#Sylvain data mining

[faroreswinds]

Data Mining Activities & Quotes Analysis: Sylvain

As per what I said before, I want to look deeper into data mining for funsies and just see what I can spot. 

Today’s character is: Sylvain! 

As a little disclaimer, I won’t be doing all his quotes because that’s a LOT! Instead, I’m just going to focus on stuff I think is interesting to look at, like particular classroom questions, or his lost items, or whatever. One day, I’ll probably get into the chapters individually but today is just to focus on one character. I’ll also update this as I find more stuff, as a small heads-up. If you find something that I missed, feel free to let me know and I’ll update the post as well.

Ok, so let’s get into it!

Check out more from this series of analysis here. They will be updated over time.  

Basics- Battle

Most of the battle quotes aren’t interesting, and the data mining does not include the voiced lines without text so I had to turn to the wiki page. That said, there were a few Post Time Skip Defeat the Enemy quotes he says I find particularly interesting:

"Don't bother haunting me."

"Burn until we meet again."

Based on Annette’s support with Claude, we know the Kingdom has a particularly interesting view on the afterlife. I won’t go into the details here- instead, I will be making a Kingdom focused page for all things cultural that will cover it- but the talk of “burning” and “haunting” go along with their beliefs. 

Not to mention, it is very, very dark. And Sylvain, despite his carefree attitude, has got a dark and gritty view of life. He’s smiling on the outside, but he will have no qualms with taking you down. 

Basics- Cooking and Choir

Sylvain just has no interest in either of these things, as per his quotes: 

Cooking Together

Part I: Cooking... Cooking... Heh. Well, it'll all work out somehow...maybe.

Part II: If you just follow the recipe, most things will come out fine. I think.

Choir Practice

It's hard to sneak out when the professor is watching.

Share a Meal- Dining Dialogue

Sylvain only has two people he has quotes with during meal time: Ingrid and Dimitri. Surprisingly, not Felix, despite having an ending with him and not an ending with Dimitri. His quotes with Ingrid are just cute, but I think his quotes with Dimitri have some nice little insights:

Support C

Sylvain: You know what, Professor? His Highness here is the most stubborn guy I know.

Dimitri: Now, Sylvain, why not go ahead and eat? If you do not, I may help myself to it.

Support B

Sylvain: By the way, how delicious are the monastery meals, right? We sure don't eat like this back in the Kingdom.

Dimitri: I agree. If we could only grow more food on our poor soil, and in the severe winter of the north...

Sylvain has a lot of quotes, including from FEH and from his support with Dimitri, that pertain to wanting Dimitri to relax (and that he’s too stubborn to). This goes hand in hand with the relationship chart that came out from Nintendo Dream some time back:

I wish I could link this picture to the original translator, but I don’t know who did it. But as you can see, Sylvain wants Dimitri to relax. 

The quotes from support B gives some insight into the Kingdom, about how they just don’t eat like they do at the monastery because the winter of the north is so severe and it’s hard to grow food.

Sylvain’s default responses aren’t particularly interesting, except for:

Neutral: I realized it after I got to the monastery—nobody in Faerghus knows how to cook.

Basically saying that the food at the monastery is particularly good. This goes well with Faerghus having poor yields of food in general. 

Share a Meal- Favorite/ Least Favorite Foods

Sylvain seems to have a pension for fish, as based on his favorite foods. Nearly every dish he loves is fish based, except for one with is a meal for two dish (obviously a philandering thing), a few white meat dishes, and the Sweet Bun Trio, which is a Faerghus sweet. Except for the Sweet Bun Trio, all his favorites have meat, which makes sense because colder climates tends to lend to meat dishes to maintain the calories needed to maintain body heat. The dishes with fish include Teutates Loach (a fish from the Kingdom), White Trout, Airmid Pike, and Albinean Herring.

He has few dishes he doesn’t like, which all happen to be seafood based except for one. The fish meals are not described as particularly tasty, or they are extremely simple without much preparation. The only non-fish meal he doesn’t like is the Beast Meat Teppenyaki, which is described to have a wilderness taste- and he probably doesn’t like it due to history he may have with his brother. 

Interestingly, he doesn’t seem to have an interest in Gautier Cheese Gratin, which has cheese from his region. 

Gifts and Lost Items

Sylvain, of course, does have some items/like certain gifts that pertain to the philanderer in him. These include:

Gift: Dapper Handkerchief-  A handkerchief adorned with refined embroidery. Appreciated by fashionable men .

Lost Item: Unused Lipstick- Lipstick that would make an ideal gift for a young lady. It probably belongs to someone who likes wooing women.

Lost Item: Crumpled Love Letter- A carelessly discarded love letter. It probably belongs to someone with a complicated love life.

Sylvain clearly takes an interest in fashion, as well as his womanizing ways leaking into his lost items. We can see his casual nature when it comes to wooing the girls with the fact that the lost letter is “carelessly discarded”. 

But the rest of the gifts/ lost items paint Sylvain’s other side:

Gift: Landscape Painting- A landscape painting of magnificent Lake Teutates in the clearing fog. Appreciated by those who enjoy nature or art.

Gift: Board Game- A fun activity in which players compete using stones on a board. Appreciated by those who enjoy tactical thinking.

Lost Item: The History of Sreng- A book recording the history of the Sreng people. It probably belongs to someone who has ties to Sreng.

Despite his carefree side, many of us know that Sylvain is actually incredibly smart and takes an interest in making positive changes and taking his job seriously. The board game shows he enjoys tactical thinking, and his lost item, the History of Sreng, shows he is taking an interest in local politics and is keen to learn. As for the Landscape Painting, we can see that Sylvain enjoys art (as you will see later), and that he’s not all about women and lazing about. 

As for his disliked gifts:

Gift: Book of Crest Designs- A book containing the designs of 21 identified Crests. Appreciated by those who enjoy studying Crests.

Gift: Watering Can- A tool used for watering plants. Appreciated by those who enjoy gardening.

Gift: Floral Adornment- Flowers cut short so they can be worn decoratively. Appreciated by most ladies and those who like gardening.

Obviously, thanks to Sylvain’s history, disliking Crest-related gifts is no surprise. However, he also doesn’t seem to have an interesting in gardening, as he is not keen on the gardening-related gifts. 

Classroom- Instruct

Sylvain has three study requests:

You know, jousting is a popular sport in Faerghus. The ladies love a guy who can joust. Speaking of... Let's polish up my riding and lance skills.

The best way to impress people is to save them by diving into harm's way. That's what a Great Knight does, yeah? So let's focus on my axe and heavy armor skills.

I want to study reason and faith. What, surprised? Hey, I may be rough around the edges, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate a little magic!

We learn a few things from these:

Jousting is popular in Faerghus. Makes sense for a knight-based nation. 

Sylvain seemingly wants to impress people by diving in harm’s way. But based on his general attitude, I think he really actually wants to just protect people and is pretending it’s all about the ladies. 

Sylvain wants to learn magic, both faith and reason. 

He also does not liked to be consoled- he wants critique to improve himself. 

Critique

Part I & Part II: I'll have to do better next time.

Console

Part I & Part II: OK. You can stop it.

Classroom- Questions and Answers

Sylvain has two questions he can ask in the classroom: 

This is from the academy phase, and we can see that Sylvain prefers it if you tell him to basically play hard to get. There are some interesting things regarding Ingrid’s dislike here, but this is about Sylvain... and apparently, he doesn’t want to change and doesn’t like it if you tell him to clean up his act. (Ingrid likes it, though). 

This one is from part two. Of course, it pertains to the war, and how depressing it is, and wants something to do to feel a bit better. Funnily enough, the other infamous nobles Ferdinand and Lorenz join him for this one! We can see they all have different tastes, but Sylvain is not interested in a cup of tea, but would rather ask out a girl. He’s not against talking a walk though, but no one seems to actually like it either. 

There are other questions that Sylvain joins in on, but I will add those when I eventually get to them. For now, I will just start with these two and update later. 

Group Tasks

Similar to the dining dialogue, Sylvain only has quotes with Dimitri and Ingrid, and not Felix despite having an ending with him. That said, Sylvain has more dialogue with Ingrid than Dimitri, so we will start with Dimitri first:

Stable Duty & Sky Watch

Support C

Sylvain: So, Your Highness, you're gonna keep the scolding to a minimum, yeah?

Dimitri: Why are you assuming you will be scolded? All you need to do is take things seriously.

Support B

Dimitri: Hey, Sylvain. I would like your help for today's work.

Sylvain: Heh, so you've finally learned you can't do everything yourself?

Results

Support C - Good

Sylvain: Professor... It's... It's finally over...

Dimitri: You are quick to tire out, Sylvain. You should consider building your stamina.

Support C - Perfect

Dimitri: Professor, the work is now complete. Sylvain did his job as well.

Sylvain: Was getting yelled at my job? Because, yeah. I did that.

Support B - Good

Sylvain: The result was fine... Though I thought we could have aimed even higher.

Dimitri: Agreed. Let's come up with a better plan next time.

Support B - Perfect

Sylvain: Professor, don't you think we did pretty well? His Highness here did most of it.

Dimitri: No, it was not all my doing. We made it thanks to your help, Sylvain.

These occur only when you pair them for stable duty and sky watch, which would be both activities the pair would find common interests in due to their personal budding talents and canon classes. We can see that Dimitri wants Sylvain to take things seriously, and Sylvain takes a more playful approach. Sylvain will also comment on Dimitri learning to not shoulder everything on his own, calling back a bit to Sylvain’s concern over Dimitri not being able to relax. 

Sylvain seems to be annoyed early on at Dimitri’s constant scolding, but this changes when their support improves, the two of them praising each other and hoping to improve together. 

Now for Ingrid:

Stable Duty & Sky Watch

Support C

Sylvain: Ugh, I'm with Ingrid? I'm not gonna get away with anything.

Ingrid: Stop messing around and get moving. You don't work, you don't eat.

Support B

Sylvain: Hey, Ingrid, this kind of work is definitely your thing, and I've got some urgent business, so...

Ingrid: I can't finish this all alone. Try to be helpful sometimes, Sylvain.

Support A

Sylvain: Me and Ingrid? Hm, I guess I'll get to work.

Ingrid: Well now, a rare and welcome proclamation. You're a real sight to behold when you try to be.

Weeding

Sylvain: Weeds have it tough. They sprout then get ripped right out of the ground. I'll do my best to be gentle.

Ingrid: Are you seriously trying to seduce a weed? Unbelievable.

Sylvain: What? No! Come on. I was just talking to myself.

Clearing Rubble

Sylvain: If I had to clear this out by myself, I think even I would get depressed...

Ingrid: Fine, fine, I'm not going to leave it all for you.

Sylvain: Let's do it quick though...before I change my mind. I'll grab the heavy-looking chunks. You get the rest.

Results

Support C - Good

Ingrid: Ah, seems we've finally finished.

Sylvain: That's it! I'm done! No more work for me, especially not with her...not in a million years.

Support C - Perfect

Sylvain: Hey, we did pretty well. All because I really went for it, of course.

Ingrid: You're a glib one, aren't you, Sylvain? I did the bulk of the work here, you know...

Support B - Good

Sylvain: I wouldn't call it a rousing success, but it went OK, all things considered. Right?

Ingrid: Well, it went OK once I rolled up my sleeves and helped you.

Support B - Perfect

Sylvain: Heh... How's that, Professor? If ya ask me, I think we did pretty well.

Ingrid: Yes, Sylvain put his back into it for once. Next thing we know, pigs will be taking to the air.

Support A - Good

Sylvain: I don't want to complain since we did OK and all, but that could have gone a lot better.

Ingrid: I think so too... Next time, I'll try even harder.

Support A - Perfect

Ingrid: Professor, here's the report. Perfect, don't you think?

