#but how to find since i can't synthesize it on my own. is this how y'all feel about freehanding vs crochet patterns. this side bites lmao

[dailypokemoncrochet]

Website for if you haven't seen it yet! :D

Updates since last time: more stuff on the about page, a chatbox, a kudos button, gallery pages for Pokemon I haven't done yet for more seamless navigating with prev/next buttons.

I still haven't figured out the PC box thing yet! D:

So far I've tried doing some pagination/tab combo. I got as far as making the prev/next buttons with number auto changing in the middle, but couldn't figure out how to make it so the correct corresponding tabs would appear.

Also tried doing iframes with each PC box being its own file. Put one on the homepage but couldn't figure out how to style it right.

[respectthepetty]

Pride Petty Watch (The Untamed) 1/?

I let the crowd pick which two blacklisted shows I would watch from my Petty List, so I flew through the first one knowing I had this 50-episode beast waiting for me. People have warned me that the first two episodes wouldn't make sense, there are a ton of characters to keep track of, I need to watch it at normal speed, and I need to keep the sound on. Therefore, I was already mad before I hit play, yet somehow I started the first episode, blacked out, and emerged five episodes later.

Which means I like it so far, and here's some quick reasons why:

Before I start, these two better be an item because they are my favorite BTS song aka "🔥" and since I haven't seen them in the present yet, I'm fearing something happened to them in that great battle in the past, and if so, I'M GOING TO BE BE LIVID! I've had them for three whole minutes, and they are everything to me, so I feel this story is going to fuck me over.

Everyone is chasing after this golden black snitch, yet nobody is catching it, so although there is a lot of death happening, I'm laughing.

If you squint, My Stand-In and The Untamed are the same. Boys who fell off a cliff come back in another body only to live the same life with the same people and make the same bad decisions. Cool cool cool.

This current lecturer is stating nobody could find the body but he fell into fire/lava, so what body were they thinking they would find?! Also, don't think I didn't catch homeboy getting in trouble in the past for asking in class what happens when a spirit demands revenge and the instructor got upset because look where we are now! Possession of a body for the sake of revenge. Should've entertained the question, professor, because sixteen years later, it will come back to haunt you, literally.

And homeboy applied his own theory of making the possessed bodies work for him to fight the other body. He is a smart cookie, and that's why the original Moo Moo person gave his body up to him.

@dribs-and-drabbles, if this is why you told me I needed the sound on, I'm confident I'm not going to remember this melody. And how is he playing a leaf right now?

I can't take this seriously. This feels like an 80s music video, and he is about to hit me with the hottest synthesizer intro.

And the sword has the golden black snitch in it. *Pikachu face*

I can't play an instrument but for a DIY flute made out of bamboo on the spot, I thought his playing was excellent. For people being saved from being squashed, they are some haters, and I would have stopped playing just so they could suffer.

I picked up that sister is dead in the future, but her kid is a brat, and I would've been mean to him too.

And did the brother really kill him in that battle on the hill because when the entire crowd was like "you killed him, right?", he was looking like . . .

So this is the brat's daddy? It would make sense that a man who shut down an entire hotel for his party would have a son who sets 400 traps so nobody else can catch anything. The privilege is genetic.

I like him AND I respect him. He has priorities and they are to drink and party because even when he came back in that other body, he snatched the liquor. As the opening showed, he's here for a good time, not a long time.

I don't like Fuddy Duddy. He can remember 3,500 rules (this place is where fun goes to die), but couldn't remember to tell my party bro that his sister and brother were inside? Everybody just left homeboy without a note saying where they are, and Fuddy Duddy had the information, yet was too busy lecturing about rules. AND committed the ultimate party foul and wasted the liquor. Make that the 3,501th rule! He's lucky he can lay the synthesizer so well.

This is where the big battle is/was (Nightvale, Nightshade, NightWhatever), and I hope this man died in it because he is doing TOO MUCH! "I don't fear death; I fear boredom" YOU'RE boring! Shut up and go collect the pieces of that dumb rock, Thanos Jr., so we can get this battle going.

HE BROUGHT A BIRD INTO CLASS! This is the everyday American high school class.

Why is everyone in the Fire Nation so pissed? Is it because it's hot there? All of y'all are doing too much except for that sister and her brother. I know that brother was the zombie guy from the statue fight, so that means the main homeboy was talking to Fire Nation sister at the graves. That was her family's grave, and she must be a good person, who is probably dead now too.

So they can all play magical instruments? They're like Josie and the Pussycats, playing gigs between fighting crime.

The brat's dad is gold, the Cloud Recesses (what is this name about because they should be a lot more fun with a name like that?) are white and blue, and the Fire Nation is red, so it's odd that homeboy had the dark blue robes with red underneath before coming to school, and keeps getting really friendly with the fire people. Plus the cloud people's power is blue, but his comes out in bursts of red. Is his daddy really Fire Nation? Get Maury on the line.

So his bird buddy gave him porn, which he gave to Fuddy Duddy, who then ripped it up. No wonder why he is so good at school and remembers 3,500 rules. Got nothing but time on his hands since he isn't using his hands doing anything else by being so repressed.

Fuddy Duddy just said he doesn't touch people, yet in the very beginning he snatched homeboy's hand without hesitation, so he wouldn't fall to his death. Then, he snatched that premium liquor for him. I see you and your heart on your sleeve, my man! Just like this water demon, the feelings are sneaking up on you and snatching you up!

Should've bought her the comb, bro, because she's going to be dead after that big battle since she was sent to snoop for the Fire Nation. Even though she is trying to help her brother, I feel this will be y'alls Romeo and Juliet moment.

So the brother was always going to come back from the dead since he already was cursed(?), and my homeboy is once again proving to be a friend to all. I like you, and I will learn your name, hopefully by episode 28.

Only three marks healed in the present, so whoever is the last mark has to be one of these hoochies, and the more backstory I get, the more I think it's going to hurt when I find out who the last mark is.

Half these people have already died leading up to that big battle and the other half will die as homeboy sets out on his Kill Bill journey, so like . . .

"You and I have unfinished business"

*slams on the 'next' button*

[vampylily]

Notes from the new Rolling Stones Japan article with Pete and Patrick Pt.1 :

[WARNING: The article is in Japanese, I'm not a Japanese speaker. I'm machine translating the article from Japanese to Korean & English, and then doing paraphrasing in English. Thus, the wording is not entirely accurate, and may contain errors. Please don't consider this as a proper translation. This is so I can have a reference more than anything. ]

When the interviewer noted Patrick's Los Crudos t-shirt, he responded enthusiastically that it was a Chicago band! Pete was in a Napalm Death t-shirt.

Interviewer asked about how Summer Sonic was, especially since it was their first since 2019. Patrick said the show went like they hoped, which rarely happens (lol). Said Japanese audiences are special. He gets asked about how concerts in Japan are, but it's hard to explain unless you experience it. Said can't explain it well, but there's a lot of give and take of energy.

Interviewer asked about Pete saying there was a song inspired by Japan on the SMFS album. Pete said "The Kintsugi Kid" was the song about how he felt when he was in Japan, it's obvious by the title. "The Kintsugi Kid'' bridges "I Am My Own Muse" and "So Much (For) Stardust." Said Patrick wrote the songs but in his interpretation, the sonic landscape of the song reminds him of Japan.

