#and that with our data there are a number of much easier analyses i could do except i wouldnt be satisfied with that. because this is my

[pilgrimattinkercreek1974]

the thing about my stupid thesis is that i love my lesbian boss slash thesis advisor and ive been working on this project for two years and i care about it and find it interesting and theoretically this work as the basis for my chance to demonstrate what ive joyfully and enthusiastically learned across the last four years should be a rewarding exciting opportunity but i was overly ambitious with my thesis proposal and feel this constant pressure to be inventive and incisive due to my deliberately interdisciplinary training on top of regular old academic pressure and the impossibility of pleasing aforementioned lesbian boss thesis advisor and ive also invested such a personal emotional degree into it that criticism is kind of terrifying and unbearable and also i really dont know anything about statistics and then my shit got rocked by the fires effectively throwing everything in my system out of whack in ways i can barely identify

[mood2you]

(ID: Page 156 and 157 of The Data Detective by Tim Hartford: "the algorithm to disregard--for example, flu cases turned out to be correlated with searches for "high school basketball." there's no mystery about hwy both fly and high school basketball tend to get going in the middle of November. But it meant that fly Trends was part fly detector, part winter detector. That became a problem when there was an outbreak of summer fly in 2009: Google Fly Trends, eagerly scanning for signs of winter and finding nothing, missed the nonseasonal outbreak, as true cases were four times higher than fly Trends was estimating.

The "winter detector" problem is common in big-data analyses. a literal example, via computer scientist Sameer Signh, is the pattern recognition algorithm that was shown many photo of wolves in the wild, and many photos of pet husky dogs. the algorithm seemed to be really good at distinguishing the two rather similar canines; it turned out that it was simply labeling any picture with snow as containing a wolf. An example with more serious implications was described by Janelle Shane in her book "You Look Like a Thing And I Love You": an algorithm was shown pictures of healthy skin and the skin of cancer. The algorithm figured out the pattern: if there was a ruler in the photograph, it was cancer. If we don't know WHY the algorithm is doing what it's doing, we're trusting our lives to a ruler detector.

Figuring out what causes what is hard--impossible, some say. Figuring out what is correlated with that is much cheaper and easier. And some big-data enthusiasts--such as Chris Anderson, author of that provocative article in "Wired" magazine--have argued that it pointless to look beyond correlations. "View data mathematically first and establish a context of rit later," he wrote; the numbers speak for themselves. To rephrase Anderson's point unkindly, "If searches for high school basketball always pick up at the same time as fly cases, it doesn't really matter why."

But it DOES matter, because a theory-free analysis of mere correlation is inevitably fragile. If you have no idea what is behind a correlation, you have no idea what might cause that correlation to break down.

After the summer fly problem of 2009, the accuracy of Flu Trends collapse completely at the end of 2012. It's not clear why. One theory is that the news was full of scary stories about the fly in December 2012, and these stories might have provoked internet searches form people who were healthy. Another possible explanation is a change in Google's own search algorithm: it began automatically suggesting diagnoses when people entered medical symptoms, and this will have changed what they typed in to Google in a way that might have foxed the Flu Trends model. It's quite possible that Google could have figured out what the problem was and found a way to make the algorithm works about in if they'd wanted to, but they just decided it wasn't worth the trouble, expense, and risk of failure.

Or maybe not. The truth is, external researchers have been forced to guess at exactly what went wrong, because they don't have the information to know for sure. google shares some data with researchers and indeed makes some data freely available to anyone. But it isn't going to release all is data to you, or me, or anyone else.

Two good books with pride of place on my bookshelf tell the story of how our view of big data evolved over just a few short years.

One, published in 2013, is "Big Data" by Kenneth Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schonberger. It reports many examples of how cheap sensors, huge datasets, and pattern-recognizing algorithm were, to paraphrase the book's subtitle, "Transforming How We Live, Work, and Think." The triumphant example of authors chose to begin their story? Google Fly Trends. The collapse became apparent only after the book had gone to print." End ID.)

If correlations is not causation then explain why do wolves have pelts and bichon frisés have curls? Because wolves were taken in out of the snow and created dogs

Actually a fun algorithm would be a dog breed guesser with mutt as a breed. But if you don't train the mutts to photograph like show dogs then the algorithm will use posture against them. You know how show dogs stand in profile with their back legs stretch out?

(ID: A picture of a gray and white pitbull with its chest facing forward and the rest of it in profile. With no background, with one back leg bent and one strethced out, and its back sloped perfectly. Another photo of a red pitbull in a nice yard, panting and standing in perfect profile with its back legs stretche dout subtly to get the back slope.)

That's a good trick to teach any dog "stand funny!" Could be the new "stop" freeze! As a kid I would always do a crazy pose I guess because if you got shot with an ice beam you'd probably either try to run or stop it with your hands. Really. If you think about it. Freeze! Sticks my leggies out real far.

[messy-does-cosmology]

Astrophysics Tools for Research and Data Analysis!

Hi guys, I've been wanting to make a post about how to use various data analysis and research tools for astrophysics, because I had a pretty hands-off supervisor and had to figure things out myself, with my research partner, or by asking academics I knew (like my friend Will). So, this is going to be a quick rundown of how to find data catalogues, download them, and analyse them (using Topcat), and then also how to use search tools like the SDSS and SIMBAD. There is not going to be anything in here about finding research papers, or search terms for google scholar, because firstly I am a noob with those and secondly because there are already beautiful, detailed posts about that. This is specifically for when you want to get some data, analyse it, and search for sources in other catalogues.

First up: how do I find my data?

Well, we use VizieR.

This is a nice, sexy, unintuitive website where you can search for various data catalogues and download them. For this, you will probably want to already know what catalogue you want by the time you get there, so I would recommend reading around. The simplest way to do that is to search on google: "[instrument name] [source type] catalogue" and read whatever papers come up. For example, you might be looking in radio, at the FIRST survey, and decide you want to look at blazar data. So you should google "FIRST radio survey blazar catalogue" and see what comes up. You are going to want to eventually know as much as possible about your catalogue's selection criteria, and what it's specs are, but for now you can start by just skimming the paper and searching it up in VizieR.

Your next step is actually finding the catalogues.

VizieR looks like this, and you should be able to find your survey by typing in its name into the little search box you see here. Next, when you have searched and been able to find your survey, clicking on it should lead you to a page like this one:

The important thing here, is to switch some stuff under the preferences heading. If you're using Topcat, you want to switch the HTML table to a VOTable, and you want to switch the maximum number of rows from 50 to unlimited. This will allow you to download the full catalogue. I suspect that if you are using Python or RStudio for data analysis, you probably want to keep it in the HTML format.

So once you have your preferences looking like this, you click the "Submit" button in the bottom right of the page, and the table should start downloading.

Great! Now you have your data! How to analyse it though?

Use Topcat!

Topcat is a piece of software developed by Mark Taylor at Nottingham University, purely for the purpose of astrophysics data analysis. As a result of this, it has some really useful features and is in general much easier to use than writing your own code in, for example, Python.

Once you download Topcat, it might take some effort to get your computer to open it, because it is not by a verified developer. That being said, it is safe, so do what you can to get it open.

Loading it up, you should find yourself looking at a grey control panel. On the left will be a blank list of tables, and next to that will be a blank space, and above all of that there will be a toolbar. The first thing you want to do is load your table into Topcat.

So, to do that, you want to click on the left-most button on the toolbar, the one shaped like a file. There, you click "system browser" and go through your files and find the VOTable you downloaded from VizieR (unless you renamed it, it will be called VOTable). This will load your data in. Now, your table list should include your VOTable data. When you have this selected in the main panel, you can use different toolbar buttons to either look at the table itself or visualise the data. Full disclosure, I am not that seasoned with using Topcat's most advanced features, so if you need to know how to use them, I would recommend checking out Mark Taylor's video tutorial here.

For the basics, the first 3 buttons in the toolbar are used to import and export data, the next 6 buttons are used to look at the table, and the following 6 buttons are used to represent the data in graphs. After that, the next 3 buttons are used to: 1- match tables and combine them to make a new table, 2- query remote databases, 3- crossmatch sources against remote tables based on their sky position.

The most important buttons are the 4th one from the left, the 11th button along, and probably the one used for matching tables (it looks like a pair of matchsticks. Get it?). The 4th one allows you to look at and search through your tables, and the 11th one allows you to represent your data on a non-bar graph.

I won't go into a lot of depth here about how to use these 2-3 really important buttons, but if you have questions you can message me and I will try to answer!

Finally, what do you do if you find a source you think you want to investigate further, how do you find out more information about it?

Use SIMBAD, SDSS and other search tools!!

This is my final bit, so hang in there.

There are really convenient search tools for you to look up your sources in, and they all seemingly provide different things. SIMBAD has a bunch of different catalogues loaded into it, including transient catalogues, and you can input the location of your source, and it will either tell you what it thinks it is, or it will tell you what is nearby to your source's location. So firstly, you can find SIMBAD here, and when you go to that link, you should see this:

There are different query methods. You can search by coordinates, criteria, or identifier, so if you have the information for where the source is or what it's called, it should be not too hard to find what you're looking for.

I'm starting with an identifier query for M31, the Andromeda galaxy, just to show you how it works for a well-known, well-defined source:

You can see that SIMBAD has given me data about this source, including a little view of it on the sky, and what it's called and what it is. It has some information about the object's speed and its magnitude in different bands. Andromeda is probably one of the most observed galaxies ever, so there is a lot of information here.

Searching for a more obscure source yields fewer results, with less information about the sources and less certainty that the sources have been correctly identified.

This was a coordinate search for a source I have looked at in WISE data, and it says that there is not an accepted exact match for this source, but that the closest registered object is a white dwarf candidate 0.31 arcseconds away. I can click on that candidate and be provided with a page of information like I was for Andromeda, but with less concrete data. The source I'm searching for is actually an AGN candidate, but it is so un-researched that it simply doesn't show up as anything useful.

Our next thing is the SDSS, the sloan digital sky survey. This contains a lot of spectra for different sources, and does not tend to tell you about nearby sources. For the SDSS, you have to know the RA and DEC of your source in degrees, which is a little annoying. You can find them usually by looking in your table on Topcat.

The SDSS honestly looks like a kid's dress up game from mathgames dot com, but it's an actual serious tool. Sigh. The most important thing is to NOT USE this page at all, and to instead click the little "explore" link under the DR16 logo. That should look like this:

As you can see, this is a bunch of information about the source it automatically highlighted. It's useful info, but you probably don't want to know about this source. You probably want to find your own source here. So, to do that you have to click "search" on the left hand side, which should add these search boxes to the top of the page:

Here, you put in the RA and Dec, and then press the "Go" button next to it. This should give you an info page, like the one above, but with YOUR source. Otherwise, it will give you an error message saying it doesn't know where your source is and it doesn't have a record of it. That's ok, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but it could mean that this source is not documented in other large catalogues.

Well, that's all folks! Good luck!

[degenvs3000w22]

Science and Nature

I am not sure how I feel about science. When I was a child, science seemed like the only thing for me. It could satisfy my curiosity about the natural wonders of this world and get me an animal related job in the future. That was it then. It was decided. I was going to become a veterinarian and learn as much as I could about helping animals. By the way, I made this decision when I was in grade 2 with a very naïve version of the world in mind. When you get older, you start to see the world for how it really is. Science is relentless, becoming a veterinarian takes at least 8-10 more years of schooling after high school, and your degree has had very little relevance to nature or animals so far. Just the concepts and ideas of animals. That is what angers me the most. I got into science to help animals and so far, all I have learned is how scientists perceive animals when running experiments on them.

Learning proper scientific methods for discovering new things in this world is a rigorous and timely thing. The proper protocol is to come up with a question regarding the natural order of this world, for instance, “Will increasing urbanization in Southern Ontario effect the mortality rate of local coyote populations to the point of extinction?”. To answer this question, you must invent a possible explanation and prediction for why and how it occurs, ex. “Increasing urbanization will increase mortality rates in coyote populations” with the prediction, “increasing urbanization will increase the number of human-coyote interactions which will result in more conflicts. This will lead to large community-based culls and the extinction of the species.” Then, you need to gather data. This requires entering their habitat, their home, to systematically find the distribution of the species, finding the number of dens located near communities, running tests on the diets of this population to find out how much human garbage the population consumes, the tests can go on and on forever. Finding every single detail out about the community.

However, do these types of studies need that much human involvement within the habitats of these animals? The stomach contents of animals can be analysed in a lab using several methods but how accurate is it? Would is not be much easier to set up trail cameras from every perspective you could possibly need? Wouldn’t you be able to observe and measure exactly how much they are eating of that one exact thing you are seeing on the screen? If we didn’t have the technology we have today, this would all need to be done just through personal observation alone. That’s what the indigenous people did and what some of us still do today. Some people still live off of the land and most of their time is spent observing nature such as hunters. Wouldn’t it be easier to ask these experts for specific information on the species they have been living with and observing their whole lives? Rather than rushing to find information in a cruel and gruesome way, why not observe slowly and have a more in-depth personal observation technique? This could be another crucial way to bring nature back into people’s live’s. By teaching our young scientists to have a more hands-off, personal, and in-depth observational perspective.

