#like the scale that people use to measure our experiences with other peoples is just broken for me

[acanthemp3]

does anyone else feel like whenever they make art out of their own experiences theyre just lying

[jyeshindra]

ALL ABOUT LIBRA RISINGS

Hey folks! We're back with the next installment of our rising series centering our artsy socialites, Libra!

A review of the ascendant: it is our mask (how we are perceived), our blueprint for life, the indicator of our chart ruler, the purest manifestation of our energy, and our physical body.

PERSONALITY

Libra Risings are ruled by Venus. As opposed to Taurus, Libra is the yang-oriented airy half of Venus. This means Libra has an extroversive quality to it (concerned with external realities and ego expression) and is more detached than Taurus.

Libra energy focuses more on the ideals of love and beauty. This gives Libra both an artistic and intellectual flair. They are oriented towards refinement and social grace. For these Venusians, there is a proper way to communicate (air) in service of connection and harmony (Venus).

Libra intrinsically understands the value of relationships. Being as such, they anticipate the needs of others and weigh things fairly. There is an amazing ability to see all perspectives with Libra.

These are balanced folk who have a charm that often incites conversation and flirtation. They usually know how to maneuver socially, and even if they're a bit awkward, they tend to be respectful of others and well-mannered. Libras hate anything that's unsightly or crude. There's a proper way to be and Libras will remind you of this!

APPEARANCE

And so their presentation is often just as proper. One word we could even use with Libra is...ah...meticulous. In the same way one may obsess over scaling as they try to perfectly measure something. Libras may have a balanced appearance. All hairs are in place, all buttons buttoned. Shoes will match the fit, hair will be kept and neat. They're very much like Virgo, but Libra is often more fashionable. They know how to dress and like to present an elegant, refined, and trendy look to the world. It'll be something that speaks to their innate sense of beauty, the same sense they project onto the world.

WHAT DO YOU SEE, LIBRA?

What needs justice? Who needs help? How can I make things more equitable and fair? How can I refine this? How can I make this more beautiful? Like Pisces there can be cases of rose-colored glasses, but Libra has a more cerebral approach to their environment that separates it from Pisces. An ability to judge and weigh all options equally.

ANGLES IN THE CHART

Libras will have their 4th house ruled by Capricorn, giving a Saturnian edge to their childhood experiences. There was likely always someone to enforce the rules and create boundaries in the home. This likely gave the Libra their sense of authority and lawfulness. The emotional climate of the home could've been cold as Saturn has a frigidity to it. Boundaries and rules are useful, but depending on the astrological personality and whatever the soul contracts are...the Libra's relationship to such restrictions in the home could have been something they rebelled against.

A 10th House in Cancer means Libra Risings will ultimately be seen for their devoted and caring nature. Their careers will likely have something to do with serving other people. Libra Risings have a deep sense of love and justice for the world and do not want to see harm being done to others. Cancer ruling their public life and persona makes sense here, these ascendants want to give their heart to the world. Something about their emotions may be on display as well, Libra Risings could turn to art to express themselves or take the role of some sort of public defender (Cancer is a protective energy).

I also think this may indicate that Libra Risings may go through a couple different careers! I feel as though Moon-ruled houses are subject to a lot of change seeing as the moon shifts constantly.

7th House in Aries...phew...we can take that a couple different directions. Subconsciously, Libra Risings will likely repress their own assertiveness/ego. They will want to keep the peace which may take the form of people-pleasing! Such behavior often builds resentment and denies the person healthy expression of boundaries/ego. These Venusian ascendants than project this onto their partner or seek it out in their relationships. To be a little traditional, this is the compliant housewife seeking an aggressive provider. Or good girl seeking bad boy (to be even more simplistic). It could also simply mean that Libra wants to be in relationships with people who have a healthy sense of self. A lot of Libras are relationship-people, I see this all the time. In this case, I'd say Libra Risings simply want their relationships to remind them of who they are. Their partnerships become a stabilizing force in this way, empowering the Libra to make their own choices and love themselves even harder. Personally, I think that's beautiful.

Libra Risings, ultimately your ability to see and balance all is your power. Your esoteric ruler is Uranus, the planet of innovation and insight. Your mind when applied to the world and your community can help raise the vibrations of love and fairness. Our society benefits from both your romance and your wit. Never change.

-jyeshindra

[sysmedsaresexist]

THIS IS AN UNFINISHED POST THAT I GAVE UP ON, but I want to post it because some friends are having a chat and I think it applies, if you'd like to add on, please feel free, otherwise, I'm just rambling and putting my thoughts down

Baumeister (1998) stated: “The multiplicity of selfhood is a metaphor. The unity of selfhood is a defining fact”. In fact, Baumeister presented no facts to back up his assertion, and so it could just as appropriately be asserted that the unity of the self is a metaphor while the multiplicity of the self is a fact.

A Multiple Self Theory of the Mind

I can't stop thinking about this quote, and how much more... right the second one sounds.

The unity of the self is a metaphor while the multiplicity of the self is a fact.

In every situation, we present a different side of ourselves. Who you are at work or school isn't the same person that you are when you're at home, alone. And that's not the same person as when you're with your friends, and that's not the same person that you are when you're with your partner. None of these are the same person that you are when you're visiting your parents, and that's not the same person you are when you're with your own children.

And yet, all of these versions make up one person.

How differently will all these people describe you?

Which ones are right about you? Which are wrong? Which do you agree with and which do you know are the act we put on for others?

And in another sense, what about your inner parts-- your inner child, the cautious part of you, the adventurous part, the kind and the angry parts. These exist within every person. "Part of me wants--" is a common thought in everyone.

It really sounds more appropriate to say that unity is the metaphor. We are all of these versions, but they're uniquely different people.

And it's really not hard to believe that there are people who would be more in tune with these different aspects of themselves. Or is it out of tune, that would cause them to become so different that you notice more?

While this can be applied to CDDs, this quote and this post are not about CDDs.

And that's okay.

These ideas have existed longer than the diagnosis of DID, MPD, and hysteria. While they can definitely overlap at times, more often than not, these conversations are entirely separate.

And that's okay.

They can and do coexist at the same time, together and separate from each other.

We're getting into ideas that go beyond science and psychology. Philosophy, self-awareness and determination, feelings and internal organization that can't be measured, and aren't very well understood.

What is consciousness? Who are we? What makes us... Us? Do we exist as a singular person, or are we an amalgamation of our parts and experiences?

Even as an alter, I have different versions of me. Sometimes, those parts or versions split off to become their own person, and the cycle starts all over. Is it really so outlandish to think this can happen on a less extreme scale to others?

Somehow, these two concepts, CDDs and multiplicity theory, lived rent-free in my head, never meeting in the middle.

Never the twain shall meet.

I know both concepts to be true, but until now, they've never crossed paths in my mind. CDD

But what if endogenic plurality and multiplicity theory are where they meet?

[psychewritesbs]

What do you think that made Jujutsu Kaisen different from any other shounen? Also, why do you think that most people said it's overated? I don't mean anything negative, just want to know your opinions on this. Thanks to you I started JJK manga and anime, and I love it (sorry as a new fan, at first I hesitate because of the negative stigmas that I found on fandom about this series).....

Also, why do you think that Gojo is a popular character?

First of all... I'm SORRY! I've literally been writing an answer to you for like for ever and ever 😭

It's just that I've been thinking long and hard about your ask because how do I objectively gush about what makes jjk amazing, when all sense of objectivity and normalcy walked out the door in 2020?

So I'll start by saying FUCKYES I don't know what fandom you found me through, but I LOVE hearing that you decided to give jjk a shot despite what other people might say about it. Most especially if you found that you love it.

I think that, for all of its flaws, jjk is still a wonderful story exploring deep truths about the human condition.

So I'm going to glaze on jjk like there's no tomorrow under the cut'o!

Glaaaaaaaaze....

Regarding the idea that most people think it's overrated: It's really simple... jjk is a very multilayered niche story.

