#but scientists do not get paid for publishing

[probablyasocialecologist]

A paper published in the world’s largest science journal, Nature, in March 2020 — ironically hidden behind a paywall (you can buy the article pdf for £29.95) — by D’Alessandro et al find “several drawbacks to green growth”. By modelling what would happen in France over the period 2014–2050, green growth was indeed found to reduce emissions to just 23% of the 1990 baseline level; degrowth got it down significantly further to 17.8%. But presumably the degrowth model came at a greater social cost? In fact, unemployment went up to 11–13% in the green growth scenario; under degrowth, it came down as far as 2%. The Nature paper also looked at labour share, “defined as the fraction of post-tax value added that is paid to employed workers as wages”. In other words, a higher labour share means that employees, as a group, are getting a bigger slice of the income pie. Under green growth, inequality continues and labour share suffers. Under degrowth and associated policies for social equity labour share greatly benefits. We finally enjoy the full fruits of our labour, wealth is more evenly distributed, and emissions approach zero. And yes, GDP is negative. But if we are wealthier, healthier and happier — is that a bad thing?! In Jason Hickel’s influential 2020 book Less Is More (which has since become something of a degrowth bible), he asks: “once we have 100% clean energy, what are we going to do with it? Unless we change how our economy works, we’ll keep doing exactly what we’re doing with fossil fuels. We’ll use it to power continued abstraction and production at an ever-increasing rate, placing ever increasing pressure on the living world, because that’s what capitalism requires. Clean energy might help deal with emissions, but it does nothing to reverse deforestation, over fishing, soil depletion and mass extinction. A growth-obsessed economy powered by clean energy will still tip us into ecological disaster.” Hickel is not, to be clear, advocating against green tech. “Technology is absolutely essential in the fight against ecological breakdown”, he writes. “We need all the efficiency improvements we can get. But scientists are clear that they will not be enough on their own to fix the problem. Why? Because in a growth-oriented economy, efficiency improvements that could help us reduce our impact are harnessed instead to advance the objectives of growth, to pull at a larger swathes of nature into circuits of extraction and production. It’s not our technology that’s the problem. It’s growth.” Hickel calls green growth “a comforting fantasy… and in an era of ecological emergency, we can’t afford to build policies around fantasies.”

15 November 2024

[alpaca-clouds]

Democratizing Media

Alright, one thing first: When politicians speak about "democratizing media" they usually mean something else then what scientist say, when they use those words. Politicians mostly mean something along the lines of "media should say what I want instead being controlled by some coorporation, because like I am elected, right?" Meanwhile scientist mean something else.

You see, before the internet became easily accessible for most people, the only way to access media was through certain outlets. TV stations, the cinema, some publishers and some record lables.

Yes, sure. Technically self-publishing was a thing even back then, but without the ease of the internet... How were you to market your own book or comic? And self-made music usually just circulated on copied and copied again casette tapes.

Usually, if you wanted to create media that actually people would see, you had to go through a big company. And those companies could very much decide who got to make movies and tv, who got to publish music or books or comics. Not only where those decisions controlled by capitalist interest, but also by nepotism and cultural biases, given that a lot of the people making those decisions where (and still are to these days) white, cis, abled men.

But when the internet came around things changed. Because suddenly everyone had a way easier time in getting their stuff out there. Pretty early on there were websites where people could just publish their stories and comics online. Either free and hosted by some other website or paid on their own site. Which was pretty revolutionary, especially as suddenly ideas that had been ignored could reach a new audience.

Voices, that by news media and such had been ignored so far - voices of women and marginalized folks - could suddenly broadcast over all sorts of channels.

And yes, you could also just publish your music and what not online, could also do your own research and offer it to the world and could actually get heard.

Now, we all know that this came with ups and downs. Because while finally marginalized people were heard like this, it also gave a bigger platform to some fringe conspiracy groups and the like. But at least there was a chance to get your stuff out there.

Social media websites and the like played a big role in this. Especially Youtube, of course, but other sites, too........ which of course brings me to the problem. Or rather to the question: "Is media democratized right now?"

Because it isn't, of course.

Right now we have these chokepoints, where you kinda are forced to push whatever you create through a channel. Sure, you can upload your videos on your own server, but probably nobody will see them. They need to be on youtube. Just like your music now needs to be on spotify and itunes. And if you self-publish a book, it kinda needs to be available on amazon or you won't sell shit. And if you have your own little blog and do not promote it on social media (or have it not integrated on a blogging platform such as tumblr) it will not be seen.

And this brings two issues with it (well, actually three). For one, as private companies those sides are able to censor you in any way they want to. They decide you cannot say the word "queer" anymore? Welp, no more talking about queer issues for you. And because they are a private company nobody can do much against it. Like with the tumblr purge. No more "female presenting nipples" for you.

The next issue is closely related: The companies in question want to make money. This they do mostly through advertisement and maybe subscriptions. Hence their goal is to keep you interacting with their website for a long while. And thus they have algorithms that decide what content you see - and hence if the content decides that something you do is not worth it or will get the wrong kind of attention... Well, nobody will get it shown. On a lot of social media we see, for example, that the negative content gets shown to more people. So writing about positive stuff does often not get you seen. (Which is why algorithms are bad. Don't fucking build your social media websites around a fucking algorithm.)

And lastly: A lot of media additionally to all of that also uses a system of partly manual currated. This is true for Netflix, who obviously want to make sure that the front page does show the stuff they either paid a lot of money for or that they produced themselves. Like, there is an infinity of great indie movies on Netflix, but if you do not know it is there, you will not see it. Same goes for a lot of Indie Games on Steam, that just go unnoticed, because they do not appear anywhere near the front page and just happen to go overlooked by folks. And in the end the big studios obviously have the money to get their games on the front page. Same with books on amazon, where just the difference in marketing budget makes sure, that certain books will end up front.

So, why am I telling all of that?

Because we still do have the tool. We can make a free, democratic internet like that. Where we do not have censorship (please note: banning people for saying hateful shit is actually not censorship, so yeah, ban them nazis). Where we do not have fucking algorithms. And where just everything has the same chance of getting seen.

Like, does not mean that there cannot be any currated lists. Like, those currator pages on steam? Those are fucking great. Lists where everyone just can make those and you can subscribe to their lists. That is amazing. But... you know. Not for the baseline experience, but for what everyone wants their experience to be like.

Just... a thing that bothers me. Based on the stuff I spoke about yesterday.

[greypetrel]

Oooh I'd love to know more about Rolling a Wave 👀

Hi Mo!

It's the general plot of my original story which I'm translating into English. I'm working on character studies, but it's been slow these last months. I hope I'll finish Raina's in this winter break and quickly design secondary characters. I may pick Priscilla back as a design, who knows. I can't wait to start planning actual pages. xD

First act summary under the cut, tagging also @bfire92 who asked me about this. :3

ACT I – Iceland

1907. A marine biologist, Aisling, is finally at the head of her very own arctic expeditions to study the social behaviour of sperm whales. She has to reevaluate her plans, when she saves a harponeer from the shiprwreck of the Hvalur, a whale fishing ship caught in a bad storm. She’s the only survivor, and also a woman, Naroa, from San Sebastian, who crossdresses to work on the ship, and tells her that it was a sperm whale to cause the wreck.

The expedition was born unlucky: Aisling has received very low fundings, both because nobody really trusts her in a leading position as an unmarried woman, both because her father was a former professor for the same institute that funds her. Small detail: he was stripped of his role and exiled from the Kingdom for having used public money from the university to finance the Irish rebels/Fenian society. Aisling was really able to get some money and sponsorship because she asked for years upon years, has a couple of contacts that vouched for her, and basically is a person that causes very little trouble. Her goal is to gather enough data to demonstrate that sperm whales are highly intelligent social animals, and that their hunting should be severely limited before their number drops. It’s very important to her, not only for personal satisfaction and crowning a lifelong dream of becoming a proper scientist, paid enough for a living and with prestige that female researchers in female colleges were not granted in England, but also to avenge her family. She MUST publish in Oxford because it was the institute that kicked her father out, she must reinstate the good name of the family.

So, with very little money to her name, she rented the smallest, most run-down hovel she could find, 40 minutes from the harbour, fix what she could to make it inhabitable, and hire a small sloop with a fully female crew. Ex piratesses running from the law, widows of fishermen and other figures that needs a living runs the Lusca, not for gold, but to chase whale pods.

