#can have some variability in terms of results

[goblinwithartsupplies]

This is such a brilliant idea

To bad I have writing block

its been a million years.  percy has gone from young millenial to squarely gen z.  i think that while he’s up on that mountain demanding the gods pay their fucking child support, he should tell hera at the top of his sixteen year old pipsqueak lungs that polyamory is a thing now and she doesn’t have to define her marriage the traditional way if she doesn’t want to.  she’s the goddess of all marriages!  that includes these modern ones too!!

hera is like zeus would you agree to an open relationship zeus is like SOLD i have been trying to do this for years, completely neglects to read the fine print that this goes two ways before signing on the dotted line for this deal with the prada wearing devil because fundamentally, zeus is an asshole

hera starts hooking up with committed married couples and having SUPREMELY powerful demigod children.  they are all her favorites and she lavishes them with powers and gifts and attention.  she has, unlike the other gods, no millenia of experience with mortal children to temper her reaction, and so this whole move honestly causes more problems than not.

meanwhile hades and persephone; poeseidon and amphirite; dionysus and ariadne; all of them have been trying to talk to hera about this thing for DECADES and then perseus fucking protagonist powers jackson comes in and turns a quarter of a century into wasted work.

[viktortittiforov]

the 2010s sure were a time in my life

[fxrheisenn]

Andrus Laansalu talked about making Disco Elysium at EKA (Estonian Academy of Arts)

"Initially, the church wasn't a focal point. There were certain characters that needed to visit this location, and I asked, "Seriously, what do we have in our church?" The others replied, "Nothing at all. Our church is completely bare—just a wheel, really. It's quite basic."

That's when I decided to unleash my creativity in the design. For example, they chose to install a glass structure at the top of the church to create a reflective surface. It was like placing an optical clock up there. Therefore, one of the most crucial aspects of designing the church was ensuring the lighting was just right to create the desired atmosphere."

"Let me show you an example of Baroque architecture, which is rich in detail. We're also designing the interior of the church based on large cathedrals. However, the foundation you use might not yield the expected results, because the church itself doesn't require such intricate details. Sometimes, it's about simplifying the design."

"I used Articy for the initial scriptwriting of Disco Elysium. The image only represents a tiny fraction of the text and choice variables involved. This system was also the reason I eventually abandoned the project after a year of outlining the script and shifted my focus to becoming a sound designer. My mind struggled to keep up with the dynamic graphic rules, but fortunately, a more talented writer took over afterward."

"In terms of sound design, it's essential to develop different layers to bring out the charm of the church as a cohesive space. Although this represents only a small portion of the overall design, each layer actually requires a significant amount of time to compose the whole....... Whenever there's a shift or a change due to the dialogue itself, you need to adjust the background sounds. Each time you modify the details in the dialogue, I have to refine the background audio, ensuring that these elements build upon each other like an intricate layer of work."

"It's funny how many scenes involve characters getting smacked in the face. My job was to recreate those, so I locked myself in the bathroom with a recorder and hit my forehead until it turned red.

As a sound designer, I really dig those unsettling, drill-like sounds. So, I mixed in creepy lectures, metal scraping, moans, and cries of pain—because I just love that stuff! (laughs)

Players will be moving through all kinds of areas, so it's super important to make the sound transitions feel natural, trying to create a more immersive vibe in certain spaces.

With all the scenes featuring big cranes, you can hear them from far away, and I wanted to capture that eerie ringing in your ears. That's going to be a thing throughout most of the game. I've found ways to really mess with players while they're playing!"

"I've come across a lot of old objects (like phones and radios) that I needed to perfectly replicate the sounds. I started to become a bit of a hoarder, buying up different models of old phones whenever I found one to add to my collection. The sound effects I can simulate from them are really impressive."

"Some of the devices don't actually exist in real life—just a mix of architecture and tech. When I need to create sound effects, I first look for something similar that exists in our world, then I try to simulate what the sound and appearance of that thing might have been like a century ago.

Towards the end of the game, there's a character carrying a fuel canister. We needed the sound of the canister, so we dug one up from our garage—it had been sitting there since it was five! I realized this would make the sound perfect. So, it had been there for 50 years, and after 40 years, it finally found its purpose.

In some places, I needed unique sound waves, and recreating them was a real headache until one day I happened to walk by a swimming pool and stumbled upon an old wartime torpedo. You can rotate the torpedo's probe, and it slowly rises up, like a proud zombie head. The sounds it made were exactly what I needed!"

🙋How did you manage to get funding?

"Well, since we're in Estonia, you just need to know a wealthy person. You don't need five people—just two who can network, hang out together, and convince them to keep investing! (laughs) Back then, we constantly ran out of money and would tell them, 'Oops, looks like we spent it all! Can you invest a bit more?' That's how we made it through!"

🙋How did you all come together to make the game?

"Luck. It usually doesn't happen this way, and that's the key difference. It has to be. If not, you couldn't create a game of this scale - well, I mean in terms of budget. But creatively, Estonia definitely has writers and artists who can pull it off. With such a small population, there are a lot of quirky folks who are good friends. We were really lucky, though - lots of fortunate circumstances came together. It brought the right people together, allowing those talented fools to collaborate with us. They had experience but hadn't tackled projects of this magnitude before. So yeah, luck is pretty important!"

Lecture experience shared by 白兔YIYANG SUN on 小红书, reposted & translated by me with her permission.

[paradoxbeta]

what do you think the ancients looked like under their masks?

ANON THANK YOU FOR ASKING I COULD CRY TEARS OF JOY

The short answer: Human-like, but dubiously. Very colorful, ornate, and diverse. Heavy on body modification: piercings, implants, tubes of all sorts, and dramatic face/eye changes are everywhere. It's hard to describe one thing they all are, because they're each so different.

The long answer: (my ocs are here!)

Okay, so, important bare minimums: They can have pretty much any skin tone, and come in all of the patterns and markings you can think of (whether they were born with them or had them added.) The default Ancient eye is exactly like a humans, but people can and often do get changes to their pupils and sclera/eye color. They have "hair" that sort of looks like worm grass. I figure some kinda splatoon inkling type logic applies when taking into mind haircuts and buzzes and all that. They generally have elven, goat-like, or other non-human type ears. Most if not all of them have openings in their bodies for tubes a la cyberpunk, because Ancient fashion gonna Ancient fashion.

Now for the fun/personalized part. Their faces!

Ancients come in a range from the most humanoid to the least. Note that "animaloid" is an EXTREMELY nebulous term and not exclusive to the one shown in the picture. I'm not yet sure how something like this would come about. I like to think this is a result of generations upon generations of extreme genome modification, or "animaloid" Ancients are a subspecies/branch off of whatever the humanoid Ancients are, OR they're the same species, but just have an insane amount of genetic variation. This is an issue for me to figure out another time. Regardless, there is no strict line between what constitutes an animaloid and what constitutes a humanoid. Both are bipedal and have a variable amount of pectorals/arms,* with the primary differences being in the face. There are some Ancients that you can look at and immediately classify as one of the two, but most of them fall somewhere in between, like "humanoid" Ancients with exaggerated facial proportions or "animaloid" Ancients that are just close enough to human looking that it becomes difficult to put a label on it. Trying to classify individual Ancients is often a fruitless endeavor, but having the general spectrum in mind is important.

