#exam standardisation

[ev-enhotterthanyou]

how did you survive mock period. i fear i can not do this year anymore this SUCKS

(ignore me its just my turn on the guillotine sigh)

oh autumn . oh my dear. well my friend you have a lot to learn in the art of what I call NAÏVETY AND DELUSION. here's how to survive <3

- cram the night before on everything

- use timer apps to attempt to overcome your attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

- get point blank ignored by the person who you're meant to get accommodations from so suffer thru the exams at a desperate pace

- cry yourself to sleep

- remind yourself its just mocks its just mocks while rocking backwards and forwards on the floor

- jork it an unforgiveable number of times for free dopamine

- disregard every extracurricular you have as well as sacrificing your entire social life. live off of ten minutes of tumblr a night

- pray to various deities and hope it works itself out

genuinely tho i hope it goes well for you i promise its seriously not as bad as it feels cuz you just psych yourself up for it so much like. I was shaking non-stop for like a week before exams started and yes I was actively shitting myself as I sat down for my first exam but after that it was just. kinda okay? it wasn't that bad when you get in the swing. just take it one day at a time okay? you'll be alright babe i hope it goes well im sure you'll do great <3!!!

[zipstick]

when you want to learn how to act but the drama a level is only designed to teach you how to pass the exam

[prime-adeptus]

since I really liked how my Dottore fic turned out (+the reception has been great 🩷), I wonder if I can make a sequel or spin-off for it... or maybe even a whole verse/series 🤔 much to think about. I want to somehow drag the Harbingers in it too

[bisquid]

Thank you for the splainy!

Wait your bachelor's take four years?? And you can chop a YEAR off that with school exams??? Hwaet?

Also:

How does your school system work? What is a middle school? What is a sophomore? When is eighth grade??

not going to share what this is about bcos it was obviously an off the cuff comment that the OP didn't word very well but hm. sometimes when i see americans trying to compare their school grading systems to the rest of the world it's very. square peg in round hole? 'in europe a 50% is a passing grade' ok i cannot speak for the rest of europe obviously but in the UK we uh. don't really have passing grades.

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

life advice because i'm drinking a can of monster (and making it everyone's problem)

ALRIGHT HELLO MAGGOTS I PROCURED A TWIRLY STRAW AND I'M DRINKING A CAN OF MONSTER WAIT I JUST SAID THAT OH WELL TOO BAD. @littlewoggysaffle and @empressumbreon, my lovely children, and @robinprinceofchaos my favourite nephew, listen close for this is TOTALLY LEGIT AND AMAZING ADVICE. OKAY? OKAY.

(I'm listening to a Crowley playlist I made called Loserboy Rizz rn. Feels relevant. Like a disclaimer, sort of, about the tone of this post.)

ALRIGHT FIRST UP YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO TAKE YOUR MEDS REGULARLY AT THE SAME TIME OR THEY DON'T WORK APPARENTLY.

SECOND, MEN'S CARGO TROUSERS ARE A HOLY INVENTION, I CAN FIT MY COPY OF ANANSI BOYS INTO THE POCKET WITH ROOM FOR A WATER BOTTLE LIKE WTF. L TO CROWLEY AND HER WOMEN'S JEANS.

YOU ARE GOING TO ANNOY PEOPLE. IT IS INEVITABLE. YOU WILL ANNOY PEOPLE JUST LIKE THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO ANNOY YOU. AND THAT'S OKAY. IT'S OKAY TO BE ANNOYING SOMETIMES. THE ONES WHO MATTER WILL LOVE YOU ANYWAY. JUST LIKE YOU LOVE THEM.

CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, IT IS NOT ONLY A WAR CRIME THE SECOND TIME.

STANDARDISED TESTING MEASURES NOTHING OF EITHER INTELLIGENCE OR KNOWLEDGE ABOUT A SUBJECT. IT'S JUST A MEASURE OF HOW WELL YOU CAN TAKE THE EXAM.

IT IS OKAY TO BE A STEREOTYPE. IT IS OKAY TO DEFY THE STEREOTYPE. YOUR LIFE IS NOT SOME KIND OF DIVERSITY REP YOU CAN BE WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT.

BODY COUNT DOES NOT REFER TO MURDER IN MOST SITUATIONS. BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ACCIDENTALLY REVEAL.

WHEN IN DOUBT, THE DRAMATIC OPTION IS PROBABLY MORE INTERESTING, IF NOT MORE EFFECTIVE. AND HEY LET'S BE INTERESTING OKAY. TO OURSELVES, I MEAN.

