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midnightstargazer · 2 years ago

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So, I'm working on a fanfic about Helena Ravenclaw, and I pulled up her Wiki article and came across this:

Envious of her mother's cleverness and importance, Helena, still during her school years, stole her diadem from jealousy and ran away ...

This surprised me, because I had always gotten the impression she was an adult by the time she stole the diadem. There's a source cited for it, but that source is ... a broken link to an old Pottermore article. A bit of Googling turned up the new version of the article, which does include the following statement:

A few years into her magical education, she betrayed her mother by stealing the diadem – believing it could make her powerful – and running away from Hogwarts.

My thoughts under the cut b/c it's kind of long.

"A few" probably means about 2-3 (more than that would be several, particularly since a complete Hogwarts education is only 7 years total). That would suggest that she was about 13-14 years old when she stole the diadem. I don't like that for what I assume are obvious reasons: Helena's story is disturbing enough if she's a grown woman, but even worse if she's in her early teens.

There's also nothing in canon to imply that. Helena Ravenclaw's ghost goes by the title of "The Grey Lady" and is described in Deathly Hallows as a young woman, not a girl.

Another possibility is that a Hogwarts education began later in the founders' time than the present day, with students starting in their mid to late teens rather than at age eleven. In that case, Helena could have been a young adult and still only "a few years into" her time at Hogwarts. However, there's no reason to believe that this was the case.

Finally, Helena may have already been in her mid to late teens when Hogwarts opened. It makes sense that not everyone in the original group of students would have started at age eleven. However, this shortens the timeline for the founding of Hogwarts by a lot. In Chamber of Secrets, Professor Binns explains:

For a few years, the founders worked in harmony together ... But then disagreements sprang up between them. A rift began to grow between Slytherin and the others. ... After a while, there was a serious argument on the subject between Slytherin and Gryffindor, and Slytherin left the school.

We are also told that Rowena Ravenclaw's death came soon after Helena's theft of the diadem, which means the sequence of events was as follows:

Founding of Hogwarts

A few peaceful years

Disagreements start forming between Slytherin and the other 3 founders

Salazar Slytherin fights w/ Godric Gryffindor and leaves the school

Helena steals her mother's diadem and flees to Albania

Rowena Ravenclaw becomes sick, wants to see Helena one last time, and sends the Bloody Baron to search for her

Rowena Ravenclaw dies

Slytherin's betrayal must have come before Helena's, because it's made very clear that all the other founders were still around when he left, and it's implied that the rift between them was the first major challenge the school faced.

If Helena stole the diadem 2-3 years after the founding of Hogwarts, that does not leave time for "a few years" of peaceful collaboration to deteriorate into conflict, and then for the disagreements to continue for "a while" - however long that is, it's a non-zero amount of time - before boiling over into the fight that led to Slytherin's departure.

I think it makes much more sense for Helena to have started school immediately when it opened or soon after, but at the normal age. This would mean she was likely a Hogwarts student when Slytherin left and stole the diadem as a young adult, either at the very end of her school years or within a few years after graduating. That's the least complicated explanation, so that is what I will be using in my fic.

*insert rant about Death of the Author*

#my fanfic #Helena Ravenclaw

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flagsdigitalindia · 3 months ago

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Success of Your Digital Marketing Campaign

Digital marketing is an essential tool for businesses today. To ensure your campaigns are effective, it’s crucial to measure their success accurately. This process involves analyzing various metrics and adjusting your strategies accordingly. In this article, we will explore different ways to measure the success of your digital marketing campaigns. By the end, you will have a clear understanding of how to evaluate your efforts and make necessary improvements, especially if you are utilizing the best digital marketing agency in Gurgaon.

Understanding Your Goals

Knowing your objectives is the first step in gauging the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaigns. These objectives can include raising brand awareness, producing more leads, or boosting website traffic. The correct metrics to track can be determined with the support of clear and defined goals. For example, you want to concentrate on metrics like page views and unique visitors if your objective is to boost website traffic. Your review process can be guided by establishing SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

KPIs, or key performance indicators, are important measures that show how well your digital marketing strategies are performing. These indicators change based on your objectives. Conversion rates, click-through rates (CTR), ROI, and customer acquisition cost (CAC) are examples of common key performance indicators (KPIs). Every KPI sheds light on a distinct facet of your campaign. A high click-through rate (CTR) signifies the persuasiveness of your advertisement copy, whereas a high conversion rate proves the efficacy of your landing page.

Analyzing Website Traffic

One of the most important metrics in digital marketing is website traffic. You may monitor several facets of your website traffic with the use of tools like Google Analytics. The quantity of visitors, views on the page, length of the session, and bounce rate can all be examined. A low bounce rate combined with high traffic indicates that your content is interesting. Examining the sources of your traffic—organic, sponsored, or social—can also assist you in determining the most successful channels.

Conversion Tracking

For many digital marketing strategies, conversions serve as the primary indicator of campaign success. Any desired action performed by a user, such as buying something, subscribing to a newsletter, or downloading a resource, might be considered a conversion with the help of digital marketing Agency in Delhi. Conversion tracking is establishing objectives in your analytics program and keeping track of the number of visitors who finish these tasks. You can determine which elements of your campaign are effective and which require improvement by looking at conversion rates.

Social Media Metrics

Digital marketing can be effectively executed on social media. Social media performance is measured by monitoring measures such as share of voice, follower growth, and engagement rates. Likes, comments, and shares are examples of engagement rates that show how well your material connects with readers. Gaining more followers demonstrates the expansion of your social media presence. Share of voice calculates how visible your brand is in comparison to rivals.

Email Marketing Performance

One essential element of digital marketing is still email marketing. You should pay close attention to metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to gauge its effectiveness. A high open rate indicates the efficacy of your subject lines. In the meantime, a high click-through rate suggests that the content of your emails is interesting. Keeping an eye on these indicators aids in the improvement of your email marketing plan.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC advertising is a well-liked kind of internet marketing. Metrics like cost per click (CPC), click-through rate (CTR), and return on ad spend (ROAS) can be used to gauge a PPC campaign’s success. Your advertisements are relevant and well-targeted if they have a cheap CPC and a high CTR. The revenue generated for each dollar spent on advertising is measured by ROAS. Monitoring these indicators guarantees that your PPC advertising is profitable and provides good returns.

Customer Feedback and Reviews

Reviews and comments from customers offer qualitative information on how well your digital marketing campaigns are working. High ratings and favorable reviews imply that your goods and services live up to customer expectations. Furthermore, reviews might provide information on areas that need work. You may improve your internet reputation by actively interacting with customers and encouraging them to submit reviews.

Measuring Brand Awareness

Long-term success in digital marketing requires a strong brand awareness. Gauge brand awareness by tracking metrics such as brand mentions, social media reach, and website traffic from branded searches. Increased reach and brand mentions are signs that your marketing is making a difference in terms of visibility. Increased search traffic for your brand indicates that more people are actively searching for it. These measurements assist in determining how well your brand-building efforts are working.

Using Analytics Tools

Analytics tools are essential for gauging the effectiveness of digital marketing. Email marketing tools, social media analytics, and Google Analytics all offer useful data. These tools assist you in making decisions by providing insights into a range of indicators. Monitoring your campaign performance regularly guarantees that you remain aware of its performance. Furthermore, utilizing a variety of techniques can give you a complete picture of your digital marketing initiatives.

A/B Testing

A/B testing compares two iterations of an email, advertisement, or web page to see which works better. You can find out which components, including headlines, graphics, and calls to action, your audience responds to the best by testing them all. You may improve the performance of your digital marketing initiatives by using A/B testing.

Return on Investment (ROI)

One important statistic in digital marketing is the return on investment. ROI compares the money received to the expenses paid to determine how profitable your efforts were. Your digital marketing efforts are paying off if your ROI is good. Subtract the campaign’s cost from the money it brought in, then divide the result by the cost to determine ROI. Routinely tracking ROI ensures that you use your marketing budget wisely.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

A statistic called client lifetime value projects the total amount of money a customer will bring in throughout their relationship. Having a solid understanding of CLV aids in strategic decision-making around client acquisition and retention. A high customer lifetime value (CLV) is a sign that your digital marketing is drawing in worthwhile clients. You may optimize the long-term profitability of your campaigns by concentrating on CLV-boosting tactics like targeted marketing and loyalty programs.

Competitor Analysis

Examining your rivals’ websites can provide you with important information about how well your digital marketing initiatives are working. You may monitor rival keywords, backlinks, and ad campaigns with tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush. You may modify and enhance your efforts by learning what your rivals are doing well. Competitor analysis helps you find possibilities and weaknesses in your digital marketing plan.

Adapting and Improving Strategies

The industry of digital marketing is constantly changing. Sustained success requires routinely analyzing your advertising analytics and making the required corrections. Continuous improvement is essential, whether it is updating your website, modifying your target population, or adjusting the copy in your ads. You can make sure that your efforts at digital marketing continue to be successful by continuing to be flexible and sensitive to data.

#digital marketing company #digital marketing services #digital marketing company in delhi #advertising agency #advertising agency in mumbai

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ajitahan3 · 1 year ago

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SERP – Everything You Need to Know about Search Engine Result Pages

Search Engine Result Pages or SERPs are the response provided to users for their searches by a search engine. In simple words, if you search for something on a search engine like Google, the result page is known as SERP.

Types of SERP Results

There are four major types of results displayed in SERPs, which are as follows:

Paid Ads

These are ads paid by businesses that pop up on the first page of SERPs.

Organic Listings

An organic listing is a type of search result that appears on SERPs because it is relevant to the search query of the user.

Knowledge Graphs

A knowledge graph in Google SERP is a collection of sources or a knowledge base that presents complete results to the users’ search queries in the form of boxes or panels.

Rich Features

Rich features add a visual layer to a SERP. They provide users with a universal view of their searches. This view includes carousels, featured snippets, and reviews.

The Importance of SERP for SEO

SERPs can be an influential determiner of how much traffic your website can generate organically through search engines. Moreover, they also determine exactly how your website looks to a user on Google’s search pages.

Most users will only click on the results on the first page of a SERP. If your website is listed on page two or beyond, you are technically invisible to users. But ranking on the first page is not enough either as users will mostly click on the top few results.

Add to this that paid search results are usually displayed on the top, which further decreases the chances of users clicking on your website if it’s not a paid advertisement. Hence, websites need to be properly optimized so that organic search results can gain optimum clicks from users. An SEO company in India like Infidigit can do this thoroughly.

Google’s algorithm for indexing for search queries is very complex with over 200 ranking factors that determine the SEO SERP rankings. Some of these factors include off-page SEO, on-page SEO, the loading speed of a website, and brand awareness. These factors all combine and offer SERPs with suitable results to display to the users.

How Can One Get to SERP

There are two primary ways of reaching SERP optimally. They are:

Paid Ads

Paid ads are search results that are displayed on SERPs with an “Ad” icon. These are one of the most convenient ways of getting your website to SERPs, although, as the name suggests, it requires investment.

Paid ads do not, however, guarantee an increase in click-through rate (CTR) for websites. Still, it is advised that if you are using paid ads to get to SERP, use keywords optimally as they might attract users and prompt them to click on the website link.

Organic Results

Organic results, as their name suggests, are results that are displayed on SERP solely based on their ranking. Businesses that do not want to invest in paid ads usually have to work very hard to elevate their website’s SEO metrics to a whole new level so that they are visible on the first page of the SERP.

Various Features of SERP

SERP comes packed with various features that a website can leverage to attract more clicks. Here are the most prominent features of SERP:

Featured Snippet

Featured snippets on SERP are a short and defined section of a webpage that you can highlight under the search results. These range from small descriptions to steps or pointers, to even a summarized version of content on the website. These are classified under four categories, which are:

Bulleted Lists

FAQs

Tables

Numbered Lists

This feature of SERP can prove to be very beneficial for websites as it provides visitors with a brief description of their search query and also showcases the website to them.

