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dxmedstudent · 4 years ago

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Risk

I’ve written about many things under lockdown, but I feel there’s something important we have to address. What happens now that lockdown is being relaxed? I think we as people struggle to comprehend complex risk - it’s one thing to work out how likely something is to directly affect us, and another to conceive that a simple, innocent seeming action of ours may not only risk lives directly affected to us, but people we pass on the road, anyone who touches the same rail on the tube, and anyone who is in contact with them. This is why rules work best when they are clear, and don’t ask us to make lots of decisions where we pit what we want or need against the greater good. I was a fan of clear, simple rules under the acute phase of the lockdown, even though the cutoffs sometimes seemed arbitrary, because we had to cut transmission as much as possible. And I’ve made it clear already that I’m disappointed that the UK has not brought case numbers and fatalities down as much as I would hope, and that I worry we are easing out too early and likely to see a second wave. I have a lot of complicated feelings about lockdown, as a clinician and as a person stuck isolated from my loved ones during the pandemic. But as lockdowns are eased, including in the UK, we will all have to navigate the freedoms we have been given (or denied) and decide for ourselves how we navigate the very different world we find ourselves in. Because as restrictions are eased, things become a lot more open to interpretation. Quite simply the rules are harder to gauge. As a doc, I struggle with the government’s decision to allow those who were asked to shield out into society again, to allow them to socialise or go out or shop whilst we are still seeing so many cases. I struggle with the fact it was announced via tweet on Satuday night - and that GPs were left to field questions from anxious patients. That this leaves them vulnerable to being asked back into work - and that there are no protections in place for those who feel worried about returning to work whilst the rate of infection remains high. I struggled with who was asked to shield - for example we know that people with hypertension, diabetes or who are obese are at particular risk - but many such people were not given any protection. The government’s own lockdown alert levels do not suggest that the shielded should have been allowed to stop shielding. The CMOs do not feel we can step down our alert level. And yet, in contraditction to this, the government encourages the most vulnerable to go out there. Social distancing, even when perfectly enacted, is not without risk - a 2m distance reduces risk. Being outside doesn’t completely rule out catching coronavirus.

In the UK, people are allowed to go to someone’s house and eat (and walk through to the garden, and use the toilet), but not stay overnight with a partner who lives apart from them. They must stay 2 metres apart, and can’t meet more than 6 people, though they can all be from different households. It’ll be really important for people to socially distance during any such events, and to evaluate how risky it is for them to attend. Likewise, non-essential shopping will be allowed - as long as it’s socially distanced. Schools will be reopened - good luc trying to make 30 small children in a class socially distance! There is no 100% safe choice - all the precautions we take reduce our chances of transmission, but do not rule out infection. I am concerned that a lot of the time, danger is either presented as risky (and therefore morally wrong) or completely safe (if you follow whatever the current rule is) - when the reality is that all activities - from those not allowed to those actively encouraged by the government, have risk - some more, some less. For some of us, availing ourselves of those freedoms remains a significant risk. For example, my parents have pre-existing conditions like HTN, diabetes, being cuddly-sized, that would make catching coronavirus risky for them. And apart from socially distanced and careful park trips and essential shopping, I couldn’t advise them it’s OK to go out shopping or live life as normal. So I’m not sure I could advise that for anyone at risk, if I wouldn’t advise it for my parents. I will remind you that the government have frequently changed their rules without evidence or justification. That it remains unclear why they’ve chosen to relax them to this degree, all at once - when it will mean that if thereis another peak, we won’t know what has had the most effect. That they have failed to listen to scientific and medical advice when they were asked to re-consider relaxing lockdown. That they have contradicted themselves on what’s allowed - when it’s us, versus when it’s them. That their current rules at times contradict the clear plan they laid out at the start of lockdown. I will remind you that they have voted to end virtual parliament despite it so far being successful - and against government policy that people should work from home if they can. Thus putting workers in parliament at risk, as well as whoever they are exposed to. They only considered quarantine for travellers or making face masks compulsory well after the horse has bolted. I could sum it up only by saying: I do not feel that the government has handled this well, and I don’t feel, at present, that their policy is evidence based as much as it’s based on keeping the economy going. Now, I’m not in the know, I don’t have all their data, but my concerns and disappointment remain. Especially after the Cummings fiasco, my belief in the government’s coronavirus response has reduced significantly, thought the reservations were there from the start. I want to remind you most of all that they will not be the ones suffering if our loved ones get sick. Which is why I personally feel we need to explain the risks to people, and help them decide based on their own risk rofile how much risk they are willing to accept, even if restrictions are eased. We need to highlight that our new freedoms are not suddenly ‘safe’ just because they are allowed. What also worries me is that we’ll be living with some form of restriction for some time - life will not go back to normal any time soon. I’m against unnecessary criminalisation during this pandemic - I feel we have to try to police by consent as much as possible unless that’s absolutely not working to the point it’s a public health hazard. I believe in making things guidance first, and law only if that’s not working enough. It seems like the government are outright making more things illegal - travelling (people have already been fined) staying the night (i.e. sex), and now, from today not wearing a face mask on public transport. It’s one thing for us all to agree to curtail our freedoms for the collective good, and another for governments to start bringing in law after law that stats to infringe upon civil liberties. We know that BAME people are disproprortionately likely to be stopped and fined for breaching lockdown in the UK - I worry that these laws will never be applied equally. And that they won’t touch at the root of things - which is that people need to know why rules are applied and believe they make a difference. And after the Cummings fiasco, opinion polls have shown that people are significantly less likely to follow lockdown rules. We need to manage people’s longterm behaviour, and get them on board with sensible restrictions. And help people to keep as safe as possible, and avoid unnecessary risks wherever possible.

#covid-19 #covid-19 journal #long post

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ryanmeft · 5 years ago

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My Top Performances of 2019, Part 2

Here is the second half of the list of my favorite film performances of 2019. I tried to be as objective as possible, but it’s also a result of personal preferences. As before, the order is unimportant. Part 1 is here: https://ryanmeft.tumblr.com/post/190668845597/my-top-performances-of-2019-part-1?fbclid=IwAR3_d80vj0FbIVXqWaTV1heUlIDJJmL-JB_ZksaadO_oNRztnhBMICxzTd8

Zhao Tao in Ash is Purest White

She’s got everything you could want in a rusting former industrial town: a good boyfriend who has influence in the area’s small underworld, which gives her power, love and money all at once. In a blink it is all gone, and she finds herself adrift in the world, dealing with the resentments of people with no patience for what she has gone through. Tao is the key component of this crime drama, which is more drama than crime. She does not take the world in blazing force as a crime figure in a Scorsese film might do, but quietly and slowly accepts that the days of her power are past---and unlike the men around her, tries to adapt to, rather than battle, the inevitable.

Ana De Armas in Knives Out

Knives Out is in the grand, disappearing tradition of the character actor, albeit with the parts mostly played by superstars. Yet among a roster that includes Captain America as an irresponsible playboy and Michael Shannon as a professorial-looking semi-Nazi, De Armas’s humble heroine Marta stands out. Maybe it’s because Marta is humble but not naive or entirely innocent, and De Armas manages to capture both her cunning and her honesty without turning her into a doe-eyed victim. She’s the kind of character you want to become a Nancy Drew-esque mystery hero for adults, so you can revisit her later adventures.

Joaquin Phoenix in Joker

Some hated the movie, some loved it, but one thing it seems everyone could agree on is Phoenix’s performance. He’s credited as Arthur Fleck, not as Joker, and his handling of the character couldn’t be more different than any previous portrayal. Arthur is sad and lonely, not at all an enigma---his private life is laid out for us in great detail---and Phoenix portrays him as just sort of being blown through the world, bereft of any real agency. You can debate all day whether the character deserves to be portrayed in a sympathetic way, but you can’t say Phoenix doesn’t pull it off, making us root for this maladjusted, societally-forgotten misfit almost up ‘till the end.

Sienna Miller in American Woman

In a just world, Miller, hardly a household name, would have her face up on the stage Sunday night for playing this role, a drunken, hard-partying too-young mother and grandmother whose life begins to change when her daughter disappears. I say begins to, because this is not one of those magical stories of miraculous redemption. Debra does not become a good parent to her grandchild right away, and never becomes a great one. Instead, the film follows her throughout years of her life, during which, naturally, she must go on living as she mourns. Miller embodies each stage of this perfectly, never once allowing drama tropes to disturb her unflinching portrayal of an ordinary life.

Jeff Goldblum in The Mountain

What does the word “monster” conjure for you? Whatever traits it brings to mind, they are all present in Dr. Wallace Fiennes. He’s an egotistical, self-interested, callous man who performs lobotomies on mental patients in the 1950’s American heartland, the kind of person for whom his gruesome practice is not an outmoded method to be improved on by advancement, but an art form in itself, and his patients merely the canvas. This isn’t handled like a horror movie: Goldblum is not a mad scientist cackling away in a lab, but an urbane, cultured, engaging professional---which makes him all the more frightening.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Fast Color

Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel were, to a large extent, a marketing department’s ideal female superheroes: always flawless, gorgeous even when kicking ass, unable to make any very serious mistakes. Ruth is very much not that. She’s living wherever she can, dealing with the effects of past addictions, running from the government, scared of her own powers. She’s not just unlike any other woman in tights (without the tights), she’s unlike any mainstream superhero ever has, can or will be. Mbatha-Raw is one of our most underrated actresses, and she portrays Ruth in a way that allows us to both sympathize with her plight and support her as she grows stronger. The movie’s not getting a sequel, because the Hollywood franchise machine isn’t ready for imperfect superheroes yet, but it is getting a series, so at least we’re getting more of Ruth in some medium.

