#Research comparison

[marketxcel]

Primary Research vs Secondary Research: Definitions, Differences, and Examples

Both primary and secondary research holds a significant place in the researcher’s toolkit. Primary research facilitates the collection of fresh, original data, while secondary research leverages existing information to provide context and insights.

[inkyami]

Kaeru nyōbō (蛙女房) — "frog wive", a shapeshifting character in Japanese folklore. The frog turns into a woman in order to marry a human man, but retains some of her froggy qualities — Kaeru nyōbō is very fragile, small, and is unable to do heavy work due to her little strength. The life with her can be perfectly ordinary and peaceful, unless the curiosity of a husband & family discovers her true nature, and she hops away.

The stories about frog wives exist all over Japan with some variations of the plot. The motive itself — of a girl "with a secret" and a family ruined by prying into it — seems to be extremely popular in Japanese folklore in general.

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[reality-detective]

When someone knocks on your front door now vs 20 years ago 🤔

[ali3nboyfriend]

logically i know modern horses aren't native to the americas like that was a whole Thing but it causes such cognizant dissonance to think of there being wild horses in europe. like that can't be right. there's no fucking cowboys there.

[leroibobo]

another mena language post - i wanted to talk about judeo-arabic and clarify a little bit about what "judeo-arabic" means

the basics, for those of you who don't know: arabic, being a language that was spread over a large part of the world and has since evolved into many different forms, has many different things that differentiate certain dialects. languages/dialects can be influenced by languages speakers' ancestors spoke before, by the social structure of where speakers live, by languages they come into contact with, and by gradual evolution in pronunciation. (many letters like evolving into ones that are easier to pronounce - this is why arabic has no "p" sound, it eventually evolved into "f" or "b". the same thing happened in germanic languages to some extent, which is why we say "father" in english and "vader" in german while in romance languages it's some variation of "padre" or "père".) many arabic dialects in particular possess different substratum (obvious, traceable influence from languages people spoke in before shifting to the new one).

arabic, being a language that was spread over a large part of the world and has since evolved into many different forms, has many different regional dialects which are different for the reasons i described in the above paragraph. even though there's modern standard arabic (which is the subject of its own post), people speak regional dialects in real life. on top of that, there's a variety of social influences on different types of arabic, such as whether someone's living in the city or in the country, whether someone's sedentary or a bedouin, and in some cases religion.

in the middle east, religion was historically:

not seen as a personal choice, but as something you're born into and a group you're a part of, kind of like ethnicity;

not generally something governments actively wanted everyone to share one of at the penalty of ostracization due to sticking to your group being the more livable way of life in the area, or later, the benefits of things like imposing extra taxes on people who weren't the "correct" religion/branch (this is far from being a "muslim thing" btw, it's been in the area for a while now, i mean look at the assyrians);

an influential factor in where you lived and who you were more likely to interact with because of those two things. (for example, it wasn't uncommon for most of the people living in one village in the countryside to share one religion/branch of a religion. if your village converted, you converted, too. if they didn't, you didn't, either.)

this means that the influence of religion in different types of arabic is due to people of different religions living in or coming from different places, and who people talked to most often.

for example, in bahrain, most sedentary shia bahrainis' ancestors have lived on the island for a very long time, while most sedentary sunni bahrainis' ancestors immigrated from other places in the gulf and iran in the 18th century. therefore, while they've all interacted and shared different aspects of their dialects including loanwords, there are two "types" of bahraini arabic considered distinctive to sunni and shia bahrainis respectively, regardless of how long ago their ancestors got there. despite the differences being marked by the religion of the speakers, they have nothing to do with religion or contact/lack thereof between bahraini sunni and shia, but with the factors affecting the different dialects i mentioned in the first paragraph which influenced either group.

a similar phenomenon to this in english is class differences in accent in england. nothing in received pronunciation is actually something only rich people can say or unintelligible to poor people, it developed by the class differences influencing where rich and poor english people lived and the different pronunciation/linguistic histories in those places, as well with different classes keeping more to themselves.

