#I need order. I need figures. I need graphs

[vickyvicarious]

Yeah Dracula is actually a thorough planner. Once I interpreted Dracula's careening final leg of the journey to England as a careless oversight on his part; one where he over-indulged by eating the entire crew and unskillfully brought the ship into Whitby by chance. BUT he's been planning Whitby from the start. I think how he ends up getting into Lucy's house at the end is also the result of careful research and planning. He even has a plan for turning the rest of those who tried to thwart him, not needing to do it all directly.

Strategizing and laying down the maps for his steps is another trait he shares with Mina, come to think of it. The latter doesn't underestimate her foes to "toy" with them, however.

I agree. I actually made a graph showing when Dracula picks off the various crew members, and when you look at it over time it looks much more intentional to me. I believe he always wanted to land on a dead ship, and picked them off gradually so that enough would be alive to get the ship close to shore where he could take over. (Also, to maximize the horror it would inflict on those still alive, because he loves that sort of thing.) Only the Captain's final stand on the wheel made steering it in to shore himself harder to do. Even then though, I wonder if he might have always intended to crash it ashore, so that he could get off the ship without crossing running water. Otherwise, his original plan would have been to hide in one of his boxes and get carried ashore when they unload the ship, but there could be a chance then of one heavier box getting noticed/opened.

I'm a little less certain about Lucy's house, simply because I'm not sure how he would have had access to Mrs. Westenra's will. But I suppose that brings up the question of law. Would the house count as Lucy's before the will is read out to her, even if she were the one to inherit? After all, Dracula doesn't exactly need Arthur's permission to enter once Mrs. Westenra dies. But maybe Lucy's sense of ownership as someone who resides there would be enough to fill that gap before she legally has confirmation that it's hers too. Arthur neither lives there nor even knew he was going to inherit it at the time. Regardless, the way he drugs the maids certainly suggests planning ahead of time: he'd need to know about the laudanum she was taking in order to use it on them. So either he was doing research when he wasn't there, or maybe he was able to find out some information by spying through windows at night, or maybe he got Lucy to tell him some things while she was mesmerized/asleep (probably the least likely, because we don't see that done elsewhere and also I think he was in bat form pretty much all the time he drank from her in London, until the day he came into the house). Regardless, he still lets his temper get to him enough that he gives up on subtlety when he goes for the "yeet the wolf" approach, but that doesn't mean there is no planning happening there.

Yeah, he's definitely strategic. He's been planning this for a while. And it's something he certainly shares in common with Mina. But, as you say, she gets right down to business. She analyzes the paths to achieve a goal and heads right for it without any of the same toying around. She also is good at estimating threats, at thinking cautiously in order to ensure success, at figuring out how people tick and how to oppose them. She definitely does not underestimate like Dracula does, and she doesn't get caught up in her own emotions (rage, pride, whatever) the same way either. The closest she comes is right after her assault but she's able to work through her grief and guilt and anger much more cool-headedly usually.

#dracula daily #dracula daily spoilers #count dracula #mina murray #anonymous #replies

[honorthysalad]

does like anyone else sort parts of hgsn into tiers of canonness? Maybe it’s just my warrior cat origins where all the information was directly contradicting so you had to decide how to sort everything yourself but like, I just go into media expecting stuff to be retconned.

Like I tier it:

>Ch3 = anything after chapter 3 with preference to the most recent chapter being the most correct. Maki says in ch23 that after the unuki was made, the illness and famine died down, but according to Kouhei in 25, it only really stopped after the Indoh sin. In this case, I would take Kouhei’s explanation as the more correct explanation unless a subsequent chapter contradicts him.

Len’s Twitter extras = Generally supplemental and trustworthy but occasionally taking them at face value can create conflict with the manga. One comic strip says that ‘Hikaru’ has to manually beat his heart, but during his stint in the hospital, he was completely unconscious. Certainly the hospital staff would notice his heart wasn’t beating, right? Therefore, we will discard this comic as not canon nor representative of how ‘hikaru’ actually works.

Chs1-3 = A separate tier because just about everything in them has been retconned and they’re riddled with beginning weirdness. The example I’ll point to for a clear retcon is ‘Hikaru’ blushing at Yoshiki at the end of ch1 when we know he doesn’t experience romantic or sexual attraction. This fits with the genre change after chapter 3, and so, it can be assumed that it was retconned and is no longer considered for the plot going forward.

Light novel = the light novel wasn’t written by Mokumokulen, but any extra information is just that. Extra. There’s no real contradictions. Yet. If anything in the light novel or extra chapter is contradicted by the manga going further, the light novel will be entirely tossed aside.

Misc hgsn art = Anything lacking text or explanation (such as the decapitation pieces) as well as the pilot. While sometimes these act as foreshadowing, most of the time they’re just cool images. Dont think we’ll see ‘Hikaru’ with a bottle of ketchup anytime soon for example.

#Maybe this is a weird thing to do #Like- idk. I can’t imagine just taking all the information and giving equal weight to all of it #Especially when some of it conflicts #I need order. I need figures. I need graphs #If you’re unfamiliar with how contradicting warrior cats is. It’s a whole fucking thing #So like. I’m just used to it. Oh this ain’t canon anymore? Got it. Oh this said this? Well the manga says this so I’ll take it as true #How this works is like- #Information has to move through every tier above it without conflict to be considered canon #So the most recent chapter of the manga is always canon #The light novel is the lowest tier #And the misc hgsn art is like.. its own little sphere of existence with no bearing on anything #the summer hikaru died #hikaru ga shinda natsu #hgsn #my hgsn shit #hgsn spoilers

[alpinelogy]

been playing around in indesign with theoretically collecting my favorite graphics, getting them printed out properly, and then binding them on my own cause i like a good arts and crafts project and ive handbound stuff before and wdym i only have four graphics i like that used black as its base color? i thought i had way more?

#i miss formatting artbooks is it obvious? i miss the craft of putting everything together and it slowly becoming something greater #anyway in total there are fifteen separate graphics/seventeen images cause two of those have multiple pictures in one graphic #lowkey summer project vibes. idk if i want to struggle with hard cover binding or if id stick to japanese stab binding instead #afaik stab binding is easier according to a friend who handbinds regularly but also. ive never done it #but the one time i handbound hardcover. war flashbacks. igcse art my deeply detested </3 #tbf id probably get either three or five copies so i could experiment and keep a set totally on its own no binding so i could do both #also i yap so much in some of my graph descriptions jfc girl (gn) stop you dont need to yap so much- #also getting them printed out would mean the inherent strangeness of being seen:tm:. ew i hate that #time to figure out an online order form i guess lol #erika.txt

[excalculus]

I saw some mentions of rabies going around again and have no clue what's set it off this time, but given recent scientific developments I want to revisit the idea of curing symptomatic rabies.

First things first: there is still no practical way to do this. The famous Milwaukee Protocol fails far more frequently than it succeeds, and even the successes are not making it out in anything like a normal state. It's been argued that it should no longer be considered a valid treatment [1] due to these issues; any continued use is because there's literally nothing else on the table.

However. There are now two separate studies showing it's possible to cure rabies in mice after the onset of symptoms. The lengths you have to go to in order to pull this off are drastic, to put it mildly, and couldn't really be adapted to humans even if you wanted to. But proof of concept is now on the board.

long post under the cut, warnings for animal experimentation and animal death. full bibliography at the end and first mention of each source links to paper.

Quick recap - rabies is a viral disease of mammals usually transmitted through the saliva of an infected animal. From a contaminated bite wound, it propagates slowly for anywhere from days to months until it reaches the central nervous system (CNS). Post-exposure vaccination can head it off during this phase, but once it reaches the CNS and neurological symptoms appear it's game over. There will typically be a prodromal phase where the animal doesn't act right - out at the wrong time of day, disoriented, abnormally friendly, etc. This will then progress to the furious (stereotypical "mad dog" disease) and/or paralytic phases, with death eventually caused by either seizures or paralysis of the muscles needed for breathing.

That's the course we're familiar with in larger animals. Mice, though, are fragile little creatures with fast metabolisms.