Knowledge Card

This feature is a visual cue for users to understand their search query. Knowledge cards are featured images that appear at the top of SERP and they provide the user with a basic overview of the subject matter of their search. They provide instant and basic results to the users, which helps them get a better understanding of their search query to explore it beyond the search results.

Knowledge Panel or Graph

These are panels that appear on the right side of the organic result on any SERP. Knowledge panels provide an overview of the website that shows up in the result and what it presents. For instance, if you search for “Amazon” on Google, the Knowledge Panel for the result will showcase the basic statistics of the company like location, name of the CEO, revenue, stock price, and so on.

Top Stories

Top Stories by Google is very useful in SERP as it displays all the top news related to a particular keyword that the surfer has looked up. It could be a user typing “COVID-19” and receiving all the latest developments, which range from local updates to global happenings.

Twitter Results

Twitter results on SERP signify any trending hashtag related to the keyword a user may have searched for. It was a prominent feature until mid-2020 when Google dropped it due to security concerns.

#SERPresult

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questinwitchface · 1 year ago

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I’m considering taking a modern poetry course. Do you have any poets you like or any poetry writing sources?

Ooh that's exciting! If you end up taking the class, I hope it's a fun one.

As for poets I like, well, there's a lot, and I don't have time to list every single one of them here, so I'll just give you those that I consider to be my top five, though it pains me to leave so many wonderful poets off the list. In birth order, they are:

Langston Hughes - One of the big names of the Harlem Renaissance. I love him because he wrote about things that mattered in very accessible language, like when you read his work, you get what he was saying the first time, and then you can dissect all the interesting little intricacies from there.

Allen Ginsberg - One of the big names of the Beat Generation. I love him because he writes so bombastically. I don't know how to explain it in a way that makes sense necessarily, but try reading "Howl" (probably his most famous work), and I think you'll get what I mean.

Anne Sexton - Famous for her confessional style poetry. I love her because her subject matter - mental illness, gender, family relationships, etc. - is very relatable to me, and she has such a deeply personal style that when I read her, I feel like I'm talking to a friend about what they're going through.

Diane di Prima - Also a part of the Beat Generation, though not as well-known as the men. I must've read her book "Loba" (the 1998 version) fifteen times or more. She writes about femininity as powerful, and her work has often been compared as the "feminine counterpart to Ginsberg's 'Howl'" which I don't think is very fair to her because her work stands by itself. But anyway, she's amazing, and I really adore her work.

Nikita Gill - The only person on this list still alive and writing today. She's got a way with weaving poetry and narrative together that just makes me so enamored. Highly recommend "The Girl and the Goddess."

For poetry writing sources, I'm sorry to say I don't have much. Like I've said previously, I was really discouraged by my poetry professor in university, so I gave away all of my poetry writing books. That said, if you're just getting started writing poetry, I suggest googling "poetry forms" and reading about different ones, like the lantern poem, the ballad, the triolet, etc., and give writing them a try. Often, these will force you to write in a way that you normally wouldn't, and it'll feel kind of frustrating at times, but through that, you can learn a lot about poetry itself and about your own preferences. For instance, I absolutely hate writing villanelles because I find the form itself too constricting. I love writing lantern poems, though, because the limitations of the form makes finding the perfect words so incredibly important. It's a good place to start to figure out what kinds of poems you're into writing and why you like those things, and that's a foundation that you can build from.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to babble on about my favorite poets. Again, I really hope your poetry class is fun if you choose to take it, and I hope your teacher/professor is better than mine was lol.

#my answers #poetry recs

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infradapt · 2 years ago

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How AI Chatbots Empower Job Seekers

Emerging technologies, such as AI chatbots, have revolutionized several aspects of our lives, including the job search process. These intelligent tools, such as Bing AI and Google Bard, have been designed to assist with tasks ranging from code generation to text translation to simplifying intricate subjects. An intriguing application of these AI chatbots is in job hunting, providing valuable assistance throughout the process, from exploring job opportunities to acing the interview.

However, it’s important to remember that, while these chatbots are powerful, they are not infallible. Users should be careful not to accept their outputs as completely accurate without verifying them from additional sources. The key is to use these tools judiciously and thoughtfully.

Navigating the Job Market with AI

The real value of AI chatbots lies in their ability to make us view things from a fresh perspective. This is particularly useful when you’re stuck in a job sector or finding it challenging to land a role in your preferred field. An AI chatbot can suggest alternative roles that align with your skillset and interests but fall in different industries. This feature allows you to tailor your queries according to your unique requirements, such as specific skills or desired salary.

Consider this scenario: You’re a teacher exploring career transitions. You could ask an AI chatbot, “What positions require similar skills and offer comparable compensation, excluding teaching roles?” The chatbot might return several intriguing options along with insights on how to pivot between jobs and transfer your skills.

Unraveling Job Details and Company Insights

Once you’ve identified potential jobs, AI chatbots can aid you in comprehending the nitty-gritty of these roles. They can provide insights into a typical day at work, the kind of skills you’ll utilize, and even specific information about the company you’re interested in.

While chatbots don’t inherently know this information, they generate intelligent assumptions based on the vast amount of text they’ve been trained on and information available on the internet. However, it is prudent to cross-check critical points, especially when it involves specific company details that could come up during a job interview.

Acing the Interview with AI

When you reach the interview phase, AI chatbots can provide valuable assistance. For instance, you can ask, “What are the common interview questions for the role of …?” The chatbot will return a list of potential questions, which you can use to prepare in advance. The more specific your prompt, the more tailored the responses will be, giving you an idea of what to focus on during your preparation.

Refining Your Résumé and Cover Letter

While it’s not recommended to rely on AI to draft your entire résumé or cover letter – after all, these documents should reflect you, not an AI – these chatbots can still provide useful enhancements. For instance, you could feed your qualifications into the chatbot and inquire about which ones are most crucial to the role you’re applying for, thereby understanding which ones to highlight.

You could also input text into the chatbot and request it to make the content more engaging, succinct, or impactful, thereby assisting you in crafting a compelling personal bio. Similarly, if you’re writing a cover letter, the chatbot can provide suggestions on what to include and how to phrase it, while also tailoring the results based on the role you’re applying for. If your draft ends up being too wordy, you can ask the chatbot to eliminate any superfluous elements.

AI chatbots offer a wealth of resources for job seekers, but they should be used as a tool, not a crutch. They can provide new perspectives, insights, and suggestions, but the final decisions should always be yours.

https://www.infradapt.com/news/how-ai-chatbots-empower-job-seekers/

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w-ht-w · 2 years ago

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What all policy analysts need to know about data science

tl;dr - Data literacy is important for policymaking; you don’t have to write code yourself.

Resources recommended:

Data.gov

data science blogs at the Urban Institute and the Pew Research Center (both do domestic U.S. policy research)

free online courses for data science + learning to program in R

joint data science and public policy graduate programs (ex. Georgetown, UChicago, UPenn)

the private sector applications of data science can sound quite alien to public servants. This is understandable, as the problems that Netflix and Google strive to solve are very different than those government agencies, think tanks, and nonprofit service providers are focused on.

data science offers a powerful framework to expand our evidence-based understanding of policy choices, as well as directly improve service delivery.

Using data to learn about public policy is not at all new. The origins of the social sciences using statistical analysis of observational data goes back at least to the 1950s, and experiments started even further back. Microsimulation models, less common but outsized in their influence, emerged as the third pillar of data-driven policy analysis in the 1970s. ... To this day, they constitute the overwhelming majority of empirical knowledge about policy efficacy. While recent years have seen a substantial expansion in the set of pertinent methods (more on that below), it is still critical to have a strong grasp of experiments, observational causal inference, and microsimulation.

Experiments

Experiments require random assignment, which for policy means a benefit or program is made available randomly to some people and not to others—hardly a politically popular strategy. Many would also say it is ethically questionable to do this, though randomized experiments have taken firm root in medicine, sacrificing fairness in the short term for progress in the long term. Regardless of the political and ethical barriers, they do happen.

Statistical analysis of observational data

Due to the financial and political difficulties that experiments present, they remain rare, and much more research is based on the statistical analysis of observational data. Observational data refers to information collected without the presence of an explicit experiment—it comes from surveys, government administrative data, nonprofit service delivery, and other sources. Usually by obtaining and combining several datasets, researchers look for various opportunities to examine the causal effects of policy changes with statistical methods. These statistical methods, broadly called causal inference statistics (or quasi-experiments), take advantage of differences within populations, or policy changes over time and geography to estimate how effective a service or intervention is.

Individually, the strength of the evidence from a single study is limited. (This is true in any field, and it suggests prudence when changing your beliefs based on results from one study.) However, since observational data is far easier to gather and analyze than experimental data, it is possible to find many opportunities to re-examine the same policy questions. Eventually, it’s possible to examine many papers on the same subject, called a meta-analysis. Meta-analysis of observational studies have convincingly argued that increased school spending improves student outcomes, gun access leads to higher risk of suicide and homicide, and that taxes on sugary beverages are associated with lower demand for those beverages.

Although at times difficult to interpret, this slow accumulation of many observational analyses by different research groups often becomes the most informative and trustworthy source of information about potential policy changes.

Microsimulation

The news is frequently covered in estimates from microsimulation methods, such as how effective taxes would change under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and how many people would lose health insurance under the curtailing of the Affordable Care Act. Even a substantial part of the (in)famous Congressional Budget Office scoring of the cost of federal legislation employs microsimulation.

The Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center model is perhaps the easiest to understand intuitively. The model starts with a sample of anonymized administrative data from the Internal Revenue Service, which contains lots of information about taxpayers that is specific to each person. (This puts the “micro” in microsimulation.) The model itself then does the same thing as online tax preparation software: It runs through the rules of the tax code and calculates how much this person should be paying in taxes. However, the model contains many different knobs that can be turned and switches that can be flicked, each one changing something about the way the tax code works. By altering some of these inputs, the model creates a simulation, that is, an alternative possible outcome from the real world of tax policy.

These models are highly complex, and usually take years to build. They also require a lot of information about how a set of public policies are currently affecting a population, so the data typically comes from government administration records. However, once they are built, they offer a quick and flexible lens into potential policy changes. In reality, the behavioral consequences—how people and firms react to new policy—are large enough that few experts are ever really convinced that estimates from these models are precisely correct. That said, microsimulation methods can ground policy discussions to reasonable predictions, make assumptions explicit, and give a reasonable sense of what complex and interacting policy changes might do. Compared to letting pundits invent numbers out of thin air, microsimulation offer a dramatically more rigorous approach to estimating policy outcomes. (1)

THE EXPANDED METHODS OF DATA SCIENCE FOR POLICY ANALYSIS

While many of these methods have existed for a long time, the proliferation of new and diverse data sources means this expanded toolkit should be more widely understood and applied by policy analysts.

Predictive analytics

There is a growing recognition that many government and nonprofit services can be improved with predictive analytics. In Chicago, predictive models are used to reduce the exposure of young children to lead paint, which has extensive and permanent health consequences. Before this effort, and still in most places across the United States, exposed lead paint is typically only discovered after children fall ill.

The Chicago model uses historical inspection data to find correlations between exposed lead paint and other information (like the age of the buildings, when they were last renovated, if they have been vacant, as well as demographic data). This model can then be used to evaluate the level of risk of lead paint in homes that are going to accommodate newborn children. Using those predictions, the Chicago Department of Public Health can more strategically prioritize lead paint inspections, saving many children from hazardous exposure.

This is a generalizable approach for service providers who have a valuable intervention, limited resources, and uncertainty in where their investments would be most beneficial. As another example, the Center for Data Insights at MDRC—a nonprofit, nonpartisan education and social policy research organization—is exploring how to use prediction modeling to better allocate employment services to former inmates. (Disclosure: I am a data science consultant on this project.) If there is trustworthy historical data and an opportunity to affect who gets an intervention, predictive analytics can be highly beneficial by getting services delivered to those who need it most.

