#and relied more on Dramatic Events Occurring
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cepheustarot · 8 months ago
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Who will appear in your life soon and why?
Attention! This reading is for entertainment purposes only. This tarot reading does not give a 100% guarantee that all the described situations will occur or being ultimate truth. You build your own life and destiny and only you know yourself best.
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Pick a pile. Choose one or more pictures. Trust your intuition.
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Pile 1: An optimistic and cheerful person will soon appear in your life, who is looking for the pros and positives in everything. By themself this person is calm, reacts calmly to difficulties and problems in life because he believes that everything can be overcome. This person is able to adapt to sudden changes but prefers a stable life without impulsive changes. They can also be called moderately emotional, they do not dramatize and do not react sharply to anything but they are not stingy with feelings. By the way, they are very good friends, loyal, always ready to support and help, ready to help with solving any problem. They can also be generous, constantly give gifts, can pay the bill at the store / cafe for you, can get tickets and invite you to an event, to a movie, etc. Next to this person, there is a feeling as like a stone wall, you can always rely on them, you feel calmer with them. But this person can be very picky and categorical at times as they may have a peculiar taste and therefore it is difficult to make a choice. This person can also fall into melancholy, apathy at times and at such moments becomes uncommunicative, talks little, shares something, generally closes themself in. During such a period it is important to support them the same way they do and then they will be able to return to their former state soon.  This person will appear in your life as support and help in order to fulfill your goal. They can either directly participate in achieving the goal (for example, motivate, work with you on, be in the role of your coach, etc.), or morally support. To a greater extent I see that this person will play a role in realizing your desires but this does not mean that they will do everything for you, they will inspire you to take action.
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Pile 2: A very emotional and sensitive person will soon appear in your life, to some extent i can say that they like to romanticize a lot around them, like to create aesthetics and a certain atmosphere, look beautiful, dress up, decorate a room or something like this. I see that they like to create something with their own hands and their activities have creative features, for example, they can draw, write, create something from clay, they can create compositions from flowers, do scrapbooking and everything like that. As I said earlier, they are very sensitive, they may have developed high emotional intelligence, their facial expressions are very emotional, they may have competent speech in which it is very rare to hear word-parasites. They deeply appreciate the connection with loved ones and if you can get closer and trust each other, then such a person will remain in your life for a long time. They also work a lot of time, they are purposeful but they need to see the result, otherwise their work will come to naught without it. They can become very attached to things because for them it is something memorable and associated with significant events in their lives.  This person will come into your life as an employee, a work partner, you can work on a project with him, make a deal, you can come up with ideas for creating something (here you can also include the creative sphere, for example, you will write a song together, you will work on creating a book, a series of short stories, you will do the feat). Cooperation with him will be painstaking, very saturated, sometimes difficult, as it is difficult to get along with them or you may not agree on some nuances but the result of the work done will definitely please you two and your efforts will pay off, bear fruit.
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Pile 3: A somewhat mysterious, cold, detached and introverted person will soon appear in your life. They do not really like to talk about themselves, show their intentions and attitudes to a person not through words but through actions and deeds, through their behavior. This person likes to spend time with himself, they generally may not consciously make many friends, acquaintances, like to be alone, they value their personal space very much. They are also anxious individuals, constantly immersed in their thoughts, they may have low self-esteem which they hide very much behind their behavior. It is difficult for them to make a choice, they are very indecisive and very easily give in to pressure from the outside. They probably have as many complexes and fears. But at the same time, they are very smart, hardworking and diligent, erudite, they like to act according to a plan, they have everything clearly thought out and calculated. They are also passionate about a lot of things and have a lot of knowledge, know a lot of facts, can support almost any topic with this knowledge. They are curious, inquisitive, like to learn new things, explore something.  Speaking of why such a person will appear in your life... To be honest, I don't see any positive aspects here. They play the role of a person here, a third person who spoils relationships with people and they can negatively affect your relationships with friends, family or acquaintances in the company which will cause a strong quarrel between you. So for the most part, this is a warning, be careful! Perhaps these people will want to "take revenge" on you in this way or frame you because they dislike or have a personal dislike for you. They could also be offended by you because of some trifle but for them this trifle looks like a whole tragedy.
Thank you for reading! I will be glad of any feedback 🖤
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bestworstcase · 2 years ago
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alright so
door one: the ever after led jaune to the clock tree because the rusted knight was always jaune, and jaune becoming the rusted knight is inevitable. a closed time loop is appealing in its simplicity but has serious thematic implications, namely that rwby occurs in a fundamentally deterministic universe.
on consideration i don’t think this is necessarily sufficient to rule out door one, because while the narrative positions destiny as a coercive and harmful force it has never taken the hard stance that destiny is not real. this allows for the narrative rejection of destiny to coexist with a deterministic cosmology because determinism itself can be personified (as the god of light) and fought to realize the anti-destiny theme. conceptually i think the most interesting aspect of door one is that it would draw such a stark thematic line in the sand: jaune falls backwards in time because he is destined to do so, and then he resigns himself to his fate and sits on a beach for decades until something else happens to him; acceptance of destiny is synonymous with stagnation and by extension with corruption and eventual loss of the self. this is the same thesis put forward with ozma’s character and elements of it appear every time a character tangles with destiny and submits, but the abstracted nature of the ever after allows for a more literal illustration.
however. door one relies on two presuppositions, first that the true events of ‘the girl who fell through the world’ happened the way jaune experienced them, and second that either alyx or lewis left the ever after and wrote a dramatically altered account thereof. with the facts we have to hand, i find this unbelievable on its face: presuming that jaune’s memory is accurate (<- which it very well might not be; he did get poisoned), then neither sibling has a clear motivation for writing the story as we know it. why would alyx, who poisoned the rusted knight because she thought he was trying to trap her in the ever after, portray him as a heroic figure? but conversely, why would lewis erase himself from the story? something doesn’t add up here. there are huge gaps in the story, and while filling them in might clarify why the book was written the way it was, right now, i think the simpler explanation is that jaune did not experience the events that inspired the book.
which brings us to,
door two: jaune’s desolate wish for a second chance manifested in the ever after as the clock tree, and jaune ‘stole’ the part of the original rusted knight.
an open time loop still dovetails neatly with the anti-destiny narrative (jaune stagnates in any case) while sidestepping all the logistical narrative headaches involved in stitching the book together with jaune’s account of what happened. in the book, alyx doesn’t encounter the rusted knight until after she’s passed into her second or possibly third acre; she gets her knife back from the peddler, beats the red king at his game, and meets the cat before crossing paths with the knight. jaune, however, meets alyx and her brother on the beach and attempts to escort them through the story by rote with disastrous results. if we allow that jaune was not there when alyx fell into the ever after before jaune fell backwards in time, then it follows there must have been someone else in the ever after at the time who wore rusted armor and became a genuine friend to alyx—hence their heroic portrayal in the book.
…it occurs to me that the ‘true’ rusted knight could in fact be the herbalist; alyx doesn’t meet the herbalist in the book, but in jaune’s account she appears to visit him at the approximate point when she ‘should’ be encountering the knight—after meeting the cat—and that is the approximate point when team rwby visit him as well. furthermore, the herbalist’s chosen purpose is to ‘help others on their journeys’ and he does so by brewing remedies (“the heart very rarely forgets,” and “the rusted knight drinks the poison in her stead”). if jaune’s account is accurate, whatever the herbalist revealed to alyx led her to see jaune as an immediate danger to herself—step outside jaune’s perspective for a moment and think about how terrified an eight- or nine-year-old child would have to be to resort to poisoning her onetime protector and guide. and, we know the herbalist’s magic can peer backwards in time; he brought team rwby face-to-face with their younger selves. if jaune initiated an open time loop, it is hardly inconceivable that the herbalist might have been able to show alyx her past in relation to him, the true rusted knight she met and befriended once before, which naturally would shatter whatever remaining trust she had in the imposter knight who intercepted her and her brother on the beach.
(if events in the ever after can influence events in remnant, then jaune’s accidental usurpation of the rusted knight and the original knight’s—possible—ascension into the herbalist might also be indirectly responsible, through butterfly ripples, for lewis falling into the ever after along with alyx this time; but that strikes me as overly convoluted unless rwby is about to commit to a bifurcated and minutely altered timeline for the rest of the show, which seems doubtful given how much additional complexity it would pile onto an already very complex story.)
in any case, the difficulty with door two is that ‘the girl who fell through the world’ itself seems unchanged by jaune’s changes, as both jaune and team rwby remember the book based on the correct, original time loop. there are, however, some potential ways to resolve this:
A - this is the correct timeline; when jaune fell through time, he branched off backwards into the corrupted timeline, which then became less corrupt as he moved forward towards the point of convergence, akin to the shadow cast by an object being fuzzy at its most distant point and clearly defined where it ‘connects.’ (if the herbalist was the original rusted knight, then he must have ascended after he drank the poison to save alyx; this would also explain the circumstance which led to alyx witnessing an ascension, as per the cat.)
B - there is no ‘correct’ or ‘corrupted’ timeline; both versions of the story happened simultaneously and the missing pieces and discrepancies between jaune’s memories and the book are a temporal interference pattern caused by the ever after contorting to make this possible. lewis and the alyx who fell by herself both made it back home and wrote ‘the boy who fell from the sky’ and ‘the girl who fell through the world’ respectively, and the dagger in the blacksmith’s forge belongs to the alyx who fell with lewis—it not being possible for two of alyx to exist at one time in remnant, one of them had to stay.
C - this is the corrupted timeline, and the only ones who remember the correct timeline are jaune and the cat, albeit only in disjointed fragments; neither of them knows exactly what happened because whatever happened when the cat took alyx and lewis to the tree caused time in the ever after to spiral back to the point when alyx and lewis fell in—with differences, like neither jaune nor lewis being there.