In spite of being broke, Aisling welcomes Naroa in until she feels better. Their forced convivence is difficult at first: Aisling is over-enthusiast over whales and is actually diving with the whales to observe them better during the day (“I thought I would have drown today, but Cacciucco was absolutely adorable, you see, so it’s ok, he can bump me again.” “… Da fuq.”), Naroa had fished them for years, and after the shipwreck has not much love for the animals, of course there is only one bed. After a while, Naroa starts working, and embarks on the Lusca to help out, too, there’s some mutual pining and they slowly confess they like each other, fuck gender roles and so on and so forth.

Until one day arrives a letter from the Royal Society, informing Aisling that they’re gonna cut her fundings: the season good for sailing is ending, they’re not willing to pay her to stay another winter doing nothing. Winter that Aisling was planning to use to organize her notes and write the essay for the peer review: it must be done exceedingly well if she wants to have a chance, she doubt they’ll give her another chance if she fails now. She manages to obtain another month, but nothing more.

She quarrels with Naroa: the harponeer tells her that even if her research should fail, it won’t be the end of the world. She has a roof upon her head, a fucking university degree (in France, more open for women), she can decide to do anything else, she has brains and possibilities, what’s the problem? Plus, if her research gets published, it could hit an industry that offers work and livelihood to so many people that have not her chances and possibilities, and for whom losing the job would be much more of a problem. For Naroa it would be: her family is still in San Sebastien, she’s the first of 4 sisters, her father died, and she’s sending money home. Don’t mention she introduces herself as a man because she doesn’t fully feel herself in women clothes and canonically female roles: she can’t afford to lose the job. Plus, she’s Basque, and technically in Iceland it was legal to murder Basques until 2014 (old medieval law they forgot to abrogate). Naroa can’t understand why Aisling is so stubborn and so compliant towards a bunch of idiots that don’t consider her, and all for what? Personal pride? What if her research fail, she’ll be better off without it.

Aisling gets mad, just a little bit. She can’t tell the RS to fuck off, and chances for female biologists aren’t that many. She isn’t very sensitive for whalers, as Naroa fails to understand why an academic research is so important. They split up pretty badly, Aisling leaves for London.

ACT 2 - London

ACT 3 - Alghero (necessary quote)

[gaykarstaagforever]

The 1999 Mystery Men movie is now free on YouTube, I guess because Universal finally realized that if no one paid to see it when it came out and so no one remembers it, no one is going to pay $3 to rent it.

Which is a shame (for the people who made the movie, who gives a shit about Universal), because it's good. Based loosely on the Flaming Carrot / Mysterymen indie comics of the 1980s (I'm only familiar Cerberus the Aardvark, which the same company published around the same time), it is meta superhero parody in the style of Gunn's Suicide Squad / Peacemaker, just 20 years before any mainstream American audience would give a crap.

This is a universe where there is one real superhero, who is so effective that crime is basically non-existent, so that the sole superhero himself is getting bored. When he comes up with a scheme to give himself something to do, it goes badly, unleashing a notorious supervillain on Champion City. When the Mystery Men, obnoxious wannabe heroes with virtually no powers, try to help, they typically fail, but so badly this time that now they are the city's only hope. Will they put petty grievances aside and learn to work together before Cassanova Frankenstein destroys the entire city?

Well, of course they will. It's a superhero movie. The point is watching fun wacky characters bounce off each-other for 2 hours, and this certainly delivers on that. The cast is a who's-who of 1999 charisma, with notable turns by Geoffrey Rush as the scene-chewing, disco-themed Frankenstein, Wes Studi doing Batman if Batman was doing Yoda, and Tom Waits as a benevolent mad scientist with a grandma fetish. Paul Reubens doing a lisp and Kel Mitchell in blonde Sisqo hair are especially fun as a team within a team, farting and getting naked on their path to victory.

Ben Stiller is the lead, playing a typical Ben Stiller-is-the-lead character, the kind of well-intentioned but self-absorbed incompetent that is charming when Ben Stiller plays him in movies, but everyone would despise in real life. And if you are a person who also isn't a fan of him doing this in movies, you'll also not like it, here. I like Ben Stiller doing this, but Roy here really is a useless pain in the ass until the very end.

There are lots of Gunn-type sitcom jokes about superhero tropes and general goofiness, and similar tonal shifts between slapstick comedy and people being slowly melted. Fans of The Boys will enjoy Greg Kinnear as a G-rated Homelander, complete with product placement on his costume.

It is about 20 minutes too long at 2 hours, and has way too many annoying closeup 90s fight scenes with mediocre choreography. More scenes of just the cast improving should have replaced a lot of this, because this is what the movie is really about. And there is some amazing 1998 CG that is used well, but man. It looks like what it is, certainly.

Props on someone greenlighting a superhero parody movie in a world where the only things to make fun of were the Schumacher Batman movies (Blade, the first "real" Marvel movie, came out the same year as Mystery Men). But it is obvious that only hardcore comic book nerds were going to connect with this, and there were not enough of them, outside of the big mainline "event" comic speculator market of the 90s, to make up for a $68 million budget.

This was made specifically for a movie-going public that has fallen in love with good superhero movies, then gotten sick of them, and appreciates someone making fun of them in a smart way. That is a thing we barely have now, in 2024. Mystery Men the big budget movie really is a thing that was just 20+ years ahead of its time. Watching it feels like watching an episode of Peacemaker that is intentionally aping the style and production design of Batman Forever. I suppose it is worth seeing, just for that.

Also the 90s Hollywood cameos. Dane Cook shows up, unfortunately. No, he isn't funny. He is a "superhero" who burns people with a waffle iron. I realize that may sound funny, but believe me, it isn't when Dane Cook does it.

See for yourself. That scene is in the original Smashmouth video for "All Star". Because that song being from the Mystery Men soundtrack before Shrek is literally all most people know about this movie.

And that's not fair to it. Go watch it.

[birgittesilverbae]

thinking about babea au and beatrice taking ava home to mary’s apartment the first time for a movie night. standing in the grocery store with mary live-texting the ensuing Gay Overplanning to shannon

(these, softer days. shannon still trying hard to reconnect, fighting the scar tissue on her back as she moves through her bō forms and bea soft-stepping into the secluded courtyard to make light, but expressionless suggestions. bea having read about therapeutic matial arts, learning to move around injuries, the half-charred bones in shannon’s back, the times she has to take her crutches back out of the closet. shannon crying privately in the bathroom mirror when she finds two old stickers from the star wars books she found for bea in a discount store years and years ago. a sticker of darth vader on one crutch and c3po on the other. bea’s queer thinking and the articles she has downloaded on disability in sci-fi, how she’ll get cross about it if you press)

(they’re learning to love each other again)

bea in the snack aisle doing the social equivalent of quantum mathematics trying to guess what snacks ava wants. nothing with apple. does she prefer savoury or sweet or bitter or-

mary sending bea off into the attached clothing section with a €10 note to get her new socks while mary pays for €50 worth of sugar, hoping bea will be too distracted to do the easy math & guess what it costs. she could use the ocs card but she doesn’t. wants to give this to bea. like she paid for the takeout on her first at-home visit with lilith. because this is her kid on a tragic technicality.

picking ava up in one of the ocs vans and bea kind of shivering with anticipation on the way, mary swatting her with the sleeve of her hoodie while they idle in traffic like ‘cheer up. we’re not in your stupid emily dickinson poem.’

bea obligingly saying, ‘because i could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me. the carriage held but just ourselves, and immortality.’

‘thanks, nerd.’

but it calms her, and she’s all smiles when they collect ava, an older ocs sister leaning in and tracing a cross onto bea’s forehead as she stands waiting with ava in the foyer. it’s not uncomfortable, just the blessing you give to someone much younger. for a nun it’s like saying ‘good luck.’

at home with the mound of snacks and ava laughing at it all, but summoning bea down to kiss her cheek. ‘thanks bea. for the thought.’

(ava who has so seldom been thought of in her life)

‘what are we watching?’

‘oh, whatever you want. i have most blockbusters from the last 38 years.’

‘oddly specific but okay.’

bea blushing like, ‘i was going year-by-year and then it was time for morning drills.’

they watch jurassic park because ava loves dinosaurs, and bea’s read her the novels, and of course bea’s like, ‘did you know that one day before the release of this film scientists actually published a paper about a weevil preserved in resin, whose remains offered up what researchers believed were the oldest strands of DNA ever recovered? amber can preserve intracellular structures.’

‘they really did visit laboratories when they designed some of these sets.’

‘it’s an interesting commentary on how our best human ventures can be corrupted by imagination. if we recreated dinasaurs they would look different. usually fossilisation destroys DNA though.’