In the first study's rabies infection model, lab mice show rabies virus in the spinal cord by day 4 after infection and in the brain by day 5. Weight loss and slower movement start by day 7, paralysis starting from the hind limbs from day 8 on, and if not euthanized first they're dead by day 10-13. [2]

This study (fittingly conducted at the Institut Pasteur) had two human monoclonal antibodies, and wanted to see if there was any possibility they could be used to cure rabies after what we think of as the point of no return.

Injecting the antibodies into muscle saved some mice if done at days 2 or 4, and none if done later, even at high doses of 20 milligrams per kilogram of body weight of each. Conclusion: targeting the virus out in the rest of the body is no use if it's already replicating in the CNS.

Getting a drug past the blood-brain barrier is, to use a highly technical term, really fucking hard. It's the sort of problem that even the best-funded labs and biggest companies in the world routinely fail at. And that's for small molecule drugs, which are puny compared to antibodies.

But this isn't drug development for a clinical trial. This is a very, very early proof-of-concept attempt, which means you're willing to ignore practicality to see if this idea is even remotely workable. So you can do things like brute force the issue by cutting through the skull to implant a microinfusion pump, which lets you deliver the antibodies directly into the normally-protected space around the brain. Combine this with the normal injections, and you can treat both the CNS and the rest of the body at the same time. Here's a survival graph of treated mice. X axis is days, Y axis is percentage of mice in that group still alive.

Figure 2A from reference 2, accessed February 2024

The fact that the blue, green, and purple lines did anything other than sink horribly to zero is unheard of. When the combination treatment was started at day 6, 100% of the mice survived. Started at day 7 (prodromal phase), 5 out of 9 mice recovered and survived. Started at day 8 (solidly symptomatic, paralysis already starting to set in), 5 of 15 mice recovered and survived. And when they say "survived", they kept these mice all the way to day 100 to make sure. Some of them had permanent minor paralysis but largely they were back to being normal mice doing normal mouse things. So, success, but by pretty extreme means.

Enter the second paper [3]. This was a different approach using a single human monoclonal antibody against Australian bat lyssavirus (ABLV - closely related to rabies, similar symptoms in humans) to try for a cure without needing to deliver treatments directly into the CNS. They also made a luminescent version of ABLV that let them directly image viral activity, so they could see both where the virus was replicating and how much there was in a live mouse.

Figure 1 from reference 3, accessed February 2024

Mice infected with ABLV start showing symptoms around day 8. You can see in the figure that at day 3 there's viral replication in the foot at the site of infection, which has shifted into the spine and brain by day 10. So what happens if you give one of these doomed mice one single injection of the antibody into the body?

Done at day 3, the virus doesn't make it to the brain until day 14, and while disease does set in after that around 30% of the mice survive. Days 5 and 7 are much more interesting. Those mice still develop symptoms at day 8, but the imaging shows the amount of virus in their spines and brains never gets anywhere near the levels seen in untreated controls, and within days it starts to decrease. Around 80% of day 5 and 100% of day 7 mice survive.

Okay, sure, you can stop another lyssavirus, but technically you did start treatment before symptoms appeared. What about symptomatic rabies?

The rodent-adapted rabies strain CVS-11 starts causing symptoms as early as day 3 after infection, and untreated mice die between days 8 and 11. The same single dose of antibody saved 67% of mice treated on day 5 and 50% of mice treated on day 7. Without making the luminescent version of the virus there's no real-time imaging of the infection, but you can still track symptoms.

Figure 2 from reference 3, accessed February 2024. CVS-11 is the name of the rodent rabies strain and F11 is the name of the antibody.

Disease score is a combination of several metrics including things like whether the mice are behaving normally and whether they show signs of paralysis. In untreated mice it goes up and up, and then they die. If one of those lines starts coming back down and continues past day 10 or so, that's a mouse that recovered. The success rate isn't as good as against ABLV, but again, this is a rabies strain specifically adapted to rodents and treatment wasn't started until it was well-established in the CNS.

So how on earth is this happening? The antibody neutralizes both ABLV and rabies really well in a test tube, but we've already established that there's no way a huge lumbering antibody is making it past the blood-brain barrier without serious help. Something about the immune response is clearly making it in there though. And it turns out that if you start trying this cure in mice missing various parts of their immune systems, mice without CD4+ T cells don't survive even with the treatment. By contrast mice without CD8+ T cells take longer to work through the infection, but they eventually manage it and are immune to reinfection afterwards.

To grossly oversimplify the immune system here, CD4+ are mature helper T cells, which work mostly by activating other immune cells like macrophages (white blood cells) and CD8+ T cells (killer T cells) against a threat.

Normally, T cells are also kept out by the blood-brain barrier, but we know that in certain specific cases including viral infection they can pass it to migrate into the brain. In the brains of the infected mice for which antibody treatment either wasn't given or didn't work, you can find a roughly even mix of CD8+ and CD4+ T cells along with a whole lot of viral RNA. But in the brains of those successfully fighting off the infection, there's less viral RNA and the cells are almost exclusively CD4+. So the antibody doesn't work by neutralizing the virus directly - something about it is activating the animal's own immune system in a way that gives it a fighting chance.

Again, neither of these proof of concept treatments is really workable yet as a real world cure. The first one is almost hilariously overkill and still has a pretty good chance of failure. The second is less invasive but careful sequencing still shows both low-level viral replication and signs of immune response in the brains of the survivors even at day 139, so it may not be truly clearing the virus so much as trading a death sentence for life with a low-level chronic infection. But now we know that 1. curing rabies after symptoms begin is at least theoretically possible, and 2. we have some clues as to mechanisms to investigate further.

Not today. Not tomorrow. But maybe not never, either.

References:

Zeiler, F. A., & Jackson, A. C. (2016). Critical appraisal of the Milwaukee protocol for rabies: this failed approach should be abandoned. Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, 43(1), 44-51.

de Melo, G. D., Sonthonnax, F., Lepousez, G., Jouvion, G., Minola, A., Zatta, F., ... & Bourhy, H. (2020). A combination of two human monoclonal antibodies cures symptomatic rabies. EMBO molecular medicine, 12(11), e12628.

Mastraccio, K. E., Huaman, C., Coggins, S. A. A., Clouse, C., Rader, M., Yan, L., ... & Schaefer, B. C. (2023). mAb therapy controls CNS‐resident lyssavirus infection via a CD4 T cell‐dependent mechanism. EMBO Molecular Medicine, 15(10), e16394.

#rabies #biology #long post #animal death #medicine #original content

[pearldrone]

hey guys, this is a post about side order and what we can somewhat gather about it so far. this'll be a long one, so hang tight. i've seen others vaguely talk about these ideas, so i decided to go all-out.

this image is of what i'm going to refer to as the 'landscape of thorns,' which is a 'long-term nuclear waste warning message.' these being used to sway humanity from intruding on highly dangerous sites.

as certain kinds of radiation can stay toxic for thousands of years, a warning of the dangers of this plant were needed. non-linguistic messages were attempted at first by a report from the sandia national laboratories, one of the three development and research laboratories of the department of energy's national nuclear security administration. {DOE, NNSA} the aim of this series of messages were to warn later visitors to any waste site. they recommended that messages include each of the following, gradually increasing complexity.