We should be teaching our students to spend hours and hours outside observing nature to find the answers that satisfy their curiosity. Our modern students do not get the ability to develop their own minds and create their own world, as they are only taught to work off of the progress of our history and to keep our society functioning the same way it always has. Well I personally don’t care for a lot of our actions in the past, and I feel that our students should be able to have the opportunity to make their own way in this world, as our ancestors were once able to. And that starts with the scientist’s. Scientists propel the world’s education forward and set the pace for the world’s development. Since it is with our knowledge, that development is able to progress. But it also goes the other way. With our knowledge, we can also have real environmental progress. If we were able to slow down and teach our successors the value of personal observation, that would be the first step in the right direction.

[jurassicsunsets]

Paper summary: Harrell et al.,  (2016). Endothermic mosasaurs? Possible thermoregulation of Late Cretaceous mosasaurs (Reptilia, Squamata) indicated by stable oxygen isotopes in fossil bioapatite in comparison with coeval marine fish and pelagic seabirds.

[This paper is freely available, by the way!]

Hi all! This is the first in a new weekly series I’m going to be doing, in which I will be doing a short paper review each Thursday. We’re starting off big this week, with a delve into the world of stable isotopes. 

But Hayley, you say, what in the world are stable isotopes? 

Okay, time for some backstory!

The part with the backstory

Isotopes, as you may be aware, are atoms of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons, and therefore different atomic weights. If you think back to chemistry class, or forward to chemistry class if you haven’t taken it, in which case this might help you get a leg up, you’ll remember or just be learning that each element is defined by the number of (positively charged) protons in its nucleus. So each atom of carbon has 6 protons, and if it has more or less, then that’s a problem, because then it’s not carbon. But within the same element they can vary in numbers of (neutral) neutrons. Neutrons are important for holding together an atom’s nucleus, because if you get a bunch of positive charges together in a nucleus they start to repel, just like if you get a bunch of elementary school-aged children together. Different isotopes act basically the same, and I can guarantee you that right now some of the carbon atoms you are using in your body have six neutrons, some have seven, and some have eight. These are referred to as carbon-12, carbon-13, and carbon-14, respectively, and that number refers to the number of (protons+neutrons) in the nucleus. [Sometimes some isotopes are unstable and undergo radioactive decay. Carbon-14 does this. But that’s not really relevant to what we’re doing today.]

(Image: This is a carbon-12 atom. The yellow and red bits in the middle are the protons and neutrons. Not remotely to scale.)

Different isotopes of the same element act mostly the same (besides sometimes being radioactive and going berserk), so animals can take them up and use them. But they don’t act entirely the same, and that information can be used by palaeontologists to learn really cool stuff about past life. 

A big thing that isotopes can do differently is something called mass-dependent fractionation. That’s fancy-people-speak for “it’s easier to move things that are less heavy”, and it means that it’s easier to move things that are less heavy. 

One useful aspect of this deals with oxygen isotope fractionation. You are breathing oxygen as you read this, and if you are not then you will not likely be reading this for very much longer. Oxygen is also present in water, though, and water covers 70% of the Earth’s surface and makes up 70% of your body. It’s kind of a big deal, if you’ve never heard of it, and for our purposes it comes in two main flavours - water with oxygen-18, and water with oxygen-16. 

Oxygen-16 makes up 99.76% of all oxygen on earth, and oxygen-18 makes up 0.2% (the rest is oxygen-17, which no one cares about). This means that about 0.2% of water is heavier than the rest of water. This water is harder to move, because it’s heavier, and when evapouration occurs, oxygen-16 is more likely to evapourate because it takes less energy to move it.

But wait! Putting in more energy makes it easier to move heavy things, and this is exactly what happens. If temperatures are warmer, more oxygen-18 gets evaporated than does at colder temperatures. 

We need something to compare this to, because otherwise we’d just be measuring samples and it’d be hard to know what different numbers are referring to. For oxygen, we use the standard of Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water, or V-SMOW. It’s not super important to know what that is. 

What is important is delta notation: δ18O (delta-eighteen-O) refers to how different the ratio of oxygen-18/oxygen-16 is from the standard. We use the symbol ‰, “per mil”, which is fancy people talk for 0.1%, for this, because the differences are really little. +1‰ means that there’s 0.1% more oxygen-18 in the sample than normal - that is, it’s 0.1% “heavier” than normal water. 

So, to get that all neatly said: Higher temperatures = More heavy water evapourates = the water that is left behind is lighter.

The part with the actual paper

Oh yeah, the paper! That’s why we were here. Okay, so mosasaurs were a group of big marine lizards (not dinosaurs) in the Cretaceous period. I wrote a little about them here. They looked kinda like this, and could get up to 17m/55ft long.

(Image: A mosasaur, a streamlined marine reptile with a large head, flippers, and a vertical tail fin. Image by Dimitry Bogdanov.)

Being lizards, mosasaurs have been traditionally thought to be cold-blooded - perhaps a reasonable assumption, as all living lizards are cold-blooded. However, it has been suggested various times in the literature as well as informally that mosasaurs may have been warm-blooded, owing to their assumed ecology as fast-moving pursuit predators and the fact that other marine reptiles have been demonstrated to be warm-blooded. 

In order to quantitatively test this, teeth from three species of mosasaur from the Mooreville Chalk in Alabama were collected and analysed to find the isotopic composition of oxygen. We need a control sample, though, to ensure that some geological process or change in atmospheric oxygen won’t mess up our data by adding or removing some heavy oxygen. In order to do this, the authors also tested samples from fish, turtles, and aquatic toothed birds that lived at the same time and place. That way they could place the mosasaur fossils in a reliable context. 

And the results they found are really interesting!

(Image: a graph showing δ18O values of different fossils from the Mooreville Chalk. I’ll do my best to explain what’s going on in the following paragraphs.)

Okay, so first things first. The fish and turtles tested have very similar δ18O values to each other. They both fall around the +21.2 to +22.0‰ range, or 2.12% to 2.2% heavier than “normal” water (because the “lighter” water has evapourated and left). This corresponds to a temperature of about 26-29°C (79-84°F). This is consistent with estimates of the temperature of the formation. This is what we expect from cold-blooded animals. Good! The method works!

Okay, next step. We can pretty safely assume that these birds were warm-blooded, and thus had a higher body temperature than their environment. Those tested had a δ18O value of about +18.5 to +19.5‰. That’s still heavier than normal water, but it’s less heavy than the cold-blooded animals (because the higher body temperatures led to more of the “heavy” water evapourating and leaving the body). This corresponds to body temperatures in the range of 36-39°C (97-102°F). This is right in the range of modern warm-blooded animals, and it’s another verification that the method works.

Okay, so what do the data say about mosasaurs? Well, it’s kind of a broad scatter. The δ18O values of the samples fall in the range of +19 to +21‰, which corresponds to a range 30-38.5°C (86-101°F). In other words, we’re getting body temperatures that are consistently warmer than the environment or cold-blooded animals, and in some cases are as warm as birds from the same environment!

What can we conclude from this? We can conclude that mosasaurs were probably warm-blooded, or, from the fact that some fall between the two, maybe “lukewarm-blooded” (which I wrote a bit about here). Either way, don’t think you’re safe just because it’s cold.

[louisstdo253]

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Related Articles:

All-on-4 cost in Melbourne

Why does a dental implant cost so much if it’s only temporary?

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[sciencespies]

Deep-sea coral reefs found surviving in Ireland at the edge of a submarine canyon

https://sciencespies.com/nature/deep-sea-coral-reefs-found-surviving-in-ireland-at-the-edge-of-a-submarine-canyon/

Deep-sea coral reefs found surviving in Ireland at the edge of a submarine canyon

Most people associate the word “coral” with sunshine, blue skies and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. In fact, more than half of the 5,100 species on the planet exist as “cold-water corals” in deep and dark parts of the world’s oceans.

Unlike most other animals, corals are immobile and so rely heavily on currents to transport tiny bits of organic material to feed on.

Over time, in some cases millions of years, cold-water corals can grow to eventually form huge skyscraper-sized structures on the seabed called “coral mounds”.

These structures are common in the northeast Atlantic at the edge of the Irish continental shelf. They can be several kilometres long and reach 100 metres (328 feet) or more in height – taller than any building in Ireland.

I have been studying the cold-water coral habitats off the coast of Ireland for a number of years, and have found these mounds of fossilised coral and sediment are incredibly varied.

Some are completely covered with live coral while others have lots of dead coral on the surface, and the mounds themselves have very different shapes and sizes.

One place of interest is the Porcupine Bank Canyon, the largest submarine canyon at the edge of Ireland’s continental shelf. Colleagues and I wanted to understand why the coral there varied so much over short distances.

To do this, we used the Irish Marine Institute’s deepwater research submersible to gather sonar data and deploy monitoring systems.

This equipment is essential to retrieve information from habitats that can be found almost a kilometre (0.62 miles) beneath the surface. We recently published the results of our work in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

Images show that corals are thriving at the very edge of the canyon on a near-vertical cliff face. Monitoring stations deployed nearby showed that the currents here were fast, sometimes more than a metre per second, the highest speed ever recorded in a cold-water coral habitat.

Nevertheless, there was also more coral rubble at these sites, which may be the result of these faster currents.

We then used video footage captured by the submarine to generate 3D reconstructions of the coral habitats which we could analyse to understand how deep water currents were influencing them.

Interestingly, while the corals can survive these extreme conditions, it appears that they still prefer it when the current slows down as they then find it easier to feed.

As the cold-water corals live in such remote parts of the planet, in the past experiments have been run in tanks in laboratories which show similar results.

As the world warms, so too will the oceans. Winds over the sea surface are getting stronger, causing average ocean currents to accelerate by around 5 percent per decade since the 1990s.

It’s still unclear exactly how these huge mounds of coral deep below the surface of the ocean will respond to these changing conditions, especially since coral lives on such long time scales. After all, these coral mounds grow very slowly, no more than a mere 12 centimetres (4.7 inches) every thousand years.

Yet despite their slow-growing nature, colleagues and I have previously found these mounds have exhibited changes over just four years, with increased amounts of coral rubble and significant decreases in the coverage of a particular coral species.

This is why our team recently deployed the monitoring stations for another year. We’re looking out for things like increased production of coral rubble, or growth of coral on the mounds.

Ultimately, our aim is to determine how these corals will respond to these tough and changing conditions in the long run.

Aaron Lim, Post-doctoral Researcher, Marine Geoscience, University College Cork.

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

#Nature

[alarmring17]

Weekly Tarot Card Card Readings

You must go into tarot card analyses with flexible inquiries in mind. With all their capacity, tarot cards do not have the capacity to provide clear-cut YES or NO answers. A tarot card analysis's genuine power depends on providing you with the understanding to lead you to make your own solid life options. Make certain that you are the focal point throughout your tarot card analysis, whether online or in-person. A tarot card reading is intended to assist you in making worldly life choices. Each person's entrée into the world of tarot card cards and also readings is various. Mine came with age 13, at a Bar mitzvah for a girl in my course that included a tarot reader as part of the cocktail hour.

