#this is an 80/20 split of people who know me in this post

[littlemoosephotography]

I've found that re-enactors are much more likely to look down the camera when they know the person taking the photo, and there is sometime a percent chance of sillyness alongside it (Jorvik Viking Festival, York 2024)

[asthedeathoflight]

the extended Deaf staging post. under a cut cause um. oh boy. I got a little carried away.

First of all wanted to preserve @subwaylesbians 's tags about Deaf Swan for posterity:

#secondly! okay okay SO#teen swan#already sleeping rough#taking a bad blow to the head in a fight and coming out of it with sensorineural hearing damage#and you know that girl is not getting medical attention. so she just tries her best to adjust#to how it makes the isolation worse and threats harder to clock#cleon taking note of the scrappy kid sleeping under the boardwalk and sending cochise down to investigate. except the kid doesn’t notice her#coming until cochise has a hand on her shoulder. predictably this does not end well#obviously swan doesn’t win the fight - if you can even call it one - but cochise does come home with a split lip. at this point cleon#is definitely interested. so she goes down herself. this time swan sees her coming - barely - and she’s trying to talk her down from another#escape attempt when she realises the kid is desperately trying to read her lips. and so she tries signing. obviously swan doesn’t know#any ASL yet. but it’s enough for swan to realise that cleon’s Deaf. and the first moment in which she thinks that maybe she should trust#this woman#cleon teaching her ASL. and just being so proud to be capital D Deaf that it rubs off a little. and swan holds her head a bit higher#(also future swan teaching mercy. only to find out she’s been bullying the other vaguely-competent ASL users in the crew#into#also giving her lessons while swan’s back is turned. it’s 80% out of love for her girlfriend and 20% out of hating to miss the shit-talking.#she learns pretty quick)

I think Swan having acquired hearing loss is super interesting! Becoming disabled while she's out on her own would be super scary and isolating and she probably wouldn't have any sort of resources to learn ASL or anything. She'd probably be trying so hard to hide it too bc she thinks it makes her a liability to have on a crew. Also love Mercy getting the others to tutor her in ASL that's very sweet! Also kind of heartbreaking because to me the two hearing Warriors who were best at ASL were Fox and Ajax so whenever Mercy asks Cochise or Cowgirl a question about it they feel that little pang of loss.

Okay so for MY thoughts about this whole matter.

In terms of like fanfiction land I think Cleon is Deaf but she can talk so people don't always know. Despite being able to assimilate tho she's very invested in Deaf culture and disability advocacy. I'm not sure what the state of Deaf education was like in New York in the 70s but I think Cleon would like organize community ASL classes and stuff like that. Her and Ajax are childhood best friends in this au. to me.

Rembrandt's parents are both Deaf and they have a very like pearl-clutching Toph Beifong's parent's attitude towards her being in a gang even though shes like MOM 🙄 they're literally a Deaf gang. I think in this au she runs with the Warriors less out of like economic suppression and more because like her opportunities in life are kind of limited from being Deaf and queer so she'd rather hang out with the Warriors. Rembrandt can't talk but also like she's never wanted to learn to talk 'cause fuck hearing people. She doesn't have anything to say to them. New Warriors who didn't already know ASL are always really surprised by her because she seems pretty quiet and shy but then as they pick up ASL they realize she's always shit-talking everyone in the background. Real "they didn't know I knew their language" moments with her.

Okay but in addition to fanfiction land there is also hypothetical Deaf staging of Warriors land. And in theater land I have some different opinions.

Okay so like for those unaware in Deaf theater there's a practice of having Deaf actors signing their lines as Deaf characters and then having a hearing actor say those lines out loud at the same time. This hearing actor is a "voice" and they are of varying physical reality depending on the production.

Some Deaf productions are almost entirely presented in ASL as well as English but I think obviously most of the gangs are not going to be addressing the Warriors in ASL so this show would rely heavily on supertitles like opera-style. I think you could get really cool with it as a production design thing though like if you had multiple projection surfaces throughout the set. Moments like the crowd screaming in Derailed could get really cool. But anyways that's pretty minor.

So the important thing that's going on here is that Cleon has a voice and Rembrandt doesn't. Cleon's voice is not physically real tho she's just a voice. Maybe she's off stage or something. But what matters is that Cleon can make the Riffs hear her. Does Masai know ASL? Is he somehow metatextually hearing the voice? doesn't matter. That's simply Cleon's impact. Cleon's role in the story is already about speaking truth to power and making men listen to her as a woman so this is just adding a disability angle to that.

I think for the most part the other Warriors rely on the fact that Rembrandt can lipread so if they are using ASL for her benefit it's more simplistic and they'd still get supertitled. Except for Ajax and Fox who sign while they talk, and of course Ajax and Rembrandt's background entirely ASL running commentary.

So. Rembrandt doesn't have a voice. How does that work? Easy. With the help of my handy dandy word document of every single line of hers in the entire musical I can tell you who says every one of Rembrandt's lines.

The really handy thing about Rembrandt is like half of her lines she's saying at the same time as somebody else, so if she's speaking with someone else they're speaking for her. Very easy and fun.

In general if Rembrandt is speaking on her own Ajax is talking for her, with the assumption that this is like. Normal every day procedure for the Warriors. So like all her little haterly asides in the first half of the musical is Ajax talking. In general the delineation between whether Ajax and Rembrandt are speaking as a unit or if Ajax is talking for Rembrandt is whether Ajax is also signing.

There are a few moments where I think Fox would talk for her instead like I think Fox picks up the "what are we gon do?" in Woodlawn Cemetery for sure, and Rembrandt's first two attempts to get Ajax to back off of Barnes.

There are a few other moments though where I think nobody picks up Rembrandt's lines and they're only supertitles. Some of these moments are like just for fun like I think her finding Coney Island on the map doesn't get spoken aloud as like our lighthearted establishing use of the device. But nobody picks up Rembrandt's "where you going???" in Park at Night because she's only talking to Ajax. and Ajax doesn't listen to her anyways.

After Park at Night Fox picks up being Rembrandt's voice for Cardigans and We Got You 1. Then, in the reprise, Rembrandt physically grabs Fox to get her to act as her voice for her monologue. Fox speaking here is blurring the line between things that are really happening and things which are metaphorical but that's the great thing about theater because you can just stand right on the line and not pick a side. As Fox starts to see what Rembrandt means she starts to sign along with her, and then is on the same page as her to start giving orders to the other Warriors when they have to run.

Momentary note that we don't translate Rembrandt saying Fox's name in Reunion Square because by this time we've learned Fox's sign name bc we've seen it in the roll call a bunch of times so no translation necessary! I don't know enough about ASL to have any opinions about sign names but I think that getting to pick out sign names for the Warriors would be a very fun part of doing the translation for this musical and they'd add a little extra pizazz to the roll call. Cool projection shenanigans for the remix in Reunion Square too!

And then finally. Nobody picks up any of Rembrandt's lines after Fox dies. We let that last "What are we gon do?" just hang in the air.

[cyborgqueen211]

**For any potential Roleplay Partners!**

Hello, and welcome to my general roleplay information post! I'll be honest and say I got the idea for this from someone on reddit, so if this seems familiar, that's probably why.

Also, I'm super new to Tumblr. So please bear with me! I've been lurking for a bit, but if my formatting is weird or anything, that's probably why.

You are most likely wondering about a specific topic about me. Hence why this post has been split into different ‘chapters’ for you to go to at your leisure, below is the table of contents. Enjoy!

**TABLE OF CONTENTS**

1. About me

2. Rules for Roleplaying

3. Fandoms/Themes

4. Limits

**CHAPTER ONE : ABOUT ME (THE WRITER)**

I know not many people on in the Roleplaying community care about the writer, and only about what the writer can give them, so let me make this quick.

1. I care about my fellow writers, so if your not enjoying the roleplay, I’m not enjoying the roleplay. You wanna stop the roleplay or take a break? PLEASE, please, let me know. I will not be offended or impatient. I’m always ready to discuss what we can do to improve and what’s next on the literature chopping block.

2. I get busy sometimes, just like everyone else. But I'm usually able to check in at least once per day. And whenever I'm not going to be available, I will always give a heads up. All I ask is the same in return. Thanks!

3. I’m quite a friendly person if you have problems with pet names (My mom was southern so I tend to call people sweetie, hun etc.), then please tell me so I don’t make you uncomfortable! If I don’t know about the problem, then how do you expect me to fix it?

4. I don’t like getting ghosted. Who does? But I may @ you once per day to see if you're free to roleplay! (Obviously, if I’m informed about you being busy, then you won’t receive a @ asking if you are or aren’t!)

5. I do both NSFW and SFW roleplays! I like a roleplay that’s story focused with smut. If you want 100% smut, then I’m not the partner for you! My ideal balance is about 80% story 20% smut, but I'm willing to go up to 50/50. Fade to black smut scenes are also welcome!

6. Grammar and spelling mean a ton to me! And because I roleplay on Discord, there is always the option to edit posts. Please use that feature!

7. Please provide detail! I have literally gotten this response, and yes it was the whole response. "[Male Character] does some things." And I can't do anything with that at all. If you can, I applaud you. I want to write an amazing plot with you! I want to worldbuild with you!

8. And about worldbuilding, I love it when there are more than just two characters! I'm more than happy to play side characters, and you're also welcome to create and play some as well. We can decide how to divide them up but usually I like to play the ones I create and you play the ones you create, but I'm cool with dividing it up other ways as well, we just have to talk about it first.

9. I usually play Female main characters, and I prefer if my partner will play Male main characters. Side characters can be whatever gender, I don't care that much.

**CHAPTER TWO : RULES FOR ROLEPLAYING**

I’ve only got a few important rules, so listen up!

1. Match how much I write, or write more. If you write more, I’ll attempt to match you instead! I don’t like there being an imbalance of effort when it comes to writing. As roleplay is my hobby!

2. Discord is required, you don’t have it? Get it or get lost! (Seriously though, it’s the most organized platform for roleplay!) But you can certainly reach out here before moving to Discord if that would make you more comfortable.

3. 18+ Only! I will not play with anyone underage for any reason! Even if all the smut is fade to black or there is no smut! 21+ preferred.

4. No ghosting, if you're not interested in the roleplay just tell me and we can get started on one of two things. A) a new roleplay, or B) the parting of ways. I’d rather we leave on a good note instead of with bad tastes in either mouth!

5. While being friendly in OOC chat is great and encouraged, FLIRTING IS NOT! I am not here to be in a relationship with you. I'm here to write about a fictional relationship between 2 fictional people.

To summarize, please match or exceed what I’m putting down, Discord Only, 18+ Only, No Ghosting, and No Flirting! Got it? Cool!

Final note, a reminder that I roleplay for fun. If I’m not having fun then I will say so, then we can discuss a new roleplay or we can part ways as mature adults.

**CHAPTER THREE : FANDOMS/THEMES**

Something to note, whilst I know ALL of these fandoms, I mostly enjoy a select few of them. So please, if you wanna do one, ask me about it! (This list is pretty much for your sake to grasp what I’m into!) anything with a 💕 next to it means I am well-versed in the fandom. I don't usually like to play canon characters, but I am more than okay with it if you want to. There are a select few characters I will play from a few fandoms, so feel free to ask.

(And yes, I know some of these are old or not very popular so please don't judge, lol!)

Mass Effect💕💕💕, Twilight💕💕💕(including Life and Death💕💕), Avatar: The Last Airbender💕💕 (and some of Kora), Scorpion💕, Ghost Whisperer💕, Star Trek (DS9 and prodigy are basically all I know), Red Dead Redemption, Empire of the Vampire💕💕💕, some of Marvel (I mostly know about Iron man and Spider-Man, but I could be persuaded to watch more for a rp), most of Disney but my favorites are Treasure Planet💕, Tarzan and Tangled.

And many More! FEEL FREE TO SUGGEST ANY NOT ON THIS LIST! I know I'm forgetting some.

Some themes, I love to explore and certainly don't mind mixing and matching. I'll also be adding things like time frames and super general plots. Most of these can be mixed and matched with the fandoms as well.

Romance💕💕💕, Slice of life💕, Marriage💕💕, Family💕💕, Slow Burn💕, Supernatural creatures (Vampires💕💕, Werewolves, Dragons, etc.), Sci-fi, Fantasy, Adventure, Old West💕, Medieval, Modern, Futuristic, Drama💕💕, Angst💕, Medical💕💕💕, Damsel in distress💕

**CHAPTER FOUR: LIMITS**

Vore, Inflation, Diapers, Beast, Underage, Abortion, Snuff, Disgusting Kinks (like Piss, Farts, Scat, etc.), OOC flirting.

If unsure about anything written in this section, feel free to ask me about it! (Always better to be safe than sorry!)

And as far as Kinks go, they change very frequently and are kinda rp specific so that'll be discussed in DMs.

