#and just humans are a social species and most of us require social feedback in the form of just interacting with people

[underthehedge]

If I recall, one of the theories of how humans developed spoken language is basically this. The "put the baby down" theory (or something) suggests it originated with a sort of continuous reassurance/contact call between parent and child while the hands were busy, because human babies can't cling onto adults like most primates.

I actually think there might be another one that suggested a similar thing, that it arose from humans evolving in an environment where line of sight is often blocked. Basically, while people are gathering or whatever in shrubby areas, constant contact calling helped keep people from wandering away from the group etc., which evolved into conveying more complicated information and eventually language.

While I'm talking about social stuff I had to learn as an autistic person

There's a LOT of social interactions between human beings whose purpose really boils down to being like that thing dogs do where they go "omg YOU'RE a dog??? I'M a dog!!!!!" And that's not a bad thing. Highly ritualized "meaningless" displays of human connection like friendly greetings and talking about things like weather actually do serve a purpose which is like idk ritualized displays birds do. YOU'RE a human? Omg I'M a human!!!! Wow!!!

And they don't have to be your favorite flavor of interaction. You can even think they're silly. But they DO serve a purpose or else they wouldn't be a thing.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Catherine Hawkins

Published: May 6, 2023

In a new piece for Scientific American, Princeton anthropologist Dr. Agustín Fuentes argues that the binary of male and female is too simplistic to describe the complexity of human sex. He claims that defining sex from “the type of gamete (sperm or ova) [an organism] has the function of producing” is not just “bad science,” but a political ploy to justify discrimination. Instead, he says we should think of sex as a combination of many biological and social characteristics that make it “dynamic, biological, cultural, and enmeshed in feedback cycles with our environments, ecologies, and multiple physiological and social processes.” Definitions are human inventions and can certainly change to incorporate new understanding.

Unfortunately, this definition of sex is muddled and incoherent. Making gametes just one of many characteristics defining sex may free us from a politically unpopular binary, but at the cost of our ability to describe reality correctly and clearly.

What is this supposedly simplistic, regressive gamete-based definition of sex? Gametes are the cells that combine during sexual reproduction to produce an offspring with genetic material from both parents. Each species that sexually reproduces needs to produce two kinds—small, mobile gametes (sperm) that make their way to large, immobile gametes (eggs). Most animals have evolved two basic body plans to produce these gametes and use them to give rise to offspring. Dr. Fuentes is correct that these body plans are complex and involve many aspects of anatomy, physiology, and behavior. For example, for human females, successfully producing eggs, getting them into contact with sperm, and generating viable offspring requires dedicated structures (including a vagina, ovaries, and uterus), complicated hormonal regulation (including puberty, the menstrual cycle, and the many hormonal changes during pregnancy, birth, and lactation), and complex biologically and socially influenced behaviors.

In the gamete-based view, the question “what sex is this person?” is asking “Which body plan would this person use to reproduce? The female (egg-based) or male (sperm-based) plan?” Humans do not have other sexes beyond males and females because there are no other gametes that human bodies have evolved to use for reproduction. Sometimes, the complex machinery involved in reproduction can develop wrong, and people can suffer from infertility or exhibit reproductive traits that are atypical for their sex, including ambiguous genitalia (intersex conditions). However, as pointed out by others, these are not additional sexes because these body plans do not produce a new type of gamete besides sperm or eggs. Someone who does not produce any gametes would also not be a third sex since they would be fundamentally incapable of sexual reproduction.

Dr. Fuentes challenges this view by building and readily destroying several strawmen. He claims that sex in human cannot be binary because (1) sex differences in physiology and behavior are not universal across species, (2) individuals with the same gametes can have different traits, and (3) individuals with different gametes can have overlapping traits. To the first point, the gamete-based view is what allows us to talk coherently about sexes across diverse organisms. We know that what a female echidna and a female human have in common is that they produce eggs that must be fertilized by sperm to reproduce. Is Dr. Fuentes saying that if we were to use his mishmash of “biological and social characteristics” to define sex, we would end up with bizarre situations where sperm-producing individuals are the ��females” of some species?

The second point also falls quickly to scrutiny. There is no mainstream belief that the fact there are two body plans for reproduction means that every characteristic of individuals with those body plans must be the same. As Dr. Fuentes reminds us, “producing ova or sperm does not tell us everything (or even most things) biologically or socially” about people, including characteristics like “sexual attractions, interest in literature, engineering and math capabilities” or “love of… sports.” Just imagine a world where that was a mainstream belief. Going to the doctor would be chaos if doctors believed that there was only one acceptable body size, estrogen or testosterone level, or muscle or fat composition for each sex. Imagine being regularly shocked to meet gay males, male English teachers, and female engineers and Red Socks fans. Obviously, we don’t live in this world, because there is nothing incompatible about believing that individuals who produce the same gametes and use the same general body plan to produce offspring can vary widely in many characteristics.

Dr. Fuentes’ third and final strawman is also the basis of the “sex is a spectrum” argument, usually represented in a graph like this:

Despite detailed rebuttals, it’s obvious from this graph that people cannot be grouped into binary categories of male and female because these categories are not separate—some of the people who produce eggs have more male-typical traits, and vice versa.

Except, oops, that’s a plot of dog and horse body weights.

The fact that small horses and large dogs have similar weights means that “horse” and “dog” are a false binary, and all of these animals fall along a dog-horse spectrum. Don’t scoop me before I get this submitted to Nature.

Alright, I was a bit rude just there to Dr. Fuentes. Let’s be fair and ask: what would be so wrong with taking up his definition of sex as a conglomerate of physical and behavioral traits, of which gamete type is just one? For his definition to work, we would first need to agree on what physical and behavioral traits we must use to quantify sex—otherwise, we will get different answers about where a person falls on the spectrum. This gets tricky fast for behavioral traits. For example, can we determine sex by asking people about their interest in literature in general, or would we need to distinguish an interest in rugged war stories by Hemmingway from romantic comedies of manners by Austen?

Let’s say we eventually did decide on a comprehensive panel of traits to measure human sex. We then quickly see that his definition is not so much unscientific as it as a kind of anti-science that makes biology less capable of making sense of the world around us. For example, people who produce eggs typically have hormone levels that change over time as part of their menstrual cycle. In the gamete-based view, this person is always female, because they will always use eggs to reproduce. But if hormone levels are instead some of the physical traits that define one’s sex, this definition quickly devolves into nonsense where people become “maler” and “femaler” every month while their underlying reproductive body plan remains the same.

Even measuring sex for an individual with ambiguous traits—which should be a strong case for Dr. Fuentes’ definition—quickly breaks down into gibberish. Consider a person who produces eggs but has the rare disorder called congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). CAH causes the adrenal glands to overproduce androgens, the hormones that drive the development of male-typical characteristics. This person would have ovaries and a uterus but also likely have ambiguous external genitalia, an irregular menstrual cycle, and significant facial and body hair, falling well within the overlapping zone for physical traits. But what is their sex? In the gamete-based view they are unambiguously female, since this person would only ever reproduce through producing eggs and never by producing sperm or another yet-to-be-discovered gamete. This person could struggle to get pregnant due to CAH, but this doesn’t change the fact that their only viable reproductive strategy is female (through eggs). Instead, Dr. Fuentes’ view of sex would say that this person has traits that place them in the middle of the range across humans, making them approximately 50/50 male- and female-typical.

The problem is that this information is essentially useless. Imagine reading that as a doctor and trying to figure out whether your patient is a female facing serious medical problems or a healthy short male who likes gossiping and Pride and Prejudice more than sports. The doctor would need the gamete-based view of sex to make sense of what they’re seeing, since these traits—facial hair, high androgens—only emerge as symptoms in the context of a female sex.

How has a researcher at such a respected institution convinced himself of something so confused and incoherent? Since Dr. Fuentes has taken the liberty of speculating about others’ political motivations, I will speculate about his.

I believe Dr. Fuentes and other political progressives prefer this definition of sex because it makes it impossible to legally protect single-sex spaces. Take the case of Adam Graham (Isla Bryson), a male convicted of two rapes who began identifying as a woman and was sent to a female prison until public outcry reversed this decision. The gamete-based view is clear that Graham was born a male and no amount of hormone therapy, interest in Jane Eyre, or disinterest in football can make him less so. There is therefore no biological reason to think that he would be less of a risk to female prisoners than any other violent male. But in Dr. Fuentes’ view, who’s to say that Graham couldn’t come up with enough physical and behavioral changes to move himself into the female-typical end of the spectrum? And if sex is just a position along a spectrum, how can anyone say that Graham couldn’t become “female enough” for female prison?

Maybe I’m putting words in Dr. Fuentes’ mouth, but I believe these are the kinds of extreme political positions that he and other activists are trying to re-write biology to support. 

Dr. Fuentes, vote for anyone or anything you like. But leave biology out of your political project. Some of us would still like to use it to make sense of the natural world.

Catherine Hawkins (a pseudonym) has a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology, and is currently a professor of plant biology at an R1 university in the United States. 

==

There was a time when people didn't know that the Earth was round and not the center of the universe. Now we do. And people who deny it are delusional.

But there was never a time when humans were confused about how to make a baby. Now people are lying and pretending that there's no way to figure it out. And being celebrated for it.

[baby-fics]

🛡️Closet Monster OC Headcannons🛡️

I wrote a couple fics about this Monster so I figured if I'm gonna make an OC you should at least know who and what they are!

CW: Vague Body horror? Eldritch monster.

It's name is Noor, it is and pronouns are it/it's.

Its body is heavily customizable and can gain and lose mass at will. They can only ever take up as much space as a room will allow, however they can give form to their "Void Body" if they do wish. So either they can encompass an entire room or they can take a smaller form that is more useful.

For example: Mimicking human shape, forming limbs and appendages, and forming eyes. These are tactics that are used to elicit the emotions they feed from.

Speaking of: Noor's species are beings that feeds off strong emotions, the most efficient being through fear. Most beings of his kind receive their energy this way, it's just convenient- but not necessarily required.

Others prefer to feed off anger, sadness, joy. Any feeling that a human is currently consumed by is siphoned onto these creatures.

It really just depends on the preference, it's more like picking a favorite food. Some enjoy the feeling of love like you enjoy the taste of strawberries.

Noor prefers feelings of Excitement and Serenity. When you are at peace, Noor is. His species is empathetic in nature and finds that he prefers the mellow but consistent energy that is released instead of the intense gut punches of energy that is received from bigger emotions.

Noor has been with MC since they were born, his species will identify pregnant individuals so that they may lay claim on a child before another can.

Think about it, babies and small children have little to no emotional regulation skills. That makes for VERY big feelings and VERY big payout, however once their child reaches adulthood those skills develop and the monster does not receive as much output.

MC gets lucky in this reguard, Noor isn't interested in negative emotions. They make Noor feel... Sharp, it does not like to feel sharp.

Noor has known it's charge since their parent became pregnant. Your parents may not know Noor's existence, but they say they were thankful that you were an "easy baby".

Really Noor was the one watching over you when they could not. Eldritch Babysitter™

When you hit puberty though? Noor HATED IT. Your emotions were immense and negative, and you were so anxious.

You also would not let him care for you anymore! Shutting yourself away and putting so. Much. Pressure. On. Yourself. And for what!? It does not understand.

It stressed Noor out, and because of your erratic and repressed emotional state, once again it created a toxic feedback loop of sharpness and negativity.

But Noor hates this, it can be morbid, odd, and antisocial but NEVER cruel. Cruelty and anger make its form shiver and revolt. Like sure it has a collection of bones somewhere, but it asked every creature before it took them! Sadly not many want to give Noor their bones though...

Noor could never handle cruelty. It knows how the outsider feels, how the often rejected feel, for those who feel like they "socialize wrong". It understands, and doesn't mind.

All Noor asks is that you're okay with how sometimes it's an empty black void and other times it is a mass of limbs and eyes! Noor's weird! And it's okay with that! Weird is good!!

Come as you are. That is all Noor asks. Trans, Queer, Disabled, ANYTHING. Only kindness is required.

When it comes to hobbies/activities, it mostly remains indoors.

Noor will put cartoons on, not only in an attempt to make it's kiddo Little: Noor just likes cartoons. Also Great British Bake off and Tiny House Hunters.

Noor. LOVES. Tiny. Houses. Like I said, their species takes up as much mass as the current room allows but most prefer tighter spaces. Noor is obsessed with the idea of the whole house being a nice cozy lil closet!

Noor could make the whole room just be your bed, while also maybe being the bed!

Please get this Void a tiny house.

And this is Noor! I'll probably make a part 2 to Noor's character HC's later! But I would like for Noor to kinda become a Caregiver OC that I write frequently about.

[rametarin]

Ultimately, healthcare is not a right.

But the cost of healthcare in the future won’’t be based on real market things, if the government has its say. Specially, to keep it a government monopoly.

However, in a pure capitalist system, the thing that makes healthcare expensive is:

A.) Limitations of technology. If the only way you can see inside someone to determine broken bones, or hernea, or presence of cancer cells, is by using a Big Fat Expensive Machine that takes up the size of a room and requires expensive appointments. Electricity hog, resource hog, maintenance hog.

B.) Limited number of technicians and specialists.

The first problemc an be solved with wise investment into computers and electronics, and holy shit, holy shit, we are just about to where there’s no tissue or CELL in the human body we can’t individually analyze with absolurely absurd definition and accuracy. Even model whole active systems in 3D simulating your body in realtime.

Technologically speaking, advancements in both electronics and manufacturing tech and discoveries in chemistry are making it possible to more cheaply, almost freely, create medicine and devices that would be like trillion dollar elixers back in the 80s and 90s. So, problem A is being mitigated for the costs and expenses and requirements of expertise and sophistication of creation.

Problem two, the cost of personnel and staff.