‘the idea that they collected so much data on species from amber so quickly is quite outlandish.’

bea falling asleep towards the end of the movie because she’s been up since dawn. little bruise blooming on her chin from a hook kick demonstrated a little too enthusiastically by one of the trainees. mary coming in to see ava not watching the last few scenes, just watching bea in the low light, half-draped in a quilt, wearing her oversize green hoodie and pyjama bottoms.

and I'm like "No! That's the thing I'm SENSITIVE ABOUT!"

[paigelts05]

Phoenix Douglas [FNAF 3, Renegade AU]

Published: Jan 19, 2025

https://www.deviantart.com/paigelts05/art/1148729478

On the surface, Phoenix appears to be a spoiled nepo baby. His father, Nathan Douglas, is the founder of a pharmaceuticals company, and both of his parents are chemists at the top of their field.

But aside from a decently sized house, the Douglas household has nothing to their name: the appearance of a successful family is a mere illusion that is frequently used in an attempt to discredit anything that the Douglas family may say against Fazbear Entertainment.

Before Phoenix was born, his father's company was purchased from under him by Fazbear Entertainment due to some shady dealings on Faz Ent's part. Nathan wound up working as a scientist for Faz Ent. Nathan was paid minimum wage for his work in the labs, and only his work in the labs. As if to rub salt into the wound, Faz Ent also made him attend business meetings as if he was still in charge of the pharmaceuticals company, for no extra pay. Nathan was living on sub-minimum wage.

Things didn't change after Phoenix's birth.

Chloe, Nathan's wife, paid for most things, including the house, but she was largely an absent mother. Phoenix doesn't remember much of Chloe, as she was rarely around. Phoenix even sometimes thought that his parents were separated or divorced, but just crashed at the same home.

Having two Faz Ent scientists as parents meant that he wound up hearing a mix of rumors and facts about the company's inner circle from a young age. Having two Faz Ent scientists as parents also meant that he was in constant danger.

As much as he was told to keep a cover story for what his parents did, it wasn't hard for the people around him to figure it out, even when Phoenix had said nothing. Though the fallout was nothing like what his parents had warned him about: the most he got was a 'gosh, I'm sorry,' from his teacher who seemed to know way more than what she let on about his parents, as well as sympathetic glances from other students.

His father taught him how to be frugal, but also how to be generous; shopping for groceries on a shoestring budget and using the reward vouchers on the sides of cereal boxes to get nice things. By the time he got to high school, he was known for being the kid who was able to take his friends wherever they wanted and help them with the necessities like a philanthropist whilst being practically broke. Anyone who pointed out th fact that Phoenix was only able to be so generous due to a mountain of vouchers and supermarket clubcard rewards was always side-eyed into keeping their mouths shut by those who appreciated what Phoenix - the kid who on paper should have been well off, but in practice was the worst off - was doing for everyone in the class.

When he was about ten, his parents started talking about how the other Operators were all leaving Fazbear Entertainment for brighter horizons: even Bonibelle had quit and moved to a different country. But the Douglas's were still stuck.

When he was in his late teens, he got kidnapped by a very much dead William in order to keep Nathan and the other Operators from retaliating when the Nightmares were all brought down to a warehouse for use in one of William's plans: a plan that later became known as the Warehouse Incident. As soon as he woke up in the warehouse, he knew that he wasn't being held for financial ransom, because due to the people and animatronics he saw whilst in the warehouse, he knew that someone high up at Fazbear Entertainment was responsible, and because his parents financial situation was still under Faz Ent's control, it was pretty obvious to Phoenix that he was being held to keep the operators from retaliating, so out of all of the hostages, he was the most calm, as he knew that his parents and the other operators would know to wait it out, and he knew that if he did come to any harm, Fazbear Entertainment would implode on itself due to the science team, many of whom no longer actually worked for Fazbear Entertainment, having a reason to blow the whistle on the whole operation. So aside from the constant worry of infection due to this well spoken zombie rabbit who called himself 'Afton' (Phoenix figured that there was an 80% chance that it was William, but he didn't want to get to know the scraptrap any better) cutting off one of Phoenix's fingers, the kid really had nothing to worry about.

He knew that William was using two of the hostages in a 'game' that was engineered to make the animatronics believe that someone else was William via an 'ultimate custom night': near-back-to-back six hour stints of getting animatronics to attack someone that would be used as a scapegoat. Phoenix knew that this detective lady was the scapegoat, and knew that William was treating the other hostage that was involved in the game as if he were an animatronic and not a human, but it's not like Phoenix could really do anything except try to find a way out whilst forming allegiances with whoever wasn't 'in-game' in hopes to get the animatronics to unite against the rabbit that was running the show, and from the information he received from his metallic allies, he wasn't the only one trying to let the animatronics know that the Afton that was hiding under their noses was in fact William, and they weren't the only one that knew.

Fortunately, it didn't take too many weeks for the detective lady to rally and rile the animatronics enough for them to all turn on William at the same time, with it not being a revelation, but catharsis. This coup allowed for the hostages to escape, and whilst infection did cause phoenix to lose his whole ring finger down to the knuckle, he was able to get a prosthetic.

The warehouse incident changed Phoenix's perspective on how to inform and rally. Some say for the better, others say for the worse.

It is still a mystery if him trying to convey what he wanted to tell the world about Fazbear Entertainment via a horror attraction was a good or bad idea.

After saving up enough money from working as a remote part-time editor for a handful of tabloid news outlets, he was able to secure enough money for a grand plan. He pitched a haunted house to the local year-round carnival: a haunted house based on Fazbear Entertainment's dark past; Phoenix would pay out of pocket for construction and maintenance, and for land rent; all the carnival needed to do was let him have the haunted house there, and they'd split the profits of the haunted house 50/50.

Phoenix avoided construction costs by doing almost all of the construction work himself, getting any extra money that he needed for materials and hiring electricians by working as a ride operator on top of his editor gigs. He also avoided prop costs by sourcing replicas and scavenging for genuine articles either by himself or with a small team.

Phoenix already knew that genuine objects wouldn't be able to be salvaged unless the ghosts in the building wanted them to be salvaged; whilst he couldn't directly speak with ghosts, the spirits he encountered on his salvage missions would always find him first and guided him to whatever artefact that they possessed. It was a win win. It was was always a part of his plan to reconnect people with the ghosts of loved ones that had been trapped in old closed down restaurants, and the ghosts being up for it just made it easier. And because he knew he'd be giving these artefacts away, he managed to create replicas for when he inevitably did.

Despite the final building having obvious ventilation issues in the form of the outside vents sealing shut at random during the night, it somehow got the green light from inspectors given that it was always fine during the day, and given that the vents could be reopened by simply resetting the ventilation, he figured he'd just tell the guard, and he'd try and fix it during daytime closing hours.

He didn't expect Theren to jump at the chance to be the security guard, and given that the fairground had left Phoenix in full command of his horror attraction - all the way from paying its bills to hiring its staff to cleaning the place up - he hired her. Whilst Phoenix was worried and didn't want her in any danger, she insisted that it was safe, and besides, his girlfriend was really the only person he could trust to keep this place safe, and she understood his plan so he wouldn't have to lie to her about his intentions: she already knew that all he wanted to do was use the haunted house as a way of getting people to realise that Fazbear Entertainment was never a safe place for kids.

On her first night on the job, Phoenix was scavenging again, and he found an old friend of the family: a broken down animatronic rabbit. As he tried to  pick it up, it woke up. Phoenix thought he was going to die, but it turned out to just be Vincent Taylor, who had undergone quite the transformation since phoenix last saw the man. As Vincent didn't attack Phoenix and seemed to be willing to talk, Phoenix explained the plan to him, and Vincent accepted the offer, in exchange for use of cleaning facilities and a negligible fee.

Vincent had also brought over some other ghosts with him too: a gaggle of adults who took ghostly forms, though he could only see traces of them. Except for Dr Ophelia, aka phantom Mangle. Ophelia seemed to like freaking people out with how mutilated she looked, and she was PUMPED to be able to star as a scare actor in a horror attraction.

With new colleagues in his plan, Phoenix and Vincent spent the second day continuing preparations for the attraction to open: with Vincent on art direction, the place was now looking less sterile and more stylish, and when Theren came in during the evening, she seemed more familiar with uncle Vincent than than he was. Though after he called in to re-brief her on the findings, still giddy about finding an old friend, Theren seemed rather panicked. Apparently Vincent had just had a migraine and had ran off to the other end of the building. He was left curious and concerned, but after running on so little sleep for so long, he fell asleep on his apartment floor whilst trying to get to the door to leave.