Sylvain: Ingrid and I go way back. If we couldn't manage to cooperate, then what would that say about us?

Sylvain and Ingrid have dialogue no matter what they do. We can see, especially in the stable and sky watch, that at first they don’t really get along. Sylvain is tired of Ingrid’s pestering and Ingrid is tired of Sylvain being lazy. But as their support goes up, we see that they get along better. Ingrid starts praising Sylvain, and Sylvain starts putting more effort in.

Sylvain also seems to be a bit melancholy about the weeds, noting that they start to take life before someone takes takes it away from them. 

Finally, just some fun default stuff. 

Uses keigo when speaking to

Byleth, Edelgard, Dimitri, Seteth, Hanneman, Manuela, Gilbert, Alois, Catherine, Shamir, Jeralt, Rhea, Jeritza, Anna

Spoken to with keigo by

Bernadetta, Dorothea, Petra, Ashe, Ignatz, Lysithea, Marianne, Flayn, Constance

“Keigo” is polite speech, used when addressing people who are in a station in life above you, whether in title or simply out of respect. For instance, he uses keigo for those who are older than him and teachers, like Manuela and Hanneman, and for those who are in higher stations, like Dimitri or Edelgard. 

Those who speak keigo to him consider him of higher status, or someone worthy of respect. Looking at this list, I would say status. 

Tea Party- Favorite Tea

The Tea Party is a pretty big section, so I won’t cover everything but I’ll try to touch on what seems important. Feel free to let me know if you notice more! 

Anyways, Sylvain seems to have a pension for black teas, although not all black teas listed in the game. He prefers Bergamot Tea (commonly known as Earl Grey) which is popular among nobles (he shares this like with Edelgard, Lorenz, Hanneman, Constance, and Anna, most of whom are nobles, and in particular are nobles with particular taste) and Seiros Tea, another black tea that is actually from south Almyra, interestingly enough! He shares this like with Ferdinand, Lorenz, Ignatz, Yuri, and Anna. Both of these teas have a three star rarity- not the cheapest tea in the list, but not terribly rare either. 

He will note that the tea is expensive if you give him an expensive tea, and perhaps seems a bit uncomfortable with you going out of your way.

This tea must have been expensive. I'm sorry if I made you go out of your way.

Tea Party- Talk

Sylvain has a number of quotes from talking, although most of them aren’t too terribly interesting. However, some have some great insight: 

Is something wrong with my face? A bruise on my cheek? Heh... Nah, Professor. Everything's fine.

Everyone has their own reason to fight. At least I'm honest about mine.

Opera, art, literature, I love 'em. They always give you something to talk about.

Sometimes, I'm surprised how warm the monastery is. I wish my parents' home was like this.

Sylvain is an interesting guy because in some ways, he’s not honest and in others, he is. For instance, he insists that you do not worry about his injury. Don’t worry about him. He’s not being honest about any pain he has- this includes his distastes for a lot of women chasing him despite his philandering. However, he is honest in others in his world views. He’s a lot like Dimitri when it comes to trying to see the other side, as seen in “everyone has their own reason to fight”. This is displayed in his other quotes throughout the game too, although we won’t be touching on those. 

As as per the gift of art he likes, we can see here that he’s actually very much into culture and art. He likes them, and likes to talk about them. 

And finally, some insight into his family. Sylvain’s relationship with his father is complex (as per the Blue Lion tradition) and here we can see that he doesn’t view his family home as warm- both perhaps literally in that it’s a cold climate, and figuratively. 

I won’t be going over the like options because there are too many, but I will take note of a few options that make him blush:

Working together...

The opera...

Cute monks...

Some insight things into Sylvain. Obviously, as he likes the opera, the topic of it will be among his favorite. Sylvain likes people working together (although he himself is a bit of a loner, he wants people to work together and talk things through like Dimitri does) and finally, the cute monks... 

I’m taking special note of that because in English, traditionally monks are male. However, the game seems to use monks for both men and women (monks in Greek can be used for both), and the Japanese word used instead is 修道士. Someone with superior Japanese can correct me, but it would seem that this is a masculine word, used for men, especially when using the kanji  士, which means “gentlemen” or “samurai”. 

However, as stated before, the game uses monk for both men and women. I checked the files and even the female monks use  修道士. So, while people claim this is proof he is bi, I would not call it a strong indicator personally (At this time I still think he has a thing for Felix, don’t get me wrong). 

Advice Box

Part I

I wonder if I'll ever find a partner who understands I don't mean any harm when I flirt with others. Does someone like that really exist?

You're bound to meet someone open-minded someday.

That's a dream that will never come true.

Have you considered giving up on flirting?

I'm hesitant to invite a girl to my room in the middle of the night with You Know Who living right next door. I'm terrified of the scolding I'd get the next day.

Maybe I'll rethink the room assignments.

It makes sense that she would be angry with you.

Perhaps it's time you and I discussed your behavior.

Part II

I'm weary from this ceaseless fighting. I wonder if I'll ever meet a kind, beautiful young lady who can cure my hardened heart.

You will one day. I'm sure of it.

Save the dreams for when you're sleeping.

A woman like that wouldn't go for you.

All we do is battle. The fighting never stops, and it's turning everyone's disposition dour. Even the ladies! We should throw a banquet to lift everyone's spirit.

Good idea. I'll see what I can do.

It's too soon to let down our guard.

How selfless of you.

Part I notes aren’t too interesting, other than that Sylvain is worried about Dimitri (his neighbor in dorms) hearing his rendezvous with the ladies and getting a scolding. 

Part II is more interesting. Sylvain’s second note is about lifting up everyone’s spirits regarding the war, and that throwing a banquet might help make everyone feel better. He prefers if Byleth agrees and will start to make arrangements, rather than getting praise for his selflessness. 

And for now, that’s all! I will update as I go, but for now I hope you enjoyed this!

Suggestions and new info welcome. 

[tinnictheguardian]

Blue Lions: Byleth vs Shez *spoilers*

Let's be clear, Byleth was never a 100% fan favourite as many people thought of her as nothing more than a self-insert. While others, myself included, felt that she came with too many pre-defined traits to be a self-insert. I mean, she had Jeralt! That alone pretty much put her in a different category to other silent protagonists, for example, every Elder Scroll PC!

However, just on account of being full-voiced, Shez seems to have captured hearts and minds and is seen as more of their own character than Byleth. Indeed, a lot of people have started saying Byleth was the worst part of FE3H. I disagree and I'll share my spoiler-filled, including data mined stuff, thoughts under the cut!

I think it's pretty clear by now that Three Hopes is a different lens on the War phase of Three Houses. The spoilers have indicated that the War phase is unlikely to be significantly different to Three Houses because apparently, Azure Gleam has a fight with the hegemon. This makes sense because the majority of the complaints people had for Three Houses did revolve around the war phase.

Shez is allowing for more factional insight in relation to the War. Looking at the Blue Lion C-support with Shez, they are all about how the Lions relate to each other and their culture. Felix talks about how well he knows his three friends. Ingrid gives Shez a crash course in Kingdom nobility. Rodrigue talks about the adaptations the Kingdom has had to make due to their geography and landscape. While Sylvain is about the worry he voices in passing that the crests are failing and one day soon, relics will just be something to look at and can't be used to defend people.

However, the flip side of this is that there is a pretty severe case of the "no new friends" thing happening with the Blue Lions. Now, this might be patched later and there is evidence that some characters from opposition factions can be recruited into your own camp. But as things stand, the Blue Lions can be divided into an in-group of the Fearghus four of Dimitri, Felix, Ingrid and Sylvain, and an out-group of Dedue, Ashe, Annette and Mercedes.

Ashe and Mercedes are adopted members of the Fearghus high or at least wealthy (in the case of Mercedes's adopted merchant father). While Dedue is a man of Duscar. Annette is interesting in that she is a crest-bearing noble of the kingdom but due to Gustava not bringing his daughter to work and her uncle's loyalty not being firm on account of bordering the Empire, she's not part of the core Fearghus group and Duke Felix Fraldarius has to treat her as a political calculus and not just be charmed by her songs.

As a result, A-support between the in-group and the out-group are somewhat lacking. Felix, for example, doesn't have an A-support with Annette or Mercedes. He had one with both in Three Houses. Sylvain's only outgroup A-support is with Ashe, which he didn't have in Three House but he loses his A-support with Annette and Mercedes. Ingrid does not gain any new A-supports, but she preserves her out-group A-support with Ashe and Dedue. But even Dimitri loses his out-groups A-support with Annette!

For me, Byleth was a justified Corrin in that she seemed to be loved and adored by her students but it wasn't without justification as you got to witness how she went from an outsider to a beloved professor over the course of the year. So it made sense that she could bring together people from diverse backgrounds and mould them into a coherent whole around her.

Now I maintain that despite how amazing Byleth was, it doesn't make sense that Ingrid, Sylvain and even Felix would side with her over the Kingdom in Crimson Flower. But you can make a good case that Byleth as a professor emphasised her students follow their own ideas and not be bound by their background, as highlighted by the C and B supports she can have with her students in the Academy phase. So it makes sense that even Kingdom students might choose to trust their professor despite their own misgivings.

The same is not true of Shez so far. Shez is becoming part of whatever group she chooses to support. Byleth in SS, VW and AM had her own faction in that she was a representative of the Church and to an extent, that was the problem. Byleth had power but the mechanics of the game meant she couldn't exercise the power the lore gave her. It didn't really matter as much in AM or CF because those were the Lords story but you really felt the lack of Byleth's agency in SS and VW, with VW not even being about the Lord.

So for those who wanted more of the Lords and to learn more about the mystery of the TWSITD, and here I am assuming we will get more answers about them, Hopes is great!

However, I don't think throwing Byleth under the bus is fair. She served a different purpose to Shez in Three Houses. She broke down cross-cultural barriers, that was, unfortunately, both her strength and her weakness - for those who wanted more of the culture of the Lords!

At any rate, I look forward to seeing what the full Three Hopes game brings!

[sciencespies]

Emperor penguins on pathway to 'quasi-extinction' this century, scientists warn

https://sciencespies.com/nature/emperor-penguins-on-pathway-to-quasi-extinction-this-century-scientists-warn/

Emperor penguins on pathway to 'quasi-extinction' this century, scientists warn

Emperor penguins thrive on Antarctica’s coastlines in icy conditions any human would find extreme.

Yet, like Goldilocks, they have a narrow comfort zone: If there’s too much sea ice, trips to bring food from the ocean become long and arduous, and their chicks may starve. With too little sea ice, the chicks are at risk of drowning.

Climate change is now putting that delicate balance and potentially the entire species at risk.

In a new study, my colleagues and I show that if current global warming trends and government policies continue, Antarctica’s sea ice will decline at a rate that would dramatically reduce emperor penguin numbers to the point that almost all colonies would become quasi-extinct by 2100, with little chance of recovering.

That’s why the US Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to list the emperor penguin as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. The proposal will be published in the Federal Register on 4 August 2021, starting a 60-day public comment period.

The greatest threat emperor penguins face is climate change. It will disrupt the sea ice cover they rely on unless governments adopt policies that reduce the greenhouse gases driving global warming.

Emperor penguins. (Sylvain Cordier/DigitalVision/Getty Images)

The US Endangered Species Act has been used before to protect other species that are primarily at risk from climate change, including the polar bear, ringed seal, and several species of coral, which are all listed as threatened.

Emperor penguins don’t live on US territory, so some of the Endangered Species Act’s measures meant to protect species’ habitats and prevent hunting them don’t directly apply.