*Can have 1-2 pairs of each: note that an Ancient with one pair of arms may have 2 pairs of pectorals but an Ancient with 2 pairs of arms cannot have only 1 pectoral set. Ancients with 2 pairs of arms are rare.

As mentioned a million times prior, Ancients are super gung ho about body modification, and things we deem extreme in human society are probably only uncommon or even unremarkable in Ancient society. Obviously, not every Ancient is making themselves into the next Rolf Buchholz. Some are more conservative about changing their body, some are more extreme. But the general idea is that not having ANY sort of change made, be it as minute as an ear piercing or as dramatic as horn implants, is bizarre.

I know there's other possible takes on the Ancients that are much more separated from human aesthetics, and I love those! But I wasn't really concerned about the spec bio-y aspect this time around. I have enough alien aliens in my roster already, so my Ancients are entirely a product of me having fun without much concern for making them super believable. Hopefully they look cool enough for that to be a valid excuse.

And finally, some pictures of my Ancients, because it's hard to get the full scope without examples. Some of these are from wips I hope to post someday, so you might see them again later. Also I'm trying to format them all nice and next to each other so they don't take up so much space, but tumblr is losing its mind right now so if it doesn't format right then whoops.

[codemerything]

I simplified some programming terms so you don't have to

I began programming seriously in January, and one of the first things I realized was the need to clearly understand these terms. I grew tired of encountering them while reading without truly comprehending their meaning. Each time I came across one of these terms, I would pause, conduct a thorough Google search, and dive deep into the subject until I fully grasped its significance. This approach has transformed how I code and even watch tutorials. Now, I effortlessly navigate through them because I truly understand. And now, I'm excited to share this knowledge with you.

NB: There are many technical definitions of these terms on every single blog, article and page which is why I want to simplify it so when you get confused you can use this as a guide to make you understand it better.

VARIABLE: It's basically a container that holds data or value. A box with a name on it. A labelled space. We use this labelled space to retrieve whatever we store inside it. A real-life example would be: Gerald has coins in his hands and he wants to save them somewhere so he can easily find them. He gets a plain box and grabs a pen and writes "forCoins" on the box and stores his coins there.

VALUE:  "Value" refers to the data stored in a variable or constant. A piece of information that represents something. A value can either be a primitive data type or an object.

EXPRESSION: Expressions executes to a value. There are code constructs that produces a value. When an expression is evaluated, it computes and returns a resulting value. Simply, a mix of values that evaluates to a value.

STATEMENT: It is a command that tells the computer to perform a specific action. It is used to control the flow of a program, manipulate data, and perform various actions.

IMMUTABLE: When a value is said to be 'immutable' it simply means it cannot be modified/changed. Kinda like fixed, uneditable.

That's the end. Feel free to reblog with more terms that need simplification for newbies and codeblr.

[jessicamessicavillageofspillage]

Apparently transpeople will also die from the inaccurate recording of Sex within statistics

The collection of data on a person’s sex – that is, whether they are male or female – has become controversial in recent years, and a number of public bodies have moved away from collecting data on sex as a result. For example, Scotland’s chief statistician recently issued guidance stating that data on sex should only be collected in exceptional circumstances. This move has been greeted with alarm by quantitative social scientists who believe that data on sex is vitally important and that data on both gender identity and sex is needed.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) was also embroiled in controversy when it proposed to guide respondents to the 2021 England and Wales census that they may answer the sex question in terms of their subjective gender identity, rather than their sex. This was despite the fact that the 2021 census also included a new separate question on gender identity. The ONS was forced to change its proposed guidance on the sex question by a judicial review and went on to advise that people should answer the first question to reflect their legal sex. The Scottish census authorities have been criticised for disregarding the implications of that judgment.

Statistics on employment, health, crime and education have all been affected by this trend.

The Government Equalities Office has issued guidance to employers who are legally bound to report on their gender pay gap to provide data on their employees’ gender identity, not their sex, and to exclude employees who “do not identify as ‘men’ or ‘women’” from the data. This makes it impossible to assess whether natal males who identify as trans or non-binary may have different labour-market experiences from natal females who identify as trans or non-binary. Yet non-binary or transgender identification may not protect females from discrimination, for example, on the basis of pregnancy or maternity or the perceived risk of becoming pregnant.

The NHS decides who to call for routine medical screenings based on the gender marker a person has recorded with their GP rather than their sex as recorded as birth. The NHS’s failure to record biological sex on patient records has led to trans patients not being called in for screening for conditions that may affect them due to their sex, such as ovarian cancer or prostate cancer. If trans patients are not screened for such conditions, the consequences are potentially fatal. The use of gender identity rather than sex has also led to confusion for some trans patients attempting to use sexual health services.

Freedom of information requests have revealed that multiple police forces in England now record crimes by male suspects as committed by women if the perpetrator requests to be recorded as such. Even small numbers of cases misclassified in this way can lead to substantial bias in crime statistics.

Differences between the sexes are an important factor for analysis in most, if not all, of the areas that social and health scientists address. Sex, alongside age, is a fundamental demographic variable, vital for projections regarding fertility and life expectancy. Sex has systematic effects on physical health and is also linked to mental health. And the importance of sex extends to all aspects of social life, including employment, education and crime.

We know that many differences between the sexes have changed dramatically over time – education and labour market participation are two examples. Without consistent data on sex, social scientists would not be able to track this change over time or to understand whether efforts to improve the representation of women and girls in domains where they are underrepresented have been effective.

We have been losing data on sex, as public sector bodies have switched to collecting data on gender identity instead. But the tide may have turned. The UK Statistics Authority has recently published guidance that recommends that “sex, age and ethnic group should be routinely collected and reported in all administrative data and in-service process data, including statistics collected within health and care settings and by police, courts and prisons”. It also says data producers should clearly distinguish between concepts such as sex, gender and gender identity.

Both people’s material circumstances and their identities are important to their lives. We know that sex matters, and we have much to learn about the ways in which gender identity matters, too. Rather than removing data on sex, we should collect data on both sex and gender identity, in order to develop a better understanding of the influence of both of these factors and the intersection between them.