UNLESS YOU WANNA BE BASIC WHICH IS FAIR BASICNESS IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT ANYWAY. EVEN SCIENCE CAN'T AGREE ON WHAT IS BASIC. DOES IT REFER TO PROTON ACCEPTORS OR ELECTRON PAIR DONORS OR -OH ANION DONORS OR WHAT? THEY DON'T AGREE. SO BE BASIC OR WHATEVER YOU WANT. YOU ARE AWESOME.

HUMAN BLOOD DOES NOT MAKE GOOD PAINT. THIS IS FROM EXPERIENCE. DON'T BOTHER TRYING.

IF YOU NEED TO TEAR OPEN THE MEMBRANES SURROUNDING A HUMAN BRAIN, JUST USE A SHARP OBJECT AND CUT THE DURA MATER. IT LOOKS TEARABLE, BUT TRUST ME, I'VE PLAYED TUG OF WAR WITH IT AND IT DOES NOT TEAR.

YOU ARE WORTH MORE THAN YOUR "PRODUCTIVE" OUTPUT AND THE AMOUNT OF CASH YOU PUMP INTO AND OUT OF THIS FAILING ECONOMY.

I LOVE YOU. THAT YOU CAN BE SURE OF.

ALRIGHT *SLURPS MORE MONSTER FROM MY TWIRLY STRAW*

I'M OFF TO CAUSE MORE CHAOS, STAY AFRAID, MAGGOTS, FOR I WILL RETURN XOXO UWU

[ragde890]

Hunter x Hunter 407 commentary and pseudoanalysis

It's ambiguous whether Morena has chosen Borksen because she is the specialist Dogman was looking for or because of her connection to Tserriednich (and she has a plan to kill him that needs her in particular or anyone within that group of friends).

The latter is much more likely, though. Remember that in chapter 394, Morena talks about ‘recruiting’ one of Tserri's personal guards. We don't know if she has already succeeded, but recruiting one of her childhood friends as well makes sense given that context.

In any case, Morena's request is, of course, that Borksen joins her and becomes part of Contagion (unless Borksen's last card is a ‘no’, in which case the request will simply be the opposite, so as to end with the same result), but it will certainly be deeper than that.

Borksen is like a ‘matching organ donor’, so either her nen type or her particular conditions will serve a hyper-specific niche that Morena needs for her plan (which we don't know in detail yet).

It is impossible to deny the subtext in the concept of the card game, which also aligns with that of Morena's abilities and backstory. Morena is Nasubi's bastard daughter, and it's clear that that is what has caused all the pain she has suffered since her conception, and has also shaped her role in life (she would not be leader of Heil-Ly otherwise, as the leaders of the three Kakin mafias are, by tradition, the king's bastard children). In the card game, there's a ‘parent’ role and a ‘child’ role, and they must face each other in a very specific way. Lines of dialogue such as these, which on a completely literal level allude exclusively to the game, are no coincidence either:

Her own Hatsu, Contagion, also has a certain parental aspect to it. After all, its use is to give skills to her followers and guide them through the process of growth.

The same can be said about the line "I am my own subject".

It's a grammatical clarification, the purpose of which -at face value- is to provide a consistent way of dealing with double negations during the game. However, it is also a statement of her intentions as a person. And this, again, is reflected in her Hatsu: Morena is a part of Contagion and levels up like everyone else, so she's literally her own subject.

Regarding the whole grammatical discussion, this resource I found on Reddit helps to understand why it was so important to establish a standardised type of response to negative questions (TLDR; how to answer them is more ambiguous in japanese than in other languages):

Another interaction that I find interesting is the one where Borksen thinks ‘What in the world is she so angry about?’, while Morena's expression is a smile, implying that Borksen is able to see through Morena's artificial facade and her feelings are transparent to her.

This is easily justified when rereading chapter 394, where Borksen has exactly the same habit of trying to camouflage her feelings with a fake smile (although she doesn't do it much, and she is, in fact, very expressive otherwise).

All of that aside, the idea of using a card game to ration exposition about Morena and her intentions while creating a tense situation, adding variety with something different to the fights we've been seeing and exploring the themes of the arc is simply superb. The very development of the showdown itself is guaranteed to have a level of mind games similar to what we've seen in battles like Chrollo VS Hisoka. Togashi will also be highly motivated to write it, as he himself has expressed before how much he enjoys creating card and board games:

He also made the ‘Hunter Exam Marathon Hell’ mini board game when Greed Island was published. And in the 2016 interview with Kishimoto, he said that one of his ideas after finishing Hunter x Hunter was to make a card fighting series (he also mentioned his admiration for Fukumoto, author of Kaiji).

