#sample variance

[butchshevik]

not to generalize but there's a very specific type of really loud and aggressive middle aged usually-white woman who collects funko pops and is married to an ex-military guy & never shuts up about his duty tours and is an Adult Disney Enjoyer who likes the live action remakes and who obviously votes deep red that i did not think I would have to encounter, much less share a coffee pot with, so often in nonprofit social service work and yet.

[wjbs-bonkle-au]

Secondary-element palettes!

Please note that these are more to show the variance that can be achieved within the canon palette limitations (kinda, but also I added a third set of colours for each)

The first two sets of colours for each element are based on the canon colours, while the third is a bonus tertiary colour and the final single-row one is eyes. Left are sampled from Studio's colour-icons while right are sampled from a render of some 1x2 tiles in those colours (which means they might not be accurate to how they'd look on a more complex build).

List of all Studio colours below, with ones from custom packs (specifically the 8/10 Colourpack) in italics and metallic/pearl colours in bold.

Sonics:

Set 1 (light grey)

Very Light Grey

Light Grey

True Grey

Set 2 (dark grey/black)

Dark Grey

Black

True Black

Set 3 (blue/medium grey)

Smooth Metal Blue

Smooth Flat Silver

Bionicle Silver

Eyes:

Trans-Glow Water Blue

Gravity:

Set 1 (purple)

Magenta

Lilac

Dark Purple

Set 2 (black)

Black

True Black

Metallic Black

Set 3 (blue)

Medium Violet

Blue

Blue-Violet

Eyes:

Trans-Glow Purple

Plasma:

Set 1 (white)

White

Very Light Grey

True White

Set 2 (orange)

Orange

Neon Orange

Reddish Orange

Set 3 (pink)

Light Purple

Flamingo Pink

Coral

Eyes:

Trans-Glow Dark Pink

Magnetism:

Set 1 (Jovan's colour-scheme except with no white)

Black

Dark Blue

Smooth Titanium

Set 2 (white/light grey)

Light Grey

White

True White

Set 3 (lime-green)

Light Lime

Lime

Medium Lime

Eyes:

Trans-Glow Yellowish-Green

Plantlife:

Set 1 (green)

Dark Green

Bright Green

Olive Green

Set 2 (blue)

Dark Blue

Dark Azure

Sky Blue

Set 3 (brown)

Dark Brown

Medium Brown

Medium Nougat

Eyes:

Trans-Glow Bluish-Green

Lightning:

Set 1 (blue)

Medium Azure

True Cyan

Blue

Set 2 (white)

White

True White

SK-White

Set 3 (yellow)

True Yellow

Light Yellow

Yellow

Eyes:

Trans-Glow Yellow

Iron:

Set 1 (orange)

Reddish Orange

Dark Orange

Fabuland Red

Set 2 (metals)

Smooth Titanium

Metallic Gold

Metallic Copper

Set 3 (dark grey)

Dark Grey

Dark Bluish Grey

SK-Dark Grey

Eyes:

Trans-Glow Reddish-Orange

Psionics:

Set 1 (blue)

Dark Blue

Blue-Violet

Violet

Set 2 (gold)

Metallic Gold

Smooth Pearl Gold

Smooth Refined Dark Gold

Set 3 (purple)

Lilac

Dark Purple

Sand Purple

Eyes:

Trans-Glow Medium Blue

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Hello! Just found your blog and I love how you explain yourself here :] Also, your oc is so cute 😭

I'm here for some advice, since I'm still learning about the lore (started playing some months ago). I was thinking of making an oc who's a half fae, and I was thinking of the age thing similar to how Marcille from Dunmeshi ages (she's a half elf). But I didn't know Sebek was a half fae... And I read your post about him and his aging process, and he seems to age pretty similarly to humans...

So I was thinking: do you think that's a "All Half Faes age like this" thing, or could it depend on the type of fae one of the parents is? Basically I want to know if I could still make him age like my original concept or if I'd have to change it HAHDHSBABD

(my other idea is to just make him a full fae, since he'd also be a 3rd year I could just make him the exact same age as Malleus... but I'm still not sure, it doesn't convince me 😵‍💫 Do all faes age in the same way? Could he be "younger" than Malleus in fae years but still be in the same maturity/age range in human years? Idk if you have any info on that 😭 sorry if these are difficult questions! You just seem to know much more about it than I do and idk who to ask 😭😭😭)

[Referencing this post!]