In the morning, he woke up, rushed to the horror attraction, and found a shaken-up Theren and apologetic Vincent. Apparently, Vincent had heard a buzzing sound and had felt himself lose control over his physical form, as if something had been puppeting his body, meanwhile Theren had been playing keep-away at Vincent's request, making sure that the animatronic that he possessed yet now held no control over wouldn't reach the office.

The trio spent the whole day searching for whatever could have made the sound that had been controlling Vincent, but they were unsuccessful. But Theren was prepared this time, and the night went much smoother, as did the next, and the next, and the next.

On Theren's sixth night, everything seemed fine and normal, until the place burst into flames.

When Phoenix arrived shortly before six, he found the building on fire. He knew it was arson: despite the 'faulty' wiring, the smell of gasoline made it clear that the wiring was not the issue here. Besides, every Fazbear's fright that had opened beforehand under different people had all burned down, so even though faulty wiring had always been blamed, it had to be something more.

As he had a panic attack at the edge of what the emergency services whom had arrived before him had designated as the safe zone, the phantoms tried to comfort him in order to keep him from doing anything rash. The phantoms also knew something that Phoenix didn't: that Vincent was getting Theren out of the building as they spoke (though Phoenix couldn't hear them). Ophelia kept Phoenix looking at the fire so he'd be the first to see Vincent and Theren escape, and as the the haunted animatronic carried out the unconscious but alive guard, the phantoms kept him from running into the danger zone to meet them. They let him go once Theren was receiving medication attention, but stuck by him just in case.

After the fire had been put out, investigation into the cause begun, and whilst the pre-morning-papers-print investigation was inconclusive, one thing was certain: the paranormal department planned on using an auction to find people that were connected to any of the genuine articles that he had found as per Phoenix's original plans of reconnecting the ghosts linked to the artefacts he salvaged with their families or friends that they left behind, whilst legitimately selling the replicas to get Phoenix some money back (all the money from insurance would go to the park that hosted the attraction, and Phoenix didn't expect a penny of that).

The auction plan went down without a hitch, especially since the paranormal department had a medium doing the auctioneer thing, and she was able to pull out some serious theatrics to make everyone in the room immediately accept that some items were posessed and would simply choose who would be taking them home before any bidding could begin. Each posessed item would be announced not as an item for auction, but as a ghost returning to it's loved ones as Phoenix brought the item out to the medium, and then she'd hold up the item, and the ghost would float it over everyone's heads before settling in the lap of whatever family member or friend it wanted to go home with, and finally, the medium would announce the person who the ghost landed with as being it's chosen home before moving onto the next item.

By the end of it, most ghosts who had been trapped within restaurants for years had been reconnected with their families: orphaned kids had found their dead parents, widows and widowers had found their dead partners, friends had found their dead friends, and most importantly, dead kids had found their parents or friends. The scale of the reuniting effort was the biggest win against Fazbear Entertainment in years, and it only worked due to the combined efforts of the ghosts drawing their folks in, the medium making the people at the event honour the ghosts wishes, and Phoenix's overall plans for the reuniting effort.

When the investigation into the fire came back as arson, everything fell into place: an individual had been hunting down any Fazbear related horror attraction that had a Springtrap: there had been one prior to the warehouse incident, and several after, and it seemed like the arsonist wouldn't be done until all Springtraps were gone. But Vincent told Phoenix not to worry about it, as he'd deal with it himself.

With that all over, Phoenix decided to open up a smaller more formal memorial museum in order to expose the truths behind Fazbear Entertainment, and whilst live-updating the exhibits to display information about each new incident as they arose was difficult, he was more than up for the task.

After all, who else was going to work with the journalists and investigators to consolidate all of the information on the HW incident, VR incidents, Riot, Breach, Raid, Training Sim incidents, and Ruins incident and present them in a way that the public would more naturally encounter and engage with.

[jcmarchi]

Insights into political outsiders

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/insights-into-political-outsiders/

Insights into political outsiders

As the old saw has it, 90 percent of politics is just showing up. Which is fine for people who are already engaged in the political system and expect to influence it. What about everyone else? The U.S. has millions and millions of people who typically do not vote or participate in politics. Is there a way into political life for those who are normally disconnected from it?

This is a topic MIT political scientist Ariel White has been studying closely over the last decade. White conducts careful empirical research on typically overlooked subjects, such as the relationship between incarceration and political participation; the way people interact with government administrators; and how a variety of factors, from media coverage to income inequality, influence engagement with politics.

While the media heavily cover the views of frequent voters in certain areas, there is very little attention paid to citizens who do not vote regularly but could. To grasp U.S. politics, it might help us to better understand such people.

“I think there is a much broader story to be told here,” says White, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Political Science.

Study by study, her research has been telling that story. Even short, misdemeanor-linked jail terms, White has found, reduce the likelihood that people will vote — and lower the propensity of family members to vote as well. When people are convicted of felonies, they often lose their right to vote, but they also vote at low rates when eligible. Other studies by White also suggest that an 8 percent minimum wage increase leads to an increase in turnout of about one-third of 1 percent, and that those receiving public benefits are far less likely to vote than those who do not.

These issues are often viewed in partisan terms, although the reality, White thinks, is considerably more complex. When evaluating infrequent or disconnected voters, we do not know enough to make assumptions about these matters.

“Getting people with past criminal convictions registered and voting, when they are eligible, is not a surefire partisan advantage for anybody,” White says. “There’s a lot of heterogeneity in this group, which is not what people assume. Legislators tend to treat this as a partisan issue, but at the mass public level you see less polarization, and more people are willing to support a path for others back into daily life.”

Experiences matter

White grew up near Rochester, New York, and majored in economics and government at Cornell University. She says that initially she never considered entering academia, and tried her hand at a few jobs after graduation. One of them, working as an Americorps-funded paralegal in a legal services office, had a lasting influence; she started thinking more about the nature of government-citizen interactions in these settings.

“It really stuck in my mind the way people’s experiences, one-on-one with a person who is representing government, when trying to get benefits, really shapes people’s views about how government is going to operate and see them, and what they can expect from the state,” White says. “People’s experiences with government matter for what they do politically.”

Before long, White was accepted into the doctoral program at Harvard University, where she earned an MA in 2012 and her PhD in 2016. White then joined the MIT faculty, also in 2016, and has remained at the Institute ever since.

White’s first published paper, in 2015, co-authored with Julie Faller and Noah Nathan, found that government officials tended to have different levels of responsiveness when providing voting information to people of apparently different ethnicities. It won an award from the American Political Science Association. (Nathan is now also a faculty member at MIT.)

Since then, White has published a string of papers examining how many factors interact with voting propensities. In one study focused in Pennsylvania, she found that public benefits recipients made up 20 percent of eligible voters in 2020 but just 12 percent of those who voted. When examining the criminal justice system, White has found that even short-term jail time leads to a turnout drop of several percentage points among the incarcerated. Family members of those serving even short jail sentences are less likely to vote in the near term too, although their participation rebounds over time.

“People don’t often think of incarceration as a thing they connect with politics,” White says. “Descriptively, with many people who have had the experience of incarceration or criminal convictions, or who are living in families or neighborhoods with a lot of it, we don’t see a lot of political action, and we see low levels of voting. Given how widespread incarceration is in the U.S., it seems like one of the most common and impactful things the government can do. But for a long time it was left to sociology to study.”

How to reach people?

Having determined that citizens are less likely to vote in many circumstances, White’s research is now evolving toward a related question: What are the most viable ways of changing that? To be sure, nothing is likely to create a tsunami of new voters. Even where people convicted of felonies can vote from prison, she found in still another study, they do so at single-digit rates. People who are used to not voting are not going to start voting at high rates, on aggregate.

Still, this fall, White led a new field experiment about getting unregistered voters to both register and vote. In this case, she and some colleagues created a study designed to see if friends of unregistered voters might be especially able to get their networks to join the voter rolls. The results are still under review. But for White, it is a new area where many kinds of experiments and studies seem possible.

“Political science in general and the world of actual practicing political campaigns knows an awful lot about how to get registered voters to turn out to vote,” White says. “There’s so much work on get-out-the-vote activities, mailers and calls and texts. We know way, way less about the 1-in-4 or so eligible voters who are simply not registered at all, and are in a very real sense invisible in the political landscape. Overwhelmingly, the people I’m curious about fall into that category.”