As for what to expect future chapters, the room they are in is the same room Nobunaga and Hinrigh saw in chapter 399. This is evident if we compare this panel from chapter 407 (left) with the one from 399 (right):

Based on this, we can assume that Phinks and Feitan will eventually break into the room, although not necessarily during the game. This is possibly what Morena is alluding to when she reiterates that the longer the situation goes on, ‘the more dangerous it will be for both sides’:

Morena knows this because, as the previous chapter already established, Wang (Cha-R's underboss) is a traitor, and he must have been giving her information about the Spider's actions this whole time.

I hope that the next chapter will be the game itself. We've had several chapters now where each one is a change of scene rather than a direct continuation of the previous one (although they do expand situations presented in the previous chapter), but a scene change now would make me a bit sad. I'm very hyped for the card game, to be honest.

[attornsky]

Alrighty i wanna talk a little abt Sherlock & Co. I originally started listening to it cuz I honestly just wanted another form of media for Sherlock that I hadn't consumed yet, but i 100% stayed for the characters and plot.

With a little background, I am diagnosed with anxiety and get panic attacks. I don't wanna self diagnose but i believe i show signs of untreated adhd (im working on a way to get diagnosed and medicated 🤞) and as a result of these two things, my self esteem and grades at school declined so quickly and suddenly and it affected me so much. I graduated HS three weeks ago, and Im applying to medical school rn, but because of how i performed in my senior year, i have 0 confidence that I could even handle my pre-med preparatory year. I often consider myself stupid and below average because if I can't get good grades, then what am i supposed to do with my life? Anyway, due to my suspected adhd, I have a lot of sensory issues, especially sounds and touches, and nobody seems to understand. I get irritated from overstimulation and sometimes just wanna start crying in the middle of a busy street. It happened a lot during school. We were 36 students crammed into one classroom, so it was never quiet, and it made it even harder for me to concentrate. My school is known to be the worst in the country, and they're not accommodating to any student. We're also KG through 12, so there's always the irritating sound of kids yelling and shouting. I just couldn't handle the constant noise, and i couldn't wait to get home so i could get in bed, close the blinds, and watch a comfort show with my doggo sleeping next to me.

That's where the representation in Sherlock & Co comes in. They've written an adult character with sensory issues, who is open about them and his friends accommodate him. He uses ear defenders and sunglasses and makes an effort to understand his neurotypical friends. That just made me so much more comfortable about the fact that I constantly have noise cancelling earbuds shoved in my ears when I'm in public. I've even started wearing headphones instead (cuz it's better for ur ears ig??). Another thing is, they mention that sherlock, despite being super smart, didn't get good grades in college. And that's like!!! Yeah!! Standardised tests are awful and serve no purpose except shatter students' confidence when they don't get the desired grade. It's not a "one shoe fits all," and it shouldn't be. Everyone has strong points that couldn't be measured using a multiple choice exam. I can't even begin to count the number of panic attacks and breakdowns i get from anything school-related. I've seen close friends break down in uncontrollable tears from bad test scores. And these same friends are the most intelligent, well-spoken people I've met. Just because they couldn't memorize 200 pages of physics formulas and definitions doesn't mean they're worth any less. I don't know. That line from S&C just stuck with me.

Anyway, yeah. This podcast just makes me feel so soft and comfortable and fills me with relief and confidence. I don't know how to explain it.

[blackbloodedisabel]

exams😟🙄😒

I finally got back into reading. And today some of the people I sit with at school were talking about reading and graphic novels, and I speak up (very quiet person, and was listening to music so I don’t bother the other people) say “oh! The other night I read a fully 200ish page graphic novel” and the one person is like “that’s just a beginner one. You need to read 400 page ones for the real deal” (or something along those lines) which made me sad but my one friend was like “they didn’t mean it in that way.” Because to me it sounded like they were belittling me (which would make sense idk why. But a lot of the people I know are taking “harder” advanced classes and I’m not so I’m like the “dumb” one) but anywho, sorry if this was a vent? Idk if it was, I can’t tell anymore, I find it funny now lol. How was your day/night?

what the hell that's so rude... why are people so pretentious oh my god. :/ <33

[finnlongman]

If one were to want to read the Irish myths in the original language, would it be better to learn old or middle irish? how much difference is there between them? a lot of resources/books I've found focus on Old Irish, or at least that's what the titles say. But when I've looked at the original texts for a lot of the tales, i cant actually tell if what I'm looking at is old or middle irish.

Neither, do Early Modern Irish and join me in hell, lmao.

