#median marker

[alcolite01]

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[writingwithcolor]

Conlanging Issues: A Compendium

NOTE: This question was submitted before the Nov 1, 2023 reopening and may not adhere to all rules and guidelines. The ask has been abridged for clarity. 

Most of my questions are about linguistics. […] One of the major locations in my story is a massive empire with cultural inspirations ranging from North Africa in the far south to Mongolia/Russia in the far north […] The middle region is where the capital is and is the main root of culture, from which Ive been taking inspiration from Southwest Asia […], but most notably southern regions of India. I've tried to stick to the way cities are named in Sanskrit-based languages but added the names of stars to the front (because the prevalent religion of this region worships the stars [...]). So Ive ended up with names like Pavoprayag, Alyanaga, Alkaiduru, Alcorpura, Cygnapete, etc. Is this a consistent naming system or should I alter it in some way? The empire itself is named the Arcana Empire since [...] each act of my story is named after a tarot card [...]. Another region in my story is based more on parts of South China and North Vietnam, so I've tried to stick to names with a Chinese origin for that. I understand the significance of family names in southwest [sic] Asia, so I wanted to double check [...]. They have only two short given names. Based on the birth order of the child, the first half of the name comes from the fathers family and the second half from the mothers family. It is seen as disrespectful not to use both names because using only one is seen as denouncing that side of your family. Thus I have names like Su Yin, Dai Jun, and Yi Wen for some of the characters from this region, and the city itself that they are from is named Bei Fen. On the other hand, Im having further trouble naming characters. […] Ive been trying to give my human characters names from real human cultures to distinguish them from the website-generated names of say, orcs, elves, dwarves, etc, but I think I should change many of the names Ive used to be more original and avoid fracturing real world cultures for the sake of my worldbuilding. […] Im still very weak in the linguistics area (even after four years of French, sigh) and am having trouble finding where to read about naming patterns so I can make new ones up. I read your naming guides but am still having trouble on where to start for specific languages. […] Im trying to look into Sanskrit, Turkish, and Persian specifically.

You're Going Too Broad

In my opinion, you’re casting too wide a net. You mentioned looking into Sanskrit, Turkish, and Persian to develop fantasy names. These languages are very different from one another, so unless you’re using them separately for very different parts of your world, it will be hard to draw inspiration from them in a way that makes sense. You’re taking on a huge amount of research in order to worldbuild cultures that span a massive geographical area (basically all of North Africa and Asia?) and have very little in common. Are you sure you want to take on that task?

I could see it being more manageable if most of your story is set in a small region of this world, which you will then research in depth to make sure you’re being as specific as possible.

Taking Persian as an example, you’ll have to decide whether you want to use Old Persian, Middle Persian, or Modern Persian. Each of these comes with a different alphabet and historical influences. They’re also associated with different periods of time and corresponding cultural and social markers. Once you’ve decided exactly when and where you want to start from, you can then expand the borders of your area of focus. For example, if you’ve decided to draw inspiration from Achaemenid Persia, you can then look at the languages that were spoken in the Achaemenid Empire. A quick Google search tells me that while Old Persian was the empire’s official language, they also used Aramaic, Akkadian, Median, Greek, and Elamite (among, I’m sure, many many others and many more regional variations). Further research into each of these will give you ethnic groups and bordering nations that you can draw more inspiration from to expand out your worldbuilding.

Don’t forget to make sure you’re staying within the same time period in order to keep things consistent. It’s a lot of work, and this is only for a small portion of the continent-spanning worldbuilding you’re trying to do.

You can get away with painting the rest of the continent in broad strokes without too much depth if the story doesn’t go there and you don’t have any main characters from those parts of the world. Otherwise, you’ll need to put this same level of detail into your worldbuilding for the area with Turkish-inspired names, and again for the area with Sanskrit-inspired names, and so on.

I know this isn’t what you were asking, but I honestly have a hard time helping you figure out where to start because your ask is so broad I don’t quite know where I would start myself. So, this is my advice: focus down on one region and time period and go from there. Feel free to write back once you’ve picked a narrower focus that we could help you with.

- Niki

So there’s logistical issues in regards to your naming system for southern China-coded regions. One issue is history: mainly on how there is not simply one language in China but multiple due to having a lot of ethnic groups and the size of China. South China in particular has different dialects and languages than the North as seen in this map of Chinese languages and dialects. There’s also how historically Mandarin was not the official language until 1913 in China and historical China saw vast changes in territory dependent on the dynasty. Before then, Mandarin was primarily a northern Chinese language based in Beijing while southern China had its own languages, dialects, and dynamics. Not to mention, historical China saw an evolution of language just like English has Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and Modern English. For instance, Vietnam was once part of China during the Tang Dynasty and at another point, it was not part of China.