Hello and thank you very much!! 🙇‍♀️

This may not be what you’re looking for, but I don’t think we can conclude one way or another right now. We just don’t have enough information; Sebek is the only half fae-half human character we know of in detail, and 1 is not a good sample size to draw our answers from.

A few other half-fae we’re aware of are Sebek’s older brother and sister, which we know next to nothing about. The older brother is a graduate of NRC, but we don’t have a value for how long ago this was (or even what Big Bro Zigvolt is like personality-wise) so this can’t be used as a reliable metric for how they physically age or emotionally mature.

We know there is life span variance among fae themselves based on the type they are. Whatever kind of fae Lilia is (it has yet to be entirely specified but I think he’s a bat fae?) can up up to 1000 years old. For dragon fae like Malleus, 1000 is considered the age of adulthood (so roughly 18ish for humans) and can live much, much longer. It’s not stated what the maximum age for Sebek’s kind (theorized to be crocodile) is, but we know it must be 500+ since his grandfather Baur was in his prime (as an adult) in the war era of ~500 years ago and is still alive but retired today. Again though, we can’t be sure how this variance would factor into the lifespan of a human-fae child.

The current lore seems to suggest that Sebek and Silver aged similarly, at least as young children. They say that the other boy was one of the few close to their age in Briar Valley (most others are long-lived fae), and they share many childhood memories. That’s the only “evidence” I have of Sebek aging like a normal human. Even then, we cannot be entirely sure since it’s possible Sebek just stops physically aging once he hits a certain point.

It’s also difficult for us to gauge how long-lived races age compared to others. Like, did Malleus age like a normal human up until a certain point and then his physical appearance plateaued at an older adolescent form??? Malleus looks like an older teenager/young adult even though he’s still “a child” by dragon fae standards. Then we have Lilia, who looks the same at 200 and at almost 700… but he looks way younger than Malleus. It’s implied that Lilia is getting up there in age but doesn’t appear elderly at all. Is that just their individual differences or is that the result of their species’ traits?? Again, we don’t know because we know so few fae to compare with.

We also don’t know for sure how this aging impacts their mental and emotional maturity. Currently, Lilia is nearing 700 and Malleus is said to be 178 years of age; the maturity between those two is significant, but that’s probably because being 200 is considered “still a child” for dragon fae (500 is adolescence, so ~13ish?). The gap is too wide for us to discern anything about their development in the time between childhood and adulthood. It’s can also be hard to discern what is “immature” and what is general fae mischief or individual traits, as both Malleus and Lilia can be pranksters but Sebek isn’t.

For now, I’m personally running with the idea that half fae-half human individuals have regular life expectancies until new lore is introduced which disproves it. I’m not going to draw any conclusions about the fae aging or development process, since that’s also left vague.

If you’re making an OC, I don’t think you need to really sweat the details 😅 People bend canon lore all the time for fun, so…

[killerbananas]

Expressions

A moment with Jean on the couch.

🔞 mdni | masterlist | 1,044 wc | afab!reader x Jean

Warnings: smut; subliminal breeding kink, come play, creampie, oral, cockwarming, biting, little rougher, adventurous positioning, softer stuff overall

AN: Repost from my old account.

You’ve been together years at this point, but it’s still a special kind of show to watch the natural honesty you see in Jean’s face. How he’d raise his brows in alarm when he realized he left the stove on, when a massive grin stole his features after you agreed to be together; it never fails to intrigue and amuse you.

His latest expression is of particular interest because you can see his thighs start to fidget restlessly and a telling bulge beginning to tent the soft material of his shorts. Even his lower abdominal muscles are beginning to twitch, showcased by his lack of apparel. Something is brewing in that carnal lizard brain.

It’s just hard to figure out what. Sure, your shorts are a little raised up while you’re sitting pretty on the couch knitting that pair of baby booties for your friend–

You check where his eyes rake over your body, directionality often readily discernible at such a short distance. He makes circuits drifting from up your legs to your chest a few times, but he keeps pausing in one area more than the others–

“Hey, beautiful. What are you making there?”

You explain. “I’ve been dying to polish up my knitting skills again too.”

You laugh and enjoy the communal mirth when he tells you he has something better you could polish. But it is not the exuberant ringing of your laughter leaving your lips when his hands grab your ankles and pull you swiftly towards him. No, it is an embarrassing high-pitched “Jean!” that steals itself from you when he manages to drag you, legs spread, to lock around his hips.