By multilayered I mean that everything from a meathead battle shonen fan, to a brainiac "intellectual" who doesn't care for the battles that much, and everyone in between, will find something that they can enjoy in jjk.

✅ Canon/headcanon romance ✅ Battles ✅ Existentialism ✅ Amazing characters ✅ Spirituality and esoteric concepts ✅ Power scaling

The problem is that jjk is so mainstream because of this mass appeal, that it could never live up to everyone's expectations, nor it should. That is not to mention that the more popular it becomes, the more people who are simply not going to like jjk it will reach.

In the end, jjk is at its core a niche story published in a shonen magazine, catering to a very specific audience.

To me, for every person saying jjk is overrated, there's 9 people who love it. And maybe I can't back up my totally made up statistic with facts, but jjk wouldn't have 90 million copies in circulation if most people thought it is overrated--they just happen to be the loudest and I can't wait for them to stfu lol.

🤪...

So that's really it. jjk is so popular that it has gotten the attention of people who aren't going to like it for whatever reason they might have. Sometimes it's simply personal taste, and sometimes it's them missing the point. These are the people calling jjk overrated.

How do I know? Because when I heard all of the hype surrounding csm and how it was the second coming of manga Christ, I decided to read it and found it to be incredibly overrated. That doesn't make csm objectively bad, btw, it just mean I personally don't care for Fujimoto's writing or art.

What makes jjk different from other shonen?

What I want to say is that I'm wondering if there is an objective measure for what makes jjk different. I think the obvious answer is that jjk has successfully subverted tropes time and time again. But I think it actually goes much deeper than that.

I am not sure that I speak for everyone. But... like would I be me if I didn't turn this answer into an exploration of depth? It's just that for those of us who feel jjk in our bones and don't see it as yet another basic shonen story... I feel like jjk speaks deeply to our humanity.

Whether we are conscious of it or not, stories are carriers of subjective truth and experience. And jjk is moving and shaking the collective psyche because of what it's saying about our shared humanity.

The basic shonen recipe

(source)

The thing is that I started watching Jujutsu Kaisen because I had an expectation that a shonen story had a good chance of catching my attention.

I've seen a lot of anime, and a lot shonen anime to be more specific. So I went in assuming jjk would follow a specific recipe.

Light haired, yang/Sun archetype, happy go lucky with a single-minded determination to achieve something shonen mc who goes on a hero's journey, learns about himself, and powers up as a result of his journey...

Bonus points if he has a demon inside of him and joins a tight knit 3-man squad made up by dynamic personalities that is mentored by the strongest teacher.

That said, it is the way Gege has explored every single one of these tropes that has made jjk unique in my eyes. I particularly love that there is a certain intentionality to how jjk's characters express typical shonen character traits outside of the way the recipe is usually followed...

The result is the same... but the means and the journey in jjk are explored through an existential and psychological lens that is very grounded in our humanity (aka relatable).

I think more than being a battle shonen, jjk is an exploration of the sense of self first and foremost.

In that sense, jjk is an exploration on how the sense of self is shaped. Like the panel above setting the stage for one of the main themes in jjk: how facing the existential fear of death shapes the sense of self.

So to me jjk is intentional about asking deep questions about life, and telling stories about characters who ask the same questions and how they go about finding answers.

As such, jjk asks that we question the very foundation of our identity as we come face to face with how our expectations haven't matched up to the reality of the world around us...

Similarly, jjk asks that we consider the difference between choosing a life worth living true to what truly matters to us...

...and realizing a little bit too late that what we thought mattered was not as important...

jjk is saying there are consequences to your actions and face them you must even if it all feels bleak...

And to me, that's because Gege understands people on a very deep level. To the point that if you're a jjk fan and you feel moved by any of its characters, they move you deeply.

A lot of this is in the subtext, of course, so not everyone can understand these themes on an intellectual level, nor do they care for. And it doesn't matter if they do or not because jjk still shakes and moves so many people to the point that you have people who make a sport out of hating on it and spend hours complaining about it... like who has that much energy to focus on something they don't like 😭?

Anyway... if I had to say one thing that makes jjk unique, it is how it story tells--which is ironically the main complaint people have about it. Again... it's a niche story that has mass appeal.

I love Gege's writing because to me it isn't about his technical skill, but his vision and the topics he explores. As someone who's been consuming animanga for 25+ years, an author with a unique writing style and an interesting premise doesn't come often. Gege is that author for me.

Anyways... Gege probably didn't even think of any of that...

jjk is just another battle shonen.

About why people love Gojo

Honestly? I'm the wrong person to ask 😂. I haven't a clue. Maybe because he's a cute bishoen? And also the strongest?

No clue lol. Anyone want to chime in with why they love Gojo?

But I fully agree with this and saved it just for you lol 👇🏼

(source)

Thanks for dropping by anon! :)

[see-arcane]

Dead Dove Venting below, Do Not Read

I'm aging another decade every time I see any update on the state of things at this point.

Winter as a season is melting into nonexistence. Within a decade we'll likely be past the point of no return. Corporate pollution continues pumping up into the air, boiling away the future and drowning the generations to come.

Devices are being made to slot in people's brains or to lock around a head to filter company training and duties into you as you sleep.

AI is eating people's art and work and faces and shitting them out in corporations' desperation to excise human involvement from creation just to pinch another penny.

American education is sliding down the toilet between book bans, strangled sex ed, and 'history' lessons edited to erase the reality of human atrocity and variety.

Bodily autonomy has became a joke since Roe v Wade was stabbed in the back. A Texan woman--a mother already--a mother-to-be who was heartbroken to discover the guaranteed painful death of her unborn child and whose full term 'birth' would only mean agony for the newborn before its end and a risk to herself and future attempts at carrying a child--who met every possible exception set forth by Texas' abortion ban, jumped through every legal hoop, and finally was told she could go through with the abortion...only to have the state's attorney general declare she couldn't do it. She had to flee--flee--her own home state to get a life-saving procedure because the 'pro-life' movement showed its full colors to her and the country as it wiped its ass with hers (and every other person with a womb's) human rights.

Pro-life is not about preserving life. Not when its supporters are so rabid as to demand a woman risk her life for a fetus destined to die within moments of exiting the womb.

Pro-life is about forced birth and always has been. For the sake of making cattle of women and adding numbers to the population, willingly or otherwise.

And in that vein, of course child labor is making a resurgence. Now your 14-year-old kid can serve in the grease trap or bar of their choice, dishing out food full of microplastics and booze full of bad decisions to grown adults ready to wink at a high schooler and ask what they're doing after work. Heartwarming! 12-year-old is mowing lawns for the chance to save up for college where they'll get into loan debt for a degree that won't get them a job because every position in their field requires ten years' experience! Gets a new mower donated to the cause!!

Artificial inflation, price gouging, and wage stagnation have eaten the promise of independence out from under an entire generation, their little siblings, the next generation to come. We're living in cars, in sardine-packed apartments, under our parents' roofs. Probably until the day we die, ancient and hobbling inside Walmart's sliding doors as greeters and cashiers, at least until the jobs get taken by smiling hotel bots and self checkouts. Retirement no longer exists as a concept.

Genocides on top of genocides, funded by vulture governments, against their citizens' will, using money that has magically appeared to funnel aid and weapons to the mass murderers slaughtering innocent people with a brutality of such scale and evil that it cracks the mind to try and measure. A shame that money wasn't around to help the tax payers or the people in need at home. Guess how many people go hungry in America, the Greatest Nation. Or don't guess! Look.

Nausea and shame and bile.

Bile bile bile at the thought of this country, with its masturbatory obsession with World War II, with its endless marathon of 'war hero' films showing the plights and heroics of our brave soldiers sent to fight for our rights!

(Because they were drafted. Because they were poor. Because they were lied to with myths of glory and valor. Because they would be killing and dying for the Greater Good.)

All this. All this. When we are living through the proof-positive that if Pearl Harbor hadn't happened, kicking the self-absorbed hornet nest of our government into frenzy, the good ol' U.S. of A. would absolutely have jumped on Adolf's dick and applauded the Holocaust start to finish. Hell, we might have handed them every killing tool but the nukes.

