#which for reference a 98 is pretty average

[missbaphomet]

I actually haven't ever had a trigonometry class. School in the US isn't the best and school in the southeast is often significantly worse. The school I went to was even on the failing list for math during my education. I was so far behind in math that when I tried to attend a local fine arts school for math and science I had to withdraw after just three weeks (and a summer course) because I was just too far behind, which was extremely upsetting to me for several reasons. I was one of only maybe a dozen kids chosen for that year's class out of a few hundred applicants, but I simply didn't have the knowledge I needed in math. I went into honors algebra 1 not knowing the order of operations. That's how bad my school's math education was.

The summer course was three weeks long and we covered a whole textbook in that time. I was out the entire middle week with the worst case of pneumonia I've ever had in my life. I tried to study through it but the meds I was on literally made the numbers jump around the page. I would easily spend 5-7 hours every single night on my daily math homework only to come in the next morning and have every bit of it wrong. My teacher also had a stupid thick accent and I genuinely couldn't understand her, and there was also a rumor that she had a particular disdain for white students because she immigrated from Uganda iirc. She definitely did treat me and the only two other white kids in my class differently than everyone else is all I'll say, but she is no longer staffed there. (Up yours, Mrs. Lugemwa!)

I was a constant ball of stress and anxiety during that time, so much so that I was eating basically nothing but fucking garbage and still dropped 20lbs in three weeks. I do genuinely think it's possible I gained some form of CPTSD from it all or something, and to this day I still freeze up if taking an algebra test. I can do algebra, but something about doing it in a school environment sets me off and I can't think straight and my heart races and all kinds of other anxiety shit. The only classes I have ever failed out of my own lack of knowledge or ability were math classes.

The others were a couple English classes where the teacher hated me and refused to grade my work for some reason, and an anatomy class where the teacher expected us to draw anatomically correct and articulated body systems [muscle, skeletal, nervous, etc] when even my stick figures are deformed and because I missed a huge test that was a pretty significant chunk of my grade because I was having surgery and the professor wouldn't let me make it up. I also had a technical fail for attendance in some fucking mandatory attendance class but my grade was good so I don't count it, especially since I technically shouldn't have been failed because I had a doctor's excuse for that absence but the teacher didn't accept it because apparently I "could have done it later". Like sorry you think some bullshit class where we did fuck all is more important than my health??? And when I say we did fuck all I mean it. We had one graded assignment the whole semester: read a book and take a test on it. I didn't read the book but I made like a 95 on the test so kiss my ass. The rest of what we did were like. Non-graded worksheets about time management and other such skills.

(This is why I wanted to take a gap year, then COVID happened. Now I have to scrape together the funds myself if I want to go back to school in the future)

Sooo many people pronounce my username wrong it blows my mind. I was like 12-13 when I first heard this term, it’s just always been there, so much so I had to ask friends when I would’ve learned it. I just can’t wrap my head around it lmfao

[luvtonique]

I realized something this morning.

This is probably gonna be a long post. (Edit, yep)

I'm a pretty fairly public figure on the internet, and I very regularly interact with a huge amount of people. From YouTube Comments to Discord to Tumblr Asks/Comments to Newgrounds Reviews to MMO Chat to Mic-Chat on Games to Twitch Chat to Stream Chat, blah blah blah.

I've, for years now, over a decade (hell over two decades) talked to probably thousands of people, and have been able to get a gauge on a pretty safe to say "average" of collective human intelligence on the internet.

I've come to realize that not everybody has that kind of experience talking to people online as I do. I've talked to literally thousands, probably near ten thousand, people online in my life.

This is a staggeringly high number and puts me in an outlier position among the rest of you, who likely have only interacted with a double digit number of people online in your life.

Now that you have that information in mind, here's what I realized this morning.

I realized that the reason I don't listen to people, ESPECIALLY when it comes to politics, is because I have learned through talking to all these people that fucking nobody knows what they're fucking goddamn talking about.

I study a lot of things in my spare time, and history is a huge one that I study. I very regularly read and listen to multiple sources talking about historic events, and I make sure to look at as many sources as possible, sometimes including reading encyclopedias in my own home that we've owned for like 40 years.

I cross-reference all of these things and paint a picture of the most likely truths through various means.

Why's that important? Because sometimes a 14 year old on Twitter, literally nearly less than a third my age, will occasionally come along telling me that I'm wrong. Not about history necessarily, but about some opinion that I have based on my own experience and my own knowledge that I've researched myself.

I usually ask them where they got their information, and I'm met with boldfaced idiocy. Completely braindead shit like "180,000 people said it on Twitter," or they link me a Tumblr post with 100k notes, or they say "It's common knowledge," (which is the biggest red flag of them all because not only does it prove they have no evidence to back up what they're saying, but as this post will go on to explain, "common knowledge" is quite literally the worst source of information on anything. People commonly think the earth is flat and that Scientology is real. People commonly think that walking under a ladder or breaking a mirror gives you bad luck. People commonly think that naturally blue food exists.)

In my life I have met thousands of people, and THOUSANDS of them are fucking idiots who very very smugly state completely incorrect knowledge. Earlier today someone tried to tell me that the creators of Beat Saber never sold the company to Facebook, and I showed them proof and they went silent for 3 hours and then went "Yeah so what, Facebook is still a good company" and I wanted to beat my head against the desk.

The internet is full of people who are fascinatingly ignorant. I'm not calling myself "better" or "smarter" than anyone here, I'm just saying that I have learned better than most people that people on the internet are not, and never fucking will be, a good source of information. I don't care if they're your best fucking friend, the coin-toss of them knowing what they're talking about or actually having the facts is so heavily weighted against them, it's seriously like a 98% chance they have no fucking clue what they're talking about.

I urge everyone to take a moment and realize that the internet is, in fact, a good place to find information and do research, but PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET, especially MEDIA AND SOCIAL MEDIA, are NOT SMART PEOPLE AND ARE NOT GOOD SOURCES FOR YOUR INFORMATION.

These are angry, smug, annoying little idiots who are likely 14 years old with a 1st grade reading comprehension who aspires to be a TikTok content creator as a career, and under no fucking circumstance should you ever, ever, EVER listen to any social, financial, religious, gendered, medical or political advice they give.

The world has gotten vastly out of control with how much people think "A lot of people agree with me" is a good enough reason to solidify your opinions. "A lot of people agree" is the biggest red flag ever, because people on the fucking internet are complete fucking idiots, I'm sorry, but I'm someone with far more experience talking to people on the internet than literally any of you reading this. I talk to people on the internet as a career and have been doing this for longer than most of you reading this have been alive.

So what's the point of this? What's the take-away?

The take-away is that I'm saddened by how many people will attack each other vehemently, cut off friends and family members, label people as toxic or problematic, jump to conclusions, etc. based on complete and utter misinformation spouted to them by people who have never once in their entire life actually looked up what the fuck they're talking about. They treat random strangers on Twitter as "experts" because that person is well articulated or put together a YouTube video with really good editing that's softly spoken by a British accent guy and has scary music whenever some "evil" person is on the screen.

The take-away is that people, like yourself (don't you dare try to deny it) will just believe whatever they read on social media, or whatever their Discord friend-group is talking about, because they are living in a complete falsehood that people on the internet know better than they do.

You are not incapable of doing your own research. You are not incapable of finding the truth. You are not stupid. Just do your own research, look into things yourself, cross-reference, use the scientific method, go to a library, read books, for fuck sake please adopt the basic social skill of "If someone says it on the internet it is most likely not true and I should look into it myself."

Because the current state of people is monstrous.

Y'all get so fucking mad about things that are just plain not true, and you revolve your entire life around things you were told by complete idiots and/or children on Twitter and other social media websites.

Stop.

Look at yourself, look at how angry you get about things, and consider that there may be a possibility that anger stems from a complete lack of any foundation or truth in your own beliefs.

Consider the almost 100% guaranteed possibility that you have been blatantly lied to by people who have no fucking idea what they're talking about, and that you are violently upholding standards that are incorrect because you have placed trust in the word of untrustworthy people.

Look up confirmation bias, read about it.

Look up manipulation tactics, read about it.

Look up "Plato's Republic" and read about it.

Absolutely, under no circumstances, should you ever, EVER, form your social or religious or political or financial or gendered or sexual etc. opinions based on SHIT YOU READ ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

And while we're here, don't listen to the news either. They're just a bunch of parrots saying what needs to be said to get you all fighting with each other so that the government can fuck things up while you're distracted. Do your own research, check multiple sources, don't consider social media or regular media to be a 'source,' get every bit of information from every angle, and for fuck sake, stop attacking people for disagreeing with you when you, yourself, only believe what you believe because your friend group believes it and you know that if you disagree with your friend group they'll all attack you so you'd rather be on their side, which only further proves my point that y'all need to fucking chill.

"Democracy will never work. If 3 medical experts tell you that you must eat a ginger root to cure your ailments, but 100,000 idiots with no medical experience tell you otherwise, you're more likely to believe the 100,000 idiots. They are louder, there are more of them, and you will gamble on the hope that among those 100,000 idiots, there must be more than 3 medical experts. The voice of the ignorant will always drown out the voice of the educated."

-Plato's Republic, 375BCE (Paraphrased)

"I can't believe Jay just called us all idiots and expects us to listen to him"

-Someone in the comments of this (It's gonna happen)

PS: If you looked up "Naturally Blue Food," and found out it does in fact not exist, good for you for doing your own research!

[moodymisty]

PRIMARCH COCK SPECULATION

I know you preach big shmeat ferrus but I've seen one or two people have the idea of repressed choir boy Lorgar ironically actually being the most well endowed of his brothers and I love it for the hillarity and how hot it is. With the massive size difference between primarchs I imagine it works through the physically larger primarchs generally having proportionally smaller members but not absurdly so and all primarchs generally ranging from "bigger/smaller than average but not absurdly so" except Lorgar who's packing HEAT. To keep the iron smheat just make Ferrus a close second and break the trend by being a physically large primarch who isn't proportionally small. This also solves the issues of there technically being no "smallest primarch" because as well as how the hell someone would ever hope to sleep with the larger primarchs: The proportionally smallest would be some massive primarch (who might even be happy because it would be impossible to use otherwise) the physically smallest would be some physically small primarch who is still pretty decently endowed. For shits and giggles Alpharius and Omegon have dicks the EXACT average size across the trillions of men in the imperium. There's 19 of them, I don't know enough about statistics but isn't it reasonable one of them would be an outlier? That outlier just happens to be physically small primarch Lorgar getting that 98% percentile cock. Lorgars also said to look the most like the emperor out of all the primarchs, perhaps this was a bit of humble brag on emps side and the real murder cock belongs to the emperor? Repressed choir boy shyly pulls out the proportional equivalent of a normal sized man whipping out a large grocery store banana still in the peel. Forget horses, my mans hung like an elephant.

Oh i know who you're talking about with big dick Lorgar lol. We do have some outliers like small dick perturabo (which isn't actually small lmao just somewhat normal which he doesn't mind cause he can use it without destroying the person getting the dicking)

The idea of sexually repressed religious nutwhack Lorgar having a massive schlong is fucking hilarious to me, cause you know he has like zero reference to how massive it actually is until his poor fucking victim is like 0-0 upon him pulling that weapon out.

[astral-from-afar]

Tokusatsu influences in Blue Period

Okay many people may not know but Magender in Blue Period is a reference to Tokusatsu, specifically Kamen Rider. I just want to spend my time going through some panels and just add a few fun facts as a fan of both shows.

Here is a brief rundown of Kamen Rider

It’s a long running TV show starting from the 1970s where a superhero who rides a motorcycle fight supervillains in order to protect Earth and their loved ones. When the franchise began they usually had an insect motif but has expanded in the last few decades to experiment with new ideas. There are 33 series currently and are split up into 3 eras (Showa, Heisei and Reiwa) based on the different monarchs who ruled over Japan at the time. There are other details but all you need to know is that it is pretty big series in Japan and has been making waves internationally.