Renee Zellweger in Judy

I won’t pretend I knew much about Judy Garland going in, and frankly I’m not sure I understand her after seeing the movie---it was, in most respects, a fairly typical music biopic. Where it broke the mode is in Zellweger’s performance. I think it’s fair to say the once-household name has been largely forgotten by Hollywood in recent years; she never had the perfect starlet looks or the ideal girl-next-door adorableness that is the main standard on which women are judged. But she had the acting chops, and here she finally gets to prove it. Her Garland is twisted and gnarled inside and out by years of sexist treatment and the resulting substance abuse, but still a loving mother to her children and a great singer---and justifiably angry at the industry that used her up and spit her out.

Paul Walter Hauser in Richard Jewell There was never a single chance of seeing the camera pan to Hauser during Sunday’s roll call of acting nominees---both he and the person he plays are about the polar opposite of Hollywood’s image of itself. And it must be said that while Jewell should not be forgotten, Eastwood’s movie, with its ginned-up anti-press narrative, maybe should be. But none of that is on Hauser, whose performance firmly proves that fat guys can be more than bumbling comedic relief or ineffective sidekicks in the movies. It matters that someone who looks like Jewell is portraying him, and that he does it so well that we can almost overlook the film’s other faults.

Honor Swinton Byrne in The Souvenir

This one was little-seen, and though it generated awards buzz initially, it’s already been largely forgotten. That’s too bad. Byrne’s Julie is a woman torn between her own ambitions and her love for a man who is---abusive? How to judge him? It’s a toxic relationship fueled by addiction on his part, but the movie is more about how you cope with a partner who is committed but not capable of commitment. Perhaps the most resonant aspect of Julie’s character is the way she holds out hope even when everyone tells her not to, even when she herself knows deep down that it is hopeless. You may find this weak, but I’ve never known a human being who wasn’t in some measure susceptible to it.

Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins in The Two Popes Everyone has strong feelings about the Catholic Church---it’s not a thing you go half-measures on. And every Catholic has strong feelings about the last two Popes---again, they aren’t the kind of personalities that inspire milquetoast reactions. What Pryce and Hopkins do in portraying Francis and Benedict, respectfully, is remind us that no matter how much they claim to be the chosen of God, these are after all two men---two men with flaws and opinions, whose own lives have shaped them every bit as much as the Bible or the church. When they are on screen together, you can imagine them in an odd couple buddy comedy, two aging road trippers tending to the flock. Lots of performances didn’t make my arbitrary 20-point cutoff. To be dead honest with you, it’s entirely possible that if you ask me in a year, I’ll have re-considered who is on the main list and who is in the honorable mentions; the idea that what I say now, when all these movies are fresh in my mind and affected by immediate emotional reaction, has to be my inviolate opinion for all time is silly. That said, here are some excellent and noteworthy performances that didn’t quite make the cut.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Kelvin Harrison, Jr. in Waves

Zack Gottsagen in The Peanut Butter Falcon

Isabela Moner in Dora and the Lost City of Gold

Alessandro Nivola in The Art of Self-Defense

Cate Blanchett in Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

More or less everyone in Little Women (I couldn’t decide, and thought more of the acting than the overall film)

Jodie Turner-Smith in Queen and Slim

Cynthia Erivo in Harriet

Kaitlyn Dever in Booksmart

Edward Norton in Motherless Brooklyn

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years ago

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Chapter 8: flashback!

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

“Wait, how did you even go to Europe on your, erm, ‘piano player’ salary?”

“Edgeworth needed help with cases from time to time - he worked out all the details. I might’ve been technically billed as an Interpol consultant? It drove his sister up the wall. Anyway, so that’s when I met Athena. Pretty simple.”

“It was like it was destiny! And it’s thanks to Mr Wright that I became a lawyer at all!”

“Give yourself plenty of credit. Defense attorney at age eighteen, honestly.”

Phoenix does not know jack or shit about the German language, which makes him more than useless (or is it “less than useless”, or do those two turns of phrase come out to mean the same thing like “flammable” or “inflammable”; Iris was the one whose major involved language, not him, and he’s not about to summon her for a grammar lesson) whenever Edgeworth is dealing with officers and witnesses.

Admittedly, most of them probably have decent English, but they’re trying to maintain the fiction of Phoenix belonging here. (Edgeworth says he belongs here, but while Phoenix trusts Edgeworth more than anyone, he can’t on this matter.) And Phoenix doesn’t like having extra attention drawn to himself, not anymore, not even here across the ocean where only a few people know him from anyone else, and those few trust him that he didn’t present forged evidence. (Or they trust Edgeworth, who trusts him.)

So while Edgeworth is actually getting useful information about the case, Phoenix is left uselessly pacing over the crime scene, and it’s then that he notices, standing on the far side of the Polizei tape, the girl. She might be Trucy’s age, not much more, with red hair half falling out of a ponytail and a broad face with blue eyes that are transfixed, staring unblinking, at the drying blood spilling off of the sidewalk onto the road.

He imagines Trucy, at her age, wandering onto a crime scene and seeing real blood, and that he doesn’t like at all. (Wait until she’s older. Like, fourteen. That’s a good age for starting to investigate murders, right? It’s a year older than Franziska was, but being a better father than Manfred von Karma is a bar so low that it’s in hell, coincidentally with Manfred von Karma.)

“Uh, Guten tag,” he says, sure he’s fucked up that pronunciation as much as something so simple could possibly be mangled. And he doesn’t know why he even tries that much, because it means she responds in German, and he doesn’t know anything else.

Which he admits, but she brightens and says, in unaccented English, “That’s okay! I’m American, actually, but I’m living here now. I think it’s good to learn the language of wherever you are, but it’s harder for adults to learn new languages than kids – there’s a kind of cutoff point where your brain stops absorbing it so easily – so I can’t blame you, really.”

It takes several moments for his brain to even absorb that. Then, finally, faintly, he says, “You shouldn’t be here. It’s a crime scene, you know. Authorized personnel only.”

“And I’m on this side,” she says, indignantly pointing to her feet and then to the tape. Her eyes drift back down toward the blood.

“Yeah,” he says, “but you’re a kid and really don’t need to be looking at this much blood.”

“I’m almost fourteen.” She raises her chin and stares at him like she knows that’s the arbitrary age he picked and is daring him even in his own head to recant on it, though “almost” isn’t actually fourteen. “And besides, I need to get tougher! Like how I’m running and going to the gym and spending time in crowds and talking to strangers.”

Phoenix frowns. She glares at him. “There’s nothing wrong with being squeamish,” Phoenix says. There isn’t a good way to position himself between the girl and the bloodstain but if he keeps talking maybe he’ll distract her. “And if you don’t like crowds and strangers and you’re out here in the city talking to me, maybe you’re already tough enough. You’re going to be running into those more than murder scenes, anyway.”

“Oh,” she says. “I didn’t think that someone could lose that much blood and live. I guess they didn’t.” Her eyes start to drift away from Phoenix’s face but then she snaps them back, leveling a suspicious squint at him. “You meant that. About being tough. People say things like that but don’t always mean it, but I can hear you mean that. Even though you don’t know me.”

It isn’t a question, but Phoenix hears one anyway that he feels compelled to answer. “I have a daughter,” he says. “She’s eleven.”

The red-haired girl nods, satisfied with that. For a moment, anyway. Then she’s back, looping around earlier in the conversation, like she knows how to hit Phoenix’s vulnerabilities after she confessed her own. “What are you doing there?” she asks. “You don’t look like authorized personnel either.”

And he’d even put on a tie and shaved today. Is it his hair? Is it too ridiculous for him to be believable as a professional? “I’m a lawyer,” he says, expecting the next question to be the why don’t you speak German?

She purses her lips and idly taps at the side of her necklace. It’s about the size of a golf ball, with a simple smiling face imposed on a glowing green. “Are you a prosecutor?” she asks.

Blinking at her, he is too surprised to immediately answer. He wouldn’t have known the types of lawyer at her age if not for Edgeworth. Maybe she’s interested in a career in law, already, and that’s why she thinks she can’t be squeamish. “No,” he says. “I’m a defense attorney.”

Was. He was, past tense. He answers in the present like a reflex, because that’s how he can justify himself being here as a consultant, but he’s not been a defense attorney for almost as long as he was a defense attorney, now. He hung a corner of his identity on it, Phoenix Wright, attorney-at-law, and got hung out to dry.

“Oh,” she says. “That explains it, why you sounded so sad when you said you’re a lawyer.”

Had he sounded sad? He didn’t think so. He’d answered without thinking, without time to get sad about the fact that he’s lying when he says “I am”.

“Because it must be really sad to be a defense attorney,” she continues, probably taking his silence for confusion. “Some people think you’re evil and helping criminals, and then you don’t ever win even when the defendant is innocent, because the police trust the prosecutors more and want to get the cases wrapped up as quick as possible because that looks best, so a prosecutor has to be honest and especially honorable to make sure justice is properly served, but a lot of prosecutors are more concerned with win records than being honorable.”