Now here comes 2024.

Voting Day looms. And of course, Joe's poll numbers are shitting the bed the way Trump is shitting himself in the various court battles still chewing on him like spray-tanned cud.

In 2020, we had the vigor of the country shouting as one: VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO. Because we were living in a different, far more intense, borderline fascist state. We felt the pressure of the stakes of a second term with the despotic Cheeto.

But now as more blood spills and our blood boils, there are, of course, people clamoring again about how voting is a sham. What kind of sucker is still convinced that voting red or blue, no matter who, is anything but giving candy to a genocidal joke? Both parties have proven they're corrupt. Complicit. Why fucking bother? We need to do more!

And we do.

We absolutely do need to do more.

But for the love of every god I no longer fucking believe in, do it after voting for whoever Is Not the Republican Candidate. You don't want to vote for Joe? For any of the potential Democratic candidates? For whoever is blue, no matter who?

Fine! Fuck it! Stick to your guns! Vote for fucking no one! Play chicken with the top office of the entire country all over again! 2016 the Sequel!

And when every MAGA shithead votes in Trump or one of his sycophants and plunges us into Diet Tyrant Rule 2.0, at least you can wear a little badge of pride--but no actual pride badges, ha ha, DeSantis has already declared rainbows ~too gay~ for Florida schools ha ha ha--that says, 'Well, Both Candidates Were Shit, So I Did the Morally Spotless Thing and Voted for Neither! Surely This Will Earn Me a Good Grade in Martyrdom.'

I hope I'm just making too many assumptions about how literal some people are being about 'why bother' and 'hold your vote hostage' kind of talk. I hope I'm reading too much into hyperbole and not seeing the rise of a new wave of bots, undercover right-wingers, and genuinely self-sabotaging moralists who think not making time to go click a button to Participate in the One (1) Guaranteed Expression of Power We Have as Citizens short of en masse protest and/or outright civil war.

I want there to be a magic switch to flip to unfuck all of this. Half of it. Even a fraction. Every day I wake up and things are worse. Even here, on the one website I regularly dip into to try and escape into silliness and personal passions, there's no avoiding the realities of the world as they get worse and worse and worse and fucking worse.

This is as close to cosmic horror as I think we can get short of Cthulhu finally getting out of bed and wiping us out.

Everything is getting worse.

All the 2024 vote has to offer at this point is a choice between Current Bullshit (Democrat) and Exponentially Worse Bullshit with a Side of THIS CANDIDATE WILL TRY TO BECOME THE FOREVER-KING OF 'MURRICA AND WILL BE EQUALLY MONSTROUS (IF NOT MORESO) IN THE GENOCIDE GAME (Republican).

But I will still drag myself into the booth. I will still vote blue, no matter who. And I will still support Palestine, still protest against evil, still raise my voice. And I'll do so in a country that won't be run by people who want to double down on regressing society to the Dark Ages with a crossover between The Handmaid's Tale and Orwell's nightmares. Who will take dissent as an offense worthy of violence and violation. Who will take every scrap of progress made by the left or by the citizens themselves and set it all on fire.

I'm tired. I'm afraid. More tired under that.

There's such bliss in the idea of flipping the bird and then flipping the table when it comes to the small important steps we can still make as people in our society. It all feels insignificant. Lackluster compared to the bombastic moves of on-the-ground protest. But you can do the small and the big steps. And we need to.

This is not Mad Max. This isn't a comic book or an action movie. There is no utopia waiting on the other side of dismissing elections as ~not worth the bother~ when it was an election that put Trump in power and another that kicked him out.

If anyone out there has a magic switch to flip that will unfuck this country? That will unfuck the entire planet's degradation? Flip it. Right now. Hammer it until it breaks and all the withheld Grace and Sanity pours over everything like a miracle tide and we can all wake up from this group night terror.

But if that switch doesn't exist?

Inch along. Do what you can. Vote in every election, big and small. Act. Support. Boycott. Scream. Fight. Do not shrug and sink into apathy. Little steps to big steps and all the intermediates in-between.

We're not in Hell, despite the weather. Sweating in December. Another massacre per minute. No, not Hell.

Hell has justice.

All we have is this.

[weatherman667]

On Space Travel

A few things out of the way first:

Our star is Sol. Our planet is Terra. Our moon is Luna.

When referring to a star with orbiting planets, the star is the sun for those planets, and the whole thing is referred to as a Stellar System.

There is only one Solar / Sol System, and that's ours.

-----

The speed of light is 300,000km/s.

We all know that we cannot travel at the speed of light, but most people don't know why, other than just relativity. So, in Relativity, space, time, and mass are all relative. As you reach relativistic speeds, mass increases, time dilates, and length contracts. More on that later, but for now, when you reach the speed of light, mass becomes infinite. Further, the math most people learned in high school is over simplified. Most people calculate acceleration with a constant force, but instead you have constant power. Power = Force x Velocity, meaning that the faster you are moving in a direction, the less force you get for the same power. The reason it's simplified is that you need calculus to properly calculate the acceleration with constant power.

Most realistic expectations have us not being able to travel faster than 10% c.

The closest Stellar System is Proxima / Alpha Centauri A/B. We thought it was 1 star, but turns out it's 3. Of the three, the weakest, Proxima, is the closest. Proxima is 4.2 Light-Years away. Meaning that traveling at the speed of light, it would take 4.2 years to reach. Since 10% c is the highest we can likely achieve, that means it will take 42 years, minimum, to reach Proxima. Alpha Centauri is notably metal poor, and likely would make a poor candidate for doing anything useful. Instead, we probably want to go for Tau Ceti, which is around 12 Light-Years. This means that at 10% c, it would take 120 years to reach.

10% c is also the limit for Sub-Light Speeds. Sub-Light speeds are when you move fast enough to feel the effects of Relativity. This involves increased mass, expanded length, and the crew on the ship would experience the passage of time slower than from an external reference point. At 10%, it's about half of a percent faster.

The most common way to measure the distances in this scale is Light-Year. This is the distance light can travel in a year. 9.46.10^12, or 9,460,000,000,000km. The next most common way of measuring distance is the Parsec, which isshort for: Parallax of One Arc Second. There are 360 degrees. Degrees are divided into 60 Arc-Minutes, which are then divided into 60 Arc-Seconds, (we can blame the Babylonians. no, seriously). So, an Arc-Second is 1/360th of degree. Distance to stars is calculated from their measured parallax. This is the amount a star apparently moves position throughout the year. So, this means a Parallax of One Arc Second = 3.26 Light-Years. Parallax is more accurate than Light-Years, because that's literally what we are measuring.

The Milky Way, our galaxy, is 25,881-26,996 Light-Years across. So, at our 10% of c limit, it would take 260,000 years to cross.

The closest Dwarf galaxy to Terra is 0.025 Mega-Light-Years.

= 2.5 Kilo-Light-Years.

= 2,500 Light Years

This is surprising.

The closest full-sized galaxy, Andromeda, is 2.548 Mega-Light-Years.

= 2,548,000 light years away.

This is to put things into perspective.

Now, if you want planets to interact with each other on a regular basis, you kind of need to bend, if not outright break the rules.

There are two main ways this is done in fiction:

Space Folding: You compress space in front of you, or outright fold two disparate places together. This means that the physical distance you need to travel is dramatically lessened.

Hyperspace: The idea is that if we expand space to the fourth physical dimension, then maybe space isn't as straight as we think it is. Therefore, a trip through all four dimensions, might find a path that is shorter.

Whatever you decide to do, it should be consistent, even if it's consistently inconsistent. Say, have a number scale, the higher number means you go faster. Do something logarithmic, the idea that the longer the journey, the more time you have to power up the system, thereby making longer range travel take no where near as much time as you would expect, but still longer than short range travel. O you can do the 40k thing, and have Warp Storms that can completely change travel time, and even let you get lost in time and space.

[winterandwords]

Happy STS!