Clustering

Clustering methods allow for the discovery of these underlying groups across many variables that might otherwise remain hidden or avoid our qualitative intuition. .. subgroups are complex and nothing is unidimensional. It’s imperative to consider how many variables may be interacting to define the most meaningful differences in whatever populations are being analyzed.

Big data

Sometimes, though certainly not always, simply having more data enables better or different policy analysis. Over the past 12 years, a joint academic initiative at MIT Sloan and Harvard Business School has been using online prices to measure macroeconomic indicators. By scraping data from the internet, the Billion Prices Project has collected the prices of 15 million items from over a thousand retailers. This massive dataset has enabled them to create measures of inflation in 20 countries, updated on a daily basis. For the sake of comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Consumer Price Indexis monthly. Although there are many challenges to this new approach, it’s worth keeping in mind that the traditional process used by the BLS (government employees surveying or physically examining prices) is far more expensive, complicated by its own problems (e.g., growing survey non-response), and painstakingly slow.

While big data can offer new insights, there are important statistical differences when analyzing big data. Most notably, it is generally harder to get data that accurately represents the whole of a population (like a country or a state). Cloud computing and modern software may easily enable analyzing multi-billion row datasets, but that makes it no easier to know who the data is relevant to. Phone records can illuminate strategies to improve traffic patterns, but does it overlook people without mobile phones? Credit card transactions can reveal lifestyle differences across socio-economic groups, but what could be missing without seeing cash transactions and cash-only consumers? This remains a large problem for effectively using big data that is not originally meant for social science (sometimes called “found data”). As a result, it’s a priority to continue the development of methods that can adjust these datasets to be representative and accurate, especially since this new data can offer so much.

Text analysis

Modern text analysis, or natural language processing, offers new ways to glean meaningful insights into the huge bodies of writing that societies produce. For example, consider the impressions that a community has of its law enforcement officers. Trust in the legitimacy of a police force can lead to more lawful behavior, as well as community collaboration to solve and reduce crimes. However, community impressions of police can be hard to measure. This is why the Urban Institute turned to Twitter. Researchers at Urban’s Justice Policy Center analyzed the sentiment of 65 million tweets, finding spikes in negative sentiment after violent police-citizen interactions. It’s worth nothing that this analysis is affected by the big data considerations detailed above.

In another instance, my colleagues in Brookings’s Metropolitan Policy Program looked for overlapping patterns in the text of job descriptions and AI patents. This allows them to create a quantitative estimate of how good AI might be at various job tasks, and thereby, how potentially automatable those jobs might be. This approach creates a new way to reason about the effects of automation that is less dependent on the qualitative judgement of experts.

Network analysis

In their book, “Network Propaganda,” three researchers of Harvard’s Berkman-Klein Center created networks of online media sources, like The New York Times and Fox News. They then measured the sources’ relationships to one another with the hyperlinks in their news content, as well as the social media sharing patterns of their audience. Critically, their research has shown how isolated and self-amplifying far-right media sources have become, leading them to grow more extreme and less tethered to the truth. This is the exact type of insight that network analysis can help deliver: Around whom is the network most dependent? Who is on the fringes and sidelines? How are relationships between actors changing?

While the internet and social media has created huge networks of people, any group of things with relationships to one another can be considered a network and analyzed as such. The states have long been considered laboratories of democracy, where experimental policies can be tested and successful ones shared. This also can be conceived of as a network, with states being connected to one another through the diffusion of similar legislation. Recent research of this kind has provided further evidence of California’s status as a leader in policy innovation. This might be unsurprising, but the same research also highlights Kentucky as the most influential state for the diffusion of public policy from the 1960s until California's emergence in the mid-1990s.

Image analysis

Image data has proliferated in recent years, originating in everything from cell phones, traffic cameras, smart devices, and even constellations of new satellites. In many parts of the word, especially poor countries, it can be very hard to develop an accurate understanding of poverty—but analyzing image data can help. Unsurprisingly, knowing where impoverished people are is vital to targeting services and investments to help improve their socio-economic outcomes. This is why the World Bank has been developing methods to use high-definition satellite data to create geographically specific measures of poverty, especially relevant to the 57 countries with almost no survey data on poverty. Data science methods can look at satellite imagery and recognize cars, identify roofing materials, distinguish between paved and unpaved roads, and measure building height and density. In turn, these new variables can be used to estimate fairly accurate poverty measures that are substantial improvements over outdated (or nonexistent) estimates.

Satellite data has also been used to monitor international conflicts and as evidence of human rights abuses. Other efforts have proposed using social media photos of political protests to measure their size and degree of violence, though this is likely not ready for implementation. Currently, image analysis is largely limited to facial and object recognition; it is not close to genuine understanding of photos. Still, as imagery proliferates and related modeling techniques improve, this data will offer powerful new ways to examine the state of the world.

WHY DATA SCIENCE MATTERS TO PUBLIC POLICY AND GOVERNANCE

Evaluating data is becoming a core component of government oversight. The actions of private companies are more frequently in databases than file cabinets, and having that digital information obscured from regulators will undermine our societal safeguards. Government agencies should already be acting to evaluate problematic AI-hiring software and seeking to uncover biases in models that determine who gets health interventions. As algorithmic decision-making becomes more common, it will be necessary to have a core of talented civic data scientists to audit their use in regulated industries.

Even for public servants who never write code themselves, it will be critical to have enough data science literacy to meaningfully interpret the proliferation of empirical research.

Despite recent setbacks��such as proposed cuts to evidence-building infrastructure in the Trump administration’s budget proposal—evidence-based policymaking is not going anywhere in the long term. There are already 125 federal statistical agencies, and the Foundations of Evidence Based Policymaking Act, passed early last year, expands the footprint and impact of evidence across government programs.

Further, the mindset of a data scientist is tremendously valuable for public servants: It forces people to confront uncertainty, consider counterfactuals, reason about complex patterns, and wonder what information is missing. It makes people skeptical of anecdotes, which, while often emotionally powerful, are not sufficient sources of information on which to build expansive policies. The late and lauded Alice Rivlin knew all this in 1970, when she published “Systemic Thinking for Social Action.” Arguing for more rigor and scientific processes in government decision-making, Rivlin wrote a pithy final line: “Put more simply, to do better, we must have a way of distinguishing better from worse.”

A continued expansion of evidence-based decision-making relies on many individuals in many different roles, adopting practices that encourage data-scientific thinking. Managers in government agencies can hire analysts with a rigorous understanding of data in addition to a background in policy.

They can also work to open up their datasets, contributing to Data.gov and the broader evidence-based infrastructure. Grant-making organizations have a critical role, too. They should be mandating an evaluation budget—at least 5% of a grant—to collect data and see if the programs they are funding actually work. When they fund research, it should require replicable research and open-data practices.

For policy researchers looking to expand their sense of what is possible, keep an eye on the data science blogs at the Urban Institute and the Pew Research Center, which get into the weeds on how they are using emerging tools to build and disseminate new knowledge. And for current policy analysts who want to deepen their skills, they should consider applying to the Computational Social Science Summer Institute, a free two-week intensive to learn data skills in the context of social problems and policy data. Though much of it is not directly relevant to policy, there is a tremendous amount of online content for self-learners, too. I recommend looking into free online courses and learning to program in R. For those interested in a bigger investment, look to the joint data science and public policy graduate programs, like those at Georgetown University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania.

1. https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-all-policy-analysts-need-to-know-about-data-science/

#policy #data #career

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luciferbacon · 6 months ago

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Ok so I'm not 100% knowledgeable in this subject as I would like to be. so the information I'm about to state, will have links to its sources where possible. Right with all that out the way let's start.

Let's say a kid takes puberty blockers and then decides to not transition or at least not take hormone therapy to counter their natural hormones. The physical effects of the puberty blockers will be reversible. I found loads of papers with interviews of children that had taken them (I searched on Google scholar and looked at selection). What I found was small sample sizes and most were just interviews. I couldn't see any paper asking kids that hadn't taken the puberty blockers the same questions.

I only found one study where they did trials that weren't just interviewing people that had taken them. I'm sure there must be more but I was unable to find them in my limited search. Trials on sheep suggest that puberty blockers impair brain development in the spatial memory areas, which is not reversed if blockers are discontinued. Spatial orientation and learning performance remained unaffected following puberty blocker withdrawal, but the speed of progression through these spatial tasks was altered after discontinuing puberty blockers. They found that in the sheep development of this cognitive function is, therefore, likely to occur during a critical window of development, which may reflect a time-limited period of hippocampal plasticity.

In my opinion, taking this all into account. I think that the decision about children not taking puberty blockers starts from a place of transphobia, as there's not much scientific data that I could find against its benefits. The test on sheep only continued until the sheep were two years old, and then the tests stopped. There were no tests past that point to see the even more long term effects, and I could find no human trial equivalent with my limited access to scientific papers.

I think that the people against puberty blockers are 100% transphobic, and are latching onto anything they can. However I do think that there needs to be more scientific studies done into its effects on humans. As this is significantly lacking. It may be that the public may not have access to these papers, if that is the case then I think that that should be changed, as ignorance fuels the transphobia.

The physical effects are 100% reversible and that aspect of the puberty blockers is well established, and has human experiences backing up the fact.

As with all medication, it will have potential side effects and withdrawal side effects too. In my opinion, which is the same opinion for all medication not just puberty blockers, the patients (and in this case the parents too due to the patients age) need to be advised of not only the side effects of the puberty blockers but the long term side effects after withdrawal that may occur, if it has any.

What I think is the most important though is weighing up the side effects with the potential outcome of the patients mental/physical health in each case. I don't think that puberty blockers should be banned but I think that the use of puberty blockers should be researched more for their long term effects. As this is still relatively unknown, at least to the public.

I hope this made some kind of sense and helped in some regards. I looked through quite a few pages of papers available on Google scholar using multiple different strings of searches before putting this together. I tried to be as unbiased as possible, but as a trans man who has had a discussion about potential puberty blockers (as an adult) I do have an opinion affected by my own experiences. I will also note, that I hate that I feel like I have to make this kind of statement at the end of such posts to protect myself from potential hateful replies.

You know how politicians say:

"Oh noooooo, transitioning shouldn't be done if you're not an adult!! Puberty blockers shouldn't be given to children!! They're not mature enough!!"

In the best of worlds, the person uses puberty blockers from 12 to 18yo without taking additional hormones. Then changes their mind and continue life without transitioning. Is there any health concerns except the measly "late puberty" thing?

If there isn't, people who want to make puberty blockers only for adults are 100% transphobic, right? Or best of cases 120% ignorant?

If there is, how negligible is it?

tagging @luciferbecons because I like your responses but if anyone else would like to reply I'd love to hear it!

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babycharmander · 4 years ago

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If you think you have never stolen artwork, read this post.

So, art theft. If you've been a follower of mine, you've heard my barely-coherent rants about this before, but I thought it might be more productive to make a more coherent post on the subject.

If you're wondering about the title of the post here, it's because I feel like a lot of people aren't really grasping what exactly art theft is, and a LOT of people, even well-meaning ones, do it without even realizing it.

"But wait," you say. "I would never STEAL from an artist!! I never claim it as my own!" And that's all fine and good, but you're missing something here.

To start things off, what IS art theft? (It's not what deviantART said it was several years back, I'll tell you that much. *cough*)

We all know what art is, so let's talk about theft. Dictionary.com defines "theft" as "the act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny." Okay, makes sense, but what about that other word there, stealing? Dictionary.com defines "steal" as "to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force."

From those definitions, we can go on to define art theft as, specifically, "taking art without permission or right." In the context of art, that typically involves reposting it (not reblogging--reblogging is different) or using it for other things.

And there, my friends, is the issue.