Realistically due to manuscript survival, the majority of longer narrative texts are in Middle Irish or later, so if your interest is "reading stories", that's what you're going to end up dealing with. Very, very few people would just sit down and read a medieval Irish text the way you might read a passage of modern Irish, though this is partly because many of them are in dreadful editions that require a lot of work just to use, and in turn this is often because of illegible or damaged manuscripts. A more realistic goal would probably be trying to get to the point of being able to translate medieval texts, or to compare other translations with the original.

But most learning resources for medieval Irish are Old Irish. That ... doesn't really matter? Like, you start with Old Irish because it's the most complex grammar that's the most different to, e.g. Modern Irish. And then you just sorta relax your grammar and lose your infixed pronouns and gain independent pronouns etc and you wind up with Middle Irish without having to learn a separate thing. We had exams on trying to tell the difference when I was doing my MA and it can be Challenging, especially since there's a lot less definitively Old Irish than people originally thought, and because things are often preserved in later manuscripts with updated spellings.

Plus, many of those horrible editions that I mentioned were done by editors who decided to reconstruct the spelling according to what they thought it should be, or standardised all the verbs, or otherwise emended the text in such a way that a lot of its definitive dating features are now invisible. So if you're looking at an edited text, it can be incredibly challenging to gauge the language and thus the likely date.

Anyway, the textbooks like to show you nice proper grammatically correct Old Irish with all its infixed pronouns squarely in place and behaving themselves, and then no text you look at will ever look like that, at all. It's great fun. There just aren't textbooks and resources for learning Middle Irish specifically (probably because anyone working on Middle Irish is going at some point to need to deal with Old Irish features, and also because of the field's historical trend towards focusing only on the oldest versions of things they could find). But you will find resources for Old Irish that incorporate texts with Middle Irish features.

You can also go the other way, which is to learn Modern Irish, which is much easier due to the wider availability of resources and teachers, and then just kinda work backwards. I did not do this so I cannot advise on the best approach there. I will say that I am finding my modern Irish more useful for most of the Early Modern stuff I do than my Old Irish, but that is also because I have substantially more modern Irish than I have Old Irish at this point, and the Old Irish at least aids me in guessing how to approach particularly heinous verbs.

(It is miles easier to eyeball an untranslated 15th century text and have a vague sense of what it means than it would be to do the same with a tenth century text, especially with how rusty I am on Middle Irish at this point. So if I am posting excerpts of a text and noting that I'm just doing the translation on the fly it is going to be an early modern text 99% of the time.)

Rough dates, fyi: 600-900 Old Irish, 900-1200 Middle Irish, 1200- Early Modern Irish. Realistically you have Middle Irish texts being written in the fourteenth, fifteenth centuries and of course things also get copied into later manuscripts and preserve older language, so these are only very broad approximations. TBC 1's earliest MS is ~1106, the Book of Leinster is ~1160, so firmly towards the end of the Middle Irish period, but they still have bits of Old Irish in there, esp. R1. Stowe is 15th century in a 17th century manuscript with modernised spelling but often it's Middle Irish in grammar. It's a whole mess. Good luck lol

[Apologies that this is not the most coherent or detailed answer I've ever written. I am very tired right now]

[web-novel-polls]

Have You Read This Web Novel?

The whole world is subjected to a highly dangerous standardised exam called the Global Examination. Answering questions by putting their lives at stake, they would live if they passed the test. Every month the exam will undergo reformation while, occasionally, it is random.

If you’re in the process of reading this web novel, please choose whichever option best fits your situation. You do not have to be completely finished with it to answer “yes.”

[songofwizardry]

It's speak your language day! I have some fun facts on Kiswahili! Translation under the cut.

Leo hapa Tumblr ni siku ya kuongea lugha yako ya kwanza (inaitwa speak your language day)! Kuisherehekea siku hii, nilitaka ku shiriki nanyinyi nyote semi chache za Kiswahili. Kiswahili ina utajiri nyingi ya mapokeo ya mdomo, na kuna desturi na historia ndefu ya kusimulia mahadithi, kutega vitendawili, n.k.

Kwa mfano, ukitaka kusimulia hadithi, unaanza hivyo:

Msimulizi: Hadithi hadithi!

Hadhira: Hadithi njoo, uongo njoo, utamu kolea!

Msimulizi: Zamani za kale...

Hadithi zinazosimuliwa mara kwa mara ni hadithi za wanyama wa porini: sungura mjanja, mfalme simba, fisi, na kadhalika; hadithi kama hizi zinapatikana katika nchi nyingi za Kiafrika.

