, Optimus requested a day to prepare, and they went their separate ways with a place and a time to meet. Optimus returned to his team and informed them that he would be going on a week long scouting mission and due to the distance, would largely be out of contact. Ratchet wasn't pleased, Arcee wasn't either. Bulkhead and Bumblebee were confused more than anything. But none present wanted to deny Optimus what they assumed was a poor attempt to ask for some alone time. To them, there was no other mech who could use a break more than their Prime.

Ratchet prepared Optimus some rations and requested an update daily. Arcee slipped Optimus a hidden blade to keep in his arm guard in the event that something happened. Bulkhead patted Optimus on the back and wished him well, and Bumblebee gave his Sire a hug. It was a simple but heartfelt farewell for what the team assumed was a simple trip. Guilt plagued Optimus's mind as he elected to not tell them of his plans. They would never allow him to leave, at least not with Megatron. This he needed to do alone. It was dangerous, but in the worst case scenario, he could always call for a ground bridge, or even fight his way out. He'd been on the Nemesis before, and he could hold his own for a limited amount of time against the Decepticons. Megatron was a mech of honor when he felt like it.

It was risky, but there was much to be gained... at least, that was his hope.

He made his way to the designated meeting point even though he knew the team would worry the moment they saw his signature moving far faster than it should have. Once he was at the meeting place, Megatron emerged from a ground bridge and beckoned him to follow with a smile. It was unnerving and Optimus quietly readied his hidden blade just in case things fell apart. However, after venting deeply, he followed Megatron through the portal with only a quick message back to Ratchet.

[[If this doesn't work, I hope you will forgive me. I want to know the truth, and if all goes well, I will gather other vital information as well. Thank you for everything Ratchet. I pray that I will return to you soon.]]

With his message sent, Optimus followed his enemy and stepped aboard the Nemesis. Unease rattled his spark as Megatron smiled and led the way to the Command deck. Optimus did not know what he should have expected, but a vial of sedatives to the neck was not on his list of potential outcomes. He wheezed and his vision blurred, but before he lost consciousness, Arcee's gifted blade found its mark, slashing across Megatron's face even as Optimus was forced into recharge.

When he returned to consciousness, he was strapped down on an examination table and a series of cables connected to his processors through ports normally well hidden. He was too sluggish to move and his whole frame ached. All he was able to do was listen as Megatron began to make plans with Shockwave and Knockout.

Megatron: Does he possess the correct coding?

Knockout: Surprisingly, yes. Despite his physical age and maturity, his coding has not completed its development. He could still theoretically be moved from one frame to another-

Megatron: Excellent. Get that relic out of him and prepare to transfer his spark to a protoform. Ensure the protoform in question is adequately adjusted.

Knockout: My Lord, I will gladly obey, but you must realize that tampering with the relic is highly dangerous! Not to mention moving him to a new frame could cause incredible stress-!

Megatron: What are the issues that concern you, Doctor?

Knockout: The Matrix is tied to him. Trying to remove it could kill him! If you want him dead then by all means go forward with this plan, but if you want a live Prime, he needs that relic at least until I can create a stabilizer to replace it.

Megatron: Very well. Leave the relic until there is a way to remove it. Anything else?

Knockout: He may have the correct coding, but putting him in a protoform is just asking for all sorts of mutations. He needs a stabilizing element, a CNA contribution of some sort considering there are no hot spots for him to go roll in.

Megatron: Then find someone aboard the Nemesis. I want him and that relic dealt with before the cycle's end!

Optimus watched in horror as Megatron grinned down at him. Knockout simply sighed and raised a blade with a murmur about not wanting to damage such a fine frame.

Optimus Prime finally came to fully understand just what his Sire endured as he was picked to pieces for a purpose he did not know. Memory faded in and out as the Doctor worked, but all the while Optimus recalled searching for Ratchet, desperately hoping the mech who treated him so tenderly would come save him. His attempts to call to the team were fruitless, and in his moments of awareness, he noted Knockout had removed his tracker or otherwise blocked the team's ability to find him. He was stranded and alone.

What a foolish decision it was to come to the Nemesis. He regretted it more with every moment and only found himself aware enough to actually process data once more when he came online in a far smaller frame. He was without many features, his new body not yet adjusted to his CNA. The Matrix wrapped around him almost like a ribcage in order to fit his small form. But aside from a few familiar features such as his finials, he also noted a few smaller adjustments, namely the duel datacables that he sensed distantly on his back.

He could not speak, he could not act. Alone and weakened, all he could do was go limp when Soundwave and Megatron came to look him over.

"He has accepted your CNA well. Take care of him Soundwave. Orion's sparkling should be preserved at all costs. I refuse to allow his memory to fade."

Soundwave collected Optimus and carried him as if he weighed nothing. Optimus, having endured his forced reformat, merely groaned. Of course, Megatron was not to be trusted. What a fool he was to even believe in a vague concept of honor. Megatron was always obsessed with his Sire. Was it really a surprise that he would try to claim what little remained of Orion Pax? He was lucky to be alive...

Soundwave took him away, and before Optimus knew it, a new schedule formed for him. He did not fully understand, but the warlord, seemingly drunk on whatever the dark energon did to him, had fully devoted himself to preserving that which remained of Orion. Megatron held no love for him. Instead, the Decepticon instructed Soundwave to tend to Optimus. That tending came... with adjustments. Every cycle he was trained in the craft of the spymaster and dutifully educated in the ways of the original Decepticon creed. Soundwave was not loving or affectionate, but he was a devoted teacher.

Cycle in and cycle out, Optimus obeyed. He couldn't fight, not when his very frame seemed so frail. He could not trust his limbs, nor could he trust his mind without wondering if his thoughts were influenced by the Matrix or Soundwave's teaching. He'd fallen for Megatron's trap, and now he remained until the warlord grew tired of him. He could only hope his team were safe and that they could continue the fight without his aid.

Locked on the Nemesis in a frame not his own, Optimus learned. And given time, he learned one important skill.

He learned to bide his time and scheme.

#transformers #maccadam #transformers prime #optimus prime #team prime #ratchet #megatron #alternate universe #knockout #soundwave #secret of the primacy au #angst #slight horror #I did my best with this #sorry if my thoughts make no sense I am rather tired

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