First is the episode count. Usually kamen rider seasons shows last around 47-52 episodes on average however some can be as little as 31 episodes (kamen rider decade) and some can be as long as 98 episodes ( the original kamen rider series). The reasoning behind the episode count is that it runs all year round only a weekly basis. It starts from September and ends in August with a few breaks throughout the year.

Another staple in the kamen rider and tokusatsu medium as a whole is the transformation belt or “Henshin belt”. This is used by the main character to transform into their superhero form and they often cry out “Henshin” (transform in Japanese) as well as their catchphrase. As seen below Magender’s catchphrase is: Eliminate evil and illuminate truth.

Furthermore Henshin belts are one of the most successful pieces of merchandise in Kamen Rider due to it iconicness with each new rider having their own unique belt. Another piece of merchandise would be the helmet which Meguro wore in chapter 45. Both can be pretty expensive so I feel for Yatora ( i want one so bad as well)

Last bits I want to go over is what Takada said in chapter 51. The demographic in Tokusatsu has always gone towards young kids, mainly boys. However there have been interesting incidences where a kamen rider series is watched by a different demographic, adult women. This phenomenon was not only due to mothers having to understand the plot of kamen rider for their children but because they found the main lead handsome.

This caused the widely known ‘Odagiri effect’ (named after the lead actor in Kamen Rider Kuuga) which wikipedia states that “A program attracts a larger than expected number of female viewers because the program stars attractive male actors or characters”

This doesn’t mean all women watch kamen rider for the handsome characters of course but this caused a large shift in how actors were recruited which still happens in the present day

The last comment about the relationship between the two male characters is quite an often take when it comes to the two male leads of the series. The tension caused by the two and their subsequent interactions as they learn to bond over the 50 episodes causes many fans to speculate if their bonds go beyond ‘friendship’. I could name many incidents in almost all series that are homoerotic but it is rare to have anything confirmed. To add fuel to the fire it isn’t uncommon to see actors of a particular kamen rider series to go onto starring in BLs which has lead to several memes by kamen rider fans.

Okay so that’s all. I’m very happy if anyone read this far and I hope this gave a bit of an insight on the Tokusatsu medium through the lens of Magender as I love Kamen rider and Blue Period to bits. I’ve barely seen anyone talk about it online so I just wanted to dedicate a long post about it. Have a great day :D

[notebooknebula]

Lease Option Secrets Revealed with John Jackson & Jay Conner

Private Money Academy Conference:

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Join the Private Money Academy: 

In today’s show Raising Private Money with Jay Conner, John Jackson joins Jay to teach investors how to make money utilizing lease options using no credit, no money, no risk, and with almost no competition, all while working exclusively on pretty houses in pretty neighborhoods.

John Jackson has been referred to as the “King of Lease Options” by other educators, speakers, and investors across the country, and has transformed many of the techniques, methods, and structures utilized today with lease options.

John started his real estate company Leasing to Buy in 2003 and since then, has completed well over 800 lease option transactions himself, not including the countless hundreds and hundreds that his students have completed.

His company Leasing to Buy has refined the way that lease option transactions are structured and executed so that over 98% of his buyers obtain permanent financing within 12 months. That is unheard of in the industry, where the industry average is less than 20% of buyers in a lease option ever obtain permanent financing at all!

As an educator, John is the ONLY educator in the US to teach Texas lease options and the unique laws that Texas has. Real estate attorneys have even referred to John for his education, experience, and expertise in this very specific field.

Other nationally recognized educators have learned lease options directly from John, and may also direct their students to John to learn his unique method for executing lease options.

In 2018 John co-authored “Real Estate Rock Stars” which hit #1 on Amazon in 3 categories and in April of 2021 launched the first-ever podcast devoted exclusively to the topic of lease options titled “The Lease Option Experience”.

Private Money Academy Conference:

https://www.JaysLiveEvent.com

Free Report:

https://www.jayconner.com/MoneyReport

Join the Private Money Academy: 

Have you read Jay’s new book: Where to Get The Money Now?

It is available FREE (all you pay is the shipping and handling) at

https://www.JayConner.com/Book

What is Private Money? Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner

https://www.JayConner.com/MoneyPodcast

Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. He maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $67,000 per deal without using his own money or credit.

What is Real Estate Investing? Live Private Money Academy Conference

YouTube Channel

[bishopswriter]

Lucky Pt. 2 (Kate Bishop x Reader)

*Hey everyone! Thanks so much for reading this story! I’m thinking about continuing this Lucky series and doing multiple parts. Also, I did want to clarify that I’m trying my hardest to write this as gender neutral for right now, that way everyone feels represented. Let me know what y'all think! As always, like and comment! I love hearing from you guys!*

@gay-vet-student

@simpforflorencepugh1

@btay3115

@kacka84

The walk was fairly short, which you were grateful for considering how cold it was outside. For the majority of the walk, you and Kate stayed in a comfortable silence. You would occasionally look at each other and smile. That was until you realized how cold Kate seemed to be. She had on jeans and a purple long-sleeve shirt, which was not nearly enough for winter in New York. You realized that Kate may not have been planning on being out in the cold that long, and you immediately felt bad.

“Here, take this,” you stated as you started pulling your hoodie off. You were grateful that you

had decided to bundle up today and wear a zip-up jacket over your hoodie.

“No, no I’m- I’m fine.”

You chuckled, “Kate, I can literally see your teeth chattering. I don’t need it, really. I have this zip-up. Plus, I’m always warm. It’s like a gift or something. Captain America has super strength, and I have a body temperature that’s slightly above average. I mean, personally, I think that qualifies me to be an Avenger.”

Kate grabs the hoodie from you with an appreciative smile, which then turns into a laugh. God, you seriously could not get enough of her laugh. “Yeah, you know, I think that’s what they’re lacking: a person whose body temperature is 100° instead of 98°. You would’ve had Thanos petrified.”

As you approach the place Kate led you to, you grab the door and let her in. She shoots you a smile that makes you stammer as you continue the conversation. “I-I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m gonna say that your favorite Avenger is Hawkeye.”

“You would be correct. What gave it away?” Kate asked with obvious sarcasm.

“Well, I’d say the apparent love for the color purple and the ‘world’s greatest archer’ title that you have given yourself is a pretty clear combo,” you state with a brow raised and a slight smirk.

“Hm, how observant of you,” she states. “Yeah, that’s one of my better qualities,” you reply. Kate quickly stated back, “Along with the modesty?” You were just as quick when you said, “Yes, exactly! Along with the modesty. That’s another great quality of mine.” You both started laughing as you approached the table. It was so refreshing to meet someone who was able to keep up with your wit. It seemed like there wasn’t a single thing you didn’t like about Kate.

When you got to the table, you pulled Kate’s chair out for her and she gave you a pointed look as she sat down. “It seems chivalry is not dead, after all,” Kate said with a slight laugh. You chuckled and replied, “Oh, love, chivalry was never dead to me.” As soon as you said it, you regretted it. It was a complete accident and you didn’t mean to refer to her as “love”. You were in the moment and it just slipped. You were sure your face was red, and you tried to cover it with an awkward laugh. Luckily though, Kate didn’t seem too fazed. A slight blush crept up to her cheeks and she just smiled at you before looking down at her menu. You smiled back, surely blushing 10x harder, and looked down at your menu. The waiter came and took your orders soon after your exchange.

Your coffee came soon, which was your saving grace because your fingers were still numb from the cold. You took a drink and let the warm liquid soothe you. “So, Kate, tell me about yourself. Obviously, you like archery and the color purple. What else do you like?” you asked with genuine curiosity. Kate already seemed so perfect to you and you were dying to know more about the girl who was able to bring down a clock tower with just a bow and arrow.

“Well besides archery, I really enjoy fencing, martial arts, and gymnastics. I always wanted to be like Hawkeye growing up, so I got really good at the stuff that I thought he was good at,” she answered. While she seemed excited to talk about her hero, there was also a hint of sadness that you didn’t understand. “I don’t really hear about very many people who really like Hawkeye, so why do you like him?”

Kate sat on the question for a minute and seemed to be contemplating how to answer it. Finally, she looked at you with a solemn expression and answered. “When the Battle of New York happened, a wall of my parents’ penthouse had been ripped out. I stood there, watching these insanely high tech alien thingies fly through the sky,” she stated as her hands mimicked the flying aliens. One of the things you were growing to really like about Kate was how she was so animated when she talked. It made listening to her effortless. “As I was standing there, I saw one of the aliens flying towards my building. I couldn’t move, when suddenly, I saw an arrow rip through it. And as it fell out of the sky, I saw Hawkeye jumping from a building, using some type of trick arrow to swing into the building. I mean, here was some random dude with no powers - just simple skills- risking his life to save others. My dad always told me that courage and will was all it took to make someone a hero,” she paused. “After he passed away that day, I swore to myself that I was going to be a hero to somebody and make him proud, so I started getting into the hobbies I have now,” she finished. Honestly, you didn’t know what to say. Instinctively, you reached across the table and put your hand over hers, while giving her a soft smile. “I know we basically just met, but I think he’d be proud of the person you are, Kate.” She muttered a “thank you” and turned her hand upwards, giving yours a squeeze.

The food arrived and light hearted conversations with Kate ensued. Just as you both finished eating, Kate’s phone dinged. She checked it and immediately her face grimaced. “Is everything ok?” you asked.

“Yeah, my mom just texted me to ‘politely inform me’ that we’re hosting a ‘soiree’ tonight and that my presence is required,” She stated with a tight lipped smile and rolling eyes.

“A soiree? That sounds fancy,” you say with a small laugh.

Kate huffs and responds, “Unfortunately, they’re super upscale and happen pretty much every week. My mom invites a bunch of clients, and they just drink champagne and talk about their endlessly boring lives.”

“Your mom must be in a good business. What does she do?”

Kate sighed and replied, “She runs Bishop Security.” Wait, if Kate’s mom ran Bishop security then that meant- “Yes, my mom is Eleanor Bishop.” She must’ve seen you putting the pieces together in your head. “Huh, well that would certainly explain why they’re called soirees,” you tried to keep an even voice, even though you were definitely intimidated by the fact that Kate’s family is that well-known.

The waiter eventually returned with the check, which Kate insisted on paying for as a “thank you” for covering for her last night. You both got up and made your way outside. As the cold wind whipped around you, you turned to Kate, about to ask her if she’d like to hang out again. However, she beat you to it: “Y/n, how do you generally feel about soirees?”

Her question caught you off guard but you answered, “Well, considering that I’ve never attended one, I’d say I'm indifferent to them.”

She looks up at you and gives you a pleading smile, and you already know that you’re going to do whatever she asks. “You know, we didn’t really get to talk about your life story, so would you maybe want to go to my mom’s soiree with me tonight and we can talk even more? I know I was just complaining about them, but i promise they’re not that awful, and it’ll be way more bearable if you’re there because there’s never anyone I actually lik-” you knew if you didn’t cut her off now, Kate would continue to ramble until she ran out of breath completely. “Kate,” you laughed and put your hands on her shoulders to stop her from animatedly rambling. “I would be honored to go to your mom’s ‘fancier version of a frat party’ with you.”

She smiled at you with relief and joy evident on her face. Truthfully, you would’ve done anything she wanted to see her smile like that. What happened next though, definitely caught you by surprise. She hugged you, and for a brief second, you forgot that you were actually freezing in the frigid New York City weather. Luckily, your cheeks were already flushed from the cold, so she couldn’t see that you were furiously blushing.

“Thank you so much! You’re a lifesaver, seriously. I feel like I need to start keeping a list of all the things I owe you for.” she said as she pulled out of the hug. As soon as she left your embrace, she shivered. “Huh, you really are unusually warm.”

Kate pulled out her phone and handed it to you, “Put your number in and I’ll text you the details for tonight.” You entered your number and handed it back to her. Honestly, your brain had stopped working after she had pulled you in for a hug, so you were just hoping you spelt your name right in the contacts. “Alright, Kate, thanks for the food. I’ll be seeing you tonight then?”

