#interuniversal life support

[bradgeigermusic]

PLANET EARTH HAS DEFENSES AGAINST REMOTE BRAIN EDITING, INCLUDING WIRELESS DIRECT TO SOUL MEMORY BACKUP AND ARTIFICIAL METALLIC SYNTHETIC BRAINS FOR PERSONS.

[ifearifearifear]

The FNAF Multiverse (9/10)

Here we are, nearly at the end of my little silly textbook draft. Don't worry though, I'm not finished with this AU. (Not by a longshot)

Chapter 9: The Spaces In-Between

And here we are. A part that I’ve been eagerly awaiting.

Explaining what lies between universes. This is where things start rounding out into something you can really sink your teeth into.

First off, the space between universes is… Interesting. Yeah, that’s what we’ll call it.

It’s filled with fractured pieces of forgotten universes. Broken, misshapen settings, haphazardly mis-mashed together into a distorted landscape, full of tears and chasms that only plummet deeper into the multiverse. Characters who have forgotten who they are - Characters who are confused, lost, and scared - Characters who have been alone in the broken, uncanny wastelands for so long that they’ve gone mad - Characters who have begun to remember things they shouldn’t be able to, who have begun to remember their previous revisions, the loop they’ve been on for lifetimes - Characters who’ve realized their entire life was planned out as a narrative, all to entertain onlookers like a trained beast in a circus - Characters who are angry, so so angry that while other universes continue to exist, theirs was abandoned and forgotten, and they were left to rot in the wastes between worlds.

Characters with a predetermined fate know nothing of the hell that those forgotten experience. To be doomed by the narrative is to have a place in it. And for these wandering souls, the narrative, the story, the life that they once had… It’s long gone. And now, there is no narrative to guide them. They’re left wandering. Even characters doomed to death serve a purpose. Even characters who face fates worse than death have the security of a story to fall back on, even if they don’t know it. But for those without a story to support them, there is nothing. Nothing but to wander, often in solitude, for eternity.

Surprisingly, navigating the spaces in-between is rather easy, as long as you’re careful. The hard part is finding an exit. Or rather, an entrance. The space in-between is quite vast, and despite how many universes exist, it’s still very much a hotdog down a hallway situation. [Note to self: Find a better way to phrase that before you post this.] [Update: I couldn't.] The sheer scale of the multiverse makes it difficult to find universes through just wandering.

With the sole exception of the center of the universe. There, you can't go five feet without tripping into a universe, simply because of how cramped it is there. But as it pertains to anything beyond X±.1 Y±.1, there will be a lot of wandering involved.

An interesting addition, there are two universes which, in this AU, could have built-in interuniversal travel. The first of them being FNAF World. Specifically, the Flipside. This is the point where I’m going to establish a specific coordinate for a world. The fourth level of the flipside exists at X0 Y0 Z-1. It exists directly under canon at the lowest point of the multiverse, and if anything falls through from canon, it ends up there.

And the second of these potential easy integrations is - drumroll please…

The Fazbear Frights anthology. I’m sorry.

The initially cut and later released Fazbear Frights story, The Scoop, sticks out severely for being intensely meta. And because of that, it is, in this AU, an example of a larger story spanning over multiple universes. And that could potentially be the case with several other stories from the anthology series, but I’m electing not to touch the matter any further, because the canonicity of these books is still a topic of vicious debate, and I’m not about any of that.

Also, I'm not even going to touch In The Flesh. I know there is an argument to be made there about it taking place in another independent universe, but I really can't take that story seriously.

But anywhom, with that out of the way, the next chapter is mostly going to be a note from me, rather than a direct explanation of the principles of this AU.

- Chapter Navigation -

- 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * 5 * 6 * 7 * 8 * 9 * 10 -

[cosmoscourge-a]

From The Great Unity to the Uniman Federation: The How and Why of Unimans Sticking Together

written because if i do say so myself it’s a bitchin’ idea and also because i realized that if i don’t have something like this here my fanregion will come off as Imperialism Lite.

so, back in the Primordial Days before the war, there were no such thing as nations, and there was no big rift between humans and nonhumans. people simply lived together in harmony, vibing and chilling with each others’ cultures, sharing their resources and supporting each other in times of need. of course, this harmony was not to last, with arceus sowing discord among the people so that they’d split into eight and then nine kingdoms. but this time would always be looked upon as a simpler time, a better time, a time called The Great Unity.