Vitendawili ni semi zinazotegwa, na watu wanatakiwa wazifumbulie. Watu wanaoongea Kiswahili kawaida wanajua vitendawili vingi, kwasababu tunazifunza katika shule ya msingi—mi mwenyewe nakumbuka nilipokuwa katika darasa la saba, kabla ya mtihani ya taifa, nilikaa ninakariri vitendawili kama arobaini! Vitendawili vinachekesha na vinachemsha bongo, kwa mfano:

"Askari wangu ni mpole lakini adui wanamhara." (Jibu: paka)

"Tajiri wa rangi." (Jibu: kinyonga)

"Numba yango ina nuguzo mmoja." (Jibu: uyoga)

"Mzungu katoka ulaya no mkono kiunoni." (Jibu: kikombe)

Kwa ukweli mi mwenyewe nimeaanza kusahau vitendawili vingine—lakini zinapatikana ukiGoogle siku hizi!

Kiswahili ni lugha yenye historia, desturi, na vipengele vingi vya kuvutia—siwezi kuziandika zote hapa, lakini kwa mfano, muda ya Kiswahili ("swahili time"), ngeli za nomino, historia ya uandikishi wa Kiswahili (kuanza na harufi za Kiarabu), na ilivyotengenezwa 'lingua franca' katika Tanzania, na lugha ya taifa baada ya uhuru. Natumaini mtafunza kidogo kuhusu lugha ya Kiswahili leo—usiache baada ya kujua 'Hakuna Matata' tu!

(Kama nimokesea sarufi, samahani sana! Siku hizi siandiki kwa Kiswahili kwa kawaida.)

(Translated from Kiswahili/Swahili, with some extra notes)

Today, here on tumblr, is Speak Your Language Day! To celebrate this day, I wanted to share with you a few short sayings in Kiswahili. Kiswahili has a rich variety of oral traditions, and there is a long history and tradition of narrating stories orally, posing vitendawili (common riddles), etc.

For example, it is traditional when one is narrating a story to start like this:

Narrator: A story, a story!

Audience: Story, come! Fiction, come! Make it sweet!

Narrator: Once upon a time...

The common tales that are narrated are folk tales involving wild animals: common characters of the cunning hare (sungura mjanja), the king lion, the hyena—folk tales of similar nature can be found in many African countries.

Vitendawili are short sayings that are posed, and people need to solve/figure them out. People who speak Kiswahili will know many of these, because we learn them in primary school—I remember when I was in Grade 7, before my national exams (standardised tests taken at the end of primary school), I sat and memorised about forty different vitendawili! Vitendawili can both make one laugh, and be mind-bogglers (literal translation: they boil the brain), for example:

"My soldier is so gentle, but the enemies are scared of them."

"The one wealthy in colours."

"My house has only one pillar."

"The white man has come from England with his hand on his waist."

Answers to the vitendawili are at the bottom.

In all honestly I have forgotten a lot of the vitendawili—but these days you can Google and find lists of them easily!

Kiswahili is a language with a rich history, and many fascinating features—I couldn't write them all here, but for example, Swahili time, our many noun classes, the history of writing Kiswahili (there are early Kiswahili writings using the Arabic script), and the way it originated as a lingua franca and how it became the national language and a uniting factor in Tanzania after independence. I hope you'll look up the history of or a little bit of Kiswahili today—it's much more than just the phrase 'Hakuna Matata'!

(My apologies if I've made any grammar mistakes—these days I don't often write in Kiswahili. Also, because I intentionally wanted to write this in Kiswahili first, and then translate it, and I'm not practiced at translation, the English sounds clunky/weird—my apologies, but hey, it's SpYLD, I gotta prioritise the non-English text.)

Answers to the vitendawili:

A cat

A chameleon

A mushroom

A teacup

Some links:

Langfocus' Swahili video, which is a really good primer

The online Kiswahili dictionary I use most

For Kiswahili news, BBC Swahili (both online and you can listen to the radio) is pretty good. There's also many, many Kiswahili language news sites you can find, eg Mwananchi.

And of course, music!

Bongo flava is a genre of Tanzanian music (that originated in Dar es Salaam! Bongoland!)—it's a vibrant genre, it's closely linked to hip-hop and Afrobeats; I have a soft spot for the Bongo Flava of the 00s, so here's Usineseme by Ali Kiba (2009)

Sauti Sol are super well known these days, with good reason! They're awesome! They sing in both Kiswahili and English, but my favourite song of theirs is Nairobi

And in a departure from my usual brand, some patriotic music—this is a remix of the traditional patriotic song Tanzania Tanzania, recorded to encourage people to vote in the 2015 elections. I like it because it's a fun video that captures a lot of different parts of Dar es Salaam.