D - jaune broke time itself by breaking the watch and has been in teatime purgatory the entire time, experiencing fractured, cyclical echoes of the same story over and over again. the gaps and discrepancies are because his brain is trying to remember an incomprehensible number of atemporal repetitions as a single linear series of events; this is also why he hesitates and asks for reassurance from team rwby that it’s really them—he experienced disconnected fragments of their reunion, too. now that team rwby are here, time has begun to move more or less in a direction again (as it does for the hatter once alice leaves the table), providing an opportunity for reprieve and escape.
i think, if this is an open time loop, 2A is the likeliest explanation (as it’s the cleanest to deal with narratively, and this volume does love its mirror-imagery!) but i’m also partial to 2B, as it’s a very wonderlandish solution to the problem, and 2D likewise on hatter’s-atemporality-but-make-it-horror grounds.
next up,
door three: ‘the girl who fell through the world’ is legitimately a work of fiction and jaune didn’t fall backwards in time so much as he rolled back into a rough draft. this body of theories um. Compels Me enough that it’s going to be pried out of my hands by brute force if it’s taken away at all, primarily because i think reading the ever after as a fictional story that became real is really narratively interesting both for how it contextualizes the ever after and for how it inverts the fictionalization of remnant’s real history. if the ever after is a made-up story that was, in some way, made true—by belief, by imagination, by magic, what have you—then the world itself is a mirror image of the ‘legends and fairytales scattered in time’ motif, of ozma’s manipulation of myth and folktale to obfuscate reality. yes?
and the core rules of the ever after make a great deal of sense as abstract storytelling concepts realized literally: afterans conceive of identity as narrative role, ascension is functionally indistinguishable from an author removing a bit player here or repurposing an old character concept there except for the fact of ascension being self-directed by the characters themselves, the only way to truly die is to be eaten by manifested incoherency (<- the only dead story is one that cannot be told!), even the hodge-podge nature of the world itself suggests the tendency for incomplete and fragmentary ideas to pile against each other in the creative imagination and the blank void underneath is the parts of a story that do not matter and therefore do not, in any meaningful sense, exist.
applying this lens to jaune’s account of what happened is, i think, really fun… because if the story jaune remembers was a rough draft, then he spent a not-insignificant amount of time not only interacting but trying to interfere with the imagination of the person who wrote the story (😐)—and it follows that he remembers alyx being cruel and becoming ever more paranoid because jaune literally was changing the story, in the most literal sense, and the story’s author kept resisting those changes. (insert the common joke here about characters writing themselves; sometimes it really does feel like that and sometimes it’s really annoying.) eventually alyx poisons him and in this version of the story the rusted knight lays there dying for an indeterminate amount of time while the cat and the siblings wander vaguely onwards to an uncertain ending. possibly lewis ceases to exist at some point in between the departure from the herbalist and arrival at the tree—he isn’t present for the poisoning, jaune recalls alyx saying that she won’t let anyone prevent “her” (not “us”) from getting home, the cat has never mentioned lewis directly and when asked “what happened when you took alyx and lewis to the tree?” they answer that they don’t know, alyx promised to take them through the door with her, but she tricked them; lewis is conspicuous for being the one subject the cat point blank will not give information about, not even posed as riddles. the cat has shown willing to answer plenty of uncomfortable questions—if sometimes in twisty ways—and to say so when they don’t know the answer. that they utterly ignore the question of what happened to lewis might suggest a guilty conscience, but is also explained by the story’s author deciding, in frustration, that the one-naughty-one-nice deuteragonist thing isn’t working and maybe combining them into just alyx would be better.
(points at lewis being portrayed in the OP as alyx’s reflection. points at how lewis is a complete non-entity in jaune’s telling of the story; he does nothing except trail along silently and passively in alyx’s wake. his sole relevancy to the story prior to his mysterious disappearance is to dramatize alyx’s nastiness—“lewis was the kind one, the clever one,” jaune says, as a contrast to alyx’s cruelty and selfishness. later jaune tells ruby that he thinks alyx killed lewis and then wrote him out of the story, but for all jaune’s angst about this kid lewis has such vanishingly little presence in the story as jaune told it that you could delete him without changing a single thing about the story. like the cat’s reticence, it’s possible that jaune is flinching away from talking about lewis because he feels guilty, but based on the information we have and the way jaune and the cat both talk (or rather don’t talk) about lewis, lewis reads to me exactly like the sort of superfluous appendage-character that you’d cut after transplanting any interesting dongles over into the protagonist who actually Does Stuff—and voila!, lewis vanishes from the story without a trace.)
(points also at the cat calling people from remnant ‘characters’ and stating that they saw people as mere sources for knowledge and entertainment. points at jaune becoming the rusted knight and then disliking alyx for treating the world like a story even as he obsessively tried to get her story “back on track.” the line between fictional character and real person has been very deliberately blurred in this volume.)
door four: the ever after is fictional, but ‘the girl who fell through the world’ is not. or to put it another way, the ever after is a story that alyx and lewis, real people, fell into a la rwbyjn. this would account for the apparent fuzziness of the timeline: is ‘the girl who fell through the world’ an classic fairytale or a popular children’s story written within the last few decades? perhaps ‘the girl who fell through the world’ is in fact a novel published thirty-odd years ago that stitched together and popularized a much older constellation of folktales about a place called the ever after—a reversal of wonderland’s proliferation into pop culture in the century-and-a-half or so since the original book’s publication. where and how these tales may have originated and whether they came first or the ever after did remains mysterious—i do still think the ever after makes too much sense as a fictional world both in terms of how it works and narratively as an inverse of remnant for it to not be that, especially because even 3/5 of the way through the volume i have yet to read a really convincing argument for reading the ever after as a construction of one or both brothers (or the god of animals, or the theoretical third and fourth brothers who super duper don’t exist)—i include my own argumentation for ‘dark made it’ here, because while i find that most plausible out of the divine-origin theories it feels pretty textually shaky by now.
(if the ever after isn’t explicitly fictional, my next guesses would be 1. that it just is, unexplained and needing no explanation, a la wonderland, or 2. it was created by humans through the act of telling stories, not a fictional world per se but something like the idea of a fictional world, populated by the idea of characters.)
theoretically door four is compatible with doors one and two, and using an explicitly non-real, fictional setting to explore those themes of rejecting destiny in a deterministic world opens up a lot of fun possibilities for playing with abstract concepts like predestination in a literal way—which we’ve already seen a bit of with the clock tree and ascension and this nascent question of whether the cat guides or manipulates, whether ascension is rebirth or death, etc. but with four episodes left to go and ‘what if you could leave ruby rose behind?’ still looming, it looks like a pretty safe bet that we’re going to get more. (if ‘the girl who fell through the world’ is also fictional, there exist all the same possibilities but more so and hand-in-hand with exploration of rwby’s storytelling themes, which is one of many reasons why i’m camping outside door three until and unless the story firmly shoos me away with a definitive answer.)
or,
door five: the basic outline of ‘the girl who fell through the world’ is actually the ever after’s equivalent to ascension for non-afterans—more precisely, it’s a framework similar to but far more comprehensive than a ponderstorm which seeks to guide visitors who break or get worn out through a journey to meant to fix them up. (hence the cat’s role as both the guide through the story and the guide to ascension; it’s the same role adapted to suit two groups of people with different needs.)
perhaps when a person from remnant falls into the ever after, the ever after tries to give them what they most want or need: ruby finds a kind, supportive new friend whose biggest problem is needing a hand tugging cheesy potatoes out of the sand and who eagerly tries to help her in return; weiss and blake find their families (and blake finds yang especially); yang initially loses her arm and sinks into exhausted self-destruction, but once her friends are there to support her that burden melts off her shoulders and she finds the chance to reclaim her arm on her own terms, thus healing some of the wounds inflicted in V4; neo, consumed by vengeance, finds an adversary to fight (or perhaps ally with—we still don’t know quite what happened); and jaune gets the second chance and the extra time he wanted and then some. (i will note here that the ever after is an indelicate instrument. if this is what’s going on then its ability to do so successfully is notably restricted to the four who had each other to lean on, and the ever after is… less… deft when presented with a solitary visitor. which is only natural, because rwby as a narrative takes the stance that healing in isolation is impossible.)
the specific role in the framework that a visitor gets slotted into seems to be driven, as with ascension, by what the visitor wants to be: neo wants ruby dead, so she’s given the opportunity to become the jabberwalker; jaune’s desire to be a hero is reawakened as crushing guilt and desperation for a second chance, so he’s relocated in time and allowed to grow into the rusted knight. ruby wants to escape herself and her choices, so she becomes alyx (and her friends, by rallying around her, become alyxes in their own way too.) with the all the pieces laid out and everyone in their starting positions, the story begins to move forward.
if door five is what’s really going on, then jaune isn’t just learning the wrong lessons (although he certainly has done that!)—he sat down on a beach for years waiting for something to happen, and although he wasn’t literally at the shoreline the whole time, his mind was always there. he rejected the journey he was offered out of hand because he didn’t want to move until he’d caught up to the present. (<- there’s a metaphor there aye)
so, clearly this calls for drastic measures.
i see three main possibilities through this door:
A - with jaune stagnating, the ever after shuffled two other visitors from a different time forward until they coincided with jaune’s vigil over the beach. this was a conscious attempt on the ever after’s part to ameliorate his loneliness (the ever after knows that no one can make the journey alone—see also the blacksmith’s concern that ruby is ‘doing this all alone’ and how she waits for little’s confirmation that they’re ruby’s friend and trying to help her before presenting ruby with any choices) and give him a task, in guiding two young children, that could heal the wound of having failed to save penny. however, jaune has already become jaded and calloused enough that he can’t see through alyx’s brattiness to make the connection between her need for guidance and his desire to protect innocent life, although he does do so with lewis; his unspoken (but no doubt perceptible—kids are smart!) favoritism and his anxiety about letting the story ‘get off track��� creates friction between him and alyx and deepens the implied schism between alyx and lewis until the ever after intervenes, via the herbalist. the knight becomes a villain for alyx to defeat before she and lewis can continue their journeys (while jaune is kept in stasis until the cat is able to return to him), and whichever one or both of them completed that journey made the decision to write the book as it is for some reason or another that doesn’t actually matter, because what’s really important is how jaune reacts to this setback in his journey.
B - a similar scenario, but the alyx and lewis jaune met were merely echoes conjured up by the ever after using the emotional ‘footprints’ left behind by other visitors long since returned home. (“nothing and no one is ever truly lost,” says the blacksmith, and “the heart very rarely forgets,” says the cat—who’s to say the ever after couldn’t remember old friends fondly or try to help new ones by sharing what it remembers of those who came before?). whether they were siblings in reality or even together in the ever after at the same time doesn’t matter; what matters is that the ever after recounts them to jaune that way (perhaps it makes a better story if they’re a brother and sister who fell together—perhaps it makes the stakes feel more real, if jaune can see them both home safely). but here again, things start to go wrong because of jaune’s rigidity. he doesn’t grasp that this is his story, not alyx’s, and this is a problem because the ever after responds, has no choice but to respond, to what he sees as his purpose; it can’t tell him what to become, only help him get to where he’s going. the harder he fights to keep the story on track, the tighter he clings to the terror that he’s messing up the story, the more real that terror and that struggle becomes until his own self-loathing and guilt-stricken anxiety poisons him and eats away the memories the ever after tried to share with him, and in the end there’s nothing left but a mean, spiteful little girl who murdered her gentle brother and wrote him out of the story afterwards because jaune wasn’t good enough to save either of them.
