#not to undermine the point of those posts but i do get an ego boost from them sfksfkskdkskfksks

[valtsv]

"bad people can create good art" [blushes] you really think so?

[astrology-with-charu]

#Pisces #Astrology #Horoscope

𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐒𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐞 & 𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟏 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐄𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐩𝐬𝐞 𝐀𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 𝐇𝐨𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐞

𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 :

As I mentioned in my post & podcast yesterday Mars square Neptune will become exact on 9th April and would be felt most of this week. We now delve deeper by sign on how to tackle this aspect. Mars is our drive and Neptune tends to slow it down but there is a hindrance for a more effective and inspired action that this aspect is trying to highlight before we go blazing into the eclipse season.

Listen to the podcast

The June 10th eclipse would be starting a new chapter at the point where this aspect is happening. So understanding this aspect and actions you take as a result would be very critical for the new fated beginnings June 10th solar eclipse in Gemini would bring. As Rahu was here in Jan’21 we have experienced activation of this eclipse new beginning already at the start of this year while full physical manifestation of the same will pan out during the June eclipse. Mars right now dares us to do the right thing before we enter the physical manifestation period. With Neptune its helping us put the inspiration, a collective goal, some faith behind our actions and making sure what we go after has the right purpose behind it. Neptune dissolves social, political, religious and personal boundaries that block our collective growth and block birth of a new societal ideal. It teaches us to have faith in the unknown, love unconditionally, allow barriers to disintegrate and act out of a place of inspiration to contribute to the society versus for ego gratification. It undermines success without service to collective, nothing is done fully for altruistic purpose but Neptune demands our motivations aren’t inspired by pure ego boost or societal pressures. A very creative aspect makes us sensitive to collective needs & styles so what we create if made from a place of channeling or self transcendence is bound to touch others and serve others.

Let’s put meat on the bones now by sign - check as always your rising as key indicator and if possible sun & moon for a fuller picture.

♓️ Pisces : 𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞, 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲, 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠

[Archive of Previous Posts](http://emailabuddy.com/blog/)

Pisces the June 2021 eclipse is a critical one for you, as it initiates a new phase in your “home” - psychological and physical, family and country of living. You might be looking to relocate, embellish your home, add a new member to your family. Aquire a property, sell an existing property, start a home based business. This is a fated new start which might have been seeded already in December / January but its full physical manifestation would be in June while right now you are laying down some ground work for it. An important family matter might need your attention.

All these changes are focusing on making you feel more secured and they are going to grow you even further psychologically. As you road to success right now is through finding that home within or outside, so you can stabilise the ground you stand on a bit, you might be very intent on having it certain way or in a certain place. You are taking care of your desires, your needs and of those you hold close as family but there might be something that blocks you from doing that. Its an internal conflict and a very potent one for you as it rocks your critical axis. This is normally driven by the fact that with Neptune you are trying to redefine who you and when we are in that moment with our boundaries not so solid, we tend to do too much for others and sometimes even forget what we want for ourselves. You can almost feel guilty for taking the smallest of the step of self care or taking care of your loved ones is coming in the way of your ability to pursue your life goals and path which are being redefined and elevated. You are an ideal, dreamy, sensitive being and those who need you flock around it but in that process very little is left for you, yourself. Mars is hell bent on getting you peace in any way possible but Neptune cannot stop thinking of everyone else and what they think and want of you. There is a conflict within.

There might be need to be direct with family - not confrontational but direct. They may not yet understand that you are not the same person anymore. Neptune has dissolved your old self image and old path. You and your life as they knew it, is changing. And any new change in home and family needs to reflect that. You may not clearly know where your life is going but you know for sure it isn’t going to the same old place or to same old patterns. There is more to you than meets the eye and you have seen it and you want to be nothing other than that. Your life path is more real, more spiritual, more elevated though less clear than ever before. Its out of your and your family’s comfort zone. Home life can either quash or grow this new individual identity of yours thats emerging - you would like it to support so this hurdle which we might have avoided before needs to be handled. Neptune always directs to use the path of love and compassion in such tough discussions. This could be yourself you need to have a discussion with - cause sometimes we know who we want to become but our own past comfort zone and regressive urges pull us back to old “home”.

What is safe and secure has to be redefined for you and yours. Your “home” needs to have colors of your new personality. Once you feel secure in this new home, you would feel more the rigour to go after your new unpredictable life path. Its not going to be dull thats for sure.

https://youtu.be/2VRYGgHrQdE

[3wisellamas]

Because there still aren't enough Deltarune theories: Fun Facts About Cards

So, I was thinking a lot about @pirenja's older post on Jevil and Seam as The Fool and The Magician, the first (or first and last, depending on who you ask) cards of the Tarot major arcana and which usually map to the Jokers in a standard playing card deck.  

There's also the MINOR arcana, though -- the plain numbers and suits that make up the rest of a Tarot deck, and look a LOT like a typical 52-card deck.  I knew about those, but didn't know those, so I got curious and spent a couple days looking into it, just for funsies.