If something is taken or used without permission, it is stolen. Permission is the important thing here--if an artist says "oh yeah, you can go ahead and use this!" then it's not stolen. You have their permission. But if you DON'T have that, then it IS stolen. It IS theft.

"But I'm not claiming it as my own!" you say. But you don't have to claim it as your own--the act of taking it in and of itself is an act of theft.

"But I said 'credit to the artist!'" The "credit" thing is a whole other conversation, but here's the short of it: The entire point of credit is to direct people to the source of something. If you are not directly linking to where you got the art from, you are not giving credit. "Credit to the artist" is not actually credit of any kind whatsoever. (Also, Google and Pinterest are not sources.)

"But I DID link back to the artist!" Okay, now this is where it may get confusing, because you may think you're covered because you actually did give credit. Here's the problem: if you reposted it or used it without permission, regardless of whether you gave credit or not, it's still stealing.

I'm bolding this because it's a point that a lot of people get tripped up on. Let me explain it this way: If you went into your neighbor's house and took something of theirs without their permission, but you told people "oh yeah, I got this from [neighbor]'s house!" that that would still, of course, be stealing, and it's no different for art.

Another thing is that even when you credit, people don't always check the source. Very recently I found a case where someone had reposted a piece of artwork of mine to Pinterest that was deliberately made to look like it came from the source material (it wasn't meant to confuse anyone, though--the description of my original post made it very clear that it was fanart). The person who reposted had linked back to my original post. The problem? The comments had people asking if this was official, where it happened in the source material, etc. Despite the fact that the source was right there, no one thought to look at it.

Even if you link back to the source, if you did it without the artist's permission, it's still stealing, and still causes problems for us artists.

"But I just posted it to my Pinterest--" DO NOT DO THIS. DO NOT POST AN ARTIST'S WORK TO PINTEREST IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THEIR EXPLICIT PERMISSION TO DO SO.

"But this artist friend of mine says they're okay if I post their work to my Pinterest so long as I link back to them!" Good for your friend! But the fact that your friend is okay with it doesn't mean that all artists are okay with it. For me, personally, I am very not okay with my work being posted to Pinterest, and say as much on my art blog description and posts (which people tend to ignore).

The problem with Pinterest--and reposting art in general--is that we artists don't know when it happens unless we're told, or unless we find it ourselves. It causes us to lose control of our art. And because of this, our art can spiral further out of our control, because when our works get posted to Pinterest or other similar websites, people who have no grasp whatsoever on how art works will just take it as "free art" and then use it for whatever they want.

That's how a piece I spent 20+ hours on was used as a poster for a paid event, without my permission, and without any payment or credit to me.

If an artist has said nothing about Pinterest (or other similar image sharing sites), your default should be to assume that they don't want their artwork posted there.

"Well I didn't repost someone's art, but I did use it for my avatar/RPing icon/video/fic cover/photo edit--" That's still stealing. If you're using it without their permission for any reason, that is stealing. Not to mention, the artist may not be cool with what you're using their art for anyway. (Looking at you, people who use platonic art in your shipping videos.)

“I MEANT to ask them for permission, but I forgot!” This can ONLY happen if you used the artwork BEFORE you asked for permission. You can resolve this by asking for permission BEFORE you use it, rather than assuming the answer will be “yes” and using it before asking.

"But it took me a really long time to make that icon/video/cover/edit!!" How long do you think it took the original artist to draw their piece? It doesn't matter how much work you put into modifying someone else's art--if you're doing it without their permission, you're still stealing.

"But I couldn't find the original artist! I tried to find them, I really did, but I couldn't. Is it okay to use their art then?" No, because you still don't have permission, and by reposting it anyway, you’re continuing to make the artwork spiral out of their control.

"What if I found the artist, but they speak a different language from mine? I can't ask them for permission, so is it okay if I repost their art anyway?" NO!! DO NOT DO THIS!! If there is a language barrier, use Google translate or find someone to translate for you and get a hold of the artist that way to ask them for their permission. The language barrier is NEVER an excuse to steal artwork. There are plenty of non-English-speaking artists who have taken ALL OF THEIR ARTWORK OFFLINE because the art theft was completely out of control. (And this isn't just exclusive to English-speakers stealing art from people who don't speak their language. It happens artists who don't speak English stealing art from English-speakers, too, but as this post is written in English it doesn't do much good for me to rant about this here.) If you can’t ask their permission, do not use it!!

"But what about reblogging?! Isn't that the same as reposting?? Should we not reblog art at all then?" No, reblogging (or retweeting) is not the same as reposting. If you reblog art, you keep all the information that we attached to the art, including our blog name and the description attached to the art. Reblogging/retweeting actually helps us artists A LOT, so as long as you're reblogging from the original artist (and not someone who's reposting their art), by all means, reblog our art!

"What if I just want to share someone else's artwork on Discord or show it to a friend?" This one's a bit different and is not actually as problematic. If you want to share our work on Discord or whatever, just link directly to where we posted it. Please don't post the art itself, unless you're doing it alongside a link because Discord won't show a preview or something.

"What about a forum or a site like Reddit?" This one's a bit different, since due to the way Reddit functions, if you LINK to the art, you have to go directly to the artist's original page to view it. (At least, that’s what it’s like the last time I was active there.) In a way it's roughly the same as with Discord--be sure you're linking directly to the actual post rather than just uploading the art on its own--but I would also ask the artist if they're okay with it, because they may be a member of the subreddit or forum and want to post it themselves, or they might not want their work shared to specific communities. (Some communities have a function where a bot will repost the artwork to Imgur, and some artists don't want that done with their art.)

"What if I'm saving it to my computer/phone to look at later, or making it into my desktop/phone wallpaper?" IMO this is fine, since your computer/phone files aren't public, and neither is your wallpaper. It's only a problem when you post it to public places without our permission.

"What if it's art I commissioned?" Well... like... in that case, it's art you paid for, so unless the artist you commissioned laid out very specific terms for you, you should be good to use that art. Like, at most, the artist may ask you to credit them somewhere in your blog description if they drew your icon or something, or credit them in a fic description if you commissioned a fic illustration from them, or something to that effect. It's really something you should have already worked out with the artist beforehand, but for the most part you should probably be fine to use art you paid for however you like.

"What about art I requested?" This is a bit different from commissioned work. Just because the art was drawn at your request doesn't mean it's explicitly yours (unless it's like, a drawing of your original character or something). Some artists take requests more as suggestions, so the art they draw in response to a suggestion or request is still theirs. Treat this as you would any other artwork and ask the artist for permission first before you do anything with the artwork you requested from them.

“What about NFTs?” ... Okay this one I can’t really go over too much because I barely understand it in the first place, but NFTs are BAD for artists and are a form of art theft. Do not turn people’s art into NFTs. This is a crappy thing to do. (If you want more information on this one, you’ll have to look it up yourself. It’s a form of cryptocurrency and it’s confusing.)

“If you don’t want your art stolen you shouldn’t post it in the first place.” This is fascinating logic. Try applying it to something else and see how it holds up. “If you don’t want your merchandise stolen, you shouldn’t open a booth.” “If you don’t want to get poisoned you shouldn’t eat food.” “If you don’t want to get punched in the face, don’t walk outside.” Yes. Flawless logic. Truly.

"Why do you care so much, anyway?! I'm sharing your art because I like it! That's a compliment! Shouldn't you be happy?" Well, we're certainly glad you like our art, but the problem is... as I've said before, reposting our art causes us to lose our control over it. When we lose control of our art, that damages our livelihood. As I said before, other people have made money off of my artwork. As well, some artists lose jobs because when their potential employers check out their portfolio, they may find artwork that's been reposted everywhere online, so they cannot hire the artist because they believe they may have stolen the artwork in their own portfolio.

Your reposting an image you thought was cute to Facebook or Pinterest could cost an artist their job. Think about that.

So, tl;dr, keep this in mind: you need the artist's permission to repost or use their artwork. If you do not have it, it is stealing, even if you credit the artist.

I know this post is really harsh in places, but this is such an important thing for all artists, and there's so many misconceptions about art theft online. And I feel like one of the biggest problems is that when some people see posts on art theft, they ignore them, because they think they've never done it or would never do it, so that's why I worded this post the way I did. I'm not trying to hurt anyone--I just want people to understand what art theft is, how it affects us artists, and how you can avoid it. Thank you for reading.

#long post #psa #drawing #art theft

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yasminbenoit · 4 years ago

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“A Romantic Partner Won’t Complete Me, Because I Was Born Complete”: How Identifying As Asexual & Aromantic Brought Me True Freedom & Happiness | Yasmin Benoit for British Vogue

There is a phase in our lives where everyone seems asexual and almost everyone seems aromantic. It wasn't until puberty kicked in that platonic relationships seemed to take a backseat. My peers stopped wanting to play together and started wanting to 'date' each other. That was when I started to realise that there was something different about me. I didn’t seem to be experiencing the same urges as those I was around. I chose to go to an all girls school in the hopes that – in the absence of boys – everyone would stop caring about sex and dating. It actually had the opposite effect. There was a sense of deprivation in the air and the heightened desire to project their sexuality onto anything and everything.

Therefore, my lack of interest became even more obvious, and it became a not-so-fun game to work out the source of what should be troubling me, but hadn’t been until that point. Having a sexual orientation isn’t just natural, it’s essential. It’s part of being a fully-functional human being. And to be romantically love and be loved by another is the ultimate goal. It’s part of being normal, which made me both abnormal and puzzling. When your asexual, people think there’s something wrong with your body. When you’re aromantic, they think there’s something wrong with your soul. Even for a teenage girl who internalised all of Disney Channel’s “be yourself” messages, it’s never nice to have people publicly debate your supposed physical and psychological flaws.

My nickname in school was “hollow and emotionless.” I was a joker with a decent amount of friends, but I was lacking something crucial, the kind of love that really mattered and the kind of lust that made life exciting...so I was practically Lord Voldemort with braids. I sat through the regular DIY sexuality tests, having my peers show me graphic sexual imagery, have very sexual conversations in my presence, and ask me inappropriately intimate questions to gauge how far gone I truly was. These tests lead to the development of theories, most centred around me having some kind of mental problem. After a while, you start to wonder if everyone knows something you don’t.

When they said that I must have been molested as a child and “broken” by the trauma, I wondered if I had somehow forgotten about sexual abuse that actually hadn’t happened. I looked at some of my own relatives with suspicion, the same people who would later ask me if I didn’t experience sexual attraction because I was a pedophile. It was suggested that I was “suffering” from my “issues” because I was socially anxious and insecure. The suggestion that my ‘issue’ was pathological stayed with me for a long time, but not as much as the widely accepted theory that I was mentally slow. Unfortunately, that one stuck. I was referred to as “stupid” and I started to believe that was the case. It would impact my experience in education for the next eight years, long after I realised that there was a word for what I was.

Asexual.

I first heard the word during one of the near-daily sexuality tests that I was subjected to. I was asked if I was gay, to which I said that I wasn’t interested in anybody like that – men or women. At fifteen, I was asked, “Maybe you’re asexual or something?” but it wasn’t quite a lightbulb moment. How could it be when I had never heard the word outside of biology class? After an evening of Google searching, I realised that there were many people with my exact same experience, complete strangers whose stories sounded so strangely similar to mine. I also stumbled across the word ‘aromantic,’ but at the time, I didn’t understand the need for it. "Wouldn't all asexual people be aromantic? A romantic relationship without sex is just friendship with rules,” I thought.

Either way, my discoveries showed me that I wasn’t alone, but that only half helpful. I now had an identity that no one had heard of or understood. Most didn’t believe that being asexual or aromantic was a real thing, and I doubted it to. I had been taught to after years of armchair pathologisation. If asexuality was real, why did no one tell you that being sexually attracted to nobody was an option? What if it was just an internet identity made up to comfort people with all of the issues that had been attributed to me? I didn’t have to go far down the rabbit hole to realise that asexuality, like many non-heteronormative identities, had been medicalised. What I had experienced as just the tip of the iceberg. As someone who hadn’t been prescribed drugs I didn’t need or subjected to unnecessary hormone tests, I was one of the lucky ones.