He knows exactly where his cockhead is hitting, even buried under both your layers of clothing, and he means to grind into your sensitive clit every time he can manage while still whispering his sinful soul in your ear while his hands map out cartographic marvels with expertly exploring tools. The way you’re straddled across his lap means getting to feel his muscle-dense thighs move with bracing strength. He knows just the right amount of pressure required to curl your toes.

The variance as he exerts drives your pulse to your neck where he’s decided to nibble tender nips, reddening the thinner tissue. It hits you suddenly that it’s only a few minutes in and you’re aroused enough that Jean–

“Look at how wet you are, babe.”

“Stop teasing me. It’s your fault.”

“Oh, really? I think it’s hot to see you so turned on, you can’t even hide it from me. Let me clean up my mess.”

And another indecent squeak of his name leaves you when he roughly tugs everything off to bare you to him, handling your legs…

“Up on your hands.”

…right over his shoulders, raising your torso parallel to his lap and causing your arms to tremble, gripping his legs to try to keep balance. His mouth meets your cunt and the tremble triples, but Jean takes his warm palms and helps anchor you to his same shoulder with one and cups what he can span of your ass with the other. He wreaks blissful havoc through your folds, nips your clit sporadically, and leaves you semi-delirious.

You try to reorient yourself from the intense pleasure, enjoying the view of Jean smirking, lower half of his face painted with smatterings of blanche-opaque dewdrops amidst smooth strokes of your creamy essence. You lick a sample from his cheek and become overwhelmed again when he initiates a tongue-dominating kiss before you can swallow, craving your taste and closeness. He’s more of a multitasker when it counts than most would give him credit. He doesn’t falter in the languid makeout session, yet, next you know it, his throbbing head is breaching your pussy and filling you up to what feels like your ribs. You suck in his deep, masculine groan as it passes his lips when you seat yourself flush. You want all of him, but fuck do you also want to bite that smirk off his face.

His stomach clenches as he presses himself further into your extremely exposed cunt. The position allows for penetration so deep that it nearly smashes bright lights behind your eyes while his cock paints lovebruises along your cervix. You gyrate your hips, sexual mischief flirting across your hazy mind and begin walking your hands back again. He works with you to adjust, intrigued where you’re going. He’s happy he complied when it ends with you folded with your legs at your ears and your ass resting at the edge of the cushions. Exposed doesn’t cover the vulnerability of this position.

He pulls back to just his head, rutting stuttering patterns with a dick so hard and leaking, he’s starting to get a sick thrill at the lewd sounds and dripping fluids he’s fucking right out of you. His fingers press some to your lips, greedily stolen from between you and voraciously consumed by your hot mouth.

“Inside, please, honey.”

You can tell he’s close by rhythm and his eyes can’t leave the slick meeting of your bodies since before the words left your mouth. He’s not even responding verbally, just helplessly chasing his orgasm so he can revel in the gift of your cunt.

He’s not so far gone that his hand forgets about your painfully swollen clit. How could he when he’s balls deep, hands pulling you apart to try to simply fuck deeper…

You get to watch every single, beautiful feeling streak bliss across his features when you come together. His jutting hips, splattering molten lovenotes into your womb, pull an earth shattering orgasm. You see that adorable way he bites his lip when he thrusts in and out, brimming with overstimulation, watching his come pool invitingly. He momentarily leaves, drawing a very fucked out moan from you. His two fingers press his seed back through your folds, into your hole, and follows back up with his still throbbing cock when he finishes. You adore the warm sensation his gaze brings you as he keeps himself right there while shoving his fingers in your mouth one more time.

You’d clean his entire body with your tongue if you’re being honest, but you can’t let him know that.