-Mod Sci

If You’re Borrowing Whole Words or Elements, Research More

The other issue is inconsistency with the cultures you’re deriving this conlang from. In regards to “two given names,” the Chinese name I was given was one syllable and then I would have a last name that was also one syllable. There’s also how not every family is perfect. Not every marriage is sanctioned and some children may come from single parents. Some families may not cooperate with marriage and sometimes children may be abandoned with unknown parents. There does not seem to be contingencies for these names under this conlang system.

The main problem with conlangs is that one needs to truly understand the languages one is drawing from. Tolkein managed to create conlangs due to training in linguistics. Mandarin is already a difficult language with multiple tones, and trying to use it for conlangs without knowledge of how Mandarin works or a good foundation in linguistics is just a Sisyphean endeavor.

-Mod Sci

Four years of French wouldn’t have taught you about linguistics as a science or anything about the language families you’ve listed - Indo-Iranian, Sino-Tibetan, and Turkic, nor any Asian naming conventions. I agree with Niki that you need to narrow down your research.

Pur/pura means city in Sanskrit (ex: Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur). Prayag is a place where pilgrimages are done. Naga isn’t a place name in Sanskrit (google says it means snake), nagar is and it means town. X Nagar is a very common name for places (Ex: Rajinder Nagar). Many cities in Karnataka have names ending in uru (Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mangaluru, Tumakuru, etc) but the language of Karnataka is Kannada - a Dravidian language and completely different family from Sanskrit (Indo-Aryan). I’m not sure where “pete” came from. “Bad” and “vaal” are common suffixes for places too (Ex: Faisalabad, Allahabad). A disclaimer that I do not speak Sanskrit, I speak Punjabi, which is a descendant of Sanskrit and in the same linguistic family (Indo-Aryan languages).

- SK

Also, This Is Not…Really Conlanging.

Hi OP. Linguistics refers to the science of studying how languages work, not the discipline of learning languages. And nothing shows that gap more than how you have thus far approached constructing fictional languages and toponyms. 

The reason why Sci and SK have a lot to say about your place names is because they don't resonate—you have borrowed whole words into your toponyms (place names) from a variety of languages—without an accurate understanding of what these words mean, how they’re pronounced, where they’re derived from—and expected them to work together. I suggest you read the links below on why conlanging is not as simple as choosing some languages and mashing their IRL words together: 

Why Using Random Languages Wholesale in your Fantasy is a Bad Idea 

Pitfalls of Mashing Countries and Languages in Coding

In your city names, for example, you’re using star names from multiple languages that use different sets of sounds represented by different sets of historical spelling rules. “Cygn-” and “Arcana” stick out like a sore thumb—the fact that one “c” is /s/ and one is /k/ is an obvious flag that they are Latin-derived English borrowings. This is because spelling rules were created in Middle English to make sense of the mix of “c” pronunciations across words of Indo-European origin due to a historical split called the Centum-Satem division. This is a phenomenon that is very specific to our world history, and to the history of English at that. Ironically, in your attempt to avoid stock fantasy names (which also often fall into the Latin-derived English pit), you are taking the exact same approach to naming.

Like Niki said, your selections are far too broad to code under a single umbrella. Do you expect that whatever language that city name came from runs the full gamut of sound inventory & spelling variety that spans multiple continents and hundreds of languages? Because that’s not how languages work. (And yes, I mean hundreds. Indigenous languages and linguistic diversity are a thing. See Niki’s note about just the languages in Persia. And nation-states bulldozing over those languages and pretending it’s just one language is a thing. See Sci’s note about China.) I haven't even talked about the variation in morphology (how words are formed) or syntax (sentence structure).

Please just read or re-read my guide on “naming conlangs” in this post and start from there.

~ Rina

PSA ON CONLANGING AND FANTASY NAMES:

For fantasy language asks submitted after Nov 1, 2023, the asker must indicate that they have read Mod Rina’s conlanging posts linked in FAQ 2 (Guides and Posts by Topic) of the Masterpost under the question “How do I make a fictional language for my story?” While this is an older ask, we are posting it as an example to our followers.

Per our new rules, any questions that can be directly answered in or extrapolated from the FAQs, or questions that indicate that the relevant resources haven’t been read, will be deleted with a note in the Deletion Log explaining why.

As always, if this post was helpful or educational to you, please consider tipping the relevant mods: SK, Niki, Sci, and Rina.

Edited for terminology errors

[osdd-1bitch]

plurality often comes in shades of grey. Medianhood remains a valued perspective and part of our community, from high to low differentiation, -1a, subsystems and mediples varions and parasians. Plural spaces trend towards multiples and ‘validity markers’, tools and resources don’t often apply. Try and take some time to appreciate medianhood and median plurals, and share their perspectives.

[sharp-silver4795]

Proxy HCs

I finally got around to it!!!

There’s gonna be some sensitive stuff, so I will keep my standard shit.