My activism would be my gateway to the community. Despite being the ugly friend at school, I ended up becoming a model while in university. I decided to use the platform I had gained through my career to raise awareness for asexuality and aromanticism. It gave me the opportunity to encounter a range of asexual and aromantic offline, it was then that I learned the significance of having an aromantic identity. There are many asexual people who still feel romantic attraction, as well as aromantic people who still feel sexual attraction. They have their own range of experiences, their own culture, their own flag, and like the asexual community, I was relieved to see that they are just normal people. These intersecting communities are not stereotypes. They weren’t just thirteen year old, pink haired kids making up identities on Tumblr to feel special. They were parents, lawyers, academics, husbands, girlfriends, artists, black, white, young, old, with differing feelings towards the many complex elements of sexuality and intimacy. Most importantly, they were happy.

I am proud to be part of both, and I know that while being asexual and aromantic, I am a complete person and I can live a perfectly fulfilling life. Since meeting members of my communities, I’ve become more open about my identities in real life, and a reaction I’m often met with is sympathy. “You must feel like you’re missing out,” “I can’t imagine being like that,” “It must be hard for your family,” “Do you worry no one will want you?” “How do you handle being so lonely?” “You’re so brave and strong,” “What will you do with your life now?” Even in 2021, a woman who isn’t romantically loved or sexually desired by their “special someone” is perceived as being afflicted with some kind of life-limiting condition.

Asexuality doesn't make undesirable or unable to desire others. It is a unique experience of sexuality, not a deprivation from it. Even if it was, there is so much more to life than what turns us on and what we do about it. Romantic love is just one form of love, neither superior nor inferior to any other. Being aromantic doesn't mean that you can't love or be loved, it does not mean you are void of other emotions or capabilities. I am not lonely with my friends, family, co-workers and supporters. I feel confident not when someone wants to date me but when I meet my goals and form worthwhile connections with others. My success isn't determined by whether someone will want to marry me someday. What we want out of life is our decision alone, our sources of happiness should not be defined by our ever-changing, culturally relative social standards. The love of a romantic partner won't complete me because I was born complete. Feeling sexual attraction to others won't liberate me because my liberation is not dependent on other people.

Valentine's Day is on the horizon. It's an occasion that amps up the focus on (and the pressure to achieve) a very specific type of love and sexual expression, one that is actually alienating for people inside and outside of the asexual community. During a pandemic where many relationships have been strained, tested, formed or distanced, it's important to keep the diversity of romantic and sexual feelings in mind. Many expect me to feel annoyed or lonely during this time of year, but I actually feel empowered and excited by the way sex, romance and love are discussed more deeply around this time. These conversations are constantly expanding to become more inclusive for everyone, and that's what we need to see all year round.

https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/asexuality-and-aromanticism

#yasmin benoit #valentines day #british vogue #asexuality #aromantic #aromanticism #aroace #asexual #this is what asexual looks like #thisiswhatasexuallookslike

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reidyoulikeabook · 4 years ago

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Invisible String

Ship: Fem! Reader x Spencer Reid

Warnings: None, this is just fluff.

Word count: 3.2k

Summary: You and Spencer Reid don’t know it, but you’ve almost met quite a few times. What happens when you do?

A/N: This is potentially a bit on the wrong side of the cheesy line, but I was listening to invisible string by Taylor Swift and couldn’t get this idea out of my head. Pls bare in mind I’m from the UK and my only understanding of the US college system is from Google searches, so pls be forgiving of any misunderstandings about that.

November 6th, 2007

Dr. Spencer Reid. As you sat, thumbing through the article he’d written about the formation of ionic compounds in a chemical whose name you could not for the life of you spell or pronounce, you couldn’t help but resent the man.

Sure, the paper was very well-written and as cohesive as possible given the complex subject matter. But Dr. Spencer Reid, whoever he was, was the current source of your resentment at selecting chemistry to make up your science credit. Highlighting the name of a substance you’d have to look up later, you sighed. It was getting late but you had to hand in a critical summary of the paper on Friday.

It didn’t help that Dr. Reid was: a) a triple doctorate holder by the age of 22, or b) that your chemistry lecturer was none other than his old chemistry lecturer from Caltech and practically glowed with pride whenever he got to bring him up.

You chew on the end of your pen, having now distracted yourself from the notes. Not that you were particularly focused anyway.

In another life, maybe you’d have been a budding chemist who could describe an ionic lattice off rote. In this one, however, you’d just have to settle for slogging through the list of chemical processes and hoping you understood it well enough to please Dr. Reid’s biggest fan.

***

April 16th, 2008

Spencer hated flaking on commitments. It caused him a great deal of anxiety, the feeling of disappointing someone. He didn’t have much choice in this circumstance though.

Diana had taken ill over the last weekend. Nothing serious, some stomach bug or other. She’d become severely dehydated though, and had been hospitalised as a precautionary measure. Truth be told, he might not have gone if she hadn’t caught him on the phone. He was already feeling guilty for not having visited since Christmas. He wrote her letters everyday, yet still felt like he was neglecting his duties as a son. Rubbing his hands over his face, he lets out a deep sigh. Then takes out his laptop, to send another email.

Dear. Dr Abraham

I sincerely apologise again for my last minute cancellation. Excluding any unforeseen circumstances, myself and SSA Hotchner will be available to present the lecture on May 12th.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Spencer Reid.

***

May 12th, 2008

Considering this was your third year on campus, you sure were bad at finding your way around. In your defence, they were doing maintenance in one of the main buildings, meaning that lectures got shuffled around and relocated. You probably had a higher change of attending the right lecture by accident than on purpose.

It doesn’t help that you’re running a little late this morning. You rush into Room 203. A lot of the seats are taken, you have to meander your way past quite a few people until you end up sat almost directly in the middle. Only moments before the lecture starts.

“I’m SSA Hotchner, and this is SSA Reid. We’re members of the BAU which is based at FBI quarters in Quantico. Today, we’ll be talking to you about profiling.”

This is not your forensic linguistics lecture.

Panic hits you, hot in your gut. Scanning the room anxiously, you suddenly become conscious that you’re drawing attention to yourself when you feel the eyes of the man who is not SSA Hotchner on you. Fuck.

There’s no way for you to escape now, not without disturbing half the lecture hall.

So you sit back in your seat, resigning yourself to sit awkwardly in the lecture you’re not supposed to be in and hoping nobody notices.

But then, it’s really interesting, actually. The work that Dr. Reid does sounds similar to work you’ve done in forensic linguistics, analysing patterns of speech and minor phrase formations that can give things away about the perpetrator. By the end of the seminar, you’re sat leaning forward. Enraptured by almost every word coming out of their mouths.

It seems to be the general mood: everyone is enamoured. People are clammering to speak to them at the end. After a brief inner battle, myou decide that you should talk to them too.

What’s the harm?

You’ve decided that you’ll speak to Dr. Reid, since he seems to share more of a field focus. However, as you’re heading down, you spot him. Dr Adams, your chemistry lecturer from last year. Oh shit, it’s that Dr. Reid.

Speaking to SSA Hotchner will just have to do instead.

----

“I’ve been majoring in forensic linguistics and criminal psychology,” You tell him, “Do you think ... I mean, I know it’s a pretty exclusive team to get on to. But is that the kind of thing that could maybe get me there one day?”

Hotchner nods, “Forensic linguistics is something that comes in very useful in the investigative aspects of cases. The FBI is always looking for new angles and perspectives, those are both good subjects to study if you were thinking of signing up to the academy.”

"Thank you, Agent Hotchner,” You say, suddenly a little bashful as you notice the queue of people lingering behind you, “That was a really interesting lecture. It’s definitely something I’ll think about.”

“You should talk to Dr. Reid if you have a particular interest in the linguistic aspect of profiling. He’s more specialised in that area than I am. I’m sure he’d be more than happy to discuss any research you’re conducting at the moment and suggest materials that might be helpful in furthering your understanding of the area.”

“Thank you,” You smile, and he nods at you again.

Stepping away from Agent Hotchner, you look to your right. Dr. Reid is still engaged deeply in conversation with Dr. Adams. You glance at your watch. There was time before your next class, you supposed, so you could wait. It couldn’t hurt to find out more, could it? It wasn‘t like you were getting your hopes up or anything.

It’s then that you feel a pair of arms around your waist, a familiar scent of cologne.

“Hey!” You whip around to see your boyfriend, grinning widely.

“Hey,” You reply, “How’d you find me?”

“I was walking past when I saw you talking to that FBI agent. Seriously, FBI?” He asks, with a disapproving quirk of his eyebrow, “You want to grab a coffee before Psych?”

You want to say no. But he’s got his hand on the small of your back, leading you out of the room before you even get a chance to reply. You glance back over your shoulder, making eye contact with Dr. Reid for all of two seconds before you’re swept away.

“Seriously though babe, FBI?”

Unsurpisingly, you don’t mention your potential change in career path to him.

***

March 8th, 2009

“Come in,” Hotch calls. He looks up from the paperwork on his desk to see Spencer entering the room, clutching a report in his hand.

“That last case we were on. I was doing some more research, just for future reference about linguistic patterns. Have you read this?” He asks, sliding a copy of your paper across the desk.

Hotch gives it a cursary look over, nodding, “Yes. It’s interesting. She’s signed up as an NAT. I believe I actually spoke to her at one of our lectures last year.”

"Her work is really impressive for somebody whose only studied this at a master level.”

Hotch almost smiles, “Yes. That’s exactly why I’ve recommended to the bureau that she signs up for profiling classes. Her work shows a lot of promise. They’re sending over a copy of her completed thesis, if you’d like to read it.”

“Yeah, I’d like that, thank you,” Spencer says, struggling to conceal the smile playing on the corner of his lips.

“I’ll email it to you as soon as I receive it.”

Spencer nods, smiling properly to himself as he leaves the room. It wasn’t unusual, exactly, for him to share new research that was relevant to cases. It was important that they all kept themselves fresh and acquainted with new theories about the field. Hotch, however, didn’t miss the excited way Spencer had presented it to him. Talking about how impressive you were, as if to subtly hint. He thinks it’s quite typical, actually, that Spencer could take such an interest in someone he only knew via an essay.

Although Spencer’s response does get Hotch to send a follow-up email, inquiring about whether you’d agreed to the classes. If Spencer was this impressed with your work, it must be good.

***

June 1st, 2009

The Metro that morning is packed. It doesn’t help that you’ve not been living here long, and don’t exactly know the route from your flat to the station off by heart yet.

You'd also had to make a detour to the post office. Your, firmly ex, boyfriend had mailed over the last of your things. Really, it was good riddance. His hounding you about your choice in job had only worsened. The relationship had been hanging on by a thread long before you’d moved away last month. You were more than a little grateful that it was finally over, that you could draw a line under it all and focus on your career.

Unfortunately, that hadn’t stopped you having a little cry to yourself on the way over.

Rushing, you make it onto the Metro just as the doors are about to close, falling against the railing on the left side. You grip onto it for dear life.

On the other side of the carriage, Spencer notices someone hurrying for the train. He had been buried deep in the paper he's reading, but the bustle had pulled his attention. Your back is to him, and there’s a scarf at your feet. He wants to say something, to try and get your attention, but he can’t from where he is.

“Miss, I think you’ve dropped something,” The woman you’re standing in front of says, gesturing to the scarf pooled at your feet.

You meet her eyes, sniffling slightly, “Thank you.”

Spencer watches as you pick it up, back still to him. Crisis averted, he turns his attention back to what he's reading: the published copy of your thesis Hotch had emailed him last week.