{much more under the cut.}

"1} Rudimentary information: "Something man-made is here"

2} Cautionary information: "Something man-made is here and it is dangerous"

3} Basic information: Tells what, why, when, where, who, and how

4} Complex information: Highly detailed written records, tables, figures, graphs, maps and diagrams"

the issue with worded messages is that they're unlikely to be comprehensible in thousands of years. considering how much the english language has changed, and will continue to evolve, would those of the future be able to understand what is being said? because of this, symbols were also considered.. but another problem arises with that. no symbol will be universally understood to mean one thing, even something such as the jolly roger. {☠️} using it to warn for risk of sickness, or general harm would serve useless as time passes. especially nowadays, while the jolly rodger still is seen as a danger symbol somewhat, is used more commonly as a cool design thing.. at least in the USA. and again, that's the problem. no symbol is universally known for one thing, no matter what.

i believe it was also a thought to not warn at all, and just leave it there.. but that questions ethics.

eventually, physical markers were explored, giving ideas such as the forbidding blocks, rubble landscape, the landscape of thorns, and a few beyond those. these ideas carry similar characteristics to each other.

from the official trailer.

in 1992-1993, a poll was issued by the zeitschrift für semiotik of tübingen germany, asking the following question:

"how would it be possible to inform our descendants for the next 10,000 years about the storage locations and dangers of radioactive waste?" and received answers such as artificial satellites, atomic priests, and 'ray cats.' i'm going to further talk about ray cats, as i think, considering the themes, it would be a good opportunity for side order to delve deeper into li'l judd, and his current whereabouts or motivations. as it's very vaguely hinted that he owns grizzco industries, and with that presumably dead fish in the trailer, it could be explored. i hope they won't make it weird though, as you know.. the whole thing with mammals has been a bit bizarre..

anyway, it was suggested that a species of cat should be bred that changes colors when exposed to radiation, so essentially a living sign of nuclear threat. as things such as nursery rhymes have been culturally significant in some way for many, many years.. in 2014, the musician 'emperor x' was commissioned by the podcast '99% invisible' to create a song about this idea for an episode about long-term nuclear waste warning messages.

whatever this fucker is. they could be completely done with grizzco, but who knows.

{edit 8/23/23 i've been told it resembles the bake-kujira. the ghost whale which is accompanied by "weird birds or fish."}

giving us the song '10,000-Year Earworm to Discourage Settlement Near Nuclear Waste Repositories {Don't Change Color, Kitty.}' the gist of this track being "if the cat turns bright colors, run!" and was designed to be "so catchy and annoying that it might be handed down from generation to generation over a span of 10,000 years."

so, themes of radiation are very likely to be present. this brings us to our next section, the coral bleaching.

as you may know, healthy coral has beautifully bright colors. this is due to microscopic algae known as zooxanthellae, which lives inside of the algae's polyps. it is also a major source of food, and nutrients. coral bleaching occurs when coral reefs are under stressful conditions, a huge one being climate change, which i will get deeper into that specifically. if the waters it lives in heat up too much, the coral will begin to expel this zooxanthellae.. leaving it completely white, and exposing its bone-like structure.

healthy vs partially bleached coral.

while bleached coral isn't quite dead, the aftermath of said bleaching makes it much more susceptible to disease and malnourishment due to lack of nutrition. if the waters stay too warm for too long, or if the bleaching is too extreme, the coral will die.

images from the official side order trailer, showing us bleached and possibly dead coral.

coral bleaching is an ongoing issue, and efforts have been made to conserve and regrow the coral reefs.. this brings us to a shorter section, but one worthy of a mention.

coral cloning. coral cloning is a phenomenon where a small bit of a healthy coral is cut, and grows into a full piece. it helps when this, sometimes miniscule, piece is placed next to another. this speeds up growth almost rapidly. however, it is not too easy to grow, and this method isn't totally fool-proof. coral requires very certain conditions to flourish, such as not being placed on an open ocean floor, but instead in an already established habitat. also things like water temperature, pH levels, pollution, all can stunt growth. this is a very vast oversimplified explanation, but i believe you get the picture. have you wondered why i am bringing this up? here is why..

am i saying this directly implies cloning? not exactly. it's an interesting thing to note, though, as you might know how octarians {NOT OCTOLINGS!} are born.. via severed tentacle. coral can sometimes be born via severed piece. i'm not going to go into this much more, as it's kind of an out-there comparison. do with that what you will.

continuing on with the radiation and infectious theme, i feel i should mention ultraviolet radiation. the sun produces these UV rays, of course, and they can be good in moderation. if it's too much? it can be absolutely killer. you guessed it, ultraviolet radiation does play a part in warmer waters, which aids in bleaching coral. however, that's not all.. the state of inkopolis square we see in the side order trailer could very well also be due to residue of nuclear radiation from the human society's many wars. before humanity's fall, natural disasters were more prevalent than ever, and we still don't really know what exactly happened besides the massive flood. the sea levels rising was the reason the great turf war, the deadliest war to strike inkadia, even happened. things like oil spills could possibly be going on too, as in some photos, you can see this black liquid.

i'm going to state the obvious and add on that oil spills are incredibly dangerous to marine life, and that includes coral reefs.

remnants of human life have not disappeared from inkadia, or anywhere in this world dominated by marine life. it's not far-fetched to say they could still be affected by anything else left behind, climate wise.

the landscape of thorns has not been built, to my knowledge, but maybe it was here. this could be a rediscovered nuclear plant, who knows. especially as certain kinds of radiation, again, can stay hazardous for upwards of ten-thousand years, and possibly longer. you may have caught that ten-thousand is an important number for multiple reasons, especially with the possibility that this octoling is eight. the human race has been extinct for longer than ten-thousand years by this point, but it's something to remember. but there's still questions.. where do pearl and marina fall now? what is their role? is this an infection only targeting octolings, and other octarians? what's going on with marina? only time will tell, yeah?

there you have it, if you read this far.. definitely tell me what you think. i've still not covered everything in the trailer, so any add-ons would be cool if you have any. this took a while to research and write, so thanks for reading.

sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_bleaching

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-are-taking-extreme-steps-to-help-corals-survive/

https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/everything-you-need-to-know-about-coral-bleaching-and-how-we-can-stop-it

https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/how-do-oil-spills-affect-coral-reefs.html

https://youtu.be/JENUAv0w8Q4

https://youtu.be/ZiULxLLP32s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200731-how-to-build-a-nuclear-warning-for-10000-years-time

https://youtu.be/dDIMYAYSGCo

#splatoon #pearl rambles #splatoon 3 #splatoon lore #side order #splatoon 3 dlc #agent 8 #splatoon theory

[danaredbeard]

Rick becomes Sasha at the CRM

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Rick: They... They're all dead.  Sasha: Yeah. I know. And it's okay.  R: How can it be okay? How... How can this be okay?  S: 'Cause you did your part, like I did mine, like the others did before us.  R: How?  S: They gave us the strength that we needed to do what we had to do for the others, and the others draw strength from us.  We change each other. We help each other. We make each other better. And it never ends.  R: It feels like it's ending.  S: Little things do end, but it's never the end of everything, because we don't die. It's not about you or me or any one of us. It's about all of us. And I don't think it just evens out. I think it always crosses over toward the good, toward the brave, toward love.  Your family... You're not gonna find them, because they're not lost.  And you are not lost.  What you need to do is wake up.

So many people thought Sasha in Rick’s exit was a fluke. However, I think of the three ghosts Shane “Past”. Hershel ”Present” and Sasha “Future” her presence was the most salient and most mirrors Rick’s exit.

Sasha doesn’t fear death because she was a preview of what was going to happen with Rick. Her last chance for life/love had died with Abraham. Like Rick says later he can’t go through that again finding a way to die while living. Sasha uses her death to try and help the others

Rick finally wakes up

Rick mirrors Sasha in that he was dead but comes alive in order to help others. This time Rick fights to stay alive and is bouyed by those who died (Carl) and those living (Michonne).

Physical and metaphysical suicides

Sasha: We don’t die Michonne: Love doesn’t die

And this is why it is an EPIC LOVE STORY, without love Rick would have become Sasha.

Their stories even mirror their battles and battles to come with Saviors/CRM (same thing super long post coming) . Funny how no one complained that with a super long and tedious build up of the Saviors that it was over so quick with Sasha attacking Negan… Because most people back then had sense enough to realize that the entire organization hadn’t fallen, Just like the entire CRM hasn’t fallen because we were even told that there are secret factions, spies, charts and graphs. The truth of the matter is those who complained was because it did not end the way they wanted with a death or deaths of the main characters … go figure.

Anywho… Sasha’s angst and sorrow was a preview of the emotional turmoil Rick felt in the CRM. I still believe we got the Cliff-note version of what really happened to him and there is more to be revealed.

#the ones who live #towl #the walking dead #twd towl #rick grimes #richonne #michonne #michonne grimes #Twd Sasha #twd #twd the ones who live #Youtube

[to-my-emil]

when, exactly, is matthias czernin's birthday?

given idv's habit of making us wait a year for the first little bit of lore for each character in the form of a letter on their birthday, i'm always antsy to know exactly when we'll be getting this information. lucky for us, we don't have to wait for a weibo post or just sitting around for a year for matthias's birthday; they actually gave us all the information we need already!