She waits, expectantly, her hands on her hips, for him to say something. It takes much, much longer than it should. “Where did you hear all that?” he finally asks. Somehow, refuting her insistence that the defense always loses doesn’t seem to be the one most pressing matter.

The confidence written on her face and in her pose - not a happy confidence, because she doesn’t seem to like what she’s saying but believes it to be true anyway - vanishes. Her shoulders fall. “My mom’s student was a prosecutor,” she says. “We’d study together, even though it was different things, and he was a lot older than me, but even before he took the Bar he’d tell me all about the legal system - the one back home, back when I still lived in LA.”

“You’re from Los Angeles?” Phoenix asks abruptly. She nods. “I am, as well.”

“Nice!” She raises a hand for a high five and then without missing a beat continues, “He never talked down to me and even if the truth was really heavy he’d always answer any question I had honestly.” Her hand, falling back to her side, freezes in the air. Everything about her freezes for a second. “Almost any.”

If she’s from Los Angeles, with someone in the legal system there, then she might very well know the name Phoenix Wright, and how he was ruined. His stomach turns. He could easily name a few of his high-profile defendants - the ones who weren’t Matt Engarde - as proof that it’s possible to win a Not Guilty, for the price of drawing attention to himself. And he’s really only nitpicking - the concept that she’s saying, that their legal system is rotten to its core, is really true despite Phoenix’s victories. He’s only one man. He was only one. Now he’s nothing at all.

“Oh!” she says suddenly. “I didn’t give you my name! I’m Athena!”

He could’ve stood to introduce himself sooner, if he wasn’t afraid of her or anyone knowing the name Phoenix Wright, and if he hadn’t taken up the fae rule of never offering his name first, which he realized the other day when Edgeworth was introducing him to the rest of their team. Paranoia, always, toward everyone equally. “I’m Nick.”

Athena raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t that super informal?” she asks. “It feels especially so I guess because I’ve been learning German and it’s all figuring out Sie and du and then you’re an American lawyer just like, yeah I’m Nick.”

“It could be ‘Mr Nick’ if you’re feeling formal,” Phoenix says.

She laughs and stops, abruptly, tilting her head to the side. Then she takes a few steps forward until the police tape is being pulled forward with her, trying to lean in across the scene. When she ducks under it entirely, she watches where her feet go, at least but she’s still where she shouldn’t be, stretching forward like a cautious dog sniffing an unfamiliar object, turning her head side to side, positioning one ear and then the other toward where Edgeworth is talking to a witness. “Hey!” Phoenix says. “You’re supposed to be on that side--”

“Shh!” she hisses.

She doesn’t move any more, is just listening intently even though Phoenix can barely pick up Edgeworth’s voice, never mind the words themselves, over the other conversations and the background noise of Frankfurt at large. After another minute during which Phoenix braces himself to be yelled at for not removing this child from the crime scene, she straightens back up and turns, very seriously, to Phoenix. “Who’s that?” she asks. “The man talking to the man in the purple suit?”

Phoenix would be more inclined to describe Edgeworth as red, or maybe burgundy, but there’s no one else who could be even close to purple in the area. “He’s a witness,” Phoenix says. “And the prosecutor.”

She nods. “He looks like a prosecutor,” she says. “Fancy.” She shakes herself, like trying to focus herself again, and says, “The witness is hiding something.”

“What?” Phoenix asks.

“He’s hiding something,” she repeats. “He didn’t do it, but he’s glad it happened, and he’s starting to get a little worried about the prosecutor’s questioning.”

Phoenix can’t see “a little worried” in the man’s body language. Certainly there is nothing to suggest any of the rest? Glad? “Where are you getting that from?” Phoenix asks. “I can’t even hear what they’re saying.”

“I have really sensitive hearing,” she says. “Like my ears can pick up a lot of things. And sometimes people’s emotions come through in the subtlest tones of their voice.”

“Like when you said I was sad,” Phoenix says. She nods. “I’ll make sure we look into the witness’ and victim’s backgrounds to see if there’s any connecting threads.”

She blinks. “You - you will? You believe me?”

“Yeah,” Phoenix says. “I believe you.” He would know if she was lying. He would be able to see the locks. “I can’t take the chance of ignoring anything if it could help us get to the truth.” Even if anything is a tip from a strange girl from Los Angeles. (Strange girls from Los Angeles tend to be blessed or fae. Maya and Pearl who are fae. Ema whose sister knew Mia. Trucy whose grandfather was fae and left a blessing on her eyes. Athena who - what?)

“Oh,” she says. “You really do believe me. Even my aunts, sometimes, the ones I’m living with here, sometimes they don’t believe me totally, all the things I can hear, when I tell them. And I--” Abruptly she cuts herself off, scrambling back under the police tape but not fast enough for her to be out before Edgeworth is there, close enough that Phoenix can hear him now too.

“Why is there a child on the crime scene?” he asks.

“I was trying to get her out,” Phoenix says.

“Unsuccessfully, I see.”

“But I was watching her the whole time and she didn’t touch anything.”

Edgeworth snorts. “Small miracles,” he says. “There was probably some other way for you to occupy yourself, usefully.”

“Hey,” Phoenix says. “I was waiting for you to finish talking and catch me up on what everyone else has to say. Besides, I think I’ve got plenty useful for you.” He turns back to Athena. “You should probably go home now. Stop skulking around at crime scenes and giving your name to strange lawyers you just met.”

“Okay,” she says. “Is this going to trial tomorrow? Is it going to be at the courthouse just up a couple blocks, if I want to see? Since I wonder how actual court cases are different than the stuff I learned back when.”

“Yeah,” Phoenix says. “But, really. This is my fatherly advice to you.”

Edgeworth rolls his eyes. “Wright. I know you’re missing Trucy, but we do have to go, and you can’t just invite every child you run into along.”

“I was not,” Phoenix says. Though it’s true that he misses Trucy; she had wanted to come, very badly, but this is a trial balloon more than anything, a few days, see if they can get away with it. (Which sounds underhanded even though Edgeworth of course went through all of the proper channels to get Phoenix attached as an Interpol/prosecutorial consultant.) Next time, if there is a next time, which doubtlessly there will be considering the number of times Edgeworth has invited him and Trucy along since Phoenix lost his badge, continuing even through Phoenix’s refusals until the home situation was stable - next time, Trucy will get a European vacation.

(For now, she gets an LA vacation, because she’s staying with Larry and that is a situation far removed from any everyday life. Phoenix anticipates washing paint out of all her clothes for days. And he’s been worried, constantly, even though Larry almost has his shit together more than Phoenix does, and even though he’s assured that Larry’s attention is responsibility focused on his books and on Trucy because he swore off women after his crush on Iris and mostly seems to have stuck to that. Which Phoenix empathizes with innately, because Phoenix also swore off women after Iris and has entirely stuck to that.)

“I invited myself!” Athena says brightly. “It’s not his fault! But okay. No more crime scenes! Got it!”

“See?” Phoenix asks Edgeworth. “I can be a good influence.”

He pairs the eye roll with a sigh this time.

Phoenix makes it an hour into the trial, from the gallery, before the emotional tumult is too much, sets him fraying from the edges in and burning up from the inside out, and he sneaks out during the cross-examination of the first witness (not the witness Athena pointed out, the one he and Edgeworth had investigated further). He intends to go straight out into the city, where the air still won’t be cold or fresh enough to settle his stomach, but the front steps might be far enough from the courtroom to make his hands stop shaking.

He doesn’t get there, because on the wide stairwell down to the entrance lobby, he finds Athena sitting there, her hands pressed over her mouth, her eyes closed, and her shoulders heaving with long, deliberately steady breaths. Standing on the stairs above her, he sees and Sees a girl not much older than Trucy and with all her stubbornness, a girl who gave him and Edgeworth a very useful hint, a with her red hair matted to her neck by sweat, who looks halfway into an anxiety attack. Who looks the way Phoenix’s poker face won’t allow him to anymore, who has a heart on her sleeve instead of locked behind stone. Strange girls from Los Angeles, nothing - they’re an ocean away and she’s a damn kid and he’s paranoid and half heartless and doesn’t know how to change any of those things and get back his humanity because he doesn’t even know how to be kind to humans anymore either. “Hey,” he says quietly. “Athena?”

She twists her head around sharply, frantically wiping tears out of her eyes. “Oh, hi, Mr Nick,” she says. She sniffs loudly but forces a bright grin onto her face. That reminds him of Trucy, too, the lie inherent in the expression.

“Do you mind if I sit down?” he asks. She shakes her head. He folds himself down onto the stairs next to her. “Yeah. Overwhelming in there, isn’t it?”

She nods. “It’s loud,” she says. “I wanted to watch everything but everyone in there is so loud with everything they’re feeling. And I’d been saying that I’d gotten better at shutting out hearing anything extra but what I wanted to but I guess I was wrong because now I’m…” She rests her chin on her arms.

“Yeah, I told myself I’d be fine and I was lying to myself too,” Phoenix says. “I’m - I was a lawyer. I’m not anymore. I was careless - someone gave me some suspicious evidence and I just presented it without further investigation, and it was forged and the prosecutor knew in advance, and I got my badge taken.” She stares at him with wide blue eyes. “This is the first time I’ve been back in a courtroom since.”

