#i'll try to find the article to link the source btw

[nicosraf]

quite certain you've probably had this ask before and have answered it but what books/specific sections of the bible do you recommend reading for angel research? and are there any good websites/other sources/other religious texts outside of the bible?

Hello!

Off the top of my head, I would say the biblical books that are more angel-related than others are Genesis, Ezekiel, Job, Revelation.... hmmm I would say the gospels tend to mention angels being physically present quite a bit too — like when Jesus leaves the desert and the angels run to comfort him (very cute of them btw). And, of course, you might want to take a look at the Book of Enoch.

One non-Bible source I remember very well is The City of God by Saint Augustine, specifically Book 11. For a secondary source on Augustine, I highly recommend Augustine's Theology of Angels by Elizabeth Klein.

I like Augustine's stuff in general, and I personally try to look for angel mentions in theological/philosophical work before Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's Celestial Hierarchy (which took over western christian angel understanding). I do still recommend reading Celestial Hierarchy mostly because it's what you're going to find in every single angel-focused book/site.

I don't really have website recs for that above reason but I do make use of Christian q&a sites a lot because they tend to stick very strictly to what the Bible says and I like knowing what the contemporary consensus tends to be about angels for Christians.

Also, I really like to crawl along JSTOR and I'd really like to set up a list of my favorite articles to share, but it'll take a while. I really recommend reading a source — for example, Thomas Heywood's The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells, which I quite like – then looking it up on JSTOR to understand what the historical context behind it is and what it might be responding to (researching Heywood's book is what made me see why the 9-level angel hierarchy concept has been so persistent in angelology).

One JSTOR paper I'll go ahead and link now is this one about angel Lucifer's beauty that I like very much.

Anyway, I swear one day I'll have a very neat organized database of sources......... I Swear.

[kernelpanic-404]

Playing Core War - The Programming Game

So I'm trying to start playing Core War, which is a programming game where two or more programs written in a special assembly language battle against each other to kill the other program in the memory of a virtual computer. I decided to document how to start playing, after I had trouble just installing the simulator.

I found this website, where I downloaded the source code for the simulator, a.k.a MARS (Memory Array Redcode Simulator). The one that I used in this tutorial is called pmars (portable MARS).

It seems like there are download links for windows users, so that you don't have to compile anything like I did, but there also seems to be different simulators that have more features and are (maybe?) easier to use.

The following instructions worked on my mac, but I'm not so sure if they would work on Linux or Windows. If you manage to get it working on either of those, lmk and I'll try to add it.

Instructions for mac (& maybe? linux):

(BTW, whenever things are in quotes, please ignore them)

I downloaded pmars version 0.9.4 from here.

On macOS, I had to download XQuartz, for the UI of the simulator to start.

I used GCC to compile the program, so install homebrew, and run "brew install gcc make" inside your terminal to install both GCC & Make.

Once unzipped, I read the README file (might be helpful)

Open the file called Makefile within the src directory, and edit the line that starts with "CFLAGS" so that it becomes "CFLAGS = -O -DEXT94 -DXWINGRAPHX -DPERMUTATE -DRWLIMIT -I/usr/X11/include/"

Also change the line at the top from "CC = gcc" to "CC = gcc-12" only if on macOS

First try to compile by running "make" within the "src" directory. If it works, great! If not, try the following after running "make clean".

edit the file "sim.c" and find the line that contains "sighandler"

Change "sighandler(0);" to "sigaction(0);"

Try to run "make" again within the "src" directory

For me, that was how I compiled the program. This may or may not work on M1 and M2 macs, as I don't have access to one. Once compiled, you can move the file called pmars to an easily accesible directory (Ex. Create a directory called "bin" in your home folder and put it there). Make sure to put the "warriors" directory somewhere you could find it easily (such as your "Documents" folder)

To run a game (for mac), first open the XQuartz application.

Change directory to the folder where the program is stored and run:

"./pmars PATH_TO_FIRST_WARRIOR PATH_TO_SECOND_WARRIOR"

An example would be: "./pmars ~/Documents/warriors/aeka.red ~/Documents/warriors/rave.red"

A window should pop up containing the memory contents of the Virtual Machine!

Voila! Your very own MARS simulator!