(obligatory disclaimer of if i'm wrong then i'm wrong and this is all just for fun so please don't come yelling if they reveal his birthday and i'm wrong <3 ty ily)

NOW LETS GET INTO IT

there's two places that we're going to look in order to figure out matthias's birthday, these being his weibo post and 3 frames of his lore video!

according to matthias's weibo post, (disclaimer that i just threw it into google translate), he first burned louis on his birthday, and then received a box with another louis over and over with each cycle getting shorter.

first off let's start out by figuring out how much shorter that cycle is getting. i punched some numbers into a graphing calculator, and we wind up with this here: a linear slope of 13 that hits the x-axis at 8.

so this means that each time louis arrives and matthias burns him again, it's 13 less days from the previous time until louis will show up once more. the fact that 13 is regarded in some cultures as an unlucky number makes it just a littler creepier, too! so if it's 13 less days, then let's add all that up to see if the math works out:

91+78+65+52+39+26+13 = 364

364 days, exactly the amount of days it takes for the last arrival of louis on matthias's birthday (if we assume we started counting the day after the first burning) as we see in the weibo post:

now, you might be asking, why does this help us figure out what matthias's birthday is?

great question! we'll get to that in a minute! for now, though, let's look at something a little more confusing. we get to see three dates in matthias's lore video (though the first one doesn't give us a month):

notice anything strange? it's hard to see when watching quickly, but the second date says may, not march, and if these dates are listed chronologically then may should've come after april. for a while, i thought this was a mistake and that may should've been march, but once i went to double check:

hey, would you look at that! 364-351 is 13 days, so it fits right into our cycle if we assume this is almost a year later. so then, there's 13 days left in the cycle. so, 13 days after april 28 would be:

may 11th! given that the screenshot above shows may 12th, and the 364 day cycle gives us the tiniest bit of wiggle room (whether it started counting on his birthday or the day after his birthday accounts for the difference), we can assume that his birthday is most likely to be either may 11 or 12!

after all this i'll still be waiting impatiently for his letters, but at least now i know what day it'll probably be... unless netease pulls a fast one and picks a character day instead of a birthday. shakes fist

#idv #identity v #matthias czernin #idv puppeteer #idv matthias #meta #my posts #again if im proven wrong later dont worry about it

[anteroom-of-death]

Teacher's Pet part 2

Synopsis: its the Monday after, what will the meeting involve for the Doctor and y/n?

a/n: uhm idk how sustainable my current writing rampage is. But tadah. We're writing to make ourselves happy. Set in the pov of the reader. Thank you to all who reads.

The Thursday after your meeting with Professor Smith, you felt like you didn’t even want to work. You could have sat on that bench until the evening chill came and claimed you.

Much more agreeable than one of your appointments canceling on you. You really needed the extra 150 quid.

Friday came and went. Nothing but dead air on the phones. The bookings girl was apologetic and let you have half a puff off her joint.

Such was life.

You were itching to get the weekend over. There was a footie match on, so you expected the bare minimum and weren’t let down.

Guess you were shopping at Aldi again, and figuring out how much of your savings you could really chip away at.

Monday was cold and dreary, it slapped you awake with your alarm. Your financial worries were keeping your sleep restless.

Not that you already wouldn’t have been kept up.

Your first class of the morning was somber. It wasn’t as dazzling at Professor Smith’s. The lecturer lacked chutzpah. Showmanship. Just droned on about hum-drum statistics and their relationships on graphs. You felt yourself slipping into a stupor.

By the time the class ended, you had lost most of your fingernails and had bitten a sizable swell on your tongue.

You dragged yourself into the toilets and started fixing yourself up. You were so nervous and every time you saw that man you fought the urge to drown yourself in the Avon. The man was beyond entrancing. Everything he said drew you in. And his flourishes?

Hypnotic.

You fixed your make up, glitter you had from your usual rota had built itself up in the corner of your eyes , no matter how much hard scrubbing you’d do, it would be there until it was time to get back to work on Thursday evening. You only had one class on Fridays so you could easily take two shifts.

You applied some chap stick to soothe a newly-chewed hole in your lip.

You muffled a scream into the sleeves of your jumper. You really didn’t know what was getting into you. It felt like your entire brain was sliding both downwards and to the left out of your skull. Through your ear. You were beyond close to failing this term. The term had barely started, but you knew it wasn’t going well!

And right now, you couldn’t afford to mess up.

You cursed yourself for following his order of “So long as it’s your last.” With your cigarettes. You threw away the entire, barely depleted pack into the trash can near the bus stop immediately after your meeting.

That entire ten minutes left you giddy and thrown off.

You sprayed some perfume on you and took a deep breath before trudging your way down to his office.

You knocked tentatively.

“Ah, come in (y/n)!” He announced.

His office was warm. Dynamic. He had an electric guitar perched on the wall. Overcrowded. There was so much to take it

Warm.

When so much of the university was drafty and got worse on days with bad weather. His office felt safe. Like somewhere there was an invisible fireplace roaring. It was more than comfortable. It was cozy.

You plunked your bag across the shoulder of the chair that faced the desk and started trying to drag out your notebook for his class.

He waved you down.

“No need for that, just yet.” He smiled easy. His holey sweater layered with a tee-shirt and hoodie matched it. The usual blazer he donned for lecture slung across his chair.

“How was your weekend?”

“I just worked. It was so slow.” You confessed.

“What about those appointments?”

You let out a nervous, yet angry laugh. “Oh, one canceled on me.” You tugged on your jumper. It was warm in here and you got nervous when anyone asked anything regarding work. You didn’t want anyone to know. Especially a professor at your school! What would the consequences be? The two worlds of you and your work never should meet. You tapped on your thigh.

“And yours?”

“Not much to report, just also work.”

“Ahh.” You replied. You felt awkward.

“Uhhmm, I have accommodations put in by the university for my stuff. But right now, I don’t think they’re working? And the office who deals with that is totally backed up and can’t see me right now.” You drummed on your thigh a bit more and pleaded with your eyes. You were way out of your depth. You were just hoping maybe he’d have some pity. Some empathy. His class was engaging. He talked so well about everything. It was labeled as a philosophy class, but it felt more like some advanced physics class at time. He was poetical and waned on about too many a topic.

It challenged you, and you did like that.

You went back to trying to claw your notebook out. He tenderly grabbed it out and placed it on the desk.

“Thanks!” You replied to the gesture…

He produced a plate of chocolate chip cookies out of seemingly nowhere. They seemed freshly baked.

“Since I’ll be keeping you from lunch…” He shrugged. “Hope you don’t mind. We have to go over everything.”

You took one, it was big and gooey. Delicious. Had a hint of something else in it that you couldn’t place.

“Now, love, what are we looking at?” He muttered rifling through the pages.

“Fuck if I know.” You blurted out. “Sorry for my language.” You slapped your hand across your mouth, as if to stop anymore profanity from escaping your lips.

“It’s fine, heard worse. You should hear my wife. Mouth like a sailor! She once went in for twenty minutes at some dignitaries that wouldn’t let her scarper off with an artifact!” He laughed.

The minute he mentioned a wife, something in your chest fell down deep inside your gut.

Of course he’s married! He fit the entire profile. You should have known that from a mere glance. His age, married. White collar job. This place was probably his passion. The one good outlet that stopped him from visiting other places…

You stopped yourself from putting him in a neat little box. That was for work. Not for school. You mentally shook yourself.

“She sounds a riot! What does she do?”

“Oh, she was an archeologist! And a professor! Total bad girl.” He reminisced.

The ‘was’ put that sunken feeling back in your chest.

“Your notes are amazing. Very detailed. Really appreciate the scribbles and the note of ‘if you can’t focus today-> you’re wasting £76.21 today’”. He pointed out your mathematical equation you did breaking down the cost of tuition, the fees and the exact price each class cost per day.

“Am I wrong though?” You grimaced.

“You’ve got the wrong perspective, but I can see where you’d go with that. Capitalism has ruined what should be a shaping experience for you!”

You scratched your neck and shook your head.

“Yeah.”