“And that’s why you were sad,” she says. “When you said to me that you’re a lawyer.” She keeps staring at him, as though she might figure anything out from seeing and not hearing. “Did you ever actually win a case?” she asks.

“I did, actually,” he says.

She sits back up straighter. “Really?” she asks. “Even with everyone against you, and - and even if you know that they didn’t do it what if no one listens to you? That you go up there and scream and no one listens?”

“You never really know if your client is guilty or not,” Phoenix says. “You just have to believe, and fight for the truth.” Those are Mia’s words, not his own; he has trouble believing, sometimes. He has trouble putting his heart into anything. “But the thing about being a defense attorney, with your badge” - he starts to point to his badge and stops, because it isn’t there anymore - “is that when you’re up at the bench, they have to listen to you. That’s your job and their job. So you get that badge and get back there and you just scream, as loud as you can, in your client’s defense.”

Athena has steely eyes when she’s focused and intent, staring at him like she can find the whole truth of the world and the profession in the words of a man who’s been disbarred almost as long as he ever had the authority of a badge. “I think I believe you,” she says. “You sound sincere. Like you believe you.”

Does he? He doesn’t know. But Larry wasn’t convicted of murder, and Edgeworth wasn’t. Von Karma tries to steamroll the judge and the entire court and still Phoenix, with Maya’s help, screamed louder. Is she right? Is he right?

“Let’s go back in,” she says, standing up and firmly planting her hands on her hips. “We can handle it this time.”

The verdict doesn’t come that day, but the witness Athena had earmarked admits, under pressure of being on the stand, to have been involved in the planning of the crime but refuses to say who he was planning with. Athena’s eyes are alight; she leans forward so far that Phoenix is afraid she’s going to tumble out of the gallery and talks his ear off on their way out, tagging along with him like a shadow. He doubts she’s really aware of where he’s going, just that she has things to say to him and wants to say them. If he’s lying, he’s only a little worried about her and this way that she’s just attached herself to a stranger. Does she do this often, or is it just him? He can be grateful that her ears might help her sus out whether someone has good intentions.

But still, she’s not that much older than Trucy. (And Trucy attached herself to him in the same way. And Ema. Is there some part of a blessing that makes him a magnet for preteen girls? Or is it a very weird curse that no one’s informed him of?)

“And the prosecutor,” Athena adds, not taking in that they are approaching the prosecutor lobby, and that very soon she will be talking about said prosecutor not behind his back but to his face. “Prosecutor Edgeworth - is he the Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, from Los Angeles?”

“Yes,” Phoenix says, cautiously, and Edgeworth, standing at one of the lobby benches putting the last of the papers into his briefcase, looks up in alarm. It would be nice if the only thing he had to be afraid of right now was Phoenix trying to adopt this child, too. “Why?”

“Because he’s famous!” Athena says, throwing her arms in the air. “He’s Miles Edgeworth! He’s one of the best prosecutors in the state and abroad! Even crazy international cases don’t scare him!” Phoenix has a memory of Ema gushing in a similar manner. “And he cares about the truth and is honorable and that’s tragically rare, but - ah.” Finally stepping out from behind Phoenix, she spots Edgeworth right there, and she shrinks down and retreats back into Phoenix’s shadow. “Oh. Hi.”

“Wright,” Edgeworth says, pressing a hand to his face, which Phoenix swears is turning a little pink. And it’s funnier the more Phoenix thinks about it, because Athena said what she knew of the legal system was what a family friend told her, and that means that Athena isn’t the only Edgeworth fan. The person who told her about him likely was, too. Phoenix needs to mention that to him later. “Wright, Wright, I leave you for two hours and again you find—”

“Wait!” Athena gasps. She springs back from Phoenix, blue eyes huge in her face, turning between him and Edgeworth so fast that she hits herself with her hair. “Wait, wait, Wright? You aren’t - he’s Edgeworth, so you, Mr Nick, you aren’t Phoenix Wright, are you?” She struggles for words, her palms drumming on the air as she searches for what she means to say. “The badge, what you said about your badge, losing it - you’re Phoenix Wright!”

“Yes,” Phoenix says, and even Edgeworth can hear how pained he sounds on admitting it. (Names matter, in magic and in general, and Phoenix cannot, will not, give up on his own. But sometimes he’s tempted; sometimes he just wants to be Nick, or no one at all.)

Athena’s eager smile slides off her face. “Oh,” she says. “Oh. I’m sorry. It’s just - you’re a legend too!” Implying Edgeworth is, and yes, his face is rather pink, adorably flustered by that bout of compliments earlier. “Will Powers and Max Galactica and Mask DeMasque! And you won all those cases! You won, you actually won!” Her smile returns, infectious enough that it loosens something that has been tight in Phoenix’s chest since he entered the courthouse in the morning. “I didn’t think defense attorneys could, but even though there was evidence and - and it seemed certain - they were innocent and you proved it!” Her mouth hardens in a line of intense concentration. “I want to be a defense attorney,” she says. “Like you. I want to be able to save people, like you, because it’s possible if you did it!”

The constriction around his heart returns with a vengeance. “It’s not as easy as that,” Phoenix says. “Saving people, I mean.”

He avoids Edgeworth’s eyes. They had that conversation during the Engarde trial, back when Phoenix was still trying to hang onto his last bit of optimism and faith in Mia’s words to believe in his client. Back when Phoenix thought he might ever have some sort of moral high ground. There was a crossroads he and Edgeworth met at, then, and Phoenix took the path that Edgeworth had just left behind. And Edgeworth became better than Phoenix ever was.

Athena frowns. “But they weren’t guilty, and you saved them from the guilty verdict. Trials and investigations are complicated but that’s simple enough isn’t it?”

“Conceptually, anyway,” Phoenix says.

“A career in law isn’t just something you pursue on a whim like this,” Edgeworth says, and again Phoenix avoids his eyes. This one is aimed straight at him. “It’s a lot of work that you have to dedicate yourself entirely to, and—”

“I know!” Athena says. “I know how much work it is! And how hard the Bar is! And what a mess the system at home in LA is! But I’ve wanted to for years. I just - I didn’t know how. And I didn’t think it could be anything but fighting losing battles.” Again she looks between them, her head tilted, assessing them with eyes and ears both. “But I could! I could, right?”

“You could,” Phoenix says. It isn’t his place to try and crush her. Studying for the Bar would do that if she wasn’t truly determined. “I’ve known some young prosecutors who got their badges abroad, so I don’t see why a budding defense lawyer couldn’t.” Sometimes he’s pretty sure that prosecutors get more leeway to even get the badge - he knows damn well they get more leeway when it comes to conduct while having the badge - but he glances at Edgeworth, who doesn’t make motion to say no, she couldn’t.

“I’m not too young, am I?” she asks, slumping from what was a moment ago bright confidence. She wheels quickly through emotions, and Phoenix doesn’t remember much about being thirteen, but he does remember feeling everything too much, and like was the end of the world. Hell, he felt like that at twenty, too.

“My sister got her badge at thirteen,” Edgeworth says. Phoenix can hear the twinge of bitterness. They’ve talked about that, the age of some prosecutors, how they’re so young, too young, set loose to be too easily manipulated by the older people around them. How Franziska should have been allowed to be a child instead just a name.

But Athena beams, that Edgeworth had addressed her with something that is in one facet encouragement. “I’m thirteen now, so I don’t think I can manage that,” she says. “But I’m already a grade ahead in school so what’s a few more?”

“That’s the spirit,” Phoenix says.

Again her smile disappears and she fidgets, bringing her arms tight across her chest. “You probably have investigating to do,” she says. “And I’m talking about how important that is and then I’m taking up all your time.”

“It’s all right,” Phoenix assures her. “Edgeworth’s used to finding more kids to advise, huh?” He nudges Edgeworth with his elbow. “And I don’t mind, either. I know how important it was for me to find someone to look up to when I was starting as a law student.”

Athena nods solemnly. “Can I give you my email address?” she asks. “For if I want honest answers about being a lawyer?”

“You don’t think there’s anyone else who can be honest?” Phoenix asks.

Athena shrugs. “You haven’t really talked down to me, either,” she says.

His heart, what’s left of it, what isn’t yet frozen, screams in protest. He isn’t a good person to be around - he can’t be a mentor - he’s afraid to love his best friends and his own daughter - he can’t just strike up another correspondence. He might’ve let his emails with Ema trickle out for a reason, and that reason is that he knows the road that Death takes him down, and god only knows what Misfortune will add.

But in the same way he’s afraid because she looks like Trucy, because she’s thirteen years old and bright of mind and bright of smile, he wants to help her. Help her because Mia helped him, like he just mentioned Mia, and he compared to Athena must have looked like far less promising a candidate to take under wing.

(Strange girls from Los Angeles, blessed or fae, another following in his wake. Trucy’s sharp eyes. Athena’s sharp ears. Good for poker, good for witness interrogations. He keeps seeing Trucy or even Ema, not Maya or Pearl.)

(Christ, he’s not adopting her, though.)

“Edgeworth,” Phoenix says. “Do you have a pen and a business card or something? So I can give her my contact info?”