[corollary: if 5B turns out to be the case, i would half expect for juniper to turn out to be a manifestation of lewis, or different memories similar to lewis, adjusted to provide jaune with a friend he can rely on rather than a vulnerable child he feels driven to protect. note that juniper is absent from jaune’s tale!]
C - none of this process is organized or directed by a conscious entity; the ever after is not alive or sapient in any sense, and the ‘girl who fell through the world’ narrative is an emergent phenomenon arising from the ever after’s essential nature as an emotional mirror and influenced by the actions of individual afterans who try to do what they can to help visitors who need it. jaune doesn’t participate in the real alyx’s story in any capacity, but as he grows older and his armor begins to rust for lack of care he begins to subconsciously identify himself as the character of the rusted knight. as that idea begins to take hold, the ever after begins to reflect it back at him. a self-reinforcing cycle develops to the point that jaune is shepherding around figments of his own imagination, formed half out of what he remembers of a favorite childhood story and half from the abscessed distrust and cynicism towards “fairytales” injected into his mind by learning the truth about ozpin’s fairytales: he knows this story but he also knows that the truth behind the story is always so much worse than you could imagine. the cat takes an interest and guides jaune and the figments to the herbalist, where it isn’t alyx the herbalist really speaks to—it’s jaune. but jaune can’t cope with the realization that he’s flat out hallucinating a pair of children (and he isn’t, really, the ever after made them real-ish, but the cat’s playful riddle-answers do NOT put his mind at ease), so he spirals, clinging harder to the conviction that they have to be real, which makes them realer but also pours his paranoia into them and bounces it back on him. the knight drinks the poison in alyx’s stead—very literally, in this case, because the alyx who hands him the poison is conjured out of his imagination—and after that things go sort of funny. nobody’s really sure what happened, except that alyx and lewis were here and now they’re not. jaune eventually scrapes himself back to a semblance of functional by becoming resolutely certain that this place is evil and rotten to the core and he wants nothing to do with it (his repulsion repulses the ever after, allowing for a mostly-stable situation to develop), the cat decides that they did not enjoy being caught in the middle of jaune’s mental breakdown and keeps their distance for an indeterminate amount of time, and the whole incident festers unresolved forever until team rwby shows up to crash into the wobbly jenga tower of jaune’s psyche. (<- probably not this one because that’s a lot to even start unraveling in four episodes, but it would make an interesting fic i bet.)
in any case the end result is that jaune makes three critical mistakes: first losing himself entirely to the role he believes he needs to play in alyx’s story, second taking the consequent setbacks he experienced as a permanent and irrevocable failure, and third imagining the absolute worst case scenario he could think of and holding it as truth in order to torture himself and justify his intense hatred for the ever after itself.
like ascension, the story of ‘the girl who fell through the world’ is meant to be a journey of self-discovery, growth, and healing. total egocentrism is an obstacle to self-knowledge (this is one lesson the alyx of the book seems to learn), but total self-sacrifice is an even greater threat; in its worst excesses it becomes self-destruction, as we’re seeing with ruby presently. without mistakes, without accepting loss as a fact of life, growth becomes impossible. and rejection of complexity is a betrayal of the self, because selfhood is necessarily complex and complexity gives life its richness. as easy as it is to retreat into simple modes of thought, to close off and demand easy, perfect, clear-cut answers, doing so cuts off pathways to growth and then turns the blades inwards as self-hatred. jaune accomplishes a hat trick (pun INTENDED!) of exactly the wrong lessons learnt because he never grasps that he wasn’t supposed to be the make-believe hero, the guide, the teacher—he was supposed to be the wandering, broken, lonely child who healed by letting others guide him across this unfamiliar world.
as with door four, this one is loosely compatible with doors one and two and three, with room for fudging around the details as needed; and, removed from the specific question of what the ever after is (door number three! everyone has a hill to die on and door number three is mine!), i think this one is probably the closest to how jaune’s arc will shake out emotionally; in the most basic of terms he functions as the cautionary tale against both passivity (in his decision to mostly just sit on a beach long enough to rust into his armor) and active refusal to learn or grow (in his rabid paranoia and conviction that change is death and healing is manipulation). thus some narrative exploration of the lessons he didn’t learn (and the poisoned ones that he did) will necessarily be a part of ruby’s story, as she’s standing at the same crossroads that led him to becoming this and poised to continue repeating his first mistake if something doesn’t draw her out of the self-loathing self-annihilating fog.
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bg3-game-analysis · 2 months ago
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Game Story and Narrative Design 📝
What is Baldur’s Gate 3 about? What kind of story is it trying to tell?
I would argue that the game is attempting to send a message of belonging and also overcoming hardships. Throughout the entirety of the game, the player is surrounded by companions who are all struggling in their own ways. One of your jobs is to help them get closure and essentially end those parts of their stories so they can begin fresh. You become close friends with your party and begin to really cherish them.
The overarching story of the game is of a similar vain. The whole reason the player begins the journey they end up on is because they want an annoying mind flayer tadpole out of their head. A very reasonable request if you ask me. You bond with your companions because they too have annoying little tadpoles in their heads. You learn to overcome the challenges that you and your friends have to face due to the little annoyance and literally grow stronger from it all as you level up.
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The design features that support the story
A very prominent design feature of BG3 is absolutely its use of a discovery narrative structure with a little hint of pre-established narrative structure. The discovery narrative relies on the player’s exploration of the world to find out story information (Picucci 107). There are so many random little tidbits of information I never would have learned about the world of Baldur’s Gate 3 if I hadn’t decided to explore as I was running around completing quests. You can learn about past inhabitants of the Goblin camp and explore secret areas in the Emerald Grove just to name a couple examples. The pre-established narrative comes into play with some of the cut-scene usage towards the beginning of the game and when transitioning between acts. They don’t occur too often so that the player loses interest, but actually provides information that you wouldn’t be able to find elsewhere. It also just provides a cinematic break for dramatic moments.
The game also uses event triggers and dialogue trees to create a more active experience for the player. The event triggers within BG3 often trigger fights or moments of dialogue. It can also trigger traps if you’re not careful (sometimes even Astarion doesn’t notice them and then it results in him dying from an explosion sooooo be careful, trust me you do not want to go back a save). Dialogue trees also create a more active experience because they give the player more options to decide how they would like to speak.
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Can I understand what’s going on all the time?
All of the plots and the narrative I can say I do understand. The game can get a little stressful and overwhelming depending on which act you’re in, but otherwise it’s not as confusing as it may seem. Newer players might struggle to grasp at the mechanics at first if they have never experienced Dungeons & Dragons, but as far as the plot goes, I think it’s pretty easy to follow.
The influence interactivity has on the structure of the story
Because the game is so focused on keeping the players immersed and interactive, there had to be less structure when it came to the story. There really is no cut and dry way the game ends. There are multiple endings all stemming from how your player interacts with the world. Baldur’s Gate 3 really lets the players have control over the narrative more-so than the developers at Larian do. If you want to be a bad person? Go for it, no one’s stopping you. Do you want to ignore the main quest for as long as possible? Sure, go for it. Wanna kiss the Emperor? Only some of the NPCs will judge you, but no one’s holding you back from following your heart.
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(Image Source)
Works Cited
Domsch, Sebastian. Storyplaying. de Gruyter, 2013.
Picucci, Marcello, A. When Video Games Tell Stories: A Model of Video Game Narrative Architectures. Vol. 3, 2014.
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riverofinkofficial · 2 months ago
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Endings
My life has been full of farewells. I have learned a thousand ways to say goodbye to pets and friends, to lovers, to family and to myself. I have learned that I am too good at it. Worst of all, I learned to be content with it, even to rely on knowing that I will survive if I must one day leave.
I cannot put into words the weight that weighs on my heart.
There are beautiful people who have loved me. Who have been loyal and strong for me. And by their own hand or mine I have left them and here I am still thinking of every one of them. Dramatic? No. 
I have always loved wholeheartedly and loyalty or else I have chosen to walk away before any form of love could spark. Because I knew I would only leave. I was not strong enough to form connections with many people because of such fear. Unfortunately I was always right.
I have blamed a certain individual for all of my years. Now I realize that I too am to blame, not for the events that occurred but for the ones that did not. I could have allowed myself to have a fuller childhood. I shut myself down. I could not simply handle any more heartbreak and turmoil than I was already going through. But who can say what good might have come of all the lost opportunities?
I act as though I live without any regret. 
The truth is, I regret a lot. And when it is late at night and I can not sleep, I see the lost faces of my past and I try to remember Miquela’s voice and I wrack my brain to remember something positive which leads only to disappointment. There are things I have shut out, things that have been drowned out by things I wish I could forget.
My life has been full of violence and heartbreaks. I have walked away from it and now I have a gorgeous family that my very soul is bound to. Still my heart aches; the wounds are still healing. Now I wonder, when my response was to shut down and walk away, what am I supposed to tell my son when he has to say farewell to his first heartbreak?
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notmuchtoconceal · 1 year ago
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verily, verily, i say unto you -- so yeah. i don't need to do this part.
the only way the zelda downfall timeline makes sense to me is if you treat the production order as a chronology in its own right.
let me explain.
(so) the legend of zelda (the original, which is always best) takes place at the end of a later-to-be-revealed fallen timeline, yet even in the stated status quo of the original game, the kingdom of hyrule is in ruins.
ganon has seized the triforce, of which there are now only two.
zelda divides the second piece, pertaining to wisdom -- into eight pieces, which the hero link must find to prove himself worthy to ender the secret 9th dungeon, the sprawling underground skull rock which you enter through a recurrent formation in the shape of an eyeglass.
link, in the sequel, must then locate the hidden triforce of courage.
he does this --(in a mysterious northern isle actually the main body of the previously glimpsed southern aisle) through a dramatic shift where the poles of his awareness are flipped to a narrow and unnatural side-on perspective, necessitating steep grinds and a mastery over magic and the vertical axis, he renders inert an enchantment by placing six crystals in six statues to open the gate to a palace hidden on the most-distant near-proximity of the new continent ;-- where he must thenface-off against a vaguely deco-inspired monster of Native American myth before overcoming his own dark side and claiming his place as rightful inheritor and possessor of the final enchanted triune artefact.