“Yes, definitely! I’ll see you soon y/n!” Kate stated as she turned to leave. You waved goodbye and started walking towards the subway before you heard Kate’s voice yell: “Wait, y/n your hoodie!” You smiled and waved it off, “Keep it! Trust me it looks way better on you.” She blushed and yelled an “I owe you again” before walking off.

When you got on the subway, your phone chimed.

Maybe: Kate

Hey, y/n, it’s Kate! My mom’s soiree starts at 7:00pm tonight. I’m sending you the location. Just remember - it’s formal. Can’t wait to see you tonight!

You

It’s a date. I’ll see you there!

You looked down at your phone and replayed the events of last night and this morning in your head. You were definitely the luckiest person alive right now.

[just-honey-dewd]

Obligatory Shadow’s height post

This post was brought to you by my own self-indulgence into the thesis statement that is: What would be the heights of all the hedgehogs if they weren’t boosted by heels? And how tall would they be after puberty?

So this was the product of my personal venture.

Canon heights (plus the differentiating shoe types):

Amy = 90 cm*

Sonic, Shadow & Silver = 100 cm

(*Looking at Amy’s model to the height chart is bizarre to me. Disregarding the added height from her heels for a moment, she looks like she should be regarded as 95 cm at least…)

Since all of all the hedgehogs but Sonic are shown to have heels to their shoes in some way, I will be cutting down that height by roughly converting their shoes into sneakers since they’ll never NOT be wearing shoes (note: it’s mostly guesstimates).

Ignore me playing around with Shadow’s shoes in this one lmao

Anyways, after some editing, this was the final result I got. The way they measure the 3D models are p weird, and I came to notice that Silver has slightly smaller eyes and lowered ears to acommodate for his quill crown look, so that makes things slightly harder for my naked eye.

By height order, Sonic (trusting that his shoes aren’t elevating him more than necessary) would be the tallest at the default 100 cm + shoes. He would be considered the oldest at 16 since he technically had an in-world birthday but let’s just say he’d be months older than Shadow.

2nd tallest is Silver at ~98 cm + shoes. His back heel was 2-3 cm, so cutting it down results in him being rather unchanged — which I find interesting considering you’d figure he’d be shorter from being second youngest of the group (and the whole bad future sitch which doesn’t inspire a likelihood that he’d have consistent food servings for optimal growth). If his genes can get him near the height of Sonic in spite of inconsistent food source, I’d wager he might end up the tallest in the future.

3rd place is Shadow at ~95 cm + shoes. His hover shoes gave him 6 cm max of extra height. Taking into account his shoes structure which seemed to resemble the structure of rollerblades (which shaped itself around the foot of the wearer), I gave him a couple inches of soles when putting him in running shoes. He’s probably of average height for a 15 yr old male mobian hedgehog, but considering he was artificially made and apparently ages slowly physically — I get the sense that he might not grow that much in time, if at all.

4th place is Amy at… okay this one was funky. Amy in the initial reference wasn’t measured under the same standard the others were (y’know... by their heads…). So in spite of being said to be 90 cm, I’ll just say that in this instance, Amy was 95 cm plus heeled boots. Thus, the resulting removal of those heels, led to Amy being 90 cm. Honestly, considering she’s a 12 yr old female mobian hedgehog, and is only has a 10 cm gap apart from the current tallest who’s already in the midst of his teen years — she’s probably of average height for her age and sex. She will likely end up reaching at least 95 cm (all confirmed 14 yr old and over female mobians have reached 95 cm) — whether she goes over that height is anyone’s guess.

In summary…

If I were to predict how the hedgehog height chart will be past their growth spurts… I’d say without any changes to their current lifestyles, Silver will overtake Sonic and reach 115 cm, while Sonic reaches 105 cm, Shadow will be in a stasis of 95 cm, and Amy would probably be at 95 cm (since without other female hedgehog mobians in the games to really draw a comparison on, she’s best presumed to just end up in the average height).

One detail I keep coming back to is whether I should call to question the Amy’s height disparity from the references I gathered. Iirc the models here are pretty accurate to what I see in cutscenes between Sonic and Amy height wise. 90 cm makes sense for Amy’s natural height to Sonic, but adding her heels should explain away why her game model is taller than 90 cm. But given canon heights are usually incorporating characters’ heels into them — it makes this isolated incident all the more jarring.

Sigh... -inhales-

“AMY IN HEELS SHOULD CANONICALLY BE 95 CM COME AT ME—“

[leafcabbage]

Hello Kale leafcabbage, I am a big enjoyer of the weather so I have brought you some of my favorite facts:

Typhoon Tip (1979) was not only the largest hurricane to have ever been recorded but the most intense. It had a pressure of 870 millibars, top wind speeds of 190 mph, and was 1,380 miles in diameter, that would've spanned half the US (so about new york to dallas). To put that into perspective, the average hurricane is about 300 miles in diameter and sits around 950-970 millibars. It was very much a beast of a hurricane, but despite that it only killed 99 people.

(In reference to the northern hemisphere, it's the reverse in the southern hemisphere) About 98% of tornado spin counter-clockwise but a small amount spin clockwise, called Anticyclonic tornadoes. They are usually pretty small/weak though and also are usually satellite tornadoes, a small tornado that revolves around a larger tornado.

There are some very cool looking clouds called mammatus clouds that are super round looking and makes the sky look like a bowl of cotton balls. The root word for Mammatus is Breast, udder, or teat. They are quite literally boob clouds, so now my family just calls them boob clouds.

I have so many more facts that I could add if you would like to hear more :D

ahh that's all so cool!! i know a little about some of this from my atmospheric science class i took a few years ago which is awesome because it means i somewhat understand what youre talking about lol. if you want to share more i would love to hear it!!! boob clouds are very funny to me :]

[kinetic-elaboration]

August 28: 3x05 Is There In Truth No Beauty?

Several days later, coming back to write up these Star Trek notes. I feel like I never got to talk this episode through properly, or even think through it properly by myself, because mom went right into watching AHS on Thursday, and I was too tired to even sort through my thoughts and when we talked yesterday, it was… entirely about other things.

So, here at least are my liveblog thoughts, and maybe I’ll remember some more as I write.

Right off the bat, this is such a cool concept: the friendly alien Ambassador who no one can look at because his form is not fit for human eyes.

Love Spock’s silly looking little visor. Not sure I get why he’s wearing it right now, when the Ambassador is in his box, but okay.

Dr. Jones is so beautiful. I love her dress.

I’m sure Spock is thinking “If only all Ambassadors could be put into little boxes like this.”

Okay, Ambassador’s coming! Everybody quarantine!

Right, I JUST remembered the significance of the dress.

Spock has experience with mind links with other creatures—a lot of experience that ho. Is he thinking about the pleasure of connecting to Kirk, that “dynamic individual”?

“My life is here.” With the Captain???

I feel like this episode is implying, all but stating outright, that Spock is very good at mindlinking. Like maybe even more so than the average Vulcan. Which makes sense because he does it so often. And yet he still messes up with AOS!Kirk.

I love the effects for the Ambassador. I’m not even being sarcastic; I think they get across the experience of looking at him quite effectively.

Hmmm, some non-touch telepathy. I know Spock has a little of that. I guess it’s mostly him reacting to Miranda, though.

Gotta get a dig in at Dr. McCoy before he leaves lol. Spock, so predictable.

Kirk’s flirting is off the charts today omg. Tone it down man.

SCOTTY IN A KILT aw yeah.

She learned from the Vulcans how not to read thoughts. Exactly!! Their telepathy is such an underrated part of the whole Vulcan thing, including why they remain ‘emotionless.’

She’s so jealous of Spock.

Honestly this whole scene… there’s a lot going on here! I’m trying to pay attention to the Vulcan telepath stuff but the men won’t stop flirting at 11. Especially McCoy, laying it on extra thick.

She does hold her own very well, though.

A preference for beauty—one of our last prejudices.

“Sleep well.” So cute. (I’ve already forgotten but I’m pretty sure this is Kirk.)

“We’re all vulnerable in one way or another.” KIRK SHUT UP I LOVE YOU.

Girls don’t like guys, girls like Medusan ambassadors.

This guy is so jealous. I barely know who he is lol; this comes out of nowhere.

Interesting angle on the hallway shot. I feel like there are a lot of those in this ep, like these weirdly long shots of the hallways… Maybe I’m just not used to seeing them with one or no people in them.

Kirk and the squad. Work work fashion baby.

“Larry? Marvick? Why?” Okay that is some real Shatnerian inflection there.

SCOTTY FIGHT SCENE.

*Ship veers obviously*

And look at this weird-ass view of the bridge. Like what the hell, where is the camera? On the lift? It’s so disorienting!

Spock needs to fix some stuff, calls for his protégé Chekov, of course.

And this funky music. So bizarre.

WE’LL BE SAFE AT THE BOUNADIRES OF THE UNIVERSE. Drama queen

This is a nutty view, this “unknown void.” Like one would think beyond space there’s… just more space, not a Windows 98 screensaver.

Space time continuum?? They didn’t time travel (again), did they?

“He just simply died.” How convenient.

“An entertaining suggestion, Mr. Chekov, but not very helpful.” Honestly, I do think he’s entertained. Spock has grown so much over the course of the show.. like I know there was controversy with his IC-ness this season but in this case, I really do think it is growth. Compare this to the Corbomite Maneuver, where he had a sense of humor but it was… a little mean, a little arch. There’s a certain warmth to him now.

Her mind must be so engaged that she doesn’t notice the plan for Spock to meld with the Ambassador = Kirk will seduce her. Lol. Of course. Everyone’s favorite honeypot.

He has absolutely NO shame.

The man sure does love his flowers, though.

She’s never been to Earth. So she’s a human born on a colony, I guess? That’s such a throwaway line, but so interesting. Could that be part of how she’s telepathic?

Oh no! A thorn!

“Violent emotion is a kind of insanity.” Can I steal this?

Too ugly to bear or too beautiful to bear?

Let me spell it out for you: this is romantic. (Again, I’ve forgotten what this refers to, but I’m going to assume it’s something Kirk said.)

Lol Bones just dropping truth bombs. How did he know she was blind? Did he recognize the dress or does he have access to her files as the ship’s doctor?

And Kirk accepts it immediately. “Of course! It’s the only reasonable explanation as to why you weren’t attracted to me.”

The Ambassador is brought to the bridge and placed behind a covid wall, I mean, protective barrier.

And now, we meet the Ambassador for real.

“THAT’s Spock!” Bones is so happy. He’s really not comfortable with Spock being all… smiley and flirty. Or rather, someone in Spock’s body, I should say.

Kollos is VERY flirty. And he and Miranda have chemistry for sure. It’s weird, because I don’t get any sense of that between her and Spock (rightly so) but Spock as the Ambassador and it comes right out.

I love the characterization of him. The idea that the Medusans’ thoughts are supposed to be particularly nice to engage with…. I really see how that would be. He’s so soothing.

Kollos is enjoying his time in a human body, I think. Mostly. Not all of it. (I got a little teary at the part about loneliness, ngl.)

Time to go back? So soon?

Noooo the shield! It’s like forgetting your mask when you enter a building.

[Spock wails]

Honestly, even seeing the steps to the upper level of the bridge is really weir. Like, I’ve always known there are steps there… but I’ve never thought about what they look like.

Kirk is so skeptical about all of this. Spock is in danger and his brain immediately goes to the pessimistic scenarios—very unlike him!

He’s freaking out nervous.

“Are we supposed to wake him with a kiss?” Idk, it’s worth a try. Why doesn’t Kirk give it a go?

Does Kirk have a game plan with Miranda here, or is he just honestly freaking out?

…The answer is honestly freaking out, which is rather a disappointment.

Trippy.

Spock has a necklace version of the IDIC symbol this time.