The psychics take genuine care to utilize their unique abilities to assist consumers get real solution to their concerns. The solutions are supplied by licensed and also authentic psychics and also for that reason, Kasamba is a credible system for on-line psychic analyses by phone or chat. Directly, I have been trying tarot card analyses for the past five years now. It provides me a clear idea of what the future holds for me, as well as be somewhat prepared. I have actually attempted various online tarot card reading services like Oranum, Kasamba, Keen, and also much more. It is a known reality that tarot card analysis sessions are extremely personal as well as depend mainly on the feelings created between the customer as well as the visitor of the tarot. Although online systems are open to a multitude of different fortune-teller, in-person tarot card readers are restricted to your area. Moreover, online tarot readings are convenient and obtainable any time that matches your routine. Therefore, although in-person tarot analyses are rather much more efficient, on-line tarot card analyses are easier for the clients. Since old times, tarot analyses are considered the most reliable spiritual guide. There is no scientific evidence for the power held by these cards. While tarot go back to late 1300 when the Mamluk card game came from Egypt and also spread throughout Europe, it has located brand-new audiences through social media sites. Social media site highlights the availability of tarot cards to any who are interested, regardless of area. Really feel the physicality of the cards in your hand, envisioning your inquiry. If you're reading for one more person, use this reflective minute to reach the origin of their scenario and aid you formulate details inquiries for them. In basic terms, the process of getting useful understandings into today, previous, or future by the aid of tarot card cards is referred to as 'tarot card reading'. According to professional tarot card readers, tarot cards are like storybooks of our life. Cleaning the deck is a crucial initial step in reading tarot card cards, as it opens up the path in between spiritual dimensions. Whenever you're ready, reduced the cards into 3 and also reorder the heap, face down. On your favored towel, prepare to draw cards for your tarot card "spread." You can start reading tarot card cards more continually by attracting a card every early morning when you wake up that speaks to what you require to understand about the day ahead. Think about it as an particularly gratifying type of self-care that has actually the included advantage of helping you show up a far better, brighter future. Ask 10 people about tarot card cards, and 9 of them will possibly claim they anticipate the future. That's nearly right, yet tarot does not inform you what will certainly occur-- it informs what could take place, and much more importantly, exactly how you must turn up to it. "Tarot cards do not tell the future; rather, tarot is a tool for spiritual advice and allows the individual receiving the analysis to link to his/her inner wisdom," she informed EXPERT. Though tarot card analysis has actually come to be commonly preferred, it had not been too long ago that there was a adverse preconception attached to them. Thanks to scary films, tarot card cards were usually looked at as scary or daunting devices used to produce spirits. Currently, however, a brand-new expectation on card analysis has actually been set forth and also even more people are using them. Tarot card reading is a method to respond to people's concerns or advice them on their worries utilizing a divination tool called tarot cards. In a tarot card deck, 22 cards are thought about the Major Arcana as well as the other 56 are the Minor Arcana with four suits-- King, Queen, Knight, Jack. The Significant Arcana tarot cards depict substantial occasions in the life journey while the small arcana are for the small details as well as happenings. When she drew the Fatality card-- fortunate number 13 in the significant arcana of cards-- in my spread, I near collapsed and also squarely chose tarot card was except me. That opinion altered when I was presented to the work of Rachel Howe, a Brooklyn-based musician, Reiki therapist, and also tarot reader-- you could understand her from her Instagram manage, @smallspells. It was Howe's mystical, black-and-white drawings that first captured my eye, and her just recently released illustrated tarot card deck as well as guidebook has actually motivated this author to enter tarot yet again. Tarot card reading online is a unique ability that viewers spend years to master. So, it is a well-known reality that no authentic tarot card reader would certainly pick to provide their services, entirely free of cost. Sites that offer entirely complimentary services are the ones that offer customers with auto-generated manuscripts in place of accurate and reputable tarot analyses. Throughout this collective period of agitation, it's maybe unsurprising that tarot is prospering. "When so much of our lives has actually changed or been removed from us, we've had no choice yet to confront what's left behind-- ourselves," La Pompe-Moore notes. Data from consumer actions platform Spate, reveals that United States look for "tarot cards" and also " exactly how to review tarot cards" are up 31.9% and 78.4% respectively from 2019. Between those who assume it's a joke and also those that think tarot card cards are real magic lies a substantial group who find them informative and also fun, otherwise always superordinary. Whether it becomes a hobby or a full-time task, tarot reading can be an illuminating method to waste time. When choosing on the internet tarot card analyses, make sure to thoroughly analyze the authenticity of the web site and that of the fortuneteller. They are the mirror to our soul and also the internal knowledge of people. Their services, depending on the psychic that the customer likes, are fairly priced from $1.99 as well as $3.99 per min. Moreover, they supply 10 mins of reading for simply $1.99 together with 3 cost-free minutes for newbie clients! The services offered by Keen can be used by you Via mobile, on-line conversation, as well as video chat for psychics. This is just one of the best sites for credible internet tarot analyses, according to countless positive testimonials. Kasamba has helped over 3 million individuals find true love, actual insights right into the future, as well as happiness given that its creation in 1999. They are a mystical tool that can anticipate the future, and offer solution to hard concerns. If you've seen tarot cards made use of for a tarot analysis in flicks or TV, you've most likely seen tarot cards from the major arcana, like the Fool, the Lovers, the Devil, or Fatality. Tarot card reading is the method of using tarot card cards to acquire understanding right into the past, present or future by developing a inquiry, then attracting and also analyzing cards. Although some websites provide free tarot card readings on the internet and also may seem incredibly lucrative for customers, these readings are hardly ever authentic as well as are mostly auto-generated manuscripts. Keep in mind, tarot card reading is an exceptionally individual experience. Tarot card readings help clients in getting helpful insights right into their future. As an example, if the tarot analysis reveals something positive regarding the future, clients are inclined to work extra efficiently towards it. If something unfavorable is disclosed, customers can prepare themselves for the ups and downs in the future. https://tarot-masters.com With the accessibility of countless on-line tarot card viewers on various sites, clients can select from a myriad of choices and are not limited by their geographical area. Furthermore, the clients can avail of the on the internet services through chat, phone call, or video conversation at any type of point of time, based on their convenience. The very best attribute about online tarot card analysis services is that customers can get example analyses from different on-line psychics absolutely free prior to choosing the psychic that suits them the very best. In issues of convenience and also variety of options, on the internet tarot card reading services are absolutely better. Constantly remember that tarot readings are not meant to offer you definitive responses regarding your future. The mix of significant and also small arcana, as well as the details cards from each deck, will certainly allow the viewers to share in-depth insights on your history, existing scenario, and also future capacity during your tarot card analysis. In addition to tarot card reading, they supply spiritual and psychic readings with guidance on your lovemaking, astrology, finances, and life generally. Keen offers a vast array of filtering system options so you can pick an advisor that meets your particular requirements. You can sort their list of consultants by category, cost, client score, and extra. Whether you've got a particular inquiry concerning your lovemaking or are looking for basic advice, cost-free tarot card readings are a fantastic place to begin. A routine tarot card deck includes 78 cards, which can be divided right into 2 groups, the major arcana and also small arcana. Considered among one of the most versatile types of readings, tarot card analyses incorporate a deck of 78 cards to discover info and also patterns concerning your past, existing, and also future. Tarot cards are thought to have originated in 15th-century Europe for play, yet throughout the years have actually evolved as a valuable tool for clairvoyant visitors. Though the system does not supply call or live video readings, you can obtain a cost-free psychic reading through online conversation or e-mail. In addition to psychic analyses and tarot card visitors, Kasamba likewise offers various other types of services consisting of dream analysis, astrology, fortune-telling, and numerology analyses. The types of services that the psychic visitors here supply cover all the basics, and then some, with topics varying from love psychics to tarot card visitors. As you filter through your choices, you can likewise select what tools they use during their readings (numerology, tarot card, and so on) as well as what their interaction style is like. It must be remembered that tarot analyses are not meant to supply exact predictions regarding your future in terms of partnerships, financial resources, family members concerns, and so on. Tarot card analysis solutions are intended to reveal more open-minded concerns than offering certain solutions regarding the present, past, and also future.

[mamerto8odld]

How Good Are BigCommerce’s Template Designs?

Best ecommerce builder for large and businesses that are fast-growing. Our independent research projects and impartial reviews are funded in part by affiliate commissions, at no cost that is extra our readers. What Are the professionals and Cons of BigCommerce? BigCommerce is a premier ecommerce platform makes it possible for you to definitely create an store that is online. It lets you set up your store, add products, and also make money through your site. But that’s not totally all. BigCommerce is a ecommerce that is specialized, meaning it’s designed to help you sell online. With tons of built-in features, data tools, and more, BigCommerce is most beneficial for large or fast-growing businesses. You won’t outgrow this platform any time in the future! BigCommerce’s clients include big brand names like Toyota, Kodak, and Ben & Jerry’s. For small businesses seeking to scale up, BigCommerce boasts an impressive average development of 28% for its clients year on year. That isn’t just hype. Here at Website Builder Expert, we carry out thorough research on all the builders we review. We put each one through hours of rigorous user scoring and testing. We compare, analyse and dig deep into every builder’s features, pricing, design flexibility, customer care, and sales tools. BigCommerce was no exception: we put the platform through its paces, and it came a solid third overall of the many ecommerce builders we tested (beaten only by Shopify and Wix). BigCommerce was also number 1 for website features, and was only behind Shopify with regards to stumbled on sales features. Could BigCommerce end up being the perfect ecommerce builder for you? Find out once we shine a spotlight in the quality of its features, ease of use, template designs, and much more. Time is money, so let’s get going! How Easy is BigCommerce to Use? As a company owner, you want to spend as time that is much possible caring for your prospects, shipping products, and watching your profits go up; you don’t want to spend precious hours trying to reformat a text box. That’s why ease of use is really so important, and just why we research it so thoroughly. So how did BigCommerce do within our ease of use testing? To be honest, it had been fairly average. BigCommerce scored 3.3/5 stars for simplicity of use, with people finding it 14% more challenging to use than Shopify. The reason that is main struggled with BigCommerce was its design interface. It’s split between two areas when you’re creating your store. One is where you add products and manage the "behind the scenes" areas of your store - for instance, discounts and shipping - while the other is where you edit your storefront. To combat this, we recommend setting up the inventory portion of your store first.

The Truth About BigCommerce

Upload all your products, add items such as for instance discounts, then go directly to the storefront editor to personalize your storefront. The news that is good, BigCommerce has recently released a brand new and exciting feature in order to make designing your store easier than ever! The latest visual merchandising tool is called Store Design, and means you can observe the consequences of the edits. This new feature makes BigCommerce significantly more customizable. Something that remains a consistent problem with BigCommerce is its terminology. It’s very complex, and this makes it unsuitable for beginners. You should be familiar with the terms that are technical or else you might waste lots of time just finding out whatever they mean - which, let’s face it, is a lot less fun than actually building your store. BigCommerce is an ecommerce builder built to carry stores into big business. Think of it like a jumbo jet: it’s got all of the powerful tools necessary to take your online store on a long-haul flight, without you being forced to change planes halfway through. However, you won’t be able to fly it straight after passing your pilot’s exam! With great power comes great complexity, and BigCommerce is not perfect for anyone who’s not savvy that is tech. However, the recent launch of the Store Design tool is a great step. It shows BigCommerce is listening to its users’ feedback, and it is making its builder simpler to use. Inside our user testing, 56% of people said they were prone to recommend BigCommerce. Regarding the whole, they liked the effectiveness of BigCommerce’s features,the ease of this onboarding process, and the professional quality for the builder. "It supports you in having the job done and is incredibly professional. What people found tricky was the language that is technical BigCommerce favors. It took people longer to get to grips with because of the true amount of enhanced functions. "Yes it’s difficult, but you can see why. It’s because it’s basically there to operate your online business for you. They are things people that are real to express when they tried out BigCommerce. It’s not the quickest or easiest platform to create an online store with as you can see. However in the long run, its powerful features can make running your company super easy. BigCommerce has been named a solid Performer by Forrester Research in two recently released reports, one on B2C commerce suites and something on B2B commerce suites. These Forrester reports evaluate and score the most commerce that is significant, to be able to guide digital businesses in selecting the right technology because of their needs. Are you considering another satisfied BigCommerce customer? Test it for yourself free of charge and tell us how you found it!

So what are these amazing features we carry on on about? BigCommerce has the best in-house features of any ecommerce builder. These provide a high quality level and minimize the reliance you've probably on 3rd party apps. You effectively have everything you need right close at hand, as well as for no extra cost. BigCommerce could be the ecommerce that is only on the market which enables you to sell physical, digital, and service-based products and never having to use an app. All of these sales types are already built into the editor. This implies less hassle and less cost, since you don’t need to worry about using alternative party apps. As soon as you’ve got your entire products set up and ready to sell like hot cakes, you will need a way to get paid! Unlike various other ecommerce builders, BigCommerce doesn’t lock you into its own payment gateway. Better still, it doesn’t impose transaction fees on any of its plans. Instead, it allows you to choose your own payment gateway without imposing any extra charges or transaction fees. You’ve got over 65 integrated payment gateways to choose from. With one-click setup, mobile payments, and multiple currencies supported, BigCommerce does its better to get you paid fast. To assist you succeed, BigCommerce has generated relationships with payment providers to cut back your costs. For instance, all BigCommerce plans do not have transaction fees, and come with pre-negotiated rates for PayPal. The longer you stay with BigCommerce and upgrade through its price plans, the reduced your rates will go - in reality, they could drop from 2.9% all of the way down seriously to 2.2%, or sometimes even lower! BigCommerce offers you a range of shipping options. You may get shipping that is real-time, offer free shipping to your customers, and print shipping labels, all with BigCommerce’s third-party integrations. BigCommerce now offers its very own service that is all-in-one next-level shipping tools. Simply install the new BigCommerce Shipping app at no cost, and enjoy special discounts (up to 80% off!) with USPS, DHL, and FedEx. Keep your customers satisfied with shipment tracking, in-store pickup, and next day delivery, and also make your personal life easier by automating your shipping operations. BigCommerce Shipping is sold with a great deal of perks, however the main one is the fact that it is possible to manage your entire shipping from a single central hub. Shipping can be a challenge, but BigCommerce aims to offer tools that are powerful minimum fuss. BigCommerce has got the amount that is largest of built-in features of any ecommerce builder. This includes the all-important SSL Security certificate, which encrypts user data in order to make online payments safe. Almost as important as an SSL certificate is the selection for abandoned cart recovery.

Keep Buying Facebook Stock in the Dip for the near future

Government to business (G2B)

Mobile-friendly design themes with full control of CSS/HTML

1000+ channels reach

9:00 a.m. Aug. 26, 2020

7-step process (below) I suggested a week ago and apply them

BusinessWire - BZX

When a client enters their email after which abandons their products or services into the shopping cart at checkout, you are able to send an automated email to draw them back for their purchase. You can also personalize the emails and include discount codes. This is a money saver that is real! An average of, these emails win back 12-15% of customers, while personalized emails are six times more efficient than regular ones. Reaching customers has never been so easy. With BigCommerce, you can "sell everywhere" using multichannel integrations. Put simply, you are able to sell through Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, eBay, Amazon, and much more. Manage everything from one place, sit back, and watch the sales roll in from all over the web. Keep track of all those sales using BigCommerce’s data reporting tools. Identify customer trends, track your store’s performance, follow your conversion rates, and more - all from your dashboard! These are are just some of the essential features BigCommerce has. If you do wish to expand your internet site beyond these functions, it is possible to - you’ve still got over 600 apps to choose from within the BigCommerce app store. BigCommerce has a much more limited app store than its competitors. But that’s only as it has so many impressive in-house features already! You simply don’t need as many apps while you would with Shopify, for instance. This keeps costs lower, since you don’t have to pay out for third party add-ons on a monthly basis. How Good are BigCommerce's Template Designs? Your online store needs all the latest sales tools to remain in front of the competition. But when it comes to standing out from the crowd, the thing that is first visitors will notice can be your website’s design. BigCommerce has over 100 themes being offered. There are 12 free themes and over 100 paid themes, starting from $145-235. That’s a lot of themes to select from! Luckily, BigCommerce causes it to be really easy to get your perfect theme. It is possible to search by industry, or by the layout you want for the template. For instance you can choose from grid layouts or designs featuring images that are large. You could view just free or paid themes, or make use of the search bar to get tailored results. Themes really vary with regards to the industry they are categorized under. For instance, themes in the ‘Fashion & Jewelry’ category have a product zoom feature, while other categories don’t include this. Therefore it’s worth having a proper search to find a theme that best fits your store’s needs. It is possible to preview a layout just before select it, that is a truly useful option. Should you pick a style and then improve your mind, don’t worry! It is possible to switch your template any right time you love.