It is also a subject that she hopes will sustain the interest of her students. White’s classes tend to be filled by students with many different registered majors but an abiding interest in civic life. White wants them to come away with a more informed sense of their civic landscape, as well as new tools for conducting clean empirical studies. And, who knows? Like White herself, some of her students may end up making a career out of political engagement, even if they don’t know it yet.

“I really like working with MIT students,” White says. “I do hope my students gain some key understandings about what we know about political life, and how we can know about it, which I think are likely to be helpful to them in a variety of realms. My hope is they take a fundamental understanding of social science research, and some big questions, and some big concepts, out into the world.”

[jackdaw-kraai]

New Patreon Post? New Patreon Post.

It was probably high time I told y'all about the fact that I have a patreon again and attempt to do so in a way that's not completely gauche, SO. Let me tell you about about what it is, does, and after all that, why you should at least look at it even if you would sooner gargle orange juice after brushing your teeth than give me money.

Patreon, as you probably know, or maybe not, is a site that kind of works on the old idea of patronage. AKA, artists get paid money to do what they love so they don't, y'know, starve. Except instead of one rich fuck, it's funded by many far-less-rich people, because fuck capitalism. In practice, you subscribe to an artist, pay them however much a month you want, and the amount determines which tier subscription you have and what rewards you get access to. As you've probably guessed, I have such a system in place.

So *slaps roof of patreon* lemme tell you what this bad boy can fit in it. It can fit LORE for one, like, all of it. This is where I post 4K long essays on the specific kind of fungus that grows only in the driest place on a fictional planet, digests rock in order to get nutrients, and feeds an underground ecosystem through the mycelium that bore through the rock and into the networks of underground rivers that exist there and thus is a keystone species for an entire biome. I also post fictional transcripts of drunk history videos with a delightfully crude historical archivist, that tell stories about how a fictional train network got created by a trainwreck of a human being that involves a contest, a technically legal museum heist, the mob, a trained cat, and a disastrously gay aristocrat. And then another about that guy's mob enforcer sister who once killed a man by putting him in a headlock and flexing her bicep and also her absolutely pathetic wimp of a husband who loves his built-like-a-semi-truck wife very much.

That's not even mentioning the extensive articles on my own conlang, including IPA annotations, detailed character descriptions, redacted reports from amoral scientists who are about to greatly regret everything they ever did, and excerpts from an essay on forbidden magic by a scholar from outside the community.

Mind you, almost all of those are in the lower tiers of the patreon, the tiers that you can get for only a handful of dollars a month, yes, a literal handful. I haven't even gotten to the high-tier stuff. Higher-tier rewards include: ability to vote in polls that make me answer spoiler questions, access to secret lore like how the magic in this world works and what occult elements are at play in the story, and even creating a character together with me if you really decide to be insane with the money you throw at me. I've already done this once and it was great fun to create Sol with someone, an absolute unit of a black lesbian fighter pilot with the soul of a gentle giant.

With all levels though, you also do this: you support my ability to write, and keep writing, as I begin to plan out my own original fiction ideas and further career steps into becoming a published writer. You support my ability to experiment with my writing style, my interests, and help me keep my head above water in a world that's increasingly hostile to artists and writers. You support my ability to live a small, comfortable life that lets me create wonder and magic in a world that desperately needs some of that.

And, as I promised above, even if you don't want to, or simply can't give anything (Gods know that everyone is struggling to get by these days) then it's still worth looking at the public-facing page, because instead of boring-ass tier descriptions, I gave each tier a little blurb of text that is a part of a larger, fragmentary story of Keshiro, Storm Wraith's, last great adventure before he left the Desert. It's a story that currently only exists in said blurbs, but is planned to be written out in full, and when it is, it will, of course, be posted for free on Ao3, no caveats or strings attached. Until then... give it a read. Tell me what you think. I'll see you there.

The link to my patreon page, see what you think.

[lichenaday]

Hi there! I read your reply to the info graphic on mushrooms and I was wondering if you'd be willing to talk a little more about Paul Stamets.

I only really know him from the Fantastic Fungi movie (which is fun but does sound like one long advertisement for the guy) and don't know much else about him. I was skeptical when I heard he was self-taught, but mycology has always seemed like such a fringe field to get into (speaking as a Master's student in biology who's had like zero contact with fungi beyond mycorrhiza) that his lack of a formal education didn't sound like a deal breaker.

I did notice (with some apprehension) how he talked about all the patents he sold and thought in that moment he sounded more like Elon Musk than a scientist...

But when I google him all that comes up is praise and talk of what a revolutionary guy he is. Do you maybe have more info on him that's a bit more critical of his practices?

Ugh, yeah I can talk about him a bit more, but I am not sure I am the right person to weigh in. Should've kept my mouth shut, but I also feel like this guy gets too many passes. I hate bad science. First, let me say he is really good at what he does. He is great at finding ways to get people excited about fungi, and that is pretty invaluable when most people would rather ignore fungi or actively hate them. As you say, even folks studying biology don't learn shit about them! It's really sad! So he is doing a bit of a service to the mycological world, which is partially why I think he sometimes gets a pass. But he's an entrepreneur, which, let's face it, isn't considered a bad thing in this capitalist world of ours. He's not doing anything *wrong*, if you don't count really stretching some truths and relying on anecdotal evidence and his own experiences. I think people need to keep in mind that he is trying to sell you something with his claims. For example, mycoremidation has cool potential, but if he really cared about its potential to save the world, he would publish his research and not hide it behind patents.

To be fair, I'm not pursuing mycology out of the pure goodness of my heart or anything. I want to get paid and I want to be acknowledged for my contributions. So maybe I am not so different. But when I read his articles where he continually plugs his books and his talks and his products . . . it rubs me the wrong way as a scientist. From what I can tell, his research practices are not transparent, the info he is giving out is not peer-reviewed, and he promotes and sells products in the alternative medicine market. It bothers me that he is constantly toted as the authority on mycology when there are many other great researchers out there doing incredible work who don't get the same attention because they are busy doing actual science instead of selling their discoveries.

Also he was on the Joe Rogan Podcast so there's that.

[ghostwise]

🏅 and 💻 for the fic writing asks?

🏅 What is something you recently felt proud of in regard to your writing (finished a fic, actually planned for once, etc).

I am extremely proud of the fic I've written for the Dragon Age Annual minizine 💖 I worked hard on it and the project as a whole is making me happy lately, so I gotta shout it out! I was also beyond proud when I got my first paid short story published, it told me I can do this writing thing... and I will!

💻 Do you do research for your fics? What’s the deepest dive you’ve done?

I research everything very thoroughly, even for fantasy; it's important to understand how things work, at least in a rudimentary way, to make them believable. I've researched reindeer life cycles, 18th century fabric production, botany, entomology, and more for DA fic.

To be honest the best way to get inspired about writing and to get ideas for writing in general is to read a niche non-fiction book written by a scientist who is MADLY in love with their subject. I mean it's so fun, it doesn't even feel like research.

[borbology]

penguin and bat facts but cursed edition? 🐧🦇 i need some shitty hcs for my metadede vault 👀

*CRACKS KNUCKLES*

Buckle up guys, it's going to be a wild ride.

PENGUINS:

Penguins have knees, but they're high up in their body. They are also about 50% neck:

They shit like this:

Because they are flightless and do not need hollow bones, being hit by a penguin flipper is surprisingly painful. They can barrage you with up to 8 slaps a second and will use their beak to hold you in place while they do it.

The instinct to parent is so strong in penguins that it was observed if emperor penguins find an orphaned chick, any adult without a chick will pursue them in an effort to claim them as their own, and the horde winds up just crushing the chick to death.

Nearly a third of all female humboldt penguins cheat on their mate, often with other females.

Female humboldt and adélie penguins will prostitute themselves to get paid in stones that they use for their own nests.

And (this is the best one) In 1911 a scientist by the name of George Murray Levick spent a year in Antarctica to study the breeding cycle of adélie penguins. What he observed was that the behavior of the "hooligan" penguins showed so much "sexual depravity" that he felt the need to write his findings in Greek code. When he presented his findings, it was deemed so obscene that the public should never see it, and it wasn't published until 100 years later. I won't go into detail here, but if you want to read about it you can.

BATS:

Their nipples are in their armpits:

The males have big 🥜

They can eat 50% of their body weight every day.

Vampire bats regurgitate blood directly into the mouths of other members of the colony.

Dense bat colonies in caves were responsible for both of the only two known cases where rabies was spread through airborne pathogens.

Bat guano can be used to make gunpowder. It is also very effective fertilizer.

Bat urine crystalizes very quickly upon contact with air, and when bats pee while hanging upside down it forms a stalagmite on the roof.