**CHAPTER FIVE : WAIT, THERES A CHAPTER FIVE?!**

Surprise! If you made it this far then you’ve unlocked the secret level you GAMER!

Here is your special key for getting priority: a well-written, prepared introduction about who you are and why you're in my discord DMS! You'll get special priority by using the password in your introduction message. The password is: COMMUNICATION

And please, if you have a plot idea, feel free to bring it up! Can't roleplay without a plot! Otherwise, I may have some plots put up here as well, shortly after this is posted.

Discord : owldimension

[bakedbakermom]

20 Questions for 20 Writers

thanks for the tag @thatfragilecapricorn30!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 16

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 69,600

3. What fandoms do you write for? X-Files (and one Buffy/XF Crossover)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? 1. Enough 2. Heatwave 3. Good Morning 4. they are all things 5. Oral Fixation

5. Do you respond to comments? I used to be too nervous but I'm trying to get better about it. What we now call "engagement" used to be called "community" and I want to start fostering that again as much as possible.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Probably Persephone. It's a 450-word cancer-arc angst biscuit.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Pretty much anything but Persephone and its sister piece Ouroboros. I don't write unhappy endings. If you want my most light-hearted happy little fluff nugget, that would be Takeout Interruptus.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Luckily people seem to be abiding by the axiom, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Who what me? 😳😈

10. Do you write crossovers? Only once: Stained, an X-Files/Buffy cross.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Fuck I hope not.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? No.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship? MSR FOREVER

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I have been trying to write a follow-up to Stained that is meant to be smutty but angst keeps getting in the way. I may just have to accept that for now, and split them into one post-Stained angst/healing thing and an unrelated smutfic.

16. What are your writing strengths? I try to inject poetry into my writing, giving it rhythm and texture and engaging the senses. My sentences can sometimes meander in interesting ways that I hope people find intriguing and not annoying.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? I would love to be able to write a compelling, spooky, twisty-turny casefile fic. I don't know if I'm capable.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I only speak English so people who can write dialogue in another language are very impressive. I am too worried about getting it wrong to even try.

19. First fandom you wrote for? Technically? The Woozles, an 80s anime about talking magical koalas. I was maybe 4?

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? Gosh I don't know, they all have something special that tugs at my heart. I'm really proud of the emotional beats of Waking Dreamland, and Sweet Surrender is the best smut I've ever written. Takeout Interruptus made me laugh out loud while writing it, and still does on re-reads. And the Scully-worship in Good Morning will always make me melt. I wrote them because I love them; how can a mother pick favorites among her children?

I am godawful at tagging, please if you see this and you want to DO IT!

[mizkit]

new blog post: Milford writing retreat

new blog post on https://mizkit.com/milford-writing-retreat/

Milford writing retreat

I was afforded the unexpected opportunity to go on a writing retreat in mid-May. It was a great success, but I have to start by telling you about the first time I went on this retreat, in 2019, which MIGHT have been the first year this retreat was held.

That week, I wrote 41,000 words. Which is a lot. In fact, it’s enough that they said “we’re now going to use ‘murphy’ as our unit of measurement for this retreat forever,” which I thought they were joking about, except it turns out they’re not. :laughs: So, yeah. Wordcounts at this retreat are measured in “murphys,” although it turns out that they thought I’d written 33k that week so a “murphy,” technically speaking, is 33k. :)

That, however, was evidently not the legendary bit.

The legendary bit is that, because I was driving in with a friend and her van broke down, and we had to wait for the AA(A)* guy, I said, “Well, we might as well get some writing done” and made her take out her laptop and got my laptop out and we got some writing done.

I THOUGHT THIS WAS A PERFECTLY NORMAL REASONABLE THING TO DO! I now understand, at least intellectually, that…it was not. :)

Anyway, so that’s kind of the level of expectation I had/have for myself, going into a retreat. Nothing less than ‘legendary.’

Well, mes amis, I did not achive legendary.

Which is to say, I ONLY accomplished a Full Murphy by Retreat Standards: ie, I did about 32,000 words, which is Close Enough, sez I. I ONLY finished one novella and did 80% of another. (Well, 90%. I finished that one yesterday.) And also I edited a friend’s book, which probably should give me some kind of writing credit but is too hard to figure out in terms of wordcount.

SO ANYWAY!

The retreat was held at Gladstone’s Library in northern Wales.

It’s a residential library with about 30 bedrooms, 20 of which we were taking up, and a working library that was extremely quiet except for the sounds of people typing frantically. In fact, it was one of the rare occasions were I could really hear myself typing, and could appreciate that it is, in fact, a really weird thing to listen to because I type really fast and when I’m in the middle of something there’s no apparent break between words or thoughts or sentences if you’re listening.

So we got in Saturday evening and had dinner with everybody who was there so far, and to my delight there were a bunch of people I knew, so getting to catch up with them was wonderful. It’s so nice to go into a space and be able to go “! :D” when you see somebody. :)

I think I did sneak off to write my minimum words on Saturday night, and on Sunday morning (Sunday? I think so) we were given a tour of the library, which consists of the History Room:

the Theology Room:

and the Annex and the Room of Wisdom, which I didn’t take pictures of. :) I split my time between working in the History and Theology rooms, and one afternoon in the lounge, where I discovered I could get the staff to bring me a giant hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows. ;)

I’m pretty focused at these things, and the first couple of days my goal was to finish KOALAFIED FOR LOVE, so I did about 12k on that to wrap it up by…Monday night? I think so, yeah. And then I fell on my face because I was very tired. :)

I think Tuesday was a really low wordcount day for me as I got started on LION ON LOAN, but I did go down to the town castle and have a walk through the grounds, which are ridiculously lovely:

I actually managed to do some socializing on Tuesday evening, joining in the games night, but then I went and fell on my face with the tiredness because … of the … tiredness… :grimace:

Wednesday was the Day of Revelation about how much work I’d done in the past month, so while I ended up with a good wordcount, it was, you know, revelatory and that was probably good for me. Also my friend made me walk in the castle park more, which was also good for me. :)

Then I spent a lot of Thursday and Friday doing things like this:

“well, SEE, i was GOING to stop at 3k for the day but then I was only 300 words from 23k on the book, AND THEN I WAS ONLY 100 FROM 4K FOR THE DAY and ANYWAY somehow I ended up at 4409 and then, then, see, my friend said it was time to stop for the day but it was ONLY 100 MORE WORDS GUYS I MEAN RIGHT?

RIGHT? 🥺🥺

Yeah, I couldn’t stand that. Wordcount for the day is 4534, for the retreat is 31,855… shit.

(20 minutes later) WORDCOUNT FOR THE DAY IS 4836, wordcount for the retreat is 32157, wordcount for the book is 24,002 & NOW I’M STOPPING!”

There happened to be another of couple women who were also there for a writing retreat, and on, IDK, Thursday night, probably, I met them as they were chatting with another one of our retreaters, who said to me, “If you were giving newer writers ONE PIECE of advice, what would it be?”

I said, “Butt in chair, do the words, finish things.”

Everybody else he asked, as they drifted in, seemed to say the same thing. :D

Seriously, though, that’s the one piece that you’ve got to do. HOW you do it, that’s between you and your gods, but you gotta actually write.

And really, one of the great things about retreats is that everybody is in fact doing things their own way, with their own metrics, their own expectations, and we’re all surrounded by people who are saying, “How’d it go today?” and congratulations us wildly on whatever we’ve accomplished. It’s really great. Complete departure from the real world and regular responsibilities, just hanging out and writing, editing, revising, whatever. It’s wonderful.

I had lunch with friends a couple days, and guiltily skipped out on a dinner off-site one night, although it then POURED RAIN all evening so I wasn’t so sad about that in the end after all, and overall had a really wonderful time with great people and lots of words.

Oh, and there was also a very nice graveyard and church:

So there, that’s My Retreat, by Catie Murphy. Unless I write up more about it, which I may or may not do. Too tired right now, though. :)

*AA is AAA in American :)

[sterlingarcher23]

Stranger Things and the quantum mechanics of time travel.

How El & Max travel through time.

I always pronounce the name in German that's why it didn't click. His name is Max - the Planck constant. With his work Max Planck layed the groundwork for modern day quantum physics/mechanics in science.

The Planck constant was a clue they gave us to point to quantum mechanics/physics and time travel. Quantum mechanics holds the scientific key to time travel and can even bypass the Grandfather paradox.

The one used in ST is from 2017,not the 80s which on face value looks like a mistake: 6.62607004

However if you split the number in half.

6+6+2+6 = 20

7+0+0+4 = 11

(That numbers, even dates put into an equation will turn to either 11 or 20 isn't unusual in Stranger Things: Mike tries to contact El 353 times, in the first DnD game Will needs a 13 but rolls a 7, Max's trailer number is 56 etc etc)

This split in half leads to another thought I had and others had but only in regards to Henry: that he was split. What if he wasn't the only one and there are two Elevens too, we just know them under a different name and face (I'll elaborate on that in another post)

Max was sent into another dimension & into the future.

Gates react depending on the emotions involved - fear and anger sent Henry into the Upside-down and love and compassion sent Max.. somewhere else. And it's just Max's mind. A gate was open. A mind gate. (We see the door of the Creel house is not in it's hinges when Max is there, meaning for her the door is open)

That's why they have parallels & mirrors. Literal mirrors as Max sees her counterpart, Henry, in the mirror, the left eye "blind" (there are other things they have in common like red & green clothing, a shot of Max in the gym vs Henry in the promo poster for that stage play thingy.)

We see the kaleidoscope before the teleportation - in El's "memory" before the zooming effect, the rainbow on Max's face & in the rainbow room. The most intriguing thing is that two kids use the rainbow as a bridge or road, playing with some toy cars on it.

And on the hand the colors we see from El's memory... It's a birth. Later associated with an electric shock when El is revived by Owens & Brenner.

"And there upon a rainbow is the answer to a neverending story. " - a rainbow bridge. A time vortex as it's called in Doctor Who. There also known as a Bifröst. Through a birth canal.

"Show no fear for she may fade away. In your hand the birth of a new day."

The association between this and "sent into another dimension" is obvious: El figuratively gave birth to or created something? Or at least helped. If not at least in a metaphorical way? . Most importantly Max's mind was send over this rainbow bridge (due to a fact that I noticed later/after this initial post - a zooming effect around El's head after the rainbow sequence) especially bc it appeared in the script during the revival, not before, a new dimension by teleportation of a being/mind. In connection to the electric shock/lighting bolt that can be seen in S1, framed by Blue and Yellow, and in the stained glass windows "eye" and in we have another association with the hints toward the 1.21 Gigawatts.

My Back to the future posts (a bit older and not 100% up to date & remember how BttF was literally in Season 3).

And the teleportation/transportation (as a metaphor) has been foreshadowed earlier when Max is in the hallway with the drawing of a rainbow starting with dots like it's disassembled into it's particles. (Comic book down below as an example of how you can do this in art)

According to an article (link down below) the physicist Timothy C Ralph ".... suggests using teleportation for time traveling, although in a different setting, namely, displacing the entangled resource in time." (This could be a coincidence but Tangled was pointed out as an inspo for S4. Tangled...entangled. The Creel house rose window that shows Blue and Yellow entangled. I don't know but it wouldn't surprise me if they tried to connect these things. So, this is definitely open for interpretation.)

Quantum mechanics, time travel/time displacement, wormholes (the DeLorean uses a wormhole btw and the time displacement is actually mentioned as a line).

They adapt these ideas (only on surface level), put in hints but basically, they told us what happened...it even makes it possible that Henry ended up in the past, defying the grandfather paradox.

We are talking about time travel via teleportation/transportation into another "dimension" .

Why else use these words in this manner in the script if not suggesting exactly that. (it could have been "when El remembered her birth/love of her mother yet this is not mentioned. Terry is probably just another proxy & Jane Ives just a...disguise). And mind lairs/inner worlds can be interpreted as exactly that: dimensions. I'm talking about Max's mind lair.

And then there was the hint towards "A wrinkle in time" and Mrs Whatsit. Madeleine L'Engle herself was fascinated by science like theoretical physics and like her the Duffers use these for ST.

In regards to quantum mechanics, you need to keep in mind a spin. "Deep inside all matter in the universe, electrons are buzzing around and behaving as if they are twirling around on their axes like spinning tops. These "spinning" electrons are fundamental to quantum physics and play a central role in our understanding of atoms and molecules."

ElMax itself has a visible spin. (credit to givehimthemedicine noticing this)

I give you the Flux Capacitor and it's spinning too.

Time travel however will work more like in "Days of Future Past" in which Logan's future mind was sent back in time into his younger self. Same body, different time. Like sleeping.

We saw for example quantum physics used as a means to travel through time and space in Endgame too. (I use these two examples only to showcase that others have done similar things too - it's not a direct inspo {necessarily} )

Except in Stranger Things and Max's case it's the future: an immediate time jump.