Being listed under the Endangered Species Act could still bring benefits, though. It could provide a way to reduce harm from US fishing fleets that might operate in the region. And, with expected actions from the Biden administration, the listing could eventually pressure US agencies to take actions to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Marching toward extinction

I first saw an emperor penguin when I visited Pointe Géologie, Antarctica, during my Ph.D. studies. As soon as I set foot on the island, before our team unpacked our gear, my colleagues and I went to visit the emperor penguin colony located only a couple of hundred meters from the French research station – the same colony featured in the movie March of the Penguins.

We sat far away to observe them through binoculars, but after 15 minutes, a few penguins approached us.

People think that they are awkward, almost comical, with their hobbling gait, but emperors walk with a peaceful and serene grace across the sea ice. I can still feel them tugging on my shoelaces, their eyes flickering with curiosity. I hope my children and future generations have a chance to meet these masters of the frozen world.

Researchers have studied the emperor penguins around Pointe Géologie, in Terre Adélie, since the 1960s. Those decades of data are now helping scientists gauge the effects of anthropogenic climate change on the penguins, their sea ice habitat and their food sources.

The penguins breed on fast ice, which is sea ice attached to land. But they hunt for food within the pack ice – sea ice floes that move with the wind or ocean currents and may merge. Sea ice is also important for resting, during their annual molt and to escape from predators.

The penguin population at Pointe Géologie declined by half in the late 1970s when sea ice declined and more male emperor penguins died, and the population never fully recovered from massive breeding failures – something that has been occurring more frequently.

To assess whether the emperor penguin could qualify for protection under the Endangered Species Act, the US Fish and Wildlife Service encouraged an international team of scientists, policy experts, climate scientists and ecologists to provide research and projections of the threats posed by climate change to emperor penguins and their future survival.

Every colony will be in decline by 2100

Emperor penguins are adapted to their current environment, but the species has not evolved to survive the rapid effects of climate change that threaten to reshape its world.

Decades of studies by an international team of researchers have been instrumental in establishing the need for protection.

Seminal research I was involved in in 2009 warned that the colony of Pointe Géologie will be marching toward extinction by the end of the century. And it won’t just be that colony.

My colleagues and I in 2012 looked at all known emperor penguin colonies identified in images from space and determined that every colony will be declining by the end of the century if greenhouse gases continue their current course.

We found that penguin behaviors that might help them adapt to changing environmental conditions couldn’t reverse the anticipated global decline.

Major environmental shifts, such as the late formation and early loss of the sea ice on which colonies are located, are already raising the risk.

A dramatic example is the recent collapse of Halley Bay, the second-largest emperor penguin colony in Antarctica. More than 10,000 chicks died in 2016 when sea ice broke up early. The colony has not yet recovered.

By including those extreme events, we projected that 98 percent of colonies will be extinct by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue their present course, and the global population will decline by 99 percent compared with its historical size.

Meeting the Paris goal could save the penguins

The results of the new study showed that if the world meets the Paris climate agreement targets, keeping warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees F) compared to pre-industrial temperatures, that could protect sufficient habitat to halt the emperor penguins’ decline.

But the world isn’t on track to meet the Paris Agreement. According to one estimate, by Climate Action Tracker, countries’ current policy pathways have a greater than 97 percent probability of exceeding 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F). With recent government announcements factored in, the increase is estimated to be around 2.4 degrees C (4.3 degrees F).

So it appears that the emperor penguin is the proverbial ‘canary in the coal mine’. The future of emperor penguins, and much of life on Earth, including humanity, ultimately depends upon the decisions made today.

Marine ecologist Philip Trathan of the British Antarctic Survey contributed to this article.

Stephanie Jenouvrier, Associate Scientist, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

#Nature

[iturbide]

Screw Edel I want more Claude! Hell IS gets free advertising from Joe Ziega, Claude's VA, via his videos and he even helped do a metal cover of God Shattering Star (he's apparently an opera singer??) So imo give my deer boy more love IS!

Oh like they’re ever going to do that.

Look, I love Claude. Claude is hands down my absolute favorite of the three Lords, and the Golden Deer are 100% my children -- there’s not a single Deer I don’t love with all my heart, even if I do take issue with some of their behavior (Hilda’s anti-Almyran prejudice and Lorenz being...Lorenz). So I am unrelentingly bitter about how he and the Golden Deer on the whole have been effectively passed over by IntSys.

Let’s take a look at the numbers, shall we?

3H Characters in Heroes, by House

Black Eagles: 10 (Edelgard x 4, Hubert, Ferdinand, Petra, Bernadetta, and Dorothea as a summer alt)

Blue Lions: 6 (Dimitri x 2, Annette, Mercedes, Ingrid as a summer alt, and Sylvain as a summer alt)

Golden Deer: 6 (Claude x 2, Lysithea x 2, Hilda, and Lorenz as a free summer alt)

Now, if we take out the CYL units since those are the only ones that players had a hand in, here’s the spread:

Black Eagles: 9 (Edelgard x 3, Hubert, Ferdinand, Petra, Bernadetta, and Dorothea as a summer alt)

Blue Lions: 5 (Dimitri, Annette, Mercedes, Ingrid as a summer alt, and Sylvain as a summer alt)

Golden Deer: 4 (Claude, Lysithea, Hilda, and Lorenz as a free summer alt)

IntSys hates my house, basically.

And call me a cynic, but I don’t expect them to change this up anytime soon. Early on after the 3H release, the Black Eagles were the most “popular” house based on the online data rankings. Edelgard beat Dimitri in CYL4 by a wide margin of 10k votes -- but she beat Claude out by a whopping 15k, and Lysithea barely got honorable mention after that. They are leaning hard on the Black Eagles’ popularity, and given that half of the summer units were Blue Lions, they seem to realize that their popularity with the fanbase is something worth mining while they try to pretend they don’t have a bias. But Lorenz really seemed to have been geared as a joke unit with that outfit, and the fact that they made him free rather than one of the gacha pulls -- even a 4-star one -- speaks volumes to me about how they intend to treat the Golden Deer.

I think Dimitri fans can safely expect him to get a Legendary, possibly even sometime this year or early next year before the second anniversary of Three Houses. I’m just hoping we get Legendary Claude before the damn game folds.

[gascon-en-exil]

It doesn't seem like the data mining resource is complete but its interesting that despite not having an ending with Dimitri, Sylvain has quote a bit of special quotes with him. I do think he's closer to Dimitri than most people believe. Dimitri even calls him "like a big brother" in the Japanese version.

My theory is that Dimitri’s male A supports highlight his two most important relationships, but that’s not to diminish the value of the other guys in his life. He and Sylvain definitely have a bond all their own.

Now someone write it as brocon.

[sicprowl]

The Fell-Star P2.3

The Fell-Star Series

Previous     AO3

{Ashe's Log} //FORMAT - TEXT// {DATE: ERA2 Ethereal Moon, 1184}

....................................................................

//LOCATION: KITCHEN//

……………………………………………………….

                                 LOG2

Subject

Girl

The Alien stands at 164cm - or about 5’5”

Weight???

Name unknown

Biology yet to be explored - see Mercedes

Light green hair with matching eyes (they glow?? How??  Why?)

Found on an Empire ship inside a strange egg orb

sample being looked at by Annette - note: don’t forget to visit later

Has a strange connection with the Prince’s Lance

Possibly knows what they are? Creators?  Original owners?

Takes very long baths

Likes kissing   Mute??

……………………………………………………….

”Why’d you cross that last one out?”

Ashe looked like he was about to have a heart attack when Sylvain appeared over his shoulder.  He watched the shorter boy fumble with his tablet, nearly dropping it before the red head caught it.

“A-Ah!   Sylvain!”  He reached up for his device - but the communications officer merely held it higher, reading over the data with a curious quirk of his brow.  Ashe frowned, “Can I have my notes back please?"

Sylvain grunted and began swiping through screens.  “Wow.  You’re really taking this research thing seriously.”

“Of course I am!”  The shorter boy managed to snatch his tablet back and held it close to his chest.

“This is probably the biggest discovery in history!”

“Mmhmm…”

Ashe narrowed his eyes at him, disbelief clear on his face.  “How can you not be excited about this?  It’s an alien!  There’s an alien on our ship!"

“Oh, I care.”  Sylvain shrugged as he glanced elsewhere.

The conversation wasn’t appealing to him anymore, more focused on the array of food set out on the counter top of their small kitchen.  Some of it were from instant packets - disgusting alternatives to real food (cheap too).  Others were various dried meats, rice, beans, and generally things that wouldn’t go bad when stored properly on the ship.  Their group had always preferred real food over the process stuff - maybe it was a Faerghus thing?

“I care about there being another pretty girl onboard~”

Ashe balked, “Sylvain!”

He gave Ashe a cheeky grin and slung an arm over his shoulders.  The communications officer ignored how the freckle-kissed boy tensed up, knowing he was a little too polite to brush him away like the others.   “Look.  Things have gotten real tense around here lately - you can’t blame a guy for getting a little excited, can you?"

“T-That’s not-!!  She isn’t-!!!”  Ashe turned pink while the grip on his tablet went white, “You can’t be serious!!”

Sylvain ignored the boy’s sputtering attempts at reprimanding him in favor of tapping the device’s screen, “Don’t forget to add ‘green fingernails’."

He blinked, “Huh?”

“ ’Green fingernails.’ ”  Sylvain repeated, using his forefinger to write it down.  It came out sloppy and bigger then the other notes on the list, but the red head was satisfied to be of help.  “She’s got these layered, green colored nails.  I guess it is a small thing to notice.”

Ashe looked up at him, brow furrowed and questioning.  The older male shrugged again, not really wanting to go into detail about how he always noticed those kinds of things when it came to girls.  They liked it when you complimented their looks so of course Sylvain would zero in on anything with color or make-up.  Hair was a bit harder; the slightest change was considered new to some girls and it could get a little frustrating.

“Just look at her hands the next chance you get - you’ll see what I mean.”

Sylvain abandoned the confused boy for Ingrid who was busy putting out as much food as she could fit on their dinky, stainless steel counter.  Plopping onto a stool, Sylvain looked over the array of food and whistled.   “Nice buffet you got going there.”

Ingrid shot him a dirty look when he spun one of the plates, watching the grey sludge wiggle suspiciously like jello.  “Don’t you have some place else to be?”

He gave her a noncommittal grunt, eyes trained on a tray of Sweet Bun Trio only for Ingrid to slap his hand away the moment he reached for one.  “Hey…”

“Those aren’t for you,” Ingrid huffed, ever immune to his pout and charming good looks.

Sylvain crossed his legs and slouched against the counter, eyes now trained on the entrance to the kitchen. “Where is the lady of the hour?  I thought she was done with the bath?”

Ingrid paused, eyes suspicious as to how the red head knew their guest was done with using the bathroom.  She almost questioned it, almost.  But she doubted Sylvain would tell her the truth anyways.  She’ll just have to keep an eye on him for now.

“Mercedes and Annette are helping her get some clothes,” she continued to place out more food before taking a step back with a nod.  It seemed like a good variety, so surely there was something here for the alien girl to eat.  “She can’t walk around in His Highness’ cloak all day."

A grin creeped onto his face as his hand reached for a sweet bun, “I’m sure His Highness would disagree~.”

She slapped him away, “No one asked for your opinion, Sylvain.”

It was at this moment the door to the kitchen slid open to reveal Annette and Mercedes, both standing on either side of their strange guest and talking to her despite the alien seemingly not listening.  Sylvain sat up and blinked, his gaze sliding over her new outfit with apprehension. A black top and shorts, both with boob and stomach window.  A corset to hold up her large chest, a bulky accessory of a falling star laying nicely in the center.  He looked down and noted the knee high boots and lace stockings.