Least Sensitive > Mildly Sensitive > Most Sensitive

I do have an OC and I not-so-well-known creepypasta in here, so if ya have any questions, lmk!

I was going to list the proxies first, but I should do the ranks first.

Authority Ranks:

High Proxy: side-man to the operator/slender man. In charge of enforcing rules, regulations, and procedures.

Median Proxy: side to the high proxy. The one who performs punishments and procedures.

The High-Median proxies are in a pair and always work together.

Specifically, after Toby leaves, Tim becomes the High Proxy and Brian becomes the Median

General Positions/Occupations:

Stationary: stays within mansion grounds. Doesn’t go on missions.

Stationary proxies usually have a full mask over their face and other markers.

Fluid: goes on missions, but they are short distance, they pass the borders because they patrol.

Fluid proxies have a one piece mask that is less distinct and plain attire.

Field: the go-to for missions.

Field proxies usually have 2-piece masks, sometimes only a mouth guard.

Special Roles:

Specialist: usually have a degree in something (think X-Virus with chemistry)

Morgue: a proxy that is set aside to specifically guard the tombs of the fallen.

Runner: a proxy that’s only purpose is to staple drawings to trees and maintain borders

All the Proxies:

They’re in order of the oldest to newest. Some are deceased (🪦)

“Death with Alliance and honor” means their face was seen and they had to kill themself

“Death with alliance” means their face was seen and another proxy had to kill them.

“Death with honor” means they died of some other reason (usually suicide)

“Death in combat” is exactly what it sounds like

“Dishonest slaughter” means they betrayed the mansion and was killed for it.

Zechariah 🪦

High Proxy until death.

Cannibal.

Field.

Death in combat

Neon Spike (OC) 🪦

Specialist (Toxic Chemicals and Medicine).

Fluid Proxy.

Archer.

Death with alliance and honor

Cat Hunter 🪦

Field proxy.

Death with alliance and honor.

Rogue

Median Proxy until Toby’s leave.

Stationary.

Primarily watches for intruders.

Ticci Toby 🪦

High Proxy until his leave.

Field.

Offensive Rebellion.

Kill on sight

Death with honor

Wilson the Basher 🪦

Morgue Proxy

Stationary

Dishonest Slaughter

X Virus

Specialist (biochemistry)

Field proxy

Defensive rebellion.

Kill on sight.

Kate the Chaser

Runner.

Stationary proxy.

Violence is a last resort.

Tim/Masky

High Proxy after Toby’s leave.

Fluid.

Abduct on sight, kill on confession

Brian/Hoodie

Morgue after Wilson’s death until Toby’s leave

Median proxy to Tim

Abduct on sight, kill on resistance

Alr! Im done for now- I hope this was good. It was a lil rushed

I feel like I’m missing someone….

[barryogg]

So The Grauniad published an article about how the voters incorrectly believe that the US is in a recession, and people here are discussing the plebs gaslighting themselves, so I'd like to propose some possible explanations:

A median person when asked this will not care about the formal definition of "recession" and will instead interpret the question as vibes: "Is the economy doing ok or not?" and answer accordingly.

"But the economy is doing ok!" Sure, but I'm only getting started. Consider these:

In a period of significant inflation, even if the wage increases match the inflation (and that quite an assumption), people will feel that someone pulled a fast one on them because they earn "more" only to end up in the same place.

The above is only about earnings. What about savings how many people have their saving primarily in cash? 40%? 50? Inflation is a tax on the poorer part of the society in that way, decaying whatever they managed to save.

While many of the markers are looking good, the costs of higher education, medical care, and homeownership in the US are decades-long problems. The stuff was fucked long before covid and will be fucked long after it. People feel dread about it, and are projecting that dread about the state of the rest of the economy.

People were repeatedly lied to about mostly everything during covid, trust in basically any media is at decades-low so people default to contrarianism when anyone tells them the economy's doing good.

Specifically, some stocks were hitting ridiculous highs when the economy was still in the 2020-2021 shitter, so people are primed to distrust those.

[bettyfrommars]

Scored a handful of metal cassette tapes at the thrift, and the covers were so scuffed, I had a little daydream about them getting tossed around Eddie's van over the years. Rewinding that one song he desperately needs at high volume in the moment, fast forwarding the others, only to quickly eject the tape and put in another while idling at a stop light. They're all just kinda stashed in the cup holders and seat pockets, chaotically organized in a filing system that only he can decipher. Has to pull over one day looking for Iron Maiden's 1984 Powerslave---he finds the plastic cover but not the cassette---and eventually it turns up inside Heaven and Hell...but now he's missing an Ozzy? What the shit? Proceeds to grind his teeth in frustration as he sulks into work, only to later find it under the passenger seat.