Patrick said he's always been quite influenced by Japan, especially on this album. Said people might not register it from the sound, but he's been influenced by the Yellow Magic Orchestra & their synthesizer sounds. He didn't use much synthesizer on the album but a lot of the songs started with synthesizers. He got the same synthesizer Yellow Magic Orchestra used and started writing songs from there. He's a big fan of Studio Ghibli movies and loves Joe Hisaishi's music. Said when doing string/orchestra horn arrangements, he wanted to create a sound that was as appealing to the heart/poignant as his. Even though their music/sound was completely different, he wanted to try it. Said he especially tried to evoke the feeling he got on "The Pink Seashell."

Interviewer asked about TTTYG's 20th anniversary and how they could have done an anniversary tour but they didn't and instead released SMFS with gusto.

Pete said the most important thing is that you stick to what you think is right. Said there was a punk band he liked when he was younger, and they didn't change at all. Talked about how artists like David Bowie or the Clash changed their styles to almost unrecognizable lengths and how some fans left because of it. But when he listens to the albums after getting older, he can reflect on his own changes and find new appreciation for songs he might not have liked at the time.

Pete said celebrating the past too much feels patronizing and not very fall out boy-like. They continue making new music, sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't. Even if something doesn't work out as well, he's like [it is what it is/that happens], and that some people might say they liked it. He's got albums he likes and albums he dislikes from his own favourite artists. Said they always make new albums that challenge their past works. Of course they hope people like it, but getting good reviews/being appreciated isn't the only reason they continue making music.

Patrick said he doesn't like making an album to celebrate the 20th anniversary, or having an anniversary to showcase past songs. Reasons was that first, the past songs are always in rotation in their sets so they don't stop playing them. Second, like Pete said, they prefer to keep pursuing new music and that stance hasn't changed from 20 years ago. Said deviating from that feels dishonest like they're lying to themselves.

Pete was like [it's how Steven Spielberg didn't make E.T. Part 2.] Patrick was like [exactly!] and said that being honest with themselves was their pure form.

also there's a page 2 to the article but i'm tired :[. they talk about "emo" changing from a specific music genre to the word entering the mainstream vernacular, patrick talked about how when they started out they didin't consider themselves "emo," they were a hardcore band. said he liked playing hardcore though when he sang people used to tell him his voice was too cute. they focused on making the music they wanted to, and before they knew it, they were being called "emo." Pete talked about the word, how it encompasses too much, feeling restricted by that in the past, etc. Talked about wanting to become like Metallica in that the word Metallica has becomes its own thing, Metallica doesn't need a description, etc. Patrick talked about perfoming in Japan, from small venues way earlier to now, etc

-

-

I love long FOB articles and I quite liked this one.

Love that Patrick talked about musical inspirations and SMFS. It’s so cool to hear because I love how beautiful and grand the sounds are in SMFS, even with spoken tracks like The Pink Seashell or Baby Annihilation. 

Also him buying the same synthesizers is so real. He’s a music nerd <3 

They’ve been consistently talking about always wanting to make new music and looking to the future instead of the past. And getting questions about their sound changing since forever haha.

It's really cool that they're very self aware and how convinced they are about making new music. Love that Pete can look back at older albums and find new appreciation for them. I’d be down for another half dozen FOB albums if they are, so (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

The new Pete and Patrick photos!!! They've got such pretty eyes <333

[tangibletechnomancy]

How To Use AI To Fake A Scandal For Fun, Profit, and Clout

Or, I Just Saw People I Know To Be Reasonable Fall For A Fake "Ripoff" And Now I'm Going To Gently Demonstrate What Really Happened

So, we all know what people say about AI. It's just an automatic collage machine, it's stealing your data (as if the rest of the mainstream internet isn't - seriously, we should be using that knee-jerk disgust response to demand better internet privacy laws rather than try to beef up copyright so that compliance has to come at the beginning rather than the end of the process and you can be sued on suspicion of referencing, but I digress...), it can't create anything novel, some people go so far as to claim it's not even synthesizing anything, but just acting as a search engine and returning something run through a filter and "proving" it by "searching" for their own art and "finding" it.

And those are blatant lies.

The thing is, the reason AI is such a breakthrough - and the reason we memed with it so hard when DALL-E Mini and DALL-E 2 first dropped - is because it CAN create novel output. Because it CAN visualize the absurd ideas that no one has ever posted to the internet before. In fact, it would be a bigger breakthrough in computer science if we DID come up with an automatic collage machine - something that knows where to cut out a part of one image and paste it onto another, then smooth out the lighting and colors to make them fairly consistent, to make it look like what we would recognize as an image we're asking for? That would make the denoising algorithm on steroids that a diffusion model is look like child's play.

But, unlike the posts that claim that they're just acting as a collage maker at best and a search engine at worst, I'm not going to ask you to take my word for it (and stick a pin in this point, we'll come back to it later). I'm going to ask you to go to Simple Stable (or Craiyon, or the Karlo demo, if Google Colab feels too complicated for you - or if you like, do all of the above) and throw in a shitpost prompt or two. Ask for a velociraptor carousel pony ridden by a bunny. Ask for Godzilla fighting a wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man. Ask for an oil painting of a capybara wearing an ornate princess gown. Shitpost with it like we did before these myths took hold.

Now take your favorite result(s) and reverse image search them. Did you get anything remotely similar to your generated image? Probably not!

So then, how did someone end up getting a near perfect recreation of their work? Was that just some kind of wacky, one-in-a-million coincidence?

Well - oh no, look at that, I asked it for a simplistic character drawing and it happened to me too, it just returned a drawing of mine that I never even uploaded, and it's the worst drawing I've done since the fifth grade even just to embarrass me! Oh no, what happened, did they change things right under my nose, has digital surveillance gotten even WORSE?? Look, see, here's the original on the left, compare it to the output on the right - scary!! They're training on the contents of your computer in real time now, aaaagh!!

Except, of course, for the fact that the entire paragraph above was a lie and I did this on purpose in a way no one could possibly recreate from a text prompt, even with a perfect description.

How?

See, some models have this nifty little function called img2img. It can be used for anything from guiding the composition of your final image with a roughly drawn layout, to turning a building into a dragon...to post-processing of a hand-drawn image, to blatantly fucking lying about how AI works.

I took 5 minutes out of my day to crudely draw a character. I uploaded the image to this post. I saved the post as a draft. I stuck the image URL in the init_image field in Simple Stable, cranked the init strength up to 0.8, cleared all text prompts, and ran it. It did exactly what I told it to and tried to lightly refine the image I gave it.

If you see someone claiming that an AI stole their image with this kind of "proof", and the image they're comparing is not ITSELF a parody of an extremely well-known piece such as the Mona Lisa, or just so extremely generic that the level of similarity could be a coincidence (you/your favorite artist do/es not own the rule of thirds or basic fantasy creatures, just to name one family of example I've seen), this is what happened.

So from here you must realize that it is deeply insidious that posts that make these claims usually imply or even outright state that you should NOT try to recreate this but instead just take their word for it, stressing ~DON'T FEED THE MACHINE~. It's always some claim about "ohhh, the more you use them, the more they learn, I made a SACRIFICE so you don't have to" - but txt2img functions can't use your interaction to learn jack shit. There's no new information in a text prompt for them TO learn. Most img2img models can't learn from your input either, for that matter! I still recommend being careful about corporate img2img toys - we know that Facebook, for instance, is happy to try and beef up facial recognition for the WORST possible reasons - but if you're worried about your privacy and data harvesting, any given txt2img model is one of the least worrying things on the internet today.