So, uh...holy shit.  The card-based Darkners aren't just playing cards, they're TAROT cards.  The characters we know fit almost ridiculously well to their cards, and there were a couple parallels I found particularly interesting.  Allow me to infodump, and add in a few extra fun little things that also came up in some card research, and which might have some...interesting implications on the rest of Deltarune.  A lot of this is gonna come from Wikipedia, as well as this site.

Just a heads-up, this post is gonna include a lot of theories (some of which may or may not be pure crack) and will be LONG, and much of it will look like this:

...But in a fun way, I promise.  ~^

First, let's go over some REALLY brief info about some of the cards we've seen so far in Deltarune.  The ties between these guys and Tarot are pretty damn obvious, especially when you look at the four suits:

Diamonds:  In Tarot, their equivalent is Pentacles or Coins.  These are associated with wealth, business, and physical possessions.

Sounds a lot like the Rudinns and the King of Diamonds, right?  I mean, they're so obsessed with their treasure that they sold their beds to have more of it!

Hearts:  The Tarot equivalent is the Cups.  Associated with emotions and bettering oneself.  

Hathys are pretty big on emotion -- they're the ones you keep flirting with in encounters, after all, and the proceeds for Hathy's bake sale go towards their health.

Clubs:  The Tarot equivalent is the Wands.  This one I had to work a bit to figure out, but it seems to be more associated with social things, passion, and desire/drive.

Clover is definitely a social one, seeing as how they're throwing their birthday party in the castle when you arrive.  And they're also VERY passionate about three specific topics, which actually plays into pacifying them!

Spades:  Now for some fun.  In Tarot, these are Swords, and are most associated with...take a wild guess.  Ambition, power, violence, and the military.

Yep.  Shall we look a bit closer at the actual cards in the Spades suit, then?  

First off, the King of Spades/Swords.  The card is LITERALLY called The Warlord, and is associated with force and discipline, ruthlessness, intelligence, and sometimes coldness and abuse in a negative reading.  Pretty damn accurate to the King, I gotta say.  Not a lot of room for interpretation here.

The other Spade we know of, though?  A...little less clear-cut, but still works.  Lancer is the Jack of Spades, meaning his Tarot equivalent is the Page/Knave of Swords -- same card, just an older name -- which is indeed all about youth and energy, as well as learning and observing, and keeping cool in danger.  However, the card is also called The Spy, and also has a meaning of concealing oneself and keeping secrets.

Hm.  Some of that really sounds like Lancer, some...doesn't?  Perhaps our boy has an arc and some more character development ahead of him.  Or...I'll get back to this.  Because there is some interesting theory fuel here once I bring in another point.

Now, for a Spade we DON'T know yet, but that we know very well is coming:  The Queen.  The Queen of Swords is associated with intelligence, strategy, independence, and...repressed sadness and divorce?  Hm.

HM.  If the King of Spades is meant to be a Dark World mirror of Asgore, could the Queen end up being a dark mirror of Toriel, out in self-exile?  Time will tell.  And when we do finally meet the Queen in future chapters, she will very likely be one hell of a big deal, if the Tarot theme holds, so keep the card description in mind for that!

But, we can't stop at the Queen; we're missing a big, major detail.  In Tarot decks, and in fact in historical playing card decks in general, there are FOUR face cards of each suit, not just the three we see in a typical deck.  At the top are the King and Queen, obviously.  At the bottom is the Page or the Knave, as I said up there the equivalent of the modern Jack.  And the last one, between the Page and the Queen?  The Knight.

No, really.  The Knight is a CARD.  But, I'm gonna go further than that:  We already know someone, specifically a card person, in the Dark World who fits the description of the Knight of Swords/Spades, quite well in fact:

Associated with major, drastic changes -- pretty appropriate for the person who's been jailing kings and opening up dark fountains, huh?

Impulsive, and constantly takes actions without much planning beforehand.

Fanatical and single-minded, obsessively loyal to one thing and one thing only at a time.

Confident, to the point of arrogance.  Basically, obsessed with themselves.

Articulate, good with words, and a sweet-talker, able to get what they want through speech and charm alone.  Ironically, not often associated with direct action, and can mean cowardice.

Also, a bald-faced liar -- their whole thing is trickery and deceit.  They also keep a LOT of secrets, like the Page.

Worth noting, the Knight often replaces the Queen entirely in older decks, and is considered the card right under the King of Spades, as his main servant or advisor.

Notably, according to that Tarot site up there, they are heavily associated with major career changes and promotions.

You figured it out yet?

.

.

.

Oh yeah.  Worm knight.  

Let's go through some points with both Rouxls Kaard and that card description in mind, if you don't believe me.  

Uh, hello?  Confident, impulsive, acts without thinking, fanatical, self-centered?  The card description may as well be the guy's Wikia bio.

Articulate...well, he tries.  Can't fault him for that.  (yes you can)

Honestly, aside from that "God.  Damn it." moment, can you give me one instance in which his manner of speaking WASN'T overly flowery and fancy, to the point of ridiculousness?  That's, like, his most defining trait.

He's a coward, never actually facing you himself until you reach the castle, and instead preferring to vandalize puzzle solutions and throw minions at you.