“Are you sure you don’t want my opinion?” Sylvain gawked - wondering just what in the seven layers of icy hell she had on.  And why was she wearing the coat like that?  Did she rip holes in the sleeves??  No, this was too much.  He had to say something.  The red head sat up, giving the outfit an incredulous wave.  “I’m not exactly a fashionista but-"

“Look here, Sylvain!!”  Whoa. Annette was not having it today.  “Girls are built differently then men, okay?!  While you guys can share shirts and pants because your planks, us women have curves of all shapes and sizes and it makes shopping really, REALLY hard!”

The communications expert gave a nervous laugh and raised his hands, “I surrender!  Please, have mercy!”

Annette fumed, having been ready to defend the horrible outfit with her life.   It’s not their fault the poor girl was curvy in all the right places!   They had so much trouble finding the right sizes that the alien had almost slipped out of sight after they spent thirty minutes looking for pants.  It also didn’t help that they were all tired from storming that ship, and the adrenaline of finding an alien was keeping them all from getting any sleep.

Sylvain let her cool off before asking another question, unable to keep his curiosity in check as he stared at the green haired girl.  “So, whose stockings are those~?”

To his surprise, it was Ingrid that blushed - her gaze suddenly focused on organizing a plate of cut vegetables.  Suddenly, he was seeing his childhood friend in a new light.

“The boots are mine,” Annette pointed out.  “So is the tie.  The pants and coat are Ingrids and the tops belong to Mercedes.”

Sylvain’s eyes were suddenly on the alien’s chest, grin growing wide at how much perkier it looked with that tight corset on.  Ingrid smacked him upside the head before he could formulate a snarky comment, effectively rattling his brain enough to make him see the error of his ways.

“Anyways,” the blond clapped her hands together while her voice held the same tone she had when flying the ship.  “Let’s get started!”

“O-Oh, wait!”   Ashe fiddled with his tablet a moment before rushing to Ingrid’s side.   He held up the device and a tiny red light appeared on the back as it started to record.  “This is the starship Blue Lion with Officers Ingrid, Sylvain, Annette, Mercedes and Ashe.  Log input number three - subject - Food.”

“All right, Ashe.”  Ingrid made sure the alien was watching as she gestured towards the freckle faced boy.  She then looked to the other two girls.  “Mercedes, Annette,  are you ready?"

���Yes!” Annette grinned, taking the alien’s arm and tugging her towards the counter next to Sylvain.  The girl paused, as if suddenly remembering something.  “O-Oh!  Here you go, Ingrid."

Sylvain raised a brow when Ingrid nodded back, only to repeat the scientist’s name again.  He couldn’t help but feel like he was missing something here…

Once they got the alien situated next to Sylvain, Mercedes and Annette quickly gathered around for a closer look.  They all waited, watching the mint haired girl stare back with a neutral look.  Mercedes touched the woman’s back, causing the alien to turn and look at her gentle expression.

“It’s okay,” Mercedes encouraged.  “You can have anything you like.”

The communications rested his chin on his hand, watching the display with mild curiosity as the green eyed woman continued on with her blank stare.  If he was going to be honest, her face was a bit creepy.  There was never a clear expression there and whatever face she did make was sometimes so subtle that it was impossible to read.  Sylvain couldn’t help but be reminded of a porcelain doll the more he stared.  Her face was both sharp and smooth; beautiful and pearly under the certain lighting, yet also gave off an eerie feeling of the unnatural.

Green eyes suddenly looked back at him, startling him out of his thoughts with giant, grassy green orbs.  Sylvain swallowed, wondering if she was going to kiss him like she’d done to Dimitri.  That wouldn’t be so bad. Her lips looked pretty soft too.  Probably still moist and warm from her long lounge in the tub.  He bet they tasted good too - something exotic and sweet~.

Sylvain felt disappointed when she looked away to look over the buffet, now finding the grey jello stuff more interesting then him.  He ran a hand through his hair with a sigh, wondering why he even bothered coming here if she was just going to ignore him.  Why did any of them bother?  It’s not like she was trying to communicate with them.  Just what were they even getting out of this?

He was pulled out of his thoughts again when Ashe gasped.  The young engineer moved in closer with his camera and kept his eyes trained on the alien girl’s fingers as she palmed a lemon.  There against the bright contrast of yellow, just as Sylvain said, were the alien’s green fingernails.  They weren’t smooth and rounded like human nails.  More so they were layered like worn seashells, ridged and almost sharp looking as they faded from dark jade to lime, like soft watercolors.

Sylvain grinned when the younger male suddenly looked at him with excitement, pointing to her nails and nodding as if they were sharing an inside joke.  He snorted,  I guess seeing Ashe act like this is kind of worth it…

But their smiles were short lived when the alien placed the fruit back down to stare at them once again - silent, blank, creepy.

Mercedes looked at the others with worry, “What do we do?  She doesn’t even look interested in the food.”

Annette hummed, “Do we have anything else she might like?”

“Everything else we have has to be cooked,” Ingrid turned towards one of the tall, steel panels lining the wall.  She laid her palm flat against the surface and watched as the grey panel slowly turn translucent.  On the other side of the glass were shelves hidden behind a cold mist and ice that bordered the edges in tiny fractals.  Each of these shelves was some of their more expensive kitchen items - frozen meats, drinks, emergency supplies, and even alcohol - all stored away for special occasions like birthdays, holidays, suicide missions.

A blue circle of light formed around Ingrid’s palm as the glass collected the data from her hand-print.   Just a split second later, a series of charts and numbers scrolled down the glass, making the blonde gasp and try to hide it with her body.  “D-Don’t look!!”

Sylvain’s eyes lit up with interest when he stood from his seat.  “Was that your weight?!  You eat way more then that!!”

“Sylvain!”  Ingrid stepped away from the panel when cool air hissed out around the edges. Thankfully her health charts were gone so she didn’t have to hide all that anymore (who’s bright idea was it to take that setting off private?).  The pilot pulled open the panel, cold mist puffing against her cheeks as she grabbed a packet of ground beef and a herring.

“Okay, which one of these-!!“ Ingrid jumped in surprise when the alien girl was suddenly at her side, her eyes wide and staring hard at the frozen fish.  “O-Oh!  Do you want this?” The woman was practically drooling when she snatched the fish out of poor Ingrid’s hands.  Ashe suddenly yelled at her to wait, but the alien had already chomped down on the fish’s middle before dropping the frozen creature in shock.   Mouth gaping and hands up as if she’d been burned, the woman looked around at them in confusion.  Sylvain couldn’t help but laugh while Ingrid hurriedly picked the herring up.

“L-Let’s thaw it out first and then you can eat it, okay?”

But the alien showed no signs of understanding, merely held her hands to her mouth to touch her wiggling pink tongue.

“At least we know she likes fish,” Annette giggled along with Ingrid who placed the herring in a device above the stove.  The blonde input a few numbers before starting the defroster and looking to the rest of the crew.  Her eyes landed on the medical expert with a curious look.

“Do you think we should cook it, Mercedes?”

“Oh,” the other woman frowned thoughtfully, “Well…Ingrid, it seemed she was ready to eat it whether it was cooked or not.”

“Good point, Mercedes."

“Okay,” Sylvain’s face screwed up as annoyance bubbled up in his chest.  “What are you guys doing??  Why are you repeating each other’s names???"

Ingrid quickly rounded on him, “Just butt out, Sylvain.”

“Yeah, Sylvain!”  Annette added with a huff, “Butt out!”

The red head looked between them with wide eyes and wondered if he was in some bizarre nightmare.  “S-Stop that!!”

Sylvain was thankful when the defroster finished with a ding, a puff of mist spilling out once it’s door popped open.  They waited as the cloud evaporated before them, revealing the same fish they’d put inside, except no longer frozen.  It’s scales shimmered beneath the device’s tiny spotlight like it was freshly caught from the lakes of Faerghus; a sight that didn’t go unnoticed by their alien friend as she sidled close.  Ingrid grabbed the animal by the tail and held it up with a thoughtful frown.

“So…should I just give it to her?”  The blonde looked around for an answer, “It just feels weird not to cook it.”

Annette shifted in place, finger on her chin as she ran through different case scenarios.  “Well…  We could avoid her getting sick if we do cook it.   So I guess there wouldn’t be any harm.”

“Good,” Ingrid looked relieved.  She wasn’t sure she could stomach watching someone eat a fish raw.  Then she looked at the herring and bit her lower lip.  “I don’t think I’ve ever cooked fish before…”

“Oh!  I can do it,”  Ashe lowered his tablet slightly, but made sure to keep it trained on the alien.  “My dad used to own a restaurant. I helped out a lot around the kitchen, even as a little kid.”

Mercedes blinked in surprise, “I didn’t know that about you!”

The boy blushed, “It’s nothing really.  I just have a little bit of experience, that's all.”

Ashe frowned as he looked at his tablet, wondering what to with it until Sylvain held out his hand.  “I’ll take it.  Can’t stop recording now, right?  For science or whatever?”

“Oh!  Thank you, Sylvain!”

The red head twitched, deciding not to comment on the emphasis on names again.  He adjusted the device until he had everyone in view before giving them a wave.  “Say extraterrestrial!”

“Can you please take this seriously?”  Ingrid huffed as Ashe grabbed an apron and a pan from one of the cabinets.

“I am being serious, Ingrid.” Sylvain gave her a cheeky grin, his camera hand following the alien girl as she walked around his childhood friend with eyes trained on the hanging fish.  “I’m making sure our viewers catch every captivating detail.”

“Well, you sure aren’t-AHHH!!!”

Everyone in the kitchen jumped in surprise, Ashe’s pan and spatula falling to the floor with a clatter, Mercedes and Annette gasping, and Sylvain jumping out of his seat as he caught it all on camera.  The alien had surged forward at the hanging fish, her mouth latching onto the creature’s gills with rows of sharp teeth.  Her head jerked back, making Ingrid recoil and drop it to cover her mouth in horror.  The mint haired girl grabbed the bottom of the fish and pulled hard, severing it’s head with the fervor of a wild beast before she swallowed it whole.

“Oh my!”

Ingrid covered her mouth and hid behind Mercedes, “I think I’m going to be sick…”

Soon the girl was tearing into the rest of the fish, her tiny, prickly teeth tearing at it’s scales for a brief moment before she reared her head back.  Ingrid choked back her nausea as they saw the alien’s throat bob as something seemed to move forward to grab a hold of her meal and pull it down.

“A-Are you getting this!?”  Ashe gasped while his eyes grew wide in wonder.

“Yeah,” Sylvain swallowed.  “Unfortunately…”

“This is amazing!  I’ve never seen anything like it!”

Sylvain glanced over at the gushing boy and wished he could be as happy about this as him.  Because this was just gross.

So very, very gross. ~~~ ♫ when you're down by the sea and an eel bites your knee that's a moray! ♫ ~~~

[cryptswahili]

Interview with Deep Learning freelance consultant and Blockchain dev: Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy

Part 18 of The series where I interview my heroes.

Index to “Interviews with ML Heroes”

Today I’m honoured to be talking to one of the great contributors to Kaggle Noobs community: Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy.

Mamy is currently working as a Deep Learning freelance consultant and Blockchain dev.

In a “previous life”, he has:

Passed the CFA level 1 (Chartered Financial Analyst)

Worked in financial markets (Société Générale) & private wealth management (J.P. Morgan)

Worked at a social startup (Horyou) & a non-profit (Fondation de France)

About the Series:

I have very recently started making some progress with my Self-Taught Machine Learning Journey. But to be honest, it wouldn’t be possible at all without the amazing community online and the great people that have helped me.

In this Series of Blog Posts, I talk with People that have really inspired me and whom I look up to as my role-models.

The motivation behind doing this is, you might see some patterns and hopefully you’d be able to learn from the amazing people that I have had the chance of learning from.

Sanyam Bhutani:​ Hello Mamy, Thank you for taking the time to do this.

Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy: Hello Sanyam, the pleasure is mine.