So do be careful with your privacy online, and PLEASE use your very understandable knee-jerk horror response to how much extremely personal content can be found in training databases as a call to DEMAND better privacy laws ("do not track" should not be just for show ffs) and compliance with security protocols in fields that deal with very private information (COMMON CRAWL DOESN'T GO FAR OUT OF ITS WAY, IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ABLE TO GET ANY MEDICAL IMAGES THE PATIENTS DIDN'T SHARE THEMSELVES HOLY SHIT, SOME HOSPITAL WORKERS AND/OR MEDICAL COMMUNICATIONS DEVELOPERS BETTER BE GETTING FIRED AND/OR SUED) - but don't just believe a convenient and easy-to-disprove lie because it aligns with that feeling.

[mistype360]

retyping(?) @ten-of-imps

looper isfp (or alternatively and unlikely, infj)

I genuinely can't tell if the reason I am typing more people as loopers is because I am biased or because most people follow the iiee/eeii stack...

I mostly approached your typing question by question. towards the end I make my final judgement, but I tried to collect as much inference and deduction from your answers as I could before I made a typing.

viewing beauty as subjective is definitely high introverted function. it could be interpreted as high fi, especially with the "judgement" aspect of both the question as answer, but I didn't want to make assumptions too early. what I looked more for was where your subjectivity was coming from. you acknowledged the fact that different observers hold different perceptions of beauty - which is very much fi. even later in the question, you seem to assert your own fi judgement - which seems to me to be very healthy. the combination of acknowledging subjectivity but also having your own values/judgement.

something I found very interesting was your use of the word "convenient" towards how you describe you can "switch" your love for something depending on how much you care about it. when I read it, it seemed as if you didn't really feel it objectively, as a fe user would. applying a sense of love with no requisites. instead, it was something very personal, very subjective to the situation (fi).

for your personal values - I don't type on what the value is, but rather how you experience it. I also don't believe that just because it doesn't come immediately to you doesn't mean that you're not a fi user (because values are not usually consciously thought about).

if I did type based on your values I infer that you hold a sense of duty towards the things you do, which may/may not be fi.

you want to have integrity, but from the way you view yourself you are seemingly 'all over the place.' i wasn't entirely sure how to interpret what you meant by 'integrity' - is it that you want to be true to yourself or true to others? how do I even type someone who wants to be vs. someone who actually is?

I spent a bit of time thinking about this, and I decided that

for your question on power and military - I actually saw a lot of ni. you seem to look at the past to synthesize and spot patterns, which is part of how you make predictions/judgements about topics.

towards the end of it, however, you mentioned something about how you interpret power. you stated how you believe it's "having enough money to make free decisions and have plenty of possibilities to choose from, so you would never have to be stuck in a bad situation."

...this is very, very much isfp. there isn't much isfp info online, but from the one's there are, they are practically known for wanting freedom (even more then every other type 👀).

(um so this is the part of my typing where I get a little lazy but this is just more evidence of fi>fe)

not being very connected to surroundings or outside situation -> low sensory

searching things up to find objective source or facts, looks towards outside sources -> te?

valuing authenticity (mostly within self and expressing it towards others) in relationships -> fi

the entire answer related to society was so ixxp it's actually wild...

critiquing societal structures from an ethical standpoint ("society does not work for everyone", "rent is a crime", "a sign that a society is failing") is very very very much fi

the labyrinth dream is NI NI NI NI:

unsure about the future, questioning the path to take and possibilities, then afraid of choosing a safe path and hated being taken no where. you cared more about what was safe, rather than what you loved internally, which ultimately brought you comfort. but through feeling safe, you felt you could explore more.

now here is the problem - I can't type you as an isfp, since you are very low in se. there is a way for me to do this, but there is not much information online for a fi-ni-se-te infp. you can try searching it up and doing research, but I doubt there is enough (yet), since the iiee or eeii structure is not as popular (even though carl jung confirmed it could work).

in the end, I decided that ne just didn't work, not matter how much I tried to reason an infp typing. I simply cannot see you as an infp, no matter how much I tried to twist your answers or interpret it in different ways.

this left me with the 2nd possibility, that you are an infj. the problem here is that again, your fi is stronger than your fe. ultimately though, I am able to see how some of your feeling answers could (key work - could) be a way that your fe manifests. imo, it is much more likely that i mistyped your fe rather than your ni, since your ni just seems to be a lot more concrete.

in the end, I will end up typing you as an infj. but I will leave the option open for that fi-ni-se-te infp. I know that you probably submitted another typing since isfp may have not identified with being an isfp. however, consider searching up looper isfp (although most results will talk about more negative stuff since looping is considered unhealthy).

[mystycl-official]

since ive been sharing more and more about my trollsona i think its time i openly share a short story explaining some of their backstory!! more will make sense once i finally finish their profile and share it

Morbidly Online, But Not For The Reasons You Think

a few sweeps ago, but not many...

dialectScholar, gokkou aritun, a goldblooded troll with a passion for linguistics and an intermediate-level in technological skill, discovered an interesting type of softwares on the web a few days ago...

"Mu-sic is con-si-dered its own lan-gu-age?? Since when??" they scoffed at what they were hearing from the net. they immediately began using the voice synthesizers to assist them in learning the pronunciations and even writing systems of languages.

but music being its own language? how ridiculous.

gokkou couldn't get the thought out of their head, continuing to research it obsessively so. however, over time they were growing convinced.

"I can't be-lieve I said that... how fool-ish of me... be-cause mu-sic tru-ly is its own lan-gu-age!!" just within a few days of toying with the voice synthesizers, the truth had been revealed to gokkou. they also grew embarrassed about their troubles with learning code. as they now understood music is its own language... the same applies with code. why did they have so much trouble understanding it, though?!?!

but, if music is another language, well... it certainly would gain gokkou's interest.

if gokkou was to fool around with the synthesizers, they would need music to go along! so now it was time for them to find their taste in music.

it only took them a few hours before coming across their new favorites: hard rock, metal, and electronic. however, what absolutely had them in awe was the sound of an instrument called the bass.

"The bass... which one is that??" gokkou searched for the instrument solo, immediately falling in love, "Oh my Gog... I want it for my-self..." they mumbled alone in their hive to their grubtop screen.

gokkou's fingers quickly went to work, roaming the net for the code off a captchalogue card.

them, knowing their way around the web, quickly found one, pride flaming inside of them, "Ea-sy pea-sy..." and thus within a few minutes, a new bass guitar plopped into the palms of their hands.

they were in awe, "It's e-ven bet-ter in front of me..."

as if gokkou wasn't already morbidly attached to their grubtop, now they really were, studying harder and harder than ever before, watching videos off the web to learn music and mimicking them as closely as possible.

"They don't call me The I-mi-ta-tor for no rea-son..." they experimented with their bass in interesting ways, using their psionics to strum, hold the strings down, or even just simply hold the instrument.

"...I think I'm go-ing to en-joy this a lot..."