Brenner’s death shows a spin too and Henry is connected to things that spin like mills.

Why? Because that day in the lab, Henry/Edward was not only sent into another dimension but was also displaced in time. (Likely it were two Henry's from two timelines or he was split - the latter more likely. Others thought in this direction already. Same with El & Max?). Like Max was now sent into the future.

And be reunited with El during the jump:

For reference reasons.

The article by TC Ralph:

[caffeinechic]

Hi dear!! 🧡🌻 I'm going to ask you n. 53, 54 and 75 (about This is for your own good) of the ask game! Hope you have a lovely day and a happy weekend 💕🐝

Sar you lovely sunflower of a human!

53 - How do you spend your time when it comes to fanfiction? Are you primarily a fic reader, writer, or a perfect 50/50 split of both?

i think at the moment its like 80% reader and 20% writer but i'm hoping over the next few months to get to more of an even split. there's SO much good fic out there across lots of different fandoms, i'm like always so blown away by what people produce with their spare time!!! MAD LADS!!! and i'm a sucker for revisiting fics i've read many times. (also open invite on dropping recs!!)

54 - What’s your favorite part about the fanfiction writing process?

oh god. there's supposed to be a favourite part?? no no fine, ok. i think my favourite part is when i know i have a scene down to its barest bones. i have a very sparse writing style and knowing that i've stripped something back to where i want it is the feeling i'm always chasing. i like it down to the marrow where it just has to breath by itself all exposed.

75 - What scene in This is for your own good took the longest to write? What was difficult about it? 

jeepers good question. i actually don't remember which one took the longest (i have a terrible memory about things) but i know that once i got to the middle of the fic it started to take longer and longer to write things the way i wanted them. a lot of it had to do with the answer to 54! nothing felt pared back enough, and i was a demon for doing too much showing, giving away things too early - this was my first multichapter/longest i'd ever written and i found the process of not giving away the house in every chapter a real challenge to get the hang of. (thank jaysus for @princip1914 who kept refocusing me!)

i feel like that probably didn't answer your question properly i'm sorry sar!!!!

ask game post

[ben-10-setting-omnicrom]

LMAOOOOOOO

What the FUCK is this.

I want to punt anyone who agrees with this into the sun.

I swear Ben 10 is one of the only superheroes where people seem to get their rocks off showing how shit of a media literacy ability they have.

The show is BLATANT about showing why he acts the way he does.

Like even if the first few minutes of the FIRST FUCKING EPISODE he shows stupidly good moral judgement, especially for a 10 year old. The fact he immediately thought to use the Omnitrix to "actually help people instead of making things worse" is fucking insane.

People give Ben unnecessary amounts of shit for supposedly acting like a 10 year old when even as a 10 year old he shows more maturity and moral fiber than most adults.

Ben being the future Hero of Heroes is well deserved. He's easily one of the most effective superheroes in fiction and easily one of the most dedicated.

Literally the only superhero I know of that is even more insane about their dedication (and actually has Ben as a role model, the series was fictional in his reality before the embodiment of the Multiverse made every possible fiction real, it makes sense in context) is Blake Morgan from Exponential Power and he has so much of a workaholic tendency that the various ultra powerful gods and stuff in setting have literally mandated to have him have mandatory vacations since he's literally (and continues to do so) done an infinite amount of work in a finite amount of time to help people in need all across the Omniverse.

Literally all of this post holy fuck. Ben never had an open relationship. Literally the only person to ACTUALLY cheat on their relationship is Julie because Ben thought they were still together when Julie got Harvey behind his back and started to date him.

If you're curious about Exponential Power here's the link and summary. It delves into lots of philosophy that's pretty interesting.

My Earth was just like yours prior to 2007. After? After that 80% of the population on every planet in the universe suddenly got a 4 way split between 4 superpowers. Super speed, strength, flight, and intelligence.

The universe didn't know what was happening or why. Until the first batch of people "leveled up" and saw for a brief infinitesimal point in time their skill tree. Infinitely branching and big, with their base super power made from a few of those branches spelling it out.

With the level up grew more power and versatility, growing exponentially at a liner rate.

Fast-forward 10 years and you had large parts of each planet able to obliterate mountain ranges in a single punch or circle the planet in seconds.

The changes brought on by the first showing of powers was massive. After 10 years of getting used to the new normal, everything changed again. The 20% of the population sans any of the Big Four started getting esoteric powers. Like my best friend Caleb, he turned into a 3D living shadow.

Me? I have mind control.

Yeah. Definitely not something you want to advertise, especially when you've always wanted to form a superhero team.

and Ben 10 hate comment of the year award goes to this fuckhead

[sevdrag]

spoilers: i am an engineer

hello tumblr, and welcome to the most well informed shitpost you're going to see today: some Fun With Data involving the Harry Du Bois vs Vriska poll that just went around.

We started watching the poll just as the swing in votes started to happen, and as such, we're missing some crucial data I'll be upfront about. The poll started at noon, and we didn't start taking in information until the percentages started to change, at 13:53, so we don't have information on total vote count for the first 2 hours of the poll. And in the rush to nerd out about this, our first few data points of the vote swing - where you see the most change - didn't have total vote count either. There is also a brief period where I had to take my cat to the emergency room, and a longer period where my ass slept because this is just a silly tumble poll. Those present as straight lines in charts like this, but keep in mind, they could have had wild variation for all I know. However, based on the results, I doubt it. Big thanks to @smolalienbee and @pass-the-salt and I think @orderlyhouse for screencapping this data and relentlessly spamming the discord with it so that I could put it in this spreadsheet like the nerd I am. (do YOU have screencaps? DM me!)

Early on in polls like this when total vote count is low, you expect to see big swings -- with 4000 votes total, for example, the amount you need to swing a vote 1% is 80 people. As these go up, however, obviously, the amount of votes needed to swing 1% increases. By the end of this poll, 1541 tumblr users would have had to make UNCOUNTERED votes, that were NOT cancelled out, to move the poll 1%.

According to our data, the swing you see above took place over a two-and-a-half hour period. For the remaining 20 hours of the poll, votes one way or the other weren't significant enough to be seen in the tumblr results.

For those who are interested, our first data point showing the 50/50 split hits at 16:21, when total votes were at 14194. From this point on, voters would have needed at least 248 UNCOUNTERED/NOT CANCELLED OUT votes to change the poll a single 1%. Just numbers to keep in mind! We talk about this at the end :)

Any winning margin smaller than 248 would, therefore, not register to tumblr. Keep in mind that by the end of the poll this number was 1541 votes required to swing a percentage, because the total vote pool grew so heavily.

In the end, as it turns out, after 77,019 votes, the poll was won with a margin of only 618 votes. final percentages were, surprisingly neatly, 50.4% v 49.6%. Won by 0.8%! Now that's a close poll.

(thanks to @mio-nika for grabbing these and @smolalienbee for confirming!)

Because I was additionally curious, and a huge nerd, I wanted to go in and calculate votes per minute to see whether there was anything weird going on. I am going to be polite and put this under a cut to save your dash from my utter nerd joy, but I have caveats to put in here first.

The first thing to keep in mind is that your data is only as good as your collection method! In our case, it was a very unprofessional method that went: someone took a screencap and posted it in Discord, and I entered it into a spreadsheet with the time entered as whatever time Discord registered it. While this ended up being pretty accurate for a 24-hour poll, it presents the problem that will come up when we start talking about votes per minute: I only could measure in increments of a minute, because getting into seconds here would have been (a) impossible and (b) super overkill. However, that means that there's more noise in the votes-per-minute data because everything is assumed to be in increments of 1 full minute. Good scientists acknowledge the weaknesses of their data sets as they do their analysis! (Source: I worked in research for 15 fucking years lol.)

Here is my ESTIMATE of votes per minute at each of the data points taken above. The green trendline is a rolling average that tells the story of the poll, more or less: Lots of quick voting at the beginning, calming down over the (American) evening, then ramping back up at the end. Much like we'd expect, I think.

(And again, remember that the bit in the middle where Americans AND Europeans were asleep presents as a straight line here but could be ALL over the place. We don't have that data because we were sleep like good feral grownups.)

The noise at the beginning, I suspect, is again because I'm measuring over small and discrete increments of time. However, unless Tumblr wants to help me develop an app dumping real-time poll results into my EXCEL 24/7, there's no reasonable way I can see to get around this. Because of the noise there's a big standard deviation on here that I'm too lazy to really dig into because I did all of this while I was supposed to be working for the government, so imagine your error bars appropriately.

So what does this mean?

Well, let's make a couple assumptions for conversational purposes. Looks like people were voting at about 50 votes per minute during the slow times, and up over 100 votes per minute during the fast times.

At the beginning of the 50/50 period, we would have needed 248 votes one way to see the percentage change. Votes per minute at this point were flying, at about 100 votes/minute. That's only (the equivalent of) 3 minutes of voting time that would have had to go SOLID for either Vriska or Harry to produce a 1% change we could see on the face of the poll. And while we certainly weren't watching it live, the density of our data for the next hour or so was pretty solid, and we didn't see a 1% change. We have screencaps, baby! 248 votes going one way or the other at this particular point is chump change at that speed, so it IS surprising that we didn't see more scatter around 49/51 for an hour or so before things settled in.

In fact, I would stretch to say it's unusual to have seen such an even curve as the percentages changed on their way to 50/50, in a case where a few minutes' worth of solid voters could still have an impact, but as this is the first time I've ever done anything like this on a fucking tumble poll, I am not putting money on that either.

If someone wants to pay me, I am more than happy to become a tumble poll expert!

At the end of the poll, votes were also flying in, on average about 80 votes per minute. At this point, we would have needed over 1500 votes one way or another to see a last-minute shift. That's (the equivalent of) 19 solid straight minutes of every single voter picking the same candidate. So at the end it is NOT surprising to not see any 49/51 fluctuation. This is why once polls settle in, they so rarely change. It's just statistics.

So, Sev. Was this poll botted? I don't fucking know. We all need to go outside. However, if you're going to make drama on it, please do it on this post so that I can see. I'm getting laid off in 2 days and I would love the distraction and entertainment!

And a big thanks to @handwrittenhello for all the work they put in to this, and personally for providing me with an opportunity to spend a day doing one of my favorite things: working with data in Excel!

[whatudottu]

In the period of calm after the shit with Aggregor, the Andromeda 5 spent some time actually getting to know each other and essentially coming together to bond over their shared trauma, in spite of P’andor probably initially trying to avoid it all together and otherwise let it sink in. Of course, during that time they learnt about each other’s homes (mainly about the planet they come from) and more about general cultural facts about them and their people, if they care to share the details of which.

Among this sharing, age relative to their species versus the number of years lived is shared, and though everyone involved were adults and no child was harmed by Aggregor, finding out that the person who didn’t know what a prison is is both about a hundred years or so old yet only about the equivalent of mid 20s is an unexpected surprise. Having said that, here are some thoughts about that.

Galapagus, with his significant lack of knowledge of the world outside of Aldabra, strikes me as someone who’s not had a whole lot of worldly experience. With my thoughts on geochelene aerio, alongside Aldabra itself, I believe that the older that you are the more taboo philosophies that the elder generation begin to circle within your discussions, the eldest generation going along with my ‘Aldabra is a post-nature-apocalypse’ headcanon being the same individuals born before the apocalypse in the late stages of what I’m dubbing as ‘The Age of Corruption’.

Yada yada, if Galapagus was a lot older - or even just slightly older - he probably would have been introduced to debates about ‘lying’ and ‘prisons’ and what have you. The eldest generation are breaching possibly a thousand years old or so - perhaps even more - and still heavily philosophise about the AoC and recall the saviour from evil/instigator of the apocalypse Addwaitya.

Galapagus is at least old enough to discuss the effects of whatever banishment ritual Addwaitya had performed to absorb much of the corruption, only that he doesn’t know what that corruption specifically is, and knows that a few spawning forests lead to splits in the veil of the prime reality and Legerdomain. He would say, if Annie later introduced him to DnD or some other fantasy media, that the spawn forests - working title for ‘forests that over ran the old cities’ - act akin to the Feywild, with an environment baring a sentence and a will to exist as it wants.

On the opposite end of the spectrum sits Ra’ad, already in the equivalent of his early 50s late 40s despite the numbers reading as 35 or 30. Outside of simply knowing that - of all the animals (and radiation for a special someone) that the Andromeda 5 are based on - squids live to only 6 years at the oldest, there’s not too much reason for me to make Ra’ad older than middle aged other than for some funny contrast.

I suppose another reason - even if I haven’t really fact checked it myself - is that somewhat in relation to Galapagus and Aldabra’s apocalypse, Ra’ad gives off the vibes of a doomsday prepper or as someone just too anxious to let the world take him that easy (considering what happens in the show, can you blame me). And the reason why I say something about fact checking is that I’m not sure if 40-50 year old dudes are the age demographic for doomsday preppers, but at the very least it’s a pessimistic ‘something will go wrong’ attitude mixed with the behaviour of ‘i will not let it leave me high and dry’ and thus this jelly has anxiety.