[neuromedical]

Got certified as an ALS provider this week thanks to a course and woo boy was it stressful.

I wanted to take the course at some point, but my hospital decided to send some people there and actually pay for it (it's around €700) and I was one of the people! The course is only two days and you need to pass an online test before you go. It was all about practical scenarios of resuscitation and CPR and at the end you had to pass a practical exam in which you were the leader of the resus team and were judged by certain points. Like the ability to communicate, being able to go by the ALS algorithm, or the ABCD algorithm. And, the most important of all, being able to switch between those two.

I hate exams. I was so stressed. Especially when all the instructors saw that I was fumbling very hard both days. But then the exam came and something in me clicked and it went great! I did my scenario, I think I was a good team leader, and I passed!

The worse part is that now I know all those things, but resus in our hospitals is still a very wild, unorganised mess. Well, maybe not a "mess" per se, but we certainly don't work in organised teams. Maybe one day. At least I got a confidence boost from it. I feel a bit better about potentially being alone with a critical patient that might need resuscitation at some point. And I just feel generally better prepared for work. I think the course was 100% worth it so if your country's resuscitation council organises courses like this, I'd consider going. (All the courses are the same across Europe so they're standardised!)

[vashtijoy]

I was wondering if it is possible that the surname "Akechi" is actually a pseudonym/alias . . . like, his celebrity name, and not the surname of his mother. I don't think the game ever hints at it but it came to me because Dietman and the Silent Requester uses the alias concept and my brain kinda automatically assumes everything in that mission has some kind of parallel to Akechi himself, and because it would make sense to use a different name (that he chose for himself) from his mother for his Detective Prince image, honestly. Do you think that's possible?

This is a fun one, but for myself, I think it probably isn't that likely. Ditto the idea that Akechi is mukoseki (essentially, unregistered at birth, which would have put him at a very significant disadvantage).

Akechi obviously has a life beside what we see. He's registered in high school and is participating in university entrance, all of which he might struggle to access if he was unregistered; he's presumably registered as "Akechi Goro" and not a second name unknown to us. He's remarkably high-achieving, which tells us that he hasn't just been parachuted into a (probably private, as he makes a big deal of earning his school fees) high school post-Shido; he was likely in a good middle school before that, through his own efforts. He tells us he obsessed about his grades so someone would want him. School will have been a big deal for him—up to a point.

He must have been registered with a doctor at some point, and so on. He will have taken standardised tests in elementary and middle school, and those tests will have needed a name, and have gone on file. By the point of canon, he's taken the national mock exams. By the time he's in high school, people do not know that he's an orphan, that he was an unwanted child, that he never had a father—he's successfully hidden it all. Which is a story in itself, if you ask me; a story which might suggest a successful change of identity—or simply that he got into private school, perhaps on a scholarship, and never told anyone his history. Yusuke mentions that his Kosei scholarship entitles him to a free place in a dorm; I like to think that Akechi, in middle school, may have benefited from something like this.

He also works in multiple fields—he must get paid by someone, even if Shido isn't paying him a yen. So he must have a bank account; he must pay tax on that income—two things Shido might certainly be able to help him with, if he saw fit. But even if Shido gave him the apartment he lives in and a credit card for his day-to-day expenses, there's still a lot going on, that that alias would have to take into account.

Shido is capable of a lot, but Akechi can't ask Shido for help establishing his anti-Shido alias; that would ruin the plot. He could, perhaps, strongarm people's shadows into doing things for him, changing things, forgetting him; we know he interrogates them. We never see him do any of that, but you could easily hypothesise it, and I wouldn't put it past him at all.

But in the days before the Metaverse, Akechi already has a lot of paperwork pointing to him; he's not a ghost, he hasn't fallen between the cracks; he's a boy with a life and a history. He's not somebody who can just start going by a different name—not without it raising questions, and drawing attention. Not without people looking up years later, when he's on TV, and saying "hey, that's <name>".

but mom

It seems to me that Akechi is just going by the same name he's had all along, perhaps because some part of him wants Shido to know who he is, perhaps because it's his mother's name, it's his name, and he doesn't want to cast it aside. But then why doesn't Shido recognise his name, like he recognises his face?

It's often said that Shido just doesn't remember people, but in fact he remembers Joker's name—he remarks on it when he sees the death certificate, though he doesn't know where he's heard it. He is doing the same thing Joker is, when he knows Shido's face, his voice, but can't place them.