***

September 2nd, 2009

"This is SSA ____, the newest member of our team. She’s recently graduated from the academy and has an excellent knowledge of linguistics that the bureau feels will be a great advantage to this team. She’s had her induction and now will be joining the team on a probationary basis. She’ll be spending a little time with each of you in between cases to make sure she forms well-rounded knowledge of all aspects of what we do.”

It’s a little overwhelming, having everybody’s eyes on you.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” Emily is the first over, offering her hand for you to shake.

“You too, it’s really nice to meet all of you,” You say, shaking hands in turn with her, Morgan, Rossi, J.J, and Garcia.

“Hi,” Spencer calls from behind you.

You turn around to face him. You remember what Hotch had mentioned to you about him being a bit of a germaphobe, so you keep your hand by your side.

“Hi,” You say, “Dr. Reid, right?”

“You can call me Spencer,” He says, a little bashful, “I read your thesis, the study about you did about the construction of passive clauses as an indicator of guilt in adolescent offenders. It was fascinating.”

You feel yourself getting a little warm under his gaze, “Thank you. I'm surprised you’re even aware it existed.”

Hotch interrupts then, “Reid, do you want to sit with ____ while she goes over the case file? It’d be useful if you could go over how you’d go about constructing a linguistic profile.”

That’s how you end up spending much of your first day: with Spencer, huddled up over case files as he explains his profile-building process to you. Spencer’s an incredible teacher, you think. He explains his thought process without ever being condescending, leaving little gaps for you to answer.

You’re incredible, Spencer thinks. You seem to grasp exactly what he’s saying, filling in the gaps based on the clues that are actually in front of you, not letting yourself be guided too much by bias.

***

October 29th, 2009

Spencer loves everyone at the BAU. They’re all the family he never had, and he has relatively good friendships with all of them. Just, they aren’t quite the same as they are with you.

He struggles to put his finger on it, exactly. It’s a unique relationship. He shares very familial bonds with a lot of them: he and Morgan are brotherly, Rossi is fatherly, Garcia’s somewhat like an overexcited little sister.

The friendship he has with you is special. You always listen to him, even as he rambles on about inane things that anybody else would tell him to shut up about. In fact, sometimes about the exact things that they do tell him to shut up about. Just last week, he was rambling on about Star Trek when Morgan told him, not altogether unkindly, to “give it a rest, kid.”

“What was that you were saying?” You’d asked, sidling up to him, “I’ve never watched Star Trek but I thought the quote was beam me up Scotty.”

He’d looked at you, considering you for a moment, “You don’t have to-”

“I know. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know Spence. You think I’d ask for a 15 minute lecture on Star Trek if I wasn’t interested in it?”

A warm feeling flooded his chest. The look on your face was so genuine, and you’d perched on the edge of his desk as he gesticulated, getting deep into the lore and how the misconception had come about. He still didn’t pinpoint exactly what it was, until he got to the end of his spiel. And then you asked him a question. You asked him a question to make sure you understood what he was talking about. You were listening the whole time, and you genuinely cared about the point he was making.

It's then that he realises, it was hard to pinpoint because it wasn’t friendship. He likes you. Shit.

***

November 2nd, 2009

You like everybody at the BAU. They’re all quite patient with you, really, happy to walk you through how they do things. Morgan’s taught you quite a bit about the tactical side of things already, and Rossi has been working with you on your interrogation techniques. Emily’s generally just a great mentor, always happy to listen and support however she can. She’s more experienced, but still relatively new to the team too, so you feel like there’s a certain understanding between you.

However, you’d definitely be lying if you said the person you hadn’t learnt the most from, or spent the most time with, was Spencer.

It hadn’t gone unnoticed by the rest of the team, either. You seemed to gravitate towards one another, forever sitting side-by-side on the plane. Sharing a line of thinking that usually led to devolved rambling, and scribbling, until you came up with something coherent.

It isn’t until November 2nd that you realise you have feelings for him.

You’re sitting at your desk, filling out a case report that Emily had promised to go over with you before she left for lunch.

“Hey,” Spencer’s familiar soothing voice comes, as he sidles up to you, “I got you something.”

Looking up, you notice the coffee cup in his right hand, “You are my caffeine lifesaver.”

He hands it to you, smiling a little nervously, “It’s actually not that.”

“Oh?”

His other hand is tucked behind his back, and he pulls it foward towards you, brandishing a red sweatshirt.

“I know you uh, left your red sweater behind at the hotel on the last case. And I know it was your favourite one, and I was shopping yesterday and I saw this and...” He trails off, embarassed, “It’s not the exact same, but it’s the same kind. I just thought you might like it.”

You swallow, hard, “Spencer that’s so sweet. C-Can I hug you?”

He nods. Standing up from your desk, you wrap your arms around his frame.

“That was so thoughtful.”

He squeezes you a little, really leaning into the hug, his face pressing against your shoulder. His tousled hair tickles your nose a little and you smile, clinging onto him, relishing in the feeling of safety and warmth.

It hits you then. When you realise you don’t want to let go. When you realise he makes you feel fuzzy. Loved. Cared for in a way you haven’t felt in a long time. Eventually, you have to let him go, and it’s in a daze that you return to your desk. You’re so concentrated on your overwhelming realisation, you don’t realise how reluctant he is to let you leave his embrace.

***

December 22nd, 2009

Driving Spencer home from the office was really just an excuse to get some time alone with him. You’d said something about the Metro being busy, one of the services being cancelled. He hadn’t factchecked you on that.

The BAU had tentative plans for boxing day, with the caveat being that no emergent cases arrived in the meantime. It was only really four days you wouldn’t see him, but that was longer than you’d ever gone without seeing him in all the time you’d known him. You worked together everyday, and it was unusual for you to go a full weekend without seeing each other. Recently, you’d got into the habit of going out for Sunday brunch together.

Pulling up outside his house, you hear him sigh.

“I know it’s only four days, but I’ll miss you.”

Smiling, you turn to him, “I’ll miss you too.”

Something in you changes then. He’s looking at you. You may be relatively new to profiling but you can see something behind his eyes, feel the charge of unsaid words electrifying the air.

“Can I hug you?” He asks.

“You can always hug me,” You reply, undoing your seatbelt and opening your arms for him.

He embraces you the way he always has: tightly. Like he doesn’t want to let go, couldn’t imagine ever letting you go. His face nuzzles to the crook of your neck, and then you feel his thumb brush your chin. Tilting your head down.

You exchange a look. His eyes flicker from your eyes, to your lips, and back. You nod your head, just slightly.

He kisses you then. Tender. You melt into one another, lips moving quickly as you drink one another in. Kissing each other breathless, your fingers intertwine in his hair and his hand comes up to cup your cheek. Nothing has ever felt so right.

***

June 10th, 2011

Neither of you have ever really believed in fate. It’s hard to - especially in your line of work - to want to interpret the workings of the universe as deliberate. Maybe you’d think a little differently though, if you knew about all the near-misses. All the times you could have met. But fate knew better. She waited until you were ready.

And as you exchange vows, promising each other your forever, you both know you couldn’t possibly deny that this was meant to be.

------

Taglists: @takeyourleap-of-faith @sassiest-politician

(let me know if you would like to be added to/removed from this list!)

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid #criminal minds #reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #imagine spencer reid #criminal minds x you #imagine criminal minds #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid imagines #pls like this it took me so long

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bitchineering · 3 years ago

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Lets go! Day 1: Let’s learn HOW the frick to study

So this I think is the most important thing to do and really it is insane that in the United States (which is where I am from by the way) students have no idea on how to freaking study. Honestly all of this gets me incredibly frustrated because with the internet we have the ability to share information and I’ll tell you that I am one of those people who have scavenged the internet and picked apart what I could find. Here’s another big problem: not everything someone does will work for you.

Also just the spread of dumb study information is pretty terrible. If I do counter anything I will leave a paper or my citation just because I believe in putting down sources and showing others how to research and why citing is freakin important.

Let’s get started: I’m going to summarize everything that will be in here for a second

1. Find your method of studying, find out everything. AND I MEAN EVERYTHING. You need to write down how you study (the different types of study people) but also the classes because people study sciences different than humanities.

2. Find out your most productive state. If this means it is you at 2 am in a suit and jacket than that means you need to leave procrastination station and be studying during that time. Now I am not totally okay with people studying in a suit for one it is uncomfortable, I think a jeans and a clean tshirt is just as good. If you can be productive in sweatpants or pjs then go for it. I know I am not and it doesn’t work when I dress for relaxation.

Okay, I’ll be going into more in depth of mainly the first one but a bit of the second.

To start off the bat, if you have time watch this lecture https://youtu.be/IlU-zDU6aQ0 by Marty Lobdell. You have probably heard the saying before and one thing that makes me so frustrated within the study community is that others use this statment without giving any real examples. I feel like Lobdell does this as well as he doesn’t describe note taking and I do believe before putting down a material, you have to take notes. (All he mentions is handwriting notes and I do believe in that. You cannot really type notes and expect to learn the material).

Another source I would suggest is the Vark Quiz (https://vark-learn.com/the-vark-questionnaire/) Learn what type you are (I’m a Kinesthetic!) and read what they give you. I’m not going to say you will perfectly match with your description but if you are starting from ground zero, this is an amazing place to see what might work for you instead of you having to come up with different technques on your own.

I get so annoyed when people use the pomodoro method as a way to study. It is not a way to study. It is a way to schedule your study time. Also, I don’t think you can do much in 25 minutes or maybe it is just me. Usually I work for an hour or 50 minutes and then take a ten minute break. All you need to do is find out what works for you.

Okay let’s get into classes, first there is an amazing youtuber named Nathan Wu who made this video (https://youtu.be/pdAt8JhBnMU and there is a part 2 but I’ll let you guys find it). He is a very good study youtuber that I do like to watch sometimes and I do appriciate that he is spreading correct information. I can give you guys an example of what worked for me in some of my classes (I also just wanna say I won’t be putting my grades on here nor anything really. I don’t feel comfortable being compared to others because I already have to deal with it at my own institution and peers. Please don’t compare yourself to others).

Chemistry (Wu also does include this subject in his video):

- Write notes and explanations for the love of god. Like please just write notes.

- Also apply those notes. If you are confused in one area ask someone for help whether that be your teacher or someone else.

-I would say to use flashcards, but I’m honestly a big quizlet user (I haven’t used Anki I’m a little weird and I get so annoyed when I use something that is popular. I sadly give off the “i’m not like other girls vibe”). When I use quizlet every time I get an answer wrong I write down the definition. I can explain this more because you can do this with notecards as well and probably Anki but I like the mobility of quizlet.

-Labs... I do like doing some labs. I miss my older ones from Honors Chemistry, I barely do good labs in AP Chemistry, but at the same time you have to do them. This could be for any science class because knowing how to apply your information is the best way to test your knowledge that isn’t practice questions (If you need labs look up a virtual simulation. While it isn’t the same thing they are usually free and if not you can find some on youtube).

- Practice problems (this more or less goes with your grading point instead of studying. While I do believe the overall goal in studying is that you understand and can apply the topic tests are so different in many things). As stated before I have taken Honors Chemistry, so I used test prep from my teacher and was able to form questions similar to how she asked them on the quiz. In AP Chemistry I’ve been able to use the online resources from other teachers and AP Classroom. I will say AP Chemistry it is much harder to write my own questions because AP Chemistry is just really hard in general, but finding FRQ practices I believe is one of the best ways you can work on it (Honestly it may be just me but doing FRQs or written essays for answers is so much better than multiple choice because this allows you to practice giving explanations and learning where your gap of knowledge is).

Another study technique I like to do is called the Feynmann technique. This is such a great way to apply knowledge without doing test prep because you need to essentially master your subject before test prep. This method includes creating a study plan for someone else, you need to teach someone else (or something else) what you’re learning and have them ask questions. Know I know this doesn’t really work well for some people including myself because I don’t really have others to talk to when I study but talk to yourself. (sometimes I talk to a ghost or a plushie in my room. I have little trinkets on my desk of which a tiger egg and a Chick Fil A cow plushie wearing a sunflower dress. Just try it, it might seem weird but you got to). If you can’t have others ask you questions say everything you can remember (and maybe do this on a google doc with the voice chat box open, I would say record yourself but I hate hearing my own recordings). Then, once you have finished look through your notes and see what you got correct and what you got wrong. If you did use a google docs then write what you meant to say like: “I said this... but this was incorrect because of this...”