[quohotos]

Thoughts about bonds/bonding

This was something I was already planning to write up but then the latest return to regalia episode opened the flood gates and filled in some missing pieces for me. What follows is my own educated guesses and headcannon, very little of this is explicitly in the text of the books. Understand that much of this is my own headcannon, though I'll try my best to justify it with the text.

(also note that since I was an audio book kid I don't actually know if it's spelled flyer or flier and I'm going to get it wrong more than once and you're just going to have to live with that)

Luxa says that it wasn't normal for her to bond with Aurora so early, but that an exception was made as almost a form of therapy after the death of her parents. The same exception was made for Hazard and Thalia. We aren't explicitly told how old Henry was when he bonded with Ares, but I'm assuming it was before adulthood given how all four of them (Luxa, Henry, Ares, and Arora) have a storied history before the events of the first book. Henry had to be younger than 16 when they bonded (16 being the age of legal maturity in the underland, will amend if I'm misremembering), which isn't surprising given that he's Henry and he's never played by the rules. This raises the question of the bats' ages... we aren't ever told that. I would assume that the bats are of similar ages to their bonds, but I have no evidence to back that up.

In the Marks of Secret Ripred explains that rats grow up incredibly fast and reach full maturity in about a year, and that humans are uncommon in how long they take to grow up. It's not clear how long the bats take to grow up. Would Thalia have become an adult while Hazard was still a little kid, or would they have grown up concurrently? I can't say either way. One thing I can say with more confidence is that regardless of their ages, Aurora and Ares probably see their respective bonds like younger siblings. Obviously, being bonded to someone is a completely different relationship that we can't exactly map onto what we have in the overland, but I think that's a close approximation.

So Why and How do regular people get bonded?

The most surefire way to get bonded would be to join the military (something you can do from a very young age... I mean they have armor on hand for 12 year olds and we see seven year olds doing military drills in the Prophecy of Bane... yaaaaay). In the military you will be assigned to mixed species units and it's just sort of assumed that they'll all end up pairing up and bonding.

For civilians there are likely special yearly festivals that the two kingdoms share with the express purpose of giving people a chance to find bonds. My guess would be right around the time of the harvest when there's plentiful food to go around. After a hard year a bunch of flyers come to regalia and everyone has a big party to celebrate. There are probably specially organized games of whatever sport Gregor walked in on back in the first book. While specific flyers are probably scouted for sports and more importantly the military there's still plenty of opportunities for common Regalian and flyers to interact and meet.

What does bonding do for a flyer?

We see so much of the Underland Chronicles from the point of view of royal humans. To them, the benefits are obvious. Humans can't fly, bonding gives them access to someone who can. But why would a flier seek out a human bond? That just sounds like an obligation, right?

The Regalians have incredibly advanced medical technology. I've roasted them before for their metalworking, but their chemistry/biotech is unparalleled. They're able to produce antibiotics, as well as synthesize plagues and their cures. They have ways of treating illnesses that the overland doctors (allegedly) cannot. We also see that they have incredibly reliable and safe oral administered sedatives. Anesthesiology is such and advanced and risky field, and they seem to have cracked it to the point where people can safely be sedated for trivial maters without anyone batting an eye.

The arrival of humans (as permanent residents, native people made limited journeys to there before the arrival of Sandwich) in the Underland definitely raised everyone's average life expectancy by decades... before lowering it immediately afterwards through endless wars. In Curse of the Warmbloods someone steals the pain killers and Gregor realizes that the rats couldn't even use it if they wanted to because they don't have hands to open the bottle. Much of the Regalian's medical technology still requires a human to administer it. You need humans to carve splints and set them, you need humans to administer injections, you need humans to cut hair and perform surgery. Spinners can do some things to stop bleeding, but any significantly complex medical procedure is going to need human hands involved. Think about things like glasses and prosthetics, things we don't normally associate as medicine but would still kinda are. Humans probably manufacture and prescribe bat-glasses.

For a flyer, traveling long distances without a human bond is incredibly risky. If something bad happens, even if you have other flyers with you, you could die from what would otherwise be preventable causes. Bitten by mites? Who's going to apply the the ointment? Wing dislocated, who's going to pop it back into place (this one literally happened to Aurora). There are also probably some foods that can't safely be eaten raw, but a human could prepare. Heck, a human can boil water to purify it, or place traps that catch pray that otherwise wouldn't be hunt-able. Humans can catch fish that live too deep in the water for a flyer to peruse. Humans are adaptable. Your bond is your Swiss army knife, adaptable and versatile even if sometimes fragile.

Any flier trying to pursue and education needs to be bonded. You wanna go to bat-college? You gotta bring a human. You'll need one to transcribe all your essays and help you read books. The fliers definitely have a rich oral history that they all maintain, but there are some things that you just need a human to access. The average flier probably doesn't have a bond, but the higher in status definitely do for the educational purposes alone. While the queen herself doesn't have a bond, in fact it seems almost frowned upon in the royal family (Nike doesn't have one despite getting very close to a human who would like to bond with her in the later books), you bet your ass that every middle manager and local bat official has a bond who takes care of paperwork and accounting.

It's a funny parallel how flyers of low status like Ares can suddenly be whisked into royalty by being bonded to Henry, the same thing probably happens to humans. You could be Joe Shmo nobody (or I guess this is the underland so Joeth Shmavetus) who would probably live out their whole life carving stone jars, but you do numbers good so the bat-secretary of bat-state bonds with you and now you're really important.

That means that there are probably lots of places within the flyers lands that are built specifically to house humans long term. We see a little bit of that in the first book, but there's probably a lot more out of sight. Special areas where an important fliers' bonds can live and do their taxes and whatnot.

Bonding is usually an egalitarian process. It seems like both sides and both factions have to consent to it. When Gregor insinuates that one side owns the other he gets massive push-back. With that being said, I'm almost certain that Ares had little control in the matter over bonding with Henry. I think there's kind of an unstated rule that the royal families are going to bond with whoever they please, and that turning down a bond of high status would be a massive faux pas. Ares probably didn't feel like saying no was even on the table.

What about non-flyer bonds?

Oh yeah, code of claw spoilers beyond this point. Now that everyone's doing the reread and we're probably bringing a few first time readers into the fold I'm going to spoiler mark this part just in case since I'll be discussing things that happen in the last installment

Luxa and Ripred bond to usher in peace. This is treated as something that has never happened before but that the rules don't explicitly forbid. Henry jokes about people bonding to the crawlers, but in a way that portrays it as stupid and pathetic rather than impossible. In doing so she also symbolically brings the Gnawer into the spiritual fold that the flyers and humans already share.

Humans and Gnawers would then be allowed to bond with each-other. It might take generations for that to happen in earnest, sicne both sides have so much trauma and resentment built up, but maybe decades in the future the younger generations will find it in themselves to do so.

The fact that Luxa bonding with Ripred doesn't break her bond with Aurora sets the precident that you can bond with as many people as you want so long as you never have two of one species. I do not think Aurora is that happy about that, and I doubt she sees Ripred as her own bond. It's possible though, that in the future you could have big groups of underlanders who are all united by one bond. A whole bad batch rogues gallery of a flyer, a gnawer, a human, and a nibbler who each bring something special to the group.