Everyone’s exchanging all these highly formulaic, formal goodbyes and Kirk’s like “Peace.” Wow, really trying hard with that one. Still rattled, I guess.

Also speaking of these formulaic exchanges—this fits very well with the HAICG-verse. Just saying.

This episode was really good! I loved Miranda, I am a huge fan of the underlying sci fi concept, and I though the Spock characterization and the hints of Vulcan culture were very interesting (and very in keeping with my own characterization and world building, imo).

The only thing I didn’t like was Kirk’s characterization. He felt like a stereotype, like who AOS thought TOS Kirk was, rather than himself—the over the top flirting, the dramatic rage, how he didn’t really seem in control of anything or on his game at all.

But, even though he’s my fave, the interesting Spock characterization made up for that, and I really appreciated these insights into him, interacting with someone who, while not Vulcan herself, had a Vulcan cultural background, someone he approached similarly to how he would one of his own people. It was very polite but with a lot of unsaid beneath the surface, which is how I imagine Vulcans are.

The introduction of IDIC truly was pretty random! I did like the idea of Spock trying to compliment her and not really landing it, because that’s just the awkward nerd sort of thing he would do. But it’s weird that the phrase has never been introduced before, and also that even within this episode, it’s only obliquely explained.

I’m not actually sure if I’ve seen the next ep or not. I don’t think so, but it’s possible I did and just don’t remember it very well…

[f107group2]

Spiny Lobster: Spiny and Clawless but Colorful Nonetheless

Photo from: Florent’s Guide to the Tropical Reefs

Yes, you read it right! Apparently there exists a lobster (Family Palinuridae) without claws. It may not be the one you’ve exactly imagined when you see those crustaceans whose claws are clamped in an aquarium outside a seafood restaurant but we’re pretty sure these lobsters saved the chef from some pinches. To some punctures? That we don’t know. It is named spiny lobster afterall!

I. Classification

Kingdom: Animalia

 Phylum: Arthropoda

   Subphylum:   Crustacea

     Class: Malacostraca

       Subclass: Eumalacostraca

         Superorder: Eucarida          

           Order: Decapoda

             Suborder: Pleocyemata

               Infraorder: Achelata

                 Family: Panuliridae

                   Genus: Panulirus

                      Species: versicolor (Fofonoff et. al. 2018)

II. Distribution: Hi! So my address is just right here..

Photo from:  Lavery et. al. 2014

Known as the Painted Spiny Lobster, they are native to the Indo-Pacific waters and are distributed in the Red Sea, South Africa, Southern Japan, Northern Australia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. However, the first non-native occurrence is reported in the Brunswick River, Georgia (Fofonoff et. al. 2018).

III. Anatomy: Pinching for that Body Plan

Extenal Anatomy

The external anatomy of a true lobster (Family Nephropidae) is composed of two parts: The Cephalothorax and the Abdomen as depicted above. The same is true for spiny lobsters but the Paniluridae traversed a different way in the path called evolution.

Photo from: Charles Derby 2011 (up) and Nemesis Database Species Summary (down)

So what do true lobsters have that spiny lobsters don’t? Or better yet what makes spiny lobsters unique from other lobsters?

Spiny lobsters lack the prominent claws and rostrum associated with true lobsters and instead have two frontal horns and prominent dorsal spines (Fofonoff et. al. 2018). Its body is tubular in shape with all of its legs not possessing true pincers and the first pair is not enlarged (Tavares). The antennae are cylindrical, enlarged, and longer than its body. The total body length reaches up to 400mm, but the average maximum size is around 300mm. The male spiny lobster tends to be larger than females (Fofonoff et. al. 2018).

Panulirus versicolor’s carapace has a whitish background, with large areas of bluish-black. The abdomen, on the other hand, is predominantly green in color and the telson is a mix of bluish-black and green. The legs are lined with black and blue stripes. The antenna is pinkish-red in the thicker and lower segments and becomes white ringed with black rings in the upper segment (Sutton 2017).

Photo by: Sutton 2017

The following are brief functions of the spiny lobster’s general external anatomy:

Shell: This part is the lobster’s exoskeleton, made from chitin, which serves as a protection for the internal anatomy. However, for the lobster to grow, it sheds its shell in the process called molting.

Antennae and Antennules: The antennae and antennules of the lobster are used as chemoreceptors, which detect odors and chemical signals to help them in locating food, mate, and avoid danger. In spiny lobsters, the antenna is longer than the antennules.

Stalks: For their vision, lobsters have long and stalked compound eyes. Although stalked, their vision is not that excellent, and can only see images in dim light.

Legs: Since they are under Decapoda, they have 10 legs that are used by the animal to navigate its way on the seafloor.

Tail fan: This is the last segment of the lobster. It has a telson as the center tail fin and pairs of uropods at both sides and is used for backward propulsion.

 Internal Anatomy

These creatures as a member of the Decapod group have internal organs that are the same as the other species. Its circulatory system is open, unlike humans. They have a single-chambered heart that is composed of muscles and ostia, or openings. Usually, the heart of an adult lobster beats for 50-136 beats per minute.

IV. Reproduction and Life Cycle

Photo from: Shiran Weerathunga, 2014

A day in a lobster’s life, they reach sexual maturity at the age of 5 to 6 years. The male’s task is to mate with as many female lobsters there is. Usually, they mate to a depth of 50 to 100 feet of water. As they mate, the male will deposit its spermatophore or known as the plaster in the female’s belly. After a while, the female will move to waters less than 30 feet deep, and when she is ready to spawn, she will use the pincers on her fifth walking leg to cut the plaster and fertilize her 80,000 to 800,000 eggs.

These eggs will be deposited under her tail, where she will perform parental duties until they hatch 9 to 10 weeks later. Usually, the larvae are transparent, large, pigmented eyes with long legs, and have little resemblance to adult lobsters. After 7 to 9 months they drift with the currents and eat plankton, after which they go to shallow water and settle at the bottom. Their lifespan is estimated to be 15 years (Cardone 2008; NOAA Fisheries 2020).

Check out this video of spiny lobsters mating!

and these cute baby lobsters!

V. Ecology

Habitat

They are found living singly or in groups in shallow water ranging from the low-tide marks up to 15 m depth and often reside in rocky areas, coral reefs, and overhangs that provide them protection (Fofonoff et. al. 2018; Mortiz 2010).

Photo by: Aquapix

Feeding Habit and Predators

Spiny lobsters are nocturnal and carnivore feeders. They even exhibit cannibalism at some point in their lives.They remain hidden in their reef or rock shelters called dens during the day and hunt during night for a variety of mollusks, shrimp, crabs, worms, and sea urchins (Sutton 2017). They use their strong legs to pry open their prey. Meanwhile, spiny lobsters are a delicacy not only to humans but octopus, groupers, and trigger fishes as well.

Be fascintaed with this video on how spiny lobsters protect themselves from a trigger fish.

VI.  Relationship with Humans

Ornamental organisms

The juvenile painted spiny lobster displays a vibrant and attractive coloration of blue and purple body with white antennae which has attracted the market of tropical marine aquarium trade (Fofonoff et. al. 2018).

Photo by: Rokus Groeneveld & Sanne Rejis

For consumption

Spiny lobsters in general are eaten and are regarded as a delicacy. The meat located at the lobster’s abdomen proved to be very tasty and chewy.

While the lobster is a rich source of copper and selenium, it contains very high cholesterol, thus, it should be eaten in a regulated manner. Additionally, lobster contains zinc, phosphorus, vitamin B12, magnesium, vitamin E, and a small amount of omega-3 fatty acids (Ware 2018).

For livelihood

As of 2011, Panulirus spp. farming has not been reported in the last years to FAO but the species are cultured in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Philippines (Clive and Shanks 2009). Philippine waters are a natural resource of seeds for lobster farming and so there is a regional trade in peuruli and juveniles to establish spiny lobster farming.

Photo from: Mercator Media Ltd 2020

However, an article published in 2018 says that BFAR will bring the lucrative lobster culture to poor communities in Eastern Visayas by providing the cages and feeds to the beneficiaries (Meniano 2018). According to BFAR, the lobster culture is very ideal not only because of the strong demand from China and Taiwan but also because it is very expensive (4,000 per kilogram) (Meniano 2018).

VII. Did you know?

1. Lobsters pee out of their heads. While their anus is located posteriorly, their bladder is found under its brain and the opening is located at the base of their antennae, or just under their eyes!

2. The female lobster takes "her clothes off" to mate. Female lobsters “take off” their shells during molting and it is in this process that they decide to mate as well. 

3. Lobsters have two stomachs. To make things even more weird, the first stomach located on its head has teeth! It functions to crush food and the second aids in digestion and is located at the abdomen.

4. Lobsters can detach one of their limbs in an emergency. Don’t worry, they are able to regrow it during the molting process.(Yes, the organism in the video is a crayfish but the mechanism is the same with their lobster cousins!)

5. In the 17th century, lobster was anything but a delicacy. In fact, a field guide by Motoh from Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center in 1980 said that the spiny lobster sells for about ₱55/kg in Manila and ₱40/kg in local areas! Now, as stated above, it costs ₱4,000/kg!

Photo from: Creative Tourist (Courtesy of Barnsley Museum)

6. The blood is known as the hemolymph and is color blue due to the presence of Copper.

Photo from:  @WhatTheFFacts on twitter

VIII. References

American Lobster. (2020). Overview of Homarus americanus: The American Lobster. Retrieved November 9, 2020, from, http://www.parl.ns.ca/lobster/overview.htm 

Cardone, B. (2008). The Lifecycle of Spiny Lobsters - California Diving News. Retrieved November 10, 2020, from https://cadivingnews.com/the-lifecycle-of-spiny-lobsters/

Clive, J., Shanks, S.  (2009). Requirements for the aquaculture of Panulirus ornatus in Australia. Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, 98-109

Fofonoff PW, Ruiz GM, Steves B, Simkanin C, & Carlton JT. (2018). National Exotic Marine and Estuarine Species Information System. Retrieved November 9, 2020, from, http://invasions.si.edu/nemesis/

Lavery S.D., Farhadi A., Farhamand H., Chan T.Y., Azhdehakoshpour A., Thakur V., Jeffs, A. (2014). Evolutionary Divergence of Geographic Subspecies within the Scalloped Spiny Lobster 

Panulirus homarus (Linnaeus 1758). Retrieved November 9, 2020, from,DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0097247 

Meniano, S. (2018). BFAR eyes lobster farms in 3 Eastern Visayas provinces. Retrieved from Philippine News Agency: https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1042610#:~:text=Lobster%20culture%20is%20very%20ideal,high%20preference%20for%20live%20lobsters.&text=A%20fishermen%20can%20raise%20up%20to%20100%20lobster%20juveniles%20in%20a%20cage.

Mortiz. (2010). Family Palinuridae - spiny lobsters. Retrieved from SealifeBase: https://www.sealifebase.ca/Summary/FamilySummary.php?ID=13

Motoh, H. (1980). FIELD GUIDE FOR THE EDIBLE CRUSTACEA OF THE PHILIPPINES. Iloilo, Philippines: SOUTHEAST ASIAN FISHERIES DEVELOPMENT CENTER (SEAFDEC) .

NOAA fisheries. (2020). Caribbean Spiny Lobster. Retrieved November 10, 2020, from https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/caribbean-spiny-lobster#:~:text=Spiny%20lobsters%20may%20live%2015,3.6%20inches%20in%20the%20Caribbean. 

Sutton, A. (2017). Painted Spiny Lobster – Facts and Photographs. Retrieved from Seaunseaan: https://seaunseen.com/painted-spiny-lobster-facts-and-photographs-clone/

Tavares, M. (2002). The living marine resources of the western central Atlantic. FAO Species Identification Guide for Fishery Purposes Area 51 and American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, 294-325.