For study schedule or something related to studying I would say watch these videos: https://youtu.be/-m2Ua5Y0mzc and https://youtu.be/OYuhkaOPKcM. Both are by youtubers who I do like to watch and follow what they do. I would say to look through Alicia’s youtube a bit more if you like electronic organization AND the true studyblr (girl can do beautiful calligraphy). I believe I align more with Keo Tsang, who studies later at night rather than earlier than the morning. Tsang does get more hours of sleep than me (haha). If you are in high school please don’t do what he does though. I try to go to bed by midnight because then I’ll get six hours of sleep, and I can sleep on the bus (it takes me an hour to get to school). I also have a free first period where I can sleep if I need to or catch up on work from last night if I didn’t do it. I do like to work when there is sunlight but also coming home from school and taking a detox or a break is so much better for my mental health. I know it will be different when in university but I’d just say this to any high school student, please do a mental detox. Don’t go on social media and scroll endlessly maybe listen to some music, read a book, take a walk/run, my sister would bake after a long stressful day and her food- while not the best- got her in a good mood.

I think this is all I’ll write today. I still need to do so much work myself haha but I am a big procrastinator and also I did have a break down a little while ago. Just know you are worth everything and in the end, every problem is going to have some type of solution even if there is no solution. Your life doesn’t need to be answered today or tomorrow so let’s work on becoming better students one step at a time :)

#studyblr #ap chemistry #how to learn #notes #study schedule #I just know realized I didn't do a study schedule example IG ill do that tomorrow if anyone wants it #youtube recomendations #studyblr youtubers #Bruh I have so many youtubers who I just want to recommend and say please watch them and how amazing they are #school #high school #university #organization and planning #student #studying #study notes #study motivation

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lucky-sevens · 4 years ago

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mechanisms basics & lore

welcome to my updated mechanisms intro post! this post will cover both the topics discussed in my mechanisms basics post, which is geared towards people who don’t know what the mechanisms are, and my deep lore post, which aimed to be a comprehensive compilation of all the important character and world lore. this post should serve the above group, but it’s geared towards people who have listened but feel there’s a lot of lore that seems to be common knowledge they’re missing. we’ll start out with a basic introduction, and then go into crew lore and a semi-comprehensive guide on where to go for further information.

basics

the mechanisms were a steampunk concept band, known for their queer representation and their tragic stories. they are no longer together, their last performance being january 2020, but several of their members are still creating related spinoff content.

they follow the trope many steampunk bands do, which is albums that tell a story; think similar to listening to a musical soundtrack, but geared to a visual-less experience. what distinguishes them is 1) narration tracks between each song, making the plot very easy to follow, and 2) being meant to be watched live, meaning there’s layers of meta that are more easily understood by watching recorded gigs rather than studio recordings of albums. specifically, there’s a focus on the narrators, known as the mechanisms or the crew of the aurora, who are immortal space pirates telling the stories and occasionally inserting themselves into them. though they are tragic figures themselves, their banter serves the purpose of bringing a lightheartedness and dark humor to the stories. if there’s an aspect of the lore you’re confused on, it’s probably related to the narrators!

to watch the mechanisms live, you can find recordings on youtube, dropbox, google drive, soundcloud, or vimeo, which are all compiled in this post (including transcripts!). if visuals aren’t your thing, i’ve linked the studio recordings later on in this post when they come up, and here are the mechanisms’ official spotify, bandcamp, and youtube, as well as an unofficial comprehensive lyric videos channel.

the albums

regarding the albums specifically, there are 4 main ones (once upon a time (in space), ulysses dies at dawn, high noon over camelot, and the bifrost incident), 2 that are compilations of miscellaneous songs (tales to be told 1 & 2), 1 single (frankenstein), and 1 album that’s a high-quality recording of their last live show, including an alternative performance of the bifrost incident, 2 songs only performed at live shows, and 'the deathsong’, which details how they all eventually die (death to the mechanisms).

as you might have been able to tell from the titles, they’re all based off of various myths, folklore, literature, and/or fairy tales, using different genres on top of a sci-fi setting to add a fresh twist to them! for example, high noon over camelot is a western based on arthurian mythos, set on a space station. (the albums are known for all ending in tragedy, so be careful if that isn’t your cup of tea!) if your goal is to get into the mechanisms, i’d suggest sitting down and listening to them all in full; links will be provided below, or alternatively you can watch once upon a time (in space) live here, ulysses dies at dawn live here, or the bifrost incident live here. (there is no full live recording with visuals of high noon over camelot, sadly, but there are partial and audio only recordings.)

once upon a time (in space) - spotify/bandcamp/youtube

ulysses dies at dawn - spotify/bandcamp/youtube

high noon over camelot - spotify/bandcamp/youtube

the bifrost incident - spotify/bandcamp/youtube

tales to be told, volume 1 - spotify/bandcamp/youtube

tales to be told, volume 2 - spotify/bandcamp/youtube

frankenstein - spotify/bandcamp/youtube

death to the mechanisms - edited video with the stream corruption fixed + subtitles / stream / spotify / bandcamp / youtube / transcript pt. 1 / transcript pt. 2

reading the fiction is integral to understanding both the albums and the mechanisms themselves. the fiction is a collection of short stories set in the mechanisms universe posted on their website here and compiled by me here, with an extra high noon over camelot story here. (there are also audio versions for ‘mirror mirror’ and ‘a rebel yell’ included on both the website and the compilation).

the crew of the aurora

as for the crew, at their peak there were nine members played by people, as well as the ex-member dr carmilla, who has extensive solo lore and is still active (which we’ll touch on in a few paragraphs). there is also their ship, the aurora, who is sentient and has her own lore. in fact, every member of the crew has their own backstory, set in a different genre or historical period; for example, nastya rasputina's is historical, jonny d’ville’s is a western and marius von raum’s is a mecha anime. however, they’re all still different flavors of steampunk! below, i’ll list each member, their performer, and the main sources of lore about them. for the majority of them, they have their own song in tales to be told, but there are a few outliers. everyone also has their own bio up on the website, which can all be found here.

the aurora (n/a, ship)- on aurora (meta)

jonny d’ville (jonny sims)- one eyed jacks (song), jonny before he was mechanized (meta)

nastya rasputina (anonymous)- cyberian demons (song)

ivy alexandria (morgan wilkinson)- archive footage (fiction), crew bio

ashes o’reilly (frank voss)- lucky sevens (song)

drumbot brian (ben below)- lost in the cosmos (song), crew bio

the toy soldier (jessica law)- the story of the toy soldier (fiction)

gunpowder tim (tim ledsam)- gunpowder tim vs the moon kaiser (song/minialbum)

marius von raum (kofi young)- the death of byron von raum summary (blog post)

raphaella la cognizi (r l hughes)- crew bio

if you’ve noticed the crew bio doesn’t say much about raphaella, that’s because we know little to nothing about her backstory. the only thing we have to go on is a quote from the tv tropes page, which looking at the edit history, was likely written by one of the mechanisms. the quote is ‘Science officer who may or may not have cheated her way onto the ship after becoming a little too interested.‘ and the page is here.

the majority of fandom content is about the crew, working off of what we get from the tales to be told songs, the live gigs, and the fiction.

dr carmilla

speaking of characters with obscure lore, let’s talk about dr carmilla! rather than linger, i’ll just link my carmilla basics post, which is a comprehensive summary of who she is in and out of universe. to summarize, she’s a character based on the novella ‘carmilla’ by sheridan le fanu, commonly regarded as the first vampire novel, but her lore has diverged heavily from that original starting point since then. she is the oldest out of all of the crew, and made the majority of the other crew members immortal. she, as well as aurora, is from a planet called terra, which was destroyed partially as a result of her actions. her character is defined by her immortality and how she deals with it, her experiences on terra, her relationship with the mechanisms, and her dysfunctional relationship with her ex-girlfriend loreli, the last of which is the most covered by her songs. out of universe, she is played by maki yamazaki. all her lore lines up with what happened out of universe, and ties to the fact the mechanisms were originally dr carmilla and the mechanisms. she has two solo albums and two singles, which i’ll link below.

ageha (prototype edition) (album)- bandcamp | youtube

exhumed and {un}plugged (album)- bandcamp | youtube

the city {nex:type mix} (single, in-character cover)- bandcamp | youtube

eleven (single)- bandcamp | youtube

the majority of her lore is still to be officially revealed, and will be in the trilogy of albums maki yamazaki is working on.

further reading

if you’d like to delve further into the lore, there are a few sources i use! there are official, in-character, blogs, as well as things that are harder to dredge up; i won’t link them here, but some sources include @/thedreadvampy (the band’s artist, as well as morgan wilkinson’s sister and kofi young’s partner; don’t bother her for lore or anything, but she’s previously made posts sharing previously unknown information), old websites and deleted content found on the wayback machine, the tv tropes pages, and most notably the lore doc.

the ‘maki forbidden lore doc’ is an archive of all the lore maki yamazaki has shared on the mechscord, the official mechanisms discord which she’s on, and her own personal server, where she’s running an arg (alternate reality game) as a way of relaying more lore about the dr carmilla universe. for an idea of the scale, the doc is currently 91 pages and 28346 words, and recontextualizes much of what is known about dr carmilla and maki’s canon of the mechanisms universe. it is confidential to anyone not in her discord or the mechscord, as she’s said that this lore isn’t thought out nearly as much as the albums and is subject to change, so she’d rather it not be out in the open. however, information on how to join the mechscord can be found here. there is also a non-canonical fan project based on the arg in progress, but information on it is also confidential for now.

with regards to the above phrase ‘maki’s canon’ it’s worth noting that all of the individual band members have their own idea of what counts as canon and what doesn’t, and as you foray deeper into lore that division becomes more and more apparent.

with that, here are the mechanisms’ blogs. they are all both run in-character by the main nine band members and inactive unless i note otherwise.

twitter

tumblr

facebook

website/wordpress (run ic by tereshkova’s ghost, the blogbot, for the most part)

carmilla twitter (active, run ic by dr carmilla)

conclusion

now that we’re coming to the end of this, i’d like to thank whoever got this far, and to say a few words. my interest in the mechanisms has been slowly fading, and i’ve been writing less and less meta and lapsing in keeping up with new lore myself. honestly, i’m pretty worn out by how much i’ve done on this blog and in this fandom, and the commitments i’ve assigned myself. i do have plans for future meta, but it’s unlikely they’ll come to fruition. so, i thought i’d do a new version of my two oldest posts on this blog, and hopefully enable other people to look into the lore and theorize themselves with the new information.

to find more information, remember there’s a mechanisms wiki, and that my askbox is always open.

thanks for reading!

#the mechanisms #the mechs #meta #my posts

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ouyangzizhensdad · 3 years ago

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What does death of the author mean?

Hi anon,

It is important at first to understand that theories, of any kind, are emergent: they exist within an ecosystem of existing traditions of thoughts. Barthes' essay Death of the Author was a critique to the dominant literary theories of his time (which he calls 'classical'), which focused generally on retracing on both anchoring literary analysis in the identity and life history of the figure of the author (l'Auteur).