All BigCommerce themes are fully mobile responsive. You can’t edit the mobile view, as the theme automatically reformats to fit mobile screens. This means you don’t have to spend a second worrying all about losing out on mobile shoppers. With more than 50% of traffic originating from cellular devices, this is certainly a vital feature to possess! The question that is real, how customizable are BigCommerce’s themes? It’s a question with an answer that is exciting. BigCommerce recently released a fresh merchandising that is visual, called Store Design. Whereas before you had to customize your storefront in 2 separate areas and wait to start to see the results, this tool changes everything! The Store Design tool lets you pick out chapters of your page and there customize them and then, right in front of you. Thus giving you instant control over everything from background colors to logo positions, wide range of featured products, navigation arrow colors, and much more. This tool that is new a much higher level of customization to BigCommerce’s themes than ever before. When you’re making money through your site, any problems can be costly. Fortunately, BigCommerce has help options set up to get you sorted quickly and easily. The support and help channels available be determined by what price plan you’re on. As standard, BigCommerce provides 24/7 phone and live chat support. No need to stress out at 4am, counting down the hours until 9am; simply pick up the device or open up a live talk with get your condition dealt with by morning. There’s also email support. In reality, when you sign up for a trial that is free you get an email through offering an appointment for a 10 minute call to go over your company, its goals, and exactly how BigCommerce can help you succeed. As well as phone, live chat, and email, you are able to make use of video tutorials - and better still, the BigCommerce Help Center. If you’re on the most expensive Enterprise plan, you unlock priority support. This includes an consultant that is onboarding as well as prioritized telephone calls. With instant connections to your most senior and highly-trained support staff, this allows the level that is highest of quality support for the store. BigCommerce Pricing - could it be Good Value for Money? Everyone understands you must spend some money to help make money. But simply simply how much do you have to spend with BigCommerce? There clearly was a 15-day trial that is free and you will even request a demo to observe how BigCommerce can benefit your on line store. What exactly Do You Get for Your Money? The Standard plan sets you up with a well-rounded, fully equipped store that is online.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 11 Mar 2020 (Saturated fat and obesity, which foods produce satiety, spying VPNs, Twitter's research-friendly terms of service)

Today's links

Obesity and unsaturated fats: Blaming unsaturated fats for obesity is very plausible, but likely wrong, alas.

The satiety index: Which foods cause or satisfy cravings?

Sensor Tower's VPNs and adblockers spied on users: Like sneaking laxative into Immodium.

Twitter's new Terms of Service help academics: Good bots welcome.

Italy's "I Stay in the House" law: The comprehensive quarantine plan.

Scam-buster hacks into a scam-factory: He gets their CCTVs, recordings of their calls, transaction data, Whatsapp chats, and more. Delicious.

Postmortem: the catastrophic EU Copyright Directive. Testimony from yesterday's Senate hearing.

Podcast: A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick: My latest Locus column, on how copyright failed artists and enriched corporations.

This day in history: 2010, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Obesity and unsaturated fats (permalink)

Scott Alexander does a very deep dive into the literature on diet, weight, and saturated vs unsaturated fats.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/10/for-then-against-high-saturated-fat-diets/

The most important elements for me were first, the validation that something really has changed: average US adult men's weight went from 155lbs to 195lbs from the 1800s to today. The 90th percentile 1800s man weighed 185lbs, today, it's 320lbs. US obesity rates in the 1800s were 1%. Today, they're 25%.

But the usual culprits can't explain the change: they ate more bread and potatoes in the 1800s, for one thing.

In China, obesity rates were very low even with a diet dominated by white rice.

1970s France had 1800s US obesity rates, on a diet of "baguettes, pastries, cheese, meat. Lots of sugar, white flour, and fat."

It's true that some tactics (intermittent fasting, low-carbing) work for some people, but they're not what worked in 1970s France or 1800s USA. So if those things work, they're "hacks" – not an indictment of carbs or eating three meals a day.

There's a widespread theory that the change is driven by the switch from saturated to unsaturated fats, which was driven by spiking heart disease in the 1950s. It's likely this heart disease epidemic can be attributed to the vast increase in smoking a couple decades earlier, but the tobacco industry's denial machine meant that the blame fell on diet, and the US (and then global) diet's fat composition shifted dramatically.

We ate a lot fewer animal-derived fats and a lot more plant-derived fats. These fats had lots more Omega 6s and (to a lesser extent) 3s, and the ratio of these Omegas also changed dramatically, both in our diet and in our bodily composition. Intriguingly, these play a significant role in metabolism. There's a plausible ring to this whole business – particularly as a way of crisping up what we mean when we say "avoid processed foods." What is "processing?" Maybe it's doing something that requires vegetable fats.

Unfortunately, neither the literature nor the lived experience of experimenters support the theory. Studies don't support it. Meta analyses don't support it. Reddit forums skew heavily to people saying it didn't work for them (dotted with people for whom it did).

Which makes weight gain a mystery. It can't be (just) exercise: we're exercising more now than we did 40 years ago, and we're heavier now. Studies about causes are inconclusive overall, but clear that weight gain is more explained by diet than exercise. What's more, we're seeing weight gain in lab rats, pets and feral animals, so exercise seems an unlikely culprit here.

Alexander ponders other possible causes: plastics or other contaminants in our diet, or that it's a "ratchet" (once your weight set point changes, it doesn't change back.). Both have little evidence to support them.

He concludes that he's "more confused than when I started it," but will avoid unsaturated fats where possible, with the exceptions of Omega-3 rich oils (fish/olive oil).

I am likewise confused, but also better-informed than I was before I read his post.

The satiety index (permalink)

I lost ~100lbs in 2002/3 with a low-carb diet. The thing I immediately noticed when I started eating (lots) more fat and (lots) less carbs was that I was always satiated, with none of the food cravings that had plagued me all my life.

No other diet since has had that effect. I really struggle with cravings (and have put 50lbs back on through my 40s, though some of that is muscle from a much higher level of exercise). For me, satiety is the barrier to sticking to any diet. I don't just get ravenous, I get these all-consuming cravings that I can't put out of my mind, even if I resist them (and the longer I resist, the more likely it is that I'll really blow it out when I give in at last).

So I was really interested in this 1995 open access study, "A Satiety Index of common foods," which offers a league table of the foods that made subjects feel full.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15701207_A_Satiety_Index_of_common_foods

The meaty (heh) parts are in these charts on pp682-3.

Sensor Tower's VPNs and adblockers spied on users (permalink)

Sensor Tower, a company that made apps billed as privacy-protecting, installed man-in-the-middle certificates on your devices that let them spy on everything you did online.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/vpn-and-ad-blocking-apps-sensor-tower

They made 20+ VPN apps for Android and Ios, but didn't disclose that all those apps were owned by analytics company, Sensor Tower. The apps had names like "Free and Unlimited VPN, Luna VPN, Mobile Data, and Adblock Focus."

The apps installed a "root certificate" in users' devices. With this cert, the company could insert itself in all the device's otherwise secure, encrypted sessions – web browsing, email, etc. Sensor Tower admits that they collected data using this cert, but insists that it was "anonymized," which is something most computer scientists agree is likely impossible for this kind of data. Re-identification of anonymized data is devilishly hard to avoid.

The claim is made even less credible when you listen to the company's other claims about its practices, such as the idea that they hid the authorship of their apps "for competitive reasons."

Or this howler: that "the vast majority of these apps listed are now defunct (inactive) and a few are in the process of sunsetting." Well, yes, they were removed for violating their users' privacy. It's not like the company had a change of heart or anything.

And then there's this: "Apple and Google restrict root certificate privileges due to the security risk to users. Sensor Tower's apps bypass the restrictions by prompting users to install a certificate through an external website after an app is downloaded."

Twitter's new Terms of Service help academics(permalink)

Twitter just published a new, and much-improved developer policy, one that permits academics to field bots for research and auditing purposes.

https://blog.twitter.com/developer/en_us/topics/community/2020/twitter_developer_policy_update.html

"Researchers will be able to share an unlimited number of Tweet IDs and/or User IDs, if they're doing so on behalf of an academic institution and for the sole purpose of non-commercial research, such as peer review."

https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/10/twitter-rewrites-developer-policy-to-better-support-academic-research-and-use-of-good-bots/

Twitter's also creating a bot registry that must include contact info for the botmaster, so that "it's easier for everyone on Twitter to know what's a bot – and what's not."

https://developer.twitter.com/en/developer-terms/policy#4-b

Italy's "I Stay in the House" law (permalink)

The FAQ for the Italian government's "I Stay In the House" decree is a fascinating document:

http://www.governo.it/it/articolo/decreto-iorestoacasa-domande-frequenti-sulle-misure-adottate-dal-governo/14278

Most notably, Italy has kicked out its tourists. As Bruce Sterling writes, "It's a tourist-ectomy. An Italy devoid of all tourists. It's fantastic, unheard-of. Surely this hasn't happened in at least 700 years."

https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2020/03/stay-house-decree/

People are allowed to go to work, to shop, and to run errands, provided it is for an "essential purpose," which you must prove "by means of a self-declaration which can be made on pre-printed forms already supplied to the state and local police forces. The veracity of the self-declarations will be subject to subsequent checks and the non-veracity constitutes a crime."

Business travelers are permitted to enter and leave the country, cab, delivery and freight drivers are allowed to do their jobs, and "outdoor motor activity is allowed as long as not in a group."

Public offices are open. Training activities are suspended. Government offices need to provide hand santizer, but if they run out, they have to stay open ("disinfectant is a precautionary measure but itstemporary unavailability does not justify the closure of the office").

Bars, pubs and restaurants may open from 6AM to 6PM, but have to cancel live music, games and screening events. Theaters, cinemas and museums are closed.

Schools are closed. Universities are closed. Exams and graduations will be conducted by video-link. Med schools are not closed. Research institutions are not closed.

Masses and funerals are canceled. Islamic Friday prayers are canceled.

Farms are open.

Scam-buster hacks into a scam-factory (permalink)

Jim Browning is a talented and prolific scambaiter. He calls the numbers listed in pop-up tech support scams and has the scammers log into a specially prepared system that lets him trace them.

In his latest adventure, Browning thoroughly turns the tables on http://Faremart.com , a Delhi travel agency that was the front for a sprawling network of tech-support scammers taking in millions every year through fraud.

Browning not only traces the scammers: he breaks into their unsecured CCTV network so he can watch them work. He compromises their phone system and listens to the recordings of all their scam-sessions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le71yVPh4uk

He gets hold of their ledgers, which list how much money each scam nets for the gang. He doxes the scammers and learns their real names. He gets a confederate to fly a drone over their HQ and maps out their comings and going.

In part II, Browning treats us to a delightful scambaiting session in which he mercilessly trolls a scammer who claims to be in San Jose, CA, tripping him up in a series of ever-more-desperate lies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV-qa9M-o4E

It's part of a growing genre of journalists who explore and document the operations of overseas scam operations. See, for example, Reply All's excellent podcasts on this:

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/6nh3wk https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/76h5gl

There are two more parts to come in Browning's series (you can watch them now on his Patreon, apparently):

https://www.patreon.com/JimBrowning

He also turned his footage over to the BBC's flagship investigative programme, Panorama, which has produced its own doc based on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rmvhwwiQAY

Postmortem: the catastrophic EU Copyright Directive (postmortem)

Yesterday, the Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held hearings on "Copyright Law in Foreign Jurisdictions," at which two key copyright experts testified on last year's catastrophic EU Copyright Directive.

First up was Pam Samuelson, one of America's leading copyright experts, who explained in eye-watering detail how the compromises made to pass the Copyright Directive produced an incoherent mess that no one can figure out how to implement in law.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Samuelson%20Testimony.pdf

Next was Julia Reda, who served in the EU Parliament during the passage of the directive and helped spearhead the opposition to it.

Her testimony really shows you where the bodies were buried: how the EU knew it was making a pig's ear out of things.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Reda%20Testimony.pdf

Both are essential reading for anyone striving to understand Article 17 (formerly Article 13) – it is such a tangle of garbage lawmaking that these kinds of guides are indispensable.

Podcast: A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick (permalink)

I've just posted my latest podcast: a reading of my new Locus Magazine column, "A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick," on how copyright failed artists and enriched corporations and what we can do about it.

https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/11/a-lever-without-a-fulcrum-is-just-a-stick-2/

Tldr: Giving monopolies to artists doesn't help them gain leverage over the super-concentrated entertainment industry, because the corporations control access to audiences and force artists to sign away those monopolies to get past their gatekeeping.