Taglist: @aotwarriorsimp @alexpro-nwn @animediplomat @antoxsmith @armoredpotato @aviinnit @beffjurky @blondeboyfriend @casuallyck @cherrxs @dearbaji @erwinsbaby @eyesucket @fairypiku @fandomficsobsession @fujoneshi @holographicceo @hinasakuino @interfectio-mortales @kenryug @koulakoukoula2003 @kxkyuu-main @lavenderdaisyhoney   @mybadluckshouldmakemefamous @chaotic-nick @nathalunalune @notgoodforlife @arsonszn @pockcock @poursomesunaonme @scouts-stuff @seychellse @shigarakiapologist @downbadpie @soaringmirror @sparklekitteh @stigandr-the-cat @syrma-sensei @reiners-milkbiddies @tiffanyy-21 @theinariakuma @tonaken @torapologist @touyyes @we-are-so-close @witchycamisado

[jadagul]

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question. Why is it harder for larger countries to have citizens with a high median level of wealth? What makes it harder for a country with the US population vs, say, Japan? I can imagine obvious challenges, but also reasons why larger countries can make their median citizen wealthier more easily. Economies of scale, more chances for innovation that can later be widely adopted, strong institutions having outsized effects. Can you help me understand the logic more?

It's not a stupid question! It's a common but incredibly counterintuitive thing that comes up in statistical comparisons. The short version is: you get more variance with small samples than with large samples.

To start off, let's point out this isn't just theoretical. According to the IMF, the twelve highest GDPs per capita are in this chart:

(If you use a different source the numbers change somewhat but not dramatically so.)

If you rank countries by population, those are rank 122, 163, 118, 134, 162.5, 95, 99, 115, 3, 191, 169, and 103.5. The US is in position 3 and the next-highest is at 95 (out of about 200).

Conversely let's look at the ten most populous nations:

When ranked by GDP per capita, those come out at ranks 73, 127, 8, 98, 138, 144, 87, 128, 56, and 71.

And notice already this looks different: these numbers are mostly in like the middle half, whereas the others were almost all in the bottom half. And that makes sense based on the theoretical argument I'm about to make.

A big country has a lot of people in it. And more than that, it has a lot of places in it. And while those places all have a bunch of stuff in common (like being part of the same country), they also have a bunch of things different from each other. So you can think of the per capita GDP of a big country as, like, averaging together the per capita GPDs of all the regions in it. (And then the per capita GDP of a region is a weighted average of the incomes of all the people in it.)

If you look at a city-state like Singapore or Hong Kong, you're "averaging" together one city. And for a small country like Ireland or Luxembourg, you're averaging one city with a small amount of hinterlands. That means that if that one city is unusually lucky, the whole country is rich.

(And if that one city is unusually unlucky, the whole country is poor. The ten least populated countries on the list that have IMF data have GDP per capita ranks of 146, 119, 95, 9, 152, 60, 106, 16, 134, 52, which are all over the map. None of them are at the very bottom, and I assume that's because cities are richer than non-cities, in general. And also maybe a city-state that's also dirt poor gets swallowed up.)

And if you look at our list of richest countries, you can really see this effect. Ireland is a tax haven for the EU, and traditionally so is San Marino. Singapore is a weirdly-managed outlier city state, as is San Marino (and Hong Kong used to be). Qatar and the UAE are all drafting off of oil revenue, and for that matter so is Norway.

And to drive the point home, let's look at the list of US metro areas by per capita GDP.

San Jose beats every country in the world hollow. San Francisco is tied with the top entries on the list. And our tenth-richest metro area would place fifth on the list of countries by per capita gdp. (Contrast Paris at €60 and Berlin at like €42k, if my quick googling is right.)

And then to drive the point home, look at the top of the list. The richest metro area in the US isn't San Francisco or New York or Los Angeles (which at 18th and $86k doesn't even show up on that list up there, but would still put it at 8th in the world); the richest metro area in the US is some place called Midland TX. It's a small town that sits in the middle of a giant oil field, and as I understand it it's basically a base camp for all the oil work out there. So it has one thing going on, and that thing is super lucrative, and distributed across relatively few people; so it gets the top spot.

And that's why the richest countries are likely to be small.

[the-npd-culture-is]

quick post on NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) :

"Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a complex personality disorder often detected with other affective and personality disorders. [...] NPD is under the umbrella of Cluster B personality disorders, which include antisocial personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and borderline personality disorder."

- National library of medicine (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK556001/]

♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔

"Genetic and non-genetic influences on the hierarchy of traits that delineate personality disorder as measured by the Dimensional Assessment of Personality Problems (DAPP-DQ) scale were examined using data from a sample of 483 volunteer twin pairs (236 monozygotic pairs and 247 dizygotic pairs). [...] Additive genetic effects and unique environmental effects emerged as the primary influences on these scales, with unique environmental influences accounting for the largest proportion of the variance for most traits at all levels of the hierarchy."