Original article in The Conversation

Professor Alice Sullivan’s academic profile

UCL Social Research Institute

[gothhabiba]

I make video essays (not frequently but I'm trying to get back into it) and I have wondered about blind accessibility before but I haven't really found much information that isn't VERY general. Do you have any resources or tips? Because frankly, the reason I make video essays and not say podcasts or just blog posts about these topics is because it is both an audio and visual medium. I can show graphs for things, play clips of movies or songs, etc. and I use captions but when I search for how to make it accessible for the blind all the information I find isn't that applicable to content that's as, dynamic I guess. Like the most common things I see are "identify who's speaking" or "read out text" (which I generally do) but what about clips from other media, graphs, things like that? Especially if im talking about a visual topic like set design or something.

n.b. I'm not blind or low-vision & I'm just brainstorming here.

image descriptions & accessibility aren't quite one-size-fits-all, because thoroughness always comes at the expense of time. you have to ask yourself what information you're trying to communicate with an image or clip. if the entire video is an analysis of a visual artwork, for example, you'd want to describe the image in enough detail that people could not only understand your analysis, but also come to their own analytical conclusions. if, on the other hand, you're just pasting in a line graph to compare two of the numbers in it as a smaller part of a larger point, it's not necessary or worth it to state every value of every variable at every point in time on the graph... just give an idea of the trend you're referring to.

some thoughts:

Any image description is better than no description. Briefly describe something rather than allow the thought of describing it thoroughly to overwhelm you such that you end up doing nothing.

Relatedly: don't think of things in terms of "is the exact same amount and type of information available to sighted and blind people watching this," but rather, "without the visual component, does this basically make sense / can I basically follow the main point?"

What this means is that at no point should there be information that is solely visual in nature, like my example of several seconds of silence where you can only assume that there's probably text on the screen but have no idea what that text says and whether it's a clarification, disclaimer, or even a retraction. It would be best to read this text out, but I've also seen a "text on screen" section in the description box of a video that gives the text in full and the time stamps at which the text appears.

Briefly state what it is about a clip or graph you're inserting that makes it useful for your point. Rather than "and you can see the results of that decision here *a few frames of a graph*," say "and you can see the results of that decision in the sharp downward turn in profits starting in 2009 *a few frames of the graph*." If it's available, link the source of a graph or chart in the description box—it may have alt text or be screenreader accessible at the source website.

Inserting a brief image description into the script after introducing e.g. a photo of a set should be feasible enough, but I also think it's possible to fold the image description into the analysis. This just means making sure that there's never a visual component with no audio equivalent—rather than saying "the stuff that's going on back here *circle part of the screen* has a haunting effect," say "the fact that the furniture in the background is jumbled, worn down, and uncomfortable-looking has a haunting effect." I think explicitly pointing out what about a scene you're responding to is just part of good analysis anyway!

Introduce a clip with a rundown of who's speaking in it and what's going on ("you can see [main point] in this clip, in which Elizabeth confronts Darcy about his meddling in Bingley's affairs"). Play the clip, and then describe anything else about it that's relevant to your analysis ("the fact that she's sitting while he paces back and forth indexes the relationship between gender and space in the film" or whatever). Again, this is just good analysis.

If there's something really central that would take a long time to describe, you could use the description box to image describe it (the same way you would write any other image description) and give a timestamp, and say something like "image description in the box below" when you reach that part of the video.

Sometimes at poetry readings, conferences &c. I've seen people give a description of their appearance, what they're wearing &c. before they begin speaking. I'm not sure how necessary this is—probably some blind people find it interesting and others think it's a waste of time, lmao

[anonymouscatloaf]

"You know, he's the yin to my yang. He completes me."

So the funny part about Dan repeatedly calling Perry the yin to Doof's yang (besides the fact that he can just freestyle some Greek tragedy level bullshit about Doof & Perry's relationship on the fly for Radio Disney or an episode commentary track) is that at face value you might also be like, okay but why is Doof the "yang" (light) and Perry the "yin" (dark)?

I didn't say good vs evil because that's not what yin and yang are about. As a concept it's one of those terms from another language that have variable meanings in English depending on who's using it and why, but its most enduring interpretation - with the disclaimer that I am not a philosopher, just someone who is far too invested in overthinking relationships in a kid's cartoon - is the idea that they are opposing but complementary forces of the energy that the universe operates on.

It's a balance. According to Lao-Tzu, "everything is embedded in yin and embraces yang; through [vital energy] it reaches [harmony]". Two sides of the same coin, sun and moon, my other half - you get the idea. It's not hard to see why Perry and Doof are complementary but opposite; one can't exist without the other: Perry all but gives up evil when Doof has that brief dalliance with Peter; Perry has exactly two POV songs in the entire show and both of them relate to Doof, one of which explicitly states "[his] life, it seems, is empty" without Doof's scheming and he "gave [Perry's] life heroic cause"; and he straight up has no idea what to do with his life and makes the saddest platypus sound ever when Doof bans thwarting as Tri-Governor in LDOS.

On the other hand, Doof is a lot easier to see - partly because he actually talks (though Perry is actually one of the most facially expressive characters in the show - by necessity - though I digress). He's overt about his affections and very clingy (a result of childhood trauma and abuse/neglect by his parents) because Perry's his only real friend. He all but begs Perry to thwart him in that whale episode, he became really upset when Perry seemed to be helping him in the episode with the Dull-and-Boring-inator but was just using him to fix the problem with Phineas and Ferb, and he can't bear to leave Perry behind in Road to Danville, just to list a few sillier examples off the top of my head. Really, the entire B plot could be used as evidence.

(There's also the fun dynamic of Perry being an animal that has human-level sentience, and Doof being a human that was raised by animals - ocelots - during some of his formative years.)

So they're irrevocably intertwined. One of the most important characters in each other's life, according to Dan from SDCC 2015. The LDOS ending song even puts Perry smack dab in the middle of the Doofenshmirtz family with Heinz, Vanessa, and Norm - two other characters deeply wrapped up with Perry as a result of Doof himself. I mean, look at them:

Yeah, this was an excuse to make you look at one of my favorite scenes and witness Perry's hopelessly fond smile, not sorry.

Anyway, back to yin-yang. They were originally ascribed to just "day" and "night", and eventually came to also mean "movement" (because you work during the day), and "rest" (because you sleep at night). In terms of qi, they embody heaven and earth, and in the collection of essays of the Huainanzi, "yang is generated from yin and yin is generated from yang [...] sometimes there is life, sometimes there is death, that brings the myriad things to completion". Technical details of Chinese philosophy aside (which I'm sure exactly nobody is considering when they call someone the yin to their yang - it's really just the "you complete me" part), the words themselves also have various opposing definitions: positive/negative, active/passive, sun/moon, overt/covert, etc etc etc you get the idea.

In terms of their relationship, Doof has the more active role. He's one who makes the crazy inators and plots elaborate traps and monologues everyday; Perry usually just reacts to that accordingly. Doof play-acts at a lofty, larger-than-life "evil", while Perry keeps him grounded ("you are my rock" and "having you around just makes me feel, you know, safer"). Perry isn't necessarily a wholly passive character, but also, like, a lot of his plot is just Shit Happens and Perry Has to Deal With It. Doof is overt about his "evil" schemes and can't stand even white lies. Perry spends his entire life hiding aspects of himself and keeping secrets from his loved ones, and he has a whole song in CATU about being an unrecognized hero. One of these characters is living in the "dark" more than the other...