Can you tell me more about how the system of incarceration works in Project Aria? I'm curious! Post a snippet if you like.

Hello, lovely! Thanks for the ask.

cracks knuckles

So, the city (it's never named in the book nor is a location ever given) is absolutely HUGE and in true hide-the-evidence fashion, all the messy, inconvenient stuff required for society to function, like waste management, food production, energy provision, and manufacturing takes place well outside of the city in an area called the facilitation zones.

The zones also house medical testing centres, but shh. Those aren't real. No-one's doing horrendous experiments on live human subjects so everyone else gets to benefit from all the incredible medical advances.

The zones are populated entirely by incarcerated people. Because this is a cyberpunk gloss-over and we're pretending everything is fine, honestly, shut up, look at all the neon and pretty technology, it's not a large-scale exploitative prison industrial complex according to the people who run the large-scale exploitative prison industrial complex. It's rehabilitation.

Do people get disproportionately cruel sentences for comparatively minor crimes? Yes. Do people end up there who have done absolutely nothing wrong other than exist in the wrong place at the wrong time? Yes. Is the criminal justice system deeply flawed and mostly structured around keeping the zones filled with rehabs at all times for reasons of low-cost expendable labour? Yes.

Is every single part of this system based on something that has existed in the real world at some point or currently does exist? Also yes.

It’s not a bed. It’s a slab of plastic. I do what I’m told though because god knows I’ve learned to do that in here. It hurts. There are too many places where my bones shouldn’t come into contact with the surface. Maybe it’s the wrong shape for me. Maybe I should be taller or built different. Maybe my bones should have more covering them than skin. It wasn’t that they didn’t feed us, but I could never really stop moving. I don’t know if it was the effect of some frequency or chemical or something, or if it was just me, getting twitchier by the day, by the week, month, year. I know they measured our energy input and output. I remember that too. They acknowledged discrepancies, but they never did anything about it. That might’ve been another part of the experiments, but I’m never going to know and it doesn’t matter now. None of it matters now.

Thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to ramble about this 💜

[oliviabutsmart]

Physics "Friday" #11 [Opinion]: Okay so I have a few more problems with SI Units

Preamble: Now what Missy?

Education Level: Primary School (Y5/6)

Topic: Measuring Systems (Metrology)

Ok so this was going to be my necessary follow up to my first opinion post, Is Fahrenheit the better temperature scale?

I was meant to save it for the next time I had too much stuff to deal with on Friday and needed to write something easier. In fact, that's going to be how I do opinion posts - when I don't need to do as much a-thunkin'.

Regardless, there are of course other problems with the SI units system that many people point out. This is basically me doing it myself.

What are the SI Units?

During the french revolution, there were several attempts to metricise the existing unit system. Generating standardised units on length, volume, weight, temperature ... they even tried to decimalise time.

These units were based off physical constants:

The metre was one 10 millionth the distance from the north pole to the equator

The litre was the volume taken up by one kilogram of water

Celsius was based on the boiling/melting points of water

A kilogram was based on the weight of a specific Platinum-Iridium Alloy called the IPK (International Prototype Kilogram)

Now obviously, these weren't perfect constants. The earth's radius changed, the boiling point of water depends on the pressure of the environment, and the IPK can vary based on surrounding conditions.

This was fixed in 2019, when every SI measurement unit was defined using a universal constant rather than physical objects like a mass or the earth:

Hyperfine transition frequency of Caesium

Speed of light

Planck Constant

Charge of the Electron

Boltzmann Constant

Avogadro's Constant

Luminous Efficacy of 540 THz radiation

This gives our seven SI units:

Time (Second)

Distance (Meter)

Mass (Kilogram)

Charge (Columb)

Temperature (Kelvin)

Amount (Mole)

Luminous Intensity (Candela)

Problem #1: Unit-less units

There are several units that come from mathematics that appear to be unitless, like:

Angle (Radians)

Solid Angle (Steradians)

Amount (Number count)

We use this all the time like in lumens (candela steradians), angular velocity (radians per second), and number density (particles per cubic metre).

Wait ... amount was already listed as an SI quanity - it was a mole wasn't it?

That's exactly it. A mole is just defined as 6.022×10²³ objects of something. This is where we experience our first problem.

Why is radian and steradian not considered a unit in it's own right but a mole is?

Radians are defined as being one metre per metre. The angle required to create an arc with a length of 1 metre given a radius of one metre.

Image Credit: BYJU's

This comes from the formula S=Rθ where circular arc length (S) is equal to the radius (R) multiplied by angle in radians (θ).

The problem with this, is that the radian is still an arbitrary dimension. We could've chosen our standard angle unit to be a degree, and all we need to do is change the definition of the sine function and the above arc length definition:

S=kθR were kθ is dimensionless and k = 1 rad⁻¹

It's almost as if, while the radian is dimensionless, it still behaves and acts like a unit. Much like how we can redefine everything and make the unit for length be a foot instead, we can do the same with angle.

You may object, as S=Rθ looks a lot more fundamental than adding an extra unneeded constant. But it's like if we were to use natural units, where the speed of light is equal to 1, making E = mc² actually E = m.

This doesn't mean that m is somehow 'fundamental' when we define it in terms of energy. All we've done is redefine our unit system in a way that makes a few constants equal to one.

The same thing goes for radians.

A little side-note on Intensity

You could argue that this also applies to relative intensity units like Magnitude or Bels. However, I'd argue that they don't count as their unit systems are defined as being relative. The strength of a signal or luminosity is just choosing a unit system of power.

For example, relative magnitude is based on the luminosity of the sun. Sound/Signal amplitude is based on watts or volts.

Problem #2: Redundant Units

Many of the quantities in the SI unit system are technically redundant. Temperature can just be redefined as energy density, mass can be redefined as energy, etc.

What I'm concerned with is one unit in particular: the Candela - what exactly is it?

I often find that a lot of people attempting to explain the SI unit system often brush over this unit, even though it feels rather important given it's called 'Luminous Intensity'.

But hold on, isn't luminosity just about energy production? After all, radiation is just energy, and it's emitted as a form of energy.

A candela is equal to one lumen per steradian, where a lumen is the total luminous intensity of an object that emits light everywhere. Candelas concern luminous intensity from a specific solid angle view of the object.

Watts, the measurement of power and bolometric luminosity, measure the total (or bolometric) luminosity of an object at all wavelengths of light.

Lumens, on the other hand, represent the power produced by an object after each wavelength is passed through some filtering function that accounts for how the human eye sees light. This weighting function is determined by the ISO.

Of course, our eyes only see light within a particular range, and inside of that range, different wavelengths appear more intense to us because we pick it up more.

But this fails to recognise that this is still just a glorified unit of power. Just because it's weighted based on some function, shouldn't change what unit is necessarily uses. Hence it is technically redundant as it can be defined as a combination of other SI units - similar to radians.

Problem #3: When the unit system isn't used

I mentioned it in the last post, but there are a lot of occasions where the standard SI units aren't used. The worst culprit I feel is Astronomy, with Physics only having issues in lieu of SI vs. Natural units vs. Electron/Atomic Units. Again here's the list:

My beloved SI units

CGS Units

Whatever the fuck a Jansky is

Don't even start with natural units I can't live without big G

"Ampere in CGS units is g1/2 cm3/2 s−2"

Solar Luminosity/Mass of Sun

Angstroms (like please can we just use nanometers?)

How many Jupiters or Earths fit into this cloud of gas?

The vomit of parallax units i.e. AU, pc, Mpc, arcseconds, radians

Steradians (Solid angles can be finicky)

Logarithms, logarithms everywhere!

Hubble's constant being in km/s/Mpc but then having to turn that into Hz or per year - like can someone please acknowledged how cursed this is?

When you do Kepler's 3rd law on Mercury and realise it doesn't work (because you forgot Einstein existed) ... so no units end up working

ADUs and/or whatever you get when you deal with telescope outputs

Sidereal time, J2000, etc.

Sky Coordinates (it always depends on the telescope mount)

(the last two are new entries into the list I forgot!)