He seriously butters you up during the entire second shop conversation, and in fact almost constantly from the moment K.Round is defeated for the final time -- he says he's always on the winning side, which at the time is you, and does his best to claim he never truly opposed you at all, that everything was a test, he just wants to help you, etc.  The guy even tries to BRIBE you at the very end if you went pacifist, offering Susie a plate of worms for letting him lie about his involvement in your adventure, to boost his own ego.  

Did I forget to mention he's pretty much got a lot of the Rudinns and Clover (and a lot of fandom it seems) charmed with his looks and manner of speaking, and wrapped around his finger as well?  Because that.

Throughout the game, Rouxls really is nothing more than a big talker and a big liar.  Most obviously, the first time you talk to him in his shop he says quite a bit, but does a COMPLETE 180 on ALL OF IT after he's defeated for the final time, suddenly going from praising the King to hating his guts and claiming to be undermining him, from mocking the Fun/$!? Squad to praising them and offering assistance, and from complaining about Lancer to admitting he cares about the kid quite a bit.  

Also, consider:  His "ultimate puzzle", which he suspiciously refused to show us...

Even if it's not explicitly pointed out as such, Rouxls is King Spade's second in command, the guy serving directly under him in the castle in the absence of the Queen (or any other castle staff besides the guards, for that matter).  In very old decks before the Queen was a thing, Knights are in between the Page/Jack and the King and are considered the King's advisor/right hand guy.

Knights also have a lot of very close connections to Pages, both in card games as well as history.  A page is literally a knight's very young (age 7-14) apprentice and servant, and stick close to them and learn from them -- similar to Rouxls' lesser dad/son relationship with Lancer!  (Also, a thought:  medieval knights would often carry lances, supplied by said page!)

During battle, the King calls the Knight "My Knight".  This might confirm that the Knight is indeed a member of his own court, the Knight of Spades, and not of another suit.  However, from the tone and some of the other things he says throughout the battle, it’s clear that King Spade actually owes allegiance to the Knight, rather than the other way around.  Possibly even some fondness for him, from that particular tone.  And...I'm not gonna beat around the bush on this.  King Spade is totally Rouxls' sugar daddy.  The King just up and fires everyone in his castle, and gives this random unqualified prettyboy the next-highest position after himself out of absolutely nowhere?  Yeah.  No.  Even incompetent kings don't just do that.  There's something really weird going on there, something about their relationship that screams there’s some shady business going on behind the scenes.  Though, potentially, one could also flip the script, seeing the new job as repayment for putting King Spade in power...

One final point, getting a bit away from the card again.  In the game, The Knight is supposed to have a close connection with the Dark Fountains, able to “pull them from the Earth” and manipulate their power to bring darkness or whatever, right?  When using the Card Castle fountain to go home, Kris and Susie teleport in a massive column of white light, that looks like this:

(Sorry, screenshotting that particular moment is tough...)

Look a little familiar?

Yep, I'm gonna go there.  The same goddamn teleport animation.  Nowhere else in the game is that particular animation used, even when it kinda should -- for instance, Jevil’s scythes also teleport in vertical columns of light, but those look entirely different!

There's some other things about Rouxls that actually make me super suspicious of the guy, but one that does so even more now, that I really should bring up if I'm claiming him to be The Knight:  Remember that last battle against K.Round?  When Rouxls brings out his "Control Crowne"?  That lets him control anything “disc-shaped”, and (if we take Ralsei's word for it) looks incredibly painful?  

...What the actual living FUCK??!  Seriously, is no one else IMMENSELY ALARMED by the fact that not only is this crown a thing that exists, but for some goddamn reason it just happens to be in the puzzle guy's possession??

I'm bringing that point up for a pretty big reason, though:  Another name for the Diamonds/Pentacles suit is DISKS.  If Rouxls wasn't just bluffing (like he does on everything else, admittedly), there's a good chance he might be able to use that crown on Diamond cards as well.

And Rouxls DEFINITELY has a lot of interesting connections to Diamonds himself, beyond that.  Rudinns generally seem to be pretty enamored with the guy, and the whole suit is all about money and even represent the Merchant, or if you will, the shopkeeper class.  (And if you ask him why he’s selling things to you, he will admit he's raising money, for...some reason.)  In a four-color deck, Diamonds are usually represented by the color blue instead of red.  Also, Diamonds/Pentacles represent the Earth element, which is where one would find worms and insects.  So, he may very well have a close connection to Diamonds, as well as being the Knight of Spades...

I'll get back to that one as well, though, because there's another point I wanna bring into this whole card mess that might complicate things.  Because while researching, I found a very, very interesting little bit of trivia about the Joker card...

Second half of this post and a LOT more fun cracktheories under the cut.  Yep, you heard me, I'm still only halfway done here!

So.  The Jokers, Fool and Magician, former members of the card court, before...something went wrong.  You know how Jevil (and presumably Seam, as his only equal) can apparently do anything?  Well, while researching Tarot, I also randomly looked into the Jokers and their functions in a couple of other card games, the biggest being Spades, because why not.