My suspicion is that Shido just never knew Akechi's mother's name, and that Akechi knows that was the case, and why it would be the case. I think she was a sex worker all along, and that Shido was one of her clients; that, perhaps with the charm and cleverness her son would later show, she wormed her way into his good graces, as much of a mixed blessing as that would have been.

Akechi does not really say, for instance, that his mother and Shido "had a relationship"; he uses the word aijin, which is much more like a mistress, or plaything. Some boys at Shujin talk about how Shiho is going to be Kamoshida's next aijin after Ann. Shadow Okumura suggests to Cognitive Sugimura that he make Haru his aijin—"just take her as your lover". A couple of women on Harmony Alley laugh about becoming the aijins of politicians so they can be spoiled rotten. And Akechi says that his mother and Shido had an aijin kankei—an aijin relationship; she was his mistress, and when she became pregnant, she was dropped like a hot potato.

Akechi's mother might well have used a name that wasn't her own, for her work. She might well have gone only by a given name. That seems more likely to me than Akechi setting one up for himself.

is it a stagename?

One thing makes it very clear that "Akechi Goro" is not a stagename, even if it is an alias: Akechi is not famous at the start of canon, and so he has no need for a stagename. We watch the Detective Prince develop in realtime. And Sae, who's clearly known him awhile, knows him as Akechi; he hasn't adopted a different name for the screen.

could you do it anyway :|a

Absolutely. Go wild. You don't even have to think about this shit if you don't want to. That said, if I was writing this, I would probably face tweeny Goro with at least a few of these issues.

[arc-archernar]

Theory about the MILGRAM prison

(working on this when I'm supposed to be studying for my psychology exam lol)

(i count this as studying for my a-levels, sue me)

Trigger Warning: WWII Germany mention, war crimes mention

One of the questions I keep coming back to is why the prison and the project is called Milgram. The experiment that Stanley Milgram was famous for, his obedience experiment, had more to do with the study of the banality of evil (that was partly his motivation to perform the experiment in the first place) and human obedience for an authority figure than criminal behaviour. What he studied was the willingness of people to obey instructions, even when doing inhumane acts such as administering increasingly lethal shocks to someone who failed a question in a word quiz. This was actually in attempt to investigate whether N@zi Germans in concentration camps/prisons/whatever and such were pure evil or just following orders because they're 'more obedient than other races of people'. He and his colleagues wanted to explain the inhumane acts done during the holocaust, basically, inspired by the criminal trial of Adolf Eichmann (i think thats the name?) about 3 months before the experiment was conducted. Of course, with a bias for Americans.

He and his colleagues predicted that less than 3% of participants would actually administer up to 450 volts to the learner (who was a confederate, i.e. fake. the initial information that participants received was that they were there to help with a psychology experiment on memory:

they would then stage a chance drawing of who would be the 'teacher' (the participant) and the 'learner' (the confederate). the participant was always the teacher. they were then separated so the participant can hear the learner, but can't see them. they were given instructions to administer shocks to the learner if they got the wrong answer, which was made to be frequent-ish. it starts of at 15, then 30, then alll the way up to 450 volts. The shocks were fake, but it would sound like, to the participant, that the learner in the other room was actually experiencing electrical shocks. Re-creation of the study later on used a standardised recording of the learner responding to the fake shocks, then silence, as if to indicate that the learner has passed out.)

Actual results? Every single participant in the baseline procedure administered up to 300 volts. 65% of participants continued up to 450 volts.

The results may be affected by the scientist in the room, which, when faced with apprehension or unwillingness by the participant to continue, will say the following things:

Theoretically, participants should feel free to stop and withdraw from the experiment at any time. Reality? the prompts above literally pressured into continuing to increase the voltage, regardless of if they said they wanted to withdraw. Imagine:

"I- I don't feel comfortable doing this. This is wrong." "Please continue." "But- this is wrong! He's hurt, will he be okay?" "The experiment requires that you continue."

(disclaimer: dialogue is fake, i made it up from watching documentaries and recordings(?) of future attempts to reconduct the study. (i.e. based on what the teacher made me watch in class lol))

And so on and so forth. A lot of participants' attempts to withdraw were met with a sound 'no'. I'd say that going through the experiment itself is traumatic all by itself.

So what does this mean for the Milgram Project?