A lot of these units are very, very, annoying to handle. Often at times because they are just so unnecessary. We have scientific notation for a reason - so why are we using Jansky? Why ever use the mass of planets unless if we are talking about specifically exoplanets?

It can especially be annoying when in astronomy course subjects, unit conversions make up like 50% of the work and 50% of the error in calculations.

And the biggest problem, of course, is the CGS units system. I hate it. So much. From what I know CGS is used simply because it appears as more correctly "scaled" for a lot of astronomical processes.

However, the problem is that it just adds extra conversion factors into every equation. Now I have to remember big G in both CGS units as well as in SI or solar units etc. And it doesn't jive with a lot of other astronomical units.

J2000 is also rather annoying - why are we using the Julian calendar at all? Shouldn't we try and strive for using a more accurate year instead? Because what happens is that every four years the calendar shifts by a day.

The "Ampere in CGS units is g1/2 cm3/2 s-2" is a direct quote from one of my professors. And it also makes very little sense - because it says that the coulomb and ampere units are actually redundant.

However, CGS units aren't usually the only thing we use. Sometimes we put things in Gaussian CGS units, where we define the coulomb's constant (kₑ) as being 1. Thus, similar to natural units, we can define a statCoulomb in terms of our three base units:

1 statC = 1 g1/2⋅cm3/2⋅s−1.

Now this is where we find our ampere definition! But wait ... this is materially different to the real ampere. In fact, we can determine the difference between coulombs and statcoulombs:

So they are different! And thus, after several paragraphs, my lecturer is wrong and they shouldn't've used the Ampere but a different stat ampere.

So what would I do?

Well, the big problem with all unit systems is that they are just equivalent to eachother dimensionally.

Because of all the seperate equations surrounding each of the SI units, we can define any SI unit in terms of any other SI unit combination just by setting certain constants to one.

So there's quite a lot of units that we could me missing.

But here's how I would do it ...

There are five unique SI units:

Distance - Metre

Time - Second

Mass - Kilogram

Charge - Coulomb

Temperature - Kelvin

There are also three dimensionless/special units:

Amount - Mole

Angle - Radian

Luminosity - Lumen

These three units are special as they can be expressed as dimensionless constants or in terms of other units, however we want them to be expressed in our own specific units.

Solid Angle is just determined from square radians where 1 sr = π/4 rad² (ratio of square and circle of same diameter).

The constants which define these unique units are:

Hyperfine transition frequency of Caesium

Speed of light

Planck Constant

Charge of the Electron

Boltzmann Constant

For the non-unique units we have:

Avogadro's Constant

Pi

Luminous Efficacy of 540 THz radiation

Conclusion

This post did end up taking longer than I expected ... much longer. Nevertheless it was fun to do!

As stated in the start, opinion posts are for those Fridays where things aren't as easy as spending 2-3 hrs writing a post. Because when you want to argue a point you have a little more passion behind it.

Anywho. Did you know that only 5% of people who read this post actually follow this channel?. SMASH THAT FUCKING LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE. Brought to you by Raid Skillspace VPN™.

Feedback's always welcome. Come and debate me you cowards. Follow if you like it ... or don't.

[loser-female]

Disclaimer: I'm doing a night shift so yeah, mistakes and all that jazz have a reason to be.

OOP post was about the difficulty of having a romantic relationship with a man because he was misogynistic.

Here are responses that bothered me and I've decided to make another post to highlight how damaging this is on feminism and women. Under the cut because this is stupid long.

For context, I'm in a relationship with a man and I'm in several women-majority groups.

Women and feminists are NOT a rehabilitation center for misogynistic men - and this is such dangerous advice because when I see a woman complaining about the relationship she has... It's ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS watered down to not make the man look like the abuser he often is.

Don't settle for an asshole - right, because a man's misogyny is a woman's fault. And because we all know men go around with a misogyny level tattooed on their face, so women know they can avoid it and if trying to fix him could work.

The fact that men can be better is irrelevant to the questions OOP was rising. She deserves a better partner *now*, not to invest herself in a building-a-boyfriend project that won't work.

And there is more than that: even if you date the perfect man the relationship will always be unbalanced in his favour.

This is because women in relationships are seen as less productive, less "trustworthy" than men in relationships, for which it's the opposite. And the woman is always assumed to earn less, to do all the housework and childcare.

OOP complaints about this are absolutely valid.

And this "but there are better men!" Is actively undermining the efforts of the literal 4 feminists left to fight domestic inequality.

Because that's an issue no one cares about. Mainstream feminism tells women men have changed (they have not, they just adapted their misogyny), so it's "safe"to date men and when this doesn't work any criticism on 2023 misogyny goes down the toilet, because "stereotyping an entire gender is wrong", shutting down any conversation about domestic inequality.

Which, if you call yourself a feminist of any kind, should be aware about. Especially how it ties directly with domestic violence.

Then the comment that enraged me.

Acknowledging misogyny or inequality in a relationship doesn't mean having a victim mentality.

Also, radicalisation ≠ radical feminism (what the hell even, but okay, what this is supposed to mean. Online radicalisation is a serious issue, but generally speaking we are talking about terrorists. People you don't like ≠ terrorists. The manosphere is a recruitment center for right wing domestic terrorists, this why the intelligence pays attention to it, because -at least in the europol reports - it's the primary concern for authorities. Radical feminism = addressing the root of the problem, patriarchy, by dismantling the current power status. But whatever, why I even waste my time like this.)

People of all genders can be shitty - well, we have several studies that show us what "gender" is shittier, like we have numbers. I don't know what the reasons are for these numbers, but it doesn't matter, because this is not the point. The point was that a relationship between a man and a woman, even if you are a rich housewife from the suburbs of IDK what city is cool now in the US, is still unbalanced. And this cannot be fixed by picking a "better man", because it's not necessarily about finding a better man, a good man doesn't erase patriarchy or other men's misogyny.

More importantly: what is a better man?

That's a question that is rarely answered in a genuine way. A lot of people say that a good man is a leftist, other a Christian...

Because, well, it's not like we have a scale of measurement of misogyny. We draw our conclusions from the past experiences (although things like trauma influence them), from the people around us, from the culture we are in and our personal values. "Look out for good men" is not a solution to OOP problem, is not a solution for *any* problem, as it isn't denying that there is, in fact, a problem.

It's also funny that the author of this comment thinks that the acknowledgement of unfairness in a relationship with a man means isolation. You know what is even more isolating? Having people that calls themselves feminists (!!!)deny your personal experience to protect an imaginary man feelings.

Conclusion:

The replies to a perfectly normal post like "I hate that my boyfriend is misogynistic" have been incredibly sexist, not surprisingly, coming directly from the victim blaming repertoire of "not all men", "you could have chosen better", "don't play the victim". It misses "you're crazy" for an inch, with zero acknowledgement of the hurt OOP was experiencing (and no, "your feelings are valid BUT" is not acknowledging anything) and the fact that... it probably was just a vent post, which makes the "NAM" preaching 10 times worse, adding this to focusing on OOP's actions like she was personally responsible for her boyfriend bad behaviour or, to me even worse, guilty of passively (according to these comments) accepting it or not trying enough.

Which is bad.

(yes I was bored. Nothing happened tonight. Now I go to sleep)

[korrasera]

svb & capitalist psychology

This single tweet is a good example of the psychology of capitalism, in which you can see a blind spot that capitalist true believers always seem to have.

They are always seeking to protect the capital, not the people and not our collective society. How does Bill Ackman's tweet demonstrate that? I'm glad you asked.

He thinks that this isn't a bailout because the company and the executives will take losses. This positions the depositors as innocents caught up in the failure of the bank. As though the depositors were just common folk who had their savings account there, surely you don't hold Joe Average responsible when the bank they're using fails, right?

The depositors are not Joe Average, they are companies with assets measuring in the hundreds of thousands of dollars at a minimum. Many had millions in assets in SVB and Circle had $3.3 billion banked:

The depositors are capitalists, meaning that they are investing capital in order to create profit. And while capitalists may describe it as a healthy competition, in reality capitalism is effectively a card game in which everyone is cheating.