- Jang KL, Livesley WJ, Vernon PA, Jackson DN. Heritability of personality disorder traits: a twin study. Acta Psychiatr Scand. 1996 Dec;94(6):438-44. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0447.1996.tb09887.x. PMID: 9020996. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9020996/]

♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔

i hate how people online tend to water down the initial definitions and jump into conclusions. no one said "it's caused by childhood trauma." stop putting things into a box when they're way more complex and diverse and nuanced.

npd is primarily caused by trauma but very often individuals have a genetic predisposition to npd.

♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔

flags

since there are two flags for npd that ive seen floating around, and since I've had people asking me why i chose the first one for this npd blog over the other, and some have never seen the first one before, im gonna give a quick explanation for both :

the first flag is the npd flag. it represents the disorder itself.

created by @/beyond-mogai-pride-flags on august 1, 2017 : https://www.tumblr.com/beyond-mogai-pride-flags/163661799375/narcissistic-personality-disorder-flag

"Design choice: the artist chose pastel pinks and yellows as they are very eye-catching colors that feel like very "outgoing" colors. In line with the outgoing and self assured face that people with NPD project, the pink is associated with confidence and the yellow with insecurity and anxiety. The purple is for royal purple, in the center, to represent the focus on self."

♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔-♚-♔

the second flag is the npd awareness flag. it's a flag representing everyone fighting for npd awareness, that including non-npd allies.

created by @/npdsafe then rebloged with the stripe meanings by @/liom-archive : https://www.tumblr.com/liom-archive/725390566188285952/npdsafe-npd-awareness-flag-i-wanted-to-make-a

concerning the second flag, there is also an alternate npd awareness flag :

created by @/npd flag : https://www.tumblr.com/npdflag/694773969935630336/an-alternate-version-of-the-npd-awareness-flag-by

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the reason i chose the first flag is, well, mostly because it's the first that appeared in the research bar lol, but also because i wanted to highlight and focus on the disorder itself instead of using the more generalised flag. to me it felt a bit like using the LGBTQ ally flag instead of the flag of a specific sexuality. on top of that, the majority if not all npd related accounts are using the second flag, so i wanted to make something a bit more unique with my blog presentation. and finally, i just like aesthetically the first one more hehe.

both flags are awesome and you are free to prefer one over the other, aesthetically or for any other reason. i simply chose to use one over the other for simplicity.

[machine-unlearning]

"None of the mean, median, mode, or variance are ever helpful sample statistics for a dataset" I quite agree! What alternatives do you think are more useful? IQR? standard deviation/variance?

Continuing my Hot Take: No sample statistics are ever helpful. A dataset can only be understood by understanding each and every data point contained within, anything else loses information.

If you want the nuance:

It's been 50 years since Anscombe's quartet but people still don't accept that sample statistics are only guides to trends in data. Don't lean on any sample statistic, even if it's not a commonly manipulated one like IQR or percentiles. If God forbid you're in a scenario where you need to present data, give a "moral" without math terms, expand on it with a sample statistics, and use a data plot as your argument.

[ckmstudies]

July 18th:

The final day! I'll take my first ever CPA exam tomorrow morning at 9 am. I'll get my score back on this exam around August 8th but will begin studying for the next exam next Monday. I've spent today reviewing the simulated exam I took yesterday and then specific topics that needed just a bit more focus. I tried to center today on a bit of review and then also relaxing and enjoying my day. I'm not going to magically learn some giant topic the night before so just hitting the high points and keeping calm is the best thing I can do for me. And also going to bed early which is why this post is so much earlier than my normal posts haha. But after this exam I'm headed to the beach for the weekend with my best friend so there won't be daily(ish) posts while I'm gone. I will be bringing my textbook for my next exam and some reading books so I hope to have some studious beach pics to post when I get back. But first, taking the four hour long Audit portion of the CPA exam! Wish me luck!

Today's accounting topic: Stratified sampling is a technique of breaking the population down into subpopulations and applying different sample selection methods to the subpopulations. Stratified sampling is used to minimize the effects of variance within the overall populations. As variances increases, so does the required size of the sample (because of the extreme values). Stratification reduces this effect and generally results in a smaller sample size.

Other activity: I wen to the gym this morning, took my dog on two walks, took a nap with my cat (she was actually being sweet for once!), straightened my hair (look good feel good mentality; hoping for some extra confidence haha), did some deep cleaning, and watched some tv with my parents!