The only reason doctors are paid so much is because our healthcare is socialized in all the worst ways through the backdoor. If the medical system was a capitalist one, in a true free market, and the medical education system wasn’t a complete racket, then we’d have more competent doctors and nurses and specialists. More specialists and doctors brings the prices down by the doctors needing to sell their services and products.

You ask me, a public/private facility that treats education of medicinal practicioners that soaks up the costs of medical education by paying med school teachers buckoo bucks to teach students learning for free would mean that doctors no longer need to pay off obscene amounts of educational debt in order to be a doctor.

Increasing the numbers of healthcare workers/medical staff/GP doctors/specialist doctors, means people have more options and doctors have to compete with one another. Making healthcare costs go down.

If we just fix the cost of healthcare education, increase the accessibility of people to become medical practicioners, BREAK OPEN the scarce monopoly of the healthcare industry so poor people can become doctors, break open the nursing agencies that cheat nurses out of their wages to pay them 20-30 dollars an hour for the $70 the agency charges (and then charges the government that.. which reaches into its deep pockets and yanks it out of peoples taxes) then we’d see medical costs virtually disintegrate, and we wouldn’t lose any quality.

We don’t even need to destroy patents or patent law. We do not need to destroy intellectual property. The only reason patent trolling works well with medicines is not because they copyright or patent the formula to “pain medicine,” but because researching that shit previously took months or years just to come up with SOME IDEA of new territory, then more years to explore if it is even possible, then more years to bang it out and test it, then more years to find anything that works, and then more testing, and then more years to prove it exists, it works, get it patented, and then made into a product..Then more years to make the most of it before the patent expires and all that research becomes public domain.

By expanding the technology that allows drugs to be researched cheaply, affordably, quickly, spreading these tools and technologies to the masses and consumers like it’s a god damned hardware store item, we increase the opportunity for Joe Everyman to be able to make and patent and possibly even legally manufacture pharmaceuticals.

The costs of healthcare are astronomical ONLY because this feedback screaming shit cacophany of a system is DESIGNED to imp and leech off of the government and society, and it’s basically a financial and bureaucratic coup. If we ever want to prosper, we need to decouple the government from healthcare. And for that matter, decouple corporatism with the legal avenues. OPEN IT UP to small business and capitalism.

Regardless of whether the system evolves and adapts to accommodate the cost saving measures, this is a technological reality. It could be freed from ridiculous expenses, thus cheapening the cost to something affordable without a fortune. And that, friends, is why I think in the future, it SHOULD rightly be on you to pay your own medical expenses.

But it’s on us as a species to make the process affordable by improving the science to making the medicine or the device is effortless and old hat.

[ashnistrike]

Having just read the Devereaux series - which I highly recommend, for anyone interested in the cool complexity of actual cultures - very much this.

Also, the books cited by an enthusiastic nerd in an adjacent academic domain, and the research required for an author who wants some real-world inspiration, are two very different things. Notably, the Dothraki are not just unlike the Mongols or Shoshone, but unlike any real human culture. Art and song have been basic human things since there were multiple hominid species; even cultures that constrain those for religious reasons have permissible versions that they practice regularly, because both individuals and groups use them to keep functional. No human group depends entirely on its vital mount animals for food. All human groups have constraints on in-group violence even if they encourage outgroup violence. And so on.

So GRRM is not only misreporting his creative process, he's doing so in a way that claims that some real-world cultures don't do core human things. And he's had a serious influence on what people in genre consider realistic. So this is worth critiquing, and the critique is worth spreading, not because we enjoy punching up at a successful author but because the critique has the potential to improve both how readers think about the world around them, and how other authors think about realism.

If like me, you are an author with a dayjob and extensive family obligations - and whether you have access to the modern internet or have accidentally time traveled to the 90s - I recommend:

Ask a librarian for help. This is what they're for, seriously.

Talk to an expert, "I'm an author and want to write about your area" opens many doors. Don't send them a long list of homework questions, but you can ask about a few central things and also what the most interesting things are about their topic that they wish would show up in a book.

These are things you can do even if you have no money for, e.g., sensitivity readers (which legit were not a thing in the 90s but are now), or friendly beta readers with the appropriate background willing to give blunt feedback for free (which absolutely were).

For an excellent and complex depiction of nomads who aren't directly based on any real-world culture, but who are actually more like them than the Dothraki, go read Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman series. The second book takes place largely among the Outskirters, and does a gorgeous job with art and song, sustenance practices, realistic hierarchies and social roles, and ingroup/outgroup relations. Oh, and they're also pretty kickass fighters when the need arises!

it is very easy to avoid getting dragged over and over again by history bloggers for the quality of your fantasy novels: don’t repeatedly emphasize how ~aCcuRaTe~ they are! Accuracy means nothing in fantasy, it’s a totally useless term, and people will forgive almost any believability-stretching worldbreaking sin if you write well and tell an engaging story–unless you try to stake your reputation as a fantasy writer on gritty realism and being a more historically attentive worldbuilder than that Tolkien guy, who only *checks notes* had a PhD in medieval literature and spent his entire life thinking, writing, and teaching about medieval language and culture.

[medigocrazy-blog]

Dexamethasone- The Wonder Drug or The Desperate Hope?

Despite all the desperate efforts to control the spread of the virus SARS-CoV2, wiz getting on nerves of us, humans, as a very, very, social ;sometimes; toxic, species 

Hello,          I am Arjun and this picture is not me. Its been like 6 months into this pandemic and I have been eating all this junk you can actually say that this picture is me.Gosh, I was so excited for 2020 because so many exciting things were about to happen. Elon Musk was actually going to complete that Neuralink trial thingy by the end of this year and I could finally end my never ending struggle to take care of my> oh my god> numerous organ systems? my weight ? and my metabolism? any my eyesight? and my everything? Who the h*ll does that? 

But no, its just not happening guys. I am pretty sure now because 2020 is just the worst year! let us just agree to that as a starter!

Can you guys like believe that we cannot go out for window shopping anymore?

I go out to buy milk and I have to wear this Halo master chief armored suit thingy.

Ordering from Starbucks is just a pandemic and one kidney away and I certainly cannot beat the Indian summer heat.

I am desperate, I am so desperate that Baba Ramdev doing Yoga at 4:30 in the morning actually makes sense somehow.

I am so desperate that my lockdown 3 AM anthem is :

Taoism talks about how you should go with the flow so thats what I am actually doing, I am finally going with the flow,

But it feels like this flow is actually going towards a falling waterfall and we all are almost on the edge now.

The International airlines are shut down You cannot travel to Ladakh or Goa with your friends and Emiway just featured Macklemore in his song? Like seriously? He went from worshiping M&M to MM? Half a million people have died due to the Coronavirus alone

Yemen is going through a civil war and one of the worst famines in modern history.

And for some reason Delhi is getting its ego drop by a series of Earthquakes.

Well,  Thank You 2020, UNESCO just declared you to be the most confused year in the history of mankind. Like seriously, please decide what you want man.

Now, lets talk medicine.

Lets talk about the scope Dexamethasone potentially has, against Covid-19,

There has been numerous claims in the recent past to have successfully found a potential cure for Covid-19, But I was like meh; BUT I am pretty excited for this one which Oxford just released a statement for I think last night maybe.

The World Health Organisation also applauded the initial results of the study.

It is really interesting, the excerpt said that they are trying to publish the data as soon as possible which basically makes it a more trustworthy of a claim.

The study was an attempt to potentially use Dexamethosone  (A long acting corticosteroid which can remain in the systemic circulation for as long as 3 days) as a DOC for the Covid19.

What are Steroids?

Steroids is a group of chemical compounds with extensive properties often used as a drug of choice for many life threatening diseases.

Some steroids ( Androgenic Steroids) are activated due to stress and leads to many anabolic processes inside your body for example "Muscle building", When you are like trying to get those gains so badly in the gym, what basically happens is you are stressing your muscular cells (also injuring) as a result of resistance training and then steroids are produced as a physiological response so that more and more protein is available for the muscle to repair (btw this is the reason why some bodybuilders using anabolic steroids, end up gaining exceptional gains over years of steroid use)

Some steroids (Glucocorticoids) can strongly suppress the immune system by either suppressing certain genes in various immune cells or by blocking the important enzyme activities. These steroids can act as Anti Inflammatory too which basically means these steroids counter any inflammatory response which can be physiological or pathological. This is the reason that if a steroid taken in the early phase of the Covid-19 disease (The mild symptomatic or Asymptomatic phase) can actually suppress the immunity to a certain point that the drug itself becomes counterproductive.

Some Steroids (Mineralocorticoids) maintain the mineral balance by salt retention, etc. Lets just skip this one.

Adrenal Gland produces Steroid. Them tiny glands you can see above the kidneys.

Now the immunity suppressing nature of Dexamethasone is also the reason why it cannot be taken as a mass prophylaxis drug,  unless the patient is in a state of severe immune response to the infection and requires ventilation or ICU.

The exudate formed in the lungs become an overwhelming immune response to fighting the virus and becomes fatal by causing the patient to stay in respiratory distress and finally succumbing to death.

The Trials done by the Oxford University aka RECOVERY trials, said that :

"1 death would be prevented by treatment of around 8 ventilated patients"

or

"around 25 patients requiring oxygen alone as of now"

*The prognosis may potentially increase as with other combinations in the future*

The study is really interesting because the study population was relatively large ( around 11,500) ; The Cohort population was around 2100 and Control was 4300 which is really exciting.

How does Dexamethasone work against SARS - CoV2?

Dexamethasone is a long acting Corticosteroid and mostly suppress the genes of immune expression

This is the Mechanism of Action of the drug if you are interested:  

Dexamethosone vs The Immune System :  

The goal of this drug is to just deactivate the immune system which has gone kinda crazy over this virus.

The immune system (IS) basically starts acting like its IS and terrorizes the whole body like its Iraq or Syria.

Jokes aside, This drug can really do some great damage to the hyper super- immune response which is kind of self destructive as the disease progress. Let's try to understand HOW

Only Within 6 hours of single dose of Dexamethasone:

There is a decreased availabilty of lymphocytes, eosinophils, basophils, monocytes,

These cells start redistributing and becomes less available and inactive for almost a day or two.

Also there is a decreased adhesion of these cells to blood vessel walls due to Dexamethasone, Actually the drug is not letting these immune cells to cross the wall of the vessel and go to the infection site (which is kinda cool cuz' no immune response no problem right? seriously why didnt evolution think of this?)

SECONDLY < there is a > decreased phagocytotic capacity of the immune cells so that they do not eat up the virus and form further exudates.

Finally leading to the decrease in respiratory burst (It is the area inside a phagocyte where we burn the pathogen inside the phagolysosome usually, in the case of Covid19,  later explodes and kills us, Dont worry the jokes' on evolution not us )

Now the first most remarkable thing Dexamethasone does is, that, it suppresses Macrophage activity.

Which is basically blocking the Arachidonic Acid Pathway, Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes, Interleukin 1, Interleukin 6 and TNF

Explaination :

IL-1 goes to the brain and causes fever and normally increases the production of steroids by stimulating the hypothalamus, but since we are giving Dexamethasone (which is a steroid) there's something called as a negative feedback and it decreases the natural physiological production of steroid, causing the person to be severely dependent on steroids; and if the person stops taking this steroid, he can eventually die due to acute adrenal insufficiency, thats the reason why we should always taper the dose when withdrawing a steroid.

Now,

The Interleukin 6 usually activates almost all other immune system actions (Remember that respiratory burst is also decreased and hence theres no signal from the MHC I and II to activate the immune system either)  but when it is suppressed by Dexamethoasone, it cannot activate the immune response like it normally would.

The second most important thing is that Dexamethasone down stimulates the cooperation between naive T cells and Interleukins

In Covid 19, Macrophage connects with the Naive T cells and there is a co-stimulation and can be two pathways. (depending on which interleukin is available for the naive T cell)

The first pathway:

In presence of Interleukin 4, these Naive T cells convert into T helper -1 cells which further increases Interleukin 4 and Interleukin 5 by positive feedback mechanism.

Finally causing the other cells of cell- mediated immunity, the "B-cells" to become active and produce antibodies which bind with the virus antigen and try to repeatedly neutralise it. (and kills us).

The Dexamethasone can potentially end all this suffering by attacking a gene known as GATA3 on the T helper 1 cell, (Remember Steroids suppress some immune genes it is just one of them) and hence GATA3 is suppressed, and therefore the chain is broken and there is no immune response ( yay, we alive now)

The second pathway :

If the naive t cell has Interleukin 12 available instead of Interleukin 4, it becomes T helper 2 cell, which produces Interleukin 2, which activates Cytotoxic T cells which produces some naughty proteins called perforins and granzymes.

These Perforin causes perforations in the infected cell and granzymes are then injected to that infected cell which makes the cell kind of commit suicide I guess ?. (and it kills us)

Dexamethasone acts on the T-bet gene on the T helper 2 cell which suppresses the further activation of immune response ( and hey we back to life again)

Now, ALL this information which just went over all of our heads is just the immune suppression of steroids, Lets not go in details with the EXTENSIVE collection of what Dexamethasone can actually achieve.

Please note the trials were done with Dexamethasone and not other corticosteroids mainly because of its wide availability, inexpensive nature, and most importantly because it is along acting Corticosteroid despite being the most potent among them

Dexamethasone also decreases inflammation

Explaination :

Our Cell membranes have a phospholipid bilayer, which is converted by PLA2( Phospholipase A2 ) enzyme to Arachidonic Acid. a) Arachidonic Acid is acted on By COXs ( Cyclooxygenases) to release PGE2F2, PGI2, Thromboxin A2 b) Arachidonic acid can be converted to Leukotrienes by LOXs (Lipooxygenase)

Dexamethasone can block the PLA2 enzyme and COX2 and COX1,  by producing Lipocortin 1, and therefore there's no formation of Arachidonic Acid in the first place, and the whole inflammatory system goes down. (Kudos to the structure of Dexamethasone)

Please, keep in mind that we do need the immune and inflammatory response in the early part of the disease but as their  actions overwhelm the healthy effects of the process, steroids can be used. Not too early, because it can actually worsen the disease if steroids are administered too early.