When capitalists want to experiment with new strategies to make Even More Money Than Ever Before, they're gambling on an extremely large scale. It's a simple kind of bet, too.

On one side, their risk. Their idea might fail and they might lose everything. This is why you see capitalists learn how to save their money in overseas banks or report income in different countries, all to lower the amount of taxes they have to pay. This reduces how much risk they face.

On the other side, their profit potential. Their idea might hit it big and they might get even more goddamn wealthy. In other words, they profit. And just like you see them dodging taxes to mitigate risk, capitalists work to do everything they can to make that potential payout as high as possible. Things like charging customers additional fees, exploiting low cost labor markets (up to and very much including slavery), and literally killing, stealing, and lying whenever they need to.

The depositors were part of the same card game, just like the investors and the executives. Their money being invested in the bank was in turn being invested in other capitalist ventures. The interest rate the bank was repaying these companies was their cut of the profit from that process, just as surely as any direct sale of goods or services.

Like, I don't know if people really clearly understand how interconnected our world is, how our financial systems create a complex web of relationships. The capitalist mechanism functionally *is* capitalism, a web of profit generating mechanisms that specifically require and demand the exploitation of people.

The depositors are not innocents, they are accessories before the fact.

What protects Joe Average is that the FDIC ensures every savings account in the US for up to $250,000, so Joe Average won't lose his life savings, which would ruin a lot of working class and middle class people in the US.

The companies that are exposed and that want to be helped by the government are asking us, the collective us, to reimburse them when their company couldn't compete successfully and went under. And we don't even get anything out of it, it's not like this gives us a cut of the profits that they could make in the future, they just want the money for free because losing what they have sucked.

Since I'm long-winded and not great at making a point, here's the really simple version:

Capitalists see companies, capital, the entire structure of the system itself like they see their neighbor. Like a person. To them, they see a company as an individual who should be protected, and not as a part of the machine that grinds everyone down. They cannot see it systemically, they see it from an individualist perspective. At least, I think the vast majority of them do.

[quahogchowda-blog]

Experiment number 550,000 million is completed... 🤣🤣🤣 With most of the rise/proof "wait time" being while I was sleeping... 💤😴 What am I trying to prove? That baking sourdough bread is NOT an EXACT science. It is not that difficult and should not require all these "rules" that people want to make about baking SOURDOUGH... I have pretty much broken every single rule there is... And done exactly what works for me... in the time frame that works for me... I don't use a scale to measure my ingredients for my bread dough... I don't use a scale to weigh the measurements of ingredients that are going to go into my starter... I don't use heating pads or other contraptions or keep my house at a higher temperature so my sourdough starter or dough can stay warm or cold... I do not use filtered water. I use water straight from the tap despite the caution that it might kill the wild yeast. I don't worry about all this exactness with bulk ferment time... cold ferment time yadda yadda yadda...

Newest experiment... Can I make a decent sourdough loaf with minimal Hands-On time... With most of the wait time being while I'm sleeping... And how will it turn out if I use the "cold baked" method... Avoiding the excessive preheat times which to me is an absolute waste of our natural resources....

Came home from work yesterday and at 3:00 p.m. fed my cold straight from the fridge starter. I didn't think I was going to have enough starter for the two loaves I plan on baking today... so I added one full cup of flour and a half a cup of warm water.... (Normally I only do a half a cup of flour and a quarter cup of water but I gave it extra because I need extra starter today...)

By 8:00 p.m. the starter had at least doubled...

To a large Rubbermaid container I added:

1 full cup starter

3.5 cups white flour

1.5 cups wheat flour

1.5 cups water

Mix quickly just to get all the flour mostly incorporated... And Let shaggy dough sit with lid on for 30 minutes. After the 30 minute wait... I added another 1/4 cup water and 2 teaspoons salt... And immediately began stretch and folds every 30 minutes at 8:30 p.m. At 10:30 p.m. I moved the dough to a glass pyrex bowl with a lid. I was going to stop my stretch and folds there but thought better of it and 30 minutes later I did one more stretch and fold.

I left the bowl on the dining room table from 11 P.M. until I woke up at 5:00 a.m.

At 5 A.M. I gently plopped the dough onto the floured counter... And gently floured and formed my dough round to get a little more tension but also trying not to deflate the dough very much...

Placed that onto a piece of parchment paper... Scored the top with one slice down the center and plopped the whole thing into my cold cast iron Dutch oven. I did not have high hopes of this rising as well as it did that's why I only did one score down the center. I wish I had taken a picture but it was definitely much smaller than any of my other ready to bake forms.

As suggested I baked using the "cold bake" method for the first time.

Put oven on 450°. And placed the cold Dutch oven into the cold... But now preheating oven... immediately.

Baked at 450° for 50 minutes.

Removed the lid... And I was surprised to see that it definitely got a good oven spring... Continued baking with lid off for another 10 minutes.

Took temperature of the loaf it was 195°.

Took the loaf out of the Dutch oven and placed directly onto my pizza stone that was already in the oven.

Baked for another 10 minutes until bread reached a temperature of 205 and was more golden brown in color.

I don't know what the inside looks like but I'm not really concerned about that. It looks and smells terrific.

And it was EASY PEASY! Barely any hands on time at all... No fuss... No stress...

Experiment was a success! Total time... From starter initial feed at 3 p.m. to completed bake @ 6:40 a.m. = 16 hours... Hands on time equals approx a measly 20 minutes... 🤣

Note: Image of the starter is actually AFTER a 2nd feeding at 8 P.M. (I forgot to move the time band)... I added another full cup of flour to my remaining starter and another half a cup of water... It more than doubled by the time I got up this morning.

[aeide-thea]

anyway i'm thinking yet again abt how like. when yr (my) ethics seem to conflict with yr (my) instincts you (i) have some options. you can either double down on yr instincts and close yr ear to the demands of ethics (have sometimes done this!); decide to suppress yr instincts in favor of yr ethics (have often done this as a stopgap measure); or third and perhaps hardest, try to find some sort of overlap or thruline…

like i often just am like, if i don't voice my personal preferences i'm at least not making them anyone else's problem? and there's some truth in that—certainly it's better than going around constantly shouting about how my preferences are Obviously Right and everyone else's are Obviously Wrong! but if i still basically feel that way in secret it's liable to burst out eventually, and in the meantime i get the unpleasant experience of Stifling Myself as a reward for my attempt at virtue, which quite frankly is likely to make me give up on virtue in the long run because no one can stand being suffocated indefinitely!

so if i find, to take the most recent instance of this in my own life, that i do really believe Prescriptivism Is Bad, because i understand it to be a tool of oppression and i understand that language ultimately needs to serve people, not the other way around; but that also i really balk at certain nonstandard usages, for reasons that are partially about Losing Nuance and Contradicting My Understanding of the Way Our Language Is Structured, but are also in large part just—discomfort with not following the rules? i can just—not correct people when they 'do it wrong,' that's easy, i'm not that kind of asshole. but that inner feeling? oof. that's harder, and so then sometimes i reblog a post and give in to saying in the tags, agh this nonstandard usage is Objectively Fine, as all nonstandard usages are, but personally i hate it a lot!

and that's not the worst thing i could do, on a scale of human misdeeds, but. it's not really quite in line with my ethics, either, because if someone who speaks that way sees my tags, they are going to get at least a little mad at me (best-case scenario), or else feel quietly shamed (worst-case scenario). either way i've created a site of alienation between us instead of connection and learning. so. not optimal!

but if i just. sit with my discomfort, and say, okay, this feels bad to me. i get that. let's listen to what people have to say about why they talk this way! then i learn something, which feels good to me, and in this instance part of what i learn is that actually this is movement in the direction of greater nuance, not less! which i love! so then i arrive at a place of genuinely embracing this development, instead of just begrudgingly tolerating it in a way that still oozes judgment, and we all win.

[universitypenguin]

Research, I hate it. But how do you do it anyways?