In Spades, the Joker card can attach itself to any non-Spade card in the deck to make it count as the equivalent Spade, though still inferior to the real Spade card.  In other words, Jokers can turn other cards into Spades.

No, I'm serious.  Look for yourself.

This idea I’m mostly just having some fun with here, but if this little bit of trivia happens to come into play in the next few Deltarune chapters, it might have some SERIOUS implications on what we know about the Spades court.  In particular, it means we might not be able to take...really, any of the Spades characters we meet at face value (pun not intended, but appropriate).

But you know what?  I think we should take a closer look at the Spades we already know, and see if that might already be the case.  

The King fits his card description very well, and we actually see the other three kings locked up in a cage, so none of them could have been converted into the King of Spades.  So, we can pretty much confirm he's who we think.

But, then there's Lancer.  So far, he's the only Jack we've seen -- I know the card characters were originally based on a set of playing card designs by @kanotynes, and that the Jacks in that deck included not only Lancer but also the various minor enemies we see:  Rudinn, Hathy, and Clover.  But, in the game, those three don't seem to have any royal ties at all, definitely not as princes!  So, I think we can confirm that they're not actually the Jacks of other suits in Deltarune.

So, I'm gonna go back to my first Tarot loose end -- the Page of Spades/Swords, Lancer.  Remember how I pointed out some pieces of the card's description didn't fully match the kid?  The secrets, the concealing of one's true nature?

What if Lancer's not the Jack of Spades at all, but rather another Jack that was converted into a Spade by one of the Jokers for whatever reason?  Let's take a quick look at the other Pages, and see if one fits Lancer a bit more, shall we?

The Page of Hearts/Cups:  A "sweet-natured child", immature, creative, naive, a bad childhood, and self-centeredness.  Not a bad fit for Lancer, gotta admit!

The Page of Diamonds/Pentacles:  Planning for and seizing future success and opportunities, loyalty, sometimes associated with fruit trees and harvests (”Delicious little apple” / "Sweet little peach"?), and most importantly, a student, constantly learning just like the Page of Swords.  Also not a bad fit, though maybe a little less than the Page of Cups.

Now for the really fun one.  The Page of Clubs/Wands:  Inspiration, optimism, also creativity and making plans, rushing into things without thinking (appropriate for the Knight's charge...), "a bit of a cheeky charmer or lovable rogue", impatience, laziness, and a big emphasis on "losing yourself".  Also, did I mention that Wands represent the fire element?

So, really all three other Pages have elements that fit this kid in different ways, but some of the things about that Page of Clubs are...striking, to say the least.  This possibility might be worth keeping in mind when chapter 2 ever gets released!

Now, then, there's also another Spade we know, even if unconfirmed, with no known equivalents in other suits to rule out.  Could Rouxls also have been another suit, and got converted into the Knight of Spades?  

Remember all those weird connections to the Diamonds suit I pointed out?  Well, let's talk about the Knight of Diamonds -- A Red Knight, if you will!

"A young man who is dark of complexion and features."  This is an actual quote from Wikipedia. 

Defensive -- focus on protecting home and family.

Hard worker, determined, stubborn, finishing what you start.

All about questioning one's work or home life, or where they stand on an issue.

An animal lover.

The "wish card", about making your wishes and dreams come true, via perseverance and ambition.

Also, a negative interpretation is a loser or laziness, expecting results but not putting in the effort.  

Not a PERFECT fit, but still an interesting comparison, no?  Especially those things about fulfilling your wish, but failing by not putting in the effort required, kinda like how Rouxls is quite proud of becoming the high-ranking and privileged "Duke of Puzzles", but doesn’t actually put together anything other than simple block-pushing puzzles.  Another thought that comes up:  The control crown(e).  If Rouxls was originally a high-ranking Diamond/Disk suit, that fucking thing suddenly makes WAY more sense.  (Also, it would make all the Blue Diamond comparisons really funny in hindsight.  Just saying.)

Yeah, I know, claiming that Rouxls is the Knight is a big enough deal, and this extra cracktheory about him being a Knight who switched suits  is one even I'm admitting it’s crazy, and over-analyzing is just what I do.  Who knows if all or any of this will still be plausible by chapter 2.  However, worth noting:  If Rouxls was originally another suit, and got converted into the "Lesser” Knight of Spades/Swords by one of the Jokers, then there is very likely ANOTHER Knight of Spades/Swords out there, a much more powerful one.  Hm...

...Naaaah.  Too obvious. And on the same note, if my cracktheory about Lancer being the “lesser” Jack of Spades up there ends up actually being somewhat accurate, then there's also an original one out there somewhere...

...Maybe?  If you look at that description up there again, it actually seems to fit Ralsei even better than it fits Lancer -- the things about concealing one's true nature, keeping secrets, intelligence, and analysis suddenly become quite fitting.  And didn't Ralsei's original concept art include a reversed spade instead of a heart on the front of his robe?

So, if these are the case, what card is Susie?  I'm...admittedly not sure.  ^^;  I bet someone else can find a card that fits her though, so I'll leave that one open.