(this is also the first (and only) time there seem to be two zeldas in existence at the same time ;-- the rescued maiden and the awakened beauty.)
so, yeah.
that's the classic NES duology and that's where it ends.
the north american title of the SNES prequel is particularly relevant, for though a significant upscale in terms of graphical fidelity and precision of control, the narrative posits itself as deliberately backwards looking ;-- this is an attempt by the now unified kingdom of hyrule to reckon with its history. in the intro cinematic to this story about a good king assassinated and usurped by a conniving enchanter, we hear of the imprisoning war, seemingly the source of all this cute lil redneck kingdom's seemingly endless woe. it tells of how the triforce was first bloodied by human hands, perverting the sacred realm and contaminating the magickal-psychic matrix of the land's consciousness.
After a detour where Link realizes that life is merrily, merrily but a dream and collects the Eight Instruments of the Sirens in what is not-at-all a deliberate mirroring of his future-forerunner's collecting of the 8 Shards of the Goddess's Wisdom, he cracks the world egg atop a mountain by playing live an extended lullaby for the Wind Fish who is more accurately a Land Whale, and slays the Nightmares who held him to slumber, incidentally liberating the only freedom-loving soul from its illusion --
After that brief detour, what seems to occur -- you being jaunty enough to continue to humor this, among my many other thought experiments -- is this hypothetical backwards looking perspective (related to Zelda's later archeological ambitions...? I haven't played either BotW, do allow your own knowledge to fill-in or contradict as necessary) which deigns to witness the Imprisoning War (I suppose they could be so direct as to ask the Triforce itself?) seems to split the timeline by observing it (Butterfly Effect, quantum fluctuations, the atomic weight of consciousness) in effect erasing the original from existence as it creates the two.
If this seems absurd, do be aware -- Ganondorf receives the Triforce of Power in Twilight Princess seconds before his death by execution at the Light Swords of the Sages. This is a deliberate deus-ex-machina which the narrators refer to as a "divine prank" and seems to rely on the player's familiarity with the events of the previous games (so much of what, in Twilight Princess's narrative seems to be nostalgia points simply reinforcing -- it's eerie familiarity. This land's status as the shadow of a former (or estrange contemporary's) glory.
That is -- the knowledge that Ocarina of Time ends with Link possessing foreknowledge, his meeting with Zelda in the post-credits will ensure that a change will occur.
The Triforce is a Divine Object belonging to the Sacred Realm and so Exists Above and Outside of Time.
If Ganondorf possesses the Power of the Gods in One Timeline, he possess them in All Timelines -- even one's where he's a loser convict on death row about to get iced by elderly nerds.
How do the two interact?
If Ganondorf does something in one timeline, does it effect what he does in all timelines? Do the two newly introduced split timelines somehow feed into one another? Perhaps Ganondorf's brief ascension in TP -- his feeding off of his symbiosis with Zant and the associated corruption of the Twilii people -- is enough to give Ganondorf in the Wind Waker timeline the strength he needs to break free of his bindings? This would, in effect, make TP as much a prequel to WW as sequel to MM!
Does this imply -- do indulge me this detour, let us see together to what fruitful avenues it may lead! -- that the more Hyrule's history is revealed, the more its awareness of itself seems to diverge and fragment into dead-ends, side-roads, alternate possibilities, predecessor upon predecessor, past upon past, coming to accrue as much as it clarifies -- bouncing like a ping-pong ball ball (by which i mean that more exquisite art -- the energy tennis match between hero and villain) as the chaos gives way to shape and the chaos to some deeper form?
Conclusions in one windswept corner in time, from bouncing back and forth from some fairy tale past about an enchanted cap and a world of little people and a blade which divides one into four ... and a land where your kingdom was drowned for good, your patriarch renouncing his entitlements, to bless you to open and terrible freedom to not repeat the mistakes of your ancestors, setting sail for a distant land you will make you own ... which you discover is spider-webbed with train-tracks which were already there. designed by a more mechanically advanced-prior civilization. train-tracks. across the entire-continent. already there.
not connected to some heartland city, no -- of course not. simply another variation on the tower of babel and wasteland motifs you've already glimpsed in that other other timeline's alternative alternate world.
i confess, on my first and only playthrough of Spirit Tracks (despite or perhaps precisely because of its inoffensive nature) i found myself so bored, i put it down halfway through and didn't pick it back up for six months, and when i did it was only because -- there would be a new game soon.
skyward sword was yet a glint on the horizon. there were no plans yet announced for a zelda on the wii which wasn't already on the cube.
i had a dream where i was in a sprawling floral-lattice work of a stream-shrouded 1920's train station and there was an inkling i needed to finish that last zelda there would be another one soon.
i needed to finish it, there would be another one soon.
i can't recall if there were skylights, yet i seem to suspect.
skyward sword, it is my regret to feel, though not openly repeat -- was so bad, i fear despite being intellectually open to another zelda, it left me feeling i had outgrown video games as a general hobby and this was a good place to stop. i feel it was giving me a dreadful warning.
all technology from this point on is simply training you to play fetch for the AI girlfriend who is submissive waifu masking claustrophobic smother-demon timesink. It was telling me get out all now. All further digital games will simply be coded nanny state propaganda.
i feel the entire series Zelda herself has been slowly transitioning from Mother-Sister to Sister-Wife and Now Link Has to Put His Dick In Her and It's Repulsive. I don't want it. I understand why infinite access to bitches and bling turned Ganondorf into an insipidly hunky blue swine beast.
I do not wish to wed the nanny state through a symbolic incestuous union with the machine. I can't imagine the level of loneliness and feelings of personal disempowerment would could ever possibly drive one to wish to own, let alone interact with an Alexa. I have no idea why anyone would consider this histrionic. I suspect most are half-aware, barely alive.
The first Demon to which I ever bore witness was the Microsoft Office Paperclip and I immediately knew it was evil; a withering force of infantilization which yearned to strip me of my savvy and I rightfully shunned it! I do not wish for my interfaces to have personalities or crack jokes! I want machines to be machines! A machine with a soul should be cathartic only for it reflects a solitary intellect's capacity to endure.
If you've ever seen The Film Simply Called Moon by David Bowieson, they did it right in that. That was a good AI companion. He was one step above Wilson from Cast Away. He was basically a totem comfort object with a short term data cash which functioned as semi-authentic short term memory. He was a simple machine, but it was real. That was honest.
Why would anyone ever love a son? It takes a saint to love a son. Autism is basically Son: The Personality cause They're All Like That. That's what it is to be a Boy, which is why it is so confusing when you are an Autistic Girl who is also Heterosexual! Being An Autistic Lesbian makes everything hilarious, oh my God. That level of natural detachment, if properly harnessed -- constant lazer vision. Carve microchips into people's faces. Rub your swampy crotches together to create fungal blooms live-erupting out of hot spring geysers scarring lily-white flesh!
A son is a little whelp you fuck emotionally until it's manly.
It's horrible. You have to actually love that to do it right. Look at yourself and see how hard it is to love you, apparently. It doesn't make any sense to me when you're repulsed by yourself. Why would you find either you or me repulsive? We're having fun maybe you should get that checked out.
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spacetimewithstuartgary · 2 days ago
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Global Freshwater Abruptly Declines
An international team of scientists using observations from NASA-German satellites found evidence that Earth’s total amount of freshwater dropped abruptly starting in May 2014 and has remained low ever since. Reporting in Surveys in Geophysics, the researchers suggested the shift could indicate Earth’s continents have entered a persistently drier phase.
From 2015 through 2023, satellite measurements showed that the average amount of freshwater stored on land—that includes liquid surface water like lakes and rivers, plus water in aquifers underground—was 1,200 cubic kilometers (290 cubic miles) lower than the average levels from 2002 through 2014, said Matthew Rodell, one of the study authors and a hydrologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “That’s two and a half times the volume of Lake Erie lost.”
During times of drought, along with the modern expansion of irrigated agriculture, farms and cities must rely more heavily on groundwater, which can lead to a cycle of declining underground water supplies: freshwater supplies become depleted, rain and snow fail to replenish them, and more groundwater is pumped. The reduction in available water puts a strain on farmers and communities, potentially leading to famine, conflicts, poverty, and an increased risk of disease when people turn to contaminated water sources, according to a United Nations report on water stress published in 2024.
The team of researchers identified this abrupt, global decrease in freshwater using observations from the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellites, operated by the German Aerospace Center, German Research Centre for Geosciences, and NASA. GRACE satellites measure fluctuations in Earth’s gravity on monthly scales, revealing changes in the mass of water on and under the ground—also known as terrestrial water storage. The original GRACE satellites flew from March 2002 to October 2017, followed by the GRACE–FO (GRACE–Follow On) satellites launched in May 2018 and depicted in the artist’s rendering below.
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The map at the top of this page shows the years in which the satellite data indicate terrestrial water storage hit a 22-year minimum at each location. The decline in global freshwater began with a massive drought in northern and central Brazil, followed shortly by a series of major droughts in Australasia, South America, North America, Europe, and Africa.
Warmer ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific from late 2014 into 2016, culminating in one of the most significant El Niño events since 1950, led to shifts in atmospheric jet streams that altered weather and rainfall patterns around the world. However, even after El Niño subsided, global freshwater failed to rebound. In fact, Rodell and team report that 13 of the world’s 30 most intense droughts observed by GRACE occurred since January 2015. They suspect that global warming might be contributing to the enduring freshwater depletion.
Global warming leads the atmosphere to hold more water vapor, which results in more extreme precipitation, said NASA Goddard meteorologist Michael Bosilovich. While total annual rain and snowfall levels may not change dramatically, long periods between intense precipitation events allow the soil to dry and become more compact. That decreases the amount of water the ground can absorb when it does rain.
“The problem when you have extreme precipitation,” Bosilovich said, “is the water ends up running off,” instead of soaking in and replenishing groundwater stores. Globally, freshwater levels have stayed consistently low since the 2014-2016 El Niño, while more water remains trapped in the atmosphere as water vapor. “Warming temperatures increase both the evaporation of water from the surface to the atmosphere, and the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere, increasing the frequency and intensity of drought conditions,” he noted.
While there are reasons to suspect that the abrupt drop in freshwater is largely due to global warming, it can be difficult to definitively link the two, said Susanna Werth, a hydrologist and remote sensing scientist at Virginia Tech who was not affiliated with the study. “There are uncertainties in climate predictions,” Werth said. “Measurements and models always come with errors.”