Sanyam Bhutani:​​ You’ve had a very interesting path in ML. You picked up programming very recently and today are working as an established Freelancer.

How did you get interested in Machine Learning and even programming at first?

Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy: To be honest, I was bored at the end of 2016 as I like to spent my free time on time-consuming hobbies and ran out of those so I set for a new one. Here is what I think is the full story:

As a kid those were reading and playing games, I suppose even then in Baldur’s Gate 2 (a role-playing game from 1998) I was building some kind of “AI” to cast healing and contingency spells when appropriate.

In 2004 I became fascinated for about 8 years with the game of Go starting and culminating with my participation in the French national championship in 2012. I followed closely the first breakthroughs in go artificial intelligence with Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MoGo from Sylvain Gelly et al, 2006 and Crazy Stone from Rémi Coulom, 2006). I remember watching official 9x9 matches against invited pro players at Paris tournament with a lot of pressure on both sides. Note that Sylvain Gelly was often authoring papers with a certain David Silver of DeepMind fame.

In 2009, I started my dive into the technical aspect of computing, I try to learn Linux by installing not the most popular one but Gentoo, a distribution where you need to build everything yourself from scratch.

In 2010, I wanted to learn programming beyond bash, Excel and .bat script, so I looked for a language and choose not the most popular one but the most strange one: Haskell, a language with neither for-loop nor if-else-then branches (see a theme?). I started learning it with Project Euler a website that offers math-themed exercises to solve in any programming language.

I think that was also the year when I heard Kaggle though I dismissed it at the time, it sounded like I needed a super powerful machine. That’s also when I heard about Bitcoin which sounded super interesting though I dismissed as well due to lack of time (alas!).

In 2015, I wanted to write my own go playing bot and why not learn a new programming language at the same time, so as usual, I choose the new unknown kid on the block with the better speed prospect: Rust. I got a baseline bot to work after 3 months, did a lot of research but I spent too much time learning and fighting Rust instead of reinforcement learning and after I was too tired to improve upon it.

At the end of 2016, I wanted to learn something new again, remembered Kaggle and like many Kagglers, my machine learning journey started with the Titanic. I bought an Nvidia GPU in January 2017, The Data Science Bowl 2017 (DSB), 160GB of 3D lung CT scans and $1M for prizes was announced the day after. I spent the weekend on digit recognition and quickly jumped into the DSB (and stopped because preprocessing 160GB of 3D images was so slow and I couldn’t beat the baseline).

Following that, I wanted to understand the low-level details and solve the bottlenecks and implemented Karpathy’s Hacker’s Guide to Neural Network in another language that caught my eye, Nim, a language as fast as C with the syntax of Python which I thought had a lot of potential for data science. Afterwards, I continued and am still continuing my Nim and Data Science journey by implementing Numpy + Scikit-Learn + PyTorch/Tensorflow/Keras functionality in my own library wrote from the ground up. I still start Kaggle competitions from time to time to make sure I don’t lose touch with actual data science needs though I have trouble dedicating more than 2 weeks to those as it’s competing with my library development time.

Sanyam Bhutani:​ You’re currently working as a Deep Learning consultant and Blockchain dev, Can you tell us more about the projects that you work on?

Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy: Currently I’m working at Status, a blockchain startup that provides an encrypted chat, decentralized Ethereum applications browser and secures mobile Wallet. One way to describe blockchain is the revolution of trust, it allows two parties with differing interests to trust each other without a third-party enforcer. While in western countries third parties are usually reliable (if costly) this is not the case in Africa for example. Furthermore, a mobile phone is often the only portal to the internet in these locations hence Status mobile focus for a global reach.

In Status, I’m doing research and development on the future Ethereum 2.0 in close collaboration with the Ethereum Foundation and several other teams. This involves cryptography, robust testing, virtual machine implementation, networking, game theory, psychology and being certain that people will try to exploit flaws in your code.

I’m also available for short data science interventions from strategic advice to practical projects, courses, conferences, hardware setup, how to hire data scientists and what to look for.

I’m still continuing building my machine learning ecosystem with an aim to bridge the gap between research and production.

Sanyam Bhutani: You’re also an active Contributor to Open Source.

Could you maybe tell us a bit about your open source projects?

Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy: I’m actually one of the lucky few to be paid to work on open-source projects so everything I do on Ethereum and Status is open-source. Besides, all my Kaggle projects are open-sourced after the competitions and as I said before I’m working on Arraymancer, a data science library written from scratch in Nim. In December 2018 and after 18 months I’ve released v0.5 which brought very exciting features notably: Numpy .npy files support, HDF5 support, recurrent neural networks with text generation example on Shakespeare and Jane Austen work.

Sanyam Bhutani:​ I’d love to know more about your library.

What is your vision with it, why pick Nim?

Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy: I have several goals with it. One, I’d like to do a Kaggle competition with it, it would probably be a deep learning competition because data frames are harder than neural networks to write from scratch. Second, I would like to reproduce AlphaGo paper with it. Third I’d like to write a Starcraft II AI in it and participate in Blizzard and DeepMind AI challenges.

Regarding Nim, it’s a very flexible language, it has a syntax similar to Python, you can implement your own operators (instead of lobbying to get the ugly @ matrix multiply operator as in Python). As it compiles to C or C++, it also benefits from decades of compiler optimizations, GPU interoperability is easy and you can write libraries that can be linked to in any language. Also, it compiles quite fast, a couple seconds at most (unlike C++ projects like PyTorch or Tensorflow), which gives it a scripting feel. Furthermore, as it’s a compiled language, users don’t need to deal with Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.5, 3.6 and pip/conda and all dependencies, you can just ship a single file for deployment.

Sanyam: What kind of challenges do you look for today?

Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy: I have several short-term challenges for 2019. One provides the fastest primitives for my library. When implementing Arraymancer, I notice several bottlenecks on CPU that I researched, I’m confident I can provide substantial improvements over state-of-the-art libraries like PyTorch and Tensorflow even taking Intel MKL-DNN into account. For example, the default exp and log function provided in C can be improved 10x and those are bottlenecks in activation and loss functions (sigmoid, softmax) especially for large activations like in language models or reinforcement learning with huge action space.

Second, creating data visualization for my library. I have been impressed by the Vega project especially the exploratory data analysis potential of Voyager.

Third, developing reinforcement learning building blocks. While when I started Arraymancer, plenty of design were explored for both ndarrays and deep learning, reinforcement learning is pretty much a blank slate. I’ve already started by wrapping the Arcade Learning Environment for training agents on Atari games.

Sanyam Bhutani:​ I want to go back a little bit and ask about your background.

With almost no coding background, you quickly picked up Machine Learning and became well-established in the field.

Could you tell us more about your journey?

The common belief is that one needs dozens of years of coding experience to even get started with ML.

Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy: I basically learned to code beyond “exercises” while doing ML. Like many, I often had to look into project documentation (especially Pandas) and Stack Overflow but in any case, what helped me is just knowing how variables work, what is a for loop, and if-then branch and a function. What we use in ML is in any case quite specific to numerical computing so what you learn on a web project, for example, won’t really help you beyond the basic programming construct and, very important, versioning your experiments. Now, being experimented will help you a lot when doing a Kaggle competition and your project starts getting huge to avoid you and your teammates getting lost in the code.

Sanyam Bhutani:​ What are your thoughts about most of the Job postings requiring a Masters or Ph.D. level of expertise for ML?

Having a “non-traditional” background, how can one find work in this field?

Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy: I think most recruiters and companies are not mature enough to evaluate candidates. Many are still building up their teams and don’t have the in-house expertise to look for external signs of competence for recruiting. I’m much more concerned about the experience requirements. The rise of deep learning was in 2012 with AlexNet. Besides the US, I would guess that many data science focused masters were created around 2014 in universities so most new hires with an actual data science degree would have at most about 3 years of experience. Most more experienced people would probably be self-taught.

As I said at the start, companies are looking for signs of competence, the best way is to have a portfolio to show. Kaggle competitions and personal machine learning projects are an excellent way regarding that. Pick your favorite sport/movie genre/games/food, find a dataset and analyze it. In the interview show how it relates to the problems of the company you are interviewing for. You will be in known land and would have worked on it for hours already.

Another important thing is networking. Before applying, try to talk to people working in the same role in several companies. For example, data scientist is a bit of a kitchen sink role, with every company having a different scope for them. How to talk to them? Just say that you’re quite interested in their day-to-day, their challenges, and responsibilities and offer them to meet over a coffee. LinkedIn is quite useful for that.

Sanyam Bhutani:​ For the readers and noobs like me who want to become better practitioners, what would be your best advice?

Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy: Don’t spend too much time in theory and courses without applying your newfound skills practically on real datasets. As one might say “no plans survive the first contact with the enemy”, we can also say “no theory survives the first contact with reality”. You need to own and internalize those skills and the only way to do that is through using them.

Sanyam Bhutani:​ Given the explosive growth rate of ML, How do you stay updated with the recent developments?

Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy: I’m not trying anymore :P.

Sanyam Bhutani:​ What developments in the field do you find to be the most exciting?

Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy: BERT in natural language processing is game breaking, in general, the domain adaptation field is quite exciting. I’m also following closely the reinforcement learning advances and just bought the new edition of the Barto and Sutton book. For a less known avenue of research, I’m quite interested in Bayesian Deep Learning as a way to represent uncertainty.

Sanyam Bhutani:​ What are your thoughts about Machine Learning as a field, do think its Overhyped?

Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy: Blockchain is more overhyped ;).

Machine Learning is a very interesting field both from practical and research point of view. I’ve always been a “field butterfly”: I like math, physics, biology, economics, marketing, psychology, computer science … On the practical side, ML allows you to apply your skills to plenty of fields: wildlife and nature identification, cancer prevention, music recommendation, traffic prediction (website or urban traffic), energy consumption prediction, sports … so you hopefully won’t get bored.

On the research point of view, you have many things you can research and get inspired by computer science and optimisation, operation research, statistics and probabilistic programming, psychology, economics, decision science and game theory for reinforcement learning, human and animal perception for computer vision, sound, linguistics for natural language processing and plenty of other fields I’m missing.

Sanyam Bhutani:​ Before we conclude, any tips for the beginners who aspire to work in this domain but feel completely overwhelmed to even start competing?

Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy: Competition anxiety is a thing, having a passion and a drive to do well but fearing to fail your own expectations might prevent you from starting in the first place. Some might say that it’s a way to have an excuse “I would have done well if I participated but I couldn’t for XY reason”.

I didn’t have this issue for ML but had to deal with that a lot while playing Go at a competitive level and I saw that discussed in other competitive games.

The first step is to realize that you are indeed anxious about doing something that someone (probably you) can judge you on.

The second step is: does it motivate you (good) or stifle you (bad). If it stifles you, you need to remember that 2 years later once you’re a master or a grandmaster no one will look into your history to judge you on your first early steps. This is like learning how to walk, or learning a new language or being a beginner in a sport, you will make plenty of mistakes. If someone ever mocks you for your early beginner mistakes, well you just have a low-cost predictor of toxic personalities and environments you don’t want to be around.

One thing that helped me a lot when I began playing Go is having a rival, it’s much easier to keep yourself motivated when you are not alone and can banter and discuss what you just tried or learned in the past week with a friend of the same level.

Sanyam Bhutani:​ Thank you so much for doing this interview.

If you found this interesting and would like to be a part of My Learning Path, you can find me on Twitter here.

Kaggle Noobs is the best community for kaggle where you can find Mamy, Kaggle Grandmasters, Masters, Experts and it’s a community where even noobs like me are welcome.

Come join if you’re interested in ML/DL/Kaggle.

If you’re interested in reading about Deep Learning and Computer Vision news, you can checkout my newsletter here.