Some Side Effects which are to be kept in mind :

1. Withdrawl :

- Underlying disease which we were treating may rebound even stronger than before - Acute Adrenal Insufficiency - Pseudotumor Cerebri - Myalgias - Arthralgias - Malaise

2. Hyper use of steroid for long period :

- Fluid and electrolyte abnormalities - HTN ( more sodium retention) - Hyperglycemia ( gluconeogenesis) - Increased infection susceptibility (suppressed immune system) - Behavioral disturbances - Striae (fat redistribution)

While this is a serious concern for us as Indians, people are already stocking up Dexamethasone, price is most likely to spike up and things actually somehow do not work perfectly in India. Let's hope we learn from our mistakes in the past and just get this done and over with. PS - I will try to post more articles like this if I find something interesting regarding the pandemic. Thank you for the time. :)   Feel free to contact.

Source: Dexamethasone statement by WHO

https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/16-06-2020-who-welcomes-preliminary-results-about-dexamethasone-use-in-treating-critically-ill-covid-19-patients

Oxford Recovery Trial Statement

https://www.recoverytrial.net/files/recovery_dexamethasone_statement_160620_v2final.pdf

[argentdandelion]

Possible Health Problems of Hybrid Fanchildren

No, think of the children!...your hybrid children, that is. Contains lovely ideas for angst.

Hybrid fanchildren are common in the Undertale fandom. It is likely this is because the main characters of the game cover multiple "breeds" of monster, and there are in fact canon cross-breed couples (Undyne and Alphys, RG01 and RG02). Fanchildren are also a creative exercise where one combines the looks and personalities of the parents into a new, distinct character design.

In-universe, if hybridization is even possible, it's likely common. However, hybridizing could cause problems.

Where potential mates of their own species are rare, animals might hybridize with closely related species. Furthermore, animals might make hybrids if they're compatible species kept in the same enclosure (e.g., lions and tigers in zoos). In birds when one species parasitically lays its eggs in the nests of another species, the offspring might imprint after its host parents in looks or song, and so only be interested in birds that look or sound like its host parents.

All these things likely happened when monsters were sealed underground. While it’s unclear if different monster breeds interbred before the war, given monsterkind’s massive casualties it’s likely monsters’ options within their own breed were limited. (This would surely be especially true for monster breeds that were rare to begin with.) Staying underground, especially if they all stayed in just one city for a long time, would also work like captive conditions. Furthermore, the devastation might have meant a whole lot of orphans, which might have been raised by different breeds. Such orphans might, like the parasitic birds, prefer breeds like the ones they were raised by. It’s certainly clear monsters have variable preferences and can imitate other monsters (e.g., Papyrus catching a thrown stick in his mouth)/have variable behavior, after all.

Biological Problems

For some breeds, even if hybridizing is possible it would likely cause health problems. This is especially obvious for fire monsters, such as offspring of the Sans X Grillby ("Sansby") pairing. Though skeleton monsters are apparently1 insensitive to cold, it's unclear whether they're insensitive or immune to heat too. Fan works often assume Grillby's fire is painfully hot, and becomes much hotter when angry. While (dry, human) bones can withstand greater temperatures than human flesh without (visible) damage, being on fire constantly might be a problem. Even if the hybrid children can withstand it, it's possible (and more likely) that they might hurt themselves from the higher temperatures if they ever get angry.

Pain can make people easier to anger, so being burned by their own flames might cause a self-destructive feedback loop of pain and burning. If they can't quickly heal burn markings from such events, they might become anxious about it, akin to obvious scars or burn wounds.

Environmental Unsuitability

Environmental unsuitability is also a problem. While a hybrid's parents might be well-suited to distinct environments, the hybrid may be unsuited for either or require unpredictable intermediate environments.

For example, the fish monster Undyne is vulnerable to heat stroke/dehydration when travelling through the dry, hot caverns of Hotland; Alphys is not. Evidently travelling through Hotland is enough of a danger to Undyne that Alphys installed a water cooler for her halfway to her lab, even though Alphys' lab is only a few screens into Hotland. While Undyne says she dislikes "snow", she's evidently not in danger standing outside Papyrus's house indefinitely. This might not be true for Alphys: while some fish can live in cold water, reptiles either die or hibernate in cold environments like Snowdin.

A hybrid child of the two might do well in an intermediate environment (e.g., hot but humid, like south Florida) or take after one or the other unpredictably.

Some assume Undyne can breathe underwater through gills; what if the child prefers most of their body to be dry but needs to keep their gills moist? What if the child prefers dry, but not hot, environments? With such a potential blend of preferred environments, they all might need custom rooms (e.g., humidifiers, pools) in one house.

Most dangerously, what if Undyne can breathe water through her skin, but a reptile-skinned but otherwise fishlike child cannot? One work, Scramble Saga, suggests Undyne sleeps in a water-filled bathtub rather than a bed. If a helpless baby that can't breathe underwater is put in a tub-crib, the baby might drown. The child might drown, too, if Undyne is playing boldly and aggressively in the water and mistakenly assumes the child can breathe underwater.

Psychological Problems

No Horns

(The picture is based on goat skulls; notice they don't have horns. Picture modified from here.)

In goats, horn buds don’t grow directly from the skull, but from a specialized patch of skin. Only later do they start to merge to the skull.

Assuming Boss Monsters’ horns grow like that of goats, a Boss Monster-skeleton hybrid might not have horns. (Many such fanchildren have no skin, after all.) While many monsters do not have horns, this might still make the fanchild self-conscious about not having horns. (Perhaps similarly to Kris of Deltarune, though Kris is a human.)

The Problems of Papyrus x Mettaton

“Us ghosts spend our whole lives looking for a proper vessel. Slowly, slowly, we grow closer to our new bodies... Until one day, we too may become corporeal beings. Beings able to laugh, love, and dance like any other...” - Mad Dummy

It is unclear whether ghosts’ desire for vessels (or “bodies”) is biologically or culturally driven. Either way, hypothetical fanchildren of Papyrus and Mettaton are likely to be dissatisfied with their bodies.

LordLaharl’s Vassal made a convincing point that Papyrus may have body dysmorphia issues. The Wikipedia article on the subject suggests part of the variation in body dysmorphia issues in the population (or “heritability”) can be explained by genetics. If this is true, and also true for monsters, a Papyrus x Mettaton child could have twice the body issues of either parent.

It’s unclear whether the child would be born/the equivalent of born a ghost fused with a skeleton body, a ghost possessing but not fused with a skeleton body, or be born separately as a ghost body and a skeleton body. If the Papyton child has a handy skeleton body from birth/the equivalent of birth, the child might not develop ghostly psychological problems, as the child could do normal non-ghost things with it.

Related Reading

Inter-Species Socialization

Do Monsters Have Instincts?

Dialogue from Papyrus is contradictory; he explains how he can live in Snowdin's cold environment saying "I have no skin" but complains about the Annoying Dog having cold feet. ↩︎

[borderlandscast]

his dark materials au

all these aus are going to crossover at multiple points, since it’s inevitable and i like creatively torturing myself. here is a basic cast list and notes. discworld au will be placed into a different post because this one is also epic length.

nilesy, will strife and parvus will get their own post! and discworld peeps too.

any feedback and thoughts on the magic system would be greatly appreciated!

rythian

born in sweden. barely left the country of his birth, except on family holidays or short trips to neighboring locations.

he became an experimental theologian with the intention of studying his heritage and discovering the mystery of why his daemon settled in an unusual form. the official story is that he’s supposed to retrieve or make copies of the althiometer interpretations for sweden’s own universities.

his daemon is called ‘ender’, gender neutral, small dragon the size of a house cat. ender has a lot of raised scales which gives them a thorny devil’s appearance. the scales are smoother than appearances suggest, so concealing ender beneath rythian’s cloak is the usual means by which ender hides.

ender’s species is that of a western dragon. thier features include a pointy head, frill, four legs with talons (thumb ones opposable, albeit sharp), leathery wings and a tail. ender’s eyes have a nictating membrane, and they possess excellent night vision.

ender’s voice has a raspy quality to it, but mirror rythian’s own voice. both have a faint accent when they speak.

ender shares rythian’s taste for information and knowledge. between the two of them, ender hoards the bulk of it. ender has never forgotten a book they or rythian have read.

ravs

born and grew up in scotland. has never been anywhere else, nor interested in doing so.

daemon is ‘finnley’, goes by she/her, a unicorn. finnley is a white ‘horse’ with patches of speckled grey on her body. she blends into mist perfectly. her eyes are a hazelnut colour. finnley’s tail is mostly white; she doesn’t take kindly to people pulling on it.

her hooves are the second most dangerous part of her, her ivory horn being the other. her hooves can crush skulls and stones, and her horn can gore through people.

that said, ravs is the only person who can ride her. she can outrun normal horses. he can ride her with or without a saddle, though ravs prefers the former for obvious reasons. finnley can carry ravs and cargo for about 100 miles (twice that of a regular horse) before tiring. she can go much further at a slower pace.

both left their town of birth due to religious authorities getting wind of him and his daemon’s settled form; the two of them left to protect their family and friends.

both have made a relative’s old highlands castle their secret base. the two earn money from running delivery jobs all over the countryside. given finnley’s speed and ravs’ head and social knack for business, they’ve got quite a reputation built up, and numerous friendships all over the place so both are never in pressing need of a roof, food and drink.

rythian doesn’t know this when they meet, but ravs can separate from finnley at will; both can travel incredibly far from each other if needed, though they prefer not to.

wherever ravs goes, he takes a carrier pigeon with him. the pigeon has been trained to respond to basic commands and questions, including relaying messages back and forth with fellow scotsmen.

a witch taught finnley the trick of how to conceal her horn by using the same trick that witches use to hide themselves from crowds or when infiltrating locations. people simply just don’t notice finnley’s horn. finnley has to concentrate to do this, but ravs’ natural chattiness makes up for her reserved nature.

ravs grew up as a farmer’s child, which explains his lack of complaints when it comes to hard work and rising at the crack of dawn to help out his folks and relatives. he’s used to the ups and downs of the occupation. he’s fairly well built as a result.

y’all be pleased to know that he wears pants in this au, plus his trademark kilt.

teep

british. welsh heritage. voluntarily mute.

daemon is ‘basil’, he/him/they/them, a cockatrice (with some traits from a basilisk mixed in). has a rooster’s head, body, feet, wings and tail; the tail has a functioning serpent’s head. the serpent can hide within the rooster’s voluminous tail.

basil is about the size of a large rooster; he comes up to teep’s waist if that’s any help.

basil’s ability to petrify people is based on vision; it can apply to objects too. basil ‘requires’ a blindfold, but gets by via infrared sensing and a keen sense of smell on their snake head, plus sharing teep’s vision.

basil’s venomous. their leg spurs and snake head produce a potent venom that’s akin to that of a taipan or brown snake. fortunately, basil can only produce so much venom a day. teep harvests the venom from the snake head to dip arrowheads into. the two are initially unwilling to elaborate on an antidote to ravs and rythian.

i said in an earlier post that basil had four legs, but i’m changing my mind and making basil more chicken shaped. basil has two taloned feet, but at the top of their wings is a smaller set of talons. these can be operated like pointy hands. like ender’s, they’re capable of shredding fragile items, like paper. it also lets basil scale objects, mostly trees and fences.

after a noodle incident that left a whole village petrified, teep and basil fled. they returned to keep guard over the village to make sure nobody discovers what happened to it. basil doesn’t feel any remorse whatsoever, and doesn’t think teep should either.

teep has proficiency in archery and maintains their own bow. their family used to be rangers and hunters, but began to dabble in lumberjacking due to rising demand in wood for ships, carpentry, artisan pursits and construction.

teep’s relationship with basil is that of mutual tolerance. they don’t necessarily like or hate each pther, though basil seems to prefer being around teep than be separated, with the addition of basil’s role in speaking for the two of them.

that said, teep dislikes basil’s snarkiness and talkativeness (which is hilarious, considering basil is a reflection and manifestation of teep’s own soul), while basil regards teep’s muteness the ‘silent treatment’, which says a lot.

some notes about zylus and daltos’ world:

separate to that of rythian, ravs and teep’s world, but linked thanks to several secret openings caused by the subtle knife’s bearers.

magic is heavily relient on dust, and the magician’s bond with a daemon.

this world developed like lyra’s world, so electricity/anbaric isn’t as widespread, and a lot of the continents remain to be explored. it’s part fantasy with steampunk thrown in.

cost of magic is concentration; you ever feel like you want to pass out after concentrating too hard? or get a migraine after a giant task? that’s the feeling. the tryhardiest of magicians fall asleep and simply never wake up; the dust expended doesn’t replenish in these comatose individuals to warrant consciousness.

given the presence of magic, religions are much more lax, acknowledging and tolerant of each other. that doesn’t mean that there weren’t wars, it just mean that they’re less on a grander scale of death and destruction since magic is utilized heavily to tamp down on these matters and nip them in the bud. there’s a lot of careful balancing between countries on keeping the peace.

magic is allied with science; science is one of the main drivers in advancing civlisation, while magic serves to fill in the gaps that science leaves (e.g. healing, weather control, binding). magic is treated like a science itself.

there are multiple schools of magic, and many sub classifications and styles. no one way is emphasised (though rival schools try to preach otherwise), or stronger than the others.

the term ‘magician’ is an umbrella term; wizard, witch, sorcerer are perfectly applicable examples of job titles, but regular folks use that first term the most.

anyone can enroll to study magic, and the earlier the better. the highest enrollment tends to occur at when kids enter adolescence, which is when dust begins to increase. there’s always funds set aside for those with incredible potential or from lower social classes to cover schooling, food, travel, study materials and uniforms. it’s in a country’s best interests to produce magicians since not many go on to further their career in a way that benefits a country.