Bivalvan, based on an ocean creature or two with wildly different age ranges, has what I’m saying is giant clam based ageing averages and get him to a good 60-80 year number for a 40 year old equivalent. Again, no particular reason outside of ‘yeah that’s a whole ass middle age mum’ vibes especially if you take a look at him with Annie, but I’m mostly sitting here going based on vibes.

And also, I had sworn that there was some mention of a previous job that he held down, about being a salesman or something? Like? Am I just misremembering? Have I got a bad case of the mandala effect? I saw it on the wiki once where did it go?

That and, tinkering with mechanics and tech stuff just seems like a real middle aged activity, outside of Kevin doing that shit for his sick ass car I mean. I mean, might just be the middle aged folk that I know and the fact that I’ve never had a backyard without a homemade (ham?) radio tower somewhere by the roof or right in the middle. That could just be bias of course, but I am designated both mum AND dad vibes from Bivalvan and making him the equivalent of his 40s.

And turning attention to Andreas, armadillos don’t particularly live that long either, but living for 12 years is double that of a squid so numbers wise he’s probably just a little younger by number for younger by equivalent. Something maybe late 20s or early 30s for the numbers of maybe 20-25 years lived. Like, he’s the overall, even if technically Galapagus is the actual 25 year old of the 5.

Living long as a Talpaedan isn’t as overtly necessary considering the number of individuals that live in any one family colony, and numbers don’t particularly matter once they’ve reached a socially accepted maturity, so Andreas has a harder time working out what age range he is for sake of communication, but otherwise he knows he’s been an adult for a hot while there. Think, for those who’ve watched not only Critical Role but specifically Campaign 2, where Nott compares her relationship with Caleb as a parent and child relationship, where she herself is the parent and Caleb - very much an adult human - is the child.

Other than not having lived long by the numbers, Andreas not having lived long by equivalents also comes from the idea that he’s very receptive to someone (he likes) telling him what to do and where to go and what to try and etc, etc, etc. He’s naïve amongst being of low intellect, though the later is not indicative of youth, and is probably far too trusting to be someone older than he probably is. Of the Andromeda 5, Talpaedans have the closest lifespan to humans, even if they taper off at a younger age on average.

And finally, we have P’andor, the fucked up deer himself.

Look, I asked my discord boys how long radiation lasts or otherwise what the fuck a half-life is and would P’andor have one. The gist of it? The more radioactive a thing is the less it ‘lives’ for because it rapidly fissiles into different materials. Bismuth, the exact opposite of such, has such a low radiation that it’s half-life is older than what time left we have in the universe, and the fact that it was the universe that made the damn thing it’s bizarre to think about.

But considering P’andor is a hungry mother fucker stuck in a suit, the very real threat of death means that very fortunately he doesn’t get to witness the universe around him and the loved ones he had die around him at the age equivalent of 40 (for maybe a half-life dealio). Alternatively, seeing as though he’s not constantly having to chow down on some active uranium, it also means he’s not in his 60s at 20 years.

And even then, Prypiatosian-Bs don’t technically have a biological childhood to age from, nor so much as developmental stages to mature a mind to. A bone parent just chucks an ulna or a rib into a very radioactive area and - whether waiting around for a ‘kid’ to spawn or running off with the knowledge someone could happen - radiotrophic spores just eat away at the heated bone until the marrow is exposed, singes the spores before they take fungal root and begins to eat the radiation around it until it forms a little fucked up deer skeleton.

It’s like, P’andor has the knowledge of a 30-40 year old equivalent Prypiatosian-B, but by going ages without a bite of radiation, he could be even smaller than a new skeleton by proxy of having eaten all of his skeleton already and running out of energy. This man- he’s as old by number by how well he has eaten, which could be said generally for most creatures with the difference being that - by constantly consuming energy and radiation - P’andor can functionally live forever.

Not that he’d want to at a certain point but uh, P’andor’s situation is already not the happiest let’s not get into the hypothetical but kinda technically feasible outcome of outliving everyone he loves so shush up and appreciate the thoughts I’ve been putting off forever ever since I believe it was @sugarbutterfly432 ‘s one post about the Andromeda 5 outliving Annie.

At the very least, not all outlive Annie, but like 3 of them will and also outlive 2 husbands it’s probably not the best situation but they married in spite and perhaps because of that, if marriage is such a once in a lifetime opportunity they may as well just get that settled so that they’ve got it all sorted out.

Speaking of Annie, if P’andor doesn’t know what a child is, why did he pick her up off the streets? Well, lads laddies and lassos, he saw a small little starving createur (not entirely inaccurate) and thought ‘well, fucko, guess who’s getting adopted’. And now P’andor joins Ra’ad in - at least what I’ve thought in detail about and settled on - ‘what the fuck is a child’ club and has to speed read to get things right.

Maybe Bivalvan too doesn’t know but I can’t decide if he’s more clam or more crab in this instance.

And that’s what I got for a topic that has been haunting me ever since the outliving post; thank you by the way for that, whoever it may be since I cannot find the post. Ever since I found out squid live at most 6 years it’s just been ‘how the fuck do i write about this?’ and wondering ‘should i tag this as mortality???’ because damn-

Anyway, I blame someone for this for this :)

[slutdge]

Who do you think is a good example of a gnc male celebrity nowdays? I don’t really know shit about Harry Styles but I totally thought he was fine as like. Just some guy that wears a skirt in some publications or whatever. But apparently people hate him? Idk I didn’t even know he was still relevant after One Direction split up. I think? Did it split up? The Zayn guy left I think? Are the rest still making music? What the fuck is Harry Styles known for nowdays. Whose blorbo is he. All I can think of for gnc male celebrities are people who fans called gnc men and then they came out as being nb and not identifying as men. I miss whatever a lot of male celebrities had going on in the 80s. Anyways love u and sorry people are being dumb on your post + me now being dumb in your askbox

Yeah I completely feel u, like if Harry Styles wants to wear skirts and dresses or whatever go ahead thats not my issue, my issue is that his fans insist hes the first person ever to be gender nonconforming ever like. Did Bowie mean nothing to you people. Bowie also wasn't even the first fucking celebrity to be gnc and he was making music in the 60's. ALSO drives me nuts that people just so blatantly think being gnc is about clothes only when its NOT, like theres way more ways to be gnc than just wearing dresses as a man. As far as currently relavant or alive gnc celebrities I honestly couldn't say bc I'm just like so out of the fucking loop with shit like that, I'm at least 20 years behind on pop culture at all times. Uhhhhh Billy Porter maybe but he's not super mainstream I don't think and also a little older? I do love his bit about "it makes people mad because I wear a dress and theres no punchline" that was legendary

[samsflannel]

survey results are in!

sorry, this is gonna be a long post. yesterday i posted a survey with a list of polls regarding Supernatural, and it was SO much fun. I got over 300 responses, which was A LOT to sort through for the short responses, but I’ve gathered all the “data” and here it is! My responses to each poll will be under the screenshots (they are in groups of 2). I’m going to include the short answer responses in another post. ENJOY!

1. Starting off strong.

2. Pleased with this one as well.

3. Yep, I expected this response from most of us.

4. Sami, I made the wincest and destiel response just for you. YW.

5. CMON YOU GUYS......live a little!!! samjack sexy

6. I’m not really surprised that Playthings got the bulk of votes here, but I think my vote would have been 8x23.

7.  :)

8. i’m disappointed that more people didn’t choose the yellow one tbh

9. it is sexy. it is. wake up.

10. i love Dean, but he’s definitely an asshole. and that’s what makes him a great character!

11. hehe.....i understand why not a lot of people picked noncon bait....u r valid its ok im gross.

12. WHO THE FUCK PICKED NO......have you ever consumed media

13. WBK.

14. damn, Dean kinda got the short end here! a lot of samgirls took this survey

15. i get why you wouldn’t like Bugs bc it does have harmful stereotypes about native ppl but the rest of it is peak season 1 wdymmm

16. almost 50/50 here! old vs new fans we love to see it. I am definitely wincest old guard.

17. YEP. Eric Kripke needs shock therapy for that one

18. The fact that some people admitted to being dry.....tragic. I think Eileen is a great character but they are NOT endgame.

19. SO YOURE JUST GONNA SIT THERE AND ADMIT HOW WRONG YOU ARE??

20. ugh. yeah. same.

21. who tf picked blue. cmon. red meat incest agenda.

22. SAM MOMMY MILKERS!!!!! hucow sam <3

23. Mixed on this one! My response is obviously yellow :)

24. I do think Bobby favored Dean somewhat.

25. Johnzazel agenda so true

26. HIGHKEY CANON. AND SEXY

27. someone requested a combination of blue and yellow and you’re so right i apologize.

28. mixed on this one for top vs bottom fans! almost a 50/50 split

29. ANNA DID NOTHING WRONG

30. I can’t believe this one is almost 50/50. Ruby girlboss you guys are haters

31. again. admitting you’re dry. THEY FUCKED

32. yeah :(

33. Q-anon level conspiracy theory.

34. I actually fall into the blue. I do believe Cas was in love with Dean, but not the other way around. I think Cas loving Dean makes wincest so much more spicy

35. I love sam so much

36. those of you who answered yes........join my movement.

37. c’mon. even if you don’t ship wincest you need to admit this one.

38. sorry this one was self-indulgent.

39. JESS PEGGED SAM.

40. idk, i personally think Cassie deffo pegged Dean. She has top energy.

41. So all the people who answered no have definitely not read the fic (were too young to remember it) or are squicked by underage which is ok! its one of those fics i read back in 2010 so i have fond memories of it

42. hahahah you guys were mean on this one

43. it’s canon bro sorry

44. thank god this one was majority yellow

45. i give wincestiel a valid pass! dean has multiple holes

46. Jack is hole <3

47. I actually think both are great (and ppl were mad I didn’t have that option srry) but deanpussy is incredible and underrated.

48. SEXY>>>>>>

49. thank you for enabling me.

50. can you guess the redacted part? it was: insert various objects into himself :))))

51. ok heres the big question! i’m not surprised ilysmmbb won, but i personally vote for “yeah, there he is” !! i think its underrated and such a tender moment.

52. i’m in the blue. i like cas.

53. i actually am in the yellow on this one. i think its more realistic, although blue is hot forsure

54. top 3 cas moment right there.

55. objectively yes on this one. thank god for COVID- *gets shot at*

56. sorry this was shady i’m not really like this usually haha. i think death is my fave besides Rowena

57. obviously i’m in the red. i’m shocked that so many people said Yes.......

58. Clearly.

59. I enjoyed fan fiction! i love campy episodes as you all know (like Dog Dean afternoon and such) so i loved fan fiction. it was a nice nod to someone like me who has been watching for a long time.

60. HOW THE FUCK COULD YOU NOT KNOW WHO ANDY IS. i wish he would have been in the show longer........

61. uh....yeah.

62. Yeah c’mon. Dean would and you know it.

63. Thank god you guys didn’t fuck this up. I would agree, but Corbett is a close second for me.

64. IN THE RED BABY!!!!

65. we love a man bleeding out. we do.

66. i actually think misha is chill with J2 but.....you can’t deny J3 have more chemistry.

67. I uh......don’t think Dean would be a great father. is this me projecting my own issues with my father onto Dean? maybe,,,,

68. i’m surprised this was so negative! I think i would be interested

69. thanks for reading my shitty poetry!! i also had s4 dean in mind when writing this

70. CMON.....ITS KINDA SEXY CMON.......that spice of battered wife syndrome.......violent man in the house.......sam beaten down....im barking

71. haha yessss go yellow.

72. go yellow again.

73. I think I would actually vote yellow on this one. what a sweet and beautiful thing to say to someone, and its so very DEAN.

74. mhm. i think so. 

75. SEXY CONTROLLING OLDER BROTHER!!!!!

76. no idea why people answered yes to this one. that punch was fucked up. was it sexy? thats another story,,

77. WOKE. 

78. I do. I love pilot Dean.

79. Dean is a carfucker. any side of the fandom can recognize that

80. thank you GREEN!!!!!!

81. Sam is bi wtf! Sera Gamble erasure

82. Padackles commune <33333 they all fuck and they don’t know whose kid is whose!!!! (not really but this is sexy)

83.  THESE BROTHERS ARE WEIRD FOR SURE.

[oh-boy-me]

Obey Me! Card Planning Tips

Hello!  This game causes us all a lot of pain and suffering, but I’m MANAGING (?), so I thought I’d give what I’d consider some tips to maybe make things feel slightly more possible for you :)

I’ll split it into three parts and put it all under a read more.