[wholelottatransbians]

Hero time: since Kurogiri is a cleaner noumu, would he provide sufficient DNA samples?

Eh, I'm not sure actually. Quirks are based in DNA, so Nomu with a bunch of different Quirks would complicate things.

Plus, the sheer amount of variance between Nomu would make it really hard to pin down what the peak form of one would be.

[solradguy]

Alright. The scribbly text font... I took a swing at figuring this thing out back around January this year (2023) then got bored, but it's come up again recently in the lore server where a bunch of us have been trying to figure them all out. There are a few.

The first is what we've just been calling Font 1 because it's the most commonly used one in the textures, the most legible, and the one we've figured out the most about. Here're some samples directly from textures. This first one is from the Outrage, "Sol Badguy no Buki Dayo" (Sol Badguy's Weapon):

A big sample from Faust that provided a lot of characters for the key (I'll include a "translation" at the end of this post):

The key:

The next 2 to possibly 4 fonts are the ones we're now stuck on. Here's a few samples I compiled and then @shmuelbrain drew some connections between similar characters. Top right text is from I-No, Millia middle-right, the tiny middle-top is from Testament, and the others are from Chaos, who used these fonts the most out of all of the characters.

The bottom text and top row text are the same font, Font 2, but the two middle left fonts look like a possible Font 3 and the Millia text may even be a Font 4. We think that these fonts are actually handwritten and not a vectorized font like Font 1. Even similar glyphs have variances with these 3 fonts, whereas Font 1 was consistent across every character that had it used in their textures.

I spent several hours yesterday downloading and sifting through font websites and AI font finders to try to find any of these 4 fonts and had zero luck. We're getting the impression that, if Fonts 2, 3, and 4 aren't handwritten, that they're at least in-house fonts. Font 1 might exist outside of ASW offices simply because they've used commercial fonts before; the weathered "Strive" font is based off Impact and FOT-ManyoSosho Std E is used on a bunch of character textures too.

Working with these scripts is difficult because, as you can see with the Sol text, it isn't always in English. Sometimes it's actual nonsensical keysmashing. So, if anyone is a font finding wizard and would like to lend a hand we'd all be very grateful haha

Faust texture text:

A merry heart makes a long life

A sound mind in a sound body

An apple a day keeps the doctor away

Care killed a cat

Desperate diseases need desperate cures

Fancy may kill or cure

The Imaginary Invalid

ManyoSosho Std E looks like this. You've probably noticed it before just because it's actually legible.

Here are some more samples from Ariels of Font 1:

[weeklyshowandtell]

Writing excerpt!

This week has been pretty busy for me, and while I did complete like three puzzles I didn't think to take pictures of any of them, so I'm implenting my emergency back up plan of sharing some of the writing I did this week!

I try to write 200 words a day, and my current project is a fanfiction I'm writing of Project Hail Mary, where I retell the story from Rocky's perspective. I've been on a bit of a hot streak lately so I've written uuuuuuuh over twenty thousand words this week? Not going to share all of that here, but I will share a choice excerpt from yesterday's writing.

Under the cut because it's a bit long, please be advised this excerpt includes people almost dying in a vehicular accident (The vehicle in question is a space ship, but you know). The two characters in question survive, but people are quite badly injured and the excerpt ends with one of them passing out expecting to die. So proceed with caution.

(NOTE: Rocky uses it/its pronouns for Grace in this fic. I'm doing a thing with the story where Eridians use the same pronouns for people and objects.

The world devolves into absolute chaos. The force changes directions again, and I am ripped away from my handholds, slamming into the wall harder than before. There's absolutely agony as my carapace cracks from the force, and I feel blood pooling at the wound. I curl defensively into a ball as I'm tossed around the dome. There's no further damage, but each impact makes my body scream with pain. It takes a few moments before I am able to grab onto the handholds again, forcing myself to a stop.

And it's just then that Grace's chair breaks. The support holding it up snaps, and it is thrown forward on top of Grace. Through the pain in my carapace and the cacophony of the ship I can hear its bones being pressed by the force of the chair. Its ribs are trapped, unable to expand more than the barest amount.

It's going to die.

I have only a moment to process all of this before my body is moving, hurtling down to my tunnel.