over the ages, the great unity meant different things to different people. it happened such a long time ago that nobody really remembered what it was actually like, and so it became a rorschach test of sorts; what people read into the scraps and ruins that remain often says more about them than it does about the great unity. in the days of the war and the days of siegfried von hohenlohe, the great unity meant nothing to the fae, but what it meant to humans was quite possibly worse. every human kingdom wanted to reestablish some of the great unity solely to take the credit for it, and even then, they wouldn’t bring it back all the way. like, the international trade and economic (if you could even say the primordial humans had an economy) prosperity was definitely on the table. but cultural unity? mmmmmm not so much, so each kingdom’s picture of the great unity was everybody else submitting to a single country’s world order; which country that was depended solely on who was painting the picture. each country believed, correctly, that the great unity would never be fully restored, but what they did with that information was monstrous: they aimed to create unlimited prosperity for themselves and their personal selection of chosen others, building it by forcing everyone else into the blood sport and slave-like conditions.

the image of the great unity changed during the time of friedrike skyherald, who desired not the absolute rule of one nation but for every independent nation to have a say in a federation--which she literally had to kick the shit out of every other country before they would accept it, because they were all so sold on the idea of becoming a dominant force instead of one part of a large collaboration. Pandispara, like the modern uniman federation, operated thus. discretion was left to the individual states for how to carry out policies agreed upon by the union and how to ensure its own individual security; it was also left to individual states to determine things like censorship, technomagical development, and its citizens’ privileges. yet all of them collaborated together on economic agreements, on deciding what their citizens had the right to (such as free speech and freedom of religion) and on interuniversal policy and security. friedrike too believed that the age of the great unity could never come again. but she wanted to get as close to it as possible, and she believed that this was how to do it.

the era of wilhelmine brought pandispara back to the days that it was an empire, with the great unity once again interpreted the same way it was in the time of siegfried; she honestly threw out the concept of the great unity entirely, believing it to be too soft to suit the needs of the blood sport. however, when tobias took power, he created the Uniman Federation and in the name of getting as close to the great unity as possible, he returned disparaverse to the union that it had under friedrike skyherald. this time, however, things were far more progressive. instead of limiting rights to, say, life, the UF stepped up and gave people a right to a good life; people deserve to be comfortable, not just barely scraping by. they also added things such as the right to be innocent until proven guilty, and the right to privacy. while the league serves as an overall governing body that represents each subregion to the full region, each subregion has its own independent government with its own discretion as to how to carry out policy. as for how the league was chosen? the process was semi-democratic. the nominees would have had to be selected as Candidates by the vote of each subregion, and go through certain trials decided upon by each subregion’s local leaders. then the remaining candidates would go on to face tobias’ trials and be further whittled down until only one per position was remaining.

this needs a conclusion but i have no concentration left to write one up. hope you enjoyed reading!

[coachcathybarry]

The importance Women Coaches in Sports - Coach Cathy Barry -Head Coach of Eclipse Track & Field Club

The statistics for girls and women in sport are overwhelming. There is not one sport where girls and women do not play, excel at or even achieve record breaking performances at. However, the most recent national surveys indicate that female coaches only account for 19% of all coaches.  Let’s face it, Women’s sports are here to stay and will undoubtedly continue to grow and maybe even surpass their male counterparts. Having said that, here’s some stats and information that I found interesting and wanted to share: “The most recent national survey (published in 2008) reported that females outnumber males in six of the 10 most popular sports— swimming, soccer, volleyball, alpine skiing, cycling, and tennis. In soccer, the #1 children’s sport and the only sport to show an increase in participation from the previous survey in 1998, girls’ participation had become identical to that for boys; in ice hockey, girls were quickly closing the gap, increasing their participation three-fold since 1998. The story is similar at the highest levels of performance. Despite fewer events in which to compete, Canadian women have earned Olympic berths in roughly the same numbers as men for two decades and brought home roughly the same number of medals. At the 2012 Olympics in London, Canadian women won nine medals, as did the men. Canada’s only gold medal was won by Rosie MacLennan of Toronto on the trampoline. Another Study conducted in 2011, by the Centre for Sport Policy Studies at the University of Toronto found that while there are almost as many teams in Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) competition for women as there are for men, only 19% of the head coaching jobs are held by women. It's not much better in other positions of leadership where only 17% of the athletic director positions in Canadian universities are held by women. And even worst, at the highest levels of competition, female coaches are still the exception”. So Why is this? Many female coaches will tell you they feel “invisible” to their male counterparts. They are often time treated as the “assistant coach” rather than the real consideration they actually deserve. There is a perception out there that female coaches can’t possibly have earned the right to be as good as their male counterpart and that they are somewhat deficient in their qualifications. The lack of visible female leaders and mentors is probably one of the biggest deterrents to aspiring female coaches. Let’s face it, in a male dominated coaching industry where women are overlooked again and again, it’s easy to be dismissed and made to feel inferior and less-than. Barriers that Female Coaches face: - male control of the sport - the lack of role models - employers’ unwillingness to hire - lack of recruiting and mentoring programs - job insecurity - low salaries - gender-based violence and sexual harassment - work-life balance - lack of networking, group practices, and job-sharing - perception that girls and women want male coaches because they are considered “better”, but the evidence suggests otherwise. What needs to change: Did you know that “One hundred percent of male athletes have had a male Coaching role model during their athletic careers?” Young women likewise needand deserve more same.