Team Strength Calculation

Team Preparation

General Tips for Resources and Daily DP

Part 1: Team Strength Calculation

Each stage has 2 sins tied to it, as you’ve probably noticed.  In chapters 1-20, the stats of these two sins are boosted for ALL cards (character and support) by 15%.*

In chapters 1-20, your team’s strength is calculated with the following formula:

Strength = 1.15(AttributeSin1Total) + 1.15(AS2Total) + Other5SinsTotal

For example, let’s look at Lesson 10-20, which is a Gluttony/Lust battle.  My team is composed of Pandas Mean Profit (Greed), A Special Ceremony (Lust), and Colorful Panic (Pride).  And I’m using zero support cards just so I only have to add up 3 numbers.

Strength = 1.15(24338) + 1.15(34921) + 122736 = 190884**

Keep in mind that the buffs only apply to the attribute sin scores.  If the battle is Gluttony/Lust, the Pride scores will stay at their base values.  This is the case for all lessons up through chapter 20, both normal and hard mode.

However, from Lesson 21 onwards, there are two changes.  One, there is a primary sin and a secondary sin for each battle, marked by which icon is bigger in the preparation screen.  (There always has been, but now it matters which is which.)  In boss battles, both are primary.  Second, the buffs have changed drastically.

Every card has its main sin, obviously, and its strength in that sin is the strongest.  However, they still have strength in the other 6 sins as well.  There are two non-main sins that a card is very strong in, two that it is average in, and two that it is terrible in.

The percent increase is now dependent on how good a card is in the battle's two attribute sins.  (Remember that these buffs still only affect that sin, not the card’s total strength.)

If a card is the same sin as the battle’s primary sin, that sin gets a 160% buff

If a card is the same sin as the battle’s secondary sin, that sin gets a 90% buff

If a card’s second or third best sin is the battle’s primary sin, that sin gets a 30% buff

If a card’s second or third best sin is the battle’s secondary sin, that sin gets a 10% buff

Any sins lower than third best no longer get a buff

I’m not going to make a formula this time because it’s too long and situational.  But let’s look at that same 3-card team again, this time with Lesson 21-5, a Lust/Gluttony stage in that order.

Pandas Mean Profit has an average Lust score, so it gets no bonus.  Its Gluttony is its 3rd best sin, so that gets a 10% buff (10752 > 11827)

A Special Ceremony is a Lust card, so its Lust gets a 160% buff (17308 > 45000).  Its Gluttony sucks, though, so that doesn’t get a bonus.

Colorful Panic has Lust as its second best sin, so it gets a 30% buff (10423 > 13549).  Gluttony is its third best, so that gets a 10% buff too (9866 > 10852).

With the new system, the team’s Lust score has skyrocketed from 40158 to 65739.  However, its Gluttony score dropped from 27987 to 26399.

This means that the sins of your cards suddenly matter more in battle.  (And honestly I don’t think that’s a bad thing.  I know people complain that it makes it harder, but.  If my Comedy team in A3! is made entirely of Action/Drama cards with poor Comedy, I shouldn’t expect that team to do well.  Idk why people think that shouldn’t apply to Obey Me.)  Which brings us to part 2.

By the way, colored glow sticks raise the card’s total strength by 10%, and rainbow glow sticks raise it by 30%.

* It’s actually like 14.99% but it’s effectively the same.  The “slightly under but so close that I’m just rounding for significant figures” thing will be consistent for all of these buffs.

** The actual in-game strength is 190881, 3 points off due to the .99% thing.

Part 2: Team Preparation

I’m so sorry.  But someone has to say it.  Are you listening?  Great.

URs aren’t automatically better than SSRs.  Honestly, they never were.  They ESPECIALLY aren’t now.  You’re not losing the battle because you’re using SSRs.  You’re losing the battle because you’re throwing Wrath cards at a Sloth opponent.

Morning Voice is an Envy SSR card.  My copy of the card is only level 10, and in a Lesson 21+ Envy battle, its Envy score is 6866.

What is my Level 90 UR Colorful Panic’s Envy score in the same battle?

3489.

Colorful Panic is a higher rarity and 80 levels higher.  It has worse Envy.  Why?  Because Envy is its worst sin.

Obviously you aren’t going to be using a level 10 card in a battle, so for a more realistic standpoint, my copy of Resentment Runs Deep (SSR Envy) has 46108 Envy in the same battle.  That’s 13x better than the UR.

I’ll repeat it one more time before I move on.  The sin scores of a card are far more important than the rarity of the card.  A random SR card of the right sin is better than a UR with no sin bonus.  The most impressive thing about a UR is how hard it is to get one.

Anyway, what does this mean?  Is it hopeless?

Well, if you wanted to binge all three seasons within the first month of playing, yes.  But let’s assume that’s not the case.  (Side note, but the feeling that our cards are never good enough is definitely exacerbated by the aggressive speed at which they release new lessons combined with the fandom’s apparent allergy to spoiler warnings, but that’s a point for another post maybe.)

Remember that having URs isn’t actually all that important.  Now remember the sheer amount of SSRs they release since they also aggressively release events.  Also remember that with every 10-pull, you’ll get at least one SSR+.  (Also remember to never do single pulls; they're not worth it at all.)  If you’re really struggling with a lot of battles, here’s how you can improve your scores while focusing on as few cards as possible.

Open an Excel document or Google Sheets page and make a chart that looks something like this:

[Image Description: An 8x8 Excel sheet.  The columns are labelled with each of the seven deadly sins, and the rows are labelled Cards 1 through 3 and Support 1 through 3, with a blank row in between.  The rest of the sheet is blank.]

Now choose a card you want to use.  Doesn’t matter why you want to use it, maybe you like how it looks, maybe you worked really hard to get it, maybe you like its ability, maybe it’s just your current strongest card.  I don’t care.  For my chart I’m gonna use Pandas Mean Profit because it’s really pretty and I got it from the 100-pull pity reward.

Look at your card’s top 3 sins and put them into the chart.  For the character cards, note who the card is, because you can’t double up.  For reference later, also note whether it’s 1st, 2nd or 3rd best.  (Be sure to do this through Contacts and not a battle so there are no buffs skewing the scores.)

Once that’s in, choose another card you like for a different sin and input that card’s top 3 sins.  Envy is still completely empty, so I’ll put Resentment Runs Deep in next.  It’s an SSR, but I really love the Refresh Team ability.  Do this for one character card and one support card of each sin at first, if you can.  It doesn’t matter what level they are right now.  Then fill in whatever blanks you have with cards that specialize in that sin.

If a sin comes up more than 3 times, keep whichever ones are strongest in that sin without overlapping characters.  Play around with it until you get something that works for you.  Keep note of the sins you’re lacking cards for.

[Image Description: The same Excel Sheet as before, except filled in with various Obey Me card names.  The cells in rows 2 through 4 are color coded to match the character of the card.  Each cell marks in parentheses how strong the card is in the sin of the column it’s in from 1 to 3.]

Mine looks like this.  This chart isn’t perfect (if you look, none of my cards had Envy as a good non-main sin, and Pandas and Bunny have too much overlap for the same character), but it works as a rushed example.  I used the cell colors to mark the characters.

Are these the teams you should be using for each battle?  No, obviously not.  First off there’s no single-sin battle, and second off the game will still build the teams for you.

BUT, this greatly lowers the amount of cards you need to pour resources into.  Instead of 42 cards, with this chart I only have to focus on 18 cards in order to be guaranteed that all my cards get at least a SLIGHT boost in each battle.  The best-case scenario would drop it down to 14 cards.

Later on, once you’ve managed the cards on your chart, the next thing to do would be to find main sin cards to replace those that are only third best in their sin.  On mine I’d definitely focus on a Gluttony character card next, but in general Sloth is the one you want to be the most proactive about.

That should help you get through at least Season 2.  Season 3 is admittedly where the difficulty actually IS ridiculous, but Season 2 really isn’t as hard as we’ve been saying.  It just requires more planning than “the first three URs I ever got.”

I do still apologize for the resources and Grimm it’ll take, though :’)

Part 3: General Tips for Resources and Daily DP

This section is just some extra tidbits to help you have the resources to get cards and upgrade them.

[Image Description: The “hard to swallow pills” meme.  The pills read “You don’t need every single card and unless you’re a whale eventually you’re going to have to prioritize some events and ignore others or you’ll never have the resources to improve the cards you already have.”]

However, events ARE good for farming Grimm, so it’s not the end of the world if you want every SSR.  The only issue will come up when you need hard mode items and never have any AP, but it’s manageable.

If you’re going to log in more than once throughout the day, you can do the 2-1 job distribution.  If not, do three jobs with one character each so you get the daily task done

To save money for leveling up your good cards, complete the devil tree daily mission with N-rank cards.

Use vouchers over DP whenever you can (and use Raven to get vouchers).  The 99 DP level-up sale IS worth it if you can afford it, because that’s like 50% off a 10-pull once you do two.

I’m not certain, but I THINK skill level also influences how often an ability activates?  I feel like my Lv 10 SSR cards activate often but my Lv 1 URs never do.  So if you’re relying on an ability, the permanent SSRs might be worth looking at over limited time cards.

Anyway, I hope this helps at all in our mutual suffering.

[struwwelzeter]

For a variety of reasons, I got into a bit of a rabbit hole about Richard's guitars, and my brain went "oh I know someone who will probably have opinions on this" so essentially, if you feel like it, pretty please talk RZK guitars to me? Favourite? Retired one that needs to come back? (Though I probably already know the answer, that fancy black one?)

Allrighty, buckle up because this is gonna be long. After much consideration I have decided to split it up in two parts because I don’t think I can make it fit into one post that is still vaguely tumblr appropriate, and I really wanted to do it some sort of justice. I still feel like I don’t. But oh well. Full disclaimer, I am NOT a guitarist, but I lived with a few, two of my best friends are pro players and I’m a sponge so I kind of soaked some bits and pieces up over the last 15 years. But in case any lost guitar hero finds this and disagrees with me over the finer points of tone wood: I know honey, I oversimplified, and I am wrong. I tried? 💜 for easier read I formatted everything specific to Richard’s guitars normally and anything general about electric guitars in cursive.

My main sources besides watching about a 100 a month of guitar tube videos (that is youtube for guitarists) with my ex, my main sources will be this interview and this.

Richard Z. Kruspe (of Rammstein and Emigrate)’s Guitars - In Order of Appearance, Part 1/2

Diamant (Les Paul Style)

“I traded the acoustic for a guitar called Diamant, which was like a Les Paul version in East Germany.” - RZK

Now I’m skipping the acoustic he started out with, because it’s basically impossible to know what that was, and go straight into the electric. Now presumably, it would have been something like this, a soviet build Les Paul rip off. The irony is that these still go for several thousands up on reverb today for being historical and collectors pieces. The thing is, that while anything east build might have used cheaper materials, I would assume this thing isn’t worse than any of the beginner/intermediate models sold today, if not better, and kids all over the world do decent stiff with those.

Something general about electric guitars is that you don’t really so much play the guitar, you play an entire system. The instrument doesn’t make the sound, it only influences it. You play a guitar - but you even more so play the amp. Which makes this a bit tricky, because an e-guitar is a slab of wood and a copper coil, and amps are way more complex. You can make the exact same guitar sound so many ways. Still - there are tendencies. The fact how and why and to which degree the shape and wood of a solid body (a guitar without a hollow wood piece) influences the sound is highly debated and can get a bit esoteric sounding to sane people non-guitarists, but there are some differences in how the general set up and build of the guitar changes things, and tendencies how they are traditionally outfitted. Les Paul style guitars are normally humbucker guitars, Stratocasters and Telecasters normally are outfitted with single coils. Usually a guitarist can switch - between using the bridge, the neck, or both (or more) pick ups and depending on where the pick up is located they pick up different frequencies, different aspects of the sound. Humbuckers produce a richer, deeper or fuller sound than single coils. Very roughly speaking, think the Stones vs. Metallica.