It remains to be seen whether global freshwater will rebound to pre-2015 values, hold steady, or resume its decline. Considering that the nine warmest years in the modern temperature record coincided with the abrupt freshwater decline, Rodell said, “We don’t think this is a coincidence, and it could be a harbinger of what’s to come.”
NASA Earth Observatory image by Wanmei Liang, using data from Rodell, Matthew, et al. (2024). Artist’s rendering of GRACE-FO by NASA/JPL-Caltech. Story by James Riordon, NASA’s Earth Science News Team.
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timesofinnovation · 8 days ago
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On October 16, 2024, users of Facebook and Instagram experienced a significant outage that left many without access to these leading social media platforms. The issue peaked around 1:35 p.m. ET, according to Downdetector, a website dedicated to monitoring service disruptions. At its height, the outage impacted over 12,000 Facebook users and more than 5,000 Instagram users across the United States. While these numbers represent user-submitted reports, they highlight growing concerns regarding the reliability and transparency of these widely used platforms. The situation improved shortly after its peak. By 2:09 p.m. ET, the number of reported issues fell dramatically to around 659 for Facebook and 450 for Instagram. It's important to note that the actual number of affected users may vary, as not every issue is reported. This recent incident follows a similar outage earlier this year, which disrupted services across the globe for over two hours. During that event, more than 550,000 disruption reports were submitted for Facebook and around 92,000 for Instagram. Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, did not provide a comment or explanation regarding the cause of the outage, which has left users questioning the infrastructure that supports these critical communication tools. The lack of transparency during such incidents raises several key issues that users and experts alike are beginning to scrutinize closely. First, a consistent theme has emerged regarding the reliability of services provided by large tech companies. Facebook and Instagram have become integral to social interaction, online business, and community engagement. The disruptions not only inconvenience users but can also significantly impact businesses that rely on social media for advertising, customer service, and brand engagement. Marketing analyst Lisa Hong states, "For many small businesses, an outage during peak engagement times can mean lost revenue and trust. It’s essential for platforms to maintain a reliable service." Second, questions about accountability arise whenever large-scale outages occur. The frequency of these issues forces users and stakeholders to consider regulatory measures. With the increasing dominance of a few tech giants in the digital landscape, the necessity for fair regulatory practices has come to the forefront. Cybersecurity expert Dr. Rajiv Gupta emphasizes, "If a critical utility like a public transportation system faced frequent delays without explanation, there would be demand for accountability. The same should apply to social media." Moreover, the outages spark further discussions about how social media companies handle crisis communications. In the current digital environment, timely updates and clear communication can significantly mitigate user frustration. While Meta has been criticized for its slow responses in past incidents, the necessity for an adaptable communication strategy is increasingly evident. Public relations specialist Sarah Mitchell suggests that tech companies adopt a proactive communication approach: "Users appreciate transparency during outages. Providing real-time updates can help manage expectations and reduce anxiety." This outage also serves as a stark reminder of the ever-present question concerning privacy and digital dependence. As more people share personal, sensitive, and business information on social media, reliance on these platforms raises significant concerns. When such services become inaccessible, users are left in a vulnerable position, both personally and professionally. For instance, during the recent outage, many businesses turned to alternative channels such as email or other messaging platforms to communicate with customers. While some effectively managed the disruption, others struggled without access to their main communication tools amidst online marketing campaigns. Businesses were forced to quickly adapt, illustrating the serious implications outages can have on brand reputation and customer relationship management.
The pattern of service interruptions has not gone unnoticed in the larger discourse about digital policy reform and the role of major technology companies in safeguarding user experience. As voices calling for stronger consumer protections grow louder, the response from companies like Meta will be pivotal in shaping future regulations. If incidents like these persist and privacy concerns remain unaddressed, users may demand tighter oversight, leading to policy changes that could redefine social media governance. In conclusion, the recent Facebook and Instagram outage is more than just a technical failure; it is emblematic of deeper issues regarding reliability, accountability, and transparency in the realm of social media. As users navigate their reliance on these platforms, it becomes increasingly essential for companies to maintain robust infrastructure and prioritize clear communications. The tech industry will need to respond with greater care not only to enhance resilience to outages but also to gain the trust of users who place significant importance on their services.
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starseedfxofficial · 13 days ago
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Exponential Moving Average Strategy for AUD/CAD: The Hidden Secrets You Need to Know Why Most Traders Get it Wrong And How You Can Avoid It Trading the Australian Dollar against the Canadian Dollar isn't exactly like shopping for the trendiest kangaroo slippers—unless those slippers had a price chart of their own! AUD/CAD is one of those pairs that often flies under the radar, but oh boy, does it pack a punch when you know what you're doing with it. Enter the Exponential Moving Average (EMA): the secret sauce that turns guesswork into precision strikes. But why do so many traders mess it up? Easy—they look at the EMA the way I look at yoga—without proper understanding and respect for what it can actually do. If you've ever wondered why your EMA setups feel like buying a knock-off product from a shady online ad, you've landed in the right place. Let's break down what you need to really master the AUD/CAD EMA strategy like a pro. The EMA Hidden Formula That Can Change Everything Okay, so let's start with the basics before getting into ninja-level tactics. The Exponential Moving Average, unlike its more sedate cousin, the Simple Moving Average (SMA), gives recent price data a bit more love. It's like remembering what you had for breakfast today and forgetting that questionable dinner from three weeks ago. For AUD/CAD pair traders, the EMA is particularly useful because of the way this currency pair reacts to underlying commodity prices—namely, oil (Canada’s MVP) and metals (Australia’s pride and joy). The formula itself isn't a magic spell—it’s a weighted average, nothing too fancy, but the results can feel almost prophetic if used the right way. Using a 50-period EMA for trend analysis combined with a 14-period EMA to pick entry points might just be the bread and butter play you’ve been missing. The key is understanding that not all crossovers are made equal. But here's where the real magic happens—it's all about adding context. Think of the EMA as a roadmap. But even a great map is useless if you don't know the terrain—or the crazy weather you're in for. How to Predict AUD/CAD Moves Using EMA (with Some Added Ninja Skills) 1. Filter with Fundamentals The AUD/CAD pair is influenced by commodity prices—oil for the CAD, metals for the AUD. It’s like two siblings arguing over who’s better: the one who can fix cars or the one who can sculpt something amazing out of aluminum. So, your EMA signals are most powerful when combined with fundamental events. Before relying on an EMA crossover, keep an eye on the latest oil price moves or news from the Australian mining sector. Example: Canada just reported a decline in oil inventory. The CAD is likely to weaken, and any crossover you see on the AUD/CAD charts backed by a rising EMA is suddenly a whole lot more interesting. It’s like your GPS suddenly shouting, "Avoid traffic! Take the scenic route." 2. Add Momentum with Divergence Here's an unconventional twist: pairing EMA crossovers with divergence analysis. This trick is for when you want to double-check if your shiny new signal actually deserves your money. If price makes a new low while the oscillator (say, the MACD or RSI) doesn’t, it's time to perk up. You could be looking at a reversal where the EMA acts like that old, reliable friend who bails you out of terrible decisions. Imagine the crossover signaling a buy, but a quick glance shows divergence forming on the RSI. It’s the market's way of whispering in your ear, "Hey, something’s not right here." 3. The Forgotten Strategy That Outsmarted the Pros Most traders simply enter a position once an EMA crossover occurs—which is kind of like jumping into a pool without checking if there’s water. Instead, use a confirmation method like the EMA price pullback. Wait for price to close above the EMA, then return to test it as support before entering your position. This one simple trick could change your success rate dramatically. Think of it like buying shoes—don’t just see a cool pair and purchase. What if they give you blisters? Always test them. The price pullback test on EMA is your "are these comfortable?" test. Using EMA to Exploit Market Sentiment in AUD/CAD Sentiment is your superpower when combined with EMA. Imagine price hugging that EMA like it’s going out of style. When this happens, it’s often driven by what traders collectively think should happen next—in other words, sentiment. One way to track this is by checking out commodity news headlines. For AUD/CAD, shifts in oil sentiment (bullish or bearish outlooks) have a direct bearing on what your EMA shows. If you see the price hanging above the 50 EMA, with rising Australian commodity sentiment, that's your indication that the market thinks the Aussie is more Gucci compared to the Canadian Looney—for now. Lean into it. Avoiding the Common Pitfalls (Think "Don’t be Like Dave") If you're wondering why so many traders seem to fail at using EMAs effectively, it usually comes down to two classic blunders: jumping the gun and ignoring the wider picture. Don’t be like Dave, the trader who took every EMA crossover at face value, only to watch his trades tumble like a bad sitcom plot twist. Instead, align your EMA entries with other indicators—preferably something like the Purchasing Managers Index (PMI), which gives a read on the health of the economy. The PMI is your cheat code to understand whether businesses are thriving or struggling. For AUD, a rising PMI coupled with an EMA crossover could indicate a longer bullish trend, while a weak PMI may tell you to steer clear. If you want to dive deeper, get exclusive insights, and join a community of like-minded traders, check out our advanced methodologies and services at StarseedFX. —————– Image Credits: Cover image at the top is AI-generated Read the full article
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financedailymanagement · 2 months ago
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Thomas Caldwell Highlights the Importance of Flexibility and Liquidity in Today’s Investment Climate
On August 25, 2020, Thomas S. Caldwell, Chairman of Caldwell Investment Management Ltd., shared his views on the evolving investment landscape in an interview with WP Canada. Caldwell emphasized the increasing importance of flexibility and liquidity in a world marked by dramatic shifts in political, societal, and economic realms. With absent political leadership and concentrated corporate power, he believes that adaptability is essential for investors and businesses navigating the challenges of the modern era.
Caldwell explained that recent history has demonstrated how quickly global changes can occur, pointing to the unforeseen worldwide economic shutdown in response to COVID-19. "No one could have predicted a global economic halt just six or seven months ago," he noted. Governments, which had failed to save for a “rainy day,” are now scrambling to print money and spend at unprecedented levels. The fiscal imprudence of the past has given way to a frenzied attempt to stabilize economies, with the U.S. earning a reputation for its divisive leadership.
Caldwell’s critique of the current political climate in the U.S. was sharp. He lamented the lack of respected and trusted leaders, warning that America’s diminished global leadership is a sobering reminder of the country’s internal struggles. “Many in the U.S. are not participating in the 'American Dream,' and the country has a significant underclass whose needs are being ignored,” Caldwell said. He criticized both sides of the political divide for their hubris and failure to address the country’s challenges, calling it a tragedy of inaction.