Some bats have huge babies. The free-tailed bat has babies that are 1/3 the size of the mother, which would be like a 120lb woman having a 40lb baby.

As part of a courtship ritual, some species of male bats will bite the female's neck to tell them they're ready to mate.

Bats lick each-other A LOT before mating. There's also this.

[doctor-seamonster]

Instead of writing what I get paid to write, I spent 30 minutes writing a 500 word rant about the rise of fascism in america post-ww2.

We grew up being told that america won ww2 and stopped the nazis for good.

They never told us about the fascists and nazi sympathizers in the US, who had open pro-nazi rallies before america got involved in the war.

And for as excited as the government was to round up random japanese-american citizens, they didn't do anything to stop the american fascists at home.

Not to mention all the nazi scientists that got smuggled into government research programs after the war, of course.

The nazis are here. They've been here the whole time. They never went away, they just got real, real quiet.

Private newsletters and secret meetings and published books with coded messages.

Politics ebbed and flowed over the decades since the war. When they could be more vocal, they took every opportunity. There was even a presidential candidate that ran on a pro-segregation platform. But for most of them, they were just waiting behind the scenes.

Sometimes they wore hoods, sometimes they wore business suits, sometimes they wore metal badges.

Then came the internet. It was so, so easy to put up anything they wanted. Websites like stormfront popped up like toxic weeds. And any place that wasn't moderated well, like image boards, rhetoric and propaganda seeped in.

Then we get to the turn of the century.

And there was a tragedy so massive that everyone in america absolutely lost their minds. Suddenly it was in vogue to blame everything on not just muslims, but anyone who had dark skin or non-european names. There's records of many indian people getting brutalized after 9/11.

And by then it was open season to spew propaganda against anyone who wasn't white.

They drummed up fears about north korean military threats and chinese businesses and mexican cartels and columbian drug lords.

Then a black man ran for president and shit just absolutely exploded. This isn't really about him specifically, he's definitely not my favorite person in the world. But just the very idea of a black man leading america brought out the very worst sides of the very worst people.

The public got fed lines about how "racism is over!", all the while online spaces were dripping with venomous conspiracy theories about the blacks and the jews.

And then there's this asshole.

A public figure, hot off his own network tv show, started to spew that same venom. Nonsense about "fake birth certificates" and anything else awful he could say that got people whipped up into a froth.

He's not so much making racist dogwhistles as he's blaring a klaxon, letting all the cryptofascists know that it's okay to be loud and proud, and telling the whole new generation groomed with online white supremacy that it was their time to shine.

Between the support he's drummed up for himself and the general fucking failures on the other side, it's a cakewalk for him to get into office. Finally, a real, red-blooded, blonde-haired, white-skinned american man is running the country again.

So now we've got open white supremacists on speaking tours and nazi rallies in the streets. Not only is it okay to be a racist piece of shit, just as long as you use the right turn of phrase, but it's even good for mass appeal if you do it stylishly enough.

And that's modern life in america.

[alpaca-clouds]

So, What's Happening In Psychology?

So, uhm. Science has a problem right now. And there is probably no area that shows this better than the psychology departments.

If you are in any way adjacent to academia, you might have already heard about the problem that sceince is in right now. Namely it is that everyone who works in science is pushed towards publishing. If you want to keep praciticing science, you gotta publish papers. But because you only get to publish those papers in journals, and those journals are run under very capitalistic principles. This means for one: Scientists often do not get shit and at times have to pay to get their papers published. But it also means that the journals prefer to publish papers that a) get a clear result, and b) get a result that will make headlines, because then they can sell the paper a lot more. This also means, that nobody is interested in replicate studies and replicate papers, meaning there is little motivation to replicate someone else's study for scientists (who need to publish, after all).

Now, this is a general problem in science. But the difference in psychology is, that other sciences have at least some clearer ways in regards to replicating studies. I am not saying it is easier - but it is clearer to control for other factors in biology, chemistry or physics than it is in psychology.

To keep standards up, it has long been standard practice to mathematically control studies, but... That is easier said than done, given that the scientist doing the study will often even through subconscious bias manipulate the study.

And then there is the general study issue that a lot of stuff has and that shows really strongly in psychology and sociology studies. I don't know whether there is a name for it, but I call it the "student bias". Basically: Often when you do a study at university where you need ask people questions and stuff, most of the people the study will be done on will be students. This will kinda presellect the kind of people you will do the study on to certain demographics.

Again, this is not only a psychology problem, but it shows so strongly in psychology, where the additional problem is that... well, at times there is moments where the scientific method was not used or is not used still.

I talked in the first entry this week about IQ tests. IQ tests are bogus. They always were bogus. But they were what was always used and nobody ever questioned that.

Same goes with other stuff. I talked a few weeks ago about Stockholm Syndrome being bullshit. It is kinda the same issue. Someone claimed it was true, nobody challenged the guy immediately, and then people just got used to it.

I am not saying that all psychologists are unscientific. Of course not. Just that some are and that right now it is at times hard - especially for people not working in the field - to actually differenciate the good from the bad. Especially when reading those papers. (I mean, I am no psychologist, but at the very least I know how to read and understand papers.)

Honestly, I personally do not even know what to do about that kinda stuff. It is probably good that right now some attention gets paid to this fact at the very least.

But really, can we stop pushing scientists to always publish stupid papers? And can we make those papers free, too? Because this stuff is bullshit right now.

[deadinyourarea]

i mean to be fair, the people who say that ghosts don't have emotions seem like those people paid off by certain industries to do scientific studies-

they do science with the express intention to come to a predetermined conclusion. in this case, it's just that the ecto-scientists are massive bigots trying to justify it with pseudo-science?

sure would suck for them if some college-age amity parkers were in the process of publishing at least one scientific article to discredit them

popsicles tho, amiright?

Oh so that's just your thing now, huh? Popsicles?

But yeah, maybe. Some people don't have to get paid to do it anyways. Some people...

some people truly believe it. Even with evidence living right under their roof.

[icebluecyanide]

Alex Rider S03E01 Reaction

So I've already watched all of s3, but I decided for some reason to keep a liveblog & take a moment after every episode to write down my thoughts/predictions/questions at the time. Some of it is very amusingly wrong, but I'm going to share it anyway because I do always enjoy reading liveblogs/reaction posts myself so maybe other people will want to read it too.

Note that while this contains no spoilers for later eps, I have read the book and reference it, so warning for book spoilers and me being unable to stop comparing the two.

Liveblog

Hey I’ve been there! (Malta)

I am petty but I don’t like Alex sharing what Yassen told him with people lol. But I guess they had to make it a group project for the show and it’s not the stuff with his dad which is what Alex in the books felt was too private to share so oh well

Tom and Jerry(/Jay??) ahsdlfhs

Alex thinking Yassen wasn’t lying to him 😭 and he does seem to have kept the part about his dad a secret!

oh damn he wants to destroy Scorpia!! and Kyra also wanting him to, that could cause interesting conflict when he joins them later

also i forgot that Scorpia actually killed Ian in this lol

Kyra is going to do machine learning lol

Love the Alex/Kyra ship fuel with the hurt/comfort scene

ahslfhs how did they even find that villa tho? LIke I thought that was just the piece of wall Mrs Rothman was photographed in front of, surely that gives them no clues about where she’s staying?

And not to be mean but Kyra did kinda bring the stabbing on herself ashdflhs. Going off on her own because she got bored and then expecting Alex to do the fighting and treating the fight weirdly casually

It’s interesting how they seem to have changed Scorpia’s structure/origin story what with Mrs Rothman being elected and there being no client for this operation.

Them referencing Alex getting in with Tom setting fireworks in the books... i mean it's a nice reference but also actually that was more fun than Kyra just being able to hack their way in ngl ahsdlfhs. Not really the show’s fault, but modern tech & computer tricks make spy stories more boring

Also Alex just walked into the party in his suit and honestly this is one of those plots that only works because Otto is not a teenager. If he actually looked like a teen, he would have stood out waaaay too much (which was actually a concern in the book)

Alex grabbing champagne and later putting it back down again haha good way to blend in, I suppose

Getting his phone out?? In the exhibition?? So rude

Love the trend of doctors/scientists in Alex Rider wanting to be paid more for their work. Honestly they deserve it because they won’t even get to publish their extraordinary findings

‘I can hear you breathe’ Love Nile

Nile please how are you surprised at Alex attacking you asdfs

Shame we didn’t get Nile overpowering him like in the books, the difference in their fighting skills was so much bigger there, but I think they made Alex more of a fighter in the show. In the books he mostly needs to rely on the element of surprise and usually when he’s in a fight he’s outmatched and needs to use some form of trickery/his environment to win while show!Alex actually has pretty good fighting skills

I love Nile’s actor but I wish he could have actually taken Alex down like in the book, the way he loses Alex and doesn’t even realise it & thinks he died makes him look a lot less competent tbh

How did Alex climb up there?? And more importantly, how is he getting down haha

I get the feeling Yassen isn't gonna show up until Alex is with Mrs Rothman lol but at least we got to hear his final words ot Alex like four times

Overall

Really exciting, love seeing Malta and I’m intrigued at the differences between the book and the show and where it will lead. 