Interview with Deep Learning freelance consultant and Blockchain dev: Mamy André-Ratsimbazafy was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

[Telegram Channel | Original Article ]

[boemarine786]

Top 15 Perfume in 2020 | Para Fragrance

I've by and by been blogging on different themes and stages since the early noughties, and I never stop to be astounded by the life span of the medium in spite of prophets asserting 'the blog is dead'. A long way from it. Furthermore, what is increasingly mind boggling is that there are bloggers consuming the 12 PM oil on each theme, anyway specialty cologne . Perfumery is no special case. There are top scent websites causing a ripple effect as specialties of this specialty; each discovering its own unique clan.

 We run over aroma sites dynamic in common perfume & cologne , aromas for men, and VIP just as nostalgic vintage scents. Others spread new discharges and preliminary spritz them giving us their survey wisdoms. On the opposite finish of the fragrance blog range, you'll discover smell scientists saying something from their labs.

 I can't do equity to every one of these specialties of fragrance writes here. Rather, I've featured those I wind up visiting consistently for news, sound perspectives, a touch of carefree head-gesturing and genuine industry bits of knowledge cologne for men . These are my pillars and ones I read each week. They make me survey my own work in progress and let me conclude whether to go with or avoid patterns. They have altogether different composing styles and plans and make for a perfect outline of this weird, dark, cold hearted world we call perfumery. Every one of them, in the genuine soul of pen popular government, diminish the persona and smoke and knifes encompassing everything fragrances for men.

 I trust you make the most of their good fortune as much as I do and maybe feel roused to begin your own fragrant blogging venture.

 Bois de jasmin – a diverse, wonderfully elegantly composed and useful blog by proficient fragrances for men industry expert and grant winning author Victoria Frovlova who is a successive supporter of HuffPost, The Money related Occasions and the New York Times. Situated in Belgium, Victoria has kept Bois de jasmin going for well more than 10 years, so her blog give a mine of data and research. I especially like her discover a 'house, note, scent or state of mind' search capacity to raise exactly what you need, and her 'prescribe me a best cheap perfume ' posts every month that urge perusers to do a questions and answers. It's a blog that gets network moving. Victoria is brilliant at answering by and by to every single remark.

 CaFleureBon – This is an overwhelming weight aroma blog that has collected all the honors going, so hope to be in for a since a long time ago read. It has genuine accreditations and positions as the main scent blog for common, specialty and craftsman aromas. cologne for men Editorial manager in-Boss Michelyn Camen made ÇaFleureBon in 2010 (deciphered from French, this expression implies 'that smells wonderful') as a 'scented salon', where common and customary perfumers and proprietors of aroma organizations, artists, gourmet experts, painters, understudies, scholars, bloggers, notices, artists, and retailers can accumulate and share their considerations about the universe of the fifth sens ". popular men cologne The blog assembles its information direct from source – the perfumers, inventive chiefs and friends PRs themselves – so is an exact impression of what's happening inside the specialty, craftsman perfumery business. ÇaFleureBon posts unique substance 365 days per year, which is some accomplishment, and incorporates among its customary givers prestigious scent bloggers like The Silver Fox. perfume for men  Editorial manager Michelyn let me know some time back that the site is experiencing an upgrade at the present time so it will be a significantly increasingly wonderful spot to hang out.

 Scientific expert in a Jug – Aroma physicist Lucas shares his normal everyday employment in sniffing and concoction sourcery in an entirely receptive and layman-available read. I especially value his 'Science Instantly' and 'Realize it Better' arrangement of articles analyzing mixes like aldehydes or coumarin. A perfect, clear, simple safe site that has an abundance of research ready for whoever gets there first. A decent spot to gen up to stay informed concerning the business from an industry insider's perspective.

 Esprit de Parfums – the blog (in French) of industry insider Sylvaine Delacourte, who is chief of improvement and assessment at Guerlain. Among the conspicuous posts about Guerlain popular men cologne and news. the blog presents individual bits of knowledge into a perfumed world. Posts entitled 'Rituel du Parfum' for instance, give us the way of thinking, in addition to tips, on the why and how to wear scent each day, valuing it ourselves and what it accomplishes for people around us. Nose around to discover a large group of down to earth tips covered in exposition, best men cologne for example, this, requesting that we consider, ie, 'le parfum comme un scene'. In the event that you can understand French, it merits following Sylvaine.

 Goodsmellas – Superb title for a reckless and large Brooklyn blog from folks (Carlos and Igor) who are 'not your normal smelling Joes' as they caption the blog, yet who are productive video analysts. Uncovered as a coot and all grins, Carlos gives it for what it's worth on huge brands and littler names in the aroma world on his channel 'Brooklyn Scent Darling'. Men's or unisex perfume for men obviously, however there's a long way to go from these folks. Convincing review and perfect for late evening wilfing before bed.

 Grain de musc – With a Ph.D on the Maquis de Sade, Denyse Beaulieu is a considerable, yet available nose and perfumery author. She runs an incredible bilingual blog in French and English and is an essayist and interpreter just as writer of 'The Fragrances Sweetheart: An Individual History of Aroma' and another book in French just so far ' perfume : Une Histoire Intime', which is about the making of 'a' scent not aromas by and large. The blog is somewhat less valuable as an available asset (so not the configuration of bois de jasmin) however a decent read on the off chance that you simply accept the way things are and dive into the chronicles voluntarily wandering through blog entries. Extraordinary for those personal time minutes in your perfume & cologne training.

 Kafkaesque – A calm, flawlessly created and scholarly aroma blog that is home to individual audits as well as a profundity and broadness of foundation on perfumery, from industry (IFRA/EU regs and what they intend) to scent history basically, a glossary of terms and aroma families and how to find out about the incredible 'works of art'. A decent spot to begin finding out about scent from a mysterious however in any case fair and ardent blogger.

 Karen Gilbert – is an autonomous perfumery coach and evaluator who runs courses both on the web and as three-day, week-long and end of the week instructional courses. perfume sale Karen is a prepared industry proficient with a lifelong that traverses common and engineered perfumery and skincare organizations. From the get-go in her vocation, she worked for IFF, one of the business' enormous name scent producers and has likewise been at Neals' Yard and with driving skincare names. perfume sale online Karen Gilbert's blog is an important asset on everything perfumery and an extraordinary spot to begin for a prologue to the subject.

 KatiePuckrikSmells – a flippant audit and fragrance jibber jabber blogo by a perfumehead entertainer, television and radio moderator and writer. I love Katie's surveys for their speak plainly, non drivel style. popular men cologne She says what we'd all state as opposed to utilizes high-faluting terms of the business or pre-having cognoscenti. Katie incredibly discovers time to answer to analysts, so expect some talk. A decent spot to peruse an elective audit on the most recent dispatch.

 NowSmellThis – a long-running magazine style aroma blog situated in the States that is a 'we' voice with supporters of different segments, for example, new dispatches, names, brands, surveys and so forth. I especially grativate to its 'Perfumista' posts where you'll discover records, for example, best perfume for men  '100 Aromas each Perfumista should attempt' or '25 Rose Scents each Perfumista should attempt'. Nothing beats examining those rundown posts before beginning a Monday morning's messages!

 Odette Toilette – otherwise known as Lizzie Olstrom began this blog around 8 years prior while in occasions and PR. It turned her novice, devotee love of scent into an all day work. Audits and general fragrances talk aside, Odette Toilette additionally has occasions on some odd and great parts of scent – ie. Aroma and Dread. Her ordinary 'Scratch n' Sniff' occasions are amazing in London. Lizzie is doing a ton for the fragrance world, evening in homerooms, showing kids how to utilize their feeling of smell! Her first book 'Fragrances: An Era of Aroma' seemed a few years back.

 Persolaise – another family unit blogger name is three-time Jasmine Grant winning author and beginner perfumer Dariush Alavi, otherwise known as Persolaise. Alavi is productive and his definitive and very much respected blog a decent blend of surveys, meetings and assessments (saying it 'all things considered'). He composed 'Le Stiff neck: Aroma', popular men cologne direct which is accessible on Amazon at a perfumed value point.

 Tauer Scents – The meandering aimlessly journal home of Andy Tauer, he of craftsman perfumery Tauer Fragrances and of creativity. Andy has a beguiling and disarmingly garrulous method of scent blogging that makes him a 'guy in the bar' sort of perfumer as opposed to a 'nez' scretively and subtly working in some concealed lab. Love or loathe Tauer perfume – he had some that have taken an extreme slamming, yet I love the majority of them – especially his hit L'Air du Desert Marocain, his blog merits the brisk day by day flick. His posts are continuous and journal like and are acceptable view into the working existence of a self-starter craftsman perfume. He likewise has intriguing bits of knowledge into the business, from his nonconformist point of view.

 The Silver Fox – Composing on aroma in a higher echelon under the Twitter handle of @ScentofElegance, The Silver Fox is an increasingly educated and graceful style of fragrances analysis. This isn't for those looking for tons of assets yet for those looking for snapshots of intelligent idea on the perfume world. Fro model, one post discusses 'synaesthesia', which is about the gathering and blending of faculties that a few people experience ie. tasting a perfume & cologne , imagining a smell, hearing a smell. Get the job done to say that The Silver Fox manages current perfumery factions and slants and does

[thisdaynews]

‘The system was broken’: How The Nature Conservancy prospered but ran aground

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/the-system-was-broken-how-the-nature-conservancy-prospered-but-ran-aground/

‘The system was broken’: How The Nature Conservancy prospered but ran aground

For The Nature Conservancy, tapping Mark Tercek as its CEO was a natural extension of its strategy for wooing business partners and bringing in more donations. | Sylvain Gaboury/Patrick McMullan/Getty Images

The Great Recession hadn’t yet found its bottom when Mark Tercek, an investment banker from Cleveland, left his job at Goldman Sachs in 2008 for another challenge: saving the planet from climate change and environmental destruction. And he was going to use his Wall Street experience to do it.

In the following decade, Tercek rang up big results as CEO of The Nature Conservancy, the world’s largest environmental organization: Revenues doubled, to more than $1 billion. Operations expanded to dozens more countries. Corporate partners like Coca-Cola, BP and JPMorgan Chase signed up to further the group’s work of protecting rain forests, coral reefs and other imperiled habitats.

Story Continued Below

But now that reign is in tatters. Tercek has stepped down, along with Conservancy President Brian McPeek and the headsof the group’s two largest programs, after an external report — first disclosed weeks ago by POLITICO — pried the lid off years of complaints about discriminatory treatment of employees, especially women.

That report offered just a glimpse at the problem, according to interviews with dozens of current and former Nature Conservancy staff members during the past month. They revealed an organization adrift, torn between a senior leadership that aggressively cultivates ties to global corporations and a core of ecology-minded staff members who chafe against the Wall Street culture, along with female employees’ unhappiness with a “good ole boys club” that hampers their advancement.

Even amid their relief and jubilation at the leaders’ departures, current and former employees express concern that the scandal will drive away key supporters and funders, jeopardizing the world’s most extensive network of land conservation projects. Several top donors declined to tell POLITICO whether they still support the Conservancy.

At the very least, veterans of thegroup say, the trauma is a distraction from an environmental mission in which The Nature Conservancy plays a distinctive role — one that harnesses support from activists, corporations and political leaders of both parties, despite the increasingly polarized climate debate in Washington. Those who withstood years of discrimination did so because they believed in the organization’s overall goals, and they hope it can adjust.

“I find it really sad because the Conservancy is a really great organization and it’s got a lot of really good people who are doing really good work,” said Susan Ruffo, who worked at The Nature Conservancy from 2006 to 2015 and served on the Obama White House’s Council on Environmental Quality. “I’m sorry that this is why they’re getting a lot of press right now, but I do also think there’s been a failure of leadership.”

Another former Nature Conservancy staffer, Mollie Marsh-Heine, called it no surprise that the #MeToo sexual harassment scandal that hit Hollywood, Wall Street and major news organizations would find its way to the big green group.