Ware, M. (2018). Everything you need to know about lobster. Retrieved from Medical News Today: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/303332

[rigelmejo]

Comprehension Levels

I did the actual words-known/words-on-page to find out my comprehension % of chinese (so characters known/characters on page to make things simple to count). i wanted to see how close I am to reading at that 98% sweet spot they tell people to read. so here’s my comprehension % of some novels of mine, as of 7/20/21:

撒野: 98.9% comprehension (I should just extensively read it, I could speed read the page I glanced at and guess the unknown words once I saw them)

SVSSS: 97.9% (pretty much at a comfortable reading level, the unknown hanzi were mostly parts of multi-character description words I could roughly guess the meaning of, but I was marking every unknown character)

小王子: 96.8% (again, this is as of today, I flipped to a random page so I wouldn’t have myself remembering the plot to affect how much I ‘knew’)

DMBJ 1: 96%

Peach Blossom Debt: 96% if I count name characters as unknown, 97% comprehension if I ignore character names. (I imagine part of the difficulty is my lack of xianxia reading vocab, so if I intensively read a few beginning chapters I could probably fix that).

Guardian: 95.7% understood (I picked the last page of the first print volume, as I figured if I picked the first chapter which I’ve studied and reread my comprehension level would be higher than if it was a part of the novel I haven’t read)

Update: the current fanfic I am reading 夜半衣寒，I tested my comprehension of the new chapter 16 I started. Out of 705 characters, I didn’t know 9, 695/705=0.987 so I have 98.7% comprehension! This is interesting to me, because I would guess (since I didn’t actually measure at the time), that I did not have above 98% comprehension when I started reading it (of course I’ve read like 34k+ characters of it now so I’d hope I’m more familiar with its vocab now). So this is just info for me, that if something starts out as ‘hard’ as this fic to start, if I intensively read for a while (and I’d guess probably the first few chapters since that’s where author’s own specific language is the most new and their setup/genre words hopefully get introduced), I might be able to learn enough words to put it into a more comfortable regular comprehension level for myself. I do think, at least now that I’m into the flow of this story, I’m reading it a bit faster (still on the slower end since I look up every unknown or ‘fuzzy’ word to double check the pronunciation). To be fair to me? These chapters are 20 pleco pages, which used to take me 1-1.5 hours ToT. Now they take 30-40 minutes, since I slow down to look up things and listen to certain sections, but considering they’d take 15-20 minutes to follow along to someone narrating out loud, I’m getting closer to a normal reading speed. If I sped read/extensively read these chapters instead of intensively looking things up, I may well be at 20-30 minutes a chapter. 

Last night I read 4496 characters, chapter 1 of 福尔摩斯  血字的研究. I used the click-dictionary for new words, and there was definitely a lot of new vocab (though mostly places and names confused me). All of the experiment related new vocab it was nice to see though and learn, since I like reading mysteries I’m sure those words will come up again in other stuff I read. 

Some things I find interesting about this information: I read 小王子 extensively months ago so presumably when I comprehended a bit less than the current amount (since I learned a lot of new words from context or from glancing at the english translation for some words). So whatever my personal ‘minimum’ level of comprehension I can personally tolerate when reading extensively is, it’s below 96% comprehension. 

Listening Reading Method and other activities I’ve been doing has helped my comprehension a LOT. I did NOT expect the comprehensions of all these to be as close to 98% as they are. Particularly Guardian, being at 95% - that isn’t very far from the comfortable reading material level of ‘98%’ I’m aiming for. I’m not sure how fast I can boost up my comprehension just a BIT more, but wow is it close to the goal...

On a related note, that explains why Guardian and Silent Reading have felt relatively easier for me to ‘extensively read’ when I feel like it lately. While I still have some difficulty, since I have familiarity with the general story (Guardian) or have read the english translation (Silent Reading), the new words are not super hard to guess and therefore following the main idea is not an issue. Guardian is above the 95% comprehension level for me now, and its likely I extensively read a novel I had NO prior knowledge about -  小王子 - also at 95% comprehension or less.

I looked up the comprehension level I had because I just read this article about how to pick reading material when learning a new language, and it made me curious how far Below that 98% comprehension level I usually try to read.

For comparisons, I’m curious how my personal comprehension compares to the general-vocab-difficulty tool and results I got from that (which can be viewed in this post more in depth). 

This was the novel’s ranking, from easiest to harder, based on that tool (lower number = more difficult):

小王子 2.004

DMBJ 1 1.992

撒野 1.98

SVSSS 1.9

Guardian 1.9

Peach Blossom Debt  1.858

I am guessing the difference in order of difficulty compared to my personal comprehension levels, might have to do with the materials I learn from? Or may have to do with the fact the tool sorts by full words, not characters, so 2-4 character words/phrases that are unknown would only count as one unit. Whereas when I calculated my comprehension I counted by character (since I was physically counting on paper it was easier to just go by character when counting unknown versus amount-of-content on the page). Also, the tool took a bigger sample of 2,000 words for each novel, whereas I used 300-500 characters per page samples.

It’s also possible, because of the small amount of characters in my comprehension % samples - Guardian overall may have more unknown words and put it lower than 95% overall, and stuff like DMBJ may well have a lot more words I know and potentially be more comprehensible than 96% overall. 

For the most part I had 4-15 unknown characters per page. Which could realistically affect my reading more or less depending on what role they served in the sentence. Characters in descriptions I can figure out the rough meaning of easier when reading because they’re often part of 2-4 character words and phrases where I know the rest of the characters, or they’re an emotion/mood description another word I know on the page will also re-state, but unknown characters for critical verbs or nouns affect story comprehension a lot more. Xiao wang zi is a good example of my overall actual reading level, since some unknown hanzi were in descriptions and I could ‘guess’ well enough to follow just ine, but some of the unknown hanzi on the page were verbs and nouns which makes those sections harder to comprehend. 

Some promising notes from articles!

From FluentU: https://www.fluentu.com/blog/reading-in-a-second-language/

So I am at the spot for most novels I want to read right now 95%+, where if I read with a dictionary it probably feels okay and I will learn a lot, but it will feel challenging at times.

And for a few (at least SaYe) I can really just extensive read the way its supposed to feel. 

Reading Rockets: https://www.readingrockets.org/article/fluency-introduction

This article puts 95% as the minimum comprehension level for a person to read to improve reading fluency.

This https://readingmatrix.com/articles/september_2011/prichard_matsumoto.pdf

is an interesting paper, and puts 95% as the minimum for comprehension to read unassisted, but also mentions it could be a spectrum rather than all-or-nothing. Readers who use strategies to comprehend more can improve their comprehension a bit, and readers who have background knowledge on the subject can improve their ability to comprehend the reading material a bit. 

This part was also fascinating: “ Hu and Nation (2000) sought to examine the lexical threshold more deeply. They tested the comprehension of a narrative text by 66 advanced learners, adapting the text to include frequent words estimated to be known by all the subjects. They replaced uncommon words with nonsense words in order to set coverage levels to 80%, 90%, 95%, and 100%. Comprehension of the various versions of the passages was measured by a multiple-choice comprehension test and a recall measure. Subjects at the 95% level had a mean score of 10.2 points out of 14 on the multiple-choice text, while the readers with 90% coverage averaged only slightly lower at 9.5 points. There were a wide range of scores at these two coverage levels with 7 of 16 subjects at the 90% level getting a higher score than the mean score of the 95% coverage group. The results were similar on the recall measure. Overall, while there was a clear and strong correlation between coverage and comprehension, the existence of the 95% lexical threshold was not supported by Hu and Nation. They estimate that if there was a comprehension threshold at all, it may have been between 80 and 90% since all the readers with 80% coverage had difficulty comprehending the text. Hu and Nation state that learners at the 90% were able to reach comprehension through reading skills and background knowledge. They also hypothesize that 98% may be the coverage required at which most learners can comprehend the text adequately. The mark they set to determine this was about 85% comprehension, which was much higher than that used by Laufer (1989, 1992). “

“ Lower threshold: A percentage at which comprehension becomes possible; a percentage at which few learners below have any significant comprehension of the text (referred to by Hu & Nation, 2000, as potentially being between 80 and 90%). 211 

Significant increase threshold: A coverage point above which learners’ mean comprehension increases significantly (95%, based on Laufer, 1989). 

Adequate comprehension threshold: A percentage at which most learners achieve “adequate comprehension” (suggested as 95% in Laufer, based on 55% comprehension; hypothesized as 98% coverage in Hu & Nation based on 85% comprehension). 

Upper threshold: A point above which an increase in coverage does not lead to improved comprehension (Laufer, 1992). If it exists, it is likely 98-99%.

That study may explain why some people with lower vocab knowledge ‘feel’ more ok with reading at lower comprehensions (that’d be me lol ToT). When I was learning french, I started reading extensively at a somewhat low vocab level, and in english I knew in elementary school I’d pick up novels for adults and read some sometimes, and by end of elementary I had a college reading level, so mm.

[tazrider]

Allez, pour ta peine : nombres pairs ! Tous.

Ah la vache... Ca fait beaucoup T_T Here we go!

2. How old are you? Between 20 and 40 but not halfway. Might be a multiple of 7. Or not...

4. What is your zodiac sign? Taurus. Been told it’s very fitting...

6. What’s your lucky number? Don’t have a lucky number but I like 3 (dates back to when I first read The Black Stallion when I was a kid and Alec and Black had the number 3 during their first race XD).

8. Where are you from? France, from where France fists Belgium XD (yep that’s a saying here).

10. What shoe size are you? Fucking way too small for my liking, it’s hell to find shoes my style... (37 or 6.5).

12. What was your last dream about? Something super weird (I always have super fucking weird dreams) but I don’t really remember this one. I don’t keep a log on dreams, seems too much work because it always swings between super weird and nightmares so not like it matters much...

14. Are you psychic in any way? Huh nope and don’t believe in these things.

16. Favorite movie? The Fifth Element, it’s not a great movie but it’s like a Madeleine de Proust and takes me back to simpler times. Also fucking funny, sci-fi and awesome music, what’s not to like?

18. Do you want children? Man, kids make me uncomfortable as hell. I prefer horses XD.

20. Are you religious? Absolutely not. I only believe in science and there’s no room in there for an hypothetical superior force, that’s supposed to be all love and shit and yet lets the world in that state.

22. Have you ever got in trouble with the law? Ah, unless you count speeding tickets as getting in trouble with the law...

24. Baths or showers? Showers.

26. Have you ever been famous? LOL nope and don’t wanna be.

28. What type of music do you like? Ooh tricky question, I have rather eclectic tastes in music. Ranges from ancient music and baroque (I love harpsichord, learned to play the piano when I was younger) to post-hardcore / “hard” music and pretty much everything in between. Discovered lately I don’t mind some bluegrass even. What I don’t like would be a way shorter list... XD I’m less a type of music kind of person and more a how that music makes me feel person, regardless of the type of music and the person/band. That said, I abhor bal musette and mostly of what we call ‘nouvelle chanson française’... In general, I like it dark and tortured.

30. How many pillows do you sleep with? 2 and a small one.

32. How big is your house? Tis an appartment and with the new job last year I was able to afford more than just a rabbit hutch! (65m2 yus!).

34. Have you ever fired a gun? Only airsoft and paintball guns, was fun.

36. Favorite clean word? Lately I’ve been saying ‘grave’ a lot, I manage to annoy even myself when I do...

38. What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep? I think it was 3 days or perhaps 4 and not even due to insomnia.

40. Have you ever had a secret admirer? Eh not that I know of lol Pretty sure I’m not the type of person that gets secret admirers.

42. Are you a good judge of character? I think I am most of the time. As an introvert I spend much of my time on the sidelines of social interactions so I watch and analyze people a lot but I’ve been wrong a couple of times (especially if it’s a pretty girl -_-) and that fucking sucked each time...

44. Do you have a strong accent? In French? Nope, I made sure to erase it because I’m a snob like that. In English? Obviously I have a French one (been told it’s cute... -_-).