Fender Stratocaster

“Then in East Germany, we had this imagination to get one of the great guitars, to me it was always the Fender Stratocaster because it was the Jimi Hendrix guitar. I didn’t know anything about pickups or humbuckers or whatever. So there was this guy that I met in a café in my old hometown and he was buying all these books because he could get all the books out through customs and he would store them in my apartment. So we became kind of acquainted. He would come over and pick up the books. So one time he came over and I asked him if he could get me a guitar and bring it over. In East Germany, if you exchange money from East to West it would be like 1 East mark and 20 West mark. SO everything I had, I changed it to West Mark and I gave him the money and I gave him the money and asked him to please buy me a Fender Stratocaster. I gave him the money and I didn’t hear anything for like three months, nothing. I wasn’t able to call because we didn’t have phones and stuff like that – it was a different time. So I thought fuck, I gave him 1400 west mark and now he’s gone and never coming back. [...] Then my imagination was so high, I thought the guitar would just play by itself and I wouldn’t really have to do anything, which I found out was bullshit. I was really happy that I had the guitar but it wasn’t really the sound that I had in mind.” - RZK

The first time I heard that story, I literally went “no, no, no, don’t be stupid, don’t give him your money, you won’t even like that guitar, stupid, lost dumbass.” I can not, for the life of me, imagine him play anything other than humbuckers. He apparently does use single coils for some things today again in the studio, but still, it’s so obviously wrong. He did play one again sometime during the late 90s, but I couldn’t find anything on the pick ups he used with that, but can hardly imagine he kept the original, unless he needed it for a specific sound maybe in one or two songs. I get it though. For many, many people the Fender Stratocaster is THE guitar. Jimi Hendrix is the main reason for that, but it’s also the countless idols that picked it up after him for the same reason, people who ended up plastered on the walls of angsty teenagers in their own right. This totally has to do with the whole amp thing aswell. You see your idol play that type of guitar ... but it’s not even half of the sound, and it won’t sound the same. Maybe probably they changed the pick ups, they have an effect rig, the spend hours fiddling with the knobs on an amp you can never afford. It’s never the same. Which is why ...

Fender Telecaster Black Gold

Then I had a guitar that I was very fond of. It was an older black and gold telecaster – there weren’t very many of them made at that point. I put a Seymour Duncan Jeff Beck SH-4 in there, like a humbucker. I remember it was like my beauty guitar and I needed someone to put that pickup in and I was with Paul and he had more experience with that stuff than me so he would get out a hammer and a chisel and he start banging away on it and I was like ‘Fuck! Fuck! Don’t do that!’ but we put the thing in there and it was one of my favorite guitars” - RZK

... this one first didn’t really make sense for me for him. It’s even more a classic single coil guitar than the Strat is, and it only really started making sense for me when I learned he Paul indeed put a Humbucker in there. It’s a stunningly beautiful guitar, and weirdly non-modern for him. I don’t know why and this is completely instinctual on my part, but I find it fitting he played it during that time after the wall came down, which seems to have been a rough time for him generally, it seems like a somehow super emotional guitar, this relic. Telecasters were some of the first electrics ever build, it’s such a pioneer, but it’s also one that alot of punk bands used, possibly because they were old and cheap in the 70s and noisy and people customized it and put other pick ups in. The whole putting a chisel to it and adding a humbucker into it is such a “I’m gonna make whatever I have fit for me, and I’ll love it” move. If you look at it, a double coil pick up is really something you have to force to go in there, you really have to break it open. There is also this:

“... and then I think I had to sell it because I needed drugs or something. I was really sad that I sold it because I was at a very low point in my life.” - RZK

If I would get the chance to do one thing only for him to thank him for his music, I would go back in time to that Richard who is just sad about selling that guitar and hug him, and tell him he doesn’t need to worry, because they will name guitars after him in the future. It breaks my heart so fucking much. But of course, it’s what opens the doors to what happens next, which is ...

ESP 901

“That led me to my very first convention in Frankfurt. With guitars, it is like with women, you have to fall in love. Sometimes you get a guitar and you fall in love later but there has to be some sort of connection with it. So I was walking around that convention and I saw that guitar hanging at the ESP stand. It was a 901 ESP Sunburst and I was looking at it because it was such a beauty. And I was walking around for hours – they probably thought I was some weird guy who wants to steal the guitar. I bought that guitar and that’s how I got connected with ESP.” -RZK

He might have fallen for it because it is pretty, but it did come with a ESP double humbucker set up, with an added condensator to muffle up the sound, although not yet an active one (more on that later). It was a 90s metal guitar, one of those things marketed to the Metallica generation, something loud and heavy and full. Also, and this is where I will put in another general insert, there is something else about the choice of electric guitars that we haven’t talked about yet.

Now, I’ve discussed that you can push or pull the sound of a electric quite far in one or the other direction with what pick ups you use, what effects, what amps. But what this ignores is that especially standing up a guitar is a really shitty asymmetrical piece of equipment. And what that does to your body is that it needs to fit you, your hands, and your playing style. Some people prefer it chunky, others like sender. Guitarists, especially the 80s shredders, like to talk about a “fast neck”, which is another one of those things that get slightly esoteric, but which usually means a slimmer neck and slightly bigger frets, that need less way for your fingers to press until the string gets stopped. Someone who plays very bendy blues might dislike that and prefer something to dig in their fingers more down to the fretboard to get more control over how they bend the string. There are different neck profiles, there are different neck lengths, and all of it contributes to how comfortable someone might find their guitar.

I am mentioning this, because until today, Richard’s guitars are build very similarly to that ESP 901. His Eclipse Model is a tad different (again, more on that later), but the one he uses the most, the RZK I, has the same neck scale, similar frets, and that comfortable ESP slender neck. Even the shape seems to be inspired by turning it upside down. He has said in interviews that he hasn’t got very strong hands, and it makes perfect sense to me. I bought my own electric (again, more on that later) purely because I wanted to own one and not even so much because I ever had any real ambitions of learning to play it, but my friends at the time (10 years ago now) forced me to try out alot (!) of models (despite me knowing what I wanted), and the only guitars that I tried that had slimmer necks were Ibanez guitars, which in turn were wider. Ironically Frankfurt is my hometown, so the place to try a lot of different models is That exact convention Richard went to, and I haven’t skipped a Musikmesse in the last 15 years. I was at atleast one were Richard was too (I just didn’t care at the time, yikes), and it somehow greatly pleases me he found “his” guitar at that particular convention. Things have changed in recent years, but electric guitars always were in Hall 4.01, with ESP being left of center in the middle, and I don’t know, I can just see him walking in circles around it, and it makes me so emotional for him because it’s what musicians do at that place. It’s really loud, everyone is playing, there is someone better noodling around at every corner, and it can be quite an intimidating setting I think. And every year you see that one kid coming back and back again to that same stand, staring at that one guitar until they finally work up the nerve and ask to try it (or the staff takes pity on them and offer). And it’s the same everytime, they think “oh god they must think I am crazy” but really, nobody does. Everyone in that hall who owns a heart knows what those dreams are made of, and all it maybe does inspire is a “oh god, I hope that one makes it”. I digress. I think it’s more common now to look for different neck styles and companies started caring about it, but especially coming from Fender and Gibson guitars, that neck is honestly just very, very nice for weaker hands.

This is where I will stop, because it makes a good moment for a break and this post is honestly getting too out of hand otherwise. There will be a part 2 - where Richard starts using active pick ups, starts playing my favorite guitar in the whole wide world (and stops playing it), and finally, set up his own signature.

This is him with that 901 though: when he must have had it pretty much brandnew, while he used it, and right before he sold it.

[etirabys]

This post is my attempt to simplify what I learned from Who We Are And How We Got Here into a timeline I have a shot of remembering for years, with some padding from Wikipedia where I thought it would help me.

---

As a backdrop to the specifics that follow: humans and human cousins have been sort of ambling out of Africa and back in waves of migration and interbreeding and extinction, for the past two million years.

Around 650K years ago, humans split from the group that will further split 200K years later into Neanderthals and Denisovans. These are the two 'archaic human' populations that contributed some genetic material to modern humans, whose DNA we got our hands on. This is also maybe the divergence point of humans and another archaic population in Africa that later mixed back into humans, that we don’t have DNA evidence for.

200K years ago, zoom in on the ambling in and out of Africa, because now some of the ambling groups are what we’d call anatomically modern humans – that is, their phenotypes fit within existing human populations. At this point, the split between the San population (the most different-from-everyone-else population alive today, whose descendants currently live in South Africa) and the rest of living humanity begins.

50K years ago, a period of great interest. We see behavioral modernity starting hereish, at the beginning of a period (lasting ~40K years) we call the Upper Paleolithic. The rate of stone toolmaking innovation speeds up from ‘glacial’ to ‘every few thousand years’. (If that seem like an odd setting change, I agree.) We see the first known jewelry and representational art. Likely we’ll never have a satisfactory explanation of what exactly changed. We almost certainly had language by this point.

Human colonization of Australia and New Guinea happens, while ocean levels are low. This is part of a radiation of a hunter-gatherer lineage spreading out all over Asia. Some of them will eventually go to Siberia and the Americas. Some of them will become the Yangtze River population and some the Yellow River population, who will later mix to produce the majority of mainland East Asians.

40K years ago. After several thousands of years of contact with modern humans, Neanderthals and some other branches more closely related to modern humans go extinct. There’s an Italian supervolcano eruption nowabouts whose climate disruptions in Europe may have intensified competition.

One thing this book has taught me is that it’s misleading to talk about ‘population splits’ outside of the Americas, because lineages diverged and met again many times, but insofar as it’s meaningful to talk about when the European and East Asian lineages diverged, it’s now.

30K years ago. The archaic humans in Africa mix back with humans and contribute 2% of ancestry to some modern African populations.

Around this time, there exists a population called Ancient North Eurasians. Some of them go east, and contribute to the population that will give rise to Native Americans (who are ~1/3 Ancient North Eurasian, ~2/3 ancestors-of-East-Asians). Some of the rest will remain and contribute ancestry to various Eurasian hunter gatherers, as well half the ancestry of the Yamnaya people of the Eurasian steppe, who will later invent horse-and-wagon way of life and become massively successful in Europe.

15K years ago, there are two migrations to America over the Bering land bridge: (1) The First Americans (the Ancient North Eurasian - East Asian group) account for the majority of Native American ancestry. These newcomers quickly zoom through the Americas. They also may have had a startlingly small effective population size – like 250. (2) A mysterious population that contributes some ancestry to a handful of groups in the Amazon, a population whose closest known descendants today are, intriguingly, Australasian. We don’t know much about them.

10K years ago, agriculture arises in the Middle East. Some Anatolian farmers spread out into Europe. Some Iranian farmers spread out to India. A thousand years later, agriculture also begins in China, in the Yangtze River and Yellow River populations.

5K years ago. The horse-and-wagon Yamnaya sweep from the eastern European steppe into northern Europe and largely replace the population there, and account for 25~45% of current European ancestry. The Yamnaya culture is the strongest candidate for the source of the Proto-Indo-European language (which has an elaborate shared vocabulary for wagon-parts). A large part of their success may have been that they were relatively immune to diseases that the rest of Europe was not – they brought plague with them, heretofore unknown to Europe. With the Yamnaya, the Bronze Age; we have evidence of much more social inequality than ever seen before, evident both from archeology and genetics, which tell us that the highest-reproducing individual men starting now are more reproductively successful than ever before.

Around the same time, there’s another wave of migration from Asia to North America – the Paleo-Eskimo lineage – that leaves a ~30% imprint in some parts of North America. The Paleo-Eskimos will be displaced 4K years later by a final wave from Asia, the Neo-Eskimos, who are the ancestors of modern day Inuits.

The Yangtze and Yellow River populations are also spreading out nowish. Their collision produces much of modern East Asians. The Yellow River people are associated with the Han, and the Tibetans. The Yangtze population, where they spread south, provides much of modern Southeast Asian ancestry.

4K years ago, the Indus Valley civilization is hit by a wave of migration for Europeish, by a steppe people who bring Proto-Indo-European culture and language. These steppe people are about half Yamnaya-related, and half ‘the Iranian farmer related populations the steppe people encountered on their way south’. The natives are about three quarters local hunter-gatherers, and one quarter Iranian farmers who mingled in ~2K years earlier. The natives and Yamnaya-ish migrants mix over the next 2K years to form a modern Indian population that’s a mixture of the two, ranging from 80% Yamnaya-ish (especially in the north, and in higher-caste groups) to 20%.

Around now, the first of four great migrations and mixing events of Africa starts – most significant among them is the Bantu migration south, out of Nigeria and into west-central Africa. Most of the present-day population structure of Africa is shaped by these relatively recent expansions, making it hard to tease out ancient splits.

[corona-extra-newsletter]

3/15/20 corona extra: cracking open cold covid facts

Announcements & Thank Yous

“About This Newsletter” has been moved to the bottom so it’s easier to skip if you’ve seen the other ones.

Some institutions do not update on Sundays. I have included the date of everything that is in question. That is also why this update is early :)

Thank you to @hysterical-random-things for letting me know about the first death in NYC and where to find that news, to @nanook2000 for information and links about KY’s response, and to @akashicsage for all of the good deets on San Diego county. If you have reliable information from a good source that I don’t seem to have, please shoot me a message/ask/pigeon!

Places now included in the newsletter are: Utah, Oregon, Washington, the Netherlands, Minnesota, Kentucky, Georgia, Nebraska, the UK, and possibly some others I missed here but included in the newsletter. Please send an ask or a message if you would like a place included!

A word on mortality rates: they look very high in some places in the US right now because testing is limited to the sickest patients. People who have mild illness and are well enough to go or stay home may not have been tested until very recently when several states started mass testing/drive through testing. Testing is still limited in a lot of states, so this will be a rolling increase situation, I anticipate.