Ever the observant one, Wayne gets him his first portable cassette carrier for his birthday so that he won't be swerving onto the highway median looking for tunes. It's brown with a push lock, resembles a briefcase. Eddie covers it in lyrics and drawings with black marker, and even though tapes still get chucked around when he's in motion, he does his best to keep them organized. For a month or two.

[covid-safer-hotties]

No signs of mast cell involvement in long-COVID: A case–control study - Published Sept 14, 2024

Abstract Long-COVID caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection has significant and increasing effects on human health worldwide. Although a unifying molecular or biological explanation is lacking, several pathophysiological mechanisms have been proposed. Involvement of mast cells—evolutionary old “multipurpose” innate immune cells—was reported recently in studies of acute infection and post-acute-COVID-19 syndrome. Mast cell activity has been suggested in long-COVID. In this case–control study, we compared data from 24 individuals with long-COVID (according to the NICE criteria) and 24 age- and sex-matched healthy individuals with a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection without developing sequelae. Serum levels of the proteases beta-tryptase (TPSB2) and carboxypeptidase (CPA3), which are mast cell specific, were measured using immunoassays. The values were compared between the two groups and correlated to measures of physical exertional intolerance. TPSB2 and CPA3 levels were median (range) 26.9 (2.0–1000) and 5.8 (1.5–14.0) ng/mL, respectively, in the long-COVID group. The corresponding values in the control group were 10.9 (2.0–1000) (p = 0.93) and 5.3 (3.5–12.9) ng/mL (p = 0.82). No significant correlations between TPSB2 or CPA3 levels and scores on the ten physical subscales of SF-36, 3.1–3.10 were revealed. We found no significant differences in the levels of mast cell activation markers TPSB2 and CPA3 between the long-COVID and control groups and no correlations with proxy markers of exercise intolerance. Mast cell activation does not appear to be part of long-term pathogenesis of long-COVID, at least in the majority of patients.

[mlembug]

is poland a good place to be trans?

in australia, it seems pretty good for now.

In general, no. I am handling pretty well mostly because I went through most of the bullshit already, I live in a fairly liberal city, and I work in IT, but I have no vision for the future if I get burned out. I estimate like 90-95% of Polish trans girls have it worse than me.

In terms of recent events, we got rid of PiS recently so there is some win in terms of politics, so at least the most egregious corruption is out, but the other party has been promising improvements for LGBT folk a few times in the past and never did them, the only difference is that the leftists form a coalition with them and another party. Too bad the leftists have the least seats in Sejm out of the three parties, but it's still okay, in that the situation doesn't get worse over the next 4 years than it already is. The worrying part is that there are a few people trying to form the spearhead of the anti-trans movement here, but they're yet a minor drop in comparison to the problems Catholic church and regular right-wingers cause for marginalized people.

The following is a breakdown of how living in Poland while trans is like.

(A quick rundown on "cost of living": Minimal salary: 3221.98zł post taxes; Median salary (estimated): 4692zł post taxes. Renting a room: around 1000zł (plus utilities). Renting a flat: 2000zł and up. Loaf of bread: 2.50-5zł. Apples (1kg): 3-5zł. A beer (0.5l) in a supermarket: 4zł. A beer (0.5l) in a bar: 15zł. A large pizza (40cm): 40-50zł. A new video game or any Nintendo game: 250zł.)

Gender marker change: You sue your own parents for this. This process is significantly less annoying than it was 10 years ago in that the number of documents included is like half as much as it was back then and also you don't have to sue your adult children anymore if you have them, but it still implies outing yourself to your parents and them seeing your medical documentation you're sending as evidence (oh god why). The less the parents meddle the better for you. Your hope is that them putting in time, money and effort to meddle is not worth it, and honestly, even regular garden variety transphobic parents don't do much beside denying during a testimony. Otherwise prepare for years-long legal battle that will exhaust both of you. A judge can also decide to appoint an "expert" to judge the medical documentation, and make it more annoying. Very vague optimistic estimate (no external "expert", which honestly is not a given and cases with no external expert started happening recently) of procuring the documentation (psychiatrist opinion, sexologist opinion, lawsuit costs, that fucking stupid MMPI-2 test) puts it at around 3000zł. No same-sex marriage in Poland means that if you're married you have to divorce before attempting gender marker change process. Changing your gender marker means also your national identity number changes because gender is encoded in one of the digits.

The good part is that you don't have to get sterilized as part of gender marker changed, and no surgeries are required. The bad part is that you can't get sterilized without a gender marker change. Either do it outside of Poland or sue your parents. Also, HRT is required for gender marker change.

Name change without gender marker change: Significantly limited due to vast majority of Polish names being heavily gendered, and you can't assign yourself a name considered feminine. Without gender marker change your best bet is non-Polish names and names that are ambiguously gendered. Some surnames are gendered so if you have one you will likely want to change it to a non-gendered one. You likely also have to provide justification and hope for a friendly clerk.