Doof is overflowing with emotions - most of them negative, but also love: so much so that his daughter feels smothered, because a lot of that love (while borne of good intentions) is misguided, and Doof fails to actually listen to her; it takes a few rocky starts (helped along by Perry himself) before they get to the point where Vanessa considers her dad a "misunderstood genius" and convinces him to give up evil. On the other hand, Perry keeps his cards close to his chest - it's not that he doesn't know how to emote (he clearly adores his boys in ATSD and he apparently is happy to hang out with Doof as a friend outside of his job enough that he has a whole wallet of photos of them just goofing off together), he doesn't because of necessity. He's better than anyone at separating his work life (fighting evil) from his pet life (pretending to be a mindless animal) from his personal life (how much he loves his family, watching his silly dramatic soaps, having a petty streak and sassing Monogram a bit, is genuine friends with Doof).

As a result, he is full of emotions he rarely gets to express - around the Flynn-Fletchers specifically, because Doof does know he's sentient, which is another reason I think they click. Doof gets the single-minded attention he never had; Perry gets the treatment as an equal he never had. They both gain a friendship, and a new sort of family. There's a part of their life imbalanced when the other isn't present.

The yin and the yang. They complete each other.

[maverick-werewolf]

Werewolf Fact #73 - Hypertrichosis, excessive hair growth ("werewolf syndrome"), Beauty and the Beast, and Bluebeard

Today I'll be covering something else clinical: hypertrichosis.

You may have heard of "werewolf syndrome," a condition of excessive hair growth. It isn't to be confused with clinical lycanthropy, which is something else entirely. "Werewolf syndrome" is also called hypertrichosis - and it's occasionally associated with and/or can even be derived from another condition, porphyria, that was also associated with "werewolves" throughout scholarship. Likewise, the most well-known kind of hypertrichosis that involves excessive hair growth all over the body is also often associated with gum and teeth problems; such issues could lead to unusual teeth and mouth shape.

Interestingly, however, despite a lot of modern scholars retroactively assuming that werewolf victims of the past could have suffered hypertrichosis, many of the werewolf legends in question specifically describe lycanthropy sufferers to look quite different. The legends in question are later era ones from the Early Modern period, during which time lycanthropy had become a madness and a disease under clinical and scientific supervision, very much unlike previous time periods, as I cover extensively in my book The Werewolf: Past and Future as well as other werewolf facts.

These legends describe sufferers of the werewolf curse variably to only be "hairy" when in their wolf form specifically (other than, occasionally, having long hair without mention of unusual body hair), highlighting how they were not unusually hairy in human form, or to "always [have] some hairs in the hollow of his hand" (as noted by Sabine Baring-Gould in The Book of Were-Wolves; taken from page 121 of my own edition of his work). Hypertrichosis often specifically does not have hair growth on the palms, conversely. Likewise, many legends of later time periods even specifically say that werewolves are not hairy "on the outside," but that their hair "grows inward" when they aren't in their inhuman form.

Still, scholars entertain the notion of connections that I still question to a healthy degree, so I have studied it as a result. I think it's best to simply summarize it as, the syndrome reminds people of what werewolves are meant to look like, rather than asserting that "this is why some people believed in werewolves" and the like.

Hypertrichosis is rare, and any kind of proper documentation only began perhaps around the 1600s. During this time and for a very long time after, sufferers of hypertrichosis were often called a variety of terms like "ape-men" or "wolf-men." They were considered spectacles and often were brought to noble courts like exotic animals, to entertain high society. Many were circus freaks. Not all examples are before our time, either.

But, Mav, you ask, how is this related to Beauty and the Beast and Bluebeard? Aren't those fairytales?

One famous example of someone with hypertrichosis is the one whose related image began this post: Petrus Gonsalvus, who lived from around 1537 to sometime past 1617. He was called assorted names, such as "the wild gentleman of Tenerife," "the man of the woods," and of course, "the Canarian werewolf." He lived in assorted courts throughout both Italy and France, including the court of Henry II, King of France, around 1547 - he was sent there when he was but 10 years old as a gift from a regent (Margaret of Parma) of the Netherlands. He moved about various courts over time and even married.

Much of Gonsalvus's family inherited his condition (four of his seven children), including some of his daughters. Like their father, they were often traded amongst courts as pets of a sort. Here is Madelene Gonsalvus, a portrait from 1580:

It is believed that the marriage of Petrus Gonsalvus to his wife, a woman believed to be named Catherine and a lady-in-waiting to Catherine de Medici, may have provided some inspiration for the tale of Beauty and the Beast, which was first written in 1740 by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve.

Beauty and the Beast may not be the only fairytale inspired by hypertrichosis, either. The tale of Bluebeard, as also discussed by Baring-Gould in his Book of Werewolves, describes Bluebeard as "His hair and moustache were light brown, and his beard was clipped to a point. This beard, which resembled no other beard" (232), similar to some elements of hypertrichosis variations, as well as mention of his gum condition: "At intervals he ground his teeth like a wild beast preparing to dash upon his prey, and then his lips became so contracted, as they were drawn in and glued, as it were, to his teeth, that their very colour was indiscernible" (233).

Sidebar: if you're interested in the story of Bluebeard and what it was based on, definitely check out Sabine Baring-Gould's The Book of Were-Wolves, as he has an unmatched documentation of it. I don't think it really has a place in a book about werewolves, but obviously I preserved his work in its original condition, so you can find it in my edition of his book, as well. It's not for the faint of heart, but it's morbidly very interesting.

So, connection to werewolves or not, it's still certain that hypertrichosis was seen as an inhuman condition. There are many examples of people who had or have the condition and records of how they were treated throughout history.

As mentioned, I have to wonder how much of this was actually associated with werewolf legends - given legends always explicitly involved transformation, which was the entire basis of it - but scholars eat this kind of thing up. In academia, everyone is always trying to come up with "new arguments" to "add to the conversation" or whatever, so we end up discussing and studying hypertrichosis alongside werewolf legends that specifically state such things weren't a part of the legends. Weird, isn't it?

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the post. Until next time!

And stay tuned for news and updates on a major [werewolf] book release later this year!

If you like my blog, be sure to follow me here and elsewhere for more folklore and fiction, including books, especially on werewolves! You can also sign up for my free newsletter for monthly werewolf/vampire/folklore facts, a free story, and book previews.

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[tavyliasin]

Disability Pride Essays - Karlach and Terminal Illness

So to start the Disability Pride Month essays, I’m going to open with one of the heaviest topics of all - terminal illness. So, please be warned this discussion will include topics around euthanasia and will to live, such as they are reflected in Karlach’s story. I will also be mentioning a few terminal illnesses and their treatments by name. There is additionally some NSFW content in the discussion of how Karlach’s early game romance can relate to sex and intimacy for those with chronic conditions. So with this in mind, if you’re not in the right place to read this right now, please do feel free to skip it entirely. These topics are heavy and may be a lot to read for someone who has a connection to them. It is also not suitable for those under 18.