Though never explicitly stated, I think it probably goes without saying that Hamnet and Frill were bonds. It definitely wasn't done the proper way, probably just informally in the jungle with nobody else observing, but still. A bond is a bond.

[volchiitza]

Hi, I have a question that I hope isn't stupid. I'm (technically) a political science grad student (I'm on indefinite leave due to disability, but that's beside the point). One thing I've been struggling with since day 1 is that everyone keeps saying "don't read the whole paper." "Reading every word is a waste of time." But when I ask "what do I read, then?" They just say "you'll get a feel for it as time goes on." I never did, I just got further and further behind. Sometimes a paper is very interesting, and I spend far too much time on it. Then I have exhausted my focus, and I can't get anything out of the next 4 papers I needed to read that night. How did you learn how to read for grad school?

Hey! I think the “don’t read the whole paper” is not the best advice. I like to read the entire paper because often there are some arguments embedded in different parts of the paper and it seems only fair to the researcher who spent ages getting their research published.

The “it gets better” comes from 1) reading enough papers so that it’s easy to follow the structure of the paper (e.g. reading papers with formal modelling is really daunting the first few times but then you learn to pick apart the important assumptions - I tend to skip a lot of the mathematical proofs because my brain is definitely not wired in that way), 2) having a research question in mind so that you can easily spot areas that are relevant to your research.

My standard process is that I read a paper in zotero, copy the highlights into obsidian and make a summary and takeaways in my own words so it’s easier for me to synthesize the information and have a record of it in case I want to refer back to it - this takes me roughly 30-60min per paper.

But! let’s say that you have 4 difficult papers you need to finish in 4 hours for your class and you can’t read one per hour. I would advise reading the introduction, methods and discussion parts of the paper.

For instance, reading the introduction immediately gives you the research question and a simplified version of the lit review and theory. Methods will give you an idea of how the authors try to prove it and whether it’s a valid approach. And the discussion section will summarize all the findings and their implications neatly. Once you’ve done that, you can spend your time trying to find connections between the papers. If you think a paper missed a major assumption, you can then skim the theory part just looking for if they address the assumption.

This is a long answer, but the basic bottom line is that once you read the introduction, you treat the paper as a reference in which you look for answers. At least this has worked for me! And obviously after each paper, you could eat something, walk around or watch a youtube video if you need to clear your head - I usually do this every two papers. Hope this answer has been in any way helpful!

[maraeffect]

Hi hello, I would like to hear many things about inoculation theory…. 🥺

OMG I'M SO EXCITED. i'm gonna add a read-more bc i'm about to info dump the FATTEST mini-essay anyone has ever seen. THANK YOU for taking interest 😭💖👉👈

okay so, inoculation theory in social psychology sort of piggybacks off the idea of inoculations in medicine.

if you've ever gotten a vaccine, you've experienced an inoculation! the way vaccines work is to expose your body to a harmless variant of or piece of a pathogen (something that causes illness) (this is also a very generalized statement so please understand that i'm not a doctor or anything 😭). this tricks your body into thinking you are fully infected with the pathogen, and then your body creates antibodies! the antibodies help recognize future contact with the pathogen in order to more quickly and effectively squash it out.

inoculation theory in psychology is super similar to this! it is often used to create plans for fighting propaganda and misinformation. specifically, it is great for keeping opinions one already has, and preventing persuasion away from those opinions.

in research, this is generally achieved in the following way: the participant has their set stance on a topic. the researcher then presents to the participant a weak counterargument to the stance. the counterargument should be strong enough for the participant to become defensive, but weak enough so as not to change the opinion of the participant. the participant will then think of a refute to the counterargument. since the counterargument was weak, it should be fairly simple for the participant to come up with their refutation. however, it lays the foundation for the participant to defend against stronger counterarguments in the future.

as an example, imagine someone has the stance that vaccines help to prevent infections. a weak counterargument to this would be "well, but people still get sick after getting vaccinated. this means vaccines don't work." this counterargument is fairly easy to refute, especially because it doesn't even play by science's definition of what a vaccine is. the participant may think, "well, they don't prevent ALL sickness. they just decrease the likelihood of infection after exposure. you can still get sick; it is just less likely with a vaccine." now the participant has defended their stance once, and they know better how to defend their stance in the future.

in the future, they may be presented with a stronger argument, but the participant is more likely to stick with their original stance, as they have practiced defending it.

inoculation theory has GREAT potential to help limit the spread of misinformation and to protect people from logical fallacies. a huge use of inoculation theory has been in schools, with programs against smoking, vaping, drugs (NOT the DARE program), etc. students are exposed to lots of weak arguments FOR the consumption of the dangerous substances (it makes you feel good, we're young so we don't get damaged as much from this, everyone who is cool is doing this, you're a pussy if you DON'T do this, etc). they're taught how to defend against those weak arguments. and, if the program is good, it succeeds in its end goal, which is to keep kids from using the said substance.

in the end, the goal of inoculation theory is strengthen someone against being persuaded; and this can mean persuasion in general! the more comfortable someone is synthesizing critical thought to defend their stances, the more they use those thought processes. over time this strengthens the person's ability to critically think about their own opinions. in most PRACTICAL uses however, the inoculation is only meant to prevent persuasion regarding a specific topic.

in my personal, non-researcher opinion, i think inoculation theory could also be bastardized in order to PUSH minsinfo and propaganda. i think it's a similar thought process the ways in which propaganda is spread. with a cursory glance, i can't find anything to back that up, so i'll just say that i'm probably talking out of my own ass for that bit LOL.

i do hope you enjoyed this little info-dump and that it was at least slightly interesting!!! social psychology is SO fucking cool and has a lot to offer. i think almost anyone could find something they were really interested in in this field (:

OH LAST THING. there is a game that was used to showcase inoculation theory, and it's called Bad News. it's been praised to hell and back since it's release, so if you're further interested, i sincerely recommend trying it out!!

thanks again for asking !!! srsly means so much 😭💖

[randomprojectsbeforeidie]

The Angry Playlist - Part 4

16. "Into the Void", by Nine Inch Nails

These are quite some different instrumentals. They're disconcerting and uncomfortable. The melody is something too, like it was made so that one part doesn't quite fit the other. Quite electronic too.

I think I kinda like it.

The lyrics sound insane and despairing, like you're disappointed in yourself. Funny how the music also sounds like it's "slipping away". They're trying to save themselves but can't find fertile ground to do it; in this sense, it's quite a self-destructive song.

Catchy. But not a lot of rage, mostly frustration with yourself.

Song: 6.6/10.

Rage level: 2/10.

17. "Less Than", by Nine Inch Nails

This sounds quite 1980's electronic music, with thr caracteristic guitar and synthesizers. The guitar is quite present and distorted, almost sounding like it's screaming at some points.

It's quite a frustrated song with a political vibe. I mean, it was 2017 and it mentions missiles in the sky.

Song: 7.9/10.

Rage level: 5.5/10.

18. "Every Day is Exactly The Same", by Nine Inch Nails

This has the 80's percussion and synthesizers. The beat and the dragging guitar and vocals bring this aura of repetition and monotony, which is quite in tune with the lyrics. You feel almost sleepy in some parts.

The lyrics are sad and trapping; talking about being crushed by a routine that has nothing to do with you, that crushes your owns self, and seing this repeating itself until the end of your life. Talk about capitalism as existencial horror, my dude.