A word on case numbers: due to the aforementioned expansion of testing capacity in the US (thank fuck), case numbers are gonna grow in a really, really scary-looking way this week. This is not actually as scary as it seems, because it means we are catching more of the cases that would have gone unnoticed and have better information to help more people.

Just The Numbers

Case numbers

Total cases: 153,517 (10,982 new)

Total deaths: 5,735 (343 new)

China: 81,048 cases (27 new!!), 3204 deaths (10 new)

This gives us a mortality rate of ~3.95%

Excluding China: 72,469 cases (10,955 new), 2531 deaths (333 new)

143 countries/territories reporting cases, 9 are new today including:

Kazakhstan: 6 cases

Curacao: 2 cases

Namibia: 2 cases

Central African Republic: 1 case

Congo: 1 case

Equatorial Guinea: 1 case

Eswatini: 1 case

Mauritania: 1 case

Mayotte: 1 case

Italy is reporting over 20,000 cases with over 1400 deaths

Iran is reporting over 10,000 cases with over 700 deaths

South Korea, Spain, and Germany are reporting over 5,000 cases

SK reports 75 deaths

Spain reports 289 deaths

Germany reports 11 deaths

International/General News

Many places experiencing a worsening epidemic are following the lead of countries including South Korea and instituting drive-through testing and high-throughput testing. Some tests (like the ones being used in Vietnam) can have a result in as soon as an hour, enabling people to be quickly cleared or quarantined. (This is super cool science! Yay, science!)

Johns Hopkins University is putting on a webinar on Tuesday, 3/17. If you are interested, you can sign up/check it out here: https://www.jhsph.edu/events/2020/covid-19/

South Korea’s epidemic is currently being driven by a fringe religious group, which represents approximately 60% of all cases.

Italy’s health system is overwhelmed, which is likely why their case-fatality rate is so high. Doctors, nurses, respiratory techs, first responders, lab personnel, and everyone else involved in hospitals/health care are working their butts off and doing some frankly heroic shit to help people.

Singapore has instituted strict travel restrictions on visitors/transiting people from European countries, including Italy, France, Spain, and Germany; this is in addition to restrictions on visitors from Iran, China, and South Korea.

Some doctors from Washington state, USA (the ones seeing the most cases) are noticing that myocarditis (viral infection & inflammation of the heart) seems to be what kills patients, not the ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome) that requires ventilation. This is obviously in early stages and more research is ongoing.

The World Health Organization is setting up three hospitals with advanced respiratory care capabilities in Erbil, Baghdad, and Basra, Iraq.

Virology Corner

Today’s topic: where did SARS-CoV-2 come from?

SARS-CoV-2 is what’s known as a zoonotic virus. This means that it spread from animals to humans, and then gained the ability (through mutations) to pass from human to human.

We think that SARS-CoV-2 came from bats (Rhinopholus) or pangolins- which doesn’t mean we need to blame bats or pangolins for this, they’re innocent bystanders in the game of cat-and-mouse viruses and animals are constantly playing over evolutionary timescales. Also they’re pretty ding dang cute.

(Not to get much more depressing, but here goes, as humans encroach on more and more land and as climate change progresses, more zoonoses will affect humans. Sorry to be a mega-bummer.)

Question Tuesday

Today’s question comes from @adventurecalls! They ask (paraphrased because the ask got eaten): “If I do get sick, how do I know when it’s ok to go back to doing stuff?”

This is a really good question, and one that’s rapidly being worked out by public health people as we speak (whoa)!

In general, the thought is that once you’re totally recovered you’re not able to spread the virus, but there’s not concrete data on this. The best we have is this recent study in the Lancet (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30566-3/fulltext) which indicates that people who recover shed virus for 20 days from symptom onset, whereas those who die shed virus continuously until their death, a maximum course of 37 days.

I obviously can’t give individual medical advice, which this is not, but the guidance from the WHO is excellent in general, and I will keep readers posted when there’s more information.

If you have questions, ask them and they’ll appear here in the next issue of corona extra!

Regional News (if you want somewhere added just let me know. Don’t be shy!! I highly recommend you just skip to your area if you don’t wanna be overwhelmed.)

Canada: last updated 9:00 AM EST 3/15/20

Total cases: 249 confirmed (+5), 4 presumed (-1), 1 death (3/9/20, no change)

All current cases had symptoms starting between 1/17/20 and 3/9/20

One of these cases is the PM’s wife (mild case); the couple are in quarantine for 14 days now. This is not expected to affect Canada’s management, but is definitely a reminder that being a political leader does not grant one immunity to COVID-19.

12% of cases have required hospitalization

79% of cases are in travellers, and a further 8% in their close contacts

Affected provinces include (both confirmed and presumptive cases): BC (73, +0), Alberta (39, -2), Saskatchewan (2, +0), Manitoba (4, +0), Ontario (103, +2), Quebec (24, +3), Newfoundland and Labrador (1) New Brunswick (2, +0), and PEI (1).

Newly affected provinces include: Newfoundland and Labrador

4 cases in repatriated travellers

The Netherlands

I do not speak Dutch so please correct me if I’ve fucked something up royally

1135 confirmed cases, 20 deaths

176 new cases, 8 new deaths

Provinces (?) affected include: Drenthe (15), Flevoland (19), Friesland (10), Gelderland (100), Groningen (9), Limburg (129), North Brabant (446), North Holland (90), Overijssel (28), Utrecht (109), South Holland (110), and Zeeland (12).

I think this is all of them based on a quick Wikipedia investigation?

Interestingly they tested a bunch of people who work in a hospital and found a pretty high (4%) rate of asymptomatic infection. This seems like bad news (are these people spreading, etc) but it’s actually pretty good news because it means the mortality rate is lower than we think. I’ll update here as I find out more, which is hampered by my inability to speak Dutch.

New Zealand

8 confirmed cases, 2 probable cases

2 new cases, one of which was diagnosed in Australia

Both patients were on international flights and there is extensive contact tracing underway

2 patients have required hospitalization but both have been discharged

6700 people have completed self-isolation, 3015 people continue to be isolated

These people all deserve a medal, thank you for protecting your communities!

Golden Princess cruise berthed in Akaroa has one confirmed and two potential cases. The ship is quarantined now.

Norway 

1077 cases, 166 of which are new

I still don’t speak Norwegian so if I screwed up lemme know

Only 1 confirmed death, possibly one more to be confirmed 3/16 but only official numbers go here

Also possible that it’s been confirmed and I don’t know because I don’t speak Norwegian

287 cases are due to community transmission, 710 acquired outside of Norway, the rest are undetermined

Locations where people became infected include Austria (491), Italy (144), Switzerland (14), UK (12), Spain (9), France (8), USA (7), Iran (5), China (1), Hong Kong (1), other countries with more than 3 cases (80), and other countries with less than 3 cases (20).

Breakdown of cases by area: Agder (55, +3), Innlandet (72, +16), Møre og Romsdal (20, +4), Nordland (8, +0), Oslo (281, +59), Rogaland (127, +9), Troms og Finnmark (20, +4), Trøndelag (50, +4), Vestfold og Telemark (48, +9), Vestland (118, +9), and Viken (278, +47)

Good job Nordland! No new cases today! :D

United Kingdom in general: this is pretty rough because apparently the public health strategy coming from Boris is “herd immunity” aka let everyone get sick and then they’ll all be immune, since the only other way to get herd immunity is a vaccine that…..we don’t have yet. Boris does not understand how to medicine. 

Fuck you, Boris.

1372 total cases (+20%), 232 are new today

35 total deaths, 14 new today

England

1099 total cases

Affected NHS regions are as follows: London (407), South East (175), Midlands (94), North East and Yorkshire (91), North West (76), East of England (71), and South West (61).

Deaths are not being reported by the PHS but I will do my best to split these out in the next few editions using news reports etc

Scotland

153 cases total and 1 death

Affected health boards are as follows: Ayrshire and Arran (6), Borders (7), Fife (7), Forth Valley (10), Grampian (12), Greater Glasgow and Clyde (39), Highland (2), Lanarkshire (16), Lothian (28), Shetland (11), and Tayside (15).

I don’t know if this is all of the health  boards in Scotland but it sure is the ones that have confirmed covid19.

Wales

94 cases, 34 new

Welsh authorities are now recommending that anyone who develops a persistent cough and/or fever self-isolate, and only call 111 if they are unable to cope with their symptoms at home

Affected areas include: Blaenau Gwent County (3, +2), Bridgend County (1, +0), Caerphilly County (11, +4), Carmarthenshire County (7, +3), City & County of Swansea (18, +4), City of Cardiff (8, +3), Conwy County (1, +0), Flintshire County (1, +0), Isle of Anglesey (1, +0), Monmouthshire County (5, +1), Neath Port Talbot (11, +0), Newport City (5, +3), Pembrokeshire (2, +0), Powys County (5, +0), and Wrexham County (1, +0).

Newly affected areas include: Ceredigion County (1), Rhondda Cynon Taf County (2), Torfaen County (2), and Vale of Glamorgan (1).

Northern Ireland

45 cases, 11 new

This is all the data I have, sorry

This may actually be a thing that makes northern/southern Ireland cooperate, which is a small spark of hope in the raging dumpster fire that is this pandemic (I hyperbolize, but only slightly)

US in general: All this info is from the state & county health departments unless I say otherwise. The national response is a trash fire (but maybe hopefully improving this week??) CDC information is updated weekdays; total US cases are from 3/13 at 4 PM

1629 total cases, 41 deaths (2.5% mortality rate), with 46 states and DC reporting cases.

CDC is now recommending all in person gatherings with more than 50 people be canceled for the next 8 weeks. This sucks for me personally and probably a lot of you all too. Hang in there.

California: updated around 10 AM PST, 3/15/20

The state dept of health is not providing a ton of info right now, so all of this is coming from county health departments, which are doing really excellent work btw. Love local public health departments <3

My official take is that the higher level government orgs in the US are muzzled from above and therefore totally shitting the bed and the county-level public health officials are really stepping up to the plate

Total cases not including the ones at Miramar (discussed below): 363, with 4 total deaths

Affected counties include: Alameda (7), Calaveras (2), Contra Costa (29), Fresno (2), Humboldt (1 - recovered), Imperial (2), Los Angeles (53, +11), Madera (1), Marin (5), Orange (14), Placer (8), Riverside (10), Sacramento (29) San Benito (3 - 2 recovered), San Diego (8), San Francisco (28), San Joaquin (8), San Luis Obispo (1), San Mateo (32), Santa Clara (91), Santa Cruz (7), Shasta (1), Solano (6), Sonoma (4), Stanislaus (2), Tulare (2), Ventura (5), Yolo (2)

San Diego: My numbers are not gonna include the federal quarantine situations at Miramar (for repatriated people and the Diamond Princess passengers) because that’s what makes sense right now regarding community transmission. If this changes I will say so.

Unaffected counties include: Alpine, Amador, Butte, Colusa, Del Norte, El Dorado, Glenn, Inyo, Kern, Kings, Lake, Lassen, Mariposa, Mendocino, Merced, Modoc, Mono, Monterey, Napa, Nevada, Plumas, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, Sierra, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, Tuolumne, Yuba

Counties with confirmed community transmission include: Los Angeles, Marin, Orange, Riverside, San Joaquin, Santa Clara, Sonoma

Newly affected counties include San Luis Obispo (3/14)

Colorado - last updated 3/14 at 3 PM

Colorado Springs Bridge Center is under an advisory for possible exposure

Drive-up testing is available now, in Denver and Lowry and possibly other places

1 death, 3/13/20, in El Paso County, a female in her 80s

Community spread has been confirmed

101 confirmed cases, 1 death

Affected counties include: Adams (6), Arapahoe (10), Denver (20), Douglas (4), Eagle (18), El Paso (3), Gunnison (6), Jefferson (9), Larimer (1), Mesa (1), Pitkin (2), Pueblo (1), Summit (2), Weld (3)

Out of state visitors who have tested positive are tallied separately. They are located in the following counties: Pitkin (9), Eagle (2), Routt (1), Denver (1), unknown (2 - wtf??)

Florida - last updated 145 AM EST 3/15/20

115 (+45) cases and 4 deaths (+0)

Florida has not yet confirmed community transmission but it’s almost certainly happening. I’m no longer separating counties with and without confirmed community transmission because of that.

Also, the numbers by county do not add up to the same total because locations are updated less frequently by FLDPH than the total number of cases.

Affected counties  include: Alachua (1, +0), Broward (36, +16), Charlotte (1, +0), Clay (3, +2), Collier (5, +2), Duval (4, +3), Hillsborough (4, +2), Lee (5, +1), Manatee (4, +0), Miami-Dade (13, +5), Nassau (1, +0) Okaloosa (1, +0), Orange (2, +1), Osceola (1), Palm Beach (5, +0), Pasco (2, +1) Pinellas (2, +0), Santa Rosa (1, +0), Sarasota (1, +0) Seminole (1, +0), Volusia (5, +1)

Newly affected counties include: Citrus (1), St. John’s (1)

Port Everglades is under an advisory due to several cases connected to a cruise company based there.