Double mastectomy: With gender marker changed you can get it for free, though whether it's good enough I have no idea. Otherwise 10000-20000zł.

Hysterectomy: Can't get one without gender marker change. With gender marker changed it's funded by public healthcare.

Vaginoplasty: Can't get one without gender marker change. Out of pocket. 50000-60000zł.

Laser hair depilation: Out of pocket. 300zł per session.

Access to HRT: Wild wild west, no regulations means doctors have their own criteria on what exactly do you need to get HRT. One endocrinologist will write a prescription when you ask for it, on the first visit, another will gatekeep you forever. Obviously do your research. A visit to the endocrinologist will cost 200-300zł.

Fem-HRT:

Estrofem (estradiol pills) 28 pills x 2mg costs 16.23zł. Public healthcare lowers that to 4.87zł. Androcur (cyproterone acetate) 50 pills x 50mg costs 91,69 zł. Public healthcare lowers that to 27.51zł. Divigel (estradiol gel) 28 packs x 1mg costs 41.25zł. Public healthcare lowers that to 24.88zł. No injections, all Polish trans girls go to Czech Republic for these, where Neofollin (estradiol valerate) 5 vials x 5mg costs 115.37 CZK, twice as much as when I bought them in November 2022.

Masc-HRT:

Omnadren 250 (testosterone injection, more specifically, testosterone propionate (30 mg) + testosterone phenylpropionate (60 mg) + testosterone isocaproate (60 mg) + testosterone caproate (100 mg)) 5 vials cost 88.14 zł. Testosteronum Prolongatum (testerone injection, more specifically, testosterone enanthate (100mg)) 5 vials costs 91zł. Nebido (testosterone injection, more specifically testosterone undecylenate (1000mg)) 1 vial costs 520zł.

Access to blockers: Also wild wild west, but I know nothing about how it is because I know no one who is on them. Probably sucks.

Society: more liberal in the west Poland and more conservative in the east Poland (the so called "Poland A and Poland B split")

Systemic discrimination: If you're a trans man after gender marker change and for whatever reason you birthed a baby, you're in legal limbo because you can't be written as neither as father nor mother on birth certificate. The one case I know of ended up resolved by giving up the child for adoption. Bottom line is that pretty much everything sucks aside from HRT access in case you're an adult, which is actually quite decent in comparison.

[zerogate]

Among a group of nearly 3,000 Finnish men, 153 of them had donated blood at least once in the 24 months preceding the start of the study. The entire group was followed for an average of nine years. In that time, one (0.7%) of the donors had a heart attack, while 316 (12.5%) of the non-donor men had a heart attack. After adjusting for age and all the cardiac risk factors they could think of (cholesterol, weight, etc.), the researchers found that blood donors had an 88% reduced risk of heart attack.

This study tried to adjust for a healthy donor effect by factoring in standard cardiac risk markers, although there might be additional factors that weren't considered.

In an American population of both men and women who were 40 years old or older and followed for cardiovascular events, those who had donated blood were half as likely to have an event such as a heart attack or stroke. All subjects in this study, both donors and non-donors, had no cardiovascular disease at the start of the study.

To get around the healthy donor effect, some studies have compared frequent blood donors to infrequent donors. In one such study, those who had given blood at least once in each of three consecutive years were compared to people who only gave blood one time during the same period. In the following ten years, frequent donors were 40% less likely to have a cardiac event as were infrequent donors.

[...]

The Copenhagen City Heart Study has studied thousands of residents of that city for many years, and is similar to the Framingham Study in the United States. One research group looked at the study's data on almost 9000 people to determine the relation between ferritin (iron) and death rates.

They found that “stepwise increasing concentrations of ferritin were associated with a stepwise increased risk of premature death overall”. People with a ferritin of greater than 600 (a high number) had a median survival age of 55, meaning that of those who had a ferritin that high, half were dead by that age. Those with a ferritin of 400 to 599 lived an average of 72 years; at 200 to 399, 76 years, and if the ferritin was less than 200, 79 years.

-- P. D. Mangan, Dumping Iron

[gusty-wind]

Latest peer-reviewed study destroys any dignity left for these so-called “Covid experts”

July 29, 2023

Covid experts are likely scrambling for cover as a new peer-reviewed study has been released. If any of them had any remaining dignity after all the politics, lies, and cover-ups, this study would surely wipe it out. But in the end, it’s not the experts who suffer the most; it’s all the people they deceived. According to the findings, heart-related Injuries from a Moderna C•19 Booster Dose were 3000x higher than thought. Researchers found a staggering 1 in 35 healthcare workers at a Swiss hospital had signs of heart injury associated with the booster dose.

So, this study basically tells us that in order to treat a bad “cold,” governments around the world created heart conditions in millions of people. The kicker is that the booster appears to impact woman more.