The more monopolies we give artists, the more monopolies are transfered to corporations, and the more they dominate the market and thus the more they can retain from the earnings generated by the artists' works.

Fights like the EU Copyright Directive are a distraction, a fight over shifting some points from Big Tech's balance sheet to Big Content's – but without any mechanism to move more of that revenue to creators.

Enriching creators means thinking beyond more "monopoly"-style copyright: instead, we have to think about inalienable rights that can be taken away through one-sided contracts (like the "reversion right" that lets US artists take back copyrights after 35 years).

And we have to think beyond copyright itself, by beefing up competition laws to break up entertainment cartels, and by beefing up labor laws to let artists form unions.

There is a role for copyright, but in things like extended collective licensing that would allow all online platforms to access the same catalog and pay for it based on the number of users they have, so a new platform pays pennies while Youtube pays hundreds of millions.

These blanket licenses have been key to keeping other forums for artistic revenues open: think of what the world would be like if one club or radio station could buy the exclusive rights to play the hits of the day, and then use their ensuring dominance to squeeze artists.

If you prefer the written work, you can read the column here for yourself, of course:

https://locusmag.com/2020/03/cory-doctorow-a-lever-without-a-fulcrum-is-just-a-stick/

Here's a direct link to the MP3 of the reading (thanks as always to Internet Archive for hosting – they'll host you too, for free!):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330_-_A_Lever_Without_a_Fulcrum_Is_Just_a_Stick.mp3

And here's the RSS for my podcast:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

Now in its 14th year (Thanks to Mark Pesce for convincing me to start it)!

This day in history (permalink)

#10yrsago London Olympics: police powers to force spectators to remove non-sponsor items, enter houses, take posters http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100303/tts-uk-olympics-london-ca02f96.html

#10yrsago Leaked documents: UK record industry wrote web-censorship amendment https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2010/bpi-drafted-web-blocking

#5yrsago Piketty on the pointless cruelty of European austerity https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/thomas-piketty-interview-about-the-european-financial-crisis-a-1022629.html

#5yrsago Rightscorp loses big on extortion racket https://torrentfreak.com/rightscorp-hemorrhages-cash-profit-from-piracy-remains-elusive-150311/

#5yrsago UK foreign secretary: stop talking about Snowden, let spies get on with it https://web.archive.org/web/20150315031642/http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2399082/government-minister-is-bored-with-snowden-and-wants-to-get-on-with-surveillance

#1yrago Defect in car security system aids carjackers, thieves https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/gone-in-six-seconds-exploiting-car-alarms/

#1yrago Former Archbishop of Canterbury cheers on students who are walking out to demand action on climate change https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/10/rowan-williams-school-pupil-climate-protests

#1yrago Leaked Chinese database of 1.8 million women includes a field indicating whether they are "BreedReady" https://twitter.com/0xDUDE/status/1104482014202351616

#1yrago Why #Article13 inevitably requires filters https://www.communia-association.org/2019/03/05/final-x-ray-article-13-dangerous-legislative-wishful-thinking/

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Slate Star Codex (https://slatestarcodex.com/), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Fipi Lele, Matthew Rimmer (https://twitter.com/DrRimmer).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Museums and the Web: March 31-April 4 2020, Los Angeles. https://mw20.museweb.net/

Currently writing: I'm rewriting a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm also working on "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel afterwards.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330_-_A_Lever_Without_a_Fulcrum_Is_Just_a_Stick.mp3

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

[gofancyninjaworld]

One Punch Man Serious CD Vol 2: Genos, Training. Full Dialogue Translation

Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/OnePunchMan/comments/ekjf4a/one_punch_man_serious_cd_vol_2_genos_training/

Courtesty of @u-vibhavm who has produced a full translation with Redditor u/hdx514′s help.   Full text is posted with his permission and follows below the cut.

Translated by me using a lot of help from /u/hdx514 and his previous summary of the audiobook.

Follow along with the audio:

Part 1: https://streamable.com/m08uk

Part 2: https://streamable.com/oiiss

Genos (G): Haaaaa, Machine Gun Blow!

MGB noises

G: Incinerate.

explosion noise

Computer (C): Target annihilated, mission clear. Simulation complete.

Inferiority OST starts

G: Alright, I managed to eliminate even the strongest opponent by myself.

G: Dr. Kuseno made this, the Virtual Genocide System. It works by using a computer to create a virtual reality, in which I can practice by battling virtual opponents.

G: If there are no virtual opponents of a higher difficulty left, then like the Doctor said, maybe it’s time to start the next training phase

G: The evolved Virtual Genocide System allows me to engage in practice battles against monsters restored from data I collected in the past

G: That means, Mosquito Girl and Deep Sea King, and even Carnage Kabuto. I can have a rematch with all the opponents I lost too.

C: Restarting simulation. Mosquito Girl: High pitched scream

G: Mosquito Girl’s data.

G: This time, I won’t let my guard down. Let’s go.

Machine Gun Blow noises

G: I can feel it…

G: How much stronger I’ve got since the time I fought her.

G: Target acquired explosion noise

C: Target annihilated. Mission clear.

G: Alright, next one!

thunder and rain sounds play

Wet DSK’s voice: I’ll tear you to shreds

G: Deep Sea King. Let’s go.

G: Machine Gun Blow. Incinerate.

MGB and Explosion noises

C: Target annihilated. Mission clear.

G: I will not be defeated by the likes of acid spit anymore.

G: With this combat practicing, my learning efficiency in battle will rapidly improve.

G: Against Demon Level opponents that I had trouble with in the past, my chance of victory is over 70%.

G: .And now, it’s finally time challenge that guy.

Alarms

Thumping footsteps

Carnage Kabuto: Well then, let’s start the killing.

G: Carnage Kabuto, it won’t be like last ti-

BOOM

G: Wha!

G: After all those upgrading my parts, learning from my defeats, and time spent studying with sensei, I am sure that I have gotten stronger, however…

CK: Hehehehe, Baaaaaka.

G: Estimated Disaster Level Dragon and opponents of similar level, I knew my chances of winning would decrease significantly in dealing with those.

G: I’m still a long way away from being able to defeat Carnage Kabuto.

C: Player, Genos: Seriously damaged. Simulation completed.

Sorrow OST playing

G: Even though I challenged Carnage Kabuto 55 times, I can’t seem to achieve victory, so I requested Doctor Kuseno for advice.

G: According to the Doctor, since the opponent is too powerful, it’s no good as reference

G: I should use my personal data to create something called “ghost”, then gradually accumulate experience through practice battles against the ghost.

”Machine Gun Blow” echoes

G: Using the past me to shape the present me, even if it’s a bit of improvement, that’s still good.

G: I have been following this training method until now.

G: In the process of repeating this training, I began wanting to see my ghost fight with Saitama sensei.

Saitama (S): Hmm? Do you need something, Genos?

G: Saitama sensei, please try on this device.

S: What’s this?

G: It’s “Virtual Genocide System”

S: huh?

G: It’s “Virtual Genocide System”

S: (Think) That’s not really an explanation is it…

S: Anyway, I just have to put this on my head right.

C: Player, Saitama: Commencing Simulation.

S: Ooh! What’s this! I see something Genos! Where is this!

G: You are currently in a virtual reality. Please defeat the enemies I’ve configured to appear in front of you.

S: What? I just have to defeat right? How do I move in here?

G: It will read your brainwaves; you just have to imagine the normal scenario.

S: Imagine you say…

Clothes ruffling sfx

S: Oh yeah, it moved!

G: You don’t need to move your body around like t-

Loud crash

S: Did you say something Genos?

G: Nope (Homonym for “house”)

S: Alright. Here I go!

Seigi Shikkou OST playing

Monster death explosions

S: Oh, this is great… It’s just like the real world.

G: We can also review that place’s footage from this monitor here.

G: So regardless of it being a virtual world, you can completely defeat any monster easily.

G: However, your last opponent is….

Mechanical noises

Compute Genos (CG): Target Acquired

S: Woah, a guy that’s the splitting image of Genos just came out

CG: I will eliminate you.

G: It’s me from yesterday. Please fight it with all your strength.

G: Use the punch from last time that you stopped just before connecting with me. In the VGS, it isn’t the real me, so it doesn’t matter if I get completely destroyed.

G: Against a very upgraded me compared to last time, please fight to your heart’s content.

S: Sokka

G: How will Saitama Sensei fight against the current version of me…

G: After analysing and studying that, I might have unexpected findings regarding my weak points and blind spo-

S: I punched it.

C: Target annihilated. Mission clear. Simulation completed.

S: Sighs Seems like a videogame, though it’s easier than one.

S: Huh, what’s wrong Genos? Seems like the lights are gone from your eyes. Hello hello?

more sorrow OST

G: (thinking) Saitama Sensei’s power is wrapped up in mystery even till this day. It’s naive of me to think I could figure him out with mere simulations.

G: Please excuse me. I’m going out for a bit. S: Huh, where are you off to?

S: What happened to him… S: Wha- Hey… There’s a hole in the wall! ARE YOU SERIOUS!!!

G: For the experiment, it might be more appropriate to find capable heroes other than Saitama sensei.

G: Thinking that, I negotiated with the Hero Association in order to summon heroes to the headquarters.

Mysterious OST playing

Sneck (Sk): Are you the guy who suddenly summoned us? What do you want with me, Snake Bite Sneck. Sk: I’ll only say this once, despite our ranks, i’m your senior.

Metal Bat (MB): Who on earth is the reckless guy challenging me, Metal bat, to a one-on-one fight!?

Darkshine (Ds): No no, I heard there’s some new training machine.

Zombieman (Z): What a bunch of unpleasant members.

Z: Hey you, Genos or something? What do you want with us? G: A-Class hero Snake Bite Sneck, and from S-Class, Metal bat, Superalloy Darkshine, Zombieman;

G: You all will now equip this device in turns and fight enemies in a virtual space.

MB: Eh? The hell is that? The latest toy or something?

G: It’s fine if you want to think of this as a game. There’s no risk to your life, but the feeling is nearly same to life so be careful.

Z: What do you plan to do with that combat data...?

G: I will use it as a reference for myself to get stronger

Z: You’re a surprisingly straightforward guy.

Z: Very well, I’ll go along with you. Well, I hope it will be helpful reference.

MB: Heh, seems interesting.

Sk: Can’t be helped, I’l pitch in and help out my junior.

DS: It seems like good training

G: Snake Bite Sneck, you go first.

(TN: Genos used the very informal second person pronoun ‘omae’ (おまえ) implying equal or superior status)

Sk: Oma…? I’m your senior you know… man…

Sk: Tsk, I just have to put this on, right?

C: Player Sneck. Commencing simulation.

Sneck: Hmph, I’m going to show you guys right here, that I’m actually pretty damn strong.

explosion

Simulation System Voice: Player Sneck. Incapacitated in battle. Simulation complete.

Sk: I was defeated in 3 seconds!

G: No. Correctly speaking, it was 2.52 seconds.

Sk: W..what the hell was that enemy just now?

G: It’s a monster I fought in the past, Carnage Kabuto.

Sk: There... There’s something wrong with its strength setting...

G: Hmm, you really can’t be used as reference.

Sk: Eh? that’s it for m-

G (cutting Sneck off): Next! Metal Bat, your turn to challenge it.

MB: Hmph, let me give it a shot.

C: Player Metal Bat. Commencing simulation.

MB: Bring it on!

metal bat grunting

boom

Z: A frontal exchange of blows huh.

DS: What a great number of at-bats!

G: No wonder he’s an S-Class hero. He wasn’t finished off easily, however...

Carnage Kabuto: YEAAAAAAAAAAH!

explosion

MB grunts

CK: Hehehehe, Baaaaaka.

C: Player Metal Bat. Incapacitated in battle. Simulation complete.

G: He wasn’t able to win huh

G: But that was his first fight with Kabuto and he lasted 3 minutes. That’s pretty impressive.

MB: Huh? That’s it? It’s over?

G: You lost, Metal Bat, because the damage you sustained were too grave for you to continue.

MB: Huh? What are you talking about? I can totally keep going.

G: No, when you get injured to that extent, it is over.

G: You are considered “dead” in the virtual world.

MB: No way Jose. I might have lost in the game world, but in the real world it won’t go like that.

MB: It might be over once you die in the game world, but in the real world, a death is just a flesh wound. You can totally revive through fighting spirit and have another go, know what I’m saying?!!

Sk: Eh, isn’t it usually the other way?

DS: Calm down, Metal Bat kun!

DS: It would make a mess of things if you get into a real fight with Genos here!

Metal Bat: Damn it!

Z: Next, it's my turn.

G: Zombieman, I heard you're an undying hero.

Z: Hmph, if the device can read my brainwaves and recreate my body's abilities as well as the damages in the simulation, it will be a reflection of my characteristics in actual combat.

MB: Aren't you confident.

G: This guy could provide great reference data.

C: Player Zombieman, commencing simulation.

Z: Bring it on, as long as it's something that can be defeated.

CK: Baaaaaaaka!

squashing noises

MB: Hey hey, that Zombieman, I thought he'd start the battle with leisure, isn't this a one sided beatdown?

Sk: Ouch, I can't bear to watch.

DS: His body is gradually disappearing, is it okay to keep it going? It's starting to look gory as hell.

G: This is strange, the battle should have long since been concluded, but the system isn't stopping it. What's going on?

Z: It must be because my brain isn't acknowledging this as real danger on a cognitive level.