Georgia: last updated 3/15 at 11:43 AM

Y’ALL THEY MADE A HASHTAG. I am NOT making this up. It’s #covid19ga if you want to use that, I guess???

99 cases, 1 death

Affected counties include: Bartow (9), Charlton (1), Cherokee (6), Clayton (2), Clarke (2), Cobb (19), Coweta (2), Dekalb (10), Dougherty (6), Fayette (5), Floyd (4), Fulton (20), Gordon (2), Gwinnett (4), Henry (1), Lowndes (2), Lee (2), Newton (1), and Polk (1).

Illinois: last updated 3/14/20

64 confirmed cases, 16 new, with confirmed community spread

New cases: Chicago (7), Cook not Chicago (4), Kane (1), Lake (1)

195 pending persons under investigation

Affected counties include Cook, Kane, McHenry

Newly affected counties include: Woodford (1), Cumberland (1), St. Clair (2), DuPage (1, first long-term care facility case)

Iowa: last updated 3/14/20

Total cases: 18, 1 new 3/14

Affected counties include: Carroll (1), Dallas (1), Harrison (1), Johnson (14), and Pottawattamie (1)

Community spread confirmed on 3/14/2020

Kansas: last updated 3/14/20

8 confirmed cases

Affected counties include: Johnson (5), Wyandotte (1), Butler (1), Franklin (1)

Kentucky: last updated 3/14 at 6 pm local time

18 confirmed cases

2 new cases, both in Fayette County

One patient in Nelson County tested positive but left the hospital and refused to quarantine himself. Don’t be like this guy. Please. I’m expecting a lot more cases to pop up in Nelson county over the next couple weeks all connected to this one patient.

Apparently there’s now a bunch of cops sitting outside his house to make sure he stays there. Ffs.

Affected counties include: Harrison (6), Fayette (7), Jefferson (3 or 4, possible repeat test), Bourbon (1), Nelson (1), and Montgomery (1)

Governor is recommending hospitals stop elective procedures and childcare centers plan for closure by 3/17/20. Also put in place a bunch of important protections for people who don’t have insurance and stuff. Good job, KY!

First patient has fully recovered! Yay!

Louisiana: last updated 9:30 am 3/15/20

91 cases reported, 14 new

2 deaths, 1 new

Parishes affected:  Jefferson (12, +1), Lafourche (1, +0), Orleans (65, +12), St. Charles (2, +0), St. John the Baptist (1, +0), St. Tammany (4, +2), and Terrebonne (2, +1)

New parishes affected: Bossier (1), Caddo (1), St. Bernard (1)

Massachusetts: last updated 4 pm 3/14/20

138 cases (19 lab confirmed, 119 presumptive positives)

1 new lab confirmed case, 14 new presumptive positives

1083 people in quarantine

Affected counties include: Berkshire (9, 0% change), Essex (5, +150%), Middlesex (65, +8%), Norfolk (28, +16%), Suffolk (27, +3%), and Worcester (2, 0% change)

Newly affected counties include: Barnstable (1) and Bristol (1)

5 cases travel related, 104 (+10%) in one community transmission cluster, others unknown

11 hospitalized, 105 not hospitalized, the rest pending (22)

1 new hospitalization

Michigan: last updated 3/14/20 in the evening

33 cases, 8 new, 0 deaths

Affected counties include: Bay (1), Charlevoix (1), Ingham (1), Kent (3), Macomb (2), Monroe (1), Montcalm (1), Oakland (9), St. Clair (1), Wayne (8), and Washtenaw (4)

Likely community transmission

Minnesota: last updated 3/15

35 cases, community transmission confirmed

Affected counties include: Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, Olmstead, Ramsey, Renville, Stearns, Waseca, Washington, and Wright

County numbers are not currently being provided by MN dept of health, just ranges. Hennepin and Ramsey counties have 6-20 cases each.

Hopefully they’ll pull an Ohio and help a girl out soon

Drive through testing available in Olivia

Nebraska: last updated 3/15

Community transmission confirmed: many locations in Douglas County are potential places where transmission has occurred; if you live or have traveled to Douglas County (Omaha), please check the Douglas County COVID-19 monitoring site.

There were also two exposures in Knox County on March 5, at basketball games at Lincoln Southwest HS and North Star HS.

17 cases, no deaths

Affected counties include: Cass (1), Douglas (15) and Knox (1)

New Jersey : last updated 3/14 at 2 pm

69 cases (+38%), 1 death (none new)

Affected counties include: Bergen (25, +47%), Burlington (3, no change), Camden (2, +1), Essex (7, +1), Hudson (5, +2), Middlesex (10, +6), Monmouth (8, +1), Morris (3, no change), Ocean (1, no change), Passaic (2, -1 apparently?), Somerset (1, no change), and Union (1, no change)

Newly affected counties include: Mercer (1)

I dread updating NJ just because the website sucks so bad

Thank you to the commenter who noted that the help line apparently rules and they’ve been advertising it heavily, that’s awesome public health work by NJ!

So that’s a bright spot, eh?

New York: last updated 3/14 at 8 PM

613 cases, 192 new, 1 new death

Affected counties include: Westchester (178, +12%), Nassau (79, +54%), Suffolk (41, +13), Rockland (12, +3), Ulster (5, +0), Dutchess (4, +1), Orange (6, +3), Saratoga (3), Albany (5, +3), Broom (1, +0), Delaware (1, +0), Herkimer (1, +0), Monroe (2, +1), and Schenectady (1, +0).

NYC has 269 cases (+75%) as of 3/15 at noon

Newly affected counties include: Erie (3), Tioga (1), and Tompkins (1)

Drive through testing in New Rochelle and Long Island

All public places are closed in New Rochelle through March 25.

Ohio: last updated 3/15 at 2 pm

36 confirmed cases, 10 new

350 people under investigation

Affected counties include: Belmont (2), Butler (6), Cuyahoga (14), Franklin (3), Lorain (2), Lucas (1), Medina (1), Stark (2), Summit (2), Trumbull (2), Tuscarawas (1)

THEY STARTED GIVING COUNTY BY COUNTY INFO, PRAISE THE LORD!!!

Oregon: last updated 3/14 at 11:00 AM

36 cases, 13 hospitalized at time of positive test, 1 death (3/14)

The following counties are affected: Clackamas (1), Deschutes (3), Douglas (1), Jackson (2), Klamath (1), Linn (9), Marion (2), Multnomah (1), Polk (1), Umatilla (2), and Washington (13).

Pennsylvania: last updated 3/15 at noon

Gritty is now loose and is singlehandedly responsible for all cases in Philadelphia, if you see the orange monster, RUN

63 total cases, 16 new today

No deaths, Gritty is thankfully failing in his mission to murder

Counties affected include: Allegheny (3, +1) Bucks (4, +1), Chester (2, +0), Cumberland (5, +2), Delaware (7, +1), Monroe (6, +3), Montgomery (24, +4), Northampton (1, +0), Philadelphia (6, +2), Pike (1, +0), Washington (1, +0), Wayne (1, +0)

Newly affected counties include: Lehigh (1) and Luzerne (1)

446 people under investigation pending test results

Rhode Island: last updated 3/13/20

~500 people in quarantine for close contact situations

57 pending people under investigation

20 confirmed cases, no deaths

Next expected update 3/16 in the AM

South Dakota: last updated 3/15

9 confirmed cases, no new cases since 3/14

6 pending cases under investigation

Affected counties include: Beadle (1), Bon Homme (1), Charles Mix (1), Davison (1), McCook (1), Minnehaha (3), and Pennington (1)

No community transmission

Texas: last updated 3/15

56 total cases, 5 new.

Highly likely that there has been community transmission, unconfirmed currently

Affected counties include: Bell (1, +0), Bexar (3, +2), Brazoria (2, +0), Collin (6, +1), Dallas (8, +0), El Paso (1, +0), Fort Bend (9, +0), Galveston (1, +0), Gregg (1, +0), Harris (10, +0), Hays (1, +0), Lavaca (1, +0), Montgomery (3, +0), Smith (4, +1), Tarrant (3, +0), and Travis (1, +0)

Newly affected counties include: Matagorda (1)

The Texas DPH has corrected a tabulation error that affected Gregg and Travis counties.

Utah: last updated 3/15

21 total cases, 14 cases in Utah residents

Affected health districts include: Davis County (3), Salt Lake county (14), Southwest Utah (1), Summit County (2), and Weber-Morgan (1)

The Utah Jazz managed to get more testing than the rest of the country for awhile there, so that’s great for them

Whoever does your graphic design, *greatjob* (the little virus instead of the UDPH logo is CHOICE)

Also, the website is super useful and readable, 10/10 good job Utah

First case of community spread identified on 3/14/20, in Summit County

Schools and universities are closed starting 3/16/20, Mormonism is closed until further notice, and skiing is canceled in Park City and Cottonwood Canyon for a minimum of a week. If you are interested in skiing in Utah, check Ski Utah for a list of closures.

Virginia: last updated 3/15

45 cases total, 4 new

Affected counties/cities include: Arlington (8, +1), Chesterfield (1, +0), Fairfax (10, +0) James City (8, +1), Loudoun (5, +0), Virginia Beach City (4, +1), Prince William (3, +1), Spotsylvania (1, +0), Prince Edward (1, +0), Hanover (1, +0), Harrisonburg City (1, +0), and Alexandria City (1, +0)

No newly affected areas today.

Washington: last updated 3/14 at 2:45 PM

Godspeed, y’all are having a real rough time right now. Yipes. Washington is really hard hit right now, especially King County. Look to Washington State and how they’re coping for a preview of how things are gonna go as the cases develop elsewhere.

642 total cases, 40 deaths (6.2% mortality)

Affected counties include: Clark (3), Columbia (1), Grant (2), Grays Harbor (1), Island (6), Jefferson (1), King (387), Kitsap (3), Kittitas (3), Pierce (26), Skagit (4), Snohomish (154), Spokane (3), Thurston (3), Whatcom (2), and Yakima (4).

39 cases are currently unassigned to a county. These are expected to resolve in the coming days, hopefully.

Deaths have occurred in the following counties: Grant (1), King (35), Snohomish (4),

Wisconsin: last updated 3/15 at 2 PM

33 total cases (6 new), 1 recovered, 0 deaths

Affected counties include: Dane (6, +0), Fond du Lac (11, +5), Milwaukee (7, +1), Pierce (1, +0), Racine (1, +0), Sheboygan (3, +0), Waukesha (3, +0), and Winnebago (1, +0)

Today’s Hot Tips

Make sure you have ibuprofen and tylenol/acetaminophen/APAP/paracetamol at home before you get sick. This isn’t just covid advice, this is life advice in general. (Obvs, ask your doctor about what’s safe to take if you have chronic health conditions etc but this is a general recommendation, not medical advice. As I said, life advice.)

As far as I know, ibuprofen and tylenol are ok, but research may change this. Current research indicates that steroids, which are used in other severe respiratory conditions, may make COVID-19 associated acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) worse. More on this later.

It still can’t hurt to have some tylenol around, though, ya know?

Hand Washing Song of the Day

If you hate singing happy birthday while you wash your hands, I certainly do, try Good as Hell by Lizzo instead!

Sing from “I do my hair toss” to “If he don’t love you anymore” at minimum (if you’re like me and can’t leave a lyric unfinished, go ahead and dry your hands while making your brain happy.) to follow CDC handwashing guidelines! Use soap and water for maximum virus-murdering.

Chill Cat  Otter Corner

https://gfycat.com/pastjovialalligatorgar-otter

Please watch these otters sproing and chase!

About this newsletter

I’m Emily, I’m a 4th year med student w/ a degree in molecular biology. I wrote this because I’m an infectious disease and epidemiology nerd and also all my friends have questions & anxiety. Hi internet!

All this info is sourced from regional & national public health organizations, plus the WHO. It’s as up to date as humanly possible. I’ve been beaming information about this outbreak directly into my brain 24/7 but I still miss stuff. Please let me know if I miss something!

Most public health departments stop updating their information around 4-5 PM local time on weekdays. That means that the earliest this will come out is around 6 PM Pacific time on weekdays going forward. On weekends things update more sporadically and earlier, so who knows what I’ll do then, but I’ll do my best.

Thank you to @marywhal for the excellent title!

For More Information

JHU COVID-19 data center: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

List of peer-reviewed publications: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/publications.html

WHO daily sitrep: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200315-sitrep-55-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=33daa5cb_6

WHO FAQ: https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses

CDC cases in the US (take w/ a grain of salt due to Political Garbage, as detailed above): https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html, this also has links to each state’s health dept which may or may not be more up to date than the CDC