You both poured yourselves over the topics covered and the remarks you made about it in your ongoing scribbled in reminders to yourself about class.

You felt him leave his seat and move over to the one beside you, probably meant for another student. The way his hands (large, sinuous, seemingly decently manicured, thin and well-jointed, you noticed appreciatively.) Combed the paper and tapped on words was enthralling.

The conversation expanded. He was letting you go off and follow your own conclusions about the subjects at hand. He commented and helped you link one thought to the other. Like a well-oiled duo. The office lights warmly reflected off the steely blue eyes that seemed to glow and shimmer when you made your own conclusions that fell in line with the lesson he was trying to give one so and so day in so and so page of note. You felt yourself relax and curl into the chair, sat cross-legged.

“So that means that time isn’t effectively real It’s a construct as much as a hobby?” You reported your findings from the deep trudged corners of your mind.

“Fuck yeah!” He shouted. Echoing your sudden use of profanity earlier…

It was oddly endearing.

He caught your gaze and you saw yourself in those haunting blue eyes. There were things brewing in those eyes. His mind was working faster and more erratically than yours was. And you were the expert on racing thoughts and flying minds.

Or so you thought…

You quickly dropped your gaze.

A red, hot flush ripped through your body. It was like he stripped you bare. And not in the way so many others have seen you bare. It was like he was inside your head. He was inside you, your very soul.

You became all to aware of your body again, the sudden ricochet into personhood was oddly violating. You uncrossed your legs and tore at what remained of your one middle finger’s nail. Really gouging into the skin around it. Doing the ultimate amount of damage. The casual, open phase of this meeting had ended.

He noticed your change and smoothed himself out.

You hated that you were the catalyst for this tone shift.

“I’ve kept you too long, (y/n). Why don’t you go. I’ll email you if I can see you next Monday.”

The thing in your chest from earlier sunk deep again. Further than the last time.

You gathered your things and made your apologies with your eyes. Walking out, you noticed your middle finger was bleeding. Profusely.

The campus felt colder than ever.

You could have shot yourself.

#personal #doctor who #i wrote this #12th doctor #12th doctor x reader #reader x 12th doctor #self insert #self indulgent #teacher student #peter capaldi #its my party and ill cry if i want to #slow burn #you x 12th doctor #12th doctor x you #help me

[peonycats]

How did you do to find your own art style and improve it ?

Personally, if you're a beginner artist, I say you shouldn't worry at all about being "original" or "finding your own style." It's far more important for you to get a grasp on the fundamentals than stylizing, because the process of stylization is picking and choosing what you want to show, what you want to exaggerate/change, and what you can cut out. You're not gonna be able to figure out what can be cut and what needs to be shown if you don't have the basics down and understand how all the pieces come together, like anatomy! Additionally, as you learn, your style will naturally develop, so it's really not something to worry about this early on!

If you're further along and feel you have a comfortable grasp of the basics, I would recommend you do some art studies of artists or pieces you like. Create a place where you collect references that inspire you or you would like your style to look like, and try mimicking them as closely as possible to figure out what makes them work, what you want to carry into your own art pieces, and what you would change. How detailed is their rendering? How do they stylize noses and ears? Etc etc. It's important you keep on asking these questions so that your own stylization is purposeful and you understand what your overarching goal is!

There's this exercise I read about years ago, where you create a four quadrant chart; on one axis is how much technical skill an art piece displays, and on the other is how much it aligns with what kind of style you want to have. You take art pieces you've already completed and place them on this graph, and from this you can identify which pieces you think align best with your artistic goals; from this pool of art pieces, you can write down traits they all share (what you want for your art style) and even study from them in the future for further developing your art style. Of course, in order to do this, you're gonna need a lot of art pieces, which means a lot of drawing. That's a good thing though, because that's how your art style develops!

#ask #anonymous #art stuff #tips #not hetalia

[venusiancharisma]

Hot Take: Human Design

Activated Gates of Authority: 19-49

I feel like it's exponentially hard to find a descriptive analysis on anything related to human design... or at least descriptive enough to satiate my curiosity - so I figured, I cannot be the only one with this problem.

After exxxxxxxtensive research (sorry for delayed inbox responses) I have started to create some content for anyone else curious.

Eventually, I would like to dive into how to use your natal chart with your human design graph to get an entirely, well rounded understanding & innerstanding of who you are, your why's, how's, and so on. They're both connected.

FULL DISCLOSURE - I will be going in an absolutely, nonsensical, and incoherent order. I may start with my own but there is a lot of content I've created to share and I plan on doing it one at a time. Anything in red will be explained in a later post as I continue this content, so don't worry if you aren't entirely versed yet. i hope you ENJOY!

Channel 19-49 is called "The Principle of Revolution". This channel features 2 gates, 19 & 49. The combination of gates creates the channel. 19 is the gate of "wanting", while 49 is the gate of "revolution". It is part of the 39-55/19-49 Definition quadra and is connected to responding, reacting, and taking action.

The channels make up the pathways through which energy flows in your body and impact your personality, talents, and decision-making authority.

If you have or know someone who has an activated 19-49 channel...

As one of your authority channels, 19-49 has a major influence on how you operate and make decisions. This motor channel brings an energetic, active, even rambunctious quality. You likely have a strong inner drive to initiate change, shake things up, rebel against the status quo, and introduce new, experimental, or unorthodox ideas or ways of doing things. You challenge assumptions and may be attracted to fringe topics or revolutionary causes.

People with 19-49 are here to be agents of change and transformation. You have an evolutionary impulse to push boundaries, take risks, and upset established orders. When activated positively, this can catalyze innovation, reforms, breakthroughs, and social or political shifts. Used negatively, it can lead to chaotic, reckless, or even dangerous behavior. Understanding how to harness 19-49 is key.

As an authority, you need to wait for this wave-like energy to come and go rather than constantly riding it. By waiting to respond when 19-49 is "on", you make decisions true to your inner motivations. If you react when it's "off", you may regret choices. Learning this ebb and flow helps moderate extremes.

Channels impact each other, so 19-49 is flavored by your other authorities. But in general, having this motor defined means a dynamic push towards trail-blazing change, often through rebellious action. By understanding the wise and unwise ways this channel manifests and using strategies like waiting, deconditioning, and experimenting slowly, you can utilize 19-49 for positive transformation.

This rebellious energy can attune you to future trends before they become mainstream.

Having 19-49 activated suggests intuitive abilities related to sensing the zeitgeist, reading cultural and sociopolitical undercurrents, and prophesying what revolutionary shifts may be on the horizon. You can be quite skilled at predicting new movements, styles, or paradigms that shake up the status quo.

As a transformer energy, 19-49 may give you the innate capacity to scan both collective thoughtforms and the horizons of what’s possible, almost like an inner radar system attuned to anything progressive, trailblazing, unconventional or on the cutting edge. You can often spot burgeoning worldviews and innovations poised to disrupt accepted norms well before the crowd catches on.

With 19 defined especially, you likely have your finger on the pulse of what people deep down feel dissatisfied with or secretly want to see changed but don't openly talk about due to social programming or consensus trance. Tapping this can make you gifted at giving voice to issues or ideas that have been suppressed or taboo.

As a motor channel connected to informational waves, 19-49 can also download revelatory insights, visions of alternative possibilities or even mystical experiences - especially during periods of change, chaos or social unrest. The revolutionary insight that dawns may hold psychic clues for navigating eras of deep transition.

Having this energy defined can make you powerfully allergic to the status quo. It’s like you have built-in radar for internal or external shifts happening under the surface that signal change is afoot. By reading the signs, listening deep below consensus, and trusting your non-ordinary hunches, you unlock 19-49’s psychic potential to be a prophet of necessary transformation.

Tips for people with this channel:

Here are some tips for how to tap into the ebbs and flows of an activated 19-49 channel in Human Design, to discern if it is activated positively or negatively:

Track your emotional waves. When 19-49 is "on", you will likely feel energized, fired up for change, filled with avant-garde ideas. When it's "off", the revolutionary fever cools into mellowness or even apathy. Noticing these dramatic emotional shifts is key.

Pay attention to synchronicities and omens. The mystic Rainer Maria Rilke spoke of "confirmatory experiences" that validate when you're aligned with your authentic path. Notice what signs, symbols, messages arise when 19-49 is activated. Are they encouraging your radical side constructively?