Same sex role models positively influence self-perceptions amongst girls. Women Coaches challenge stereotypes about gender and leadership and offer diverse perspectives, insight and advice to their athletes. Having gender diversity in role models is important because it challenges outdated gender stereotypes about women in leadership. Additionally, if women are not visible in leadership positions it can lead to less favorable outcomes for girls and women. Their abilities and self-perceptions can be devalued as we have seen when speaking with other female coaches.  In a day and age where we struggle for barrier-free access to facilities, the right to play in a hijab, gender self-determination, gender bases violence, sexual harassment/solicitation and even racism, female coaches should be made a priority. Female-Friendly environments can and have shown to increase and enhance female participation. More female coaches in the industry make sports more acceptable and safer to many more girls and women When women are ‘out of sight’, they are also ‘out of mind’, their needs don’t get prioritized. On the flipside, when there are enough women decision-makers, women’s issues get prioritized.

What Women Coaches can do for other Female Coaches: Female Coaches can provide support and advice to colleagues about navigating what has traditionally been a male dominated workplace. With more female coaches, the sport could better cope with the high rate of disordered eating and body image issues, which tend to be more common on women’s teams and with female athletes. Developing that sense of relatedness and connection with female colleagues working as Coaches or in a sport related capacity is both beneficial and critical to the quality of their experience, especially when coupled with the opportunity to receive feedback from other Coaches. The ‘network’ is just as relevant and useful for women as it is for men, it can help them in their career and women Coaches need to see and interact other women Coaches for friendship, networking, support, career advice and mentorship. “By increasing the number of women Coaches, we can change perceptions, give equitable opportunities and positively influence the lives of young women. We are poised to change the landscape not just for current Coaches, but also for the next generation of aspiring female Coaches.” ~ Nicole LaVoi Ph.D., a pivotal force in the women’s coaching movement says in her book, Women in Sports Coaching. 

[just-pretend-i-can-write]

Earth-6420

Peter Parker x reader (eventually)

Peter is asked to go into another universe to start a chain reaction to help things get better. This is part one, reader will come in on part two

word count: 1530

Peter pov: Earth-616

The bell just rang when I got the the summons. I was washing my hands in the bathroom sink, I left my study hall to use the bathroom, and words started appearing on the mirror in gold lettering, all caps. ‘COME TO THIS ADDRESS IMMEDIATELY MR. PARKER: 77A BLEECKER STREET, NEW YORK CITY, NY.’ Honestly, at this point I wasn’t even surprised by the magic lettering. I just grabbed a pen out of my back pocket and wrote the address down in the palm on my hand. Honestly, I was a little annoyed. I was going to work on upgrading my computer tonight. Mr. Stark was still giving me an… well, he called it an allowance, I called it a paycheck, we compromised and now call it’s an allowance.

I shot a quick text to Aunt May, something about a job opening at a pizza shop in Greenwich Village. I had to pull a few stings (and by I, I mean, I begged Tony to pull a few strings) to have her brain wiped of the finding-out-that-I’m-spider-man incident. It was for her own safety, after Mr. Thoomes’s little threat of ‘I will kill you and everyone you love’, I didn’t want to risk my last family member being threatened because of my day job. In response to the text, I got a few emojis ‘Okay’ and a few more emojis. I laughed and opened my locker to grab my backpack. I had gotten more careful about where I put them, this was only my second backpack this month. I slid the bottom stack of books into the bag, figuring that even if I didn’t need all of them, I’d study or something after I got back from Greenwich.