all budding magicians start as theorists, and the majority choose to follow this path in life. they debate, study, experiment and discuss magic, just like they would a science. they can cast magic, but their methods and output differs substantially to that of a practical practioner (get it?). many theorists also have a second occupation, not always magic orientated (such as teaching, gardening, merchant). a few even regard magic as a hobby, dabbling in it on the weekends.

practical practitioners are a jack of all trades. they go out into the world and solve problems that occur as a result of dust, and to a lesser extent, conflicts or human problems. they’re paid a portion of the comissions fee by the requester and a reward upon successful completion. many are freelancers, some work only in one location, and a select few work for the government.

all requests come through via guilds that screen them for issues before making them public. private requests are also possible, including wanting a specific magician but these charge a much higher fee since the magician may not always be available or if another has to transferred in or out.

all magicians undertake a final exam condicted by professors to test their control, theory, aptitude, and specialty (optional, and the magifian can claim multiple ones). this is to root out those unprepared and the undesirables. it can be retaken as many times as needed.

upon passing, the institution acknowledges the magician, and grants them a license. the license isn’t legally needed since unlicensed magic thrives just as well; more caution is required when dealing with said magic. the license also serves as identification since each carries a unique signature from each daemon/human pair.

daemons must be settled by the time of the magician’s graduation. exceptions are rare. certain factions prefer recruiting daemon specific magicians. some say that the final settled form of a daemon determines how advanced one’s magic growth is, but that’s just gossip.

dust is present in this world to a ridiculous degree; if lyra’s world is a lake, this one is an ocean. two basic opinions exist: dust is finite, the other being dust is infinite. either way, there’s evidence to support both, but further studies are needed. and magic is slowly vanishing...

to prevent accidents with daemons (such as in hunting, sports, public events), all daemons must be marked in an obvious, foolproof way. kids tie scraps of colourful cloth or braids to their daemon, explorers equip hats or backpacks, university members use their school’s crest branded on a scarf or tie. there’s a whole world of daemon fashion. people can get very creative.

zylus

dutch scholar. born in the netherlands, has never traveled beyond europe. prefers to stay in one location, dislikes travel unless absolutely necessary. especially hates sea travel.

daemon is ‘griffin’, prefers masculine pronouns but will happily accept female pronouns, brown gyrfalcon. griffin’s height is about arm length. he has a whistling nature to his voice.

part of a noble house that made its fortune when shipping and trade lanes were first established out of the country. his family’s company has existed for a century, and is family run. zylus would rather avoid drawing attention to this fact. his family has low expectations that he’ll run the company, given his natural aptitude for magic, his interests and lack of business ambition.

zylus is a mathematician and a budding physicist. he has a head for numbers, attributed to his upbringing where no child in the house grew up blissfully ignorant of how the company operates. zylus assisted in accounts, making sure all the numbers nearly lines up on all sides. he gained a taste for it, and combined with a curiosity of dust (thanks to the scholars frequenting the store), led to his university career.

zylus entered university in his early teens, and spent the majority of the time immersed in the mathematical side of explaining dust and feeling out his magic. his faculty involves studying the nature of magic through formulas, theorums and laws, depending on the type of magic.

zylus developed a method for quick, precise casting of magic. it involves entering a certain state of mind, and he and griffin are currently stumped as to standardize it. if he’s successful, he might revolutionise the way magic is cast. most magicians cast magic like they’re being filmed: with great, sweeping movements, drama and chants. zylus thinks this is impressive and all, but highly impractical.

he has yet to decide on a specialisation in magic, owing to his occupation and interests. it’s fine to leave a magic specialty blank since all it does is help the guilds match up requests to a magician.

he prefers using precise magic, mostly used to give him a quick, numerical snapshot. it can be tailored depending on the job (like calculations, divinations, calibrations, weighings or measurements). zylus’ toolkit also includes a wider variety of real world magic but he rarely uses those spells. he also knows archival spells to preserve notes and texts, and the manual methods of doing so.

zylus is certified as a practical magician, but chooses not to accept requests except those from his family, faculty or friends. he doesn’t even know who’d request him snice he works in such a niche field to begin with.

griffin is capable of flying at least a hundred metres away from zylus. the nature of this range is a subject of intense debate in the field of daemon focused studies in that large daemons are theorised to have a greater wandering range than that of smaller daemons, and is especially so for bird daemons (those with flight capabilities, anyway).

due to griffin’s talons, zylus has to carry a foldable, wooden perch for his daemon, or have leather pads fastened to one or both shoulders whenever he leaves his home so griffin doesn’t have to park on his head or arm.

griffin’s personality isn’t as aloof as their form suggests; griffin is more talkative than zylus is, and is the more patient and outgoing of the pair. griffin tends to notice smaller details that zylus overlooks. griffin isn’t as serious as zylus is; in fact, their playfulness is akin to that of dallas’, daltos’ daemon. sometimes zylus’ self consciousness spills over, so griffin can be harder to read than usual.

zylus adores griffin, though griffin can be a handful when the both of them are agitated and hold opposing opinions. nonetheless, zylus unconditionally loves his daemon, and vice versa. he does his best to listen and compromise, and he doesn’t shun griffin for long after they’ve both squabbled.

zylus ties a small leather pouch to griffin, and a plain, sandy coloured scarf to mark griffin as a daemon. the pouch can hold letters, small objects, food, and instruments. griffin can open it on their own with their feet and beak.

daltos

american scholar. born in ‘new denmark’, left the country at a young age. the sole reason for that is his talent in magic; schools for magic hadn’t been fully established, and the best option was to send daltos back to europe with his uncle and aunt.

daemon is ‘dallas’, genderfluid, bearded vulture. dallas has no preference for pronouns. their voice is ambigious, albeit with a harsh note to it; daltos prefers masculine pronouns when personally referring to his own daemon.

his early childhood in italy was full of adventures, largely spent by following his aunt and uncle around since both were practical magicians by trade. he picked up a lot of their mannerisms and habits, including their taste for functional, minimal fuss casting and arsenal of spells.

as a result and in his later years, daltos has traveled extensively all over europe; his trips as a small child had a profound effect on his curiosity, and his aunt and uncle did well in cultivating it.

once he hit adolescence, he went to one of italy’s universities, taking the exam. he eventually decided what he wanted to do while attending said university.

daltos studies people and daemons as an anthropologist, focusing on the study of the presence of dust and how it rises and falls with social development, culture and practices.

he keeps meticulous logs about his travels; part of his goal is to track, document and learn about cultures that lack archive entries. his other goal is to chart shifts in dust over time to pool together data for a collective study that his faculty is responsible for. said faculty believes that sentience is key to dust’s existence, and thus, dust is infinite.

he transferred to zylus’ university to access their data, with the stipulation that he help some of the other branches to cover some absences. this is how he and zylus met.

daltos’ magic is more focused on a versatility of spells than conpletely mastering a select few. as a field magician, he and dallas have to be prepared for anything, from healing, shielding, weather adjustments, repairs, to animal control. he carries around a detailed notebook listing basic spells, sorted by category, effectiveness and strength, all based on his own observations and experiments. he also prepares powerful spells in advance on dust infused scrolls; these are last minute resorts, and are all sealed away in a waterproof bag.

dallas is a large daemon, measuring about 1.2 metres in height. like zylus and griffin, daltos owns leather pads to support dallas landing on his shoulders, and carries around a portable wooden perch.

dallas’ wandering range is about two hundred metres. dallas reckons that he could go further, but that’s his rough estimate.

dallas is marked by a navy bandanna worn around their neck, and leather spats. when traveling, dallas equips a backpack to help carry equipment and items.

dallas is a reserved daemon, in contrast to daltos, who is known to be a chatterbox rivalling parvis. however, dallas does share some of daltos’ traits, such as his stubbornness, acting insufferably smug, and being a playful piece of shit. dallas is fond of stealing items that daltos needs and retreating to a high location until daltos either comes after him or caves.

daltos and dallas are as thick as thieves, they have no secrets between them, and indulge in a lot of joking around. they know it looks unprofessional to onlookers, so dallas tends to adopt an intimidating air when out and about. otherwise, dallas plays the straight man to daltos’ funny man. as for how daltos keeps a straight face when he looks at dallas head on, he says ‘he doesn’t.’

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 9

Newest chapter is up!  We finally encounter other people on the ship, and I have a chance to show that Sophia is not perfect. Also, this is a fluffy chapter, no warnings.

Please feel free to send me any constructive feedback or questions you have regarding any chapters of this story.  I love to answer questions.  All I ask is, if you identify a problem with something, please also suggest a solution to said problem. I am always willing to correct myself provided I know how.

I spent the next several weeks getting used to the routines on the ship. For the first few days, I was still getting a substantial amount of my mobility back; just because I had been given new body parts in perfect condition did not mean they held the same flexibility and endurance as the muscles I had lost.  The Miys had insisted that the muscles should be in correct working order, and struggled to understand that some traits of human motion are not held in genetics, but rather in how we use the muscles to strengthen them and stretch the connective tissues.  In the end, I had to demonstrate my lack of range of motion by trying to do yoga with Tyche.  The fact that I could barely even do half of the poses hurt my ego more than it hurt my body.

“Enhancer,” the Miys buzzed in a questioning tone. “You and Tyche genetically possess both ligamentous laxity and hypermobile joints, causing a greater base range of motion than the Terran average.  Please explain why you wish to be more flexible beyond what you are already capable of?”

I rubbed my stiff spine before answering. “Humans are like that. If there is something unique about us, sometimes it feels good physically to cultivate that.  For example, I had a friend growing up who was able to both perceive and vocally produce sounds with perfect accuracy.  In English, we call this perfect pitch. Rather than just be happy with that, he learned to play every Terran instrument he possibly could, so that he could make music not just by singing, but by playing instruments. He found it challenging: he could already make perfect music through singing, and had a substantial range. But that did not extend to instruments, so he had to actually teach himself to play these instruments with very high precision.”

“I would have very much liked to find someone with perfect pitch,” it hummed wistfully. “However, of those who survived the condition of your planet, none with perfect pitch were found.  I certainly tried. The concept was very exciting, both for me and for my home world. What would they look like?”

Now, I was kind of bummed about it, too. What would Ronnie have looked like to a species who saw through sound? Despite the fact that his face had blurred in my memories after so many years, I do remember how kind he was, and that alone always compelled me to remember him as beautiful and vibrant.  Maybe he would have been beautiful and vibrant to the Miys, too, in their equivalent of crystal clarity and surround sound.  The idea lifted my heart a bit.

In addition to working on returning to my previous peak physical condition (pre-End, before malnutrition was as common as breathing), I focused on familiarizing myself with the ship. After a rowing argument with my food console when I tried to order Shepherd’s Pie, I stomped to one of the communal eating areas and decided to socialize.  I had struggled with the console from the first time I tried it on my own. Most international food worked okay, but comfort food was just not cooperating.  The Miys already confirmed that there was no restriction on my console, as I had no dietary restrictions from a medical standpoint.  It was unable to explain why the console had difficulty with certain dishes, however, as the consoles were specially installed for the Terran cargo. The Miys just ate its standard rations to sustain its several bodies, and apparently that was all they ate, even on their home planet. I was curious enough to tag that for further interrogation later. Right now, I wanted one thing and one thing only.

As I navigated into more populated areas, I paused to compose myself: Stand tall, head up, shoulders back, smile on my face. After all, the Miys expected me to help lead in some capacity; I knew from previous experience on Earth that humans generally prefer to be led by someone who seem confident, but approachable and somewhat likable.  Essentially, this was my public debut to the rest of the ship, so I needed it to be a good impression, whether the rest of the ship knew that or not. Being frustrated and hangry was no excuse.

Once I entered the common area, I immediately saw that it was roughly the size of an Ikea food court: large enough to be left alone, but small enough to be social if you chose to be. Very considerate.  A quick scan of the room showed several freshly prepared options to one side, and a bank of food consoles on the other.  My brows furrowed at the consoles before I made my way over to scan the freshly prepared food. To my chagrin, the fresh food was rather boring but hearty fare.  It looked good, but it wasn’t what I had a craving for.  Miys did not understand the concept of cravings, so this was another struggle I would have to explain at a later date.

In defeat, I shuffled over to the food synthesizers, praying to whatever deity would listen that one of the damned things would produce what I wanted. Three synthesized (and subsequently recycled) meals later, I still could not get my meal.  While considering defeat, I held my arms at my side, fingers splayed, tipped my head back, and took a deep breath to calm myself so that I would not start screaming like a madwoman in the middle of a crowd.  After a slow count of twenty – ten had stopped working at the previous synthesizer – I was about to just order something else when someone walked up behind me.  With survival instincts required by someone who survived nearly a decade in an apocalypse, I whirled to confront what my lizard-brain had dubbed ‘attacker’.

A dark-skinned woman backed up at my aggressive stance, hands in the air, showing they were empty. “I just want to assist you. I know the look of someone who is trying to find food from home and cannot obtain it from the console.”

I shriveled on the inside as I relaxed on the outside. “Is it that obvious?”

She chuckled before extending her hand. “Only because we have all experienced it. I am Arantxa. For me, it was bacalao al pil pil. The console continued to give me battered and fried cod! So angering!  Finally, the console was reprogrammed when I was able to find someone who knew how to make it.”

I took her hand as I melted in relief. “I will gladly try that tomorrow if you can find me someone who can get this thing to give me Shepherd’s Pie. I love trying new food, but right now….” I trailed off.

She gave me a curious look, “Yes, nothing else will do. I see the problem, however. When you name that dish, I only hear ‘language conflict’ in my translator. Do you know what nation the dish comes from?”

“Wait,” I held up a hand in front of me. “What do you mean ‘language conflict’?”

Arantxa tilted her head before responding, “The implants translate any language you are hearing into your native language. Did they not explain that?”