Check your mental state. Is your mind speculative, imaginative, innovative when 19-49 is on - or scattered, conspiratorial, paranoid? The latter could indicate the channel is distorted. Stay grounded.

Assess your behavior objectively. Is your rebellion or rabble-rousing inspire progressive change or just petty chaos? Are you breaking conventions with purpose or just for shock value? Check your intentions.

Notice physical sensations. Do you feel buzzing inspiration or nervous agitation? Vitality or imbalance? Attune to your body's signals to read 19-49 clearly.

Consider gradual steps. Experiment cautiously when 19-49 is on so you don't risk burnout from overstimulation. Baby steps avoid big regrets!

With awareness and discernment, you can learn to ride the 19-49 wave skillfully, using its psychic gifts for radical yet enlightened change. Analyze the quality rather than quantity to know if you’re dialed in.

#natal chart #human design #human design chart #natal astrology #channel 19-49 #zodiac #astrology #sagittarius

[blake447]

So I'll actually chronicle this as I go along, I'm playing around with dungeon generation! And holy hell we're running into the first major roadblocks.

Basically the algorithm goes as follows, generate a bunch of random rooms in a tight circle, run an algorithm to pack them without overlap (separation steering, which I managed to borrow from the internet), triangulate those rooms (which I cannot borrow from the internet) according to something called the Delaunay process, then use the resulting graph to fill in hallways based on the connectivity of the rooms. But Blake, what is the Delaunay Triangulation? Well, basically its a way of making sure the triangles are "nice" as in not too long and skinny. The first requirement is that the vertices on the triangles are sorted in a counter clockwise order, which is where my initial challenge lies. Even before we start dealing with triangles, we need to figure out how to handle them. Here's what I mean. The way I'm doing it is similar to blender's handling. We take a list of points. We then make a list of edges, an edge defined as a pair of indices for points. Then we make a list of tris, a tri being defined as a trio of indices for edges. Like so

Bit of a mess, but it gets the point across. Now that we can represent triangles, we have to also represent orientation. Basically the way we do this is assume the edges first point is well, its first point, and that the order the triangle's edges are listed corresponds to some clockwise or counterclockwise order. It doesn't matter which, as long as we always assume the same thing. In the above example, we'll use clockwise. We also want all the points to follow after one another. Notice how in the first triangle, the last point of a segment is the same as the first in the next segment. The second triangle, doesn't follow this convention and the order needs to be flipped around on a few of them. If the clockwise orientation ends up being wrong, we can simply flip all three of them once they are consistent. Alternatively, the approach I take is first make sure the orientation is consistent, then make sure the ordering of points is consistent. The way we do that is with a little bit of vector math

Basically, we take the offset between the two points, and the offset from their midpoint to the centroid and cross product them using the right hand rule. If the orientation is up in this case, then its wrong and we have to swap the edges pointer's to A and B. After that, we check to make sure the 0th segments last pointer is the same as the 1st segments first pointer, and if it isn't, we simply swap the pointers to those edges in the triangles representation.

Now that we can triangulate between major rooms, its time to begin adding more points to triangulate. Now, i can't seem to get the implementation working for some weird edge cases, so I'm going to take the brute force approach.

Here, what I'm doing is creating a canvas to guarantee that any main room gets placed within an already existing triangle. In the future I will try to create a convex hull to start off first, then do this, but this works for now. Now its worth noting I utilize very similar math to the orientation math to determine if a point is within a given triangle, then brute force the search over all existing triangles, subdividing them as I go along. Wikipedia mentions some fancy smancy pointer math to tern this into kind of a binary search (ternary in worst case) but I can't get it to work, so brute force it is! You might notice that it looks like shit. Thats because its not Delaunay yet. What we need to do next is as we're adding triangles, examine the neighbors of the triangles it falls within and switch some edges around to minimize the smallest angle in any given triangle. Unfortunately, I need to go to work at this point and this is also not a trivial task with our current data structure! so this is going to require some more on-paper math before implementing an algorithm. Till next time!

#math #gamedev #unity #progblr #mathblr #graph theory #triangulation #delone triangulation #girl math

[vickyvicarious]

Who's Read What in Dracula? Masterpost

This is a little self-assigned project to try and keep track of who has read (as well as written) what documents, and, importantly, when they do so. Last year I spent some time thinking about this and it informed some of my thoughts about specific characters' perspectives and actions in interesting ways. So I thought it could be a neat resource to have for others!

I'm going to update this in time with the novel, so there won't be any spoilers. This post is going to be a master reference, with links to each individual character's posts. I originally wanted to do this as a series of graphs for each character, with color-coded bars for each document they've read, but I'm not savvy enough to figure out a non-confusing way to do so, especially given the number of different authors/documents. Instead, I'm going to have a separate post for each character, and just have the info in written form there. Here are the links to each of those, in order of introduction:

Jonathan Harker

Mina Murray

Lucy Westenra

Some housekeeping notes: Obviously, each character will have read their own writing. I'm not going to update day-by-day for any such things. Instead, I'll only add update whenever they access new information by someone else, or begin what I'm counting as a new document.

Most of the time, we know for a fact when characters get access to a new document. However, there are a few exceptions. I have my theories, but I will mark them as speculative whenever that label applies.

I break up documents based on chunks of information and have assigned titles to them as such. The labels may change as time goes by as needed to avoid spoilers. I also try to add in dates, but for any longer accounts it will just be a range of dates rather than every entry.

Below the cut is a list of all the documents, in order of appearance, with dates. I'm using color-coding for all the main authors, which will match the colors used in individual character posts. This too will be updated over time, so no worries about spoilers here either. Unless, of course, you don't want to know if someone who has only written once before will go on to write often... in that case, don't look below.

Castle Dracula Diary (3 May-?) - Jonathan Harker

Invitation to Castle Dracula (3 May) - Count Dracula

Letter to Innkeeper (4 May) - Count Dracula *

Letter to Dracula (5 May) - Mr. Hawkins *

Letter to Lucy (9 May) - Mina Murray

Letter to Mina (2-3 May?) - Jonathan Harker *

Letter to Mina (11 May) - Lucy Westenra

Dictated Letters Home (11 May) - Jonathan Harker

Letters to Various Solicitors (11 May) - Count Dracula *

* We know these documents exist, but never get to read them (or in one case, only get a brief excerpt) as they aren't added to the record. Sometimes some of the main characters do get to read them, but not always.

#dracula daily #wrwd #wrwd masterpost #dracula meta #my meta #no one has ever asked for this. i just find it fun #both years so far i think 'probably not gonna be posting as much about dracula this time around' and then immediately start tracking stuff #or writing metas etc #also i'm doing this as we go so who knows if this format will work. hopefully so but if not i'll try to figure it out when it comes to that

[skwpr]

How To Take Great Study Notes

Take Great Study Notes That Make Exam Prep Easy-Peasy.

Why We Do NOT Take Notes

To start, let’s consider reasons not to take notes:

Not to document everything said during a class

Not to document everything you read.

Not to fill up a notebook.

Hopefully, you get the idea! Notes should NOT be a comprehensive document detailing all of the facts. This is what a textbook is for. You can always look up specific concepts in your book or online if you need a more thorough refresher.

Why We DO Take Notes

Now we know what not to do, so let’s talk about the real purpose. There are two goals for taking notes:

Document information pertinent to you. Your notes should not look like your friend’s notes. You both have different experiences and prior knowledge; your notes should differ to fit your own individual needs.

Collect your thoughts. When you are learning something new, the information is not stored in memory. Notes help you to initially get the information into short-term memory. Through continual practice and study, we can move it to long-term memory.

If you’re just starting a course, you may be thinking…I need to write it all down! When we begin to learn a new subject most of the information can feel new. It is likely true your notes will be longer as you begin, but follow these two tips for taking better notes and you will immediately see the power of notes to help you study.

Get Organized

To create notes that will be a useful tool for studying you need to create one central place to keep everything related to a specific course. There are a lot of options on how to do this:

Have a single notebook or binder for your course

Use a digital tool like OneNote or Evernote

Keep a folder of Word documents

By getting organized upfront you will be able to find what you need when it matters. If you sit down to study and only have 30 minutes, you need to make your time count! Knowing where your material is so you can get started will make you a more efficient student.