“When the Harvey Weinstein story broke, not only myself but many people still working at the Conservancy were like, ‘Whoa,’” said Marsh-Heine, a fundraiser for environmental causes. “I knew it would reach TNC eventually. It was just a matter of time.”

***

For The Nature Conservancy, tapping Tercek as its CEO was a natural extension of its strategy for wooing business partners and bringing in more donations.

That strategy had long brought the group both growth and criticism.

What had started in 1951 as a band of ecologists who united to stop development on a 60-acre forest in eastern New York has exploded into a 4,000-employee, studiously non-partisan organization that has helped protect more than 100 million acres globally. Since the 1970s, however, detractors have accused the Conservancy of being too cozy with its corporate donors, many of them polluters seeking to green up their reputations.

Nature Conservancy leaders have long called this criticism off-base, saying the money enables them to protect more lands and waters. Besides, they argue, it is better to work inside the boardrooms to improve companies’ practices than to wave picket signs outside the gate.

And Tercek saw the world changing, according to interviews with dozens of current and former staffers: Defending a plot of land in the Adirondacks or the Catskills matters, but those are piecemeal approaches in the face of the widespread environmental degradation accompanying global climate change.

So Tercek introduced a revised strategy: He brought in Wall Street-style data-crunching to measure the effectiveness of The Nature Conservancy’s projects, a change that mirrored the processes he’d used in his investment banking background. He appealed to the Conservancy’s corporate donors by harnessing market-driven formulas, including one called “impact investing,” to boost the group’s funding so it could work on a global scale.

He also helped recruit a board of directors that reflected the corporate approach, including Chinese billionaire and Alibaba CEO Jack Ma, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, ex-Dow CEO Andrew Liveris, JPMorgan CEO of commercial banking Douglas Petno and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman.

Tercek set the tone for this new culture: The conservancy held corporate-style senior manager meetings at locales around the world and boasted an ever-expanding executive team with lofty salaries. (Tercek earned $819,000 in 2018, according to the organization’s Internal Revenue Service filings). It also began approving first-class flights for “key people” in certain circumstances beginning in the 2010 fiscal year, it told the IRS.

As the organization would come to discover, that culture also brought a management structure that, according to current and former staff, shrugged off the complaints of lower-level employees and women in senior roles.

Tercek, according to many of his underlings, didn’t much concern himself with employee morale. They described him as aloof and awkward, saying that for all his everyman, Rust Belt persona — marked by a flat, nasal Midwest accent — he bristled at criticism and didn’t form relationships with colleagues easily.

Tercek arrived a few years after McPeek joined the Conservancy from the influential consulting firm McKinsey & Co., and at a time when corporations were looking at stark changes in Washington. The newly elected Obama administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress were talking about taking on climate change with cap-and-trade legislation, which would offer economic incentives for oil companies, power utilities and other businesses to reduce their greenhouse gas production.

Ignoring the continued criticism about corporate “greenwashing,” Tercek forged even closer ties to big business.

“When Mark Tercek first started there was a real feeling like the private sector was the solution to a lot of things,” Ruffo said of the mood across the conservation movement and government. “For the Conservancy in particular that was maybe taken to extreme.”

Tercek inked partnerships with multinational corporations with long reputations as top environmental offenders: Coca-Cola, oil giant BP, mining heavyweight BHP Billiton and Dow Chemical. His signature program, NatureVest, leveraged his investment banking background and a partnership with JPMorgan Chase to drive $1 billion of private capital for conservation — including sustainable timber harvesting, carbon credits, a restructuring of island nations’ debt to expand marine conservation, and grants to promote more sustainable cattle grazing.

He hired former investment bankers and added alumni from big agriculture companies, such as Monsanto.

The Nature Conservancy was hardly the only big environmental group embracing the corporate approach at the time — the Sierra Club had taken criticism in 2007 for making an endorsement deal with Clorox, and later revealed that it had accepted $26 million in undisclosed donations from the natural gas industry.

But the TNC’s shift didn’t endear Tercek and McPeek to the scientists, ecologists and naturalists who staffed the group’s operations around the globe, a senior leader said.

“[They] sort of embodied and represented the change from place-by-place conservation to working at a global scale — like with the investment community, working with the insurance community,” one senior leader said of the pair, speaking anonymously to candidly discuss high-level personnel issues. “These things that were not strengths of the long-timers at TNC.”

Tercek and McPeek were “strong personalities,” the senior leader said, acknowledging that their management style had drawbacks. The leader said people felt forced to agree with Tercek, while McPeek insulated himself from conflicting viewpoints by surrounding himself with friends and allies, both men and women, from his days overseeing the Conservancy’s Denver office.

“Sometimes they missed good advice and they missed good opportunities to elevate other people,” the senior leader said. “But on the flip side, they did do some really powerful things for this organization.”

Their approach was undoubtedly good for business. The Nature Conservancy pulled in $547.2 million in revenue in 2009, Tercek’s first full year atop the organization. Last year, it generated just shy of $1.3 billion. It also expanded globally, jumping from operations in about 30 countries a decade ago to 72 now.

The executive team expanded with its finances. Just 18 people made up its top level in 2006, according to archives of the organization’s website. Thirteen years later it stood at 32 members.

Even as the executive team ballooned, women said they found it difficult to advance. Three high-ranking female officials departed during Tercek’s tenure with six-figure severance payments, according to the organization’s 990 filings. Others departed with significant “other compensation,” to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Current and former staff said the exits were a result of maltreatment and gender discrimination, but the ex-officials declined to comment when contacted by POLITICO. Staffers who spoke with POLITICO said they knew of other senior-level women who had left because of sexism and a perception that women couldn’t advance beyond a certain point.

“There is a pattern of letting somewhat senior people go so that they won’t sue them,” said a former marketing staffer, who secured a “generous” severance when her position was eliminated, according to the staffer. The person added, “It was people who had an opinion or a point of view and you didn’t fall in line.”

Seeking to address those issues, Tercek added more women to the executive team and began a mentorship program for senior-level staff. But current and former staff said those steps didn’t dislodge an ingrained culture of men protecting other men, even those who had been the subject of complaints.

“It was not long after I had started working there that in a team retreat the phrase ‘penis protection plan’ was mentioned,” said former staffer Bessie Tassoulas, sharing a term that she said female employees used to describe the company culture.

“It was not the last time I heard that phrase,” added Tassoulas, who in May left the organization’s main offices in Virginia. “It was tossed around our headquarters in Arlington sort of flippantly as a joke, but there were undertones that this was a widely known practice.”

Senior manager meetings, held around the country, were often a source of problems, former staffers said. Hundreds of staff every year flew into the events, where alcohol was plentiful, meetings were often conducted over dinner, and former staffers reported seeing people dancing on tables and testing the boundaries of appropriate collegial relations.

Staffers around the world shared other unpleasant experiences — men reacting aggressively to women’s opinions or ignoring them; superiors isolating them when disagreements arose; senior male officials cutting female counterparts out of meetings or keeping them in the dark about projects and strategy. In a focus group about gender relations in the mid-2010s, one woman said she had gone to her manager to report harassment — only to have the manager turn the issue against her by asking: “What did you do?”

“I think women have always felt undervalued and underrepresented at TNC,” a female senior staffer said.

In one case, staff had for years complained to the highest levels of the organization about problems with Luis Solórzano, who led the group’s Caribbean office near Miami, said ex-staffers such as the office’s former science and conservation director, Vera Agostini.

But, as POLITICO reported last month, Solórzano remained in his post for years despite numerous formal and informal complaints accusing him of creating a divisive workplace, making uncomfortable comments to women and using racial and homophobic slurs. Solórzano and the organization parted ways June 10 as POLITICO questioned him and The Nature Conservancy about the allegations.

Solórzano did not respond to several attempts requesting comment about the complaints.

“There was a perception amongst staff that the [human relations] and ethics staff were focused on defending senior managers rather than the overall interest of the organization,” said Agostini, who is now the deputy director of fisheries and aquaculture at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. “Putting it mildly, staff were reluctant to voice concerns. There was a sense that the system was broken.”

In another case, not previously reported, multiple people in the group’s Mexico office complained to ethics and compliance staffers that Juan Bezaury Creel, a top official there, had shoved a folder in the face of Leticia Gutiérrez Lorandi, an employee who was five months pregnant, and who stepped back just in time to avoid being struck. The incident occurred during a tense moment just before a May 2018 news conference, Gutiérrez told POLITICO, which verified her account by reviewing documents and email exchanges about the episode.

“I went to the bathroom. I cried,” Gutiérrez said in an interview. “The moment he shoved the folder in my face, I froze.”

She said she spent months following up with the organization’s ethics and compliance office before realizing that The Nature Conservancy wasn’t going to take action against Bezaury, even though other complaints had begun to mount. “The problem is the organization is normalizing these behaviors,” she said.

Bezaury said he remembers things differently, saying he had merely raised the folder in front of Gutiérrez’s face to create a physical barrier while he spoke with another colleague. In an email to POLITICO, he said TNC’s ethics and compliance staff had reprimanded him and warned him that retaliation would get him fired.

“Ms. Gutiérrez perceived that I acted in a physically aggressive way toward her during a press conference,” he said. “Under our institutional culture, perceived aggressions are equated to real aggressions.”

Gutiérrez said: “It’s not my perception. It happened.”

Bezaury left his full-time environmental policy director position in March; he is working part-time on contract with The Nature Conservancy until July 15 out of its Mexico City office space, he said by email.

The Nature Conservancy’s top brass had other evidence that many female employees felt stigmatized: In January, the organization’s leadership received the results from an internal study that laid out the problems in stark detail.

“Women repeatedly reference a ‘good ole boys club’ at TNC in the reasons that they see the ways in which men succeed as being different than for women,” said the findings, obtained by POLITICO, which were delivered in January to Tercek, McPeek and chief operating officer and general counsel Wisla Heneghan.

The study, by the Conservancy’s Gender Equity Advisory Council, found that male employees put the onus on their female colleagues for succeeding in The Nature Conservancy’s environment — saying women “must be able to navigate the male dominated workplace.” Women, meanwhile, felt they were better served “blending in or not standing out.”

Men and women both said culture change started with leadership, but women specifically called out male leaders specifically while their male counterparts didn’t.

“CHANGE IS DESIRED AND EMPLOYEES BELIEVE IT STARTS WITH LEADERSHIP,” the council said, adding that “most believe these changes need to start at the top and permeate all of TNC.”

TNC’s leaders didn’t release the report to staff until late June after receiving pressure from members of the gender council, according to a staffer familiar with the process — and after POLITICO sought a copy.

“Some people have this feeling that it was sat on deliberately. I think it was more underprioritized,” the staffer told POLITICO. “I think that was poor management. They should have acted on it more quickly, but I don’t think it was malicious or intentional hiding.”

***

The problems boiled over in April, when the group hired the law firm McDermott Will & Emery to investigate its workplace culture after anonymous tweets accused McPeek of sexual harassment.

The report, released in late May, found one of the four sexual harassment allegations against McPeek to be “credible.” It also revealed deeper schisms: Women called The Nature Conservancy a difficult place to thrive; higher-ups routinely sided with those accused of misconduct; alcohol at work functions often fueled bad decisions.

On May 30, not even a full day aftersending the report to staff, Tercek called a town hall to assure employees that top management would fix the problems.

Instead, he caused much of his staff to lose any remaining faith in him.

Addressing the gathering at the organization’s Arlington headquarters and livestreamed to its offices across the U.S. andworldwide, Tercek doubled down on his announcement the previous night that McPeek would stay on as president despite being the object of “he-said/she-said” accusationsin the report. The report included accusations that a Conservancy leader identified as Executive 1 had kissed a subordinate against her will. Several current and former staffers familiar with the circumstances have told POLITICO that the executive was McPeek.