What Is Karlach’s Disability?

Karlach is one of the clearest examples of a disability parallel to me, and also one of the most complex. Of course there are choices in her story that affect the outcome, but those are strikingly similar to the choices people often make with real chronic, degenerative, and terminal illness. On the surface level, Karlach has a heart problem. Although it might not prevent her from performing a lot of day to day tasks (she can walk, run, and even fight just fine for the most part) the condition can still flare up causing her short periods of intense physical and psychological distress. We can also interpret some of this as being similar to mental health symptoms in which emotions are felt to a greater intensity and most people might experience them.

The other issue Karlach has in day-to-day life is around intimacy. Of course there aren’t really people who catch fire just for being close to someone they like, or who are literally too hot to touch, but there are those who find touch too painful. Those who, much as they might like to, can’t enjoy an intimate physical relationship due to pain. 

How Do We See The Disability In The Game?

We see a longer progression with Karlach, and this reflects a lot of what we have in the real world with these situations. First she experiences the symptoms, then learns about them from Dammon who offers a temporary treatment to relieve some of it. Which is similar to a medical treatment, one that helps some of the symptoms but isn’t a cure. It buys time, but we know that her heart isn’t fully fixed, that she still can’t do everything she wants to. There are moments we see her emotions take over, or the physical aspects of the condition “flare up” as she struggles with it. Moving in to Act 2, we see another treatment, another sliver of hope, but it’s one that comes at a cost. We know that it will help her for now, the short term hope and joy that Karlach can actually enjoy intimacy and touch, but…it arrives with the knowledge that long term, there is no guaranteed cure. By Act 3, she is learning to live with it, finding more control over some of the outbursts (for example, she will hold off from attacking Gortash at the first meeting even though she’s clearly feeling a lot of intense emotions in that moment, compared to not holding back in the fight with the false paladins in Act 1.

How Does This Reflect Real Life

Really what we are seeing here is similar to a terminal illness like cancer, and other degenerative conditions that have a variable outcome. Treatments like chemotherapy or radiotherapy for some can offer hope at first, a test to see if it can treat the illness, often even with some initial positive results. At the very least, these can slow down the progression and buy time - much like the initial heart upgrades buy more time for Karlach. 

Karlach, Sex, and Intimacy

We can take a closer look just at the intimacy side for a moment too, and how it’s handled within the game. Karlach’s early romance scene, it’s not safe for her to be intimate with a partner, much as she might want to, it would hurt them. One more direct real world parallel for this could be a condition called vaginismus, which can make vaginal penetration too painful for a sufferer to endure, and mean they are unable to enjoy a lot of sex acts. Similar to Karlach’s scene, some might look to different forms of intimacy with a partner like talking about fantasies, or other lighter and different types of partnered sexual pleasure. There are treatments for it, but they take time and patience, and might not be suitable for everyone. There are also, of course, conditions that can make sex acts painful or impossible for those with penises too - so again looking at these other forms of intimacy like sharing fantasies in conversation can be validating to see for people who aren’t able to (or even who simply don’t wish to) engage in a physical sexual relationship with a partner (or partners). There are plenty of disabilities that change how we approach sex and sexual intimacy, which in my opinion can make these scenes more impactful to those who might relate or may not have thought about this as an option in the past.

The Hardest Choices

The ending of Karlach’s storyline really is the most heartbreaking turning point. It’s a crossroads that many reach - a difficult decision between keeping on fighting a much harder battle like Karlach does if she goes to Avernus, not knowing if she will win, or choosing to stop fighting on their own terms. Karlach’s speech on the docks, and even several times she talks before that, really echoes some of the intense feelings and experiences of terminal illness. It’s a constant fight, and choosing to keep going - to keep hoping for a cure that might never come, to buy time - is to lose a lot of quality of life too. Because you can’t just take a day off from intensive treatments (or in her case, from fighting for her life in the hells), and although there are good things worth fighting for, and still some positives within it like the friends or partner who might travel with her to Avernus, sometimes…sometimes for people they don’t feel it’s worth it. They would rather choose a peaceful end, to lay down their sword and stop fighting, instead of continuing to struggle against the tide. Just like for the other characters - and for us as the players - this can be really hard for loved ones to accept. But at the end of the day it is the choice of the sufferer as to what they’re willing to endure. We can’t - and shouldn’t - force anyone to go through more than they genuinely want to. Of course they often want to live, and it is never an easy choice for a patient or for their family to know their time is coming to an end sooner than we would like, but the best we can do is to be there for them. To accept that living isn't quite so easy, that there is a balance to be struck and a toll to be paid. To listen, to make sure they aren’t there alone “on the docks” even if it’s hard. 

What We Can Learn From Karlach’s Story

The main takeaway here is that terminal illness is going to affect people in all kinds of ways that might be unpredictable. They might act in ways that seem irrational to us, they might fall to despair or they might continue to hope and be an upbeat influence trying to support their loved ones. Often, it’s a mix of things. Our role as people who love them is to give them the space to talk, to be heard, and to respect their decisions even if it’s hard on us.

There will often be a choice to be made between quality of life and quantity of life, and much as everyone’s usual instinct is to live as long and as much as they can, it isn’t fair to expect someone to endure an endless battle that might have nothing at the end other than an even less kind passing. We can also be more aware of different kinds of intimacy with partners who have difficulty with physical sex acts, and find the things that might be enjoyable instead. So perhaps next time you’re playing through the game, take a moment to listen closer to the lines between the lines, hear the echoes of real world voices from the heartfelt and impassioned speeches we hear from this complex and beloved character.

With Thanks

I’m going to round this one off with my deepest gratitude to Larian Studios for the wonderful writing and production in the game, and to Sam too for their absolutely unforgettable performance as Karlach. I have seen several people in my life go through stages of terminal illnesses, as well as others fighting their "battles through Avernus" with hope in their hearts. Whether it was intentional or not, I feel like Karlach’s story is a truly beautiful and heartfelt mirror to these experiences, as we see her struggle with everything it means and all the decisions to be made along the way.

My love, as always, goes out to all of you who have been affected by chronic and terminal illness, whether in yourselves or in those around you.

[pphalaen0psis]

On the Motivations of Nagisa Shingetsu’s Father: A Short Analysis

Something that people tend to misconstrue about Nagisa’s father is that he actually wanted his son to have flawless academic performance. In reality, the conditioning to strive for absolute perfection was merely a part of the manipulation (or in more scientific terms, the independent variable) of the experiment he conducted on his son. In Nagisa’s own words:

“My parents raised me like they were levelling me up in some game… They didn’t even treat me like a person […] My father was a teacher at our school, he was a researcher of children’s talent. He used his own son to research the growth of a child’s talent. He wanted to see what the growth curve would be like if he pushed a child to the breaking point… Isn’t that funny? I was the subject of such an amusing experiment.”