“Not like that, no,” I confessed. “I thought it just translated their language into English.”

She immediately seemed to understand, because she gave a short nod before continuing. “We have people from many nations here, and we would never be able to establish a colony if we did not understand each other. So, the implant does not just translate their language, it translates any language spoken by a person with such an implant into your native tongue.” Arantxa gestured to herself, “I am Basque. My language is a dying one, so I am particularly glad of this. But I do not speak even a little English, as I was so young when Terra died.  So, my implant and your implant are trying to find a common name for the food you are asking for, but there is no exact reference in my language and several references in other languages. This causes a conflict until the database is updated to include your term and its reference.”

I nodded before responding to her previous question. “It’s Irish as far as I know, but anyone from the former UK or Ireland can probably recognize it.”

She looked satisfied as she nodded. She turned and walked over to a particular person before bringing him to me. “Conor,” she said decisively, “this is…?”

“Sophia,” I supplied.

“Sophia,” Arantxa continued. “She is struggling to get the dish she would like, and I think you can help her.” With that, Arantxa waved at us both before returning to her meal.

As I turned to Conor, I held out my hand. “Sophia, from America.”

“Conor, from Ireland,” he shook my hand with a slight smile. “What is it you’re craving?”

I blew out a breath of relief. “Shepherd’s Pie. Please. I’ve tried several different synthesizers, and I....nothing comes out right.”

Conor simply nodded before addressing the console. “Two servings of Shepherd’s Pie, please. And to drink…” he glanced at me.

“Sauvignon Blanc?” I asked hopefully.

He dutifully ordered my drink.  Surprisingly, the synthesizer produced two beautiful, mouth-watering portions of my heart’s desire, along with a glass of wine.  To my surprise, Conor picked up my tray and gestured with his head for me to follow him back to his table.  He had previously been sitting alone, so I was confused as to why he wanted me to join him.

After setting my tray down and chuckling at the groan of satisfaction I made when I took the first bite, the reason became apparent. “The replicators are finicky,” he chuckled. “And they particularly don’t like English. Between the Queen’s English and that hodge-podge you speak, it gets confused a lot.”

“So,” I asked around a forkful before swallowing. “How do I get it to make this for me?”

He grinned and shrugged, “the Miys update the database fairly frequently, so they can simply add ‘Shepherd’s Pie’ to the terms for the dish.”

“And how did you convince the synthesizer to give up the goods?”

“I asked nicely?”

I arched a brow at that, gazing silently.

“I asked in Irish,” he relented with a laugh. Either I was very funny, or Conor was very cheerful.

“So what is the Irish term for this?” I gestured at the serving left after I shoveled the first serving down.

Rather than replying verbally, Conor pulled a tablet out of his pocket and started typing. When he turned the tablet to me, I realized the dilemma.

Pióg an aoire

I nearly choked on my wine. “I don’t think I can pronounce that, honestly,” I admitted. “And I’m willing to bet that you can’t teach me either, can you?”

Conor confirmed my suspicions with a shake of his head. “Nope. It will just translate into American if I try.”

“And how long does it take the database to update.”

“Oh, just a week.”

I could live with a week. However, I thought of another dish that I enjoyed that may need to be added. “Conor, do they already have coney pie in the database?” Despite living on the stuff for several years, I really did enjoy it.

“Rabbit pie is, yes,” he confirmed before leaning forward with furrowed brows. “How likely are you to know the term for something in a different language?”

Slightly confused, I answered, “Well, I really loved to cook and eat before the world went to shit, so there is a lot of food I know the correct term for, or the term in another language. Why?”

He flashed another grin before sitting back and stretching. “You and I,” he ticked an index finger between us, “are going to get along great. I’ve been dying for what Americans call French toast, and all I can get is toasted baguette. None of the French speakers seem to hear the right term for it, all they hear is ‘toast’ apparently. I’ve managed eggie in a basket, but if you can get me that, we are square, and you may be my favorite person.”

I suppressed a chuckle before I asked, “You haven’t happened to have met a much smaller person who looks like me, named Tyche, have you?” I knew for a fact my sister spoke nearly flawless French and could have accomplished this for him before I ever woke up.

Conor simply shook his head. “Only been on board a few weeks. Why?”

“No reason,” I smirked. “When do you want your French toast?”

His eyebrows flew up at that. “Now, preferably. I’ve had a craving ever since I woke up. It’s my favorite breakfast.”

I finished my wine and dropped the glass in a recycler before walking to the console.

“Pain perdu and a glass of sauvignon blanc, please,” I announced triumphantly.

Leading had to start somewhere.  Breakfast is a good place, I thought in amusement.

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[olhaboyko]

Week 12 - The design document

For this assignment, our group decided to settle on an 2D adventure game with a top-down angle that more resembled Enter the gungeon than Hotline Miami. In it the player/environment will be viewed more from a side view than from above to create some sense of depth and they would be able to more in all 4 directions. This layout/game type was chosen partially due to our limited experience in making of such game, the requirement for the code aspect of the assignment and due to our own preference.

The main objective of the game is for the player character to escape a maze-like mines that have monsters crawling through them with only their AI companion providing them with light. In this situation not only the players range of sight is limited but it is also outside their control by being given to a NPC that will possibly lag behind them, forcing the player either take their time and be caution with traversing the labyrinth or to be brash and rush though the dark mines. This visual restriction is commonly used in horror games to create tension and sense of lack of control.

“[…] biologically speaking, darkness is not the normal setting for human activity, it is self-evident that the necessity to perform various activities in the dark impose a considerable strain upon man, especially since the primacy of vision over the other senses is particularly conspicuous in the human species.” (Devereux, 1949)

Moreover, horror games provide players with a sort of challenge, where they are put in an artificial simulation of a threat which would stimulate them and upon winning (surviving) they would feel a sense of accomplishment and relief.

“While frightening media may be initially aversive, people high in sensation seeking and intellect/imagination, in particular, like intellectual stimulation and challenge and expect not just negative but also positive emotions from horror consumption. They brave the initially aversive response to simulate threats and so enter a positive feedback loop by which they attain adaptive mastery through coping with virtual simulated danger.” (Clasen, Kjeldgaard-Christiansen and Johnson, 2020)

Though in comparison to many horror games where they not only remove players ability to see but also the ability to retaliate against a threat, we decided to allow the player to fight back (though we are not yet sure if it will come to fruition due to time restriction and out current skill level). The players would be able to attack and kill the monsters and pick up health items if they get hurt together with being tasked to pick up keys to unlock the exit doors of the maze. The player is in no way forced to confront or kill the enemies and can decide to avoid them all together as they hunt for the keys which would provide the player with a choice, to either play aggressively or passively.  

When it come to the topic of gameplay/player types the Four Bartle Types are always mentioned. 

For them MUDs (multi-user dungeons or MMO’s as we now call them) was used as a basis to draw inspiration from, on what were the activities that players partook the most and receive the most enjoyment out off, which in turn created the archetypes.

Above you could see the Interest Graph, on its x-axes are displayer the importance of the game world vs the other players while on its y-axes are displayed the way the player interacts (interacting with other things, acting upon other things). The 4 types are the complete extremes in this graph.

“Achievers are proud of their formal status in the game's built-in level hierarchy, and of how short a time they took to reach it.[…] Explorers are proud of their knowledge of the game's finer points, especially if new players treat them as founts of all knowledge.[…] Socialisers are proud of their friendships, their contacts and their influence.[…] Killers are proud of their reputation and of their oft-practiced fighting skills.” (Bartle, 1996)

Though this model is the most mentioned one, later on in his other work called Designing Virtual Worlds Bartle has expanded to 8 types by adding a third aspect (z-axes), implicit/explicit motivation. The type included Griefer, Networker, Politician, Friend, Opportunist, Scientist, Planner and Hacker. So, to simply put it each of the 4 types mentioned before got an implicit and explicit version to them. Griefers are implicit Killers, Politicians are explicit Killers, Scientists are explicit Explorers, Hackers are implicit Explorers, Networkers are explicit Socializers, Friends are implicit Socializers, Planners are explicit Achievers and finally Opportunists are implicit Achievers.

For out game Achiever or more specifically Planner type fits best for both the passive and active playstyles, since both playstyles require the individual to go out of their way to play that certain way. It can also be argued that Killers are more fitting to KILL enemies but due to enemies being AI and by extend being aspects of the game rather than actual adversaries, its more fitting for Achiever to defeat them. Moreover, Killers are said to be more leaning in player than game world aspect and since our game doesn’t contain any Player vs Player gameplay it simply seems like an ill fit. 

 Another small attribute that we wanted to add to the game is a number of objectives that will appear on top left of the screen, giving the player false instructions. For example, at the beginning of the game the player character will spawn in a room with objective to ‘open the door with a key’ but in reality, there is no key and the player is meant to just interact with the door to open it so to simply put they need to disobey the directions that the game provides. The reason for that function is partially due to see how the player will behave when they are given instructions that were clearly wrong and are meant to mislead them, would they continue to follow them out of instinct, still follow them but by doing the opposite of what is asked or disregard them all together and use their own judgement. 

 Interestingly enough in a publication called Principles of Social Psychology by Charles Stangor covered an experiment on Obedience, Power, and Leadership. For it they got a participant and an actor to play the roles of learner and teacher, the random draw was rigged to that the actor always could be the learner in that situation. After that the teacher together with the experiment conductor was place in a separate room from the learner so that they could not see them, and they need to read out an assortment of word associations (for example ‘blue sofa’). If the learner got them wrong, the teacher needed to administer a shock to them, increasing the volage with each consequent mistake. In actually the learner was not actually shocked but a prerecord message of their reaction still played, to see how the teacher will react.

Before the study was conducted hower the reasearcher explained the experiment to three groups of individuals (college students, middle-class adults, and psychiatrists) and asked how likely would it be for people to shock the student at max setting (450 volts) and the results were rather optimistic (1% or 2%). The results on the other hand were quite shocking. Even though the result varries after the innical shock done, 65% of the participants continued administering the punishment under the persistent preasure of the experiment conductor. 

Of course the experimen conductor replicated the experiment in a vaiety of other situation, and one thing of note is that “in replications of the study in which the experimenter’s authority was decreased, obedience also declined.” (Jhangiani and Tarry, 2014).

This experiment show just how presense of a figure of autority can increase obedince, which would be interesting to see viewd from a perspective of the game since, its autority is often challenge (searching for bugs, and attempting to clip though levels)or viewed as a mear guideline.

References

-       Bartle, R., 1996. Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDS. ] Available at: <http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm>[Accessed 15 May 2021].

-       Bartle, R., n.d. The 3D player types graph. [image] Available at: <https://sites.google.com/site/psychotropolis/articles/virtual-worlds-why-people-play> [Accessed 17 May 2021].

-       Clasen, M., Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, J. and Johnson, J., 2020. Horror, personality, and threat simulation: A survey on the psychology of scary media. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 14(3), pp.213-230.

-       Devereux, G., 1949. A Note on Nyctophobia and Peripheral Vision. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 13(3).

-       Devolver Digital, 2012. [image] Available at: <https://store.steampowered.com/app/219150/Hotline_Miami/> [Accessed 15 May 2021].

-       Devolver Digital, 2016. [image] Available at: <https://store.steampowered.com/app/311690/Enter_the_Gungeon/> [Accessed 15 May 2021].

-       Jhangiani, R. and Tarry, H. ed., 2014. Principles of Social Psychology. 1st ed. BCcampus Open Education.

-       Stewart, B., 2014. Personality And Play Styles: A Unified Model. [Blog] gamasutra, Available at: <https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6474/personality_and_play_styles_a_.php?print=1> [Accessed 17 May 2021].

[yasbxxgie]

The COVID-19 pandemic signals that civilization has breached a major ‘tipping point’ that could pave the way for a dangerous new era of interacting ecological emergencies.

Scientific evidence accumulated over the last five years suggests that the pandemic didn't come out of the blue, but is a direct consequence of industrial civilization's breaching of key ‘planetary boundaries’—these are important natural ecosystems needed to maintain what scientists describe as the ‘safe operating space’ for human survival on the planet.

The more we destabilize those boundaries, the more this safe space for human habitation shrinks—and COVID-19 suggests that the world economy is now entering a volatile new phase of chronic instability due to not just one crisis, but the interaction of many crises including climate change, resource bottlenecks, food system failures and civil unrest. It is the escalating synergy between these crises, each of which is experiencing its own tipping points, which points to the risk we are crossing a planetary threshold in the global system.

This verdict doesn’t come from new data, but from applying a systems lens to understand the massive amount of data we already have. I assessed the evidence in a major report for the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems, a British think-tank which has led on the European Commission’s CONVERGE project, among other things.

Pandemic: a symptom of civilization itself

Prior to 2020, warnings from public health experts of an incoming global pandemic had accumulated over the last few decades. All of them have based their diagnosis on examining the risks posed by the relentless expansion of industrial civilization.

One of the latest warnings in 2016 from the Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework published by the National Academy of Medicine, identified the main drivers of pandemic risk as continued population growth, increasing food production, closer transport ties due to globalization, and the expansion of urban areas into natural wildlife.

Numerous studies have similarly pinned the heightened risk of a pandemic on such expanding industrial processes. And many have noted that intensifying climate change plays a compounding role, by forcing disease-hosting species out of their traditional habitats.

There could be up to 600,000 unknown “zoonotic” virus species—hosted by animals—circulating in wildlife which could potentially spread to humans, the transmission of which is made more likely due to how industrial expansion is driving climate and land use changes. “Climate change means more zoonotic emergence risk—and no, mitigation doesn’t seem to reduce that, even if we stay under 2 degrees,” said Professor Colin J. Carlson of Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science Security on Twitter. “It’s coming no matter what we do now.”