"No love and no pain" and not knowing what else you could do finish the despair. This is a crushing song.

Song: 8/10.

Rage level: 1/10.

19. "Wish", by Nine Inch Nails

This is quite a quick beat, and sounds really alien. Almost like ancient internet or an angry alien ship. Quite "electronic", literally. Sounds like ancient technology, which makes sense, since the lyrics say they feel "souless".

This gives me anxiety. And it is quite angry, for sure, the kind of angry that makes you break everything around you.

Don't really like it.

Song: 4.5/10.

Rage level: 8/10.

20. "We're In This Together", by Nine Inch Nails

This also sounds alien. The beat also sounds incomplete. The distorted guitar is almost screaming. The singing is disconected from the beat and the melody, but sometimes the guturals and the guitar almost seem to mix into each other. It's quite ominous.

The ending is calm, but ominous, which is a good contrast with the rest.

It has a defying vibe, kinda like "us against the world". It's tragic, ominous, but full of love and defiance. Kinda like "King and Lionheart", from Of Monsterd and Men.

Song: 8/10.

Rage level: 2/10.

[gryficowa]

I'm currently listening to old (Already forgotten) Circus-P songs

I recently found out that "Circus Monster" was a series and something makes me sad that even the author prefers to hide it, because oh no! He was using a pirated vocaloid! Tia… Big loss for the corporation and Yamaha, no matter what

People used to have a crazy love for corporations and treated piracy as the biggest crime, so what if the company exploited its employees and paid them less, you should feel guilty for pirating programs, because according to logic it will lose a lot while earning millions at the same time

Yes, I'm taking it out on corporations because we, as customers, are being attacked, regardless of whether we buy something legally or pirate it, in both cases we will get what we deserve (Capitalism is a tragedy and let's be honest about it)

Shall we buy something? We support a corporation that exploits workers

Are we pirates? We break the law because we don't support corporations that exploit workers and people think it's wrong

So regardless of whether Circus-P bought vocaloid or pirated it, in both cases someone could accuse him of something

Although ironically you'll get hit more for pirating because you don't support corporations that exploit workers, so yes, as a society we have fucked up moral principles

We have to remember that some people pirate because they can't afford it, or to test the program, because the demo versions are a sick joke and they don't encourage people to buy them due to fucked up restrictions, should we seriously attack them for that? Because in the first case it is classism, and in the second case I tried it myself, because let's face it, the demo is a drama and the limited time does not help, when you don't have time and the entire trial version will be wasted, because you won't try shit, I checked the pirated vocaloid myself, for my own use, because openutau wasn't an option yet (Because I didn't know, or it wasn't available yet), and utau doesn't work very well, to learn how it all works

Okay, back to the topic of Circus-P, because now it's targeting corporations (Correct, but that's off topic)

I have the impression that the current works of this artist are often bland, there are gems, but compared to the beginning of the creator himself and this type, the new works do not have the power they had years ago, because on the one hand there is a lot of progress, but something is missing, I can't define what I mean it just doesn't have the same power in the lyrics and it doesn't stand out much, they're not bad songs but I just don't like them as much as I should

Unfortunately, I have the impression that lately the situation with vocaloids is not very good, or rather with songs, because larger creators do not create as good things as they used to, and many of them have not created for years (For various reasons), while smaller ones can hardly break out because the bigger creators who have been around for years have been preventing them from doing so, and some new creators have given up (Creep-p)

Because the power of the singing synthesizer songs was that they were something different than what other songs were used to, seriously, I go back to the old ones more often than I find new ones, because they described my condition (Even today), especially the songs sung by Hatsune Miku are for me much closer (And unfortunately many of them were attacked because Miku is weak… Seriously? For you, scapegoats are weak? Are you totally crazy?)

Many old artists have stopped creating or their songs have become bland, and new ones can't stand out as strongly as they did back then and it's sad

Among the new creators I found: Zoofles

But as you can guess, he is not a great creator on the level of many bigger ones, because he has been creating for a relatively short time and since he hasn't been around since the heyday of vocaloids, he doesn't make a name for himself that quickly

So I have the impression that vocaloids are no longer at the same peak as they used to be, and it's not just about other vocal synthesizers that were created, but the creators simply messed up a bit, yes, those who broke out years ago during the vocaloid renaissance, because seriously, there is a visible difference between what they used to create and what today seems to be an advantage, when you don't see the problem, it's losing what made vocaloids a big deal

I miss that something, that thing that made synthesizers something great in newer songs, the history and emotion, those trivial things that seem like nothing special, but were just something that made them stand out from the regular songs you hear on the radio

And this is exactly the case with Circus-P, the old songs had this fire, but in the new ones it rarely happens

Unfortunately, I will probably come off as a whiner and piss off the capitalists for this angry attitude towards corporations, but you understand, this is something that has been bothering me for a while now, and hardly anyone has paid attention to this fact

[howtofightwrite]

I'm not sure how the subject of plagiarism came into play but since it's been brought up...I've been toying with the idea of having one of my warriors use cheesy one-liners taken from songs I like. So for example, saying something like "Hit me baby one more time!" when she gets punched by someone (not an actual example but you get the idea). It's meant to be annoying and a callback/homage to songs that have inspired me at some point in my life. Would that be considered plagiarism? Sorry, I hope this is not too random. Love your blog!

That's not plagiarism, or, at least, probably not. Plagiarism is when you try to pass someone else's work off as your own. It's copying whole sections of the other work, and saying, “I created this; it's mine.”

That last time we touched on this, someone had sent us a six-word story, and tried to pass it off as their own work. That is plagiarism, they were presenting the entire work as if they were the author.

Trying to use stray song lyrics as one-liners is, probably, not going to be plagiarism. There's a contextual element that's harder to pin down, but you're presenting another's work in a completely different context, and that re-contextualization transforms the work into something else.

It is functionally impossible to be 100% original in your writing. Whatever you seek to do, whatever story you try to tell, you're going to be influenced by what you've read, watched, or played. You can't, completely, escape this. However, that does not mean you're a prisoner to what you've experienced. You can take those influences and synthesize it into something new. Something that is genuinely yours.

Most song lyrics are not intended to be used as one-liners, so, it's not plagiarism, especially if it's clear that they're quoting another source, even if they don't explicitly cite that source.

On the other side of this, if there already is a character who bases all their combat quips off of song lyrics that I've somehow forgotten about (or missed entirely), then, yeah, that would be plagiarism. If you're copying another character's gimmick verbatim, yeah, that's probability going to be plagiarism.

I still wouldn't recommend doing this, but not because of fears of plagiarism. Writing good combat quips is harder than it sounds. They suffer from diminishing returns, the more quips your characters make the less impactful they are. While it can be a running element of your voice, overuse of quips can promote audience disconnect. This risk is related to where you end up on the formalism/realism spectrum; the more formulaic you are, the lower the risk. Pop culture based quips (not just song lyrics) are more risky in this regard. Further, when you're selecting your quips, you need to tailor them (somewhat) to the context you're using them in. Obviously, if you're selecting song lyrics, you're going to be limited to the lyrics you know (can find through research), meaning you need to tailor the scene to fit the quip. This feels like a case of the tail wagging the dog to me; you're putting a lot of work into what is, functionally, a throwaway joke.