Honestly, I can only guess that, in a way, it shows how willing most of us are to go along with this extremely inhumane premise. Imagine that the prisoners are real people - well this kind of experiment would get absolutely blasted by any ethics board, and the prisoners would be subject to the Japanese criminal justice system and all that. But imagine somehow passed ethics boards and such. And, instead of the judge being internet people who can discuss and judge freely, it is people who are physically there to be the judge, jury and executioner. The information and experience will be repeated for every participant, every fan of the project. The chances of those of us who will call this kind of prison out drastically decreases, for various reasons. Some of Milgram's participants said that their willingness to go along with the study was because they thought the whole thing was 'play-acting'.

And this scenario is exactly what Es is subjected to. They only know to follow the rules of Milgram, because like the participants in Milgram's obedience study, they can't withdraw. They can't get out. They can only complete the objective they were given, because that's the only way this experiment would end. Jackalope is the scientist in the room in this analogy: they keep Es obedient, keep Es from questioning.

And, like the 'learner' in the original experiment, the prisoners are there to distract us and Es from the true aim of the experiment: to what end will we be jackalope's little obedient doll?

then again, I can be completely wrong. I got distracted from studying. (this counts as studying right????)

[myautisticpov]

I think it’s been easy for me to go “oh, yeah, same” on posts and stuff about being smart enough at school that you don’t need to study, and then not knowing how as you get older

But, like, while it looks similar to the issues I had, I did actually have to study from a young age

They make you take (or made you, I think they’ve been talking about getting rid of them) standardised tests in the UK when you’re six/seven, and I was on track to fail mine

But then I studied and I got the highest marks

It’s not that I never had to study, it’s that the resources available to me as I got older stopped being suitable for my ADHD

When I was a kid, my parents would buy me SATs (that’s what the exams are called) prep video games

They weren’t even that video game-y, but just having the interactive environment that I could use on my own, and the little canned “yay!” noise when I got a question right was enough for me, at age six/seven, to sit in front of my computer and do the practise tests, even without my parents prompting me

Like, I asked for them to buy me the maths blaster games - no one needed to force me to try to beat the game on the hardest difficulty!

But as I got older, you stopped being able to buy the games. BBC Bitesize got less and less gamified and more and more like a digitised text book...

During my GCSEs (age 14-16), my mum scheduled revision time for me, and that wasn’t fun, but it was enough

By my A-Levels (age 16-18), I should have been able to schedule that time myself, but I just couldn’t face one more boring text book

Teachers tried to make learning fun in the classroom, but that always meant making posters as a group, and I was pretty badly bullied in school, so that was never fun for me

Idk, I think “I never learned how to study” is an easy explanation, and because I couldn’t concentrate in class, I did get a reputation in school for being someone who read books under the desk and then magically got full marks in the tests

But it wasn’t magic, I did put in the work, and I did have those skills, but the tools I needed to accommodate myself got taken away as I got older, and they were never replaced with anything else

[phoenixyfriend]

hey there! so i have a question about one of your older posts - ofc feel free not to answer, i’m just curious. it starts with ‘pour one out for the stories you won’t ever find again’ or something similar

so basically, in that post, you mention something like ‘stories in standardised tests that you could only read for a few minutes, but those minutes lasted longer than you’d think’ or something similar

so i’m from africa, and during school, i… don’t think we ever got anything like stories in our tests. i didn’t go to public school (but private school and public school curriculums are rlly similar where i live, tbh) but our tests (end of year exams) were always something like: a comprehension (usually a news article as a source - one year we got an opinion piece about cancel culture), analysis of some poems, writing an essay abt a play, writing a summary, visual literacy (usually a comic), writing a few short pieces like an email or open letter, and an ‘editing’ section (language/grammar skills). i also took an extra subject that my school called advanced program english, and we never got any stories there - just poems, plays, etc.

i am,,, literally so sorry for such a long and detailed ask, i’m just so intrigued about the stories you mentioned? like, what kind of stories were they/what were they abt? did you analyse them, or like edit for grammar mistakes? and do you know if this a common thing for schools around the globe, or if it’s just the usa/certain parts of usa that put stories in their tests?

again i’m so sorry, this such a weird thing to ask about, i’m just. curious ajjdjdjjjhh but like feel free to ignore, ofc. no pressure.

"Older post" is maybe pushing it, lol. It's from two months ago.

United States standardized tests usually include reading sections to test critical thinking skills. If you google something like "ACT short stories," or look at an SAT practice test, there will be some short stories included. This is also true for state level standardized testing that covers elementary through high school.

We did also have writing sections, and other kinds of writing did happen, but there were usually at least two or three stories in the reading section.

A portion of this story, cutting off at about the “America—America—where was America?” is one that really stuck with me. It was abridged for testing purposes.

(I'm not going to address the many, many problems with American standardized testing here.)