Edgeworth sighs. “Honestly,” he says. “You should at least have a pen and some paper on you. You’re an investigator, you can’t just slack off - and you’re giving her my information too?”

“Yeah,” Phoenix says. “It’s important to know your enemy. See the other side.”

Edgeworth’s glare could split rock, but fortunately, Phoenix’s head is harder than that. “Of course!” Athena says. “That’s very important! And, oh, I never introduced myself to you, Prosecutor Edgeworth!” She extends a hand and he starts, taken aback by her boldness. “My name’s Athena, Athena Cykes!”

Ah, a last name too, this time. Edgeworth blinks slowly and accepts her hand even more hesitantly. “Cykes?” he repeats slowly, quietly, like he’s not aware of her being there right in front of him to hear him.

She nods eagerly. “Yep! Athena Cykes.”

“Cykes,” he says again, dragging it out like a hiss. “Athena Cykes.” Edgeworth isn’t good with names, Phoenix notices and usually hasn’t pointed out to him when he gets them mixed up, but maybe he’s finally noticed it himself. He’s taking care not to end up calling her Artemis Psyche later, maybe. “Nice to meet you, Miss Cykes.” He releases her hand and then goes into his jacket pocket to pull out a business card. Athena’s grin widens, and Phoenix indulges in a small smile. So she’s won him over now, too. “Now, I suppose…” He hands the card, and a pen, to Phoenix, even though he just as quickly could write down Phoenix’s email and number and office address. It’s the principle of the thing, surely.

“Thank you!” Athena practically squeals when she takes the card from Phoenix. “Thank you both so much, Mr Wright, Prosecutor Edgeworth! Good luck on your case! I’ll let you go to it now! Au revoir!”

“Even I know that’s not German!” Phoenix calls at her back, and her laugh lingers after she bolts around the corner.

-----

[chapter notes]

#roddy fanfics #fic: the witches of los angeles

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solipsistful · 8 years ago

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categorizing the bipolar disorders is weird

WHO WANTS THE L O N G E S T INFODUMP, 1,500+ WORDS GO

I... didn’t actually incorporate citations into this (hindsight: 20/20), but if anything stands out, feel free to ask and we’ll point you to sources.

The Formal Criteria

As it stands, the bipolar spectrum is diagnosed primarily based on the idea of a linear “mood spectrum” and how close you get to either extreme, with some extra requirements around how long episodes last (chronicity). So, canonically, the spectrum goes:

Bipolar I: Mania, depression

Bipolar II: Hypomania, depression

Cyclothymia (sometimes called bipolar III when people are making a point of the spectrum): Hypomania, chronic mild depression (dysthymia)

So first off, chronicity: Technically, there are requirements for how long a state has to be in order to count as an “episode”. One week (or until hospitalization :V) for the manias, two weeks for depression, and for dysthymia, technically two years.

These cutoffs are fundamentally arbitrary. It’s why there are quite a few ways people get around it. One major group of bipolar NOS is just episodes that aren’t long enough; the DSM-5 proposed a condition for further study of depression with not-quite-long-enough hypomanias (maybe “technically” what we have ;P). I think originally the idea with chronicity was to exclude the rapid mood shifts that might be better captured as emotion dysregulation a la borderline, but that’s morphed a bit. “Rapid cycling” officially means more than four distinct episodes in a year. Now, we have “ultra-rapid cycling” for multiple in month, and “ultradian” which completely removes any chronicity requirement and refers to multiple episodes in a day.

I think some of the difficulty with chronicity is a problem with what exactly a mood even looks like. There’s a reason we’ve heard some folks actually prefer the language of “manic-depression” over “bipolar”, because two separate poles? lmao. Mixed episodes are common – I’ve heard that in bipolar type II in particular, time spent in a mixed episode tends to outnumber the time in straightforward hypomania (*waves*). Plus, mixed states are often the most problematic – suicidality goes way up compared to depression alone.

Mixed states are kinda by definition hard to categorize. People have tried. The most sensible categories I’ve seen are actually the ones that hide the mixed-ness. That sounds strange, but categories like “dysphoric mania” and “agitated depression” can definitely be seen as fundamentally mixed – the hate and emptiness of depression while manic, the energy and irritability of mania while depressed. It’s why we say both “mixed” and “agitated” for our brand of “lots of the energy and irritability but also misanthropy and anhedonia” – whaaat’s the difference. But even those only work for some people some of the time – often times, the person themself just has to figure out their own “categories” for their episodes. Mostly mixed episodes just tend to be a jumbled, manic-depressive mess.

At least personally, we can see why mixed-ness would cause confusion with chronicity. We’ll get irritable at something in the environment and stay that way for a while before falling back to the “baseline” depression. That’s not “cycling” to us; it’s that the irritability and resulting energy need a target, plus the mood reactivity of atypical depression (I’ll address that in a few more goddamn pages).

Funnily, though, the definition of a mood spectrum doesn’t quite stop there. Something that always strikes us is the mania-hypomania distinction – the formal distinction between types i and ii. The way folks lay out the disorders, you’d think it’d be a quantitative, scalar difference – that is, maybe 3 symptoms from the list is hypomania, but 5 makes it mania. That’s how minor and major depression work! But actually, the difference is based on two things: Is it impairing (in particular, are you getting hospitalized or arrested)? and are you psychotic? Say yes, mania. No, hypomania. Technically, you could have two people, one who checks off more of the formal criteria but neither of those key questions, and another who just barely passes the cutoff but got arrested for something like kleptomania, and they’d be hypomanic and manic respectively. That said, it’s not just meaningless arbitrariness: some other not-readily-apparent things actually fall out of that distinction:

As I said, mixed states practically typify type II in particular.

Type IIs tend to spend way more time depressed – a number we’ve seen suggested is upwards of 40:1 depressed:hypomanic (bipolar I, more like 3:1). Therefore, it’s super hard to actually catch (“Wait, was that hypomania or just my annual week of feeling better?”) This gets particularly relevant when talking about soft bipolar.

I’ve also heard it suggested that type IIs tend to spend more time in any non-baseline state longer a higher percentage of the time than type I. There really does seem to be an inverse relationship between how “extreme” a mood is and how long it lasts -- cyclothymia being the other end of that, with basically no time at baseline, but no major depression.

Type II tends to come with more suicidality (see: mixed episodes), so smack that in people’s faces if they call type II “not as bad” as type I.

“Soft Bipolar”

So, with that, you know how I said there were three categories of bipolar? SURPRISE, THERE’S MORE. There are a few different schema, but I like Fieve & Dunner’s -- they’re the ones who first laid out bipolar I, II, and III, after all. It’s just that the other three don’t get as much specific attention:

Bipolar IV: Hypomania or mania caused specifically by anti-depressants

Bipolar V: Seemingly unipolar depression in people with bipolar relatives

Bipolar VI: Mania without depression -- unipolar mania, basically. A weird category that might not actually exist. Funnily, all a bipolar I diagnosis requires is a manic episode -- it just happens that people diagnosed as such almost always experience depression as well. I don’t really know much else about it.

Every so often you’ll see other categories. For example, I’ve heard folks suggest that seasonal affective disorders that only present with depression might actually be a bit bipolar-y.

Bipolar V is the fun one, for me, and is what most often gets called “soft bipolar.” An important first note is that bipolar V has a habit of becoming bipolar IV so, yknow, there’s something there. Another is that sometimes you’ll see “soft bipolar” used to refer to bipolar type II -- here, the idea is that anyone who “seems” unipolar depressive but “actually” belongs on the bipolar spectrum somewhere must have type II, because type II in particular can be so hard to catch -- it’s just thought that maybe the patient just hasn’t noticed their hypomania.

Why would someone with a unipolar presentation belong on the bipolar spectrum, anyway? Other than just the desire to group together the possible genetic causes, there are actual effects: Bipolar depression looks different than non-bipolar depression. This is actually the trend for all bipolar depressions, but only becomes particularly relevant when depression is all that is being experienced in the first place. Specifically bipolar depression tends to be:

Atypical, not melancholic. (Atypical doesn’t actually mean uncommon here. Those terms refer to specific historical things -- melancholic was described first, so atypical was the “other”.) But what makes a depression atypical is, specifically:

Mood reactivity -- the ability to sometimes feel good because something good happened, even if that feeling goes away really quickly.

The opposite of certain melanchonic symptoms -- weight gain instead of loss, and hypersomnia instead of insomnia.

A weird personality thing: being super sensitive to rejection, even outside of any mood episode. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A really physical feeling of fatigue called “leaden paralysis”

Resistant to SSRIs and other meds that are specifically anti-depressants, but helped by mood stabilizers and other bipolar-focused meds (sorta obvious in someone who actually fits a canonical bipolar presentation, but a bit unexpected if it’s “only depression.”)

Or, even if an SSRI helps, it will randomly stop working much more often with bipolar.

Or an SSRI might just kick off mania.

Irritable -- of course, here you get into the difficultity with “is irritable/agitated depression actually mixed”, but irritability alone isn’t traditionally marked as not-just-depression.

Psychotic. You can technically have unipolar major depressive disorder with psychotic features, but some folks think that that makes it a bit more soft bipolar (the association between bipolarity and psychosis would be aNOTHER DAMN ESSAY, but the short version: their immense conceptual separateness is very much a matter of “some dude in the past said they’re different”. They’re clearly at least genetically related.)