NEW Peer-Reviewed Study Finds Heart-Related Injuries from a Moderna C•19 Booster Dose were 3000x higher than thought. Researchers found a staggering in 1 in 35 of healthcare workers at a Swiss hospital has signs of heart injury assoc. with booster dose. pic.twitter.com/dHnqLPKH2Q

--- TexasLindsay™ (@TexasLindsay_) July 27, 2023

Wiley:

Hospital employees scheduled to undergo mRNA-1273 booster vaccination were assessed for mRNA-1273 vaccination-associated myocardial injury, defined as acute dynamic increase in high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) concentration above the sex-specific upper-limit of normal on day 3 (48-96 h) after vaccination without evidence of an alternative cause. To explore possible mechanisms, antibodies against IL-1RA, the SARS-CoV2-Nucleoprotein(NP) and -Spike(S1) proteins and an array of 14 inflammatory cytokines were quantified. Among 777 participants, median age 37 years, 69.5% women, 40 participants (5.1% [95%CI, 3.7%--7.0%]) had elevated hs-cTnT concentration on day 3 and mRNA-1273 vaccine-associated myocardial injury was adjudicated in 22 participants (2.8% [95%CI, 1.7%–4.3%]). Twenty cases occurred in women (3.7% [95%CI, 2.3%–5.7%]), two in men (0.8% [95%CI, 0.1%–3.0%]). Hs-cTnT-elevations were mild and only temporary. No patient had ECG-changes, and none developed major adverse cardiac events within 30 days (0% [95%CI, 0%–0.4%]). In the overall booster cohort, hs-cTnT concentrations (day 3; median 5 [IQR, 4–6] ng/L) were significantly higher compared to matched controls (n = 777, median 3 [IQR, 3–5] ng/L, p < 0.001). Cases had comparable systemic reactogenicity, concentrations of anti-IL-1RA, anti-NP, anti-S1, and markers quantifying systemic inflammation, but lower concentrations of IFN-?1(IL-29) and GM-CSF versus persons without vaccine-associated myocardial injury.

Conclusion

mRNA-1273 vaccine-associated myocardial injury was more common than previously thought, being mild and transient, and more frequent in women versus men. The possible protective role of IFN-?1(IL-29) and GM-CSF warrant further studies.

This horrific news comes on the heels of several very high-profile and public “medical incidents” that occurred over the past week.

More:

[thebreakfastgenie]

🍪🧡

🍪 If you were a cookie, what kind would you be?

Snickerdoodle

🧡 A color you can’t stand?

I love orange but the like median shade of orange is so ugly... like crayola magic marker orange...... so bad.

[alcolite01]

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[preeeow]

happy october! tis the season of people posting like. deeply saddening human stories only to follow it up with "wow isn't that creepy spooky :)"

like. no? this man defended his family member's final resting place from urban development. why would that be haunted or spooky, instead of just like. sad that he had to stand there for hours with a gun to keep people from disturbing her grave? why aren't we thinking about the fact that thousands of other people fought that same fight and didn't win, didn't get a median with a historical marker to forever commemorate your love for your family member. and your devotion to her rest.

the dude who was unburied and mummified in Pennsylvania only just now getting buried is not "creepy" and "scary" its fucking sad that this man was allowed to be experimented on and displayed because he committed a petty crime hundreds of years ago.

like i think ghost stories and believing in a remnant of people's spirits is fun but like. not at the expense of these idk. very real human experiences that are frequent throughout history. its not creepy. its just fucking sad that people DO this to each other.

[rabbitindisguise]

Really appreciate the addition above, it describes the issue very well.

Also a collection of replies I thought really helped to explain the issue:

Something else that's important that supports the above ^ is that in order to become an academic you need a degree, and be able to network. If you can't do those two things then you're probably not going to become an academic. Poor people often simply can't afford those things and the options available to them (like state schools) don't have as many networking opportunities, or even stop before making it to a full bachelor's degree by only offering associates. The classes available to poor people are also often worse and lower quality, and the classes of more costly universities have more rigor and ungodly amounts of essays that no normal person working a job could do well on. These are all markers of privilege so someone who graduates already has a huge disparity between them and the rest of society. 62% of people in America simply do not have a bachelor's or higher. That means most people are not like you once you even get out of college with a bachelor's, nevermind getting into academia.

They've also studied this so what other folks and myself are saying isn't without evidence. It's known that wealth affects how likely someone is able to get into college (and therefore become someone who works in academia). Especially PhDs.