Okay, okay, I'm done with the wild theories now.  Lastly, I just wanna mention a couple of other interesting, weird card things I found out while researching.  Won't go as in-depth with these, but including them because why not:

A lot of people have been theorizing about the idea of Darkners bleeding like humans, and unlike monsters.  What if I told you that "bleeding" is an actual card term?  When you bleed your cards, you're accidentally exposing your hand to other players out of turn.

Remember when Rouxls called the party "mine amigose"?  Kind of an odd line, especially coming from him, but it was actually another card game reference!  Also from Spades is the term "Three amigos":  A nickname for the Ace, Queen, and King of Spades.  Interestingly, the Ace of Swords is all about cutting through lies and exposing the truth.  (Maybe that could be a card for Susie in future chapters?)

Hell, there’s just a LOT of card references thrown all over the place.  A cute one is when Jevil says “piip piip” during his fight -- like the dots on dice, the individual symbols on number cards are called pips.

Want another fun Tarot card meaning?  Take a good look at the Nine of Swords.  It's generally considered the worst card you could get, even in a mostly positive reading -- It's literally called The Nightmare, and represents fear, stress, being overwhelmed, grief, doubts, cruelty, etc.  Basically, if it's bad, it's in this card, up to and including a complete breakdown.  Now, recall another line that seems totally benign at first, courtesy of Jevil:  "From now, a nightmare will awaken in your hearts.  In the shadow of the Knight's hand..."  If I were y'all, I'd make damn sure to WATCH THIS CARD.

Also, "The Knight's hand"...of cards, perhaps?  :P  Okay, bad joke.  

There's sometimes three Jokers in a deck -- a white one in addition to black and red.  Just sayin'.  Might wanna also keep your eyes open for a third Joker in chapter 2, maybe chilling out with the Queen wherever she is? 

[jodyedgarus]

How Shoddy Statistics Found A Home In Sports Research

Graphics by Ella Koeze

At first blush, the studies look reasonable enough. Low-intensity stretching seems to reduce muscle soreness. Beta-alanine supplements may boost performance in water polo players. Isokinetic strength training could improve swing kinematics in golfers. Foam rollers can reduce muscle soreness after exercise.

The problem: All of these studies shared a statistical analysis method unique to sports science. And that method is severely flawed.

The method is called magnitude-based inference, or MBI. Its creator, Will Hopkins, is a New Zealand exercise physiologist with decades of experience — experience that he has harnessed to push his methodology into the sports science mainstream. The methodology allows researchers to find effects more easily compared with traditional statistics, but the way in which it is conducted undermines the credibility of these results. That MBI has persisted as long as it has points to some of science’s vulnerabilities — and to how science can correct itself.

A commentary touting MBI that was published despite reviewers’ objections has been cited more than 2,500 times.

MBI was created to address an important problem. Science is hard, and sports science is particularly so. If you want to study, say, whether a sports drink or training method can improve athletic performance, you have to recruit a bunch of volunteers and convince them to come into the lab for a battery of time- and energy-intensive tests. These studies require engaged and, in many cases, highly fit athletes who are willing to disrupt their lives and normal training schedules to take part. As a result, it’s not unusual for a treatment to be tested on fewer than 10 people. Those small samples make it extremely difficult to distinguish the signal from the noise and even harder to detect the kind of small benefits that in sport could mean the difference between a gold medal and no medal at all.

Hopkins’s workaround for all of this, MBI, has no sound theoretical basis. It is an amalgam of two statistical approaches — frequentist and Bayesian — and relies on opaque formulas embedded in Excel spreadsheets1 into which researchers can input their data. The spreadsheets then calculate whether an observed effect is likely to be beneficial, trivial or harmful and use statistical calculations such as confidence intervals and effect sizes to produce probabilistic statements about a set of results.

In doing so, those spreadsheets often find effects where traditional statistical methods don’t. Hopkins views this as a benefit because it means that more studies turn up positive findings worth publishing. But others see it as a threat to sports science’s integrity because it increases the chances that those findings aren’t real.

A 2016 paper by Hopkins and collaborator Alan Batterham makes the case that MBI is superior to the standard statistical methods used in the field. But I’ve run it by about a half-dozen statisticians, and each has dismissed the pairs’ conclusions and the MBI method as invalid. “It’s basically a math trick that bears no relationship to the real world,” said Andrew Vickers, a statistician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. “It gives the appearance of mathematical rigor,” he said, by inappropriately combining two forms of statistical analysis using a mathematical oversimplification.

When I sent the paper to Kristin Sainani, a statistician at Stanford University, she got so riled up that she wrote a paper in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise (MSSE) outlining the problems with MBI. Sainani ran simulations showing that what MBI really does is lower the standard of evidence and increase the false positive rate. She details how this works in a 50-minute video; the chart below shows how these flaws play out in practice.