Starting earlier in life, and steadily worsening. Some (lucky) folks experience just one or two episodes of major depression and that’s it. Bipolar doesn’t do that, and repeated mood episodes have a habit of getting slightly more extreme each time they happen.

The above, sans psychosis, is how we self-diagnosed as bipolar, even before we started delineating mood episodes. ;P It’s a bit weird to ask a psychiatrist that no we don’t experience hypomania but please put us on lamictal instead of trying yet another anti-depressant -- she was kinda hesitant at first, and apparently noted us as probably bipolar type II while simultaneously explaining that lamictal is often used off-label for depression (cough, probably actually folks with soft bipolar).

So, you have a cluster of diagnoses where you have just a few formal criteria (what counts as a mania, hypomania, minor depression, and major depression) but actually a lot of shared features that aren’t necessarily suggested by the criteria (atypical depression, type II suicidality vs. type I, etc.) -- which leads to some suggested alternative criteria that would center things like the atypical features or mixed episodes and thereby potentially incorporate “unipolar” presentations, almost in contradiction with those formal criteria at the outset.

- Ace

#actuallybipolar #actuallyautistic #time to work on my actual grad student work goodbye

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foolsiwillshowthemall · 8 years ago

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My wife is writing the chapters of her story that take place on the Ba’ku planet, with the magic healing radiation that makes nobody die and heals all injuries and lets you live (mostly) forever. We’re re-watching parts of Insurrection, and I have Just. So. Many. Questions.

It started with me wondering how this affects the ecosystem. Would plants and animals on Ba’ku evolve to have no innate immune or healing mechanisms, if the magic radiation takes care of that for them? I assume that the native life would die quickly off-world, if it had become adapted for the local conditions. How are parasites affected? Are they healed, because they’re living creatures, or killed because the radiation decides they’re a disease? And what happens to a joined Trill if they go to Ba’ku?

Does the native ecosystem have any creatures which die during or shortly after reproducing, like many invertebrates on Earth do? Are they even allowed to die, or does the magic radiation just prevent their natural senescence? If you brought mayflies to Ba’ku, would they find themselves still hanging around alive even after mating and laying eggs, and if so, what would they do with the rest of their eternity?

Does the magic healing radiation apply to plants? If so, does the forced de-ageing thing work on those crop plants which die at the end of the season?

For that matter, how does anything develop properly? Programmed cell death is a necessary step in development, many cells exist only to temporarily support or nurture other cells as they develop and then die when their job is done. And what about cancer? If death isn’t allowed, cancer cells wouldn’t respond to the signals from the immune system telling them to self-destruct, which is a major way many cancers are shut down before they even get to the point of being dangerous. Although the magic radiation probably kills cancer, somehow recognizing it as being a disease even though it’s also living tissue.

And then there’s the matter of how the planet cured Geordie’s eyesight. Which is not an injury, but a genetically caused problem. Which means that the metaphasic radiation recognized that the existing genetic information was wrong, and decided to fix it.

I was trying to figure out how this could possibly work, when my wife helpfully pointed out that the anti-aging effects of the radiation radiation don’t kick in until a person reaches 18. Such a firm arbitrary cutoff made me throw up my hands and declare that the radiation must be sentient, some kind of healing genie in the planet deciding how and when to heal people. Which actually makes perfect sense, and explains everything.

The Star Trek universe is, after all, full of mysterious alien beings of godlike power. There are multiple canonical examples of mysterious alien powers that have set up controlled habitats for small groups of pet humans. Ba’ku must be one of these, some member of the Q continuum or similar massively powerful alien being created to keep a population of humans alive and permanently healthy on. It probably created the Brian Patch too, to hide the world. The metaphasic radiation is probably just a side effect.

If so, the Son’a plan to harvest the radiation would certainly have failed, and probably backfired horribly by pissing off the entity that set everything up.

There is a possibly related issue that I noticed on re-watching Insurrection. The population demographics of the Ba’ku are completely wrong. There are far too many children. This is a population of nigh-immortal people, they live for hundreds of years and never get sick. There aren’t very many of them (about 600) and we’re given the impression that their numbers have been stable or are move grown slowly during the few hundred years they’ve been on that planet.

If the population was stable in numbers, you would expect the number of children to be nearly zero. But we see quite a few children among the Ba’ku, implying that they are able and willing to have children on a regular basis. You would therefore expect the population to be growing at a significant rate - plenty of children, nearly no death rate, and adults that retain the ability and desire to reproduce for a very long time. And there’s no sign of starvation or natural disaster that would keep their numbers down, the world we see is practically a paradise.

So what happens to the extra population? The demographics we see imply that the population should be growing at a good rate, but it isn’t.

Maybe the healing genie gets hungry. Maybe the paradise world is a human breeding colony and the extra population is removed on a regular basis. Maybe Ba’ku isn’t the paradise it seems, but is actually much darker than they would like you to believe.

My wife’s fanfic will touch on none of this. She’s just writing a cute romantic story about fixing an android, and decided to take Ba’ku as it appears on face value.

#star trek tng #star trek insurrection #ba'ku planet #population demographics #data recovery #to serve man is a cookbook

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flauntpage · 6 years ago

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Actually, the Wild Card Format is Bad

Yesterday, VICE Sports Canada published a piece extolling the virtues of MLB's Wild Card format. It's great, you should go read it. Today we offer a counterpoint.

My issue with the one-game wild card playoff in Major League Baseball is not that it’s bad or boring—it is demonstrably neither of those things. I don’t even care whether or not it’s a “fair” representation of which team is necessarily better—if we wanted to reward the team that prevailed over the long run we would simply crown the city with the best regular season record as champions, 19th century style. My problem with the one-game wild card playoff is that it is a flawed solution to a nonexistent problem. It takes a perfect system and mucks it all up.

If you watched last night’s game between the Cubs and Rockies, you probably think this is indefensible, and even though it’s a hill that I am willing to die on, I see how once you get into the weeds of what is “necessary” or “not” in sports, you run the risk of sounding like someone who takes the whole thing a little too seriously. For six years and also last night, the one-game wild card playoff games have been great! Super exciting. I watched the Giants beat the Mets at Citi Field in 2016 and it was one of the most electrifying sporting events I’ve ever seen live. It was also entirely contrived.

Just because something is good, doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do it. (This is neither a moral argument nor a defense of stodgy baseball traditionalists who decry bat flips.) I just mean, like, literally, when it comes to entertainment, it’s all added value and yet we instill arbitrary parameters that curtail the net value of fun. If you like football, why not have 18-week seasons? Or hell, year round! A slip-n-slide between third base and home plate sure sounds like a hoot and yet the basepath remains dirt to this day! If the World Series was nine games long, I would tune in for those extra games and someday find myself marveling at how wacky and wonderful that comeback from a four-game deficit was.

So the question is not whether these games are enjoyable—baseball is awesome, as is deviation from the norm, even when contrived—but whether this is the optimal system for MLB’s playoff structure. Which, it’s not! In fact it is a shift away from the optimal structure, when we had one wild card team.

The single wild card team, introduced in 1994 but first implemented the following year after the strike-shortened ‘94 season, solved the problem introduced by the expansion from two divisions per league to three. In doing so, it also accounted for the possibility that a second place team might have a playoff-worthy record but be denied a spot in October on the virtue of playing in an especially strong division. That these teams are better than the first place teams in other divisions despite playing against such strong competition is a reason to reward them. This reward, as far as I’m concerned, does not need to come with a corresponding punishment. But more on that in a moment.

This is an elegant, airtight solution. It introduced a whole new round (hell yeah, ticket sales) and four more teams into the playoffs while preserving baseball’s superlatively exclusive postseason. And that’s where it should have ended. What baseball failed to realize is something the NCAA has similarly grappled with while selecting the field for its basketball tournament: the cutoff point is always going to be hotly contested, regardless of whether four teams or five from each league ultimately advance to the postseason. But that’s what makes getting to the postseason so special. It’s hard. It’s supposed to be hard. There is a cut off and if you don’t make it this year, you have to wait a whole other year to try to get back. I’m not saying having two wild card teams is like giving everyone a participation trophy, but I’m also not not saying that.

That second wild card team was added in 2012 to solve amorphous, situational ills. It was believed that an extra pair of playoff berths would encourage competitive balance; more teams with their eye on October would result in better regular seasons. This is a reasonable assumption but six years into the experiment and more teams than ever are tanking. The Cubs and Astros are largely to blame for this, existing as ringing endorsements of leaning into the rebuild, but if not for parity’s sake then what?

There’s a line of thinking that if wild cards are treated the same as division winners, it dilutes the value of winning the division, but that just doesn’t make any sense. First, a wild card team would still always have to play the best division winner, and second why risk getting into a slugfest with as many as 12 other teams for one spot, when you can battle it out with four others (realistically more like two) in your own division? As a result of this needless fix we now find baseball in a situation where it simultaneously rewards and punishes objectively playoff-caliber teams for having the misfortune of playing in a strong division.

The single most compelling part of the wild card showdown is that it’s one game long—despite everything so deeply entrenched in baseball’s slow-and-steady legacy—but that’s only because that’s all they have time for. There’s a Division Series to get to. It’s a side effect of the constraints, rather than an endgame in and of itself.