One study from 2022 (bold mine):

Despite the special role of tenure-track faculty in society, training future researchers and producing scholarship that drives scientific and technological innovation, the sociodemographic characteristics of the professoriate have never been representative of the general population. Here we systematically investigate the indicators of faculty childhood socioeconomic status and consider how they may limit efforts to diversify the professoriate. Combining national-level data on education, income and university rankings with a 2017–2020 survey of 7,204 US-based tenure-track faculty across eight disciplines in STEM, social science and the humanities, we show that faculty are up to 25 times more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. Moreover, this rate nearly doubles at prestigious universities and is stable across the past 50 years. Our results suggest that the professoriate is, and has remained, accessible disproportionately to the socioeconomically privileged, which is likely to deeply shape their scholarship and their reproduction.

[...]

(Proxied) parents’ income Faculty also tend to spend their childhoods in wealthier zip codes than do the general public (Fig. ​(Fig.4).4). The median proxied household income based on zip code data for surveyed faculty when they were children is 23.6% higher than the median across all zip codes (US $73,000 versus US $59,000, Mann–Whitney U, ρ = 0.4, n = 1.2 × 108, P < 0.001). Consistent with the importance of parental education on faculty careers, proxied parental income is correlated with parental education: faculty who reported that at least one of their parents holds a college degree were associated with higher average proxied household incomes (US $78,000) than those who said their parents did not hold a college degree (US $59,000; ρ = 0.3, n = 3,916, P < 0.001). Across disciplines, median proxied parental income remains relatively high, ranging from US $67,000 (Sociology) to US $78,000 (History). Faculty are more likely to have grown up in urban areas compared with the geographic distribution of the US population around the average year faculty were born (89.6% versus 73.6%, point estimates)35. And the majority of faculty reported that their parents owned a home during the first 18 years of their life (75.7% versus 13.4% said primarily rented, and 10.9% rented and owned equally, point estimates), higher than one would expect given rates in the United States at the time (62% of homes owned by their occupants in 196036). Hence, faculty tend to come from families with relatively stable childhood financial circumstances.

[...]

However, we do find evidence of racial differences within our survey results: white professors are more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. (23.4%, n = 5,905, point estimate) compared with Black or Hispanic faculty (17.2% and 16.9%, respectively, n = 518, point estimates). This distinction is even more pronounced among women surveyed, where 25.5% of white women have a Ph.D. parent versus 14.6% of Black women (point estimates, Supplementary Table 3). To the extent that the probability of becoming faculty depends on parental education, and specifically on having Ph.D. parents, this large racial gap in Ph.D. attainment is an intergenerational impediment to the proportion of Black and Hispanic scholars who become tenure-track faculty.

[...]

To summarize, nearly a quarter (22.2%) of faculty reported that one of their parents holds a Ph.D., and over half (51.8%) had a parent who holds a graduate degree, compared with less than 10% of US adults of similar ages (Table ​(Table1).1). Faculty who have parents with Ph.D.s report receiving more support from them for their careers (Fig. ​(Fig.3)3) and are more likely to be employed at elite institutions. Nearly a third of faculty at top-ranked universities report that their parent holds a Ph.D. (29.8%), versus a fifth (19.0%) at lower-ranked institutions. This pattern represents a significant source of social reproduction at the highest levels of academic attainment. Moreover, given broader racial inequality in educational attainment, academia’s overrepresentation of inherited advantages represents a fundamental constraint to increasing its racial diversity (Fig. ​(Fig.55).

[...]

In fact, the importance of having Ph.D. parents appears so great that the rate of having them nearly doubles across the transition from completing a Ph.D. to obtaining a faculty job (11.8% versus 22.2%; Table Table1).1). This effect indicates a substantial loss of talent in the pipeline from Ph.D. to the transition to a faculty job. Doctoral students with Ph.D. parents may be better prepared for the difficulties of the academic job market, which may confer an advantage that becomes even greater during periods when academic jobs are scarce, for example, during a pandemic or a recession. Furthermore, the stability of this pattern across STEM fields, the social sciences and humanities suggests that the loss of talent at this stage in the pipeline is unlikely to be caused by the existence of attractive non-academic jobs for STEM Ph.D.s. Understanding the causes of this pattern is an important direction for future work.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9755046/

So we can pretty conclusively say that these stigmas about professional academics:

Living in an urban area

Having wealthier parents

Having college educated parents

Having parents that owned a home

Are all stigmas that people have that also have statistically proven significance for tenured professors with PhDs (and they're even true of regular college students- though I have included way too much text in this post already so that's a topic for another time). The increase in other non-tenured PhDs in academic work is a recent phenomena so it makes sense that any improvement wouldn't reflect on people's perception on this subject (and improvement simply by being gay isn't that high- remember that we're talking zip code and home ownership as factors of probability to represent proxied wealth! I know I had those despite being gay and poor and based on conversations with gay poor people in my university they often had those too- because proxied wealth still provides better school experiences for the lower classes).