To highlight Sainani’s findings, MSSE commissioned an accompanying editorial,2 written by biostatistician Doug Everett, that said MBI is flawed and should be abandoned. Hopkins and his colleagues have yet to provide a sound theoretical basis for MBI, Everett told me. “I almost get the sense that this is a cult. The method has a loyal following in the sports and exercise science community, but that’s the only place that’s adopted it. The fact that it’s not accepted by the wider statistics community means something.”

How did this problematic method take hold among the sports science research community? In a perfect world, science would proceed as a dispassionate enterprise, marching toward truth and more concerned with what is right than with who is offering the theories. But scientists are human, and their passions, egos, loyalties and biases inevitably shape the way they do their work. The history of MBI demonstrates how forceful personalities with alluring ideas can muscle their way onto the stage.

The first explanation of MBI in the scientific literature came in a 2006 commentary that Hopkins and Batterham published in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance. Two years later, it was rebutted in the same journal, when two statisticians said MBI “lacks a proper theoretical foundation” within the common, frequentist approach to statistics.

But Batterham and Hopkins were back in the late 2000s, when editors at Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise (the flagship journal of the American College of Sports Medicine) invited them and two others to create a set of statistical guidelines for the journal. The guidelines recommended MBI (among other things), but the nine peer reviewers failed to reach a unanimous decision to accept the guidelines. Andrew Young, then editor in chief of MSSE, told me that their concerns weren’t only about MBI — some reviewers “felt the recommendations were too rigid and would be interpreted as rules for authors” — but “all reviewers expressed some concerns that MBI was controversial and not yet accepted by mainstream statistical folks.”

Young published the group’s guidelines as an invited commentary with an editor’s note disclosing that although most of the reviewers recommended publication of the article, “there remain several specific aspects of the discussion on which authors and reviewers strongly disagreed.” (In fact, three reviewers objected to publishing them at all.)3

“Will is a very enthusiastic man. He’s semi-retired and a lot older than most of the people he’s dealing with.”

Hopkins and Batterham continued to press their case from there. After Australian statisticians Alan Welsh and Emma Knight published an analysis of MBI in MSSE in 2014 concluding that the method was invalid and should not be used, Hopkins and Batterham responded with a post at Sportsci.org,4 “Magnitude-Based Inference Under Attack.” They then wrote a paper contending that “MBI is a trustworthy, nuanced alternative” to the standard method of statistical analysis, null-hypothesis significance testing. That paper was rejected by MSSE. (“I put it down to two things,” Hopkins told me of MBI critics. “Just plain ignorance and stupidity.”) Undeterred, Hopkins submitted it to Sports Science and said he “groomed” potential peer reviewers in advance by contacting them and encouraging them to “give it an honest appraisal.” The journal published it in 2016.

Which brings us to the last year of drama, which has featured a preprint on SportRxiv criticizing MBI, Sainani’s paper and more responses from Batterham and Hopkins, who dispute Sainani’s calculations and conclusions in a response at Sportsci.org titled “The Vindication of Magnitude-Based Inference.”5

Has all this back and forth given you whiplash? The papers themselves probably won’t help. They’re mostly technical and difficult to follow without a deep understanding of statistics. And like researchers in many other fields, most sports scientists don’t receive extensive training in stats and may not have the background to fully assess the arguments getting tossed around here. Which means the debate largely turns on tribalism. Whom are you going to believe? A bunch of statisticians from outside the field, or a well-established giant from within it?

For a while, Hopkins seemed to have the upper hand. That 2009 MSSE commentary touting MBI that was published despite reviewers’ objections has been cited more than 2,500 times, and many papers have used it as evidence for the MBI approach. Hopkins gives MBI seminars, and Victoria University offers an Applied Sports Statistics unit developed by Hopkins that has been endorsed by the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences and Exercise & Sports Science Australia.

“Will is a very enthusiastic man. He’s semi-retired and a lot older than most of the people he’s dealing with,” Knight said. She wrote her critique of MBI after becoming frustrated with researchers at the Australian Institute of Sport (where she worked at the time) coming to her with MBI spreadsheets. “They all very much believed in it, but nobody could explain it.”

These researchers believed in the spreadsheets because they believed in Hopkins — a respected physiologist who speaks with great confidence. He sells his method by highlighting the weaknesses of p-values and then promising that MBI can direct them to the things that really matter. “If you have very small sample sizes, it’s almost impossible to find statistical significance, but that doesn’t mean the effect isn’t there,” said Eric Drinkwater, a sports scientist at Deakin University in Australia who studied for his Ph.D. under Hopkins. “Will taught me about a better way,” he said. “It’s not about finding statistical significance — it’s about the magnitude of the change and is the effect a meaningful result.” (Drinkwater also said he is “prepared to accept that this is a controversial issue” — and perhaps will go with traditional measures such as confidence limits and effect sizes rather than using MBI.)

It’s easy to see MBI’s appeal beyond Hopkins, too. It promises to do the impossible: detect small effects in small sample sizes. Hopkins points to legitimate discussions about the limits of null-hypothesis significance testing as evidence that MBI is better. But this selling point is a sleight of hand. The fundamental problem it’s trying to tackle — gleaning meaningful information from studies with noisy and limited data sets — can’t be solved with new statistics. Although MBI does appear to extract more information from tiny studies, it does this by lowering the standard of evidence.