One of the other biggest drivers of the increasing risk of pandemics is tropical deforestation, also a result of accelerating industrial expansion. New research has shown that the COVID-19 pandemic not only spurred greater illegal forest clearing in tropical countries—especially Brazil—during lockdown measures; but in turn is increasing the risk of disease outbreaks. “Zoonotic diseases, public health, economy, agriculture, and forests may all be reciprocally linked in complex positive and negative feedback loops,” wrote the authors, describing a self-reinforcing cycle of “emerging threats to nature and society.”

There is no evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic was triggered by deforestation or climate change. But it did seem to emerge from wildlife-to-human transmission in China, which has become more common in the context of a rapidly expanding urban society.

Five years ago, an international team of scientists identified deforestation and land-use change as among four planetary boundaries which civilization was already at high risk of crossing, out of a total of nine.

Other planetary boundaries we were on the brink of breaching at that time included the rate at which species extinctions, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and the flow of nitrogen and phosphorus into the environment due to industrial agriculture. The further we breach these and other planetary boundaries, the greater the risk of irreversibly driving the Earth into a less hospitable state for humanity. Now scientists warn that at the current rate of deforestation, industrial civilization faces a 90 percent chance of collapse within the next two to four decades due to the devastating impacts on key ecosystems.

The COVID-19 crisis, I argue, urgently needs to be reframed. It’s not just ‘a pandemic.’ It’s a direct consequence of industrial civilization’s continued encroachment across planetary boundaries. As urban civilization along with its tightly-coupled global transport networks continue to expand and penetrate the biosphere, it is exposing more people to greater numbers of different virus habitats, which is what helped trigger the global pandemic.

Multiple tipping points

The systemic consequences of the pandemic have also been unpredictable and wide-ranging, exposing deep-seated structural fragilities within interconnected social, economic, and health systems. The public health crisis is now amplifying, and being amplified by, multiple simultaneous breakdowns.

The pandemic has forced an already unsustainable global economy into a state of paralysis. Economic modeling shows that all options lead to economic contraction and a reduction in GDP. If we let the virus spread uncontrollably, we face the devastating impact on health care systems amidst millions of hospitalizations, leading to economic collapse. Periodic lockdowns, too, have dire economic consequences. And even countries in East Asia that have protected most lives and livelihoods face what the World Bank calls a “triple shock” from the pandemic, the economic impact of containment, and reverberations from global recession.

Given economic research showing that over the last century the global economy is experiencing increasingly larger and slower recessions, the pandemic appears to be amplifying this pre-existing trend.

Perhaps the most significant yet understated impact has been on the global oil industry. Prior to the pandemic, some experts were forecasting that by 2020 fossil fuels would face a crisis of plummeting demand, while others predicted a supply crisis of escalating costs amidst ever diminishing returns. In hindsight, the pandemic has dramatically worsened both these processes, precipitating the largest oil price collapse in history. There is now a risk that long-term shut-ins could lead a significant percentage of oil reserves to experience permanent damage, suggesting that global oil production may well be experiencing a turning point this year.

The danger is that this unfolding energy crisis will, too, have complex societal consequences that are difficult to anticipate. With so much of the last decade of economic growth fueled by the shift to US shale oil and gas, the pandemic not only threatens to accelerate industry bankruptcies, but to provoke deepening recession and a global debt crisis that could particularly afflict oil producers.

Meanwhile, the pandemic is driving up levels of global hunger, as well as straining food supply chains—a crisis that could be worsened due to the effects of an oil crisis on our fossil fuel-dependent food system.

All these crises would be greatly amplified by climate change, where our ability to detect potential tipping points is inherently ambiguous. Eight years ago, scientists recognized 2020 as the critical year before which we needed to reduce carbon emissions to keep global average temperatures below the upper safe limit of two degrees Celsius.

It’s 2020, and emissions have continued rising overall, despite the pandemic’s dampening effect. And cutting-edge research around planetary boundaries suggests that human activities over the next decade or two will be pivotal in determining whether or not we trigger self-reinforcing feedbacks that could lead to a worst-case ‘hothouse earth’ scenario.

The global system is therefore experiencing multiple, simultaneous crises—the pandemic, energy, the economy, food, and climate change. These crises are not separate, but inherently intertwined. As they intensify, they converge and amplify one another. Left unchecked on a business-as-usual trajectory, this could become a system-wide self-reinforcing feedback process.

When a whole system experiences multiple, simultaneous tipping points, the very structure and architecture of that system comes under strain, and is pushed into a transition toward a new state. My research suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic is a signature of this process. Civilization’s breach of planetary boundaries is now triggering multiple interconnected crises which are shrinking the safe operating space for human survival. And it could either result in breakdown—or breakthrough.

Toward the next system

That’s why our report recommends a simultaneous whole system transition across multiple sectors. As governments continue to think about 'COVID-19' recovery plans, they need to join the dots and realize that economic prosperity, public health and ecological health are deeply intertwined.

To avoid the next pandemic, the next climate crisis, the next resource bottleneck, we need a World War II-scale transition to a ‘lifeboat economy’: an economy that thrives by protecting public health and planetary life-support systems. Markets cannot thrive when they degrade their own ecological foundations.

That requires a paradigm shift in economics: moving away from profit for its own sake, toward redesigning markets so that they meet public needs and nourish ecosystems. Governments are going to have to accept that a future of declining GDP may be unavoidable. Far from doom and gloom, this opens up an opportunity to rethink our addiction to endless growth linked to material overconsumption, and to embrace the mounting evidence that a good quality of life is available to all within planetary boundaries even with dramatically lower GDP—as long as we are ready to change.

Integral to that is a strategy to address the frontline driver of future pandemic risk, which also contributes to around 15 percent of global carbon emissions: deforestation. Driven largely by expanding industrial agriculture, there isn’t a single major food commodity that escapes deforestation. Currently, the predominant approach (for instance in the EU) tends to single out one commodity—palm oil. But this makes little sense given that beef production is the world’s number one driver of deforestation. It also creates a danger that if we shift away from palm oil, this will displace demand onto other oilseeds which, however, are less efficient and more land-intensive—which could drive even greater rates of deforestation.

To solve this, we therefore need a more consistent approach to stop deforestation across all commodities. One way to do this is to scale-up approaches which are beginning to work. In Malaysia, for instance, the rate of deforestation has fallen year on year for the last 5 years largely due to the impact of its own national certification scheme, MSPO—which is the world’s first mandatory sustainable palm oil scheme. According to Glen Hurowitz, CEO of Mighty Earth, although far from perfect, such schemes have been so successful in dropping deforestation from over a million to less than 250,000 acres per year, that they could be used as a “blueprint” for how to achieve the same in the Amazon.

The imperative, in other words, is to further incentivize, strengthen and support those locally-enforced schemes which are working, while focusing penalties on intransigent producers. One mechanism to incorporate this combination of carrot and stick could be realigning trade deals so that ecological restoration is at their foundation, rather than simply an afterthought. Trade would open access to Western markets for producing countries on condition of meeting core targets on domestic sustainable production.

Simultaneously, the full potential of the ‘Green New Deal’ opportunity must be recognised. Recent research reveals that just $2 trillion could transition the entire continental United States to a 100 percent solar, wind, and battery storage system, provided at marginal near-zero cost, opening up opportunities to transform entire industries across mining, manufacturing and agriculture while creating millions of jobs.

Governments can support this transition by gradually winding down incumbent fossil fuel industries. This would mitigate economic shocks as the industry declines, while retraining oil workers so that they can move into new renewable industries and emerging sectors.

As the Bank of England’s little-understood ‘Ways and Means’ facility proves, all this can be sustainably financed. Instead of printing money by borrowing it into existence from private banks, which tends to inflate asset bubbles and increase inequality, authorities can create their own money debt-free to support productive investments in the great transition.

Taken together, this programme of structural change can protect our societies from the consequences of overshooting planetary boundaries, and pave the way for the emergence of an ‘ecological civilization’—a civilization that enables the conditions of life to thrive within planetary boundaries.

[h/t]

[11toe11-blog]

Covid Sitayana

Ramayana was an epic scale epic. Since we did not have the bandwidth for more than one Ramayana or Mahabharata - we decided to ensure another Ramayana never happens. 

So every other potential Sita was trained - a clear Line drawn - stand inside, well within the line. 

“How many times should i tell you! Stay inside”

Sita - “but the cow…”

“What cow? No cow! Stay inside. Always remember the line. Everything outside is Ravana.”

____

Notes on Kalari -- Dr. Priyadarshan Lal

Warm body- warm up

Being able to stand on two feet requires great balance. Not any other mammals other than humans - who start erect. Core- balance ( like cycle/swimming)

Drawing associations of etymology. Letter of Tamil are distinguished as.

Mei-ezhuthu-  Consonants. Mei --> Body

Uyir-ezhuthu - Vowels. Uyir-->Breath

---> Mei- payattu

8 types of postures:

Lion - cross legged and paw connect. Cross core

Elephant - simultaneous movements of the side. All of left shifts. Then all of right shifts.Strength.

Fish - turn. Flash turn.

Kukkuda/ rooster - flutter up and land

Horse straight

Boar -stright. lift.

Snake

Cat

All the postures appear in the meippayattu, obviously or subtly.

(*noticing how barteniff similarly constructed fundamentals based on evolutionary stages of embryo. In my experince so far, the manipulation of the jelly like that is strong and flexible and can contort and expand and realign etc, in connection with the breath, creates a posture if extended to the extremeties)

(pic courtesy: https://www.leisurepro.com/blog/explore-the-blue/5-harmless-species-jellyfish/) 

___

Empty handed combat. Win over the enemy without fighting. (*love and empathy)

___

Adhara chakra

(*he didnt elaborate, but from the adishakti workshop of many years ago i remember that each posture has an associated chakra basis. Maybe the movement originates or is held or passed through that particular chakra. Im yet to experience it. For fish and horse and elephant maybe i sense it, but i cant be sure)

___

I feel close to being done writing about myself. And my vantage at this point. I feel it would be nice to explore a subject in writing.

Like kalari. And where kalari meets ramana. Not scholarly sense, but for me. So that i can discover for myself the connections i have made. And the questions and blind spots are clearer to me. 

Looking at a dance journal called FUSE, i caught a glimpse of the dancer’s notes...the notes, the scores, seemed closer to my way of enquiring. Scores. Questions. Frames of observation.

What of the archetypes and narratives and characters? 

“We’ll isn't it interesting, that as well as you know your characters and the relationships between them, you aret compelled by dialogues - what they say to each other seems to be of no import to you.” 

 Yes. I cant seem to care much for dialogues insipte of all that auditory hallucinations. 

I feel - The dialogues are not spoken. They are actions. And in the body, their very being itself there is something alive and exchanging and transforming. SOmething that doesn't lean on words to do preliminary negotiations. Something that is, and goes in, and is being from the very start all they way.  Like mom keeps saying, actions speak louder than words.

Yes. And in their moving around and relating back and forth to the space and movements and changing landscape of their emotions/memories/ etc… changes takes place… in ascertain  kind of quietness. Cant call it silence.  Or in a certain kind of silence. Cant call it quietness. Or is it a certain kind of silence. 

But dialogues have no place there. Expect as inner soliloquies. May be as monologues. When it comes to rapid energy exchange, it physical. Not words.  Because words are diversions at best.

Most of the time. They appear when there is no choice, but to speak. And then  the words appear, and they appear crystal clear, to illuminate, to clarify. Not to veil and hide. 

___

Form is created by tension. Last night i was watching the mind. Or rather something was watching the mind. And i was in the mind trapped in its incessant chatter and looking from outside. The incessant chatter seemed to originate from a tension at the base of the skull. From something taut, like a string of a musical instrument. Though not wholly a pleasant feeling. 

In this tension, between this points of tension space is created and form appears. A is the tension between the two slanting lines whose base is pulled apart and wedged by a shot line. Form. Uyirzhuthu. K is the inclined upward and inclined downward push, directed to a particular single point on the vertical line.

Not sure if i would have been able to finally get a sense of the symbols used to denote english alphabets, if wasnt for my conversation with DK, aka Quirky.

Me: wait... i have more technical question ...how do you remember what you did on the floor?

and when does meaning emerge?

He: It's all in the flow

And it's the experience and the environment that the movement create that in turn gives the watching person to make meaning

Technically it's all about the flow and muscles memory

Me: but what of the mover? where is he/she finding meaning?

or is the meaning purely an experience of spatial truth?

He: Meaning is subjective isn't it

Me: yuss

He: It's like the color red and the redness of the read. Red

I guess redness of the red is what I am interested

Not what meanings people associated red with

Of course one can use association of the red to creat an emotion or mood but as a core the ness ness of something is the research

Me: do you at any point at all, as a mover dancer, remember being interested in what meanings people associated with red? or was it always about redness of red?

He: When is create it all about the Ness nesss but ofcourse once the composition and presentation of the idea start I do play with association of the given ideas or objects to create tention. 

But I also know if I considered the association I am closing a lot of other posibal reading

It's a balancing act

Me: mmmm

He: If I address the association more often them not I will be taking stands and sides

Which may be use full for certain works

But as a for being true to the work I find it enriching to look for the nessness of the idea

Me: Ness-ness is nice. very nice. i supoose it the most neutral position available to you while fully innit - if i must intellectualise. but ya... when i was asking you, how do you rember, i was coming from a simplistic space of notaton and mnenomics. but this redness of red gives me a btter answer tothe unasked question.

He: I don't remember I am not wired like that

Dicklessli. Lol

Its all in the flow and muscle memory

And ofcourse repetition

Me: relieff

just came acrosss this https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/63113284/fuse1

He: The useal lol . Gay and tamil mami

Lol. I know of the person who runs this project

Me: trust you to massacre! Nut!

___

I dint quite understand what he meant by this “ He: When is create it all about the Ness nesss but ofcourse once the composition and presentation of the idea start I do play with association of the given ideas or objects to create tention. “ yesterday.  This idea of creating tension using associations etc for the compositions and presentations and sharing… the point of outer reflection and feedback from the larger whole , as mirror.  Like R says, “only when the play meets the audience does it become a play”, audience provides that vital energy - that space- witness. ANd thats when the possibilities of the play star unfolding. 