So now we have evidence that Dr. (?)* Shingetsu was not placing high expectations on Nagisa because he wanted him to succeed, but rather out of morbid scientific curiosity. Below is an excerpt from the man himself:

“I cannot obtain the result I was expecting with my experiment. I cannot discern whether the environment or the subject himself is the problem. I shall look into the experiment conditions in more detail.

Until now, I have used solely visual observation, but I should erect cameras to watch the subject at all times and discipline the subject when resting longer than allowed.

If I do not obtain any desirable results with the experiment, I will conclude that the problem lies within the subject, and change my experimental target.”

One thing to note is that it is unclear what his desired results are. According to Nagisa, he was apparently researching the growth curve of a child’s academic talent under extreme stress— however, we should be aware that Nagisa is likely an unreliable narrator due to his conditioned biases**. Although a common interpretation is that Dr. Shingetsu was expecting an increase in Nagisa’s performance, there are two main factors that disprove this:

1. Nagisa states that during the experiment, his father would force him to study for several days straight using intravenous analeptics, threats, and corporal punishment. The exact drug he used is unknown, but it is likely either doxapram, due to it being administered intravenously, or amphetamines, which are noted to have cognitive-enhancing abilities. However, the overuse of analeptic stimulants can cause cardiovascular problems, as does stress and sleep deprivation. In this environment, the likelihood of Nagisa suffering a stroke or heart failure increased considerably. Dr. Shingetsu would definitely have known this.

2. Sleep deprivation and excessive stress are known to negatively impact cognitive function and development. Dr. Shingetsu would also have known this.

This begs the question: why would Dr. Shingetsu subject his son to conditions that could result in health hazards and/or declined performance if he wanted Nagisa’s academic success?

A possible answer is simply that the “desirable results” were actually a decline in performance. Perhaps Dr. Shingetsu wanted to find the point of absolute burnout where Nagisa would either barely function, or give up completely. Perhaps he was dissatisfied with Nagisa’s resilience to the experimental conditions. In the end, Dr. Shingetsu ultimately reaped the consequences of treating the Nuremburg Code as the Nuremburg Suggestions allowing his hunger for knowledge overpower his morality.

—

* Due to the nature of his research, it is most likely that Nagisa’s Father (referred to as Dr. Shingetsu for the sake of brevity) was a psychologist, particularly a developmental psychologist. He also likely held a doctorate degree.

** There are multiple instances of Nagisa being an unreliable narrator. In the referenced scene alone, there are two: one is his implication that Monaca was paralysed by Tokuichi and Haiji, when in reality, she feigned the severity of her injuries. The second is his claim that Junko truly loved the Warriors of Hope.

[ataleofcrowns]

Chapter 11 Progress [25/MAR]

Hey everyone, I hope your spring has started well 🌻

As for me, I have a lot of good news to share!! After a short writing break post CH10 release, I wrapped up some uni coursework, which freed up my schedule for the next several months. Starting from this week I'm full steam ahead on CH11, and have already written 13k words for it!!

That's way more than I estimated I would have for March, so I hope I'll make it close to 20k by the start of April. If I can keep this pace up for the next two months, then I'll be able to post CH11 by early June 🙏🏼

What you can expect from CH11

As you can probably tell from how differently CH10 ended depending on your LI, each LI route will have very different opening scenes as a result.

It also has additional, major varying scenes depending on if your Crown has a high romance or a low romance. The low variants for the romances haven't had major consequences so far, aside from some differences in how the relationship is progressing, but CH11 is where it gets REALLY real. 

I sincerely hope you'll consider having a separate low romance save for your Crown, because the differences between a low and high relationship in CH11 are going to be pretty huge.

Not irreversibly huge, mind you, but "this scene has a separate variable that will make the game remember whether your relationship was high or low at this point in time and how it all went down" in the future. Even if you switch to a high romance later on, your LI will still remember how your Crown handled this scene 👀

And don't worry, the choices regarding this scene will be VERY clear in terms of their effects on the romance. So if you want to intentionally craft a messy route that still leads to a good ending, or if you just want to go for a complete trainwreck of a romance, here's your chance lol.

First up: X's route!

In terms of specifics, I've written bits and pieces for each LI over my supposed writing break (lol), but since I've started working on CH11 in earnest, I've started off with X's route first.

This is because X's route has the most ANNOYING variants in it haha. The opening for X's route features the Imperial Court, which has to take a lot of player choices into account (Office of Law, Lady Naza, possible alliance with the royal historians).

It is a relatively short scene since the court meeting is very spontaneous, and players on other LI routes will also see the choices they made reflected in the Imperial Court on the main plot path. But it involves a lot of writing, especially since I have to write a low romance variant and a high romance variant for it 😭

On the upside, I'm practically done with it!! I'm hopeful I'll be able to move onto writing X's major romance scene tomorrow, then switch to another LI's opening scene by the end of next week. I'm thinking R next.

That was it for this update ✨

I'm posting further updates and CH11 previews on the Patreon for all tiers, as well as all sorts of fun extra LI/Crown snippets, so if you'd like more AToC content while you wait for CH11, consider pledging!!

As always, thanks so much for your patience and support 💖

[hawkogurl]

As a staunch defender and lover of all female spider man characters, if you all won’t like them that’s just more for me, I do wanna briefly ramble about one specific thing that’s mostly a raimiverse fanfiction thing as far as I’ve seen.

I’m not gonna say you gotta like Harry with Peter or MJ, I myself pretty much only read Harry and MJ platonically and I have written many things where Peter is more useful to me platonically, but I feel like I’ve developed some weird sense of sort of resigned dread whenever Raimi Harry gets shoved with Gwen or a version of Liz.

For those two specifically, I think a lot of it is rooted in the fact that people are rarely writing Raimiverse Harryliz or Harrygwen because they really like it—a lot of people in this fandom are only tangentially familiar with Liz to begin with—and Harry only gets written with them because a lot of the time, there’s an assumption in the cultural consciousness that singleness is unhappiness or even if not that, that being with someone is completing or more happy than being single. As a result, it becomes some sort of thing that even when a character isn’t being focused on in a romantic capacity, a romantic relationship is part of the checklist for a happy ending. It’s something that should happen for a person to be Happy.

Most of the time that it happens, people are writing these things for the sake of Harry ending up in a relationship. It’s a relationship for the sake of a relationship. And even then, I don’t know if I would find it to be that big of a deal even if it would still sort of annoy me.