the influence of religion on arabic dialects isn't universal and nowhere near as intense as it is with aramaic. some places, especially more cosmopolitan or densely populated places, are less likely to have very noticeable differences or any differences at all. in addition, certain variations of a dialects that may've been influenced by religion in some way (as well as urban dialects) may be standardized through tv/movies/social media or through generally being seen as more "prestigious", making more people who wouldn't have spoken them otherwise more likely to pick it up. (this is why so many arabic speakers can understand egyptian arabic - cairo is like the hollywood of the arabic-speaking world.) this is the case with many if not most countries' official and regional languages/dialects nowadays.

this phenomenon is what "judeo-arabic" refers to generally. like many other jewish diaspora languages, the "jewish" aspect is that it was a specific thing jewish people did to different types of arabic, not that it was isolated, possessed a large enough amount of certain loanwords (though some varieties did have them), or is unintelligible to non-jews. people were generally aware of differences where they existed and navigated between them. (for example, baghdadi jews may've switched to the more prestigious muslim baghdadi dialect when in public.) if you know arabic, listen to this guy speak, you should be able to understand him just fine.

judeo-arabic also often used the hebrew alphabet and some may have been influenced by hebrew syntax and grammar in their spelling. you can also see the use of script for religious identification in persian and urdu using the arabic script, and in english using the latin alphabet. in general, influences of hebrew/aramaic on different types of judeo-arabic aren't consistent. you can read more about that here.

"judeo-arabic" isn't a universal that definitely happened in every arabic-speaking part of the world that had jews in it to the same degrees, but it did definitely exist. some examples:

after the siege of baghdad in 1258, where mongols killed all muslim baghdadis and spared baghdadis of other religions, bedouins from the south gradually resettled the city. this means that the "standard" sedentary dialect in the south is notably bedouin influenced, while dialects in the north are more notably influenced by eastern aramaic. christians and (when they lived there) jews in baghdad have dialects closer to what’s up north. within those, there's specific loans and quirks marking the differences between "christian" and "jewish".

yemenite jews faced some of the most persistent antisemitic persecution in the middle east, so yemeni jewish arabic was more of a city thing and often in the form of passwords/codewords to keep jews safe. jews were usually a lot safer and better-regarded in the countryside, so jewish yemeni arabic was much less of a thing there, and when it was, it was less "serious".

due to the long history of maghrebi immigration to palestine, there's attestation of maghrebi influences in arabic spoken by some palestinian jews with that origin. this was also a thing in cairo to some extent.

(i'd link sources, but most of them are in hebrew, i guess you'll have to trust me on this one??)

still, the phrase "judeo-arabic" is often used with the implication that it was one all encompassing thing (which it wasn't, as you can see), or that jews everywhere had it in some way. many jews who spoke some version of arabic special to their mostly-jewish locale may not have registered it as a specifically "jewish" version of arabic (though they did more often than not). the truth is that research about anything related to middle eastern and north african jews is often sloppy, nonexistent, and often motivated by the desire of the researcher to prove something about israel's colonization of palestine (on either "side" of the issue). this is not me being a centrist about the colonization of palestine, this is me stating that academia is often (even usually) influenced by factors that aren't getting the best and most accurate information about something. i don't think we're going to get anything really "objective" on arabic spoken by jews in that regard for a long while.

for comparison's sake: yiddish is considered a separate language from german due to 19th century yiddishists' efforts to "evolve" yiddish from dialect to language (yiddish-speaking jews were said to speak "corrupted german" historically; on that note sephardim were also said to speak "corrupted spanish"). this was at a time when ethnic nationalism was en vogue in europe and declaring a national language meant declaring your status as a sovereign nation (both metaphorically and literally). for yiddishists to assert that they were speaking a language and not a dialect that intrinsically tied them to germans was to reject the discrimination that they were facing. (besides, german/austrian/swiss jews weren't speaking yiddish (leaving it with the connotation of being the language of those icky ostjuden), yiddish-speaking jews had practically zero other ties to germany/austria/switzerland, and yiddish-speaking jews (let alone the yiddishists) were almost entirely east of germany/austria/switzerland, so it's not like they were pulling this out of their ass.)

whether a jewish person of arabic-speaking descent calls it "arabic", "judeo-arabic", or something like "moroccan"/"syrian"/etc depends on who you're talking to, where they're from (both diaspora origins and today), how old they are, and what they think about zionism. despite "judeo-arabic" being what it's called in academia, on the ground, there's no real strong consensus either way because the social circumstances arabic-speaking jews lived in didn't drive them to form a movement similar to yiddishists. (not because there was no discrimination, but because the political/social/linguistic circumstances were different.) the occupation since made the subject of middle eastern jews’ relation to the middle east a contentious topic considering the political and personal weight behind certain cultural identifiers. the term "judeo-arabic" is modern in comparison - whether it's a distinction dredged up by zionist academics to create separations that didn't really exist or a generally accurate term for a specific linguistic phenomenon is a decision i'll leave you to make.