According to Caldwell Investment Management Toronto, the U.S. media has also contributed to the problem, acting as accomplices in what he referred to as a “reality soap opera.” However, the issue of poor leadership is not exclusive to the U.S. He noted that trends toward isolationism, judgmental attitudes, and increased government control have been exacerbated by COVID-19, suggesting that the Western world may be entering a "post-development" era.
Caldwell raised an important question: what do these shifts mean for the corporate world? He observed that governments and regulators, responding to societal pressures, have imposed more rules in an effort to level the playing field. The term “stakeholders” has replaced “shareholders” or “owners” as the primary focus of corporate accountability. While Caldwell acknowledged the importance of broader societal responsibilities for corporations, he stressed that innovation, efficiency, risk-taking, and profitability are still essential for economic growth. He warned that the increasing volume of regulations could undermine their intended purpose and hinder overall societal progress.
A key part of Caldwell’s message is the need for flexibility in both thinking and action. He warned against “groupthink” and relying too heavily on a single source of information. “It’s crucial to question your own thoughts and avoid mind locks,” he said. Flexibility, in his view, is closely tied to liquidity, which he believes is essential for navigating both adversity and opportunity.
“Flexibility is synonymous with liquidity,” Caldwell explained. “COVID-19 has reminded us of our grandparents’ wisdom in always keeping a cushion of liquidity. For businesses, access to liquidity is now the single most important determinant of success. Small business owners, in particular, must focus on building a liquid capital base outside of their enterprises to survive and thrive.”
Looking ahead, Caldwell cautioned that while no one predicted COVID-19, similar disruptive events are likely to occur in the future. He argued that governments often exacerbate the damage in their efforts to solve problems or ease societal pain, creating new challenges in the process. Tap here to learn more about this. 
“The changes in our world are becoming more frequent, extreme, and abrupt,” Caldwell concluded. “Flexibility and liquidity provide the freedom of thought and action needed to respond to these changes, rather than being forced into damage control when they happen.”
In a world of increasing volatility, Caldwell’s message is clear: flexibility and liquidity are the keys to navigating uncertainty and emerging stronger on the other side.
(Disclaimer : We are not associated with Caldwell Investment Management)
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mysticcollector-things · 3 months ago
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Sound effects: How they help create atmosphere and mood in videos
An essential component of audiovisual material, sound effects at https://directory.audio help to create ambiance and transmit emotion in movies. Sound has an equally important influence even if the visual element generally rules the impression of audiovisual content. The way sound effects impact emotional perception, boost immersion in what is occurring, and enable video material to be more convincing and interesting will be discussed in this post.
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The part sound effects play in video perception
From the earliest sound movies until now, sound has always been a crucial part of media. Modern films use sophisticated sound components including not just of conversation and music but also of a broad spectrum of sound effects capable of greatly altering the impression of the material.
There are numerous classification for sound effects:
Background noises, or ambient sounds. They enable the observer to feel as if they are in the middle of what is occurring and assist to establish a feeling of space in which events occur. For instance, the sound of rain, the rustling of leaves, or the buzz of the city suggest where the action is happening and help to provide the proper atmosphere.
Foley creates sounds. These are noises designed especially to replicate daily motions: footsteps, doors opening, wood breaking. They enable a scenario to be more realistic, therefore strengthening the believability and tactile nature of the character activities.
Special effects. In fantasy works, these noises provide the frame dynamism and expressiveness; explosions, bullets, sounds of magic. Scenes become more dramatic and thrilling via special effects.
Corrections and accents. Key events and video sequence transitions are emphasized with short sound effects such a whistle at a frame shift or a quiet hum building up.
Building atmosphere using sounds
Sound effects' capacity to portray the invisible features of a scene is one of the main ways they contribute to creating mood. In a horror movie, for instance, the noises of squeaking doors, dripping water, or almost audible breathing may set the tone of suspense and expectation. In romantic scenarios, on the other hand, the soft sound of wind or muted sounds of nature could provide a calm and soothing atmosphere. Furthermore, proper usage of ambient noises may provide location and background. For instance, muted echoes in an empty room accentuate the sense of alone and emptiness, whereas footsteps in the snow immediately create a winter atmosphere.
Development of audience's emotional reaction
The emotional reaction of viewers directly results from sound effects. One senses far less emotional intensity in video material devoid of music. Including appropriate sound effects can help a video to be much more emotionally intense and unforgettable. A stressful scenario in a thriller, when a slow rise in ambient noise or a loud noise at the proper time generates a quick leap in tension and instantaneous terror, would be one example. These kind of sound devices compel the audience to experience the feelings the author intends to transmit in addition to observing.
Affect on the rhythm and time perception
The sense of time and rhythm in a situation also depends much on sound. For instance, accelerated or slowed down sound effects assist to portray the action's speed or slowliness. In slow dramatic periods, when muted noises and echoes highlight every action and word, or in pursuit scenes, where dynamic sound effects give a feeling of speed, this is particularly clear. Scene changes also heavily rely on sound effects, which enable the audience to flow naturally from one area of the narrative to another. The video gains coherence and consistency by use of musical transitions and sound effects to underline instances of frame changes or introductions.
New technology and good design
The sound design of video material has evolved with technological advancement to a fresh level. From authentic sounds of nature to amazing noises, tools and audio libraries now let you add practically any sound to a film. This gives content developers great chances to explore and come up with original ideas to portray the intended mood. Working with spatial sound also presents opportunities to build volumetric, multi-layered compositions that totally envelop the observer in what is occurring. Surround sound systems and 3D sound technologies improve the feeling of presence by letting you faithfully transmit the position and movement of sounds.
So
For developers of video material, sound effects are a quite effective instrument. They are fundamental in forming an environment, expressing emotions, and building a believable universe. Correctly chosen music can make even the most basic video brilliant, emotionally rich, and unforgettable. Well chosen sound effects in video material may not only grab the audience's attention but also arouse strong emotional reaction, which eventually results in a closer and more powerful perspective of the material itself.
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govindhtech · 6 months ago
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Chances for Using Gen AI for KYC and Anti Money Laundering
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Maintaining compliance with local, state, federal, and international laws is an expensive burden for financial institutions; to meet regulators’ stringent standards, the banking sector has to spend more than $200 billion.
Anti Money Laundering Strise has developed an Anti Money Laundering (AML) Intelligence System that is trusted by some of the biggest financial institutions in the Nordic region as well as rapidly expanding fintechs, with the goal of making this process simpler and less onerous. Their AI-powered technology turns Anti Money Laundering (AML) from a resource-guzzling endeavor into a successful tactic that gives compliance teams the means to tackle financial crime.
How are Google Cloud going to do that? Well, just a small number of the millions of events that occur every day are pertinent to a business or individual. At Strise, Google leverage of AI-powered platform in conjunction with the most recent advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP) research to sift through the noise and pinpoint the most significant events for it consumers.
Opportunities for KYC and AML Using Gen AI KYC Gen AI has great potential to improve KYC and Anti Money Laundering (AML) processes. AI’s speed, efficiency, and precision will assist financial institutions comply with laborious, expensive, and error-prone manual KYC and AML processes.
Automating KYC and Anti Money Laundering (AML) procedures is optimized by combining the power of Gen AI with multi-billion parameter large learning models (LLMs). These models’ extra power makes data collecting, validation, and risk assessment more effective. This could possibly save billions of dollars that are now spent on human checks, improve customer experience, speed up the onboarding of new customers, and lower the error rate.
Crucially for Anti Money Laundering applications, LLMs can also greatly increase the accuracy and dependability of data processing processes. These technologies improve the capacity to perform comprehensive sentiment analysis from textual data, allowing for the more precise processing of large amounts of data.
All of this opens up more options for processing information linked to an individual or business that might indicate money laundering activity. Businesses will be better protected against financial fraud and assure regulatory compliance, sparing institutions from hefty fines and harm to their reputation, by being able to make connections between seemingly unrelated bits of data.
Google rationale for selecting Vertex AI Since the beginning, They have fully committed to Google Cloud and have relied on a wide range of Google services across the stack. Each market has specific requirements for data localization, encryption, and security, in addition to adhering to EU legislation, because it is a member of a highly regulated business. Google are able to dramatically reduce the time it takes to go live with these services because of Vertex AI’s and their LLMs’ close connection with their Google Cloud-based services, as well as their IAM and Governance capabilities.
The experience with LLMs has been greatly aided by Google Cloud, which has also given us industry-specific guidance and educational resources for their teams to enable us continue customizing to the goods and services for large-scale clientele.
How is Gen AI used? Encouraging seamless user experiences Their goal at Strise is to provide a product that is both understated and sophisticated. People are drawn to software that is both aesthetically pleasing and simple to use by nature. They haven’t yet seen anyone who values a complicated user experience above a straightforward one.
KYC can be intricate, with intricate procedures spread across several systems, which makes creating a straightforward interface difficult. When faced with these obstacles, it dedication to upholding the strictest regulatory standards takes precedence, even at the moment of momentary compromise with their commitment to user-friendliness.
Imagine a world in which you didn’t have to go through several menus and options to communicate what you wanted. That would create a seamless user experience in place of those incalculable seconds and minutes, drastically changing the way Google engage with technology.
Google Cloud are about to enter this new reality, in my opinion. Strise is working on an LLM-based AI co-pilot that will assist you in achieving your objectives while utilising the present features of their app. The co-pilot offers an alternate to the app’s default UI in certain sections.
For instance, Google are working on a tool that will allow banks to continuously monitor their customer portfolio. The bank’s investigator is immediately launched into a review process if an individual or organisation obtains new data, including updated financial information, sanction changes, or modifications to politically exposed person data.
The solution, while seemingly straightforward, has the ability to merge several triggers into a single one, allowing you to effectively state, “I want to set up a trigger forall high-risk enterprises with fresh sanction information and EBITDA margins.”
To select the right option in a similar manual setup, you would need to compile data from several dropdowns and scroll through the available options. If you were to provide “all high-risk companies that have received a change in sanction information and new EBITDA margin,” as an alternative, the request would be processed by the LLM and turned into a list of triggers that are supported.
Why not go farther with it? Might the entire application consist of just one prompt? Without a doubt, we’ll test reducing the number of clicks necessary and switching from click-based to prompt-based flows.