Put another way, quips aren't worth this much effort. Though, ultimately, this is your story, so this is your choice, and if you really want to do it, have fun.

-Starke

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[the-blue-fairie]

For the Fictional character ask: the icons themselves Mickey and Minnie Mouse!

Since I already answered an ask about Mickey, this one will be exclusively about Minnie.

Favorite thing about them: I love, in the House of Mouse, how she's a lynchpin in keeping the House of Mouse afloat and does so much to hold it together, from keeping the projector in order to organizing cartoons, etc.

I also love it in shorts etc. when she's allowed to get hopping mad. A righteously frustrated Minnie is a wonderful Minnie, just like a happy and contented Minnie is also wonderful. :)

Least favorite thing about them: How she can be dismissed by a certain subset of the general public as "the generic female character." Which isn't an issue I have with her, it's with how (some) people see her, but there you go.

Three things i have in common with them:

I can be very gentle and demure. At the same time, if I get exasperated enough, I can make people know it.

Sometimes I worry I am not appreciated by my family group in the way I want to be.

I have a sentimental, romantic side.

Three things i don’t have in common with them:

I am not a mouse.

I am less sociable than she can be, at least when talking with others in person. I tend to be very introverted and reserved.

Regarding House of Mouse, I'm not as adept or as businesslike an organizer, although I always do try to be supportive of my friends.

Favorite line: Perhaps her exchange with Mickey at the end of the Gift of the Magi segment of Once Upon a Christmas. It's a lovely segment, and it's stayed with me even though I think I only saw the movie twice when I was little - once in school possibly, and once when we checked the VHS out from the library. It's just simple classic Gift of the Magi poignancy, I know, but there's just something beautiful and archetypal about it being Minnie and Mickey.

brOTP: her and Daisy

OTP: her and Mickey :)

nOTP: This fucking rat. Mortimer, I don't like you lol.

Random Headcanon: I'd like to synthesize all the different shorts/films where Mickey and friends re-enact literature or plays (Christmas Carol, Three Musketeers, Midsummer Night's Dream) and say that Mickey and Minnie don't just have to be separate iterations of themselves if it's cute to imagine them happily play-acting these parts with love and warmth for each other in their hearts. And it is cute to imagine.

Unpopular Opinion: I'm not sure if I have one?

Song i associate with them: This is going to be an odd one, but the temperance song "Come Home, Father" by Henry Clay Work from the 1850s/60s.

You see, the 1941 Mickey and Minnie short "The Nifty Nineties" was at the end of the VHS copy of Pollyanna that my family owned, and it includes a sequence of Minnie crying over the song, so since then, I've associated this song with... Minnie Mouse.

Favorite picture of them:

This moment from the Gift of the Magi segment of Once Upon a Christmas that I've gushed about already. Unlike with Mickey, I was able to find the exact moment from the scene I was looking for in screencap form.

I also want to give a shoutout to the pictures/stickers of Minnie in an old CD-ROM game, Disney Magic Artist Studio. I meant to bring up the game's depictions of Mickey last night as well, but in my haste I forgot.

See, you could put the "stickers" in various backdrops and then print out the image - or animate the stickers as well. I can't find the most iconic depictions of Minnie that I remember (I'm taking the above screencap from a Youtube vid), but suffice to say there were lots of cool variations - like Minnie dressed like she was on Mount Olympus, in the jungle, as an astronaut...

I DID find a picture I made with the game saved on an old computer a few years back, though, so let me share it. Enjoy astronaut Minnie!

[andmaybegayer]

Let's say, hypothetically, for the sake of argument, that someone wanted the benefits of upgrading their computer but Fucking Hates Hardware, and is also frustrated that lots of major guides hedge everything by saying to Check For Yourself (reasonably! there is a lot of variability), but not how to sift through and synthesize the technical stats gained by Checking For Yourself to get an answer, and also has an eye-glaze-over reaction to the gobbledygook names of different computer parts and cannot trust themselves to remember such a name for even a few seconds. Let's also say this hypothetical person is an idiot partly in denial about their usage patterns but mostly completely ignorant of how to assess what they need, what counts as heavy usage and what counts as dicking about, whether what will count as dicking about in several years will be commensurate with what is considered heavy now, or what the bottlenecks in their current system are. What would you recommend to this person I made up?

You mentioned a few things that get to the heart of the Upgrade Question which is: what do I actually need?

Ultimately, the first thing you must ask is "Does my current system do everything I want to do." In my experience, future proofing is mostly a fool's errand, and I could write a lot about why that is, but let's just say don't worry too much about what you might be doing in five years, don't really look more than a year forward for performance estimates. Whatever you're doing now plus whatever you want to do but can't because of your current system.

(The other question is "where am I putting this", if you live in a tiny Tokyo apartment or you don't want to dedicate permanent desk space to a desktop, or this is going to be your only computer, a good laptop may be a better choice even though you're sacrificing some performance. If you live in a bigger apartment or suburban house, you can probably find space for a desktop. Hell, laptops come with a screen and keyboard built in, that's a cost a lot of people don't price into buying a new desktop for the first time.)

If your current system is doing everything you want it to do at an acceptable speed and noise level, you're done, no upgrade required. If, say, you edit video and you notice that since you moved from HD to 4k it's starting to take forever to render out, or you picked up Elden Ring and it's not running as smoothly as you would like, then it's time to upgrade.

Knowing what to upgrade, especially in-place on an existing system, is unfortunately pretty much impossible without getting into the weeds of performance and hardware, so your best bet if you are dissatisfied with your current setup is probably getting some kind of mid-range prebuilt system from a reputable company within your budget and performance constraints.

In general, most people will be moving from an old mid-range system to a new mid-range system every 3-6 years. You dont want to be upgrading with every new release, and really not even for every second release, unless if the actual tasks you need to do have changed since you got your system. In that case, you'll have to step up a budget increment since you need something faster than you use to have by a significant amount.

Budget-wise in USD, you kind of have these steps and the tasks the correlate with.

$2000: professional, "this is for my dayjob" workstations, performance machines for doing heavy compute

$1500: amateur workstations, high end gaming machines.

$1000: sensibly balanced gaming-optimized machines that'll handle most light workstation tasks, an hobbyist machine.

$500: utility laptops, for handling basic desktop and document handling tasks, programming, image editing, very light workstation tasks.

ABS out of NewEgg and Skytech from I forget who owns them make reasonably priced performance machines with all-new hardware, and while I know people who have had machines arrive with issues, the majority of the stories I hear are positive. The quality of various prebuilt manufacturers varies wildly in terms of cost to performance and level of customer service, but absolutely sight-unseen if I had to recommend some desktops and a laptop for a stranger I've never talked to I would say get one of these and it'll handle almost anything you can throw at it well enough not to annoy you.

These are not the best options per se, even in their own budget ranges, but what they are is solid all-rounders that I would not be mad about if someone told me to use them as the only computer I had for the next five years.

This is the summary of my advice on buying a new computer for people who don't like shopping for computers. The biggest weakness is the price:performance list up there, whcih assumes that you're getting fair pricing on the hardware. Lots of prebuilt companies charge super high markups on old hardware, which is an easy way to get screwed, so I'd advise checking what the latest generation of hardware available is and only using that if you're upgrading.