[theamazingmaddyas]

So, I've been hyperfixating on Michael Yew as a character in general (No, I'm not okay, all the fanfictions have emotional destroyed me) and I've been going through everything Michael related, and recently have been looking at Michael fan art, and I've realized that almost every fanart where he's with someone else he's oddly tall? Like, this isn't hate towards the artists, they're out here doing the gods work drawing minor characters, but it leads me to wonder if people really realize how small Michael truly is.

Michael's described as being four foot six, and while one could technically try and argue that Percy is an unreliable narrator and is estimating Michael's height, there is quite a bit of evidence on the contrary. Michael is one of, if not the only person who Percy gives an exact height to; even Annabeth, Percy just describes as being tall, never giving the reader an exact height. Besides, Percy's description of Michael is as followed, "Michael stood four feet six, with another two feet of attitude." If Percy were estimating, or even exaggerating, he'd probably use a preposition in his sentence. So, it's safe to say that Percy is 100% certain of Michael's height (which does leave the question how Percy's so certain of this fact, but we'll never know that, as much as I wish we did.)

I know most countries don't use feet, and as someone who read the U.S. edition, I cannot be positive, but I'd assume if other dialects of English, or different languages, had their prints, it would be in what's common there (probably centimeters?) But if not, here's a conversion chart for everyone:

4ft 6in = 4.5 ft = 54 in = 137.16 cm = 1.37 m

Okay, so we all know how objectively small Michael is, but how does that compare to other people? It's difficult sometimes to make such comparisons between two characters, so I found a height comparision thing to show the height difference. As you, hopefully, can see, the first picture I put Michael (4'6" or 137.16cm) next to Percy (who's about 6' or 182.88 cm). And the second, Michael next to Coach Hedge (5') because his height is made explicit in heroes of olympus, while Percy's is just a guesstimate.

Michael doesn't even reach Percy's shoulder in height, despite the two being the same age, or Michael being older (which I genuinely believe: see my previous post about Michael). Even with Hedge, who people comment on how small he is, has a noticeable few inches on Michael, who reaches to probably about his nose or upper lip.

Now, mostly Michael is drawn with the other Apollo boys, and I've rarely see a fanart where Will's taller than him. Maybe it's because Will is explicitly a few years younger than him (at minimum, 2½, at maximum, 5ish), or maybe not, I'm not sure.

According to the wikipedia page, Will Solace is 6', but again, we take everything on the wikipedia page with a grain of salt, because Will is just described as tall in the books, specifically in Heroes of Olympus where Will would be about 14 or 15 (though, this is also a bit iffy. I could write a whole thesis on Will's age, specifically how I believe Apollo's description of Will's age is overexaggerated in THO, but that's for another post). Using this math, Will would have been approximately 13 to 14 when Michael kicked the bucket. The average height for a 13 year old boy is 5'1" to 5'5", meaning, if Will's height were truly above average, he'd be, at minimum, 11 inches taller than his brother in TLO, which is:

Even if the fanart is depicted a young Will like starting it camp, there is no plausable way for him to be taller than Michael.

Here's a chart for average heights of a white boy (while we do not know Michael's ethnicity, this chart is easiest to show). The red dot is Michael's height in The Last Olympian, if he were 16, and the yellow dot is Will's approximate height, at 13.

If you were to graph out Michael's height, it'll be pretty obvious that the only ages he's taller than Will is when he's really really young (I study neither biology nor math, so I couldn't be bothered to actually figure out the formula, but maybe I will someday) if Michael grew at an average rate. If his growth was normal until about ten and then was stunted, that would be a different story, but we, as readers, will never truly know the reason.