46. What is your personality type? INTJ, introvert all the way (is that what it’s referring to?) Because if not, I’ve been told by a psychologist I saw as part of something for my job who said I should get diagnosed for ADHD and autism, so...

48. Can you curl your tongue? Yep. Can make a tube with it, can also turn it over but only from one direction.

50. Left or right handed? Right but training the left to not be useless since childhood (you need to have a good feeling of both your hands if you want to be a good horseback rider).

52. Favorite food? Pasta all the way!

54. Are you a clean or messy person? Both. A clean mess XD Seriously, there are still some boxes I haven’t unpacked from moving in last year... My desk at work is a fucking clutter because I manage like 15 projects at the same time and sometimes the files all end up there... But I always end up fed up of the mess and clean everything like a tornado. Especially when I decide I have enough, I can’t do anything else until I cleaned everything.

56. Most used word? Fuck or ‘putain’ and it’s variation ‘putain de merde fait chier’ in French.

58. Do you have much of an ego? I do, it’s big and sometimes misplaced. I try to not let it get in the way though.

60. Do you talk to yourself? Oh yeah, especially when I fucked something up.

62. Are you a good singer? Nope, doesn’t mean I don’t like to sing very off-key when I’m alone...

64. Are you a gossip? No, not really.

66. Do you like long or short hair? In general? Long hair but I don’t care long or short as long as they’re comfortable with it and it suits them.

68. Favorite school subject? Hands down History and geology (wanted to be an archaeologist before I chose geology).

70. Have you ever been scuba diving? I’m a scuba diver (have my first degree, can dive down to 20m). I fucking love it but life happened and I haven’t been able to keep it up :(

72. Are you scared of the dark? No, I kinda like it. Although I don’t need the room to be pitch black to sleep.

74. Are you ticklish? Yeah and since I don’t always control my strength, it can lead to some kind of injuries to the tickler...

76. Have you ever been in a position of authority? I guess? I taught at the engineering school in geology during my PhD, does that count?

78. Have you ever done drugs? Only weed a couple times. I try to stay clear from anything remotely addictive because I have an obsessive personality.

80. How many piercings do you have? None and not planning on getting some.

82. How fast can you type? Average fast I guess?

84. What color is your hair? Very light brown, bordering on blond (I’ve been told I’m blond and it gets even lighter in the sun...).

86. What are you allergic to? Dust and mold which is just awesome for a horse owner, everyday your nose in hay...

88. What do your parents do? Teachers both. My mother’s a History and Geography teacher which means a childhood spent visiting historical sites during any vacation.

90. What makes you angry? Stupidity, incompetence, injustice to name a few. Currently my neighbors letting the front door bang at any hour when there’s a note asking not to (my bedroom’s right next to that fucking front door)...

92. Have you already thought of baby names, and if so what are they? Nope nope but I thought about names for my future horse(s) XD

94. What are you strengths? Loyal to a fault, up front, smart, persevering. I’m fucking funny too.

96. How did you get your name? My father always wanted to name his daughter that way. I always thought it doesn’t suit me though.

98. Do you have any scars? Oh yeah... Left shoulder, both knees, right ankle, shins, nose, chin, hands (not counting the tip of one finger I nearly lost 2 years ago), right shoulder blade.

100. Color of your room? Plain white, I rent the flat so not redecorating.

[sleekflowseo]

Beginner Tutorial: How To Get Started With WhatsApp Business

Reasons to Use WhatsApp BusinessWhatsApp VS WhatsApp BusinessAs of October 2020, WhatsApp hits 2 billion users around the globe and the number is still rising. The market penetration of WhatsApp is especially astonishing in some countries, for example, over 95% of Netherlands smartphones have this instant messaging app installed (Statista, 2020).

Obviously, WhatsApp is massive. The high number of WhatsApp users indicates there are enormous potential audiences ready to be reached. In 2018, WhatsApp released a standalone business version, allowing companies to interact with customers via greeting messages, quick replies, and business profiles. From that moment on, many started scrambling over each other to explore this opportunity. However, jumping on the bandwagon is never easy. Let’s check out these helpful tips and tricks for getting the most out of the world's biggest messaging platform!

WhatsApp VS WhatsApp Business

Although the user interface of WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business is pretty similar, they serve very different purposes. Given that WhatsApp Business is specially designed for businesses to connect with their clients instantly in an official manner, there are a few exclusive features that are currently not available in WhatsApp:

Automated Messages

Quick Replies

Business Profile

Label Chat

Reasons to Use WhatsApp Business

In today’s instant messaging (IM) era, customers preferred having a real-time conversation rather than simply leaving a message. Responding quickly is crucial for customer satisfaction. According to the research published by HubSpot, 82% of customers expected an immediate response to a sales or marketing question, and 90% expected an immediate response to a customer service question. In such cases, automated messages are an extraordinary way to address this issue: it lets your customer feel heard. You can also make good use of the automated greeting message to gather more information from the customer, which will help you identify their particular needs easier and save some back-and-forth.

Of course you can use your personal WhatsApp account to communicate with both of your friends and customers, but it must be increasingly difficult to draw a fine line between private and business relationships. Not only can WhatsApp Business help you to stay organized, but they can also assist you in offering accessible customer service options, showcasing products and services and most vitally, creating superior brand connections with every customer.

With the WhatsApp Business, communicating with your customers is now easier than ever. Sometimes, customers’ inquiries are complex and hard to solve straight away. Instead of spending extra time trying to dig out all the information from customers, you can customize the WhatsApp pre-filled messages to reduce the number of these follow-ups to a minimum. Not to mention the predefined text can encourage your audience to engage with your company on certain topics. This can potentially contribute to your revenue growth, as well as improving customer satisfaction and streamlining your operations.

WhatsApp Business Tutorial

WhatsApp Business is a free app available on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.

To get started, you have to create your business profile by entering details under Settings > Business Settings > Profile. Make sure you get these accurate since any misleading information can cause you trouble.

Followed by the most important step, setting up the messaging tools. You need to go to Settings > Business Settings and check the messaging options available there. There should be 3 options: Away message, Greeting message, and Quick replies, you can set each of these depending on your requirements.

Apart from 1:1 support, you can also remind your customers about the latest promotions at once. To create a WhatsApp broadcast message, you have to go to the WhatsApp > More options > New Broadcast. Search for or select the contacts you want to add, then tap the check mark. You can select all the contacts you wish to send a broadcast to and send it, or you can organize your contacts with labels and then send a broadcast to one or more than one set of labeled broadcast lists.

For more app features, you can refer to Sleekflow’s complete guide on using WhatsApp Business.

WhatsApp Business Audiences Management

Creating a WhatsApp Business account is definitely not the hardest, while establishing presence in customers’ minds is. How can you keep in touch with your audiences without annoying them?

The key is to continuously deliver great content on relevant topics. Thus, it is of utmost importance for you to label all contacts, or else it will be very tricky to find the right person to stimulate conversation. The default setting already has a couple of different labels, but you are always welcome to add your own as well.

After putting your customers into different categories, you can start interacting with them via either a group or a broadcast list.

A group is a place for your fans and customers to come bond around, they can learn about your product and get access to exclusive knowledge through chatting with other like-minded people. It is also a handy channel for you to tap into some real insights.

Another practice is to send out a broadcast message as mentioned above. It is very similar to a marketing email but with a much higher open rate - the text message on WhatsApp gets an average open rate of 98%. Unlike group chats, recipients will see the message as a standard one appearing in their WhatsApp. With this one-to-many conversation feature, you can keep the conversation private and personal, all the replies will be restricted to the broadcaster only and no one else will get the reply of the message except the one who has sent it.

6 Must-Know WhatsApp Marketing Strategies

1. Present an Attractive Brand Persona

It’s 2020. If you want your brand to rise above the digital noise, a cold and sterile approach is the last thing you should attempt. To make sure your customers must be able to identify your brand quickly, you need to develop a strong, memorable, warm-blooded brand. For instance, including jokes about your brand on the business profile or getting festive profile pictures on special occasions. Quick reminder: don’t be afraid to use casual language such as “btw” and “LOL”, speak to your customers like you’d speak to your friends.

2. Build a Contact Base

Due to WhatsApp's anti-ad philosophy, cold call messages are not accepted. Businesses can only send messages to customers under 2 scenarios - customers initiate the conversation or the company’ phone number is on their contact list. In exchange for the WhatsApp number, you therefore need to offer them something of value. An exclusive coupon, promotional code or a giveaway campaign can all be good motivations for the users to begin their relationship with you.

3. Offer Relatable Content to Customers

Customers may come to you for very distinct reasons, in other words, you can’t use only one type of content to keep every audience engaged. Don’t forget to make good use of the Label Chat feature. You can create labels with different colors or names, and add them to an entire chat, group, or certain messages within a chat. By targeting those who are interested in particular topics and feed them with relevant content, you can eventually increase your customer base.

4. Deliver Excellent Customer Service

A 24/7 customer service used to be very luxurious, but with WhatsApp, even small businesses can now provide real-time support within budget. No doubt, speed matters in customer service. Fortunately, WhatsApp Business has the ability to send quick replies. With quick replies, you can create keyboard shortcuts for the messages, which is especially useful when you have to answer the same question over and over. This provides a considerable benefit when it comes to time saving while still actively connecting with customers.

5. Conduct Customer Research

Imagine you were trying to ask a girl on a date, how could you succeed without knowing her interests? Same logic, you must first have a deep understanding of who your buyers are, your specific market, and what influences the purchase decisions and behavior of your target audience members. Customer research is conducted so as to clarify the aforementioned details. Generally, people react more positively to images than blocks of text, so do try using visual aids in your questionnaire. Polls are also fun as they can give the respondents a glimpse of how they compare to others. By integrating a poll midway through a survey, the respondent can be immediately presented with the overall polling results, rendering them a sense of wider engagement with other respondents.

6. Utilize WhatsApp Status

Like other social stories, with Status Feature you share an image or video with your contacts that lasts for 24 hours. You can create special promotional codes your customers can share to redeem at your business. Using the instant photo and location feature, Status can let everyone in your group know about the on-going promotions. If you want to drive in traffic and create buzz, you can even launch a two hour flash sale or a one day special.

Read More:

How to Run Instant Messaging Marketing?

Essential Guide: Whatsapp Business API

WhatsApp Business: Pricing in Hong Kong and Worldwide

Original Link: https://sleekflow.io/zh/blog/whatsapp-marketing/

[365daysofsasuhina]

[ 365 Days of SasuHina || Day Three Hundred Thirty-One: Boiling Water ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata ] [ SasuHina ] [ Verse: Best Years of Your Life ] [ AO3 Link ]

Another day...another away basketball game. Which means a pretty empty classroom for the Home Ec group.

And Sasuke still has a lot on his mind regarding the class.

It’s true that he’s really enjoyed this semester. He had his doubts in the beginning. It has a bit of a reputation for being...well, girly. Of course, now he knows better. Sewing, cooking, cleaning...it’s not a girl thing, it’s a person thing.

While most of his classmates are underclassmen girls, they’ve subtly - in their own way - help impress just such a fact upon him. Doesn’t matter what you are. Got a hole in your shirt? You can fix it, just gotta know how. Need to make a dessert for a friend’s potluck? You can make one, just gotta know how! And literally everyone needs to know how to clean. Otherwise...you’re just gross.

In short, he went from one of those senior guys to a better equipped soon-to-be-adult. And also from someone rather intimidating in the class to the girls’ favorite person to fill in on gossip and ask opinions for. From scary upperclassman to adopted older brother of the class, really.

Well...for everyone except one person.

Hinata’s been...different. Mostly because she’s a senior, like he is. But also because she’s pretty much teacher number two. A copilot for the class, but especially for Sasuke. She helped him catch up in a variety of the class’s aspects, but especially cooking. Which his mother has been ecstatic about.