Z: Stuff like this isn't even considered damage.

MB: No no no, what a load of bollocks. A body-less head is in no position to say that!

G: Totally not useful for reference!

Metal Bat: Looks like it's going to go on for a while, yawns, I'm gonna take a nap. Call me when it's over.

Darkshine: I'm also going to take a break and get ready for my battle.

G: Then aside from Zombieman, it's recess for everyone else. Everyone, go take a break.

G (monologue): Afterwards, Zombieman's battle lasted for over 3 hours, since there was no conclusion, the system automatically sped-up its simulation clock and one week has passed in the simulation.

C: Simulation complete.

DS: Ooh! Zombieman’s back!

MB: Finally acknowledging your defeat?

Z: I won.

G: What did you say?

Z: After transforming into Carnage Mode or whatever and rampaging, it spent all its stamina and couldn't even move.

Z: I saw my chance and started my attack.

Sk: Finally winning after losing for 1 week straight...

G: That's amazing! ...but can't be used for reference at all...

DS: Alrighty, finally, i’m up!

G: Superalloy Darkshine...

DS: Since we’re in virtual space, it would be okay for me to release the full power of my muscles, right?

Genos: Yes, let me bear witness to your power.

C: Player Superalloy Darkshine. Commencing simulation.

Darkshine: Hmph!!

booms and bashes

Carnage Kabuto & Darkshine: DIE ー Hmph ー DIE ー Hmph ー DIE ー Hmph ー DIE ー Hmph ー DIE ー Hmph ー DIE ー Hmph ー DIE ー Hmph ー DIE ー Hmph ー DIE ー Hmph ー DIE ー Hmph ー DIE ー Hmph ー

Sk: Whoa, this is…

Z: A great fight

G: It’s working! This means Superalloy Darkshine’s strength goes beyond Kabuto’s defense.

continued sound effects of battle

DS: HMPH! !

Sk: WHOA!

C: Enemy, incapacitated in battle. Player, Superalloy Darkshine, is victorious. Simulation completed.

DS: Yeah! I won!

DS: He’s a lot stronger than I imagined, took me 15 minutes.

G: Zombieman is undying, so his body makes sense, but what’s with your body, Darkshine? Has it been modified?

DS: I’m not a cyborg! Although, I can’t say my body hasn’t been modified… by the power of muscles!

G: Muscles you say?

G: Looks like I have to give up on upgrading my parts. Maybe I should discuss with Dr. Kuseno about installing muscle upgrades.

DS: By the way Genos, I saw there are monsters in this to choose from, can I give them a go?

G: Sure, but Carnage Kabuto is the strongest monster who’s data is stored.

DS: Is that so… That’s unfortunate.

G: However, you can fight a ghost of yourself from the data collected.

Z: Wait a minute, that means, there are also ghosts of us right?

MB: So that means, it is possible to have Genos vs Metal Bat, and Zombieman vs Darkshine?

MB: That sounds interesting. Fight with my ghost, Darkshine!

DS: Ummm…

Button click and computer starting sounds

OPM OST Main Theme plays

DS: Oh, I pressed some strange button.

MB: Huh? What the hell is that enemy?

Sk: A black silhouette came out…

MB: Huh? That silhouette… I feel like i’ve seen it somewhere…

DS: Well, it’s not gonna be stronger than Carnage Kabuto. Let’s just test it out.

DS: Hmph!

boom

C: Player, Superalloy Darkshine: Incapacitated in battle. Simulation completed.

DS: Eh...?

MB: What the hell!

Sk: A bug in the system?

G: That Ghost just now… Could it be…

Z: Genos, do you know anything?

MB: Hey! Select that guy once again! I’ll defeat it!

DS: Oh, alright.

DS: Huh? It won’t move.

MB: What’s going on, Genos?

G: I do not know

Darkshine pressing the button repeatedly

DS: Ahh… It’s no good… It won’t boot up. Looks like it broken.

MB: Genos do something!

G: No. We are done for today here.

MB: Haah?

G: There’s something I want to confirm.

MB: What happened to him all of a sudden…

Genos slams a door open

G: Saitama Sensei! I have returned back home.

S: Ahh, Genos. Where did you go off to earlier?

G: I went to repair and improve this machine.

S: Are you still playing with that thing…?

S: More importantly, hurry up and go fix my wall.

G: Saitama Sensei, please active this once again.

G: I updated, but the previously collected data is still inside

S: Sure, but why? Won’t the same thing happen again?

G: No…

S: What do you mean? Well anyway.

C: Player, Saitama: Commencing Simulation.

G: Inside the system, yesterday’s Saitama sensei has been added as a ghost.

G: In other words, an enemy of the same level as Saitama sensei was born inside the virtual world.

G: Of course, including me, there are no heroes who can win against an enemy like that.

G: Even if I let the others try, they’ll probably think it’s just damaged strength balance data as the result of the machine being broken.

G (thinking): This enemy has power unlike anything Saitama sensei has ever faced, he will be forced into a hard battle against his own ghost… sensei has been down since yesterday putting holes in his wall, is this a bad time? Will not being able to one punch his ghost affect him mentally? What if a defeated sensei loses his mojo and retire as hero? This is a huge, putting sensei in such danger in order to satisfy my curiosity...no, I have to explain to sensei what I’m getting him into…

G: Sensei...!! The enemy you are about to fight is-

boom

G: Sen… sei… I was too late...

S: What?

G: Please excuse me, I failed to let you know beforehand…

G: Your current enemy was, yesterday’s Saitama Sensei…

S: Oh, was that so?

G: As such, even though Saitama Sensei lost, it was against himself at full power, please don’t mind it too much…

S: Nope, it was over in One Punch.

G: Yes… eh? You... you won?

S: Obviously. Why would I lose to yesterday’s me?

extensive scribbling

S: H- Hey… What are you writing down in the memo?

Genos nods to himself

G: However, that you won in one punch, that’s incomprehensible.

G: Sensei is far more powerful today than he was yesterday… is that even possible?

S: It’s just unreliable simulated data right?

G: No but-

S: GENOS!

G: Yes!?

Serious Saitama: It doesn’t matter how strong you become in the virtual world, it will never change who you are in real life. I learned this lesson the hard way as a kid when I was so obsessed with leveling up in an RPG I missed my entire summer holiday.

S: Now enough virtual reality... GO FIX THE WALL!

G: Ye… Yes!

[vemodalarna]

The sun will be guiding you

Characters: PIXAL, Zane Julien (mentioned: Nya, Cole) Ships: PIXAL/Nya (Samuraishipping), Zane/Cole (Glaciershipping) (mentioned) Word count: 2001 Description: PIXAL asks Zane about love.

i wrote this back in september to y’know. break my basically year long record of not completing fics. i wrote this in one sitting, in the middle of the night, on my phone - which, frankly, i think is becoming a trend. Ninjago came out of nowhere and has me hooked so cheers!!

-----

PIXAL was idly watching the numbers and code flash by on the screen when Zane knocked on the door. She quietly shut down the diagnostics program, disappointed in her findings; nothing was out of the ordinary. All of her systems were optimized and functioning. No mentions of a hiccup or virus anywhere. The code was flawless, like it always seemed to be.

"Come in," she called out, while swiftly but carefully pulling out the clunky cable from the left side panel on her chest, ejecting it with a soft pop . Zane sheepishly poked his head out from behind the opening of the cave, giving PIXAL a little smile.

"There you are," he sighed, an artificial sound created by his voicebank. PIXAL found it odd, but Zane had previously stated that it made him feel 'more like he belonged' - that it made it less obvious that he wasn’t organic like his family all were. "Nya's been looking for you. She said you malfunctioned and refused to let her help?"

PIXAL clenched her jaw and looked away from Zane. Shame flooded her system as she recounted the days events- a totally normal sparring fight between Nya and herself. Losing wasn’t the shameful part; it was how her body reacted to...

Shaking her head, PIXAL stood up from her chair- too fast if Zane's expression was anything to go by. Weaving around the mechanisms and machines, she quickly picked up a sweater that was lying around in the Samurai X hide-out. She didn't need to wear clothes, but she knew that it led to discomfort or flushed looks her way whenever she didn't.

"I am fine, Zane," PIXAL hummed, while pulling the sweater over her head. "You do not need to worry."

Zane frowned slightly, closing the door behind him and crossing his arms. "Forgive me for being blunt, but your powers shutting off because of a simple throw over the shoulder is not 'fine'."

"I ran a diagnostics test," she replied, her eyes drifting to the now turned off screen. "Nothing is out of the ordinary. My systems are optimized and running and I cannot detect any physical injuries that would cause me to turn off." PIXAL sat back down on the chair in front of the control panels, watching as Zane furrowed his brow and grabbing the spare chair that Nya used and placing it next to her.

"Then why did you?" Zane sat down with a soft clunk , his fans whirring softly. His blue eyes flashed, and he sat back with a concerned look on his face. "My sensors cannot indicate anything wrong. Something, however, is clearly distracting you. Your movements were less sharp than usual today."

PIXAL's fans kicked in, and she forcefully archived the wave of embarrassment she felt in her systems. Her cooling liquid rushed through her body, hurrying to lower the temperature of her core and limbs before anything fried or shut off. "Yes, Zane, I noted."

Zane didn't respond, so PIXAL took the time to sort through and analyze the memories from the sparring. Nothing was vastly different from her usual trainings. Everything was running smoothly, until she changed sparring partners to... Hm.

"Zane, how did you..." PIXAL started slowly, breaking the silence. "How did you figure out your feelings for Cole? How did you manage to define love ?"

The titanium nindroid sat up even straighter, somehow, at her question. "Ah, that is a complicated question."

PIXAL looked at Zane as his eyes flashed a darker blue and nervously scratched a hand behind his head. "Well, when did you realize you had acquired more than platonic love for him?"

"I will be fully honest with you, PIXAL," Zane chuckled, "I would have kept analyzing for decades why my systems reacted differently to him if it were not for him confessing to me first."

"What do you mean?"

"Love is very hard to define, and thus to understand. For the longest time I assumed that I would never feel romantic love," He explained, looking thoughtfully at the Samurai X suit stationed in the room. "And yet, after Yang and Stix, I found that my feelings for Cole were different compared to the others. It was not necessarily stronger or more confusing than the feelings I felt for the other in our chosen family, but. It was not the same."

Humming, PIXAL looked down at her hands. That was indeed similar to how she is currently feeling about Nya. Not worse or better, but different to how she reacts to Zane and the rest of the ninja. Stroking her hands across the soft blue fabric of the sweater (of Nya’s sweater, she realised with a start- she must’ve left it here when she last visited), her sensors tingled as the static of her fans mingled with her thoughts.

Ever since her reveal as Samurai X, Sensei Wu had recruited her for proper training. PIXAL didn't need it, as she was a nindroid - she could simply download data and put it to use without training, but Sensei Wu insisted. In usual Sensei Wu fashion, he said a probably inspirational quote, but PIXAL had a hard time picking it apart and understanding it.

PIXAL won nearly every time someone sparred against her. Analysing and predicting her opponents’ movements was something that took no energy at all; Kai was too hectic, and not planned out. Jay flails too often and can't control his strength. Cole tends to rely too much on brute force when he loses his concentration, and while Zane is the most balanced out of the bunch, he can get too caught up in the numbers to fight freely. Nya, however... Nya was the hardest to predict and beat.

Nya banters while she fights, her words smooth and knowing, yet sharp and biting. She's light on her feet despite being a sturdier and shorter build. While she mostly stays in one fighting style, she's versatile and can quickly change to defensive from offensive, and vice versa. Despite being serious in actual brawls and scenarios, Nya laughs and jokes as she spars and trains. It distracts PIXAL too much to predict her blows.

That is just what happened that day. PIXAL got distracted while analyzing a jab Nya had thrown at her, giving Nya the perfect opportunity to strike. She had grabbed PIXAL by the arm and flipped her. Nya had just laughed that loud and spontaneous laugh at her, and extended her hand to help PIXAL up.  

From PIXAL's view Nya looked like nothing PIXAL had ever seen before. Around her hair was a soft and warm glow from the sun, a halo illuminating her face and changing the black tint of the loose curly strands sticking out from her ponytail. Her deep brown eyes had sparkles in them and her soft, round flushed cheeks pushed up against them. Between her eyes, her nose was scrunched up, the way it did when Nya smiled genuinely. PIXAL found that she longed to see her this way more often, to make Nya happy and to hear her laugh. How she wished she could stay in that position and admire the woman in front of her more often.

It... It was too much information for PIXAL to handle. Warning notifications clouded her vision, her fans going haywild inside her chest and her motherload heating up. A strange feeling arose in her chest, and the last thing she saw was Nya's expression turning concerned as her systems shut down.

"In what ways was it different?" PIXAL asked curiously. “How did your attraction to Cole change… Well, your behavior?” Zane smiled at her, warm and flustered.

"I was, ah, distracted, mostly. I found myself thinking about him more. I would feel elevated yet terribly anxious whenever I was around him- which was not good for our team, by the way," Both nindroids chuckle, the unnoticed tenseness in PIXAL's shoulders melting away. "My system would generate daydreams and thoughts about him, possible what-if's that were so much more... Involved than it had ever done with the others. My fans would work in overdrive to keep my circuits from frying around him. I put so much of my energy into unwillingly noticing small details, from the cracks in his hands or the texture of his hair. Wondering and wishing about him."