Most courses either follow a textbook in order or have a syllabus with a set of topics in order. Use this order to set up your system. If there are 12 chapters, go ahead and make space for each chapter. If there are 10 topics, make a space for each topic. By doing this ahead of time, you are ready to add notes at any point.

Take Great Notes: Keep It Short

You’ve got a system. Check!

You’re in the right spot to work on Chapter 1. Check!

Now it’s time to start taking notes that are going to be beneficial to study from down the line. You want to write short facts, not long paragraphs. When you are in class, or when you are working through the course material, try to take the shortest notes possible. As long as it will make sense to you tomorrow, it works.

Imagine going back over each of these notes in three weeks as you study for an exam. Which is going to be faster and easier to review? Just looking at the notes on the left makes my brain feel tired and overwhelmed. The notes on the right feel much more do-able. I can remember those three facts!

important dates

new terminology

important names

formulas

steps of an important process

references to charts, tables, graphs, or other visuals

questions

Questions? You Betcha.

Absolutely! You especially want to jot down questions as they come to you, and mark them so they are easy to identify. I like to draw a big question mark in the margin or use the question mark icon in OneNote. If you skip this step and don’t write down questions, you will forget them. And then you don’t know what you don’t know. This is an easy way to fall into the “I don’t know what to study” trap.

When you do write down questions, then you know what to study. I need to figure out the answer to these things. When I have answered all of the questions, then I can work on memorization to get prepped for the exam.

Do A Quick Review And Revise.

Notes taken on-the-fly are not going to be cohesive or coherent. This is normal! What we do need to focus on is spending 10-15 minutes reviewing and revising notes after they are taken. Can you rearrange information so related information is together? What information did you write down but doesn’t really seem important any longer? What already lodged itself in your short-term memory?

Bonus tip: Schedule a 10-minute comprehensive review session every day. Use your time to review your existing notes. Your comprehension will go through the roof with this strategy and final exam prep will be painless.

#diary #university #blogger #unidays #my day #study motivation #biology #science #student #college student #grad student #new studyblr #phd student #study hard #study inspiration #study blog #study space #study tips #study with me #studyblr community #studygram #studyspo #studystudystudy #studywithme #studying #succession #university student #study aesthetic #study notes #study

[theladyofbloodshed]

what’s the best way to purchase your books to ensure that you get the most available profits from it?

sincerely, a girl that wants to buy it, but hates giving money to amazon

Thank you sweetheart.

I will be honest in that Amazon is the only way to purchase it :(

I will be super transparent under the cut about prices/amazon/self-publishing as I didn't realise a lot of these things when I signed up to KDP. If anybody is interested in self-publishing this way or wants to ask questions, feel free.

This is all for The Story of Old: End

These are the price breakdowns for the ebook

I selected the 70% royalty which means it costs me $0.09 to have the book delivered to somebody's e-reader but I make $2.74. If I selected the 35%, I wouldn't have to pay delivery costs but I make less money. This is typically selected by people who have lots of images/graphs etc and it would cost them a lot to pay for the delivery. Ebooks are the way I make the most money because the royalties are higher.

Now, for the paperback as this has to be listed as a different entity on KDP.

The book is priced at $13.00 and I make $1.78 from it. The minimum I can put it up for is $10.03 because it costs just over $5 to have it printed so I wouldn't make anything from it. Amazon gives you 60% royalties which is actually a lot higher than traditional publishing (but I think with traditional contracts, you do get a lump sum stipend for writing, you don't have the costs involved with artists, formatting, editing, promotion etc).

I can also select "Expanded Distribution" which means my book is available on B&N and Waterstones, but my royalty rates drop to 40% because the book still has to be printed by amazon and shipped to them, so Amazon is essentially a middleman and takes the money I would have earnt to ship it to that store. I haven't selected it because I would earn a sum of zero. I get that people don't want to give Amazon money, but they would still print the book and it earn money even if you purchased it from B&N.

Onto Kindle Unlimited...

Yesterday, somebody read the entire copy of The Witch and The Monster and I earned a whopping 59p. This figure is estimated because the actual amount depends on how many people subscribe to kindle unlimited and how many pages are read across the whole system. Each month, the amount "per page" varies.

Also, if you read the same book more than once, we only get a payment for the first time you read it (so if you really love a book on KU, please consider just buying it).

You have to meet certain thresholds on Amazon then you get a payment. On the US Amazon site, I think you need to earn around $100 before you get your payment - it's not like somebody buys my book and I get $2.74 straight into my bank. So, if somebody in Germany reads my book - that's amazing! - but I won't "have" that money until more people in Germany read it and I hit the threshold in that market, e.g. one person in France has a copy of my book, but I won't get that money until I earn €100 from the French Amazon site. (Bonjour if it's you).

Many people do go down the self-publishing route but there are many expenses involved:

I've paid the same artist to do the covers for The Witch and The Monster as well as The Healer and The Alpha (I did the Old ones, that's why they're bad lmao). I'm proud not to use AI. I've also commissioned two other artists to make fan art because we all have to support each other.

I also pay for a proof copy of the paperback to come so it can be checked for errors. I had the page/margin size wrong a couple of times, so I had to order more proofs.

I also then wanted a finished copy which doesn't have PROOF over it for my bookshelf but I only have to pay the raw printing costs.

I could order author copies because I just pay the price to print them and then sell them at local fairs etc, but I can't take them to local book shops due to the amazon isbn.

I've paid a little bit of money for marketing on facebook/instagram/amazon which I don't think really had any effect.

I've done giveaways which cost me money and didn't reach a massive audience.

I post a lot on facebook/reddit/instagram/twitter which is free but does it have much of an effect? Probably minimal.

I have also utilised the amazon book promotion where I can offer the book for free for a limited time and I had massive numbers of downloads but not really any reviews as a result so people must just like free things.

I also used Booksirens (which is similar to netgalley) and had a lot of clicks but I wouldn't use it again. 2 of the readers they found never posted a review so I'm owed credits (because I essentially had to pay every time somebody downloaded my book and they didn't fulfil their end of the deal) which I can't use unless I pay again for a book to be hosted.

All of this is to say that self-publishing isn't "easier" than traditional publishing. There is so much competition and you are fighting to be seen. Amazon is the only avenue that I have right now to have my books published, but I completely understand if you do not want to give your money to them. I love writing. I love creating. If I was doing this for money, I would have quit. Whatever you decide, thank you for wanting to read it <3

#anon asks

[yaninus-de-venoix]

advice for small fighters

Someone messaged me to ask if I had any advice for small afab people getting into SCA heavy combat, so I figured I should make a post about it!

This got long, so I’m putting it under a cut.

Things to keep in mind:

I’m not a knight, I’m not officially squired to anyone (my dad is functionally my knight, but nothing formal), and I’ve only been fighting consistently for four years. I’m not an expert. But I do have access to some very excellent teachers, and I’ve been doing this long enough to have some idea what I’m doing, so hopefully this will be helpful for some people.

What works for me may not work for you. Keep what clicks, discard what doesn’t seem relevant.

I’m 5′3″, about 115 lbs, with an estrogen-dominant hormone system. In comparison to most heavy fighters, I have low upper body strength, small hands, wide hips, and a small ribcage. The more of those traits apply to you, the more likely my experiences are to be relevant, but some of this will hopefully be helpful regardless.

Also, this is in no particular order. Some of it is basic technique, some of it is mental stuff, some of it’s about equipment, some of it is tactics that won’t be relevant until you’re a bit further along.

1. You will probably have a longer learning curve than other people. This is not a bad thing. As a small person with significantly less muscle mass and body weight than the vast majority of heavy fighters, it will probably take you longer to be a challenging fight. Your technique has to be excellent before you can even hit hard  enough for people to take it. A lot of big guys can brute force their way through the beginner stage, they can just pick up a stick and start swinging, whereas you will have to be very solid on the basics before anything else. In the long run, this is to your advantage. By the time you're past the beginner stage and starting to be a credible threat, those big guys will reach a point where they'll have to unlearn a lot of bad habits in order to progress. Then after that, there won't be any real difference.