What of traditional performers such as koodiyattam then? For whom the lamp is the only witness?

Also https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/07/06/the-aesthetic-of-silence-susan-sontag/

“Art is a technique for focusing attention, for teaching skills of attention… Once the artist’s task seemed to be simply that of opening up new areas and objects of attention. That task is still acknowledged, but it has become problematic. The very faculty of attention has come into question, and been subjected to more rigorous standards…

Perhaps the quality of the attention one brings to bear on something will be better (less contaminated, less distracted), the less one is offered. Furnished with impoverished art, purged by silence, one might then be able to begin to transcend the frustrating selectivity of attention, with its inevitable distortions of experience. Ideally, one should be able to pay attention to everything.”

“So far as he is serious, the artist is continually tempted to sever the dialogue he has with an audience. Silence is the furthest extension of that reluctance to communicate, that ambivalence about making contact with the audience… Silence is the artist’s ultimate other-worldly gesture: by silence, he frees himself from servile bondage to the world, which appears as patron, client, consumer, antagonist, arbiter, and distorter of his work.”

Both of which i resonate with to whatever degree of my experience  has been. This struggle of audience. And a certain withdrawal and dismissal and a sense of pursuit of something much larger than popularity or appreciation of peers. Which is questioned very starkly here by Sontag like a slap on the hand

“

Sontag recognizes that the gesture of silence in abdication from society is still “a highly social gesture.” She writes:

An exemplary decision of this sort can be made only after the artist has demonstrated that he possesses genius and exercised that genius authoritatively. Once he has surpassed his peers by the standards which he acknowledges, his pride has only one place left to go. For, to be a victim of the craving for silence is to be, in still a further sense, superior to everyone else. It suggests that the artist has had the wit to ask more questions than other people, and that he possesses stronger nerves and higher standards of excellence.”

Is that why i am still around. Hanging on nail and tooth. Because i havent proved myself in this world. That the way to Griffindor is through the corridors of Slytherine?

Ramana says, not necessary. 

Kalari says, if necessary, come to the pit.

Eitherways, the presence and absence of a living fluid core makes a difference to the experience and perception of reality and the energy to keep observing past its frames. So i show up the pit everyday. One way or the other.

[allyklapak]

We must take the right path

With each day, the stability of the Earth under current environmental pressures becomes increasingly perilous. As we approach the breaking points that scientists have cautioned world leaders about for years, it is increasingly clear that the near future will follow one of three paths. We may collapse, adapt, or reinvent. [^1] There is a great deal of uncertainty about the future, especially when considering the current coronavirus crisis and the immense impact that it has had on daily life and every facet of society in such a short amount of time. The looming climate crisis poses a similar threat to the normalcy we are hoping to get back to. If major changes are not consciously made to solve these adverse environmental issues, we remain vulnerable to a possible collapse or remain stuck in an unsustainable system.

The model that most of the world currently functions under is known as the consumer capitalist mode. [^1] It is driven by systematic positive feedback loops that invest money into innovation which capitalist societies depend on. [^1] Innovation is typically connected to a positive connotation. However, by funding a system that deals with energy waste and unsustainable practice by just investing more money into potentially worse band-aid technologies we are just “running to stay ahead” rather than addressing the original inherent issues. [^1] These checks are meant to facilitate adaptation to environmental obstacles and protect the capitalist system. Human resilience and ability to modernize can clearly be seen throughout history. [^1] Over the past five centuries, humanity has undergone change in an exponential fashion. [^1] The progression of man from the invention of fire to the invention of the internet has demonstrated the capacity to make increasingly larger leaps as time marches forward. [^1] Though, such rapid development should be assessed to uncover the environmental repercussions and role in a growing socioeconomic disparity across the world. By reinforcing the capitalist system, an emphasis is placed on turning human life into human capital. [^1] Advancements may allow for improved living conditions and yielded higher life expectancy, the lives of these people have become focused on conforming to a system where time is money and productivity has monetary value. [^1] Humans have been degraded to capital and buy into a system that considers them and this planet to be disposable. In order to persist in this mode, society must find a way to stabilize the unsustainable practice and persistent exponential trends. [^1] According to Lewis and Maslin, “the simultaneous rapid increases in the number of people, level of energy provision, and quantity of information being generated… suggest that our current mode of living is least possible.” [^1] Trying to maintain the system we have will not work. Thus far it has been the very reason there exists so many threats. It is imperative that the public is not blindsided by the dishonest corporations desperately clinging the consumer capitalist mode out of self-interest and greed. We are fed lies that this is the key to a successful and shiny future but there have always been cracks beneath the surface that technology won’t be able to fix forever.

A more probable, but bleak, fate that our world may succumb to is collapse. [^2] The model that we currently cannot continue on forever. The ramifications of our practices will catch up to us and if society finally has this epiphany too late then collapse will be inevitable. Expert estimate a degree and a half to two-degree Celsius increase in atmospheric temperature will prove to be catastrophic.[^2] Many nations of the world are aware of the immanency of this issue and have already started employing changes to decrease their contributions to this global warming. Although it is difficult to project the exact time frame for this climate tipping point and the likelihood of humans adequately responding, many nations have set a goal to try to stay below 1.5 degrees C by reducing emissions to near zero by 2050. [^2] Due to the dense geopolitical tensions surrounding fossil fuels it is difficult to seriously change course away from collapse as nationalized resources and interests may not bend for the greater good. [^2] Agriculture is an industry that has already faced the detriments of a failing climate. Historically farmers have utilized genetic engineering and breeding and technology to adapt to increasing temperatures and growing resistance to pesticides, but it will reach a point where this can go on no longer and the collapse of the food industry will lead to the perishing of many. [^2] We already face inequity in food distribution around the world as millions die of malnutrition each year. These issues of competition for food and clean water and work leads to unrest that brews the perfect storm for mass destruction. Even the pentagon considers this issue to be an “urgent and growing threat” due to the potential violence that may transpire. [^2] Humans are egotistical and uniformed creatures of habit. The lack of willingness to seriously heed the warnings of scientists and satisfaction of living in blissful ignorance will likely lead to the vain pursual of the first option. This course of action can only end in collapse.

The only way for humanity to prevail is the drastic yet necessary measure of adopting a new system. The authors refer define the Anthropocene to be an “epoch where the human component of Earth system is large enough to affect how it functions.” [^2] Humanity’s effects have proven to be detrimental and jeopardize the many interconnected ecosystems and social structures of the world. However, humans have always had the capability to change this doomed fate but are too reluctant and misled to upend the order established by manipulative capitalists. A new system would require a complete switch to alternative and renewable solar and wind energy. [^3] It is difficult to convince the public of the cost effectiveness of this transition due to integral discount rating which makes a larger return further in the future seem less appealing than instantly gratifying short-term profit. [^3] New system would also limit the dependency humanity has on unsustainable practice and increase agency in careers and finances. [^3] A key practice to accomplish this more liberated existence is ensuring a Universal Basic Income. [^3] Ideally, by ensuring this monetary equity across society, the structure of education, work and consumption can me reimagined. [^3] If people all have the necessary means to pursue and education, it is easier for those with a real passion and skill to take these positions and therefore refine the craft that may have been inhibited by the socioeconomic disparity in education. [^3] People can consider their futures without being restricted by worrying about making ends meet. Essentially, this would put an end to the rat race and would allow humans to escape their ties to unsustainable practice or jobs that are not environmentally ethical yet are reluctantly filled by those who need the paycheck to survive. [^3] Additionally, practicing a half earth model would protect invaluable ecosystems by designating an equal amount of space for natural species to flourish. [^3] Reducing humanity’s real estate dominance on earth would force us to reform unsustainable agriculture and actually deal with our problems directly. Abiding by a half earth practice would prevent the degradation of vital ecosystems that science can not recreate. [^3] The best option for the course of humanity is to reinvent our system rather than unsuccessfully trying to hold together the one that is not working.

The web of systems that run our world are delicate and driven by capitalistic interest and concession of the public. If we continue on the path we are on, the temperatures of the earth will rise far about the two-degree cap and in the very near future the fate of collapse will be sealed. The world is experiencing a crisis right now. With lives at a standstill and a sense of normal being completely obliterated, it may be just the opportunity to make these drastic changes necessary for the survival of humanity. The limits are being tested and it has once again been proven that humans can adapt well when given no other option. It is no longer an option, for posterity’s sake we must defy the consumer capitalist model and welcome this new change.

Word Count: 1380

Discussion Question: Although it seems that establishing a new system is the best solution, could undergoing such drastic change have its own set of ramifications?

Lewis, Simon L., and Mark A. Maslin. Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene. Yale University Press, 2018. Chapter 11, pgs. 369-377

Lewis and Maslin. Ch. 11 pgs. 378-399.

Lewis and Maslin. Ch.11 pgs. 400-415.

[soulsplosion-cs]

here is souls advice on making a popular species

i am not lying when I say Viscets were literally a social experiment that I made for the sole purpose of getting popular with effort & business tactics. I wanted to take a giant shit on the stereotype that popular species are entirely the luck of having a cute drawing style.

If you disagree with me that’s cool!!! I just want to throw my advice onto this hellsite before I frolic my way to sweet blissful freedom

- the lineart and stuff Obviously the appearance matters, but don’t let yourself believe that’s the only thing. The most common complaint I see is how making a popular species is the luck of striking something cute. I mean sure that’s a definite possibility, but viscets used to look like this!! That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen!!! (no offense to anyone that liked them in that stage)

- cater to these sparkledog-loving children I don’t even like viscets!! I only own 1!! The majority of my species are demonic alien dragons, insects, and monsters. Viscets weren’t an “I have this cute idea and I want to share it with the world”-type species. I literally designed them specifically to what I thought the inhabitants of CS would like. Granted you don’t have to do that, but know that it’s a definite option. people on CS like: - cute and fluffy things - a brief and catchy name - some thing that’s recognizable (kalons have the tail shines, plumies had the trademark feathers, etc). Viscets have unique anatomy, but they also have the bottom mane and the top crest, so you can recognize the species even from headshots. There needs to be a few generic things that you know people were like, but at least 1 thing that they will easily recognize which will make your species stand out.

- Devote honestly you could throw everything else to shit but if you run the species for at least a year then you’ll pretty much be semi-popular by default. People won’t become devoted members of a community that they know won’t last long.

- Be a decent human being!!! You don’t know anything!! we’re all idiots!! One of the worst mistakes a species owner can make is saying ‘well it’s my species so I can do what I want’. no!! fuck you!! the phrase “the customer is always right” exists for a reason. it’s completely wrong. but it exists for a reason. Be kind to people. Discourage cliques. Make everyone feel included. No matter how much you want to hack the chickensmoothie site just to ban the idiot that’s asking you super obvious questions, always respond with smiley faces, patience, and fake friendliness while screaming inside. being a decent person is remarkably easy. i dont know what’s real anymore when in doubt make a vaguely-true excuse! if an art comp was full of buttshit-ugly designs I’d say “These are all beautiful so far! I’ve extended the comp a bit to allow some people more time.”

- Communicate!!!! Again with the “it’s my species I can do what I want”. no!! fuck you!! I carried out no major decision without first polling who it would impact, especially the staff. Whenever people complain I always try to peacefully explain the decision so that no one’s left in the dark. Most importantly, always be willing to apologize and go back on something. Tell everyone everything. Keep no secrets. Listen to all the feedback you get and use it to become better.

- Choose good staff!!!!! Another common mistake is when species owners hire people just because they’re popular or make cute designs. Your staff have to be a good team that understand how the audience functions, and you have to be ready to intervene on troublesome ones. All the Viscet staff I hired had moderating powers and I made sure to inquiry about that ability in the art comps. I passed several applicants solely because I didn’t think they’d be good at leading a community, and it makes me real happy whenever people praise the viscet staff because!! i did that purpose You also want staff who will be able to expand the community and share it. Staff who will engage with their characters of your species, make editables, etc.

- Prepare for shit !!! Prevent the apocalypse by making a plan!! At one point we had 2 archives and 4 archivists (5 including me). Once I corrupted the Viscet files and we had to make a new main thread from one of the artists’ adopts which happened to have all the lineart and ever since then I made sure to make a billion backups. I divided the workloads do carefully that I was able to shimmy out of there on the breeze. sometimes i’d disappear for 3 days and nobody would hardly notice

- Convince people they’re popular!!! Tbh viscets never even got popular, I just convinced people they were popular and then they started believing it and the lie took life. i am evil. Use whatever cheap advertising tactics you can: - ART is good because drawings in the Oekaki or commissions from Popular Artists are just free ads. a lot of the early viscets required art. You have to balance it out to accommodate those who can’t work with it, but use it whenever u can - i often went on the “Rate the Character” thread asking for feedback on my viscet designs. that is a lie. i was trying to show them off - DCAY was invented when i wanted to get art of my viscet. i literally made an entire forum game just for that. DCAY was a part of Viscet’s marketing - affiliate with as many people as physically possible!!!!!! that never held me back - REFERRALS. The Stub Shop was the Viscet babyboom. It put viscets Everywhere. they were Inescapable. And that made people think that that means they must be Popular. ding dong they were wrong but they made it right just by thinking that. it’s a paradox. this paradox is your friend - In the early stages sometimes I would specifically choose popular owners or artists that draw in the oekaki a lot because they were vital in spreading the word and jumpstarting species (but ONLY for the early stages--obviously if you always do this you’re just an asshole. it’s only a good beginning tactic. and still be fair about it ofc) Being a good person is important but never forget to be a merciless businessman

- cater the community to your intended audience the appearance ain’t the only thing that must be specifically designed. I also made sure to design the community to the kids I was aiming for, even against my own beliefs. Part of the experiment was to create a safe space for children, and specifically for children, so I made the rules as friendly as physically fucking possible. I outlawed NSFW because I know what my audience was. (I mean I personally love gore, but kids don’t, so I outlawed anything to do with it in the community, even off-site)

The community is what’s actually fun about species. anyone who’s devoted to a species is also devoted to the community, so making it a safe and friendly place is what’s most important.