That’s not a healthy way to do science, Everett said. “Don’t you want it to be right? To call this ‘gaming the system’ is harsh, but that’s almost what it seems like.”

Sainani wonders, what’s the point? “Does just meeting a criteria such as ‘there’s some chance this thing works’ represent a standard we ever want to be using in science? Why do a study at all if this is the bar?”

Even without statistical issues, sports science faces a reliability problem. A 2017 paper published in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance pointed to inadequate validation that surrogate outcomes really reflect what they’re meant to measure, a dearth of longitudinal and replication studies, the limited reporting of null or trivial results, and insufficient scientific transparency as other problems threatening the field’s reliability and validity.

All the back-and-forth arguments about error rate calculations distract from even more important issues, said Andrew Gelman, a statistician at Columbia University who said he agrees with Sainani that the paper claiming MBI’s validity “does not make sense.” “Scientists should be spending more time collecting good data and reporting their raw results for all to see and less time trying to come up with methods for extracting a spurious certainty out of noisy data.” To do that, sports scientists could work collectively to pool their resources, as psychology researchers have done, or find some other way to increase their sample sizes.

Until they do that, they will be engaged in an impossible task. There’s only so much information you can glean from a tiny sample.

from News About Sports https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-shoddy-statistics-found-a-home-in-sports-research/

[angoracactus]

The Cat and The Beans

I’ve always been a secretive person, even as a kid. I don’t often let people in to see my emotions and thoughts. Part of this comes down to personality. I also think part of it came from the way I was raised. Whatever the cause, the effect has been that I keep secrets sometimes. This can create problems, like bottling things up instead of getting them out in the open and dealing with them. Or it can have repercussions on trust. When people realize you’ve been keeping a secret, it hurts, because they feel like you don’t trust them. It can also undermine their trust of you, as they begin to ask themselves what else you’re hiding.

I’ve been keeping a secret. It’s not a very big secret, but it’s big enough that after telling my sister about it, she has developed some anger toward me. I understand that completely, and I don’t blame her. I would feel the same way if she’d kept the same kind of secret from me. 

My reasons for keeping the secret are probably not very good, but the main reason has been the absurdity of it. The situation in question is pretty ridiculous, and that’s made it really easy for me to feel justified in keeping it to myself.  

At the end of last December, over the break for the holidays, my cousin was over at my house. For a few months she had been nagging me to find a boyfriend and start dating. It became a running joked with us. That day, she had the idea to make me an online dating profile. I reluctantly agreed, as a joke, and we put together a goofy bio and uploaded a photo onto Christian Mingle. We laughed about it and looked through the matches that popped up. Right away I received a couple messages, one from a 40-something year old man and another from a 19-year-old boy. You can create an account for free, but they make you pay to use any features. We couldn’t even read the messages I got without paying. Obviously we weren’t going to do that, which was disappointing for her, but a relief for me! The unsuitable ages of the message senders creeped my out, so I disabled the account and that was that.

A day or so passed, but my curiosity had been sparked, and I began to think, “I wonder what it’s really like on other dating sites?” So I googled and found a list of the features you can access with free accounts on all the various sites. OkCupid had a lot for free, so I created an account, expecting to delete it within a few days after I’d explored it a little. Since I wasn’t seriously trying to date anyone, when I filled out the bio wrote it pretty tongue-in-cheek. On OkCupid they have questions that you answer about yourself and about the kind of person you’re looking for. They’re a bit addicting, and I had a lot of fun answering the questions and adding funny notes to my answers. I actually learned some things about myself. I also realized things about what really matters to me in a potential partner. 

So after a while, I decided to upload a photo. I guess this is when I started to think, “Well as long as I’m here...” My attitude was pretty “Why not?” Even before I put a photo, I’d gotten a few messages. Obviously, even if you’re not a bombshell, you get more messages with a photo. Overall, I didn’t get a ton, which would have hurt my ego if I had actually cared. Well... ok maybe it hurt my ego a tiny bit, haha. 

Anyway, none of the messages were too creepy. Most were kinda cheesy. Some were pretty funny. Looking at profiles felt really weird. It’s just too easy to judge people based on their looks, especially when they don’t say much in their bio. It was also really weird to imagine them as real men, living real lives, in real life. I mean, all social media is a filtered, glamorized, or abridged version of our real personal lives. But I feel like online dating is a form of social media that really vividly shows the conflict between what we want people to think about us, and who we really are. There are a lot of implications, in what you say, as well as what you don’t say. Online dating feels like watching a singer lip-syncing to a track. 

There are algorithms on OkCupid that calculate a percentage of compatibility between you and another person, based on the questions you answer about yourself and what you’re looking for. It was interesting to look at the profiles of dudes I had a high percentage match with and think about whether they seemed to really be the kind of person I could imagine dating. Sometimes they were, sometimes not. Sometimes guys with lower matches had profiles I liked better, but one or two things, like religion/faith or smoking habits, made us incompatible. It was pretty thought-provoking. As a writer, it was also interesting to see all the different kinds of men and the unique personalities and how they presented themselves. It gave me a lot of ideas for future stories and poems. 