The author is a modern figure, produced no doubt by our society insofar as, at the end of the middle ages, with English empiricism, French rationalism and the personal faith of the Reformation, it discovered the prestige of the individual, or, to put it more nobly, of the "human person". Hence it is logical that with regard to literature it should be positivism, resume and the result of capitalist ideology, which has accorded the greatest importance to the author's "person". The author still rules in manuals of literary history, in biographies of writers, in magazine interviews, and even in the awareness of literary men, anxious to unite, by their private journals, their person and their work; the image of literature to be found in contemporary culture is tyrannically centered on the author, his person, his history, his tastes, his passions; criticism still consists, most of the time, in saying that Baudelaire's work is the failure of the man Baudelaire, Van Gogh's work his madness, Tchaikovsky's his vice: the explanation of the work is always sought in the man who has produced it, as if, through the more or less transparent allegory of fiction, it was always finally the voice of one and the same person, the author, which delivered his "confidence."

Barthes' essay is primarily on the process of interpretation, and how meaning is produced out of a text--it's about semiotics, in a larger sense. For him, analysis should only be rooted in the text.

for Mallarme, as for us, it is language which speaks, not the author: to write is to reach, through a preexisting impersonality — never to be confused with the castrating objectivity of the realistic novelist — that point where language alone acts, "performs," and not "oneself":Mallarme's entire poetics consists in suppressing the author for the sake of the writing

His essay is rooted in views of interpretation/semiotics that were dominant or emerging in other fields, like linguistics.

Finally, outside of literature itself (actually, these distinctions are being superseded), linguistics has just furnished the destruction of the Author with a precious analytic instrument by showing that utterance in its entirety is a void process, which functions perfectly without requiring to be filled by the person of the interlocutors: linguistically, the author is never anything more than the man who writes, just as I is no more than the man who says I: language knows a "subject," not a "person," end this subject, void outside of the very utterance which defines it, suffices to make language "work," that is, to exhaust it.

It is to be noted that the views of interpretation/semiotics that Barthes drew from have since received a lot of criticism. The whole field of sociolinguistics would likely not agree with the statement above: in reality, the identity of the speaker often plays an integral part in the process of interpretation when it comes to language (I cannot say if it still holds true, but a few years ago explorations of embodiement were all the rage in sociolinguistics for that very reason).

Barthes considers that the author is incapable of dictating meaning because the utterance which defines itself by itself is however constantly prone to shifting, and considers that the author is only a repository of signs that he mixes on the page but which he cannot fix.

We know that a text does not consist of a line of words, releasing a single "theological" meaning (the "message" of the Author-God), but is a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original: the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture [...] his only power is to combine the different kinds of writing, to oppose some by others, so as never to sustain himself by just one of them [...] the writer no longer contains within himself passions, humors, sentiments, impressions, but that enormous dictionary, from which he derives a writing which can know no end or halt

We cannot "close" the meaning of the text, something that focusing entirely on the auteur and authorial intent tries to achieve, Barthes argues. The text does not have a final signification, which can be deciphered or discovered through the author. Meaning is more fluid than that. Instead, "the true locus of writing is reading" and it is the Reader who determines meaning, not the author:

In this way is revealed the whole being of writing: a text consists of multiple writings, issuing from several cultures and entering into dialogue with each other, into parody, into contestation; but there is one place where this multiplicity is collected, united, and this place is not the author, as we have hitherto said it was, but the reader: the reader is the very space in which are inscribed, without any being lost, all the citations a writing consists of; the unity of a text is not in its origin, it is in its destination; but this destination can no longer be personal: the reader is a man without history, without biography, without psychology; he is only that someone who holds gathered into a single field all the paths of which the text is constituted.

As you can see, Death of the Author has nothing to do and has never had anything to do with trying to rescue single texts from 'problematic' authors, especially when decisions on what makes the author problematic is what people have found in the text itself. It certainly doesn't mean that you can decide to change the text itself to fit what you want as a Reader. It does not support the idea that the text 'belongs' to the reader in terms of ownership but rather in terms of interpretation. Barthes is not saying 'the reader can decide what the text means' but that the reader creates meaning by the very act of reading. As well, it is not about the identity of the author, because for Barthes it is impossible to locate the 'voice' behind the utterance (which makes his essay sort of antithetical with the current OwnVoice philosophy). Barthes even denies that the reader has an identity that is relevant! It is about the text, the utterances therein, and the reader who makes meaning out of them in relation of multiplicity of meanings.

Death of the Author is also not, as some people on social media seem to suggest, a final view on how to do literary analysis/criticism. It is a theory that emerged out of a specific context, both inside and outside of literary analysis, more than 50 years ago. I personally find that my boy Bakhtin did a more insightful job of exploring interpretation and the fluidity of meaning-making through language in literature. I can only disagree with a description of an interpretative process that considers that "the reader is a man without history, without biography, without psychology". I mean, I'm sure the same people who use Death of the Author would find Barthes problematic because the author is a Man, the reader is a Man, and in the essay at one point modern societies are being contrasted with 'sociétés ethnographiques' (translated as 'primitive societies'), etc.

NB: You can find the pdf, in English or in the original French, easily on google, and short summaries of the essays and its impact on literary analysis.

#anon ask

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thenightling · 4 years ago

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Does The Frankenstein Monster have a soul?

I have seen many strange blog posts and articles recently claiming that Mary Shelley’s creature in the Frankenstein novel does not have a soul. I believe this does a disservice to Mary Shelley and the intention behind her story. Before we proceed please note that this is written in the literary context of assuming that within the narrative humans definitely do have souls themselves. First let is begin with the literal and possibly occult aspects of the Frankenstein Story. Victor studied the works of Agrippa and Parcelsus in the novel. Agrippa and Parcelsus were a self-proclaimed sorcerer and alchemist. Victor was not studying hard science as we know it today, despite what you might see in some Frankenstein movies. Victor was studying metaphysics and he was still a student when he brought his creature to life. Many consider Frankenstein to be the first science fiction novel but without the actual description of how he brought his creature to life he could easily be the result of alchemy.

At no point does any character in the Frankenstein novel ever refer to The Creature as soulless. Even Victor, who loathed his creation near the end, never described him as being without a soul. The closest thing to it is when he uses the term “mockery of a human soul” which indicates that what soul The Creature has he sees as an inhuman one.

An article from “The Conversationalist” argues that because the eyes are the gateway to the soul that this means The Creature is soulless since his eyes are watery and yellow. But it is not that The Creature lacks eyes at all. It is that his eyes are different from a human’s. Watery eyes suggests sad, expressive and tragic. Eyes are usually watery as a result of deep emotion. I cannot understand why a description of something often used to convey profound emotion would be used to mean “soulless.”

A different Google Search result on the subject of “Does the Frankenstein Monster have a soul” is a teacher’s resource site that claims it would be a good exercise for the class to discuss “Ways in which it is portrayed that The Creature in Frankenstein has no soul.” But this is, again, pure speculation, and not based on anything of the actual novel. The essay directly under this described “exercise” talks about how The Creature would not have killed Victor’s loved ones if he had a soul and that a creature with a soul would feel remorse for his actions.

There are two things wrong with this sample essay. First, many humans have killed other humans and shown no remorse. That does not mean they do not have a soul. It means there is something wrong with their conscience. The second thing the matter with this assumption is at the end of the Frankenstein novel The Creature does show remorse. He laments the pain and suffering he has caused. His education had consisted of books that glorified revenge as something noble and righteous and justified such as the actions of both God and Lucifer in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. And he only learned after the fact that revenge only helped to make him feel more isolated from humanity and actually served to bring him no peace or satisfaction and in fact only helped to make him feel worse than what he already felt.

Now onto potentially more subjective content.

The Creature, who is well-spoken and articulate in the novel, repeatedly talks about his own soul. He becomes obsessed with the depictions of Adam and Lucifer in John Milton’s Paradise Lost and is actually a surprisingly spiritual figure. He talks about his own soul frequently and does not seem to have any doubt that he has one. He also seems quite certain of the fact that he will have an afterlife. The indication here is simple. If humans have immortal souls that can ascend than logically- as he is capable of the full range of human emotion and thought- so does he.

Mary Shelley, herself, has been quoted as calling The Creature a “Poor soul” and “wretched soul” or “a romantic soul” and as she is the author I do not think she chose those wordings lightly. Note: I cannot precisely source these quotes at this time but most of what I have written here can easily be found in both the 1818 and 1831 editions of the novel Frankenstein.

It is also important to consider that if The Creature was indeed “Soulless” this feels like it would diminish Victor’s accountability for abandoning him, and the world’s fault in rejecting him. It dampens and potentially ruins the entire idea that you ought to pity The Creature and are supposed to sympathize with him despite the horrible things he has done. To claim he is without a soul overly exonerates those who have wronged him and immediately dehumanizes him, making the portions of the novel where The Creature tells Victor his own sorrows and experiences practically pointless and creates a barrier between the reader and character. The ability to sympathize with him is dramatically reduced and I feel this would undermine Mary Shelley’s intentions by dehumanizing him further than Victor already did, and almost justifying mistreatment toward him.

It’s an odd thing to me, to see so many comments, articles, and blogs talking about him not having a soul. I think people forget that in 1818 the soul was usually depicted as a person’s spirit, consciousness that could live on after-death, the part of you that thinks and feels. Your very awareness. In the nineteenth century if you could feel emotion and think it was considered a given fact that you have a soul because “You are a soul, you have a body.”

It seems that the modern “interpretation” of The Frankenstein Monster being soulless mostly comes from not quite understanding what the nineteenth century described the soul as in most literature. This wasn’t the TV show Buffy The Vampire Slayer where the soul and conscience are easily confused and interchangeable.

It’s peculiar to me that a low budget schlock film like “I, Frankenstein” can explore The Frankenstein Creature’s soul and conscience with more respect for the source material and Mary Shelley than some so-called academics. Kevin Grevioux is a very underrated writer and his film deserved a better budget and care than what it received. This is why I like that low budget and cheesy little film.

In any event, if you are trying to figure out if The Frankenstein Monster has a soul or not I think it is safe to assume that at least the novel’s author and the character, himself, believed that yes, he does have a soul. And I hope whoever was trying to figure this out heeds this post before the righteous rantings on the Google results from those whom I suspect might not have actually read the novel or may not have wanted to feel compassion toward The Creature.

___________________

Further note: Lots of people mistakenly think Frankenstein’s main moral is not to play in God’s domain.

I do not have patience for those with the assumption that the moral of the novel was "Don't play God." That's the 1931 film, not the novel. The themes of the novel included parental responsibility, the need to forgive, the futility of revenge, and judging by appearance.There are literary professors who have assumed the film was accurate in the novel's moral but thankfully most people who read the book know better. The Creature began benign and gentle and only went evil after several instances of mistreatment. A third of the novel is there just to tell is this. If simply creating him was Victor's sin then that diminishes Victor's accountability for how he treated him. It's also why I don't like film versions where The Creature has an "abnormal brain." It overly justifies the mistreatment of him and exonerates his creator. If simply creating him was Victor's sin than we would not have been repeatedly told he would have remained Good if he had not been mistreated. Victor's sin wasn't creating him but how he treated him after he was created. The "I shouldn't have played God thing" was the 1931 film, not the novel. Victor, himself, acts as if merely creating him was his sin but The Creature, and (at times) even Victor admitted that The Creature was once benign and gentle, until the cruelties of others got to him. Finally, "Modern Prometheus." PROMETHEUS! Why do so many people think Prometheus was some sinner who was righteously punished? Does no one know Greek mythology anymore? Prometheus was a Titan and the creator of the human race. In short, he was God. Zeus and the new Gods coveted light. The fire Prometheus stole represented knowledge and the power to invent. He gave humans (his own creatures) this and it pissed off Zeus. He severely punished Prometheus but it was unjust and in later myths he was freed. The great centaur who invented medicine even gave up his immortality as payment to keep Zeus from trying to return Prometheus to his punishment. Mary Shelley's own husband, Percy Shelley, wrote Prometheus Unbound.

#Kevin Grevioux #Mary Shelley #Frankenstein #Mary Shelley's Frankenstein #I Frankenstein #Does the Frankenstein Monster Have a soul?

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onlinemoneyculture · 4 years ago

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favorite open-source resources.

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