And over time, it’s become less about him learning from her, and more just...hanging out with her. They use free days to just...sit and cook things and talk. He hasn’t ever really had a friend like her before. Mostly he’s only ever just been commandeered into friendships like that with Naruto, or Shikamaru, or any of the other guys in their year. Any girls he’s met have generally been obnoxious and only wanted one thing from him.

...ironic then that the one he’s been able to tolerate and actually befriend...he’s been trying very hard not to feel more than that for.

He didn’t even mean for it to happen! It just...did! She’s so kind, and soft-spoken, and sweet...and she’s never treated him like the other girls have treated him. Like some kind of prey to be stalked and hunted down. It drives him up the wall...no, Hinata just treats him like anyone else. Like a friend.

And...and that’s what he wants.

...ugh.

It just so happens, too, that this entire conundrum is coming up as the semester is about to end. Technically Sasuke only needs one semester of this class to meet his requirements for graduation. And at the beginning of the year, he had assumed he’d be thankful once it was over. But now...he’s not so sure. And not just because of Hinata. He genuinely enjoys the class, and wants to stay.

There’s just one problem: his dad has been hounding him about taking as many “attractive” classes to colleges as he can. And needless to say that a Home Ec course doesn’t really do much for him in that regard.

Which leaves Sasuke in a bit of a bind. Does he ignore his father’s very obvious hinting and risk making him mad? Or does he abandon one of his favorite classes to please him (and whatever university ends up accepting him), making himself all the more miserable?

It’s been bugging him for a few weeks now...and he really isn’t sure what to do.

So...he decides to ask the one person he thinks he should.

“Another quiet day,” Hinata muses, letting her bag rest near the table she always sits at. “Well...want to cook something?”

Sasuke doesn’t reply at first, and her head tilts curiously.

“...Sasuke?”

“Could we maybe do something...else first?”

“Um...sure! What...what were you thinking?”

“I’d like some advice.”

Pale eyes blink in surprise. “...okay! Um...would you like some tea for while we...talk?”

“...yeah, that’d be nice.”

Nodding, Hinata fetches one of the Home Ec room’s kettles, filling it with water and letting it sit on the stovetop. “Is...everything okay?”

“Y’know how I mentioned changing classes the other day?”

“Oh...yeah. Still haven’t m-made a decision yet?”

His head shakes.

“Well, I...I don’t know if I’m really the person to ask, Sasuke.”

“I already asked my mom. She said I should stay.”

“...I take it you, um...you haven’t asked your dad?”

“No. I already know what he’d say. And...I didn’t want to risk bringing it up and having him make up my mind for me, y’know?”

“Yeah...I get that.” Going quiet for a moment, she seems to mull that over. “...what do you want to do?”

“...I want to stay.”

“...but?”

“But...I don’t want my dad to get angry. I don’t want to risk screwing up my college apps.”

“Will half a credit really make or break you…?”

“No. I don’t think so? I don’t know!”

Holding up a hand for a pause, Hinata lets the kettle build to a steady whistle before pouring two mugs of tea. “...here.”

“...thanks.”

“Let’s sit.”

Sasuke follows, holding his cup and not yet drinking. It’s almost more soothing just to hold it.

“...before, when we talked...you said you liked this class, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And that you...you already know your major, and...what kind of job you want?”

“I guess. It’s not really that I...want it? More just I guess it’s what I’ll do.”

Hinata’s eyes lower to the table, clearly thinking. “...do you...enjoy the things we do in class? Like...would you consider them hobbies, now?”

“...some of it? Cooking, yeah. I was kinda meh about it before, but...now I really like it. The rest is just useful.”

“...then I would stay, if I were you. Your dad can’t throw much of a fit about half a credit, right…?”

Sasuke sighs, a hand running back through his hair. “...I guess not. I just…” There’s a beat of hesitation. “...my dad’s pretty strict with my brother and I. Itachi’s already getting his undergrad in business this year, and he’s going on for a master’s. I don’t even think he wants to, he just feels like he has to because Dad pushed him into it. And then he started doing the same to me when Itachi started college.”

Hinata’s expression sobers. “...I know how that goes. My father and I, we...we had a big f-falling out when I was younger about what I wanted to do. When I told him I was going to take a year off...he told me he was cutting all support once I graduate.”

“What?!”

A nod. “He doesn’t think it’s proper. So I’ll be on my own. But I don’t have a plan...nothing’s ever felt that c-clear to me. I wanted the year to take and just...discover myself. See if...there was something I wanted to pursue.”

Sasuke’s brows furrow with a frown. “...I still say you do culinary stuff. You’re so good at it, Hinata! And you clearly enjoy it! Screw your dad and his snotty standards. Take a year, explore, and then go to culinary school. Look...I know there’s a pretty good program with the local community college. I bet you’d do great, and it wouldn’t be very expensive. Hell, I’d help you if I could.”

At that, her face slackens in surprise. “You...you really…?”

“You’re like...the nicest person I know. If your dad’s gonna treat you like that, it’s his loss, not yours. It’s your life, ‘nata. Do what you want with it.” Sasuke takes a gulp of tea in a spike of temper, feeling it burn down his throat. “...and if you open that baker you talked about? I’ll come work for you - do your books and stuff. Doesn’t matter what I’m doing otherwise. I’d do it.”

“But...w-why…?”

“Cuz you’re my friend. And I want to support you. Look...I know it’s only been a semester, but...you’re one of my best friends. Maybe even my best friend. So what kinda friend would I be back if I didn’t do that much, huh?”

To his own surprise, her jaw trembles, tears beading along her lids. “No one’s...n-no one’s ever...told me that before. Just...said I should do it.”

“Then you need to find better people to be around,” he mutters stubbornly.

“...thank you, Sasuke. Heh…” She dashes at her eyes with a sheepish smile. “...this was supposed to be advice for you...not me.”

“Hey, it’s a two-way street. I’ll stick to the class. That much we pretty much already knew anyway, right?”

“...right.”

Sasuke’s eyes flicker between her own, which stare a bit somberly at the table. “...it’ll be fine, Hinata. Besides, we’ve got a whole semester before we graduate. You can make some plans between now and then. Just...forget your dad and his attitude. It’s all gonna work out.”

“...I hope so.” Finally looking up, she gives him a rosy-cheeked smile. “...I’m glad you’re staying. It...it means a lot to me to have you to talk to, and just...y’know...hang out with. Is...is that lame?”

“...nah, it’s not lame at all.”

                                                           .oOo.

     (This is a sequel to days 98, 108, 139, 227, 284, and 301!)       Heyyy, guys - sorry for the unexpected two day break. But uh...I'll talk more about that below for anyone wondering. For now, about the drabble!      We're back in the Home Ec verse! I love this one, for a couple of reasons. Mostly cuz it's just so domestic and slice-of-lifey, y'know? It's relaxing, even when writing more stressful parts for them like this one. I dunno. It's just nice xD Not really a full 'story' per se since not much really...HAPPENS. But it's one of my favorite series.      Anyway, a lil behind-the-scenes for a second, which comes first with a little warning: the rest of the year is going to be VERY busy for me due to some irl changes happening this month. The next two weeks especially, but it'll probably drag on until at least the new year...I dunno. But in short, I've been missing so many days the last few weeks because life is REALLY stressful, and I've just been too tired. Add in that I have a chronic illness to deal with, and just...yeah. I get behind and have to take breaks.      And honestly I'm getting very burnt out by a whole year of writing an average of 1500 words A DAY. For reference's sake, this challenge JUST past 500,000 words. And I also did SHM, which was another 30,000, and ANOTHER ship month which was 75,000. That's over 600,000, and that's not counting other side projects I've done. So yes, I write other things too, but that makes this challenge all the more...well, challenging. For reference, today's prompt was for November 27. That's how far behind I've gotten. But there's just...really not much I can do about it, sadly. I don't have time to make them up, and likely will just have to drag the event out past December 31. Then on top of that there's organizing all the mini series for AO3, and just...yeah. I'm gonna need a LONG break once that's done before I even THINK of taking on all the projects I want to that will stem from this challenge.      SO, in short...just please be patient with me ;w; I'm doing my best, and in the end - as much as I love this - it IS just fanfiction. Real life has to come first. So I hope you'll bear with me for the last few weeks, and then the much-needed hiatus once it's over to recup before hopefully turn some of these into proper fics. We'll see how life goes.      But, that's enough rambling out of me! I just thought I'd elaborate a bit in case anyone was curious. I'm all right, just...very busy and stressed ^^; So I'll just have to take this challenge as I can. But thanks to everyone sticking with it. I appreciate it! On that note, though...I better go. Thanks for reading!

[wolfhuntsmoon]

Sarah Rogers pt 2: or, how baby!Steve imbibed a fuck-you attitude with his mother’s milk

Okay, so after looking at Sarah’s backstory, how she met Joseph and had Steve and decided to go to America, I couldn’t stop thinking about: what next? The MCU wiki is VERY thin on the ground with detail, and she’s so interesting! Plus, this is, like, one of the most criminally underdeveloped sources for Steve Rogers’ character, as I mentioned in pt 1. So, what can we reasonably source from the time to fill in the gaps?

So: I said in my previous post Sarah likely arrives in January/February of 1918. This is because in those days, travel times were long, conditions were VERY poor and you did not want to be heavily pregnant on a cheap ship to America with the conditions on board. Plus, in those days there was no guarantee a ship company would even sell you a ticket if you were visibly pregnant. It did happen, but was risky for the company, so you could never be sure. Sarah would have left asap once she made a decision. 

The journey itself would have taken about 3-4 weeks. First she would have had to travel to London, because nothing would have been leaving to America from the French or Belgian coastline, as a) most of it was too close to the war and b) the bits that weren’t wouldn’t have been profitable. Travel to London from Passchendaele would have taken a few days to a week, given the mud and absolute priority troops and military materials were given on all journeys. This map here shows it took between 7-10 days to arrive in New York from London (by ship, no flights until the late 1920s/1930s) in 1914 before the outbreak of the war. I mentioned how at this point the German U-boats were basically sinking anything they found not flying a German flag, which made this journey pretty hazardous, even with the newly introduced (and very effective) protection of the convoy system. If Sarah was travelling on a fast convoy (less likely as they were primarily for troop ships) it would have taken about a week. Slower moving convoys carrying mostly cargo might have taken 2 weeks, even 2 and a half weeks if the weather was bad. Convoys, by the way, were where groups of ships were clustered together and escorted across the Atlantic by a combination of naval ships bristling with every explosive known to man, and navy ships disguised to look like harmless merchant cargo ships but ALSO bristling with every explosive known to man, to prevent U-boats sinking them. And also attack U-boats when they turned up. Not if. When. As you may be imagining, these journeys often contained lots of Things Going Boom and people Dying in Unpleasant Ways. Sarah would have been told by literally everyone she knew that this was a stupid, near-lethal decision, and that she should just NOT. But Sarah being Sarah, ignored this in the pursuit of what she felt was right and best for her and her baby... that doesn’t sound familiar at all, does it?

Okay, so she’s made it through the journey to the iconic Ellis Island. The next problem was that Immigration to the USA was incredibly curtailed by 1918, compared to the levels of immigration to the US prior to WWI beginning. In this, Sarah was lucky. Prior to WWI, on average between 1900-1914 about 1 million immigrants arrived into the US each year. In 1918, roughly 110,000 did - Sarah being one of them. I’ve said before that she would have had an easier time getting passage on a ship in the first place because she was comparatively better off on a nurse’s wage and was a middle class professional. More than that, most travel was reserved for the military - and Sarah likely had connections, being the wife of an American soldier, which made it easier for her to gain passage on a ship. (More on this later.)