There are sensible and tactical reasons why Grace should survive instead of me. I don't know how to pilot this ship, I don't understand how any of its thinking machines work or how I could even interface with them when we can't survive in the same environment. Without a pilot we will crash into the planet, and even if we don't I would be stranded in space with no way back to my vessel.

Beyond that, Grace is a scientist, and I'm only an engineer. We have a sample now, but even if I could pick it up I wouldn't know how to examine it, wouldn't know how to learn how these life forms work. Grace's ship is full of scientific equipment that only it knows how to use, and Grace will be able to understand and draw conclusions that I cannot.

There are a lot of reasons that Grace should survive. And as I hurtled toward the dormitory, toward the airlock that would bring me into its side of the ship, I didn't think of a single one of them. Because when I heard it fall, when I heard it trapped under the seat and the air being crushed out of it, there was only ever one thing I could possibly do. I lost 22 crew mates, 22 good, brave, smart people in that terrible trip from my world to Tau Ceti. I couldn't do it again. I couldn't watch my friend die again.

I hurtle through the dormitory, clambering into the airlock. There's a moment, just a second, where I hesitate with my hand on the controls for the second door. I'm not going to survive this. I don't know what being in Grace's atmosphere will do to my body, but probably nothing that I can recover from. It will probably hurt. I am afraid to die.

I pull down handle and throw open the door.

There's very little temperature variance on Erid. Grace has told me about seasons on Earth, how the year fluctuates from "warm" to "cold". Erid has no seasons, the thick atmosphere traps too much heat inside. It makes no difference what part is closest to the sun, whether a side faces toward or away, the entire planet is a mostly consistent temperature all the way across.

Which is to say that when Grace's atmosphere washes over me, I don't even really register it as "cold" initially. It is a temperature so far below anything that my body evolved to recognise that my nerves can't make sense of it. I make it several steps through the dormitory before they settle on interpreting the sensation as agony. It's so cold that it paradoxically feels like I'm burning.

Except the radiator, which I realise as I stumble through the panel to the control room might actually be burning. There's definitely something that's happening there, the air I breath in feels wrong, and thick. Oxygen, I think. Terrible idea to have that on a spaceship.

I can barely make sense of the control room. I'm trying to listen but my entire carapace is an unending scream of pain. I need to focus. If I can't find Grace then I'm going to die here for nothing, and both our planets will die for it.

There, I can hear it, still trapped under the chair. I don't know if its breathing at all anymore. I push away all the distractions -the pain, the hull groaning around us, the fear, and all the rest of it- and focus on this. I rip through the straps fastening Grace to the chair, and with all the strength I have left in me I pull it off of its limp form. I hear Grace inhale sharply. It quickly devolves into spluttering noises, but it's alive.

It's alive.

I drop the chair down next to us. I think Grace is saying something, but the world is starting to fade around me. I'm so, so tired. Maybe this can just be like going to sleep, I think. Sleep is frightening, but it's a familiar kind of fear. Maybe I can just imagine that I will wake up somewhere when my body has rested. I'm not standing anymore, I'm not sure when that happened. I think Grace is saying something, but it's very far away.

I would really like to reach out and take its hand. It would be nice to fall asleep holding someone's hand again. But my body is too hot, and I don't want to hurt it. Humans are so delicate.

"Save... Earth..." I say, as the dark closes in on me, "Save... Erid..." I want to say more, but the words are too far away now. Everything is so far away now. Even the pain feels like a distant memory.

It's okay, tell myself. It'll be okay. The world is going away now, but it's okay. And maybe Adrian will be there when I wake up.

[furryprovocateur]

not adding a "i don't qualify/show results" option to polls is a win-win. you scare off people who don't fit your sample and stop skewing your data (you can recalculate your percentages and such manually, but as said, it skews your data visually, which is the whole point of polls) and the people who would vote in a poll regardless just to click a button are going to randomly distribute amongst your answers, generating a normal amount of variance. plus, it gives you another option to use if your poll has an exceptional amount of differing options. but we're not ready to have that conversation

[pheere]

The L’Rain sax player Ben helped me up stage tonight after the show when I asked questions about his setup.