Thoughts/predictions

I imagine the race Tom’s brother mentioned will play a role and I liked the little bit we got with Tom about his grades being bad and maybe wanting to drop out. I guess Tom’s parents aren’t going through their divorce in the show? Also really enjoyed Alex and Kyra being more invested in the investigation than Tom and how they are apparently planning to take down Scorpia for their families.

I liked how we got to see more from Julia Rothman and Scorpia already and I’m intrigued by what Invisible Sword will be. Love Max having his ‘I have grandkids now’ moment and trying to talk Julia Rothman down and her being like ‘no I want to kill’. Looooved Nile telling Mrs Rothman to shoot him if he ever lost the appetite for killing.

I also really liked Alex talking about his dad and how he had nothing to do with spying and how his world got turned upside down when he learned about his uncle being a spy and now it’s happening again.

Questions

What is Invisible Sword in this?

What’s the deal with Julia inheriting her place at the table? Not sure if I like the new origin story for Scorpia but I’m intrigued by the way they have a council now instead of an executive board and how it changes the vibes.

Are Alex and Tom and Kyra gonna fight?

[bussyplease]

As someone who's about to work in biology research, I can't stay silent about the Frontiers AI rat penis event.

LOOK AT HIM

WARNING: LONG AF. STRAP YOURSELVES IN, WITCHES!

I'll explain in detail, in a way that's accessible for non-scientists, everything that's wrong with this. Recently, a scientific article with AI generated figures was published in the journal "Frontiers in cell and developmental biology".

Here's the link to download this (now retracted) article in PDF.

(disclamer: I am a master's student in neuroscience with a bachelor's in biology, so, definitely not a rat ball specialist, and I have never published anything)

Context

This is a review article about the relationship between rat ball cells and a signalling pathway that happens inside cells.

What's a review article? It's an article that is meant to summarise everything we know about a certain topic, based on recent research articles. This means that the authors of a review don't conduct any experiments: they gather information from people who did. It sounds easy but it's not. They have to piece together a very complex puzzle. Sometimes an article says that molecule A interacts with molecule B and gives you such and such effects, but in another article they say they haven't found any effect in particular of molecules A and B, and a third article will tell you that the effect exists in cell cultures but not in an actual animal because molecule C is also there... And there are dozens and dozens of articles they have to sift through, dissect, evaluate etc. And then they have to make sense of that whole hoopla. And then they have to explain it to everyone.

BUT. A review is probably the easiest type of scientific article to fake. Because for a research article, you have to conduct actual experiments and provide results. For a meta-analysis, you will come under great scruitiny because they are expected to be very reliable and when a new meta-analysis drops, the hype in the field is big. People will see through it in seconds. But a bullshit review? People are not as interested in picking apart reviews, because there are no experimental results directly shown in them, no statistical calculations or criteria to criticise etc. It's almost all text. You can AI generate text. You can write lazily and it will still have the appearance of a review from afar.

However, a review has figures. The figures are meant to illustrate the mechanisms of the phenomena described in the review. Usually, those are very clean, easy to understand even for non-specialists, they are your best friend when you're not too sure what's going in this wall of text and you want to get the gist. Review figures are good educational tools, so you need to have a good understanding of the topic and be concise to make a good review figure. You can't fake that with AI.

In order to publish a review, just like any other scientific article, you have to submit it to a scientific journal. You have to format your article exaclty according to the journal's criteria, (and if you were wondering, no you don't get paid for doing the journal's job for them, nor do you get paid for providing them content you took years to produce, in fact you have to pay them, the journal, thousands of dollars). Your article will then go through several rounds of selection and revisions. First the journal will decide whether or not your article is relevant to their area of expertise (like, if you try to publish a paper on quantum mechanics to the journal "Poultry Science", it will not work, no matter if you're better than Einstein and Hawking combined). Then they'll decide whether or not your article is interesting enough to them. If it is, they will send your article to reviewers (usually 2, sometimes 3). Reviewers are researchers who are knowledgeable about the topic you're covering in your article. They're usually anonymous, they shouldn't be associated with the journal and they don't get paid by the journal for reviewing the paper (this is to guarantee neutrality, but still it's work to review an article and they don't get paid). The reviewers will suggest modifications to the paper, ask for clarifications etc. You change your paper, they give their suggestions again, you change your paper again... Then after this back and forth is done, if everyone is satisfied, your article can get published. I'd like to emphasize that in a decent journal, it almost never happens that a paper gets accepted right away without any rounds of corrections. Most of the time, reviewers get real nitpicky and I've had professors complain that they'll sometimes freak out over every single comma. This is what the term "peer-reviewed" means. Other researchers in the field have to critique your paper before it even comes out, and after it comes out, every other scientist who reads your paper can critique your paper. Some say the real peer review starts after publication, because then everyone in the scientific community can pick your article apart and determine how relevant it actually is by deciding whether or not to cite it in their own works.

The journal this article was published in, Frontiers in cell and developmental biology, is not the most prestigious, but it is (or was, I guess) still rather reputable with an impact factor of 5. The impact factor is a score that evaluates the quality of a journal based on how many times their articles were cited as references in other articles. To give you an idea, here are the 2023 impact factors of the biggest journals in biology:

Science: 57

Nature: 65

Cell: 65

The average impact factor for all scientific journals is under 1, because there are a lot of shit journals out here. Journals are businesses that can be very low effort to set up, so the quality journals are actually few. An impact factor above 10 means business, that's some shit you can brag about. 5 is not super glorious but it's decent.

Frontiers is not just one journal but a group of journals, each specialised in one topic (Frontiers in Immunology, Frontiers in Surgery, etc) each with their own impact factor.

Where did shit go wrong?

I don't know what the fuck went through the authors' heads. Was this a troll? Were they serious?? Anyway let's start with the funniest and most visible part.

The figures

Figure 1

Do I really need to explain? These aren't real body parts. These aren't even words. Shoutout to "rat", the only correct part of this figure. The caption says just about nothing.

This is the image that went viral because... Of course. It's a massive rat dick and balls. But the other figures aren't any better.

Figure 2

This is supposed to represent the JAK-STAT intracellular pathway. JAK and STAT are proteins, and this is supposed to represent how their activation impacts other molecules inside the cell. As you can see, again, not a single real word on that figure, this represents absolutely nothing. You can clearly see that the authors gave the AI image generator "JAK-STAT pathway" as a prompt because every single thing on this image is labelled as some variation of JAK or STAT. Which is pretty funny. Another thing I find hilarious is that the caption underneath the figure is actually a correct description of the JAK-STAT pathway, which leads me to think it was written by a human. For reference here's an actual diagram that represents this pathway rather simply (by Adriana Gutiérrez-Hoya and Isabel Soto-Cruz)

Source

Figure 3

Again, no real words, just a bunch of balls and circles without any meaning. I can't speak about whether or not the caption makes any sense because I'm not too well versed in the topic. Special shoutout to the beautiful word "IMMOUMINOMUDUODIUILATIUCATON" in figure E. I think that was an attempt at saying "immunomodulation".

The content of the text

This review attempts to summarise the current knowledge on spermatogonial stem cells in relation to the JAK-STAT pathway. Spermatogonial stem cells are self-renewing cells located in testicles that allow for continuous production of sperm cells throughout a male mammal's whole adult life. The JAK-STAT pathway is a cellular signaling pathway. What this means, in simple terms, is basically a cascade of proteins inside a cell that talk to each other to say shit like "hey hey hey have you heard that there's a bunch of [X] molecule outside?? We better do something about it." And then they do something about it.

As I've said before I'm not an expert in this area at all. I vaguely know the JAK-STAT pathway, the structure of testicles, and what stem cells do, but it stops there. I do want to discuss the content of this article though, because I haven't seen anyone do it yet and I wish an expert in the field would tell us what the content of that review is really worth.