However, the fact that essentially means using these female characters only for the happy ending of a male character can raise some concerns for me. There’s rarely any attention given to these women—one of whom has an established personality and character in these movies and one that has decades establishing who she is as a person in the comics. Half the time, they barely appear on the page and they do very little and have very little personality when they do. If he needs to be in a relationship for how people perceive happiness in the long term, I can live with it, but it always puts a bad taste in my mouth when they don’t have personalities or active characters. They don’t really matter, they literally are just the check mark on that part of the checklist. What the hell is the point of this when nothing would actually change if he wasn’t with someone? And I mean that, I don’t want to see kids or things like that as an excuse, adoption exists. What actually changes about this if you just make him single? And that’s not just a matter of necessity, it’s also a matter of how damn misogynistic it can feel to use a female character solely for this purpose, especially one’s that historically have their own identities, their own conflicts, their own stakes.

If nothing else, I want to see some effort put into it. At least try and sell me on it, at least give these women some semblance of their actual personalities and try and tell me why it would work with his. Don’t make Gwen Stacy or Liz Allen of all characters into sexy lamps. At least try and make it make sense as a relationship.

And even putting the semi misogynistic treatment of women in this context aside, I’m still not done here. What is actually the point of putting him in a relationship here? If you’re not writing a relationship between two characters with personalities that can be used for development, if it’s not for the sake of liking them together, if it’s just to check that box, does that box actually even really make sense for him? I’m not talking about sexuality, and this can be rather variable, but being in a relationship isn’t gonna automatically fix someone with this many issues. It’s not going to be a convincing patch to use this as a substitute for working out the problems in this dude’s life that would—and in 616 canonically have—make it so hard for him to be happy in the long term. This guy is canonically divorced in 616.

This version of Harry, if he survives the third movie, is implied to be schizophrenic, historically poorly coping with trauma from Norman existing, recently traumatized in a half dozen new ways, struggles to maintain the connections he already has, has very little independent identity outside of wanting his father to love him and an even worse sense of self, and recently endured multiple severe and disfiguring injuries. Under what circumstances is any relationship he enters actually going to end well, even with a person that would be absolutely perfect under any under circumstances. Because whatever person you shove him with, they can’t fix him, and if you’re using Gwen and Liz it’s gonna feel a little misogynistic to try because they still only exist for him in these cases. It’s already pretty generally true that someone shouldn’t be in a relationship if they can’t be happy and complete alone, but this is more true for him than for everyone. Does Harry need another person to project his massive need for validation from onto like he did for Norman? Does he need to substitute finding his own identity with molding what little he has for another person to like him? Will he really benefit at all from another connection when he’d be trying to figure out how to rebuild the ones he already has? Realistically, him getting into a relationship without at least trying to deal with all that is just going to stunt him in trying to fix all that, because he’ll have something to fill all the holes with instead of dealing with it. And if you try and avoid that, it’s still going to risk being rather unsatisfying because there’s the hazard of just making him Suddenly All Better Now for the sake of a relationship that might be misguided in its very existence.

And on top of that, Harry has, in these movies, dated all of one time. And it didn’t necessarily seem like it was for someone he liked, more so to impress his father. Generally, though it is a matter of opinion, he doesn’t seem to want a relationship as much as he wants to be in a relationship. In a way ironically similar to how this is written much of the time, he’s fixated on the concept of dating for the sake of dating someone rather than actually really wanting that sort of connection with someone. A lot of the toxic masculinity he’s written with sort of manifests in this regard. He wants to be dating someone, but does he actually want to date someone? Should he? In many cases, especially ones where it’s not with a more tangible character that can be used for development independently, I don’t know of the answer should really be yes. It seems more satisfying for his character to be comfortable alone. Additionally, there’s little reason to me that platonic connections should be less valuable for him when they’re the most important ones he’s written with. He doesn’t need to be dating someone. In most cases it’s worse for his character if he is. The people who say he’s a playboy are lying to him and his casting has deceived you.

But also god if you’re gonna make him date someone at least sell me on it and make it mean anything at all.

[dedalvs]

Hi I've been working on a conlang that underwent tonogenesis by losing coda non elective stops and becoming high tone (coda elective stops then become plain voiceless, giving a fun way for my language to be divided into different initials and finals) and low tone coming from the coda fricatives [s] [ɕ] and [ʑ], with mid tone happening in open syllables or with coda sonorants (though 2 of those sonorants from the proto lang [r] and [r̥] are now fricatives [ʁ] and [χ]). I'm also debating having intervocalic /s/ debuccalize to [h] and then delete and get contours from those new diphthongs like this: [ˈʊ˩.sə˧.nʊ˩] > [ˈʊ˩.ə˧.nʊ˩] > [ˈʊə˧˥.nʊ˩] > [wə˧˥.nʊ˩] but I'm still not feeling satisfied with this but then I remembered reading yours and Jessie Peterson's posts on instagram about Ts'ítsàsh some months ago where you guys had tonogenesis by consonant loss and also stress and I was curious about how that worked in Ts'ítsàsh because I think that could be what I'm missing, especially because stress in the proto language was based on morae and was therefore not fixed and I want my conlang's tone to be more dynamic. Sorry for the long introduction and thank you for your time.

What is an elective stop...? I've never heard that term.

Essentially, stress is another variable you can play with. You can ignore, as your system here has, or you can add it back in to potentially create even more tonal distinctions in your language. Stress is associated with a number of elements, depending on the language: volume, vowel length, pitch level, or some combination of these. The goal is to somehow give a particular syllable more prominence than other syllables. If stress is associated with pitch, well, tone is also associated with pitch. You can imagine, then, you have two syllables, however this works (i.e. whatever needs to happen to get you these two proto-syllables):

*pat

*ˈpat

Now you've got options. You already know that a loss of something like [t] in coda position results in high tone on the previous syllable. Throw in stress, and you have some options. Here are some examples. First, there's option A, which is what you have above:

*pat > pa˥

*ˈpat > pa˥

That is, stress plays no role, and it's simply the loss of the consonant that gives the syllable tone. Let's call this option B:

*pat > pa˦

*ˈpat > pa˥

This kind of additive tone. The loss of the coda [t] pushes the pitch one point higher, while older stress pushes the pitch one point higher. This results in a high tone and a super high tone, which is now a regular distinction your language makes.

Now here's an option C:

*pat > pa˧˥

*ˈpat > pa˥

Some tone languages don't allow contour tones on short syllables, but if yours does, this is another option. With the loss of [t] and stress you get a solid high tone. The the loss of [t] and no stress, however, the tone is dragged down a bit, resulting in a rising tone.

This is how an older stress system can play into creating a more complex tone system down the line. You have to be meticulous in writing down the rules, and, both Jessie and I can tell you from experience, it's easy to forget them, but it can lead to some more grist, if that's what you're after.

Again, though, this is not something you have to do in creating a tone language. Often stress plays no role in the development of tone.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

by David Paton and Sourafel Girma

Vaccinating older people probably did avert some deaths in 2021, but the effects were small. And even those small effects on mortality seem to have dissipated during the booster program. That's the conclusion of our new study, published in the European Economic Review.