- there’s a mic hooked up to the kick drum into the modular synth that triggers effects when the patch receives signal

- Ben unscrewed the mouthpiece on his sax to reveal a tiny little mic, produced by a single french guy (who doesn’t ship to the US, go figure) because an external mic would produce too much muddiness

- an effect he set up but wasn’t ready for the show yet was triggering horn samples when certain notes on the sax are played

- the ambient washes of sound are achieved by a 40-second delay (!) and multiple patches working independently of one another to create the sensation of constant shifting

- Taja’s pedalboard is made from a projector stand with a female mic mount attached so she can travel with it. It’s then hooked up to autotune and effects pedals with two channels that can be controlled by foot between effects. One of the pedals includes pitch variance, so she can change pitch while she’s singing.

- Justin uses the Roland SP-404 for sampling and looping. There were some pretty crazy sounds - amongst them were Taja’s laughs (though that was achieved thru her looper) and electronic drums underneath the live drums.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Hii Miss Raven! I have been wondering and I have come asking for the help of a twisted wonderland specialist (you, your blog is an oasis for those who crash into wonderland and know nothing about nothing, like me, so thank you). Do you know which are the most popular characters in the game? Thank you!!

Character popularity varies based on the region (JP vs EN, or even by irl geographical location ) or the platform (social media, magazine, etc.) you’re sampling; there is no such thing as an official popularity ranking. This will naturally occur due to differences in culture and the types of audiences certain platforms attract. Please note that it is also extremely easy to manipulate the votes in unofficial polls, especially casual ones put out there by individual fans. Any observations made in this post are just that: observations, nothing cut and dry.

The trend in JP has consistently been Floyd, Riddle, Azul, Jade, and Leona in the top 5 spots (usually with Riddle and Floyd trading places for the top 2). In EN, we see a similar trend with Octavinelle and Leona being in the top 5. Malleus is also extremely popular in the English-speaking fandom. Heh, Octa sweep—

If you were to sample just (EN) Twitter, there’s a good chance that Idia would be high on that list as well, since he’s seen as “relatable and cringe” by many TWST Twitter users. He just fits into that particular cultural niche very well.

I would recommend checking out this post (which has links to further readings) if you want to hear more of my thoughts about the variance in character popularity across cultures.

Please note: going forward, I will not respond to general questions about character popularity; they inevitably lead to the same kinds of responses, and that doesn’t really add anything to or expand on the discussion 💦

[redistrictgirl]

Polls vs. Fundamentals

I recently got a question about how accurate my poll-based and fundamentals-based probabilities are on their own, so let's go over them!

First, let's understand how we obtain each metric. My poll-based probabilities are calculated using an average that "bins" polls on when they were conducted, then weights for pollster quality and sample size. The fundamentals-based probabilities simply rate the odds that a candidate would be expected to win a state based on prior elections, adjusting for national environment.

First, let's compare these metrics by simple "greedy" accuracy. This takes the winner of each election as a binary value and finds which value landed closer to that 100% or 0% mark. In the House of Representatives, we tracked 158 races in 2022. In 56 of those, the polling probability was more accurate, and in 102, the fundamentals probability was closer to the truth. In the US Senate, we tracked 21 races. In just seven, polling won out, while in 14, fundamentals got closer. Based on this, you might assume that polls are garbage and fundamentals rule the day.

But it's not that simple either! The fundamental projections are typically more extreme, so we wouldn't be that shocked to see those win out when so many safer races were included in that example. Let's look at the R-score between the different metrics and the total outcome in House races.

Fundamentals only: 0.65

Polling only: 0.68

Fundamentals and polling combined: 0.70

This means that the fundamentals can account for 65% of the variance in possible outcomes on Election Night, polling can account for 68%, and both combined account for 70% of variance. So polling wins out here, but both factors are roughly comparable, and combining them gives us a broader picture of the race.

[archacovercosine]

I've got these two views on humans that seem very contradictory but I do not really want to drop either:

a) I am very much on the nurture side of things and think that, if you take a random sample of humans and measure them along almost* any axis, the contributions of the environment to the variance overwhelms genetic variance by enough that it's essentially not worth worrying about.

*The exceptions lie in physical or medical domains, especially where the assumptions of a normal distribution are not applicable. Things like lactose intolerance.

b) I also have a belief that humans are generally always the same and have along the course of history always been the same (history really does not cover as many "generations" as you would naively expect it to).

On one hand a) and b) synthesize nicely in that both share the underlying assumption that the human genetic blueprint is and has never been all that different from how it is now.

However, the big problem is that over history and across the world, the environments are wildly different! So if I want to believe that humans are largely the same, I must bite the bullet that the (general) behavior has a strong genetic component!