Of course, the excitement of a win-or-go-home game is undeniable. That’s what’s so special about Game 7s or Game 163 tie-breakers. Trying to recreate that atmosphere absent the context feels a little like the proposals to start extra innings with a guy on second base. Sure, that’s an exciting scenario, but that doesn’t mean we should necessarily skip the build up. If you want the playoffs to feature all win-or-go-home games then we can just… do that (We can’t, there would be riots, not to mention a massive loss in revenue.) But the one-game, winner-take-all format is merely incidental to adding a second wild card team—it’s a problem born of an unnecessary situation.

MLB is selling a product and of course they want every postseason to be the best one ever but fans should be frustrated by that even if they are benefiting from the experience of these weird-by-design single game series. Last night, people kept talking (OK, tweeting) about various firsts or mosts that the 13 innings between the Cubs and the Rockies represented but it seems odd to marvel at a stat that is largely just reflective of a shift in the overall system and that will be necessarily diluted by the very perpetuation of that system.

All sports drama is contrived but with the one game wild card playoff the machinations of catering to an impatient, short-attention span audience feel especially heavy-handed. It’s arbitrary, not in result, but in design.

Actually, the Wild Card Format is Bad published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

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wjwilliams29 · 7 years ago

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Copy: Decoding the Google Answer Box Algorithm – a SERP Research on 10.353 Keywords

Last time we looked at the Google’s Answer Boxes, we came up with quite a handful of interesting observations. However, we couldn’t quite give you the best explanation of what it takes to get your website on the position zero, as some named it. We gathered you needed to be regarded as an authority site, but what does that really translate into?

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny…’ – Isaac Asimov

So we set out to find out more about the issue, only this time with a more scientific outlook on things. This meant that, while we could still look at only some examples, we could make the sample much bigger. What’s a big enough sample? Well, in statistics a couple of thousands is usually enough. So just to make sure, we looked at about 10 000 keywords. Of course, we didn’t have one person (or more) look at every scenario, but rather we devised an algorithm that would do the job for us.

The algorithm did automatic keyword research. It looked for phrases such as “what is…” and “who is…”, adding just one letter after the phrase ( “what is a”, “what is b”, and so on up to “what is z”) and taking into account the autocomplete suggestions (since those are supposed to be most popular searches, therefore the ones most likely to elicit answer boxes).

To have a standardized cutoff point, we only took into account the first 10 autocomplete suggestions for each generated keyword. Using this method to extract the keywords we selected a sample of keywords that are most likely to return answer boxes.

Google Answer Box Appearance Ratio on 10k Keywords

This foray into the search engine came up with about 10 000 search terms (10 353 to be more precise). Of those, only 1 792 returned answer boxes, which is roughly 17% of the total number of searches. So the first straight observation is that the percentage of search results with answer boxes out of the total number of search results is fairly small.

We can say that this claim is true in general, since our sample size of 10 000 is enough to extrapolate for a population of pretty much any size with a high confidence level. While this may sound pretty unbelievable, that’s just how statistics works. Admittedly, we haven’t really been using a perfectly random sample, so let’s just say that the claim we made earlier is true of all searches that could potentially yield an answer box: off all that could, rather few actually do.

Google Answer Box Types

We have already established previously that answer boxes are a certain type of rich answers and can come in many shapes and sizes. Also, there are different methods to trigger the answer box. Theoretically, answer boxes are triggered by the featured snippet you set, but there’s not a fact. Mostly Google selects what info considers it is relevant for a specific query. So we instructed the algorithm to also figure out what kind of answer box it received.

Most of the answer boxes included definitions or descriptions that were the result of various website extractions; they were 1 236, which amounts to almost 69% of the answer boxes. Which means that all the other types of answer boxes – Web Definitions, Video Widgets, Google Widgets (conversions, maps) or Google Dictionary Definitions – taken together amount for less than a third of the answer boxes. But this is good news for SEO. If you mark up your content with structured data you’ll be able to appear in google’s answer boxes. Google’s natural language API helps webmasters to find all the entities from their website and get more rich snippets , better click through rate and maybe some answer box integrations.

If the answers only consisted of Google widgets, Google definitions or web definitions, you would have little to contribute to the landscape. As things are now, your website could be the source of a definition or description for the vast majority of the answers in the box.

Before continuing, let’s clear up a bit the definition’s types, as they appear in the answer box.

Google Dictionary Definition

Google Dictionary was an online dictionary service of Google, originating in its Google Translate service. The Dictionary website was terminated on 2011 but after that, part of its functionality was integrated into Google Search and now it looks like it’s integrated in the paragraph snippet. When it provides the direct answers from the Google Dictionary, you won’t see any URL near the generated content. It answers the question and it kind of gives you the feeling that Google “knows for sure” that the info is accurate and doesn’t need to give any extra explanation.

Google Widget

Google has quite an impressive and helpful number of widgets, including translating, weather, driving directions or currency converter services. These widgets really improve the user’s experience, sparing him lots of clicks and time invested. For instance, if a user needs to find out how much 300 meters mean, reported to kilometers, a user doesn’t have to go on several sites to find out how much one meter mean and multiply it by 300. All he has to do is “ask” Google “how long is 300 meters” and he will get his answer instantly.

Google Video Widget

Also, if you want to impress your friends with some new move dances or you are looking for a particular type of moves that you want to reproduce, Google understands this need and gives you a video result directly in the answer box.

Google Web Definition

The quick answer boxes provided from the web definitions are quite a basic way of generating the information extracted from URLs with Glossary and dictionary words. These kind of definitions rely neither on entities nor on a dynamic process of extracting data but rather a static procedure is involved. Although there are a high number of answer boxes coming from web definition, they are not always the best answers that Google provides, time and again providing inaccurate or unrelated data.

Google Web Extraction

The definitions provided in the answer box from web extractions are, as we will see later on, more reliable, more dynamic and more accurate than the web definition. They usually come from sites that have high authority and also include the search query on their site. For instance, in the example below, if we want to find out what an atom is composed of, the answer box extracted the information from education.jlab.org/qa/atom.html . As we follow this site, we will see that on the landing page we will have a dedicated content to this matter, with the matching title “What is an atom? What are atoms made of?”

Unique Domains Used for Data Extraction

It seems that in the world of the search engines the rich get richer. When we analyzed the answers that were extracted from websites, we found out that they only came from 342 websites. So on average about 3.6 answers per website. But averages can be deceiving and in this case they actually are. Of those 342 websites (mainly , Wikipedia, dictionaries or Glossary) not all got the lion’s share.

Top 10 Ranking Position Distribution in the Organic SERPs for the Answer Box URL

Of the many factors that might influence the “distribution”, one that comes to mind almost instantly is the SERP ranking. So we split the websites according to this criteria, and look and behold, websites that were found on the first position in the organic results accounted for a third (33%) of all answer box information. The top 5 pages accounted for more than three quarters (77%) of the answers.

There was just 1 answer out of the total 1 236 that came from a page not in the top 10 (statistically, that’s less than 0.1%). So rankings matter. And while you would be right to suggest that the relationship implied by this correlation may be more complicated here than what we are seeing from the numbers, you’d be taking a pretty serious chance to bet on being that 1 case in 1 236 that doesn’t need to be up high in the rankings to make it to the answer box. Or, to quote XKCD “scienc-y” web comic creator Randall Munroe, “Correlation does not imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there.’ ”

Trusted Sites Distribution in Google Answer Boxes

In all fairness, we are inclined to cut you some slack and say that it’s not necessarily (or solely) the SERP rankings that matter, but that’s only because the SERP positioning might simply be an indicator of some other measure of your website’s quality: referring domains. This is a case where more is actually more and better. Domains that provide answer boxes with more than 10 000 referring domains are exactly half of all domains that represent answer sources.

Interestingly enough, a lot more answers (twice the number) come from domains with between 1 and 5 000 referring domains than from domains with between 5 and 10 000 referring domains. That may very well be, though, due to the arbitrary split or due to a lot of the values being around the cutoff point. Despite this, however, the 1 K mark is a fairly good predictor: more than 80% of all answers come from places that have 1 000 referring domains or more. But that means there’s still a reasonable chance of popping up in answer boxes even with less than that. However, if you drop under 100 you are on your own: less than a 3% chance of hitting the jackpot.

Google Answer Box Crawl – No. of Results based on Words per Page Intervals

In fact, how the information is structured may have a lot to do with your chances of being considered a trustworthy source for answers. A helpful element is having a title that is roughly the same as the question and an answer that immediately follows the title. That speaks to the structure part. What about rich content? This is where, unlike before, less is actually more. Pages with less than 2 000 words (the rough equivalent of 5 pages typed in Times New Roman, font size 12, single spacing) account for close to 70% of all answer boxes.

As the number of words grows larger, the number of answer box results shrinks: 20% for pages with between 2 000 and 5 000 words, 5.5% for pages with between 5 000 and 10 000 words and only 2 percent for pages with over 10 000 words! Whether adding information automatically makes it harder for Google to look at that page for answers, or it simply makes it harder for us to keep things simple and straightforward, one thing is certain: leaner is better.

Google Answer Box Characteristic – Title vs No-Title Answer Boxes

As you’ll go around searching for different queries on Google, you might notice that there are two types of answer boxes, if we take into consideration the title: answer boxes which have a title and answer boxes which don’t have one. Just like in the case of any piece of content, the title can make a great difference. Let’s take a look at the screenshot below!