Her status and profession is also very important for explaining how Sarah gained entry to the US, because by the end of WWI, the open door policy of the 19th and early 20th century had been solidly shut. The open-door policy had essentially allowed anyone who could pass a very basic medical and legal check free entry to reside in the USA, and the Ellis Island museum has a very good description of just how cursory these checks were - they were nicknamed the ‘six second physicals’. 98% of immigrants passed straight away, and a only a very small percentage of the remainder were put on a ship back to their country of origin. But by the outbreak of WWI, politicians and the public had become uneasy about this. Mostly due to racial concerns - Chinese immigration was the first to be restricted in 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act. Japanese immigrants were targeted in 1907 and all Asian immigrants in 1917. (I see a lot of posts on tumblr talking about how immigration restrictions in the US began by denying Jewish refugees entry in the 1930s, which... is wrong. So, so wrong. But anyway.) Here is a contemporary cartoon showing a pretty good summary of attitudes to immigration by the time Sarah would have been travelling:

(The 3% refers to immigration restrictions put in place by Congress AFTER the war, btw.)

But the US wasn’t just worried about one continent’s people! Or even ‘just’ non-whites! Oh no... they were also VERY worried about the ‘wrong sort’ of white immigrant too. Namely, anyone from southern and eastern Europe, and the Irish. 

The discrimination against the Irish is an interesting one, because on the face of it, the Irish were the kind of immigrants the US wanted - north and western Europeans. But here’s where eugenics and pseudoscience come along and fuck things up for a lot of people. Part of the reason why the US was suspicious of southern and eastern Europeans was political - that they harboured a tendency towards violent revolutions, communism and anarchy. The Irish, after the violence of the 1916 Easter Rising and the fact that a not-insignificant number of violent revolutionaries tried to facilitate a German invasion of Ireland (and then unionists ran guns during the war through Kriegsmarine U-boat dropoffs on the Irish coast in... defence???? Idk either.), came to be included in this politically radical group. That’s the first strike.

The second strike came from the fact Irish had the British working against them. In those days, British media and culture really set the tone for the rest of the world. Remember, the US was not a world superpower yet - this is when Britain is at the height of its power, ruling 20% of the world’s people and 25% of its land surface by 1924. Britannia really did rule the waves, and much of the world’s culture, at this point. Hollywood, and American ‘soft power’ had yet to develop into the behemoth it is now. British culture persistently depicted the Irish as subhuman, ape-like, feckless, uncivilised and dangerous, as you can clearly see here:

The top one is from 1866, and the second one from 1849. Both were cartoons published in Punch Magazine, which was the pre-eminent social and political publication that EVERYONE read in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. It also played a huge role in shaping social attitudes, and you can see more of its, and others, views on the Irish in these excellent galleries. The rest of the British media was the same - almost universally negative views of the Irish, which filtered across the Atlantic over time. And seemed to be vindicated by events like the 1916 Easter Rising, and before that a long running number of secret societies the British kept discovering, plotting revolution against their rule. The whole ‘kiss me I’m Irish’, dying the Hudson green on St Patrick’s day, ‘omg I love an Irish accent’ thing? Didn’t happen until the latter half, or really the last quarter, of the twentieth century. The Irish were pretty much persona non grata when Sarah was alive. Part of the explanation for this came from the idea that the Irish were a part of a lesser race, their Celtic origins leading to a lack of judgement, predisposition to alcoholism and hotheadedness, and passionate outbursts which meant you needed to treat them more like children. Conveniently enough for the British, this explanation meant you didn’t need to treat your subjects like equals, deserving of the vote, or indeed with anything except violence and condescension. Ha. Funny that.

But anyway, back to America.

Third strike: the Irish were Catholic, as Sarah would have been. Only the very richest in society were Protestant, because they were descended from British settlers. Both the British and the US governments of the time viewed Catholicism with deep suspicion, partly for historical reasons (Martin Luther, 1517 and all that jazz) but ALSO because the Catholic Church remained a vastly powerful institution which could and did command the loyalties of people more than the national government, and this represented a dangerous fifth column within the nation state. Most of north and western Europe was Protestant, unlike the south and east which was predominantly Catholic (with the exception of France. But hey, they’re the French. No big.) so the Irish being 99% Catholic was yet another reason they got lumped in with the other ‘undesireables’. 

Not a small part of this was caused by the fact that the Irish had been immigrating to America in vast numbers ever since the Great Famine (aka the Potato Famine/Blight) to the tune of and average of c450,000 Irish per decade between 1850-1900. That is... a LOT. Like, New York’s population in 1890 had only just hit 2.5 million! Ireland’s population TODAY is 5 million! So by the end of WWI, there was already a sense that Too Many Irish were here, particularly since the Irish tended, like most immigrant communities, to move into certain areas in large numbers via family groups and connections. Sarah would have been no exception to this, which I’ll explore more in pt 3 later. It was a very common practice in this period for a man to go to America and work, then bring his family and extended family over. Or for young relations to go and live with family already in America if there was no work in Ireland - which there wasn’t, the Irish economy being subsistence agriculture and not a lot else. 

All of this together means that when Sarah arrives in Jan/Feb of 1918? She’d get a pretty rough welcome at Ellis Island (still used for incoming immigrants until new legislation establishing a visa system in 1924 went through and basically made it redundant.) and beyond.

Below is a pic of an Ellis Island arrival card, just because it’s cool:

These tightened restrictions resulted in not just health checks, but intelligence tests and ‘mental fitness’ tests, which if failed, could result in the immigrant being sent back to their country of origin. However, Sarah would have made it through okay, because she had good English, her profession and likely her marriage cert and references from Joseph Rogers’ commanding officer to speed her passage. She may even have had family connections already in New York or America, but for the reasons outlined in my previous post, probably wasn’t in contact with them. Or if she did contact them, was likely to be ignored and ostracised. Because patriarchy, yay.

But ironically? Getting into America was the easy part. I know, I know, unbelievable, especially when you consider she was PREGNANT during this. I mean, can you imagine enduring morning sickness and all the other joys of pregnancy on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic in WINTER, in danger of sinking from a U-Boat torpedo at any moment? Can you? Can you??? Sarah Rogers came up against an immense set of obstacles just to get into America and just fucking ploughed through them like they were tissue paper. Which explains a LOT about Steve Rogers, that’s for sure.

Join me next time for pt 3, where I explore Sarah’s living and working situation after she arrives and we all learn to be even more in awe of how fucking metal she was.

[slushyseals]

https://sportsmascots.fandom.com/wiki/Lou_Seal_(San_Francisco_Giants)

Lou Seal is the official mascot of the San Francisco Giants. "Born" on July 25, 1996, Luigi Francisco Seal has been a regular part of the Giants baseball home games and events around San Francisco, and the United States. The name is a play on the name "Lucille." The Giants held a contest in which fans submitted name ideas. Six people submitted the name "Lou Seal" and they were all invited to a game that season to watch from a luxury box. All of them got to meet the newly named Lou Seal and one of these lucky fans was randomly chosen to throw out the first pitch at that game. The name also refers to the San Francisco Seals, the baseball club that was a mainstay of the Pacific Coast League from 1903 until 1957. Although the mascot's name is a bit ambiguous, Lou Seal is indeed "officially" male (and the person inside the costume is a man). In 2008, Forbes named Lou Seal the best mascot in sports.

The character has had 1,150 consecutive home-game appearances, and is one of the four subjects followed in the second season of the Hulu series Behind the Mask.

He even has PARENTS! (Pictured above in the second row)

The Interview

Full Name: Luigi Francisco Seal

Position: Left Out (Team Mascot) Born: July 25, 1996 Bats: Right flipper Throws: Right flipper Height: Taller than the average seal Weight: He could use a diet Hair: Battleship grey

CAREER Like a fish out of water, Lou's flip-flopping mystique and crazy sense of humor contribute high-powered enthusiasm to Felipe's roster. Known for his "Let's see what I can get away with next" philosophy, Lou has accomplished many daring feats ... 25 attempts of unsuccessfully kicking the umpire in the seat of his pants ... actually stole home plate five times ... 19 headstands behind home plate ... placed 2.5 banana peels in the path of the opposing team ... Five-time champion of "Act Crazy Behind The Fox Newscaster Without Getting Caught!" ... has given 2,562 nuggies, polished 843 bald heads, directed more than 12 major name pregame music bands ... won the 1998 Easter Seal Mascot Baseball Game as a member of S.J. Sharkie's Heroes ... caught 13 "fowl" balls with his mouth.

GIANT IN THE COMMUNITY Participates in visiting hospitals, youth organization and civic groups throughout Northern California and San Francisco.

PERSONAL Graduated from Pier 39 Flipper Academy, majoring in Beach Ball Balancing and Shark Avoidance ... started own crab-leg restaurant at Fisherman's Wharf, where he invented Clam Chowder in a Bread Bowl ... won the San Francisco Tuna Eating Contest flippers-down from 1997-98 ... once grew his whiskers so long, he was mistaken for an octopus ... someday aspires to be a special guest on "Baywatch."

HOW OBTAINED Spotted by Dusty Baker at Pier 39. Turned down offers from other teams to sign with the Giants.

INTERESTS Enjoys going to the movies, eating dinner (lots of it), dancing (all the time), swimming, playing baseball and many other sports, and likes to watch ESPN when at home.

Q: Hey, Lou Seal. Everyone has been wondering where you are from. LOU SEAL: I was born on the Farallon Islands just west of the Golden Gate Bridge and I grew up right here in San Francisco. Currently I live under the Lefty O'Doul Bridge in the China Basin district of San Francisco. I love this spot since I'm swimming distance from the team's home, Oracle Park. Being so close gives me more time to do what I do best - root for the greatest team of all time: the Giants!

Q: Do you come from a large family? LOU SEAL: Yeah, I come from a very large family. Us seals mature pretty quickly so I have a lot of relatives that I've never met -- until I became the Giants' team mascot! Now I have uncles, aunts, cousins and nephews coming out of the woodwork asking me for tickets and stuff.

Q: Are your parents proud of you? LOU SEAL: My parents are extremely proud of me! I am the first one in my family to earn a paycheck that isn't paid in smelt or other small fish. My family is so happy the new ballpark has opened up. Now they can watch me perform from the Bay.

The ballpark is pretty high-tech. I have suggested to the Giants to put some underwater television monitors below the waterfront so my folks can watch me on television.

Q: Sounds like you have quite a sweet tooth! LOU SEAL: Yes I do! Yet I always make sure I brush my teeth three times a day. My whiskers make great dental floss!

Q: How did you become such a huge Giants fan? LOU SEAL: I'm a San Francisco native and the Giants are in my blood! My dad was a big-time Giants fan and so was my grandpa! How can anyone not be a Giants fan!?! We've had so many great players over the last 40 years like Mays, McCovey, Marichal and Bonds -- you just gotta love the Giants!

I love cheering with the fans and helping to keep our team morale up and positive!

Q: Sounds like your family has quite a baseball history. LOU SEAL: Oh yeah! Because of my great-grandfather, the original San Francisco minor league baseball team was named the San Francisco Seals. As Grandpa told it, the original owner was walking along Pier 23 trying to think of a name for his team. A burst of wind came and blew his cap off his head and into the Bay. My great-grandfather retrieved it with his nose and gave it back to the man. From that moment on, they were called the San Francisco Seals!

At least that's what my grandpa tells me. It may be just a marine legend.

Q: So you must love your job. LOU SEAL: It is a dream job! I love cheering with the fans and helping to keep our team up and positive! It is no small coincidence that we have done so well since my first year on the job. It was not just Brian Sabean who helped turn this team around, the Big Lou had something to do with it too, you know.

Q: Besides going to baseball games, what else do you enjoy doing? LOU SEAL: I love making public appearances. It is great getting out and meeting Giants fans. I enjoy going to community and charity events, schools, birthday parties. I especially love attending corporate get-togethers.

I've done some appearances at some of the Dugout stores. It was great fun. When I'm not at a game or making an appearance, you might find me relaxing at Pier 39, chasing mermaids or fishin' for mackerel.

Q: What is your advice to kids on how they should enjoy a Giants game? LOU SEAL: They should wear a Giants cap, bring their glove to the game and root, root, root for the Giants! And don't be afraid to join Lou in the conga line!

(https://www.mlb.com/giants/fans/mascot)

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