I told Ned to make up an excuse for me for missing practice, probably a bad idea. I loved the guy, but he wasn’t the best with secrets or excuses. He winked at me, telling me he had this, and I knew I had another detention coming my way. I jogged out of the school, ducked the corner and stopped, debating if I should go all spideied up or just take the subway. Why not make an entrance? I grinned to myself and ran a little farther away from the school into a different alley to strip and suit up.

Within ten minutes (no traffic when you swinging on buildings), I was looking over what I once thought was a haunted building. I swung onto it’s roof and scuttled onto the skylight, looking through into a vast loft filled with dusty artifacts. It looked like a museum. I didn’t see anything… living though. Well, didn’t see anything living until after the swirling vortex of sparks opened underneath me. I landed in a hard chair, and from the impact, my eyes were jarred out of whack... again. For a good thirty seconds all I saw was black and white bars until I got them situated.

“Can you take off the mask, Mr. Parker? I’m not a fan of them.” Saided a distinguished man, a few years old than my aunt. He had his fingers steepled over his mouth and a look of judgement scribbled over his face. I hesitated to take off the mask, studying the man once more before deciding he wasn’t a threat. I pulled off my mask and shook out my hair. “I never understood heros and the jump suits, it seems a little ridiculous, don’t you think?” He waved his hand and an antique tea set started to work on it’s own. I was a little to dumbstruck to answer. “I suppose you wouldn’t, all of your versions wear them.” He shook his head. “Tea?” One of the cups floated towards me, and I finally found my voice.

“I… I’m n-not much of a t-tea person.” I stuttered, my eyes wide. Like I said before, not much surprised me, but this took the cake. I was sitting across from a wizard that could do wandless magic.

He sighed and waved his hand again, the tea turned into a bottle of Coke, “Not many people I have the pleasure to meet are tea drinkers, shame. Tea does a lot of good for you.”

I just nodded along to it, not sure why he called me here to have tea and small talk. How the heck did he even know my name? As far as I was concerned I had never met the man before in my life. “Who the hell are you?” I blurted, lurching forward. Thankfully the bottle of Coke was still closed, otherwise I would have had one heck of a stain to explain to Mr. Stark.

“Oh, sorry, I forget, not everyone has an insight to the world.” He chuckled, “My name is Dr. Strange.” He paused, waiting for admiration.

I sat quiet for awhile before clearing my throat, “Oh… ‘m Peter… Parker. But you already… knew… that…” I drummed one hand on my leg and clicked my tongue, looking around the room at the artifacts, “So… why am I here?” I asked slowly meeting his eyes.

Dr. Strange stood, “Yes, follow me.” I don’t think I had a choice because as soon as he said that our entire scene changed. Thank goodness for spidey senses and quick reflexes or I would have ended the shift on my butt. We were standing at an green orb thing supported by a silver pedestal, acrossed it in gold letters (what was it with this guy and gold?) was a simple message. ‘Send help.’

Strange put his hand on top of the orb, “I got this message last night from an alternate realm, from an alternate me. This the only piece of it that came through clearly.” He rotated his hand counter clockwise and a bunch of jumbled letters appeared. ‘Hro oe. ord brn  acs.’ The lines in Strange’s face deepened, “I think the other me’s powers are weakened, used to only supply steadiness to his hands, so he is out of practice. The length of the message journey does no difference to signal, only the flow of magic through it as it travels. Unless the magic flow was interrupted, then that is the only explanation.”

I was still stuck on his first sentence, “There are alternate universes?” I asked, dumbstruck. Apparently there was a lot to learn about the world I had now been in for two years.

“Keep up kid,” Strange barely looked up at me, “I need a hero that isn’t in that universe to go help fix everything, or start a chain reaction. I’ll be scrying into the world’s future, once the chain reaction is started, I’ll pull you back through to this world and you can go on with your life.”

“So, what? I wasn’t born in that universe?” I asked.

“Oh, no, you were. You were just killed two years ago by these things called sentinels built by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner.” Strange said in a casual manner, like it wasn’t a bad thing I was killed.

“So, lemme see if I have this straight. I go,” I pointed at the orb, “to wherever this came from. Kick some butt, change a few minds, and be back… when? In a couple months? I don’t think I told you this, but I need to be home by dinner, my legal guardian thinks I’m at a job interview, not a interuniverse mission interview.” I shook my head, “Thanks but no thanks.” I turned around and began to walk away.

I didn’t get very far.