If you’re catering to an older audience, you should have more formally-written rules, a more adult-orientated interface (not cute/cartoonish), and can be more free with having strict lore, which young kids generally won’t like

anwayys that’s a shitton of words and i probably wasted my life writing this but here u go. do what u will with my secrets

.

[planetaryawarenessproject]

Plant Blindness, Plant Script, Plant Co-Authorship and Interspecies Dialogue

The neglect and dismissal of flora is not only limited to scientific outlooks but extends also to social and cultural domains with planets often being reduced to just aesthetic purposes. Alarmed by the relegation of threatened floristic communities to reductionist discourse, biologists have popularised the idea of plant blindness to describe an inclination “among humans to neither notice nor value plants in the environment” (Balding and Williams 1192). As a tendency to overlook flora, to underestimate its global ecological significance, or to reduce it to an appropriable resource, plant blindness could reflect the physiological constraints of the human processing of visual information. The pervasiveness of plant blindness and the inability to recognise vegetal lives and their complexities could be one of many factors contributing to the exponential species loss and biocultural disintegration that ever more characterises the Anthropocene.

Ways in which artists have attempted to connect plants and humans once again is through plant poetry and plant literature, a technique and form that incorporates layered, planetary narratives and discourse to not only highlight the wonders of plant life, but to create an interspecies dialogue.

Research into botanical percipience can be traced back at least to Charles Darwin and Jagadish Chandra Bose. Darwin and Bose were the first to imagine and develop novel instruments to make visible the endemic semiosis of vegetal life, or what they came to term plant script. Plant script incorporated modes of interspecies dialogue between humans and plants and made visible the non-linguistic forms of communication of plants, plant-script or plant-autographs. Although forgotten for a long time, this form of collaboration and communication has opened a world of potential for creative arts to engage, evoke and elicit plant sensitivities. Rather than constructing them as objects of representation, it entails the possibility of creative exchange between plants and humans in which plant script intergrades with the production of a text. The potentials of writing practices can therefore initiate new social, biological, political and imaginative perspectives on flora. Human-plant communication can be posited as a basis for interspecies collaboration in which botanical life is an agent, participant within, and contributor to the compositional process.

Rather than passive constituents of the landscape, plants exhibit a range of self-determined behaviours, including learning, remembering, solving problems, making decisions based on prior experiences, interpreting sensory feedback in order to negotiate environments, assimilating information to enhance survival and fitness, and, even, enacting forms of altruism including care.

The plant as co-author has been seen through multiples cases of literature, including eco-fiction, speculative fiction and perhaps most effectively, plant poetry. Examples include Wright’s Five Senses (1963), Murray’s Translations from the Natural World (1992), Easter Sunday (1993) and most recently, Power’s The Overstory (2018).

Plant fiction, plant poetry and the co-authorship between plants and humans is an integral part to our project as rather than speculative reverie, pathetic fallacy or barefaced metaphorisation, plant script becomes available to us through practices of listening to, looking at, feeling, tasting, smelling and walking in plant habitats. The interspecies dialogue requires a deeper understanding between fauna and flora, a reconfiguring of our relations on this planet and to one another and a cognitive shift in perspective towards the planetary.

For further information and resources: http://www.transformationsjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Trans30_08_ryan.pdf

[spicynbachili2]

Larysa Switlyk: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

Larysa Switlyk/Twitter

Larysa Switlyk

“Taking pot photographs at goats on a cliff. What a fully disgusting human.”

The particular person being described is host of a searching present geared toward ladies, although it seems she has a male following as effectively, Floridan Larysa Switlyk travels the world searching trophies whereas hawking searching gear from ammunition to rifles, as may be seen in her Instagram the place she tags sponsors in almost all her posts just like the one for her camo leggings designed with an AR15 emblazoned on the aspect.

Fashionable, she has 150,000 social media followers and movies on her YouTube channel have been seen almost half one million occasions.

Her searching journey to the Scottish highlands the place she stalked and killed sheep and goats has Scotland livid.

Right here’s what it’s worthwhile to know:

1. Switlyk Tweeted & Took to Instagram to Pose With Her Goat & Sheep Trophy Kills & Scotts Took to Sharing Their Anger & Disgust

On her Instagram starting Oct. 10, Switlyk shared posed photographs of her along with her kills; two goats, one wild and one probably home, a home sheep and a Purple deer stag.

Switlyk and three others stayed at a highlands fortress on the Scottish island of Islay, the place they stalked and killed grazing deer, wild goats and home livestock. And the photographs, glam photographs of Switlyk and her kills, are designed to entice others to return to Scotalnd and do the identical. She’s promoting excursions.

“Lovely wild goat right here on the Island of Islay in Scotland. Such a enjoyable hunt!! They dwell on the sting of the cliffs of the island and know the best way to conceal effectively. We hunted laborious for an enormous one for two days and at last acquired on this group. Made an ideal 200 yard shot and dropped him with the @gunwerks and @nightforce_optics ! ( Good factor too as a result of he may have ran off the cliff into the water). Ever fascinated about searching Scotland and performing some whisky excursions, e mail larysa@detailcompany.com”

Switlyk posted photographs of her scoping out deer and mendacity in wait, with full make-up and sportswear she’s promoting, particularly leggings.

“Feeling like royalty staying within the Mingary Fort and glassing for Purple Stags with my @nightforce_optics recognizing scope ~ @wsisports AR15 leggings.”

She was additionally stalking deer and killed a stag that she posed in such a means if seems alive.

“Lovely hunt leading to a Royal Scottish Stag ~ Desirous about Looking Scotland ? Electronic mail larysa@detailcompany.com.”

2. Switlyk Says She Was ‘Large Recreation Looking.’ Locals Say She Hunted Livestock

Switlyk posted trophy images of 4 killed animals, albeit posed to seem alive. At the very least two described as home or livestock.

She described (and hashtagged) her efforts as “huge recreation searching.”

Commenters on her social, many who say they dwell on Islay, weren’t having it.

“That’s somebody’s prize livestock! We don’t have any wild sheep in Scotland. Simply open grazing. Additionally the tups (rams) are normally tame as a result of they should be caught commonly for breeding,” one wrote.

“I did surprise. I’ve a good friend who has blackies and he mentioned that sheep’s horns have been labored with. Marvel if it has tags in its ears,” requested one other.

A black-faced sheep such because the ram she stalked and killed are domestically bred sheep raised for wool and meat. The livestock graze on hills and mountains.

“I dwell on Islay and there’s lots of people completely disgusted about this,” one native wrote.

“These goats are so tame they are often walked as much as and caught by hand. These posts are cringeworthy belief me I dwell on Islay and that is simply embarrassing,” wrote one other.

Cannot consider what number of animals she has murdered whereas on her vacation in Scotland. @NicolaSturgeon How are you going to let this occur?

— Eliot & Zac (@NewtonsCats) October 24, 2018

In line with Go to Scotland, the Ardnamurchan peninsula is a “wild, distant but stunning place stuffed with great surroundings located on the west coast of Scotland.” Described as unspolied, distant and teeming with wildlife together with wild goats, deer, dolphins, whales and birds of prey, the terrain consists of moors, forests, lochs and seashores on the Sanna Bay.

three. Scots Requested First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to Act. She Tweeted Wednesday & a Petition to Parliament Was Created

Completely comprehensible why the photographs from Islay of useless animals being held up as trophies is so upsetting and offensive to individuals. @scotgov will evaluation the present scenario and think about whether or not modifications to the regulation are required. https://t.co/SIQxcEYBzR

— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) October 24, 2018

Folks needed to know if trophy searching is authorized in Scotland and if is she alright with trophy searching wild goats.

“Can’t consider what number of animals she has murdered whereas on her vacation in Scotland. @NicolaSturgeon How are you going to let this occur?”

Sturgeon responded: “Completely comprehensible why the photographs from Islay of useless animals being held up as trophies is so upsetting and offensive to individuals. @scotgov will evaluation the present scenario and think about whether or not modifications to the regulation are required.”

Scores of feedback on her put up from Scots describe Switlyk as “merciless” and “sick” and never welcome in Scotland.

“If that’s what you need to do then don’t come anyplace close to Scotland. Folks like you aren’t needed,” one wrote.

“You have to be completely ashamed of yourselves you abhorrent individuals. Go away right here, you’re not welcome,” wrote one other.

A petition to Parliament to ban trophy searching based mostly on Switlyk’s actions is gaining traction. Her searching and profiting off of it are referred to as “mindless acts that are at odds with the peaceable environment of the island, and the nation.”

“Scotland is internationally famend for its untouched nature and progressive social local weather. Looking defenceless animals with excessive tech weapons for the sake of boasting is solely at odds with the values of Scottish individuals. It disturbs an ecosystem, and enforces human dominance on species which have coexisted symbiotically with locals for hundreds of years.”

“Ms Switlyk has used her images to promote searching expertise excursions to an American and worldwide viewers. Trophy Looking taints the picture of our valued vacationer trade, and places the great thing about our lengthy established pure habitat in danger.”

The petition on Change.org reads, “Whereas we admire that sure kinds of stalking/searching are regularly up for debate in parliament resulting from inhabitants management, this petition hopes that the Scottish authorities will recognise there may be by no means justification for searching native, peaceable species with excessive tech gear for some absurd ego increase. For these causes, Trophy Looking should be made a punishable crime all through Scotland.”

four. Whereas Scots Are Indignant About Switlyk’s Trophy Looking, a Scottish ‘Sporting Supervisor’ in Ardnamurchan Guides Hunts There

The final time Niall Rowantree tweeted was a yr in the past, and with simply round 100 followers, he and the ‘West Highland Looking’ group is probably not well-known. Certainly, a click on on the hyperlink that’s imagined to convey individuals to the Ardnamurchan Estates and Mingary Fort web site, the placement Switlyk tagged in her images, has not but launched and is “beneath development. That mentioned, there’s an e mail tackle to contact for “sporting bookings.”

In an article from FieldSports journal, its shared that British primitive goats are uncommon and quantity lower than 1,200 to 1,500; they’re thought-about a domesticated goat.

However, the writer, Simon Barr, wrote that “regardless of their comparatively low quantity, the truth that wild goats browse fairly than graze means they trigger enormous harm” to vegetation they’ll attain. He writes that on his hunt, which he describes as among the many most memorable of his life, the goats owing to their agility can “scale steep areas of hillside to feed, resulting in elevated soil and land erosion, whereas their capability to eat shoots and strip bark from bushes poses issues for forestry and woodland administration and biodiversity in these areas.” A “controversial goat cull” adopted.

The Scottish highland goats are among the many earliest animals domesticated by individuals.

“Designated a Web site of Particular Scientific Curiosity (SSSI) and an Space of Excellent Pure Magnificence (AONB), Ardnamurchan is dwelling to a wide range of fauna together with golden and white-tailed eagles, otters, crimson deer, wildcats, pine martens and the explanation for my go to – a wholesome and sustainable inhabitants of untamed goats,” he wrote.

Wednesday, the Scottish Authorities Cupboard Secretary for Surroundings, Local weather Change & Land Reform Roseanna Cunningham tweeted that it’s not solely not unlawful to hunt, populations should be culled. She mentioned although that there was an understanding of the “issues raised by these photographs” and the company will probably be trying into it.

5. A ‘Hardcore Huntress,’ Switlyk Says She Has a Mission to Encourage Folks, Particularly Children & Girls to Trophy Hunt. She Sells Calendars, Jewellery, Sports activities Gear & Now, Trophy Journeys

Her web site and different bios clarify that Switlyk “grew up with three older brothers and a concern of weapons. But, her upbringing taught her to be sturdy, brave and never afraid to attempt something.”

She describes herself as a “combination of a tomboy and mannequin” with an adventurous and aggressive streak. An authorized public accountant in New York, she says she wasn’t reduce out for the town life and the job: “A intestine feeling advised her one thing was lacking in her life.”

She started to hunt: “Larysa’s ardour for journey, assembly new individuals, discovering new locations and experiences, led her to seek out that factor when she booked a hunt in New Zealand. Regardless that she had by no means shot a rifle earlier than, she immediately fell in love with the searching way of life. She realized she had a pure expertise for taking pictures and searching. She has all the time appreciated the outside, but it surely was not till later in life that she discovered real love and zeal for searching. Larysa found her calling and booked her second searching journey in South Africa! Larysa is the one one who hunts and fishes in her household and has added the bow to her arsenal, persevering with to hunt when she will. Just lately she’s been lucky to expertise hunts in Argentina, Europe, Canada, and everywhere in the United States.”

Now she has a present referred to as Larysa Unleashed that seems on Wild Television, Pursuit Channel, Tuff TV, Motion Channel, & Girls’s Outside Community on Roku! The Motion Channel, the Untamed Sports activities TV, and Tuff TV.

“Viewers will observe Larysa as she promotes the outside way of life, providing a style of the journey as she blossoms right into a hardcore huntress. Alongside the way in which Larysa needs to encourage the general public, particularly youngsters and females, to go searching and expertise the good open air,” her web site explains. “Whether or not it’s educating them to shoot a gun for the primary time, or searching alongside her for an incredible trophy, will probably be nothing lower than an excessive journey!”

​Her sponsors embrace gun and knife producers, taxidermists, a rifle scope firm, recoil merchandise from ‘Limbsaver,’ and a jewellery line of metallic and leather-based bracelets, her personal clothes line of leggings for girls to put on whereas searching in collaboration with a U.S. sportswear producer. She even sells calendars.

from SpicyNBAChili.com https://www.spicynbachili.com/larysa-switlyk-5-fast-facts-you-need-to-know/