There are some things that do seem fishy in here. First of all, when I first read the abstract, I was convinced that the whole article was AI generated because it looked like a succession of buzzwords. Turns out, the captions of the figures make sense and the text seems somewhat coherent. I would tend to say it was written by people, albeit in a very boring and unclear way. Then I went to the references to check if they were real. It turns out, at least the references are real articles.

I will not speak on the validity of the claims made in the article because I'm not knowledgeable enough. I've checked some references at random though, and sometimes, they are only very very loosely related to the claim in the review that they're supposed to illustrate, or sometimes just unrelated.

Example: at the beginning of page 7, you can read "miR-34c activates the JAK2/STAT3 pathway, implicated in germ cell generation and SSC differentiation (Clotaire et al., 2018)." When you go to that 2018 reference, you find out that this paper is not about miR-34c (it's not even mentioned once in that article). It's about another miRNA called miR-19b-3p. I've checked, they are 2 completely different miRNAs. They're not even coded on the same chromosome ffs. The article barely mentions JAK2 and the few times it does mention JAK2, there is no significant result showing any activation of JAK2.

Other example: at several points throughout the review, the authors claim that spermatogonial stem cells have an important immunomodulatory role. I haven't found literature supporting this claim anywhere. The one reference that the authors linked to this claim was absolutely not about immunomodulation, it was about reprogramming spermatogonial stem cells into neurons. What I did find, is several mentions of Sertoli cells (another type of cell present in testicles) having an immunomodulatory role.

Literally a case of [citation needed]. If there is one place where you have to have proper citations, it has to be a review article. This seems like some top tier laziness. I kind of doubt myself because I don't want to believe that someone would make a review where they don't source their information. I want to believe that I understood their reference articles wrong. But for real, check for yourself if you know a bit about biology. I don't think I'm wrong here.

I will not dive further into the content but tell me if y'all are interested. I will read up on rat balls to try and see if there is more bullshit in here, section by section, if you want me to.

The authors

The lovely individuals behind this review are Xinyu Guo, Liang Dong, and Dingjun Hao. All three are part of the Department of Spine Surgery in Xi'an Honghui hospital in China.

Because I don't speak chinese, and because it's common for hundreds or even thousands of people to have the exact same name in China, and because chinese social media is isolated from the rest of the world, it was hard for me to find information about these people.

All I can think is, what were they thinking??

First of all, what are y'all spine surgeons doing writing about rat balls?

First author - Xinyu Guo

For context, the first author is the person who contributed the most to the paper.

It's hard to find information about this person due to a lot of homonyms. However I was able to find 4 other articles from them on ResearchGate, which were about spinal cord injury, the JAK-STAT pathway, and one about reprogramming spermatogonial stem cells into neural-like cells in order to transplant them and help with recovery after spinal cord injury. So I guess that's why they're interested in rat balls. Kind of makes sense, but it looks like spermatogonial sperm cells could be a tool that they use in their research, and not their actual area of expertise which is, ya know. Spines. They seem knowledgeable about spines. I've also found their name in articles that were reports of medical cases and treatments for spinal injuries. I haven't found any online accounts related to this person, even on "scientist" social media like ResearchGate. My hypothesis is that this is a medical doctor turned researcher who got into using stem cells.

I did find this person as a reviewer for a paper in Frontiers in Immunology. If they're also in the field of immunology, that might explain why the review was so adamant that these spermatogonial stem cells have a role in immunomodulation...

Anyway, it doesn't seem very wise to have someone who is not specialised in stem cells to be the main author of a review about stem cells.

Second author - Liang Dong

Again, all I can find on that person is about spines and how to fix them. Articles associated with them are related to spinal cord injuries, spine surgeries, reports about medical cases and treatment efficiency etc. Nothing related to stem cells, except that one fateful review. No social media accounts either that I could find.

Third and last author - Dingjun Hao

Another Mister Spine. An experienced and prestigious one, even. He is (or was, I'm unsure) the president of the spinal surgery department of the hospital all three authors work at. He was also an author on many other papers, including those I found with the first author, so he did read the term spermatogonial stem cells at some point in his life it seems. But with his rhythm of publication (sometimes more than 10 papers a year), there is simply no way he is putting much effort in all of these papers. It seems like he is an old renowned professor, director of such and such department, who gets almost automatically added as an author in all of his colleagues' papers. I doubt he contributed a significant amount to this review. There's even a chance he hasn't read it.

He has been a reviewer for another journal of Frontiers, Frontiers in Surgery. He reviewed various papers on spinal injuries, which is fair enough because it's his area of expertise.

This time though, I got some more fun details. Interestingly, I found this from the website of Honghui hospital:

Looks like our friend won a great prize from the chinese government for his scientific work! Congrats! I'm sure that this botched review and the associated global backlash will not affect his relationship with the chinese government at all!

Overall, it seems like the authors are indeed spine surgeons, probably good ones, but not researchers specialised in stem cells or cellular singaling pathways.

This leads me to think that this review was not a troll at all. The likely scenario, in my opinion, is that, since all institutions need to publish articles to stay relevant (the age old slogan, publish or perish), the first two authors were asked to write a review and did so in a rush, about a topic they're vaguely familiar with. They didn't have anyone available to make cool looking figures, so they resorted to using AI at the last minute. It turned out terrible but they still tried to publish it in a not so prestigious journal, and somehow succeeded. They probably thought nobody would notice because no one would care enough to read it (and fair enough it is boring as hell).

The last author likely just has his name on there because he's the head of the department they work at, and these guys always get the last author spot by default. They're not necessarily very involved in the paper because they don't have time, but it benefits them by inflating their publication count.

The reviewers/the journal

With the way the figures look, there is absolutely no way a reviewer even looked at this paper and gave a favorable opinion. Point blank. Even an editor with very little scientific knowledge would have screamed seeing this. So what happened here?

After retracting the paper, just a few days after the publication, Frontiers released a statement in which they say:

"Our investigation revealed that one of the reviewers raised valid concerns about the figures and requested author revisions. The authors failed to respond to these requests. We are investigating how our processes failed to act on the lack of author compliance with the reviewers' requirements."

It seems like one reviewer (why just one??) raised concerns, somehow their opinion was not taken into account, and the editor still chose to publish without the reviewer's accord which is a huge no-no (means the paper is not in fact peer reviewed).

In a Vice article, one of the two reviewers, Jingbo Dai, (probably the one who didn't raise concerns, as you can tell from his detached attitude) said:

"As a biomedical researcher, I only review the paper based on its scientific aspects. For the AI-generated figures, since the author cited Midjourney, it's the publisher's responsibility to make the decision," Dai said. "You should contact Frontiers about their policy of AI-generated figures."

This is utter bullshit, because the figures are 100% part of the review, they are a "scientific aspect", and if they are inaccurate it's totally the reviewer's job to call them out. This guy simply doesn't give a shit. He shouldn't have accepted to review this paper if he didn't want to bother doing the bare minimum. If by "scientific aspects" he means the text, had he checked the references, he would have noticed some shit to fix as well.

Basically, what happened is that at least one reviewer didn't do his job, the editors flat out didn't look at what they published, and they only bothered looking at it when the backlash started. A nice chain of incompetence.

Conclusion

What does this mean for the scientific community?

It's important to note that the reason this article was even retracted is thanks to online backlash from the scientific community. What corrects science? More science. Better science. Not your aunt who "did her own research" on Young Living's facebook page.

Many in the scientific community are now more than ever highly critical of Frontiers, saying they will never publish in or review for them. The reputation of the journal is severely tarnished in the eyes of many, and one can hope that this will make editors look twice before they publish bullshit.

This may or may not be a career-ending mistake for the authors as well. We will see in the following weeks or months if they get to keep their jobs. They might not be able to publish in scientific papers ever again due to bad reputation. But I don't think they will have to stop their work as surgeons, since this is a completely different activity.

For me, this whole ordeal is a reminder that scientific journals are, first and foremost, businesses. Ultimately, they don't give a shit if what they publish is true. They only pretend to care about scientific integrity to maintain their reputation.

I hope that this will also encourage co-authors, especially senior researchers who get the last author spot by default, to be more cautious about what kind of papers they're willing to put their name on. And I hope this encourages institutions to lower their push for their researchers and doctors to publish publish publish no matter the quality, just so they can flex how many papers came out of their institution.

If anyone actually read this entire thing, thank you so much. I am very grateful that you found my rant good enough to read. If you have any additional information or corrections, please share them! Because this is just something a master's kid wrote in a boring afternoon, so there might be some errors. Have a nice day and uh... stay sciencing