I took two steps and the scene shifted so I was walking towards Mr. Magic, “You’ll be home before dinner. You’ll be home before the hour has passed. When you travel through dimensions, no time passes.” Doc sighed at my expression, “Have you ever watched or read Narnia? It’s like that. Now, are you a hero or not? Put on your big boy tights and help me make an interdimensional portal to get you to Earth-6420.”

I didn’t have room to say no, or at least not any admirable room to say no. So I helped the guy, got him his supplied, loaned him some of my hair. He called me a good little assistant. While he worked on the spell he explained something that was called the multiverse. There was our universe, Earth-616. There was the one I was about to enter, Earth-64200. There were a lot of others as well: Earth-1218, where we never existed. Earth-1602, where Killgrave ruled. Earth-2149 where we were nothing but Zombies. And hundreds of others.

After a while of talking, Strange finally ushered me to the portal, this was surrounded by another glowing spark ring. Through it was a dingy world below me, empty streets, only dime street lights giving me any access of sight, and don’t get me started at the smell. While I was looking over the edge, Strange’s cloak pushed me through. I guess I was taking to long for it. I fell for a few seconds before I was able to swing and catch myself on the side of the building, just in time to watch my way home close.

[hello-bigdata-blog]

Big Data Share

Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to explore the practice of big data sharing among academics and issues related to this sharing. The first part of the chapter reviews the literature on big data sharing practices using current technology. The second part presents case studies on disciplinary data repositories in terms of their requirements and policies. It describes and compares such requirements and policies at disciplinary repositories in three areas: Dryad for life science, Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) for social science, and the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) for physical science.

Introduction

The September 2009 issue of Nature included an interesting special section on data sharing. An opinion article in the section discussed the Toronto International Data Release Workshop, where attendees “[recommended] extending the practice to other biological data sets” (Birney et al., 2009, p. 168) and developing a set of suggested best practices for funding agencies, scientists, and journal editors. The February 2011 issue of Science compiled several interesting articles to provide a broad look at the challenges and opportunities posed by the data deluge in various areas of research, including neuroscience, ecology, health, and social science, where there is a demand for the acquisition, integration, and exchange of vast amounts of research data.

The term big data is a current buzzword. It is a loosely defined term to describe massive and complex data sets largely generated from recent and unprecedented advancements in data recording and storage technology (Diebold, 2003). Explosive growth means that revolutionary measures are needed for data management, analysis, and accessibility. Along with this growth, the emergence of a new “fourth paradigm” (Gray, 2009) for scientific research, where “all of the science literature is online, all of the science data is online, and they interoperate with each other” (Howe et al., 2008, p. 47), has created many opportunities. Therefore, the activity of organizing, representing, and making data accessible to both humans and computers has become an essential part of research and discovery.

Given the significance of this context, data sharing has become a hot topic in the scientific community. Data is a classic example of a public good in that shared data do not diminish in value. In particular, scientific data have long underpinned the cycle of discovery and are the dominant vehicles by which scientists earn credit for their work. So shared data have served as a benchmark that allows others to study and refine methods of analysis, and once collected, they can be creatively repurposed indefinitely by many hands and in many ways (Vision, 2010). Sharing data not only reinforces open scientific inquiry but also promotes new research and expedites further discovery (Fienberg, 1994). As science has become more data-intensive and collaborative, data sharing has become more important.

Promoting the effective sharing of data is an increasing part of national and international scientific discourse and essential to the future of science (National Science and Technology Council, 2009). Today, many U.S. government agencies recognize that scientific, biomedical, and engineering research communities are undergoing a profound transformation in regard to access to and reuse of large-scale and diverse data sets; as such, these agencies have developed policies that mandate and/or encourage data sharing. For instance, the National Science Foundation (NSF) expects grantees to share their primary data, samples, physical collections, and other supporting materials created or gathered in the course of work under the grant.1 The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has had a data-sharing policy since 2003; the policy states that any investigator submitting a grant application seeking direct costs of $500,000 or more in any single year is expected to include a plan to address data sharing in the application or state why data sharing is not possible.2

To support these needs, infrastructure is being built to store and share data for researchers as well as educators and the general public. In 2008, the NSF awarded nearly $100 million over 5 years to data preservation and infrastructure development projects under the DataNet initiative.3 DataONE4 is one of the awards, which is dedicated to the large-scale preservation and access to multiscale, multidiscipline, and multinational data in biology, ecology, and the environmental sciences. Recently, the White House announced a $200 million initiative to create tools to improve scientific research by making sense of the huge amount of data now available. Programs like these are needed to improve the technology required to work with large and complex sets of digital data Thanks.