Annoyingly there's a new CPU release cycle happening right now, so the two things I recommended above will be one generation out of date by the end of October.

[art-of-mathematics]

What field are you in and how do I get there? ( I dont understand shit from your posts but they're the coolest things I've ever read)

Hi their, thanks for coming along my ask box - unfortunately I am not really able to offer a plain answer - as I am currently doing it all in isolation (autodidactic) - working on all that stuff since ten years - and I am also working on writing about my principles of research/learning - most I do is interdisciplinary - I recommend Vijay Balasubramanian's work - polymath in mathematics, theoretical physics, theoretical cognitive science - he researches about statistical inference, quantum field Theory, quantum gravity, string theory and I can't summarize the broad spectrum of his research more clearly now. My work is merely similar/related - yet, it is a mess to explain - Although math, physics and cognitive science might be my main sevtors of focus - my knowledge is 'heterogeneous", say, I lack much of the rigourously studies topics one learns along the formal education path.

Currently I do some merely low-level stuff, basic calculus/analysis so to speak - but the approach of how I understand is... is merely odd. You see how I synthesize multiple perpectives/modes of perception. I find the notation of integral and differential calculus confusing - somehow, my journey into analysis started with fourier transform, superposed waves and multiple parallel thought ramblings - In retrospect, the mathemetics is the actual and concrete form of how I have perceived my own reasoning and perception.

And I understand why people think it might just be psychotic nonsense. Yet, the methods are highly advanced. I try to put them in a comprehensible language/mathematical model/algorithm currently.

To further investigate career options, I think about seeking entry into the academic world through the IT sector - most certainly quantum developer - I want to write assmbler code for non-lineary working quantum computers, so to speak. Good thing: I could apply much of my own research directly and advance/develop them better [especially the non-linear axiomatic system/quantum information flows topics] and say, start research without having a degree - but that might open some options to attend university programs, or get a degree in the future, and especially: I could do what I love, and could finally learn to master my stuff in a way that is functional and applyable in that world - and not just rotting in my filecases...

Yet, my health, being neurodivergent, having no support socially/in health issues/financially, and german buerocracy are really hindering factors in that constellation of situation - especially if they are combined.

Yet I have a rough plan. In the recent weeks I could finally leave a many-year long traumatic situation - one that involved my father keeping my mind tiny - supressing and abusing my neurodivergent self - whatever, I do not want to burden with details nor do I want to be pitied. It gets better and I can finally unravel my potential and start my academic life - tough, in a very odd and statistically unprobable way - but that's it: In some sense I use(d) game theory to free myself from that trap of situation: An almost zero percent probability to have a fullfilling life becomes gradually more probable - as for now, it's me showing initiative and dedicated autodidactism that has secured me a hope to a career in my special interests. (I am sorry for the much bla bla)

Alongside that way I also try to make mathematics more accessible and enjoyable for curios and/or neurodivergent people. As I believe, hope is something people need more than ever. And a new way to see can be exactly that for some people. Especially neurodivergent people have to suffer tremendously under that worldwide defective education system - alongside other systematic deficits including basic human dignity and respect. In some sense, I want to write books, create content and art on mathematics and other inspiring branches, to inspire, to give someone the hope and enthusiasm I wish I would have received as kid, to ignite a flame of wonder and awe - and in some sense, yes, I am becoming sentimental, but honest, somehow, ten years ago, I have received that hope of inspiration on that platform - by fellow (most certainly also neurodivergent) blog owners/content creators. And if I look back, I am extremely thankful for the kindhearted and honest community here, the hilarious puns and posts, the insightful debates, the silly memes, the common appreciation for infodumping on special interests, and the very humane and heart-wearming and welcoming social interaction.

I could link some users here, but I would feel bad if I forgot some - so, in some sense, for whoever is reading that - I am thankful for our encounter!

(Ahh completely lost track of my thoughts...) I really appreciate your appreciation! Yet, I can't really give you info in how you could get iny my field - as I do not know it myself unfortunately. But I let you know once I know more. (I can only recommend Vijay Balasubramanian's work. As he is already in that career path, maybe research about him might be helpful... interestingly he also entered via the CS sector...)

[mikrokosmos]

Strauss - Overture for the Prologue of Ariadne auf Naxos (1912)

I keep coming back to Richard Strauss' less 'popular' operas. During his lifetime many of them were somewhat dismissed for their 'conservative' writing. It seems that Strauss was going into a more jarring and angst ridden Modernism with his operas Salome (1905) and Elektra (1908), but then betrayed that direction with the very gushy romantic Rosenkavalier (1910). I think this lower opinion of Strauss has more to do with the time he lived in rather than the music itself. Not to mention that this 'heavy/lighthearted' florid style continued through both World Wars. It's hard for me not to love his music because of it's unusual mix of being hyper-romantic and also clear and easy to follow. What Strauss did was the seemingly impossible task of synthesizing Wagner (free floating harmonies, thick orchestral textures, and long scale structure) with Mozart (clarity, grace, lyricism, and more grounded functioning tonality). This is the opening of Strauss' comic opera Ariadne auf Naxos. The confusing title for this post is due to the opera's structure; It is an opera within an opera. The opera is in two parts, first part is the prologue which gives us the backstory where a composer has been hired to stage one of his operas at some very super rich Viennese man's house. He is deeply offended to learn that the patron has also hired a burlesque dance troop to perform after his opera. Offended because (and I'm pretty sure Strauss is satirizing the Romantic-minded young artist who takes his own work too seriously) his opera, Ariadne of Naxos, is supposed to be a super serious tragedy and having a burlesque dance afterward shows how the patron and audience don't care that much for 'serious' art, and may even look forward to the half naked women more than the Grecian music-drama. The opera company and dance company argue over who gets to play first. The situation gets worse when the patron's butler informs everyone that his dinner party ended up going later than expected, and since he's paid for both acts already and wants them to perform, he decided he wants the opera and the burlesque to happen at the same time. The composer is angry but his teacher encourages him to comply. And the lead of the burlesque show, a risqué comedian named Zerbinetta, charms him into changing the opera to include scenes for her. The second part is the opera Ariadne of Naxos, where Ariadne has been abandoned on the isle of Naxos by her former lover and hero Theseus. Zerbinetta and other nymphs (the burlesque dancers) try to sing and cheer Ariadne up but they can't get her out of her depression. Zerbinetta tells her the best way to get over one man is to find another, and encourages her to flirt with a clown Harlequin. But then a stranger comes to the island, who turns out to be Bacchus the god of wine, chaos, and 'hedonism'. Ariadne and Bacchus fall in love, the end. Despite how this opera is somewhat minuscule (in comparison to all opera ever, let alone Strauss'), it is the genius combination of Wagner (a 'super-serious' philosophical music-drama based on classical antiquity where love transfigures the soul), Mozart (lighthearted comedy, flirting between men and women who don't understand each other, and an optimistic idealization of a classical pastorale) and Strauss (a metafictional story about an opera within the opera where characters discuss the nature of opera and relationship between artist and audience, the kinds of themes that would be best exemplified in Capriccio). But really the only reason I'm sharing this is because the main melody is stuck in my head, the perfect Straussian melody; optimistic and upbeat, goofy-sounding accidentals, very sentimental writing based on subtle diatonic dissonances, and coming back again and again in different waves of great orchestral writing.