I might not be a bio or math major, but I do double major in creative writing and psychology, and that means I'm interested in why Michael is drawn taller in comparision to who he's with. And for this I have a few theories.

The first one, which I mentioned a bit ago in this post, is age. People percieve being taller as being older—though once you reach adulthood this becomes less infallible, though since they are kids that doesn't matter much—meaning if Michael were drawn his actual height, he'd be percieved as younger. While I'm not positive, I have an inkling this stems from ableism, but I have no proof to back up that claim.

My second theory is that, much like the fact that many people in the fandom say Connor and Travis are twins even though it is explicitly stated they are not, people genuinely forgot. Or one person said something, and it snowballed from there.

My third and final theory is that people just can't fully comprehend the height difference in their mind. I struggle with creating mental images, and it's possible that many other people do.

It's interesting to think about, really. And I'd really like to know if other people noticed this, or if I'm just overthinking everything again.

[hypewinter]

Conner is the only stable clone of Superman. Therefore the scientists over at Cadmus decide to clone him in the hopes that they'll have most success in their cloning.

They are indeed successful.... kinda. You see while they can produce more stable clones more often, seeing as these are clones of a clone, they're not that strong. They're all basically just slightly stronger than the average human. Except one clone who shows a lot of promise. Too bad he runs away before they can start training him. (They never expected the clone to prematurely wake up in the tank and escape).

That clone ends up becoming, you guessed it, Daniel Fenton. He doesn't know he's a clone and promptly forgets about his 5 minutes trapped in a strange facility as he adopts his new identity. Life goes on, he becomes a ghost, battles other ghosts and gets cloned by the local fruitloop. Enter Ellie. She is now the clone of a clone of clone. Cloneception if you will.

The reason she's constantly destabilizing is because she's so far removed from the original that her cells are physically degraded. Think of it like cells that have been divided for way too long and have become cancerous and/or tumorous. The ectoplasm in her blood just keeps healing her body at the same rate as the degradation but it's constantly needing to be replenished. If she wants to live a truly stable life she would need to get a DNA sample from the original.

[carronpatrick]

Haven't found this here yet, so I wanted to share it with some links for education.

Found it from-

Twitter post by OmarSShakir

IG Post by visualizing_palestine

Created by-

AAANY (Arab American Association of New York)

Gaza Is Palestine

[thegreatyin]

this nemesis ambition started out a little slow but I am getting closer to finding that bastard who killed my wife, and I’ll not rest a minute now that im far closer to on his trail

sorry got in character for a second

Anyways fun ambition so far very fucked up though

congratulations on joining the murder club anon!!!! depending on who you ask the name refers to either people who have murdered or people who have witnessed murder. usually both. actually extremely often both. it's a swell time you'll feel right at home (don't mind our collective skyglass knife collection in the back)

[repmet]

Ngl, despite my apprehension (i.e. I'm old and cynical), I'm interested to see what they do with the Red, White & Royal Blue sequel partly since I know in the book bonus chapter, Henry gives up his title - I haven't actually read it so idk if he's actually described as 'abdicating' or fandom just decided to use that term (which is not exactly correct).

But the book lacks a lot of accuracy around the British Royal family where as the movie put in a bit more effort (e.g. Henry's Mum being Duchess of Edinburgh not Princess of Wales) and since in the United Kingdom, Henry can't step out of the line of succession without an Act of Parliament which isn't an insignificant thing, I wonder if the movie will focus on that or if it will gloss over it or just go in a brand new direction entirely for a new audience who aren't familiar with the book.

Personally, I hope for the latter partially because the parallels to certain real life royals would get distracting but mostly because I'd love to see Henry use the position he once felt suffocated by to advocate for and empower others.

Though being honest, I'm mostly just hoping they don't fall into the romance sequel trope of breaking them up to get them back together again.

To be clear though, in real life I think the entire monarchy should be abolished - but in this gay little movie world I have other thoughts :)

[s1ndle]

Unique PC Appearances for Console Sims

6 months later and I have another bit of fun about The Sims for Console! And with a weird title to boot!

If you want to see more, read below!