Plus all college students have increased proxied wealth and social capital, and increasingly so when comparing public to private. So being hateful towards academics writ large because of our statistical likelihood of classism is reasonable, even if it feels unfair. Remember that owning money is not the only thing that the wealthy do- they can also discriminate and take part in microaggressions. This is often very obvious in offline academic queer spaces, where people who are poor are often unable to participate because of lack of access to the "correct" language, etc. We're on the internet right now and that's a privilege plenty of people don't have the luxury of outside public libraries, if that. I think in order to foster better goodwill it's going to mean naming and taking responsibility for our privileges that allowed us to enter college in the first place as part of a rigged system.

-

The other thing I wanted to mention is the "wealthy gay" phenomena. Where (historically) some gay people could find gay bars out of their own wallets and had to be catered to by the community in order to get that money, and were basically whales that the queer community relied on. People can have marginalization and have class privileges over other marginalized people in your community at the same time. I don't have more to add to this point, I just think it's important to mention that being underpaid and gay does not erase the wealth of your support system (or previous support system).

i'm always a bit unsettled by disdain for intellectual or creative labor in leftist spaces. there's this commonly held belief that academics are a bunch of rich old white men, rather than a wide variety of people who are barely getting by. most lecturers in universities are adjuncts living paycheck to paycheck. authors make very little money as a general rule. most researchers are overworked and underpaid. and yet there's still this idea that academics are overcompensated to sit around and smoke cigars together while making shit up

[medschoolrip]

Jfc im so tired. First day of actual classes.

Had biochem and anatomy lectures in the morning (both by HODs). Mostly general overview of the whole session + exam pattern. In biochem she taught a lil abt the fjrst chap (mostly glossing over things and all coz its old stuff. The only new thing i learnt was marker enzymes which i have to review rn)

Anatomy was mostly abt rules and regulations and again, the general overview. After that there was the AETCOM class with respecting the cadaver blah blah. I nearly slept throught that. The only thing that stopped me was no backrest which was fucking annoying and the worsening cold. Dk how i managed to get sick on the first fucking day of college :)

Post lunch we had SGT abt bones and clavicle. Learnt abt all the muscle attachment of the bone and general stuff abt it. (Lore dumping here to help me recall)

Clavicle is a long bone and the only horizontal bone of the body. Its superior surface is smooth and inferior is full of ridges and grooves and is porous at the ends.

The lateral is flat and the median end is a knob like structure with 4 directions. Its divided into two parts

* median 2/3rd part(convex curve)

*lateral 1/3rd curve (concave part)

Median side is the sternal end and lateral side is the scapullary(?) end.

Median curve has 4 surfaces - superior, inferior, anterior, posterior.

Muscles attached to said surfaces -

Sup - sternocleidomasteoid muscle

Ant_ pectolaris major

Post - sterno hyoid

Inf - cost(?) Clavicular(?) Ligament

Lateral part later im so fucking tired

Then we had histo lab which basically consistef of fucking around and finding out with the microscope. After that received the manuals (The Horror) and then went to buy meds (my stupid dumbass cold and why tf are the meds so costly jfc) then went to buy an umbrella phir books (barely managed to restrain myself and avoid impulsive purchases. So proud of myself) then went to buy a pen stand (fuck u fungi)

Annddddd then cleaned my desk. Filled my bottle. Anf finally melted into a puddle of goo on the bed. Abhi padhna hai but himmat nahi ho rahi. Baad mei karungi amen.

[crimsonpublisherscancerstudy]

Unstipulated and InexactIndeterminate Dendritic Cell Tumour_Crimson Publishers

Opinion

Indeterminate dendritic cell tumour emerges as an extremely exceptional tumefaction composed of proliferation of dendritic cells or cells of histiocytic lineage. Additionally designated as indeterminate cell histiocytosis, indeterminate cell tumour or indeterminate dendritic cell tumour, true cutaneous dendritic cell tumour may depict solitary or multifocal lesions. Generally, tumefaction is confined to diverse cutaneous surfaces wherein deep seated visceral or regional lymph node involvement is exceptional. Tumour forming indeterminate cells simulate Langerhans cells vis-à-vis morphological and antigenic features. However, indeterminate cells appear devoid of Birbeck granules and lack immune reactivity to langerin (CD207). Median age of disease emergence is 45 years although no age of disease occurrence is exempt. An almost equivalent gender predilection is encountered. Indeterminate dendritic cell tumour predominantly(~88%) implicates diverse cutaneous surfaces. Infrequently, regional lymph nodes (9%) or spleen (2.3%) may be involved [1,2]. Of obscure a etiology, neoplasm expounds varied concurrence between indeterminate cells and Langerhans cells as ~indeterminate cells manifest as Langerhans cells devoid of Birbeck granules ~indeterminate cells represent as immature Langerhans cells. A subset of neoplasms express dendritic cell marker ZBTB46, thereby indicating the emergence of neoplasms directly from bone marrow progenitors, in contrast to embryonic precursors which undergo localized cutaneous regeneration [1,2].

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