Tercek repeatedly referred to the incident as “the kiss thing,” according to a senior staffer who watched the town hall. Employees watched with scowls and arms crossed. A colleague asked Tercek whether he had confidence that McPeek could continue to lead the organization.

Tercek said yes. But it was the beginning of the end.

“It was like, holy shit, you could just hear it and see it, people losing confidence in a leader,” the senior staffer said.

The fallout was rapid. McPeek resigned the next day, on May 31, just after the departures of Mark Burget, who headed the group’s North American operations, and another executive, Kacky Andrews, who were accused of failing to disclose being in a relationship with each other. Tercek announced June 7 that he would resign — he left as of July 1.The group also tapped former Obama administration Interior Secretary Sally Jewell as interim CEO starting Sept. 3. The selection of Jewell, who joined The Nature Conservancy board last year, has raised optimism among people both inside and outside the organization. But they also don’t think she or the remaining top brass fully appreciate how much needs repairing.

“We’ve got some hard, hard work ahead of us,” said a current female senior staffer.

For one thing, current and former staff said, the failure to handle misconduct and harassment complaints has sown broad distrust in leaders who haven’t stepped down. Many of those officials will remain in their posts, according to an internal staff email Jewell sent June 18.

“The past few weeks have been a time of rapid change at The Nature Conservancy and recent changes to TNC leadership have surfaced trust and leadership issues that needed to be addressed,” a Nature Conservancy spokesperson said in a statement. “The first priority of our co-CEOs is to listen and craft a process that will regain trust and unlock staff’s full potential in service to TNC’s mission.”

Current and former employees also fear that the turmoil will harm fundraising, jeopardizing efforts the group’s conservation work. Burget and McPeek were considered two of the organization’s top fundraisers.

Some of the group’s big donors, such as the Hewlett Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, are sticking by The Nature Conservancy, saying they’re confident it followed proper procedures to address the organization’s issues. But Hewlett was“very concerned” about the reports of trouble and first made contact with TNC in April, spokesperson Liz Judge said.

Other corporate partners and funders were more non-committal. BP, Shell, Packard Foundation and JPMorgan declined to say whether they still support The Nature Conservancy.

“We are not commenting on this,” said Jason Ryan, a spokesperson for BP.

Read More

[faroreswinds]

Lots of anons for Three Hopes

I'm not one for schadenfreude but r/edelgard has been going through a meltdown since the leaks started (after initially being smug about the Claude Edel handshake) and it is DELICIOUS. Like literally the game goes out of its way yo tell you Edelgard is imperialist. And ato one point she teams up WITH rRhea. I love it.

I saw, lol. It went from “HAHA WE WIN” to “WTF IS THIS SHIT” very quickly. 

And don’t get me wrong, I’m also “wtf is this shit” in some places too, but not because I’m trying to gain some victory. 

Apparently the German reviewer said Azure Gleam felt short/the ending was abrupt, but tbh I’ll take a rushed ending over total character assassination any day

Yeah, I saw that. And some other reviews have said that GW feels a little confusing on the politics and that SB barely touches on the Slithers. So, sounds like some bad writing might be heading our way again.

I heard people saying its a golden ending because the slithers are defeated and all the lords survive, but then I heard it’s not because war after the story is still implied (and all the fuckery involving claude and rhea, rhea can NOT catch a fucking break and the edelstans/khalidstans will eat that shit up), and it’s getting to be quite confusing! All I know for sure is that the discourse will get even worse and will truly show that 3houses/hopes have the worst fire emblem fandom experience

Oh, the fire has already begun to spread. It’s bad, anon. 

So, there is no “golden” ending. There is a secret ending, somehow unlocked, where Arval is killed. And the lords agree to a truce. A temporary truce, mind, because apparently there are hints that this truce won’t last. 

I highly doubt the blame will fall on Dimitri, dude literally is just “get off my lawn, I’m busy” embodied. 

Deathly curious, but where are you finding these leaks? I'm particularly curious on the supports and support lists.

There are a few data mines so shift through. 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m4xHogOjhfdRYywACT-ZHuexdiskAkPSE45soei5zeQ/edit#gid=146160821

https://mega.nz/file/vU5ESBwC#u5zwtxjC8ktoJOH-2q4wDJkexsBgplHtHr_g_4_wA5w

Enjoy.

So if we execute Jerry, then Leonie will be alright with it??? No, I have to believe that she leaves on the spot, as you kill her idol. I already remember how pissed she was when "Monica" does that.

Yeah, I’m not sure how that will work yet. Good question, to be honest.

They will probably make some bullshit up.

wait wait wait WAIT!!! In that little Dimilix blurb you posted am I supposed to take it that Felix was giving Dimitri a piggyback ride back to his bed?! Based on Dimitri saying his legs are dragging, Felix complaining about his height, and the tidbit of Dimitri carrying Felix once as kids it all suggests Felix is carrying Dimitri. That is both incredibly hilarious and ridiculously adorable!!!

Life is GOOD ANON, IT’S JUST ALL I EVER WANTED OUT OF LIFE HERE. 

Much bliss.

Does it say yet why Claude wants Rhea dead so badly in GW? He didn’t like her (at first) in VW but in Musou he’s outright willing to invade another country to kill her

We haven’t found out why yet. It’s still a big mystery. And a sad mystery. 

Like how you can play with both the GDs and BEs in SB/GW because of Edelgard and Claude teaming up, do you know if any of the BLs are recruitable to the other routes?

The BL’s are the least recruitable. Of the students, only Ashe and Mercedes can be recruit. Ashe all routes, Mercedes only to SB. 

It seems all the GD will just mass join the Empire at a certain point, likely due to Claude teaming up with Edelgard. However, the same is true for BL - the GD mass join Dimitri EXCEPT Lysithea and Leonie (BE recruits only). 

So if you like Felix or Sylvain, or even Annette, BL is the only route for you.

Now there is a “memory” battle type thing where you can replay any map with any character, but that’s not a “canon” way to play. Just for fun.

[faroreswinds]

Data Mining: Dialogue - Dimitri

Going through the data mining, I will be collecting quotes from Dimitri and about Dimitri from other characters and putting it all here. 

As a disclaimer, I will not be looking at every piece of dialogue- rather, I will be showcasing the dialogue that looks interesting or is important overall.

If you want to see more of this little analysis project of mine, please check it out here. Please remember this is a work in progress and posts will be continuously updated as I come across more information. As such, this post is currently incomplete. 

Please feel free to update me on anything I missed or whatever, and I will try to include it in the posts if I feel it is important/ cool.

Prologue

Dimitri: Thank you. We are in your debt. It wouldn't do for us to fall in a place like this. Dimitri: Please, lend us your strength. Let's work together to drive out these thieves!

Dimitri: The way you held your ground against the bandits' leader was captivating! You never lost control of the situation. It showed me I still have much to learn.

Beliefs, Ideals, and World Views

Dimitri: Hm. You will prove a lacking ruler yourself if you look for deceit behind every word and fail to trust those whom you rely on.

About Dimitri From Other Characters

Edelgard: His intentions were as clear as day. You will prove a lacking ruler if you cannot see the truth behind a person's words.

Byleth: (He seems quite sincere...) Byleth: (But I sense darkness lurking beneath...)

Sylvain: You know what, Professor? His Highness here is the most stubborn guy I know.

Sylvain: So, Your Highness, you're gonna keep the scolding to a minimum, yeah? Dimitri: Why are you assuming you will be scolded? All you need to do is take things seriously.

Dimitri: Hey, Sylvain. I would like your help for today's work. Sylvain: Heh, so you've finally learned you can't do everything yourself?

Sylvain: I'm hesitant to invite a girl to my room in the middle of the night with You Know Who living right next door. I'm terrified of the scolding I'd get the next day.

[sciencespies]

Animals' ability to adapt their habitats key to survival amid climate change

https://sciencespies.com/nature/animals-ability-to-adapt-their-habitats-key-to-survival-amid-climate-change/

Animals' ability to adapt their habitats key to survival amid climate change

Birds build nests to keep eggs and baby nestlings warm during cool weather, but also make adjustments in nest insulation in such a way the little ones can keep cool in very hot conditions. Mammals, such as rabbits or groundhogs, sleep or hibernate in underground burrows that provide stable, moderate temperatures and avoid above-ground conditions that often are far more extreme outside the burrow.

Michael Dillon, an associate professor in the University of Wyoming Department of Zoology and Physiology, was part of a research group that examined animals’ ability to respond to climate change likely depends on how well they modify their habitats, such as nests and burrows.

So, how are these animals doing? Are they succeeding, struggling, or are their efforts a mixed bag in adapting their habitats to climate change?

“One of the key reasons that we wrote this paper is that we don’t know the answer to this very important question!,” Dillon says. “We hope the paper will encourage scientists to begin answering this question.”

Dillon is a co-author of a paper, titled “Extended Phenotypes: Buffers or Amplifiers of Climate Change?,” that was published June 16 in Trends in Ecology & Evolution. The journal publishes commissioned, peer-reviewed articles in all areas of ecology and evolutionary science.

The lead author of the paper is Arthur Woods, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Montana. Other contributors to the paper were from the University of Tours in Tours, France; and Stellenbosch University in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

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The study investigated extended phenotypes, which are modifications that organisms — birds, insects and mammals — make to their habitats.

“An extended phenotype can range from simply a hole in the ground occupied by an animal to leaves rolled into cavities by insects, to nests of all shapes and sizes built by birds and mammals, to termite mounds and bee colonies,” Dillon says.

Extended phenotypes are important because they filter climate into local sets of conditions immediately around the organism. This is what biologists call the microclimate.

Because extended phenotypes are constructed structures, they often are modified in response to local climate variation and, potentially, in response to climate change. This process is called plasticity of the extended phenotype.

“One example might be a bird nest that is well insulated to protect eggs or young birds from cold. As climates warm, if the bird does not adjust insulation in the nest, it may, in fact, cause the young to overheat,” Dillon explains.

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In another prime example, termites build mounds that capture wind and solar energy to drive airflow through the colony, which stabilizes temperature, relative humidity and oxygen levels experienced by the colony.

However, the idea of microclimates is broader than constructed habitats. Microclimates typically differ substantially from nearby climates, which means that the climate in an area may provide little information about what animals experience in their microhabitats.

As an analogy, although a weather station might tell the public that the temperature in Laramie is 90 degrees Fahrenheit, simply by moving from the south to the north side of a building, one can experience microclimates that are strikingly different and often not captured by the weather data, Dillon says.

The same is true of animals of many different sizes. For example, a moose can move from an open sagebrush landscape to a shaded river corridor to cool off; a snake can move from its underground hole to a sunny rock to warm up; and a tiny insect shuttling between the top and bottom of a leaf can experience temperature differences of more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

“So, animals use microclimates, both by simply moving but also by building structures, such as nests, burrows, mounds and mines,” Dillon says.

Across the globe, rising levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere are causing temperatures to rise and precipitation patterns to shift. For biologists, a key problem is to understand current effects of climate change on species, and to predict future effects, including how species’ ranges may shift and what the relative risks of extinction are for different animal species’ groups.

The research team favors a renewed effort to understand how extended phenotypes mediate how organisms experience climate change.

“We need a much better understanding of the basic biophysical principles by which extended phenotypes alter local conditions,” says Sylvain Pincebourde, an ecologist in the Insect Biology Research Institute at the University of Tours and one of the paper’s co-authors.

Another key challenge is to understand how much plasticity there is in extended phenotypes, and how much and how rapidly they can evolve.

“At this point, we pretty much have no idea,” Dillon says. “Can structures that buffer temperature variability keep up with the pace of climate change?”

#Nature