In my previous post I had mentioned that I was able to open the .IFF files for the sims themselves. The reason that I was able to do that in the first place was because the console version and the PC version are, for all intents and purposes, the same game!

In fact, you can take sim .IFF files from the console version, plop them into the PC version, and they will function flawlessly! Except for their appearances…

In the PC version of Create-A-Sim, you were only able to change the whole head and whole body. But the console version featured a much more elaborate system, with the player being able to change the sim’s hair, face, and clothing independently, as well as do other things like change the color, as well as add and remove accessories at will.

The PC version uses a resource within a sim’s .IFF to keep track of their appearance, these are called bodystrings. 

Sims from the console version still have this resource within their .IFF as well! However because the sims’ appearances are vastly different between the two versions, the bodystrings inside a console sim’s .IFF go unseen. However when a sim from the console version is forcibly brought into the PC version, these previously unseen bodystrings can be seen! But most sims, like the GOTH family pictured above, use a set of default heads and bodies for their respective age groups, see below.

However! There are a few exceptions to this rule, and a handful of sims have uniquely defined appearances in their body strings, despite never being used by the game. So… here they are!

Freeplay Sims:

Interestingly enough, only the unused sims get to have unused unique PC bodystrings. Not even Betty Newbie!

Get a Life Sims:

Some interesting notes and observations about these appearances though:

They don't correlate to their proper appearances within the console version, like at all. They also only use light skin for whatever reason, not sure why. I do think it's a little funny that BETTY ROOMIES ended up with the same head that Betty Newbie from the PC version uses though! I also find it to be rather interesting that several sims use heads or bodies from the House Party Expansion Pack, what, if anything, that means though, I don't know.

As mentioned before, every other sim, apart from these select 17 sims use the same bodystrings. Even the duplicates of the Get a Life sims that exist within the neighborhood used for Bonus Game lots don't have this quirk.

I'm honestly not sure why these are even a thing. They could potentially be early development leftovers, but what purpose they served, if any at all, is a mystery to me.

[crowned-ladybug]

I wanted to draw my own take on ART-as-a-presence-in-the-feed but struggled with what path to take for A While bc all I had was that I was adamant about a winding, serpentine body, too large to take in at once and So Good at piling upon your shoulders with weight that's either overwhelming or comforting, take your pick

And then I brought in the hexagons and everything just worked

(They let me give it a face without an actual face, make for a good shorthand to show that it's talking/present in potential future art, and as a bonus serve as an homage to JWST bc hey, science!)

Partially brought to you by a whole lot of listening to Satellite by Starset

[reality-detective]

Compare Biden and Kamala’s entrance into Shanksville Firehall VS Trump’s entrance into the Firehall!!!!

Biden/Harris: Crickets

Trump: LOUD CHEERS!! 🤔

[organized-chaotic-disaster]

(Repost due to a misunderstanding on the final date to collect data)

Hey everyone! Feeling good about our bodies can be tough with societal pressure. I’m researching how social media impacts body image. If you’re 18 years or older, join our survey to help us understand! It’s quick and anonymous. Click the link below to participate.

Please share this post to help us get more responses!

Thank you!

[Link to the survey here! Survey closes on April 2nd, 2024]

[healingheartdogs]

A lot of liberals use the words "liberal" and "leftist" interchangeably and then act like the world is ending and lose their shit when an actual leftist says totally normal not even radical actual leftist things because they don't realize that liberals are actually right wing, including themselves.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

it’s so wild how there’s still people who say c!dream wasn’t obsessed with c!tommy like. like you do realise that’s fundamentally just saying c!dream isn’t abusive with extra steps right. like abuse isn’t just a Bad Person Thing that people do for no reason it is in fact part of a mindset. abuse comes from entitlement and possessiveness like abusers feel like they're owed whatever they want from their victims whenever they want it and any time they’re not being actively controlled is theft of something that rightfully belongs to them. that’s like the fundamental thing that Makes an abuser. and that counts as obsession in my fucking books. like either you’re saying c!dream isn’t an abuser in a convoluted way or you’re arguing he did it for literally no reason which is like. that is worse. you know that causing pain onto people when you believe they don’t deserve it and know you’re causing severe psychological damage is in fact even more one note evil villain than the psychology of abusers that exists In Real Life right.