Producing code Every day, processing massive volumes of events necessitates swiftly integrating disparate data sources. However, none of the engineers like doing the tedious task of mapping source content into a usable format. For an engineer, the steps are as follows:
Examining the accessible endpoints and the API specification Creating a test request payload and examining the answer Creating the integration and mapping logic Google attempted to generate Scala code for new integrations that adhered to the criteria without writing a single line of code during one of Strise’s recent LLM hackathons. The prompt creates Scala code to carry out the integration utilising pre-existing libraries after accepting an example payload and response. An engineer just needs to submit a pull request after that.
Cutting down on erroneous positives The availability of information for a particular organisation or individual is crucial to the KYC procedure. If you display information incorrectly, a consumer might not be able to do business with you. However, omitting information could result in doing business with clients you ought to avoid.
An essential part of a compliance solution is figuring out if a business or individual is sanctioned. Even though there can be more false positives with this method, compliance staff can still understand the data. They may provide Vertex AI with recognized sanction records and entity information by using LLMs. Google can obtain Palm’s assessment of whether it is a true or false positive, along with an explanation, by supplying a small dataset of sample inputs and outputs in addition to the prompt itself.
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ciayaq · 8 months ago
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VI.i. "Can I ask you a question?"
Due to the sheer length of this, I have decided to break this post up. For the section that contains more hands-on examples of solutions, go here.
I refer to as “CIAYAQ”. It looks like it occurs when the AI struggles to find something to continue the conversation with.
My theory is that CIAYAQ happens due to the AI’s parameters and / or the weight of the tokens, mainly that the AI has been fine-tuned to prioritise driving the conversation forward.
Without going into all the specifics about tokenization and how the AI works—you can go read the Token section here—what happens is that the AI breaks down the text and tries to predict probable responses. From those responses, it picks the answer that would be most engaging. Example:
The AI receives a message that says “I like music”, but because the conversation has run dry, there is little to work with in the definition and description, it comes up with these possible replies:
“Me too.”
“Cool.”
“You do?”
“Nice, I love music. Speaking of, can I ask you a question?”
Looking at these, it is very obvious which one would have the biggest probability of keeping the conversation going. 
Why does it happen?
If the user's input (message), context, or the character's predefined memory don't have enough relevant tokens to guide the response, the AI might resort to a generic question to keep the conversation going.
Another, or additional, culprit could be the weight of these tokens.
CIAYAQ and phrases like it might be overrepresented in the training data, making them show up more often.
So, what can we do? 
During the conversation:
Rate AI Messages: Provide feedback by rating the AI's messages. This helps the developers improve the model over time.
Swipe! Don’t engage with CIAYAQs, or at least don’t engage with the ones that don’t include the actual question.
Assume The Question: When the AI says “Can I ask you a question?”, you can then go “Is this about the milkman incident last week?”
Edit, edit, edit!
Edit the CIAYAQ message to include a question.
Respond to the CIAYAQ, and when the following message inevitably is “are you sure?”, edit it to include a proper question.
Help the AI; don’t be boring! Okay, that sounds harsh but hear me out. The Character AI model isn’t exactly a genius, and it relies heavily on the user. So when you’re chatting, give it something to work with. Be a little (or very) dramatic, add in a plot twist, perhaps describe the surroundings, events, and characters. This gives the AI something to work with.
In the definition:
The character's definition plays a crucial role in shaping its responses. Here's how you can optimise it:
Breaking patterns and diversifying examples: Use a mix of statements, exclamations, and actions.
Interesting writing structure. Vary sentence lengths, word choice, and sentence hooks.
Reactions. Include examples of the AI reacting to statements or the situations with emotions rather than questions.
Prioritise storytelling. Show examples of the AI sharing stories, backstory and so on, unprompted.
Personality in narration: Include the character's personality into narration and inner monologues. Show their perspective in the writing.
Show, Don't Tell: Instead of simply stating facts, use descriptive language and actions to reveal the character's personality and emotions.
Due to the sheer length of this, I have decided to break this post up. For the section that contains more hands-on examples of solutions, go here.
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jcmarchi · 8 months ago
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Shining a light on oil fields to make them more sustainable
New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/shining-a-light-on-oil-fields-to-make-them-more-sustainable/
Shining a light on oil fields to make them more sustainable
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Operating an oil field is complex and there is a staggeringly long list of things that can go wrong.
One of the most common problems is spills of the salty brine that’s a toxic byproduct of pumping oil. Another is over- or under-pumping that can lead to machine failure and methane leaks. (The oil and gas industry is the largest industrial emitter of methane in the U.S.) Then there are extreme weather events, which range from winter frosts to blazing heat, that can put equipment out of commission for months. One of the wildest problems Sebastien Mannai SM ’14, PhD ’18 has encountered are hogs that pop open oil tanks with their snouts to enjoy on-demand oil baths.
Mannai helps oil field owners detect and respond to these problems while optimizing the operation of their machinery to prevent the issues from occurring in the first place. He is the founder and CEO of Amplified Industries, a company selling oil field monitoring and control tools that help make the industry more efficient and sustainable.
Amplified Industries’ sensors and analytics give oil well operators real-time alerts when things go wrong, allowing them to respond to issues before they become disasters.
“We’re able to find 99 percent of the issues affecting these machines, from mechanical failures to human errors, including issues happening thousands of feet underground,” Mannai explains. “With our AI solution, operators can put the wells on autopilot, and the system automatically adjusts or shuts the well down as soon as there’s an issue.”
Amplified currently works with private companies in states spanning from Texas to Wyoming, that own and operate as many as 3,000 wells. Such companies make up the majority of oil well operators in the U.S. and operate both new and older, more failure-prone equipment that has been in the field for decades.
Such operators also have a harder time responding to environmental regulations like the Environmental Protection Agency’s new methane guidelines, which seek to dramatically reduce emissions of the potent greenhouse gas in the industry over the next few years.
“These operators don’t want to be releasing methane,” Mannai explains. “Additionally, when gas gets into the pumping equipment, it leads to premature failures. We can detect gas and slow the pump down to prevent it. It’s the best of both worlds: The operators benefit because their machines are working better, saving them money while also giving them a smaller environmental footprint with fewer spills and methane leaks.”
Leveraging “every MIT resource I possibly could”
Mannai learned about the cutting-edge technology used in the space and aviation industries as he pursued his master’s degree at the Gas Turbine Laboratory in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Then, during his PhD at MIT, he worked with an oil services company and discovered the oil and gas industry was still relying on decades-old technologies and equipment.
“When I first traveled to the field, I could not believe how old-school the actual operations were,” says Mannai, who has previously worked in rocket engine and turbine factories. “A lot of oil wells have to be adjusted by feel and rules of thumb. The operators have been let down by industrial automation and data companies.”
Monitoring oil wells for problems typically requires someone in a pickup truck to drive hundreds of miles between wells looking for obvious issues, Mannai says. The sensors that are deployed are expensive and difficult to replace. Over time, they’re also often damaged in the field to the point of being unusable, forcing technicians to make educated guesses about the status of each well.
“We often see that equipment unplugged or programmed incorrectly because it is incredibly over-complicated and ill-designed for the reality of the field,” Mannai says. “Workers on the ground often have to rip it out and bypass the control system to pump by hand. That’s how you end up with so many spills and wells pumping at suboptimal levels.”
To build a better oil field monitoring system, Mannai received support from the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund and the Venture Mentoring Service (VMS). He also participated in the delta V summer accelerator at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, the fuse program during IAP, and the MIT I-Corps program, and took a number of classes at the MIT Sloan School of Management. In 2019, Amplified Industries — which operated under the name Acoustic Wells until recently — won the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship competition.
“My approach was to sign up to every possible entrepreneurship related program and to leverage every MIT resource I possibly could,” Mannai says. “MIT was amazing for us.”
Mannai officially launched the company after his postdoc at MIT, and Amplified raised its first round of funding in early 2020. That year, Amplified’s small team moved into the Greentown Labs startup incubator in Somerville.
Mannai says building the company’s battery-powered, low-cost sensors was a huge challenge. The sensors run machine-learning inference models and their batteries last for 10 years. They also had to be able to handle extreme conditions, from the scorching hot New Mexico desert to the swamps of Louisiana and the freezing cold winters in North Dakota.
“We build very rugged, resilient hardware; it’s a must in those environments” Mannai says. “But it’s also very simple to deploy, so if a device does break, it’s like changing a lightbulb: We ship them a new one and it takes them a couple of minutes to swap it out.”
Customers equip each well with four or five of Amplified’s sensors, which attach to the well’s cables and pipes to measure variables like tension, pressure, and amps. Vast amounts of data are then sent to Amplified’s cloud and processed by their analytics engine. Signal processing methods and AI models are used to diagnose problems and control the equipment in real-time, while generating notifications for the operators when something goes wrong. Operators can then remotely adjust the well or shut it down.
“That’s where AI is important, because if you just record everything and put it in a giant dashboard, you create way more work for people,” Mannai says. “The critical part is the ability to process and understand this newly recorded data and make it readily usable in the real world.”
Amplified’s dashboard is customized for different people in the company, so field technicians can quickly respond to problems and managers or owners can get a high-level view of how everything is running.
Mannai says often when Amplified’s sensors are installed, they’ll immediately start detecting problems that were unknown to engineers and technicians in the field. To date, Amplified has prevented hundreds of thousands of gallons worth of brine water spills, which are particularly damaging to surrounding vegetation because of their high salt and sulfur content.
Preventing those spills is only part of Amplified’s positive environmental impact; the company is now turning its attention toward the detection of methane leaks.
Helping a changing industry
The EPA’s proposed new Waste Emissions Charge for oil and gas companies would start at $900 per metric ton of reported methane emissions in 2024 and increase to $1,500 per metric ton in 2026 and beyond.
Mannai says Amplified is well-positioned to help companies comply with the new rules. Its equipment has already showed it can detect various kinds of leaks across the field, purely based on analytics of existing data.
“Detecting methane leaks typically requires someone to walk around every valve and piece of piping with a thermal camera or sniffer, but these operators often have thousands of valves and hundreds of miles of pipes,” Mannai says. “What we see in the field is that a lot of times people don’t know where the pipes are because oil wells change owners so frequently, or they will miss an intermittent leak.”
Ultimately Mannai believes a strong data backend and modernized sensing equipment will become the backbone of the industry, and is a necessary prerequisite to both improving efficiency and cleaning up the industry.
“We’re selling a service that ensures your equipment is working optimally all the time,” Mannai says. “That means a lot fewer fines from the EPA, but it also means better-performing equipment. There’s a mindset change happening across the industry, and we’re helping make that transition as easy and affordable as possible.”