Research! My favorite! 😍 It’s also my IRL job… so, you’ve come to the right place. Pull up a chair.

- - - - - - - - - -

In writing, I usually do the first draft as quickly as possible and then mark out the places that need more detail. For example, if I’m writing something where the character has to use technical skills, I’ll just insert brackets. In the brackets goes this comment in pink letters, so it’s easy for me to spot during revisions: [Character fixes it in a really cool way.]

Then I move on. When I get to the second draft, I’ll go back and research and fill in the details.

Documentaries are a great resource, because it gives a visual representation of what’s being done. Since I have to describe the process when I write this is ideal. Reddit threads are really helpful for POV experience with different activities and emotions. What is it like to live with bipolar disorder? I don’t know. But someone on Reddit probably posted about it extensively. This is a fantastic place for primary source documentation of life experiences. Going out and doing something yourself, if possible, is often the best form of research. For example, if I was going to put a character in a scene that required snow shoeing, I could definitely do that in my area. (Because I don’t want to have to re-learn how to walk, and fall on my face, I haven’t done it myself. However, for the sake of a story, I’d try it.)

User manuals are a fantastic resource for learning about guns, industrial machinery, cars, and electronic devices. I don’t know how a satellite phone works, but if I want to learn, the manufacturer has a guide on their website. I can use that information to make my character look smart. If they’re following the correct procedures to fix a device, it instantly shows their knowledge and readers can draw conclusions about them based on that information.

The comment in brackets method helps me narrow down exactly what needs to be researched for the most efficient use of time. However, I often find researching a topic inspiring. It sparks new ideas and thoughts about the plot. For this purpose, I sometimes just dive in and see where the internet surfing takes me. I also keep a notebook handy for storing random ideas and thoughts that I don’t know how I’ll use, but they seem cool.

If you’re asking about medical research, I work in the medical research field, so that’s quite a bit easier for me than most people.

One good tool for trauma is the ISS scale. It’s an abbreviation for “Injury Severity Scoring.” This is how we calculate someone’s probability of survival after an injury. We can also extrapolate from that data to measure the performance of trauma centers, EMS personnel, and surgical interventions. The scale goes from 1-75 with a 75 being a fatal injury. There are guides to using this method online and descriptions of what each injury is and how they’re weighted. The ISS scale has been used since the 1960s. After decades of improvements and revisions, it’s very accurate. (If you need more details, I can show you how to use it. Or even run the numbers for you.)

Having a background in EMS (and a little SAR experience) is a great help to my writing. I’d recommend anyone who can go get a certification for first aide, basic/advanced EMT (or anything similar) that’s accessible to you.

Being able to do something during a disaster is very empowering. It will serve you well beyond your writing career. I’m sure automation and other technologies will change a lot in the future, but you can’t ask a machine to pry you out of the vehicle that you wrapped around a tree. Paramedics have great job security on that front.

Here are my final recommendations:

Documentaries

A few ideas: DW Documentaries on YouTube. They’re a very neutral perspective because they’re produced by the German state news channel. As an American, I find that they’re far enough away from our sphere of influence to make content that challenges some of my pre-conceived assumptions that come from a lack of international experience.

PBS frontline also has some interesting documentary content. ABC News in-depth is pretty good. 60 minutes Australia tends to be another great show for gathering information. Top Documentary Films is a website that offers a ton of free documentary films. Here is a link to their website.

Reddit threads

This is great for discovering how people feel and think about events that you haven’t seen or experienced yourself. There are posts from individuals in various communities with unusual life experiences and from different cultures and backgrounds. For example, I’ve not been paragliding, but I can read a play-by-play of what it feels like from some daredevil who does it every weekend. This is fantastic, because I don’t want to go paragliding. Like, at all.

Real life exposure

This is only when it’s possible. Real life experience is the best for medical exposure and physical activities.

User manuals

Read a user manual for things you don’t know about. There’s a lot of information on guns that can help you learn the proper terminology. For example, a clip is different than a magazine

You can apply this method to learn a lot about a particular weapon quickly. The Glock firearm has a website with links to their user manuals. I went to their information section and retrieved the user manual. Here’s pictures of some of their diagrams:

Reviewing the manual will only give you so much information. Having real life experience shooting a Glock will help you fill in those gaps. This is why that real life experience is still very important. For example, hitting the release mechanism for the Glock’s magazine requires you to stretch your fingers around the grip of the gun, particularly if you have smaller hands. In order to hit it with enough pressure for the magazine to drop is rather difficult with shorter fingers.��

User manuals will allow you to identify the specific vocabulary, and give you a clear idea of how the gun works. As a bonus, this is the best tool to learn how to break something. If you want to learn how to throw a kink in the scene for your character and cause problems, check out the user manual. They tell you a lot about vulnerabilities and issues with devices. In my opinion, user manuals tend to be the most reliable source of information for a lot of things.

I hope this helped! Message me if you need anything. I’d be glad to talk about trauma medicine if you need specific details on realistic injuries.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

White Jewish people really having a fun time right now discoursing about what is and is not definitionally genocide as if genocide knocks politely on the door and asks permission to begin instead of ramping up slowly over years of cultural violence and eradication efforts until one day the rhetorical threshhold for physical violence gets passed and blood pours through the streets.

Anyway if you want one of the more conservatively stated yet internationally recognized definitions of genocide, here's what the UN has to say:

Definition

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

I'm not interested in having a debate with any fucking one about whether or not the trans community is currently among those in the US experiencing what meets the criteria for genocide in the US because as a matter of course the US is arguably in the midst of efforts to enact a genocide against a LOT of communities at any given moment and the trans community is just one of them. My fellow white jews can sit down and shut the actual fuck up with their "trans people weren't targetted during the Holocaust so stop comparing the two" oppression olympics bullshit.

Just because you're so enraptured by the sancity and holiness of your white skin that you're sure our Jewish genocide is too holy to be discussed in the same breath as any other doesn't mean you're not reinforcing the very systems of white supremacy and violence that will happily murder us next when you try to shut down conversations about the interconnectedness of these experiences. It was literally a month ago that my feed was full of people confidently shouting about how the nazis burned trans literature. You fucking know better.

I'm so tired of this constant need to tear each other apart for daring to suggest that our genocides are genuinely interconnected. They are. Plain and simple. No matter who they are committed against. A genocide against any community reinforces the rhetoric of genocide against communities like our Jewish ones and we should be more inclined to give a damn that some members of our Jewish faith agree with that genocidal rhetoric that reinforces our own genocidal unsafety than with the fact that the other communities suffering rightly point out the connections.

If it seems like everyone is quick to say the big G word right now that's probably because global fascism is rising at unprescidented rates, and fascists seek genocidal outcomes with the kind of tunnel-vision few could ever dream of experiencing. That doesn't mean we deny people the truth of the language. It means we start working together to resist an unprecedented scale of genocidal intent. Never again means for anyone, not just the Jews and if you're truly looking at the world right now and thinking that we're NOT at risk for genocidal outcomes unless we actively resist fascist waves, you're a fucking fool.

It's not doomerism to say that, it's realism. Doomerism says genocidal fascism is inevitable and we should give up. It's not! In fact it's quite easy to resist! But we DO actually have to do so actively, consistently, and across all fronts.

So why the FUCK are you people looking our comrades in arms in the eyes and telling them to get off the field??

[mbvvacationbibleschool]

The Universe Is A Hologram

There is an ongoing discussion of whether the universe could be a hologram or a simulation of some sort. The simulation theory is a sister to the holographic universe - that the universe appears to be higher dimensional but is a projection from a lower dimension. Mathematicians have deduced 10 dimensions, but I’m not a mathematician so I’m just going to wax poetic on the possibility that the universe is one-dimensional. The savvy may notice the reductionist impulse I have, and I’m extremely impressed by their insight. Without further ado, I’ll share my thoughts.

The simulation theory has been making its way through pop-sci journalism and many people regurgitate a banal version of the theory as a talking point for cocktail parties... but I do believe that the holographic universe theory should be expounded, because it has really interesting fundamental assumptions. 