PIXAL softly clenched her fist, remember how pretty Nya was under the sun, and how she had an undeniable need to remember everything about that moment.

"So when he admitted to having... Romantic feelings- you understood what it was that you felt?"

"No, not exactly," Zane grinned at PIXAL's confused face. "I understood that I, too, felt a romantic need to be with him, but I never could, nor have defined love. I still get warnings and emotions that I cannot compute properly or solve. The important difference, however, is that I know the source, and it makes the whole experience easier to pick apart and understand."

Nodding, PIXAL subconsciously opened up her memories. How many are there of her not understanding the signals her systems and body are giving her? How many feature Nya, with her smiles and laughter and wild hjinks and theories that leave PIXAL speechless and bewildered every time? How many memories has she purposefully archived, because they were not memories at all; rather figments of her imagination, puzzling together fantasies of the two together, or of obscure details featuring Nya? PIXAL simply didn't know.

“I do not know if I am capable of loving someone,” PIXAL admitted, her voicebank rumbling quietly. “I do not believe that is in my programming. In the very least not romantic love.”

“And I doubt it is in mine,” Zane chuckled. “Yet, I found that I had fallen for Cole. You are the only one who can find out whether or not you are able to love, PIXAL. And if you aren’t capable of romantic love, you are clearly capable of platonic love.”

"If I were to hypothetically catch these feelings- romantic feelings - for someone," she unsurely spoke, feeling her eyes flash pink and her cooling liquid circulating. Warnings popped up in the corner of her eye how her sensors were overloading slightly. "What would be the best course of action?"

"That depends from person to person," Zane nodded, clasping his fingers together with a click. "What would hypothetically work best for you and your counterpart? What is your raw, unfiltered instinct? Consider before you do anything, but do not overanalyze. You will only get stuck in the numbers and analytics of it all- and those are not to be trusted when it comes to things such as love. They are usually unreliable, since love is an unpredictable phenomenon."

Frowning slightly, PIXAL made a mental note to save this for future use.

"I must go," Zane stated, sheepishly standing up and moving his chair out of the way. "The chicken I am roasting will soon be done. If you wish, I will let you know once dinner is ready."

"I do not eat."

"No, but good company truly never hurts." His footsteps echoed along with his words as he wandered towards the cave entrance.

"Thank you, Zane," PIXAL called out, successfully stopping Zane in his tracks and making him look over his shoulder. "For everything."

"It is no problem," he smiled and resumed his walking. "Good luck with Nya!" he called out right before stepping outside the cave and closing the door, ignoring PIXAL’s offended yelp and giving a clear chuckle in the distance.

Embarrassed but satisfied, PIXAL busied herself with cleaning up the cables she used for her diagnostics check. Nya’s shirt hung around her shoulders, it’s shape too short for her chest but yet too big to sit snuggly. PIXAL found that she didn’t wish for it to fit any other way. The soft blue contrasted well with the purple electric veins that adorned her arms, the color family intermingling aesthetically. Smiling, she decided that was more than enough talk for one day.

[scripttorture]

Medical Testing Part 1: a quick introduction to drug testing

I get a fair number of asks based around this classic sci fi scenario: a person is captured and held in a scientific facility for ‘testing’.

Usually I suggest authors choose between writing this as a pseudo-scientific torture scenario* or as an unethical experimentation scenario. But I haven’t actually discussed what ethical testing practices look like or how they differ from unethical ones. In fact I haven’t really spoken about what medical testing looks like at all. So I thought I’d put together a quick introduction to medical testing and the ethics surrounding it.

I ended up splitting this in two, because it’s a complex topic and the original post ended up rather long.

It’s probably helpful to start with the basics: the scientific method.

We tend to use the word ‘science’ to talk about technological advancements or discoveries but what the word really means to scientists is this: we learn more about the way things work by testing our ideas.

Science is effectively a demand for proof. If you think a particular treatment or medicine would help someone a logical argument isn’t enough. You need to back up the claim.

Backing up that claim now is tougher then it was historically because our understanding of how we interact with our work and how patients respond to doctors has improved.

Experiments and medical trials now acknowledge the fact that scientists and doctors are flawed individuals: we’re biased because we want treatments to succeed. Which means even if we don’t think we’re manipulating data we tend to emphasise the positives in our results.

One of the ways we try to avoid this is by involving more people, so that the people analysing the data didn’t generate it. Another is with double blind trials, which means that no one involved in a medical study knows which patient is tacking the medicine being tested.

Most (but not all) medical trials also use placebos, which in this context means something that looks like the real medicine but doesn’t contain anything which will have a medicinal effect. So if the medicine being tested was in an inhaler the placebo group would have identical inhalers, which contain no medicine.

Some medical tests will use a licensed drug (ie one that’s already passed testing and been shown to work) instead of a placebo. So you’re comparing a new potential medicine against an established medicine.

I’ve mentioned it before but for those of you who don’t know I work in the pharmaceutical industry. My day job is testing inhalers. The part of it I focus on is whether or not a medicine can actually be inhaled by a patient and where in the lungs it would end up.

There are quite a few practical reasons for using a particular delivery method (ie taking a medicine in a specific way such as a pill, an IV or an inhaler). If you’re sending the medicine directly to the part of the body it effects you can (usually) reduce the dose and this reduces the side effects.

Some ways of taking medicines are also easier to use then others: any one can use an inhaler, it’s a lot more difficult to inject yourself or someone else.

A lot of the things I’m going to describe here are UK based: I’ve worked in drug testing for a while but only in the UK, laws and standard procedures vary by country.

I’m also not going to talk about animal testing. I realise a lot of people have strong feelings about it and that’s not an argument I want to get involved in. The most I’m going to do is describe when animal testing would typically take place and how long it would last for. The focus here is on in vitro (‘in glass’, chemical testing) and human trials.

Developing a drug to the point where it’s used by patients can take around 15-20 years. Here’s what it looks like.

Drug Discovery and Preclinical testing

How do scientists find new medicines? Well- most of the time we guess.

Some scientists build up a database of diverse compounds. Often they'll be taken from bacteria, fungi or plants and purified.

Some scientists will work from existing drugs or compounds that almost passed the testing stage. They'll make a selection of modifications and build up a database of related compounds that way.

Sometimes if we have a 'target' for a particular disease, usually an enzyme or protein we need the drug to interact with, drugs can be designed to increase the chance of interaction.

But whatever the initial approach the majority of drug testing today relies getting a lot of chemical compounds, throwing them at a disease causing agent and seeing what kills it. Potential drugs are mixed with cancerous human cells, normal human cells, bacteria cultures, fungal cultures, parasites etc and the list of what kills a disease (or diseased cell), without killing normal tissue is where we get potential drugs.

Leads that are considered promising usually go on to animal testing of some description. This overall process of identifying a potential drug can take anything from 5-10 years and most promising leads won't end up as useful drugs.

Clinical testing

This is when things get serious and expensive.

Typically testing begins with a small group of healthy volunteers. About 100 people will be given the drug to see- well if it poisons them or causes serious side effects that would stop it being useful as a treatment. This is often called a Phase 1 trial.

Depending on the kind of drug ‘serious’ side effects can be a pretty broad term. A friend of mine takes medication which can, potentially, make someone’s skin die and start to fall off in big chunks. But because this happens rarely, because his illness is serious and because there are very few other treatment options- this is considered an acceptable risk.

On a similar note modern cancer treatments include mustard gas. Because it works and it’s better then dying.

Phase 1 can take 1-2 years.

The next stage of testing is generally when patients start getting the drug. They typically involve a few hundred people. This is called Phase 2.

Part of the initial testing with patients is about finding out how helpful the drug is in practice. It’s giving it to a small group of people, in small doses, and monitoring them for improvements and side effects. This will be done several times in different groups to control for as many factors as possible.

Imagine a medicine designed to treat a particular kind of infection (bacterial, yeast, fungal etc). Lots of different people might be prone to the infection especially if the infection occurs with other diseases or conditions. So one test group might be patients who only have the infection and the second test group might be patients who have the infection and are taking immune-suppressant drugs (for example organ transplant patients). Another group might be patients who have the infection and use particular kinds of medical equipment, like respirators.

This is the stage of testing where placebos come in.

It’s well known that giving people something that looks like a treatment can result in a clinical improvement. Modern medical testing requires doctors and scientists to show that a drug or treatment is better then faking it.

And the way we typically test this is with double blind trials. Patients are randomly assigned to a group that’s given the drug and a group that’s given- something that looks like the drug.

Which can be more complicated then you’d think. I say as someone who has never been involved in a discussion about how on earth we could make a placebo that thick and yellow.

The ‘double blind’ part means that both the patients and the people conducting the study don’t know who is taking the placebo and who is taking the drug.

This means any significant improvement (or the opposite) that takes place across an entire group is definitely due to what the patients were taking.

Phase 2 can take 2-3 years.

The final stage of clinical testing involves a lot more people, sometimes several thousand. This is when researchers look at effects across a larger population, ways patients might misuse drugs (ie not store them or take them properly) and whether the drug is actually better then drugs we already have. It’s generally called Phase 3.

Phase 3 is usually the final hurdle before a drug can be used. If a medicine passes Phase 3 all the remaining hurdles are to do with legal reviews and approval.

Testing lasts a lot longer and it can also include what happens when patients stop taking the drug.

This stage is the cumulation of all previous testing. It’s about showing that the medicine helps most patients, doesn’t have severe side effects, is consistently better then other treatments (or has advantages other treatments don’t). It’s about collecting as much data on the medicine, from as wide a group of patients as possible.

And then analysing all of that data to (hopefully) show a statistically significant improvement for the vast majority of patients.

It can take anything from 3-5 years.

Additional Testing

Everything I’ve described will be repeated at different dose levels, with different formulas and sometimes different methods of delivery.

Even if the drug passes testing doesn’t stop. Shelf life is tested in different conditions. Rapid temperature changes are used to mimic being transported by air. The crystal structure of the drug is examined. So is the way it interacts with other materials, such as the bulking agents in most pills.

And this testing is important. Subtle changes, such as in the crystal structure of a drug, can have a big effect on how useful the medicine actually is.

Ritonavir was found to change crystal structure when it was stored. Which changed how easily it dissolved and how easily it was absorbed into patient’s bodies. This made the difference between an effective treatment and a dose so low it had no real impact.

Some studies will also monitor patients for years after Phase 3 to check that more long term use of the medicine over years doesn’t cause problems.

Compassionate Use

Compassionate use trials are when doctors make an ethical argument for using a drug before testing has finished.

What that tends to mean is that a patient is in a terminal condition and every other available treatment has failed. But there’s something part-way through testing that might help.

These trials aren’t scientific, we actually consider them anecdotal evidence. They don’t involve enough patients to be statistically valid and there’s no placebo or control group.

And most of the time they don’t work any better then the other treatments doctors have tried. But sometimes they do.

Compassionate use is the argument that sometimes, rarely, the ethical thing to do is break the rules so that patients can have every possible chance to live.

What does all this mean?

Possibly an obvious point but medical testing, done right, is hard. It takes a lot of time and effort and money.

We had a presentation on a compassionate use study for one of the drugs my company tested a few days ago. About a hundred people who’d been involved in the testing or supporting it turned up.

There will have been at least another dozen in the hospital running the study. Another dozen people were involved in the original discovery of the compound.

The drug is working incredibly well and it’s being fast tracked. It’s probably only going to have been 10-12 years work in total.

Science takes time, but it also takes team work.

And that’s an important thing to consider if you want to write something that actually looks scientific: the effort involved. The people, the specialist set up of the building, the equipment, the records and the time.

Fiction has a tendency to present scientific advances as the work of lone geniuses. In reality it’s usually dozens of small groups of people, each with different specialist areas, getting together to try and do something incredible. We move forward, not in bounds but in inches.

And we do it by carefully recording, controlling and analysing everything, from the quality of light to the temperature of the room**.

So if you want your villain to be a scientist, think about everything that implies. Not just their intelligence but their attention to detail, their record keeping and above all their ability to work with others.

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

*For previous discussions of my problems with portraying torture as high tech see here.

**Both of these factors have had measurable effects on compounds I’ve worked with.

[script-a-world]

Hi, I'm trying to connect land in my non earth world with tunnels under the ocean. I notice that in real life, tunnels are extremely expensive and if I could have tunnels 1000km long, that sounds impossible. But obviously that only counts real world expenses. So, yeah, how am I to judge expenses in a sci-fi setting.

Tex: A construction project like tunnels often need to consider two things when pricing the project out: cost of supplies and how hazardous the project is to build. The two are interdependent, in that the safety of the project is increased the more advanced the technology and materials are for construction.

Fritchley Tunnel in Derbyshire, England, is one of the oldest surviving railway tunnels in the world, built in 1793 - I’m not certain how it was built (Archaeology Data Service), but I’d reckon that some sort of pickaxe was used by manual laborers. Depending on how you count it, manual labor may be either cheap or expensive because of potential pay, injury incidence rate, and skill of the laborers. Since sci-fi doesn’t necessarily mean futuristic, methods that we consider old-fashioned may be the preferred method, as would laborers pressed into service from previous occupations such as slavery, jail, or poverty.

From what I’ve been able to discern, tunnels carry their own unique risks of laborer and equipment endangerment, as one wrong move and the entire thing can collapse around your ears. Preempting potential disasters at the work site may or may not incur a net financial burden, so some unscrupulous project managers may turn a blind eye in order to cut corners in the budget. This may be especially so if the cost of adding on new labor is cheaper than securing the work site.