COVID-related deaths decreased significantly in most of Europe and the US from the middle of 2021. Although this reduction coincided with the rollout of COVID vaccines, it has proved surprisingly difficult to identify the extent to which vaccination contributed to the drop in deaths.

Randomized controlled trials (the gold standard for testing new treatments) suggest COVID vaccination can provide significant protection against serious illness and death relative to unvaccinated people who have not previously been infected with COVID. But there are reasons the effect of vaccination on mortality may be lower when viewed outside of trials.

Early in the program, there were hopes that vaccination would also prove highly effective in preventing the spread of COVID but it has since become clear that vaccination provides only limited and short-term protection against infection and transmission.

It is also well established that a previous infection provides protection both against reinfection and against serious illness and death in the event of reinfection that is at least as effective as vaccination. Having a previous infection significantly reduces the likelihood of being vaccinated meaning the vaccinated population will include a relatively high proportion of people without protection from prior infection. So even if vaccination provides protection at an individual level, we may still observe population-level mortality rates that are similar for vaccinated and unvaccinated groups.

The effectiveness of vaccination programs may also be limited by people's behavior. For example, there is evidence that vaccinated people who get infected are more likely to have mild symptoms and this may cause them to take fewer precautions than others against spreading infection. As a result, vaccination may sometimes be associated with more rather than less transmission.

Taken together, even if vaccination reduces the risk on an individual basis, it does not necessarily follow that it will reduce deaths at a population level. Existing research reflects this ambiguity with some research finding very significant effects of vaccination on death while other findings conclude there was little or no effect at all.

Our new study attempts to improve our knowledge about the effect of COVID vaccination programs by estimating the effect of vaccination take up on deaths in care homes. This is a particularly important group to examine. Given that the vast majority of COVID-related deaths occur in the elderly, any effect on deaths is highly likely to be seen in care homes.

Machine learning used to analyze the data We examined deaths from COVID in care homes across nearly 150 local authorities in England from the start of the vaccine rollout in December 2020 until after the second booster dose in summer 2022. We tested whether higher rates of vaccination of staff and elderly residents led to fewer deaths both in total and from COVID.

One feature of our research is the use of machine learning (a type of artificial intelligence) to isolate the effect of vaccination from other factors that may also have affected mortality, including levels of prior infection as well as demographic, economic and health differences among local authorities.

Machine learning is particularly adept at separating out the effects of a high number of potential explanatory variables, providing much better evidence of when associations represent true causal relationships. In contrast to some other research, we also use a measure of vaccination that takes account of the fact that effectiveness wanes over time.

We found that higher vaccination rates of residents (but not of staff) did indeed lead to fewer deaths, but the effect was relatively small. For example, an increase in the resident vaccination take-up rate of 10% in a local authority caused, on average, a reduction of 1% in the total care home mortality rate. That is equivalent to about 22 fewer deaths per week nationwide.

Of course, any reduction in deaths is welcome. But vaccination does not appear to be the key factor in reducing care home deaths from COVID. We also found that the reduction in deaths was restricted to the initial vaccination rollout.

From September 2021, when the booster vaccination program started in England, higher vaccination rates of elderly residents do not seem to have led to any reduction in deaths. Based on these results, vaccination is unlikely to have been responsible for the sustained fall in COVID-related deaths.

Why then did Europe and the US experience large reductions in COVID deaths since 2021, even during times when infection rates have soared?

There are two explanations. The first is the growth of variants such as omicron that, although highly infectious, are less deadly than variants responsible for the early waves.

Second, is the rise in the cumulative number of people who gained protection from having had previous infections.

These explanations are consistent with the experience of places such as Hong Kong, New Zealand and Taiwan. All saw relatively low COVID infections and deaths in 2020, meaning only limited levels of natural immunity had been built up. All then experienced high mortality rates during 2022, well after most people in those places had been vaccinated.

For example, the seven-day average mortality rate in Hong Kong reached 40 deaths per million in March 2022, a rate far above the highest peak seen in the US during the whole pandemic despite cumulative vaccination rates at that time being similar.

Even though vaccination probably reduced care home deaths by a small amount in the early rollout period, there is little evidence that the booster program had any significant effect on COVID-related deaths.

Study link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292124002113?via%3Dihub

[aeshnacyanea2000]

Where do you think Bedelia went, and what was she doing, when she ended her psychiatrist-patient relationship with Hannibal withdrew from social ties in Season 2?

Thank you for this ask!

I'm afraid I don't have an answer. I've been thinking about this on and off since I first watched that episode, and each time more questions pop up for me, more variables that would influence Bedelia's decisions. So, I have a list of questions:

The fact that Bedelia decided to end her therapist-patient-relationship with Hannibal and leave town shows that she considered staying more dangerous than leaving, but her behavior during that scene in his office - and how he found her house when he went there later - show that she knew leaving would carry its own dangers. So, what dangers exactly did she foresee for each option?

Did she expect someone to come looking for her, and if so, who? Jack Crawford, Will Graham, the FBI (possibly others from that agency, working for Jack or against him)? Officially, or unofficially? What about Hannibal? Perhaps even he and Will Graham together, should Hannibal be successful in turning the man into the friend and partner he was longing for?

Did Bedelia get found and brought back to Baltimore because she miscalculated the lengths Jack would go to to find her, or did she want to be found?

For that matter, how long did it take Jack to start the search for her?

What resources did Bedelia have for her flight? Does she own other properties, preferably outside the U.S., or have any friends or relatives who would offer her a hiding place that would not be immediately known to law enforcement?

How much knowledge does she have about what it takes to disappear?

Was she planning to disappear long term/permanently, or was she planning to simply wait out the conclusion of Hannibal's game with the FBI, and then return to her home once that situation had resolved itself in whatever way it would?

I do think we can make some general assumptions about Bedelia's hiding place. For example, I don't think she would just go and stay in a hotel. Not for weeks or months. At the very least, she would choose an apartment or a house somewhere. Something that offered more privacy.

Second, I don't think she is the type who'd hole up in a hunting cabin in the woods, or something similarly far from civilisation. (Though it would be fun if she actually had the knowledge and skills for wilderness survival, and was just hiding it because it didn't fit in with her own person suit.) Besides, someone like her would stick out like the proverbial sore thumb in any rural area. Her person suit is very much a city-dwelling one, or at most the lady of a country manor house.

But, like you, I don't think Bedelia cooks for herself, or for that matter does the cleaning and laundry. If she was planning her exile to last weeks or potentially months, she'd choose somewhere that allowed for the same services and comforts she enjoyed in her life in Baltimore.

So, an apartment or a house in a city somewhere, or perhaps in some area that's an upscale holiday destination where she would blend in as yet another rich person enjoying a quiet retreat. But as to where…

Flights have the disadvantage of flight records that are easily available to law enforcement. And once at the destination airport, she'd need to rent a car, which once again results in records of her actions and movements. Leaving Baltimore in her own car might be the better choice, but that puts other limits on how far she can go. So, I don't know.