We are not talking only about the title’s purpose to garner attention and entice people to start reading your content. But about the basic purpose of titles: functionality. Beyond all, people need to know what the content is about. From all the analyzed answer boxes about 30% have a title, while the rest provide the information directly in the box, without any other introductions. Is a title beneficial? It definitely is as it highly improves the user’s experience. With a majority of “no title” answer boxes it is not exactly at hand saying that Google is on the right track with this matter. Yet, things might change in the future and having 100% titles in answer boxes in a couple of years might not be far from the truth.

Answer Box Stability and Freshness

There seems to be quite a lot of hard work you need to do to get into the much coveted answer boxes. But the reward is likely to pay off, perhaps even in ways that were not necessarily intended. We are no further still into the “that’s interesting” territory. The interesting thing being that the answer box functionality seems to be rather static and that once a website gets there, it might be a long time before it is removed. Not even, say, the website going down will shake the answer box. This turned out to be the case for a variety of queries, such as “what are lr14 batteries”, “where to buy plan b”, “what are k1 tax forms”, “what is seo spam”, or even “who is john endler and what did he study” (vertebrates, he studied vertebrates). So there is a very slight chance that an answer box will buy your website a little bit of post-mortem remembrance.

Expired Domains Rank No.1 in Google Answer Boxes

Being in the SEO industry and trying to make our way through all the Google’s guidelines, we are often asked “what is a natural link ?” We’ve tried to give the best answer to this question but what better place to ask about this than Google? Yet, as we tried to figure out what the exact definition of the Google friendly links was, the answer box failed to provide us with such a rewarding explanation. What is even more interesting is that when we tried to follow the link from the answer box for more info, we stumble upon an expired domain: wordpressseomarketing.com.

Being imbued by the “researcher’s fever”, we decided to buy this domain and analyze the ranking data we may get from Google.

Even if it was dropped, this link stayed in the answer box from 16 May until 6th of July. This means almost two months while an un-registered domain ranked number 1 for the “what is a natural link” search query. And it would have probably stayed even longer if we haven’t bought it. Quite ironic, isn’t it? Google, the great unnatural link “slayer” providing us a broken link on the top of its results, trying to explain us what a natural links is.

We decided to re-create the page based on its previous content and remove any extra data. So, with the help of WayBackMachine we extracted the content of that page and recreated it exactly.

And this is the content that was put on the site based on the previous content that was there years ago.

What is left to do now (beside enjoying the quality of the owner of a website listed in the answer box)? Track the traffic and enjoy the ride. We are still analyzing this site’s situation and as we gather enough valuable information, we will let you know what happened with our mentioned answer box expired site in the Answer Box results.

But some website definitions bring out even more issues as not only they hit the jackpot, they do so multiple times. Wikipedia’s entry for “Search engine optimization (SEO)” brings all the SEO-related curious people to its yard. It’s the source for no fewer than 14 answer boxes, including, information for questions such as “what is seo expert”, “what is seo consulting”, “what is seo industry”, “what is seo definition”, “what is seo marketing” and more. But do not be fooled by this “rich and well structured” content that provided so many answer boxes. What really happens is that for all the mentioned queries, even if it’s about SEO expert or SEO marketing, we are provided with the same, identical answer box. Not so impressive anymore, right?

Then again, there is a much greater chance that this static character of answer boxes will impact you negatively, since it will prevent your perfectly well-functioning website from entering the ranks because some defunct authority no one even knows if it exists anymore is taking up the space.

Website Extraction vs Website Definition Answer Boxes

I invite you to take a look at another interesting finding, regarding the Website Definitions.

It looks like none of the URLs for website definitions are found in the top 10 SERPS.

For instance, for the search query “what is a link description”, the URL suggested in the answer box, http://www.sparkbb.com/free-forum-articles/forum-terminology.php, is not to be found in the first 10 pages of results. This raises two legit question:

how can a site that Google doesn’t consider worthy to be listed in the first 10 results be given as a resource in the answer box

shouldn’t we worry about the quality of the information found in the answer box, given this situation?

As we analyze other answer boxes extracted from web definitions we find out that the majority of them seem to be low quality and sometimes even unrelated. Let’s take for instance the query “what is 360 link”. Even if the web definition provided by the answer box comes from Wikipedia (where 51% from all web definitions come from), it cannot be found in the top 10 results. Even more, the content provided is unrelated and has a commercial flavor (it refers to a product from the ProQuest company). This is the exact opposite of what John Muller from Google said about “branding” the answer boxes:

we need to watch out […] so it doesn’t turn out to an advertisement for a web site but rather that it brings more information to the search results about this general topic.

Thereby, having so many issues, answer boxes generated from Web Definitions don’t look very reliable. Yet, in the case of website extraction things are more settled and we don’t encounter the same problems. Judging by the fact that the data are shown differently, we can assume that the extraction from web definitions vs Entity Extraction done using the Knowledge Graph is made totally different. The Website Extraction seems more precise while the Website Definition seems more basic.

Nevertheless, mysterious are the ways of Google but equally determined are the people from cognitiveSEO to find out answers. As we browsed so many queries with answer boxes, we identified a pattern in the web definitions extraction. It looks like the majority of definitions that are not coming from Wikipedia have a similar URL pattern using the words “glossary” or “dictionary” ( and other variations).

Google SERP Re-crawl – 1 Week Later

As we tried to keep things as accurate as we can and assure ourselves and our readers that the data used in this research are representative, we’ve re-run the analysis one week later after the initial research was made. The results made us think even more about how the answer box algorithm really works (as we weren’t already) but confirmed in the same time the correctness of the initial investigation. After this re-crawl on the 10.353 keywords taken into account, we found 120 new answer boxes, 127 disappearances and 13 answer boxes with their status changed. From the new answer boxes, a large majority (about 80%) are Web Extractions and just a few are Google Widgets. Judging by the fact that for our sample only, we found more than 100 new answer boxes we might say that answer box is a growing “industry” and Google might offer answer boxes in short time for more queries.

Let’s move a bit our focus on the disappeared answer boxes. The reasons of the 127 dissolutions might be multiple and we cannot be 100% sure what really happened. But we have some well-funded assumptions. The first one would be that Google is making some A/B testing. It’s very likely that the big G is taking into consideration the bounce rate, the click through rate, the user’s experience overall and choose to keep or remove the answer boxes depending on these factors. I think that they are actively doing A/B testing on the Google Answer Boxes because sometime they appear sometime they do not for the same search. Google is doing a lot of testing in the SERPs and with answer boxes being such an important part of it right now, they might apply the same tactics.

Our second supposition is based on a situation that we meet quite often: Google is not always returning the same results for the same search query, answer box included. Meaning that for the same “ what is…” query, keeping the same coordinates of the search, sometimes we received an answer box and sometimes we didn’t. Thereby, this mysterious vanishing of the 127 answer boxes may originate from here. As for the answer boxes with a changed status, we can see that a very small number underwent modifications. Most of these few adjustments concern transformations from Web Definitions into Google Widgets and vice versa.

Conclusion

Google Answer Boxes might be quite controversial as the Google Search user interface lets Google’s users view and copy content without visiting the content provider’s website. In addition to losing organic traffic, webmasters might be also a bit “upset” with the fact that their perfectly well-functioning website doesn’t appear int the answer box while some broken site that doesn’t exist anymore is taking up the space . Double-ouch for Google answer boxes!

Yet, we cannot help ourselves from seeing things from the user’s point of view. If the answer box has accurate information, they provide the user with a better usability by sparing him another click or providing a shortcut to the final action he needs to do. If, for instance, you urgently need to make a payment and you want to know how much 127$ is in Euros, all you have to do is “tell” Google to “convert 127$ to euro” and you’ll have the result in an instant. Not long ago, for the same operation you needed to consult a currency exchange site and after that manually calculate the amount you were interested in.

Having 80% of the newly emerged answer boxes , on our second analysis, coming from Web Extractions, gives webmasters quite a new breath. Judging by this information, we can say that Google is looking more and more at the definitions provided by high-quality websites, giving webmasters the chance to have their site mentioned in the first row, above all the search results. As we shown previously, answer boxes extracted from websites are more accurate and provide the user with a better experience. Thereby, Google taking more into consideration various websites as a source for the answer box is a win-win situation.

As we mentioned in this blog post, there are several issues with the answer boxes. The most important we feel the need to emphasize are the fact that the results generated are quite static and sometimes not relevant, even though they are mostly reserved for high quality sites. These issues can be a big enough obstacle for webmasters that wish and (maybe) deserve to be listed in the answer box. It is indeed a hard working process but not an impossible one. Proving Google that your site is trustworthy and an authority in the field it’s way harder to be done than to be said but it pays off on the long term. Moreover, following some tips that we came up with in a previous post on how to optimize for the Google Answer Box might be also really helpful.

The post Copy: Decoding the Google Answer Box Algorithm – a SERP Research on 10.353 Keywords appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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flauntpage · 6 years ago

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Actually, the Wild Card Format is Bad

Yesterday, VICE Sports Canada published a piece extolling the virtues of MLB's Wild Card format. It's great, you should go read it. Today we offer a counterpoint.

Actually, the Wild Card Format is Bad published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

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