One of the fundamental assumptions of the holographic universe or simulation theory seems to be that the behavior of the universe is rational and follows mathematical rules, and that time is a linear and non variant sort of surface that merely is a space that events occur in. Some of these assumptions such as the clockwork model of the universe were in line with Newtonian thinking and the cyclical nature of the cosmos and empirical evidence are in line with a kind of Christian-Scientific school of thought called Deism which still holds a decent amount of commonality with current scientific rationalism.  The rational nature of the universe means that deists had to typically believe in a potentially disinterested non-intervening God (as would be taken by some Gnostics), or in a sort of pantheistic or panentheistic potentially impersonal God. I find this rational non intervening God the only compelling model of divinity.  The simulation theory also requires an observer that either is the simulation itself or an unimaginably complex processor of some sort that is outside of the universe. This does indeed invoke the image of a Calvinist and all-knowing God if not a pantheistic one. The joke here is that our universe is a C+ grade science project sitting forgotten on a shelf- this is a cynical take tangential to that of the Gnostics.

It seems like universe has layered complexity expressed through process.  These processes could be quantified and expressed as topographic objects with a matrix of numbers- and measurement over an area can be considered dimensionality. If you wanted to map out sodium ions in a given two dimensional representation of an area, (perhaps on a tongue, or  in the ocean with satellite imagery) and include the properties and rules of interaction, also expressed numerically, the entire process could be expressed in only one dimension as a complex series of sets and coordinates. Each individual interaction could be processed one at a time through parenthesis or whatever format or language that a processor is using, and the movement through time could proceed as each interaction is calculated and resolved. The fact that it appears in three dimensions is projections into higher dimensions, thus a hologram.  Every individual point in a matrix could be layered with other measurements of other properties at that point. This merely adds holographic dimensions, some of which are illusory. The deistic intuition of Newtonian mechanics is that interactions can be explained on higher levels by low level phenomenon- paricule collision and charge interaction. We can predict the behavior of molecules- that they will attract or react in certain ways. The things that happen on macro scales, such as the behavior of hormones, cells, cellular tissues, organs, organisms, communities, these are called “emergent properties.” 

The series of laws that the universe operates upon seem to be some sort of experiment of optimization through concentric layers of emergent property- an engine that designs by running complex operations. At a molecular and atomic level, interactions seem to have such an abstract connection to the kinds of things encountered by biological creatures such as ourselves, but at every level, the participants- be it atom, molecule, or organism, seem to follow patterns of behavior that can be modeled mathematically and behaves in predictable ways on various scales, and influencing each-other. The old saying goes- “as above, so below.”

The fact that mathematical objects describe nature so well seem to support a universe that is built out of mathematics entirely. Recognize, though, that the mathematical objects that describe real objects completely would definitionally be identical in complexity and in every other higher dimensional emergent property. 

Of course, it is possible that a tautology is being invoked by believing that a mathematically defined cultural viewpoint that defines its’ favorite descriptive tool, in this case, “mathematics” BY it being the measure to which the universe is put up to. 

Physicists have puzzled over what was considered a law of physics from the deistic standpoint that all information in the universe is conserved in some ways, and that it can be run forwards as well as backwards. There are a few interesting assumptions loaded into this view, but the interesting one is about black holes. The current model of black holes and their singularities is that they allow no information to exit the event horizon. In order to preserve a previously held law, some physicists theorized that as a solution that perhaps information is eternally stored on the two dimensional spherical surface of the event horizon without being lost. This got me thinking about higher dimensional representation via lower dimensional objects. For example, the surface of the retina is more or less two-dimensional, yet we perceive 3-dimensional space. Stranger still is that the photons that strike individual photoreceptor are translated into individual ones or zeros- that is, the photoreceptor either decays from a photon hitting it or it doesn’t, and a series of signal collections allow the brain to decide based on a series of filters what it is perceiving. Each individual signal comes from a point- no dimensions, combined into a series of code in one dimension. 

Additionally, language can be a one dimensional representation of higher dimensional objects. Each word is symbolized by the characters and comes in one character at a time. The higher dimensional attributes of what is contained in language - arguably occur from the perceiver. However, it is possible that on some level the symbol can contain what it represents in its’ entirety in one dimension. Although our languages contain a great deal of subtext and connotation, all of this could be packed into the equivalent of an extremely dense footnote.

I believe that emergent properties are like large mathematical objects contained within parenthesis with minor adjustments to certain parameters but ultimately the same base-code that underlies the rest of the universe. It isn’t necessary that all code of the universe is read one character at a time- such a model could be a one-dimensional universe. Having each individual plank-length being a processor of course could be another model, and that could be a 3-dimensional universe. 

One big problem that opposes the clockwork model of determinism- that the universe can be totally predestined, predicted, or run like a video tape from start to finish with sufficient data comes from quantum mechanics which i only have a rudimentary understanding, unfortunately. However, I do know that the main problems arise from two models- non-locality, and the uncertainty principal. These two models of subatomic behavior indicate at the very least that we cannot measure the position and velocity of (for example) an electron simultaneously and that we cannot measure without interacting with a particle. Non-locality goes even further by saying that an electron is more like a smudge of probability in its’ behaviour and it is everywhere all at once but mostly in certain places. I’d maintain that these are not necessarily problems with deism itself but that the model still holds up if we just assume our instruments are not capable of producing that level or precision either yet or that the precision isn’t possible from within the simulation or hologram itself.    

Give it some thought, let me know your thoughts, follow me for more thoughts. 

[atosibairagi]

The Importance of Digital Marketing for our Business

Digital marketing is crucial for businesses in today's digital age. It offers numerous benefits that can help your business grow, increase its visibility, and connect with your target audience. Here are some key reasons why digital marketing is important for your business:

Wider Reach: Digital marketing allows you to reach a global audience. With the internet, you can connect with potential customers across the world, expanding your market beyond geographical boundaries.

Cost-Effective: Compared to traditional marketing methods like TV or print advertising, digital marketing is often more cost-effective. You can allocate your budget more efficiently and target specific demographics, reducing wastage.

Measurable Results: Digital marketing provides data and analytics tools that enable you to measure the performance of your campaigns in real-time. You can track website traffic, conversion rates, click-through rates, and other key metrics to evaluate your marketing efforts' effectiveness.

Targeted Marketing: Digital marketing allows you to segment your audience and create highly targeted campaigns. You can reach people based on their interests, demographics, behavior, and more. This ensures that your marketing messages are relevant to your audience, increasing the chances of conversion.

Personalization: Personalization is a key trend in digital marketing. You can tailor your content and offers to individual users based on their past interactions with your brand. This personalized approach enhances user experience and fosters customer loyalty.

Brand Visibility: A strong online presence is essential in today's competitive business landscape. Digital marketing helps improve your brand's visibility through SEO, social media, and content marketing, making it easier for potential customers to find you.

Real-Time Engagement: Social media and email marketing enable real-time engagement with your audience. You can respond to customer inquiries, address concerns, and provide valuable information promptly, building trust and rapport.

Flexibility and Adaptability: Digital marketing campaigns can be easily adjusted and optimized in real-time. If a particular strategy isn't working, you can make changes quickly, ensuring that your marketing efforts are always aligned with your goals.

Competitive Advantage: Many of your competitors are likely already using digital marketing. By investing in digital marketing strategies, you can stay competitive or even gain a competitive edge in your industry.

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Data-Driven Decision Making: Digital marketing provides valuable data and insights that can inform your business decisions. You can use this data to refine your marketing strategies, improve products or services, and better understand customer preferences.

Easier Scaling: As your business grows, digital marketing can easily scale with it. You can expand your reach, budget, and campaigns to accommodate your growing customer base.

In conclusion, digital marketing is not just important; it's essential for the success and growth of businesses in the digital age. It offers a cost-effective, measurable, and highly targeted way to connect with your audience, build brand awareness, and drive conversions. To stay competitive and thrive in today's business landscape, embracing digital marketing is a smart move.