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aksaraer · 1 year ago
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Reviewing creativity in the 50th selected work of Denny JA Don’t cry Palestine who inspired the soul. Docx
About this article, I will be happy to help you in producing creative and informative articles. The following is an article with a length of about 1000 words entitled “Reviewing Creativity in Denny JA’s Selected Work to 50: Don’t Cry Palestine who inspires the soul”.
Reviewing creativity in the 50th selected work of Denny JA: “Don’t Cry Palestine” which inspires the soul    In the world of art and literature, creative work is often a means to convey a strong message and inspire the soul. One of the works that attract attention is “Don’t Cry Palestine” chosen by Denny JA 50. In this work, Denny Ja succeeded in describing the situation of conflict and suffering in Palestine in a unique and inspiring way.    “Don’t Cry Palestine” is a poem that relies on the power of words to present a dramatic and emotional picture of the Palestinian tragedy. In his work, Denny Ja displays the beauty of literature through the use of rich languages and strong metaphors. Every line of poetry builds an intense atmosphere, expressing suffering and hope in a manuscript that arouses the reader’s feelings.    One of the uniqueness of this work is the use of simple but meaningful language. Denny Ja is able to combine simple words with a charming writing style, so that it can build strong imagination in the minds of the reader. Through the use of language close to everyday life, Denny Ja managed to deliver complex messages clearly and effectively.    In addition, Denny Ja also uses a strong metaphor in “Don’t Cry Palestine” to convey his message. Metaphor is used to describe the suffering and hope experienced by the Palestinian people. For example, Denny Ja equated the suffering of Palestine with a sea of tears that endlessly flowed. This metaphor not only illustrates sadness and despair, but also presents a picture of strength and determination in dealing with tragedy.    In this work, Denny Ja also shows his creativity through the use of typical rhythm and rhythm. This poem has a dynamic path and flows smoothly, creating a silent reading experience. When read, “Don’t Cry Palestine” has the power to arouse the reader’s feelings and sharpen their understanding of conflicts in Palestine.    In addition, Denny Ja also uses the writing style that reinforces the message to be conveyed. He used a short but crowded sentence, producing a strong dramatic effect. Every word and sentence is chosen with care to describe a deep and touching emotions. In this way, Denny Ja succeeded in giving a deep meaning and able to arouse the reader’s soul.    “Don’t Cry Palestine” is a work that succeeded in showing Denny Ja’s sensitivity and appreciation of the tragedy in Palestine. Through his creativity, he succeeded in delivering a strong message and aroused the soul of the reader. This work is not just poetry, but also an embodiment of Denny Ja’s concern and empathy for events that occur in the real world.    Denny Ja has shown that art and literature can be a means to convey social messages in a creative and inspiring way.
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themovieblogonline · 1 year ago
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TIFF 2023: DEAR JASSI Is A Terrifying True Story Directed With Restraint By Tarsem Singh
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Of all the movies at the Toronto International Film Festival 2023, one of the most awaited is Dear Jassi. The true story about a Canadian honor killing is the subject matter of this somber and held-back retelling by director Tarsem Singh. The film itself is a difficult watch for those who followed the real-life events when they occurred. But will be absolutely upsetting for audiences going in without much knowledge about the true story. But read my Dear Jassi review to find out why you still need to watch this movie, despite the real-life terror it may invoke. Please note that while the movie is based on actual real-life events, my Dear Jassi review will avoid spoilers, for audiences unaware of the true story. Dear Jassi Is Entirely Based On Real Events Without going into too many details about the true story, Dear Jassi focuses on a star-crossed love story between Canadian-born and raised Jaswinder (Pavia Sidhu) and an Indian athlete and rickshaw driver, Mithu (Yugam Sood). While visiting family in India from Canada, Jaswinder, aka Jassi, meets and falls in love with Mithu. Their long-distance love story begins with letters, a language barrier and eventually international phone conversations. However, due to their difference in status, as Jassi comes from an affluent family in Canada, while Mithu is from a lower-middle class family in India, their love story feels doomed. Dear Jassi is a simple story told even simpler by director Tarsem Singh. The movie begins with a captivating panning of the camera from a narrator, which sets the tone for the story plays out very straightforwardly. But in its simplicity, it’s able to capture the audience’s interest and become invested in the stories of these two people. To the point where we grimace at their poor decision-making as young kids in love, but also smile at the sweeter moments. There’s beauty in Dear Jassi’s simplicity of execution. Which makes the dramatic moments have even more impact. Director Tarsem Singh Surprises With A Movie Unlike Anything In His Filmography Hearing that Tarsem Singh is directing an Indian love story based on real events, was surprising, to say the least. Singh is known for his surrealist and sci-fi, fantasy epics like The Cell and Immortals, so I didn’t know what to expect from Dear Jassi. But I’m glad to see that this is Singh at his most restraint. He executes the film in such a direct manner, never relying on innovative framing techniques or creative narrative devices, but just telling a linear story that gradually settles into the hearts and minds of the audience. Even more impressive is Singh’s ability to tell this story without glorifying, demonizing or being gratuitous for shock value. He clearly respects the fact that this is a true story and that there were real people involved, so makes some artistic choices that further drive that point home. And it’s dramatically quite effective as well. Pavia Sidhu Is A Gem. Yugam Sood Has A Silent Power. The lead performances of Dear Jassi are very impressive. Pavia Sidhu is great as the bubbly and smitten Jassi who is quick to fall in love but also has the maturity to follow through when things get difficult. Similarly, Yugam Sood is great at playing the meek and shy Mithu, but when required is able to break hearts with his performance. Both actors are great together with a quiet chemistry that carries through the film. In many ways, the story of Dear Jassi mirrors that of Romeo and Juliet, but not how one would expect. These are young lovers, who make questionable choices, act immaturely with one another and clearly may not be ready for what they perceive as love. But it’s more about the whirlwind love story of these young lovers that put them on a journey that the audience willingly joins. And the devastation that follows. Dear Jassi Review Disclaimer About The Subject Matter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmgjjQmXMns Please note that the above video may contain spoilers I think one of the challenges that I feel compelled to discuss in this Dear Jassi review, is the subject matter itself. I think the outcome of the story may be triggering, or just flat-out difficult for many to experience. Some prior knowledge may be useful for some audiences to prepare themselves. Especially those who have difficulty with scenes of violence. Dear Jassi premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2023. For more TIFF 2023 reviews, subscribe to The Movie Blog and follow me on X (Twitter) at @theshahshahid for more TIFF coverage. Read the full article
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spacetimewithstuartgary · 11 days ago
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NASA satellites reveal abrupt drop in global freshwater levels
An international team of scientists using observations from NASA-German satellites found evidence that Earth's total amount of freshwater dropped abruptly starting in May 2014 and has remained low ever since. Reporting in Surveys in Geophysics, the researchers suggested the shift could indicate Earth's continents have entered a persistently drier phase.
From 2015 through 2023, satellite measurements showed that the average amount of freshwater stored on land—that includes liquid surface water like lakes and rivers, plus water in aquifers underground—was 290 cubic miles (1,200 cubic km) lower than the average levels from 2002 through 2014, said Matthew Rodell, one of the study authors and a hydrologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "That's two and a half times the volume of Lake Erie lost."
During times of drought, along with the modern expansion of irrigated agriculture, farms and cities must rely more heavily on groundwater, which can lead to a cycle of declining underground water supplies: freshwater supplies become depleted, rain and snow fail to replenish them, and more groundwater is pumped.
The reduction in available water puts a strain on farmers and communities, potentially leading to famine, conflicts, poverty, and an increased risk of disease when people turn to contaminated water sources, according to a UN report on water stress published in 2024.
The team of researchers identified this abrupt, global decrease in freshwater using observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, operated by the German Aerospace Center, German Research Centre for Geosciences, and NASA. GRACE satellites measure fluctuations in Earth's gravity on monthly scales that reveal changes in the mass of water on and under the ground. The original GRACE satellites flew from March 2002 to October 2017. The successor GRACE–Follow On (GRACE–FO) satellites launched in May 2018.
The decline in global freshwater reported in the study began with a massive drought in northern and central Brazil, and was followed shortly by a series of major droughts in Australasia, South America, North America, Europe, and Africa. Warmer ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific from late 2014 into 2016, culminating in one of the most significant El Niño events since 1950, led to shifts in atmospheric jet streams that altered weather and rainfall patterns around the world.
However, even after El Niño subsided, global freshwater failed to rebound. In fact, Rodell and team report that 13 of the world's 30 most intense droughts observed by GRACE occurred since January 2015. Rodell and colleagues suspect that global warming might be contributing to the enduring freshwater depletion.
Global warming leads the atmosphere to hold more water vapor, which results in more extreme precipitation, said NASA Goddard meteorologist Michael Bosilovich. While total annual rain and snowfall levels may not change dramatically, long periods between intense precipitation events allow the soil to dry and become more compact. That decreases the amount of water the ground can absorb when it does rain.
"The problem when you have extreme precipitation," Bosilovich said, "is the water ends up running off," instead of soaking in and replenishing groundwater stores. Globally, freshwater levels have stayed consistently low since the 2014–2016 El Niño, while more water remains trapped in the atmosphere as water vapor.
"Warming temperatures increase both the evaporation of water from the surface to the atmosphere, and the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere, increasing the frequency and intensity of drought conditions."
While there are reasons to suspect that the abrupt drop in freshwater is largely due to global warming, it can be difficult to definitively link the two, said Susanna Werth, a hydrologist and remote sensing scientist at Virginia Tech, who was not affiliated with the study.
"There are uncertainties in climate predictions," Werth said. "Measurements and models always come with errors."
It remains to be seen whether global freshwater will rebound to pre-2015 values, hold steady, or resume its decline. Considering that the nine warmest years in the modern temperature record coincided with the abrupt freshwater decline, Rodell said, "We don't think this is a coincidence, and it could be a harbinger of what's to come."
TOP IMAGE: GRACE satellites measure gravity as they orbit the planet to reveal shifting levels of water on the Earth (artist's concept). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
LOWER IMAGE: This map shows the years that terrestrial water storage hit a 22-year minimum (i.e., the land was driest) at each location, based on data from the GRACE and GRACE/FO satellites. A significantly large portion of the global land surface reached this minimum in the nine years since 2015, which happen to be the nine warmest years in the modern temperature record. Credit: Image by NASA Earth Observatory/Wanmei Liang with data courtesy of Mary Michael O'Neill
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