The way the site is set up, there are “visits,” “likes,” and “messages.” You can see a list of everyone who “visits” your profile. You get a notification when someone clicks the star and “likes” you, but you can’t see who it is unless A) you pay for a premium account, or B) you happen to click their star and “like” them too. When you both “like” one another, you are “mutual likes.” I guess you’re “in like” with them, haha. The star is available to click either on someone’s photo on the main page, or on someone’s profile. 

I found it surprising and strange that I got a lot more likes than visits, probably three or four times as many. I’m guessing a lot of dudes just scroll through the list of women and star them all, to increase their chances of getting a mutual like. That’s kinda depressing... Those poor, desperate little dudes.

I set my preferences to filter matches to “nearby,” so when I scrolled through the main page I only saw men within a radius around my city. However, if someone else had their filter set to allow matches from “anywhere,” I would show up in their feed of potential matches. I got some visits and messages from men in other states or other countries. One guy lived in Sweden. Several men from Morocco and other places in Northern Africa messaged me. I think we got high matches because they were muslims, which was kind of funny, and also weird. 

It honestly was all pretty weird. I did reply to a few messages for fun, only if they had an interesting bio, or a funny leading line. 

Then... there was this guy...

He visited my profile first. He was from Ohio. We had a really high match percentage, like 98% or 99%. I didn’t have many matches that high. So, I visited his profile, and he seemed interesting, and he was kinda cute.

At this point I’d only been on the site for a few days, and I didn’t understand the whole star/like thing, so I didn’t do anything. Then he visited me back, and we went back and forth a few times, haha, before I figured it out and clicked the star on him. The notification popped up that we had a mutual like... That was scary, haha. Overall I clicked the star to “like” four or five profiles, but he was the only mutual like. 

(just for the record, I got hundreds of “likes.” I think the number was over 300 or 400 before I deleted my account after a month or two. I will admit, it boosted the ego, haha, even though I knew they were mostly from guys just going through and clicking the star on every chick on the site.) 

Anyways, this guy. He messaged me after that. And we talked. And it was really scary and funny and interesting. Part of me was excited by how cool he was, but part of me figured this was just for fun, because of how unlikely it was that we’d ever meet, living states away. After a while he gave me his Instagram account and I followed him. Later we messaged through the Instagram messages. Then we added one another on Facebook and we talked on there. Now we’ve been talking for 6 months, which is kinda weird... well, really weird. 

At first, I didn’t tell anyone in my life that I was using a dating site, because it was embarrassing, and I wasn’t taking it seriously at all. Then I didn’t tell anyone I was talking to someone I’d met on a dating site, because it was embarrassing, and I figured it was likely to fizzle out before we ever met in person. Then I didn’t tell anyone that I’d been talking to someone for half-a-dozen months, because it was embarrassing, and since we haven’t met in person yet, I still felt a little unsure about it, and I wanted to wait until I felt more confident before I had to deal with the drama of people––specifically my mom––overreacting about it. 

But then he made me tell my sister. 

The way it happened was, in the beginning of April, he and I were talking and joking on Facebook, and as a joke he “liked” a couple of my Facebook photos. However, they weren’t my photos. They were photos posted by my sister, and I was just tagged in them. It happened at 3am, but within seconds my sister texted me a screenshot of the notification she’d gotten, and then she texted “who?” 

I panicked. I didn’t feel ready to tell her about him, because of the reasons stated previously, so I told a white lie. I told her that he was a friend from Instagram. This implied that A) he and I were just friends, and B) that we had met on Instagram. The first was not completely true, and the second was definitely not true. I misled her, and I immediately felt guilty about that, and in the back of my mind it haunted me for three months. I also chose not to bring it up to him, because that would have been even more awkward, and I didn’t want him to feel weird about it.

Fast forward to the end of June. He and I had gotten to know one another a lot more. One day, I was using the Facebook messenger app, and we were talking and joking, and the subject of telling people about one another comes up. I wound up telling him the story about the photos and the likes and my sister. It’s a pretty funny story, and I tried playing up the humor because I didn’t want to be too awkward about it. I also told him that I was ashamed that I hadn’t told my sister the truth.  

The next day, he and I talked a little more, and again I used messenger. He was being goofy, but a little strange. I figured he was just in a weird goofy mood. Then that night, I texted my sister about something, and she replied to my text, and then texted, “Who the poop is B____ P____?! lol” 

I knew something must have prompted this. I got onto Facebook and I had several notifications. After I told him the story the day before, he had gone and liked a few of my sister’s photos I was tagged in. Then he’d liked some more that day. 

I knew what he was trying to do, but I was freaking out a little bit. I messaged him, “I don’t know what to tell her,” and he messaged back “Just do.” So, I texted her an abbreviated explanation, and apologized. She said she read my texts after waking up from a nap and she thought it was a dream, hahaha! I was very embarrassed, but it was also a relief. 

So, now she knows, and she’s in on the secret.