The level of commonly-accessible technology is dictated by the constraints of the economy of which this project participates in, and the capital upon which the participating companies and/or organizations (non-profits, governments, etc) draw their wealth from. Sketching out the parameters of this project minus the fictional worldbuilding part of it might be more helpful in this case, and after that you can throw some numbers at the problem and see what looks plausible in terms of cost (do we really spend 500 space dollars on a hammer or not?).

Further Reading

PDF - Quantifying the costs and benefits of occupational health and safety interventions at a Bangladesh shipbuilding company by Irene Thiede and Michael Thiede

PDF - The business case for safety and health at work: Cost-benefit analyses of interventions in small and medium-sized enterprises by European Agency for Safety and Health at Work – EU-OSHA

Constablewrites: In the last 10 years, the cost of solar panels has decreased over 60%. This is largely due to advances in technology making the cells more powerful and cheaper to build (though increased competition in the market is likely in play as well). A century ago, owning an automobile was the provenance of the wealthy; now the average American family owns two. In other words, the cost of technology isn’t really fixed.

Your world’s level of advancement in this particular niche is likely to be a factor of how long they’ve been doing it, how much demand there is for improved processes, who benefits from the project and how, what alternatives there are to doing such a project, and what resources they have available.

So if this world decided on intercontinental tunnels, what makes traveling underwater a more compelling option than traveling across or above it? Are there unique dangers on the surface that make tunneling overall a safer and more efficient option? Is the planet’s geological makeup more malleable than ours? Do they have some significant fuel source or advanced automation that would make such a project more feasible? Is there something about the society’s culture or values that favors tunnels? Is there enough trade and migration between continents to justify such a large-scale project? How did that movement happen before the tunnels were complete, and is there a reason they can’t just keep doing that?

Basically, economics isn’t so much about specific dollar amounts as it is about trade-offs: what else could they be doing with those resources other than this? What can they not put resources into if they allocate them to this? In our world, it wouldn’t make sense to do this sort of thing because travel by air or sea is already possible and is cheaper, easier, and faster in comparison to tunneling--especially since just getting to most of the ocean floor is something we haven’t figured out how to do easily, to say nothing of staging a massive engineering project there. But on a world with shallow seas and an inhospitable atmosphere, the calculus would look very different.

tl;dr: If you want these tunnels, you have to build a world where they are (or seem to be) the most reasonable option.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING SUMMER

In Lisp, all variables are effectively pointers. Why go work as an ordinary employee for a big company, or have they abandoned the center for the suburbs?1 Especially if it meant independence for my native land, hacking.2 It's hard to engage an audience it's better to start with what goes wrong and try to trace it back to the root causes. A lot of the new startups would create new technology that further accelerated variation in productivity is far from the only source of economic inequality, the former because founders own more stock, and the rate at which it changes is itself speeding up.3 When we first started Y Combinator we have some kind of secret weapon—that he was harming his future—that hacking was cold, precise, and methodical, and that was more than enough technical skill. There is a name now for what we were: an Application Service Provider, or ASP. How little money it can take to start a company of any size to get software written.

I needed to remember, if I could give an example of a powerful macro, and say there!4 Design means making things for humans. Wrong. Big companies also don't pay people the right way to get an accurate drawing is not to make the poor richer. This sort of thing was the rule, not better off, as more than a plan A. In some ways, this assumption makes life a lot easier for the users and for us as well. Why did desktop computers take over?5 Programmers have to worry about infrastructure. For the first week or so we intended to make this point diplomatically, but in many ways pushes you in the opposite direction.6 Similarly, good new problems are not to be had for the asking. Don't be too legalistic about the conditions under which they're allowed to leave.

Now, when someone asks me what I do, I look them straight in the eye and say I'm designing a new dialect of Lisp;-Though useful to present-day union organizers rather than an attack on early ones. I think mathematicians also believe this. In the middle you have people who are poor or rich and figure out why. We were just able to develop stuff in house, and that if grad students could start startups, they'll start startups. Eric Raymond here. Which seems to me one of the most interesting differences between research and design. In fact, it may be slightly faster. We were terrified of starting a startup, there are even worse tradeoffs than these. I think about why I voted for Clinton over the first George Bush, it wasn't because I was shifting to the left or right in their morning-after analyses are like the financial reporters stuck writing stories day after day about the random fluctuations of the stock market.

This metaphor doesn't stretch that far. Maybe it will also be your cell phone. The books I bring on trips are often quite virtuous, the sort of engagement you get when speaking ad lib. It doesn't necessarily mean being self-sacrificing. For the first week or so we intended to make this an ordinary desktop application. You can't trust authorities.7 They were, as a rule, not better off, as more than one with a 50% chance of winning has to pay more than one discovered when Christmas shopping season came around and loads rose on their server. I'm letting you in on the secret early. But since then the west coast has just pulled further ahead.8 It is not the way it's portrayed on TV. And if you're writing a program that attacked the servers themselves should find them very well defended.

Sometimes I can think with noise.9 Our only expenses in that phase were food and rent. It's hard to imagine now, but when they do get paged at 4:00 AM, they don't think of themselves that way. When you switch to this new model, you realize how much software development is affected by the reactions of those around them, and c they're individually inconsistent. If you want, but not totally unlike your other friends. And that might be a great thing. As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer wouldn't use either of them.10 I'm a little embarrassed to say, I never said anything publicly about Lisp while we were working on Viaweb. As usual, by Demo Day about half the startups were doing something significantly different than they planned. So there you have it.

Notice I said what they need, not what a piece of code. Fortunately, there were few obstacles except technical ones. And more to the point of view. And creating wealth, as a rule, not better off, as more than a plan A. You never had to worry about those. If you work this way too.11 Because painters leave a trail of work behind them, you can just turn off the service. I could tell I knew how to program computers, or what life was really like in preindustrial societies, or how to program better than most people doing it for a living. I think few realize the huge spread in the value of 20 year olds.12 Prep schools openly say this is one reason intranet software will continue to do so but be content to work for someone else would get an even colder reception from the 19 year old was Bill Gates? Programs.13 The way to get in the software as soon as they got their first round of outside investors 36x.

It allows you to give an example of this rule; if you could count on investors being interested even if you're not certain, you should get summer jobs at places you'd like to work. You have the users' data right there on your disk.14 And you don't have to be poked with a stick to get them to stay is to give them enough that they don't dress up. Only 13 of these were in product development. No one will look that closely at it. You have the users' data right there on your disk.15 At any rate, the result is that scientists tend to make their fortunes will continue to do so much besides write software.16 So startup culture may not merely be different in the way of having the next. Though we were comparatively old, we weren't tied down by jobs they don't want to, but they didn't actually drop out of college and it tanks, you'll end up at 23 broke and a lot who get rich by taking money from the rich. If you write the laws very carefully, that is a good idea—but we've decided now that the party line should be to discover surprising things. This was done entirely for PR purposes. What you're afraid of competition.

Notes

Management consulting.

If you're expected to do work you love, or boards, or even being Genghis Khan is probably a losing bet for a couple hundred years or so and we ran into Yuri Sagalov. Most of the reason the founders. In fact the decade preceding the war had been a waste of time on is a new version from which they don't know. 6% of the products I grew up with much greater inconveniences than that.

Even in English, our sense of a startup enough to invest in a safe environment, and then a block or so and we did not become romantically involved till afterward. They seem to be hard on the grounds that a startup is rare. Companies often wonder what to do whatever gets you there sooner.

9999 and.

Globally the trend has been around as long as the web have sucked—A Spam Classification Organization Program. The point where things start with consumer electronics.

People and The Old Way. But if you tell them what to do video on-demand, because you can't even claim, like the bizarre consequences of this essay talks about programmers, the other cheek skirts the issue; the point where it was briefly in Britain in the Ancient World, Economic History Review, 2:9 1956,185-199, reprinted in Finley, M.

Inside their heads a giant house of cards is tottering. In fact the less powerful language in it.

The only people who might be 20 or 30 times as much income. Selina Tobaccowala stopped to think about, like arithmetic drills, instead of editors, and astronomy. Incidentally, the police treat people more equitably. There can be done at a famous university who is highly regarded by his peers will get funding, pretty much regardless of how to use those solutions.

For example, because it doesn't cost anything. What will go away. In a startup in a deal to move from London to Silicon Valley like the increase in trade you always see when restrictive laws are removed. Come work for us now to appreciate how important it is certainly part of a safe environment, but mediocre programmers is the discrepancy between government receipts as a technology startup takes some amount of damage to the size of a startup, as on a map.

Success here is that they've already decided what they're going to need to run an online service, this would work.

But no planes crash if your school, secretly write your dissertation in the right sort of wealth, not like soccer; you don't know of no Jews moving there, only Jews would move there, and power were concentrated in the imprecise half.

The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, many of the art itself gets more random, the increasing complacency of managements.

For example, the laser, it's this internal process in their target market the shoplifters are also startlingly popular on Delicious, but since it was 10 years ago.

In a project like a core going critical.

How could these people make the right not to stuff them with comments. The state of technology, companies that an investor, than a product of number of discrepancies currently blamed on various forbidden isms.

If you did that in practice that doesn't lose our data. Anything that got built this way is basically a replacement mall for mallrats.

Thanks to Mike Arrington, Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, Patrick Collison, and Paul Buchheit for sharing their expertise on this topic.

[myalgicencephalomyelitiscfstom]

Trial By Error: NHS ME/CFS Clinics Lax on Treatment Harms, Study Finds 16 July 2019

By David Tuller, DrPH

In the last few years, the Journal of Health Psychology has provided a valuable platform for researchers, academics, and other experts who have challenged the claims made in the discredited PACE trial and other research from the CBT/GET ideological brigades. Last month, the journal published a revealing and useful paper from four authors–three smart members of the patient/advocacy community, along with an academic psychologist.

The paper is called “Monitoring treatment harm in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: A freedom-of-information study of National Health Service specialist centres in England.” It documents serious limitations in how or even whether NHS specialist services educate patients about about potential treatment harms and how or whether these services monitor such harms.

I asked the lead author–Graham McPhee–for a description of what he and his co-authors did and why they did it and what they found. (His co-authors are Adrian Baldwin, Tom Kindlon, and psychology professor Brian Hughes.) He sent me the following on behalf of the entire group.

**********

Summary

For years, patients with ME/CFS have complained that CBT, or more often GET, made their condition very much worse. The number of complaints, shown consistently through surveys, indicate that centres should certainly be aware of such patients. We decided to look at how clinics monitored and recorded such outcomes, to see how they dealt with harms from the treatments.

We wrote to 57 specialist NHS ME/CFS centres in England: some were no longer operating as centres, some were being operated by private contractors and so were not obliged to answer our questions, some did not reply, despite a reminder, and two stated that they did not offer any rehabilitative therapies. That left us with the answers from 38 centres, which we analysed.

Surprisingly, of the 17 clinics that provided data on harms, all reported that no harms had occurred in their clinics in the year-long period that we’d asked about. But surveys done by ME charities show that large numbers of patients report deteriorating after CBT and GET – and so do the clinics’ own data, according to a recent study conducted by Simon Collin and Esther Crawley:

https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-017-2437-3

So this claim by the clinics in our survey that no harms occurred seems a bit optimistic. Why the mismatch?

One possibility may lie in the fact that, in every one of the few clinics that were able to report their drop-out figures to us, all had patients who dropped out of the therapies for unknown reasons. How many of these patients could have been harmed by CBT or GET but found it easier to drop out than to report it? In addition, a number of clinics reported tailoring each patient’s treatment individually, and we do not know whether a patient would be counted as a dropout if they felt worse on GET and chose to stop it but continued to see the therapist as part of their individualised therapy.

Also, no clinic reported telling patients explicitly that they could be worse after their course of therapy than before. This raises doubts as to whether many clinics are even on the lookout for adverse side-effects to their therapies, and whether patients feel able to raise such concerns. Indeed one booklet on GET advised, “If GET is correctly undertaken it will not harm you.” Patients might take that to imply that if they are harmed by GET, it’s the patient’s fault for doing it incorrectly – making it less likely that a patient will report the harm.

Another possibility for clinics reporting zero harms is that patients have tried to report harms but that clinics haven’t recognised the harms as such and so haven’t recorded them. Only one clinic reported having guidance for staff on how to recognise harm. It was worrying to find one centre stating, in response to our question about numbers of patients harmed, “This is making an assumption that treatments we provide are harmful. If any treatment is contraindicated we would not provide it.” This seems to imply scepticism as to whether harm is even possible.

Several clinics reported warning patients about ‘setbacks’ or temporary worsening. But the fact that none mentioned warning patients about the possibility of being made worse after a course of CBT or GET raises the question of informed consent. If patients are to give properly informed consent to treatment, they surely need to be informed about the results of surveys showing deterioration after CBT and – especially – GET.

ME/CFS centres need to develop standardised methods for warning patients about harms, anticipating harms, preventing, and, where necessary, recording and remedying them. The clinics should stop rehabilitative therapies for any patient experiencing harm. The time seems to have come for a national system for reporting harms from rehabilitative treatments, similar to the UK’s Yellow Card system for drugs and medical devices.

CBT and GET and their variants are currently being reconsidered by NICE. We hope that our findings will feed into that decision-making process and that we have cast some light on what is going on in the specialist NHS ME/CFS centres.