Some resources for creating your own programs to battle:

A Core War Website Strategy Guide Wikipedia Article Tutorial that I found that explains things really well

Hope this works, and Happy Programming! :D

[sleepingfancies]

honestly im still reeling over that thing i read abt plague doctors where basically the black plague is the reason we have primary care doctors who dont know jack shit about us today

the gist of it is that plague doctors, at the beginning of the black plague, were not a new variety of doctor. rather, they were community physicians; and this is important because in medieval times, generations of families would be seen by the same doctor for their whole lives. your mother’s doctor treated her smallpox, he oversaw your delivery, and now he’s treating your young child’s plague.

but the unfortunate reality was that most, if not all, of these community doctors died early on during a huge resurgance of a deadly plague that would ravage europe for almost 10 years straight. death happened so quickly and so frequently that community physicians couldn’t be replaced fast enough by community physician-apprentices or other community aids.

so what do you do now? your community physicians are all dead, and so are the ones from the next town over.

well, you hire traveling doctors who do nothing but treat the plague, of course.

except that means you might only see “your doctor” once every few months as they bounce from country to country, and on top of that, these new “plague doctors” wore masks and suits and kept their distance (which are all good things, of course, but at the time were not widely implemented ideas). they often didn’t take longer than an hour or two to observe you before leaving your care in the hands of your family with instructions on what to do. in most cases they weren’t there when you died.

and that’s been the trend ever since. medical practice was irreparably damaged by the black plague because it normalized being cared for by a doctor who, while qualified and well-practiced, does not know you personally. i’ve heard so many people complain about how impersonal being treated is, and how they feel unheard by their doctor when they try to ask questions or bring their own suggestions to the table.

all the good bedside manner in the world doesn’t change the fact that it is very rare that doctors today know their patients to the degree that europeans pre-black plague experienced with their community physicians. and that’s just so heartbreaking

[crabnby]

christ ok. couple things.

it's a joke, and i have it in my bio bc i've been studying genetics for approx 5 years now so i personally find it incredibly funny. i've been fighting against people that use scientific research to try and prove that gmos are dangerous so i mean. this is nothing new to me.

also the mic article actually?? does??? summarize the scientific article i linked????? i got it straight from the mic article????? so idk how u got there.

it does not HAVE to be a scientific review to be well written and accurate btw. i'd consider the mic article a good 3rd person source bc 1) it gives links to its sources, 2) it talks about the article in depth without getting boring or confusing, and 3) the author has written abt other science research?? granted it's some pretty weird shit, but it's not as if he just decided to summarize a scientific article on a whim. it looks like it's his Literal Job to fuckin. write about science

obviously u would want to use the actual peer reviewed article in question for any academic writing. but for someone who's just curious abt the subject? this is a Good Source imo

in terms of actual subject matter, i did go through some of the responses u got so i'll just respond back here ig

my internet is real slow sometimes so i will admit! i missed the replies to that article bc i just started scrolling past the abstract as soon as i could

i went back n clicked on some of them and u know what? they could be right. i don't study neurology, so i don't actually know what methods work best or the standard for data analysis. i do my best to understand the results, and thoroughly read the discussion and/or conclusion to help. so if joel et al produced a shitty study! that's on me for not realizing

on the other hand though, it's incredibly common to have contradictions in any kind of research. science is NOT free from politics and bias, as ideal as that is. i think that's important to keep in mind when u see responses to articles, and keep an open mind to both sides

which brings me to my next point. i don't actually have a problem w the idea of brain sex! i think this research is really important, especially in the context of mental/chronic illness

my problem is when people try to take peer reviewed articles abt brain sex and present them as """fact""" bc 99.9% of the time i read them, the ultimate conclusion is that there is none. no scientists can come to a conclusion on any of this research yet!

it's irritating to me, to say the least, that y'all seem to have your mind set on the existence of brain sex.

i don't want to ramble abt this for ever, so i'll just leave it at that

and to directly address @keyhollow

1) pls send me ur research i love to read different stuff abt biological sciences whether it relates to my field or not

2) ur making some real leaps there. who's to say that it's not controlled by genetics? or hormones? or the environment? we don't actually know so please,, don't say it's "proven itself time and time again" when i can't find a single source that comes to a solid yes or no conclusion.

and finally, i don't have """nothing"""

while i realize this is just one source, it's one i really like bc it's fairly recent (2017) and the final paragraph puts my stance into words pretty damn well:

any other sources i might use are ones that transmeds themselves have given me bc again...none of the peer reviewed articles i've read come to any sort of conclusion, and some actually contradict the idea of trans identities being caused by brain sex, or just the idea of brain sex itself. so don't come at me without peer reviewed articles that you've actually read (more than just the abstract) and actually prove your argument, thanks

Male and female brains aren’t wired differently

New research, published in October in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that despite size discrepancy, there’s no functional difference between men’s and women’s brains. “Male” brains and “female” brains simply don’t exist. In fact, there’s significant overlap.