(Image description: a graph with Time on the horizontal axis and Threat Level on the vertical axis. The red line labeled “big guys” increases rapidly at first, then levels out, then gradually increases again. The blue line labeled “small people” increases slowly at first, then very rapidly, then slows until both lines are increasing at the same rate. End image description.)

So I know it can be frustrating at first, but keep in mind it'll pay off eventually. In the meantime, try to find chill people to practice with, who are willing to take light from you occasionally so you can practice things other than power generation.

2. On that note, make sure someone teaches you how to throw the basic shots: snap, wrap, off-side. Practice them on a pell. Everyone who comments on your power generation will tell you to throw from your hips; that's not the only way to generate power, but it is generally the easiest to learn. As a general rule, the less mass you have, the more of your body you have to put into a shot. A big guy can barely twitch his body and throw with more than enough power; a small person like me has to engage their entire body from foot to shoulder. To start, think big motions. (NOT big with your arms, big with your body. You want to keep the path of your hand as straight and compact as possible, it'll hit faster and harder, don't let it swing out. But your entire body should be engaged to throw a shot.) You'll be able to use smaller motions eventually, but at first, you’ll need all the help you can get. Think of it like screwing your body into the ground.

3. Remember to stay low. That’s the other reason why I say to screw your body into the ground. A lot of people instinctively raise their center of mass as they fight, as if somehow standing on their tip-toes is going to help. It's really not. One of your big advantages is having a low center of mass, don't throw that away. When you stay low, you're a smaller target, you're harder to push around, and you generate more power. To start out, especially if you’re lightweight and struggle with power, try moving like a wrestler, low and grounded.

4. Be conscious of range. When you're fighting someone much bigger than you, to get to the range that you can hit them from, you have to pass through the Danger Zone where they can reach you but you can't reach them. Different people have different approaches for dealing with the Danger Zone, but you need to know it exists and have some method for handling it. My main piece of advice is to make sure you're actually close enough to hit them before you throw a shot. Personally, I try to close in quickly and defensively, then hang out about as close as I can comfortably be without restricting my own movement, because that's generally uncomfortably close for my opponent.

5. On the topic of closing range: as you get closer to a tall opponent, you have to raise your shield a smidge to cover the same amount of helmet. That’s a tip about perspective that I learned from Sir Helga at Sport of Kings a couple years ago. Here's a diagram:

(image description: a stick figure holds a shield at about head height. A horizontal blue dotted line passes over their head. There are two vertical lines in front of the stick figure, a green one which is further away from the stick figure and a red one which is closer. Both vertical lines are the height of the blue line and they each have an arrow that points from the top of the line to the person’s head. End image description.)

The blue dotted line represents the height of your opponent's shoulders, so where they're throwing from. The green line is from further away, and at that distance, the shield blocks a straight shot. The red line is much closer, and at that distance, the angle is more steep and a straight shot gets in. 

6. Get equipment that works for you. I started out with an extremely light shield because that’s what I could physically lift for an entire practice. I also highly recommend shaving down your sword handles until you can wrap your fingers all the way around the handle, or as close as you can get without making it so thin it’ll snap. When the handle is thin enough to grip easily, you can keep your grip much looser, you have less tension in your wrists, it’s easier on your body and you’ll throw whipier shots. It should feel more like a ruler than a club (though not as thin as a ruler). Being able to feel where the edge is will give you much better control over the angle of your sword.

7. You will get so. much. redundant and unasked-for advice. You learn to sift through the chaff to find the bits of advice that are actually useful for you. I haven’t had anyone be rude or exclusionary to me; I have gotten a lot of mildly patronizing advice. No idea if it’s a gender thing, an age thing, or just overly enthusiastic nerds wanting to share information, but I suspect it happens more often to women and gender minority fighters than to cis guys.

8. One common side effect of having an estrogen-dominant hormone system is crying easily. That's a totally normal response to get from fighting. What I do if I start to have a tear response is I end whatever bout I'm in, go take my helmet off and get some water, take a breather. Then I always try to do at least one more fight. Sometimes I'm fine after that and can keep going, sometimes I still need to stop, but either way, it teaches my body that crying won't get me out of doing the hard thing. It helps to have an understanding person around who you know won't make a big deal out of it.

9. Find out if there are any other not-cis-guy fighters in your area, I've found that there's a really good sense of community among the women + gender minority fighters. There's also a facebook group, Women & Gender Minority Fighters - SCA Unofficial, that I would highly recommend joining.

10. Have fun!!!

#am i a stickjock now #questions for the bard #sca heavy fighting #medieval sword fighting #trans in the sca

[greatwyrmgold]

Before I start the next stage of base-building, I need to plan.

No base screenshots this time. Just diagrams and rambling and ratios. But this post forces me to get my thoughts in order and turns them into something I can consult later, and hopefully someone else will find these ideas useful.

This chart, courtesy of Kirk McDonald's Factorio Calculator, shows most of the steps and ratios needed to get about a hundred SPM. That's what a single rocket silo with three productivity modules mark 3 can achieve, so it's a decent benchmark to aim for. (Mining, smelting, oil-cracking, and wire-assembling are over to the left of this part of the graph. But they're less important.

The lines are a mess, but the numbers are clear, especially if I switch back to the list. This requires something like 18 yellow belts of iron and copper, which is absurd. If I switch to red belts, we get a slightly less absurd nine belts of each (plus 3.6 of green circuits, 1.9 of plastic, and basically everything else <1).

Most of the copper and about a third of the iron are in green circuits. Nearly half of the iron goes into steel. Remove that, and I only need 1.2 belts of iron and 3.7 of copper, about half of which goes into low-density structure.

None of this accounts for non-science production, of course (e.g. automating those assembling machine 3's). But even so, that's a lot less resources than I was anticipating. I considered leaving a spot for trains to add more resources to the bus, but it looks like that's basically unnecessary—especially if I ship in green circuits and steel from elsewhere.

I'm still gonna do it, though.

Next, a diagram I made myself.

At the top are things I intend to put on the main bus. Maybe not coal and batteries, and stone bricks are only required for three things (furnaces for purple science, walls for gray, and miscellaneous furnaces/oil refineries) so they'll fall off the bus quickly enough, but the important thing is that they're excluded from the rest of the diagram.

Automation, logistic, and military science are simple enough. Automation is just bus ingredients, while logistic and military science are basic things, half of which I want to mass-produce anyway. At this stage of the bus, I can also build some basic factory stuff, like mining drills and assemblers Mk 2 and more red belts.

This probably sounds weird, but I think it makes sense to put production science next. (Red chips need to go somewhere earlier, but that's fine.) Its three products are disconnected from things made elsewhere, and it lets me get stone bricks off the bus early. Actually, I might just set up that stone unloading station here, to feed rails to purple science and bricks to wall/electric furnace/miscellaneous factory stuff production.

And chemical science is directly linked to utility science, because both use engines. Ideally I'd like one line of engine assemblers that gets split 2:1 between blue science and electric engines, with a few engines of each type getting stashed for making flame turrets and rocket silos and stuff.

Anyways, the rest of chemical science is straightforward, and utility science isn't much harder. The tricky bit will be setting up a circuit system that lets me set how many logistics and construction bots I want in the robot network, which is something I'll definitely do just to the side of the bus.

And then space science. But that's quite a way off.

All that in mind, let's get some figures.

We'll need almost four red belts of green chips, most of which are going into red and blue chip production. This will take something like four belts of iron and six of copper. Yeah, I should just make green chips off-site.

Green chips aside, phase 1 science requires less than a belt of copper and iron, plus coal for the grenades and stone bricks for the walls.

Phase 2 science requires those bricks, a couple belts of iron, half a belt of copper, and plastic. Also advanced circuits.

Phase 3 science requires like half a belt of copper and iron, plus plastic and sulfur.

Phase 4 requires a full belt of iron, a belt and a half of copper, and a bunch of miscellaneous stuff like batteries and plastic and oil.

Phase 5 (Space) requires most of a belt of iron, almost two belts of copper, two belts of green chips, a belt of plastic, and a bunch of other random stuff.

To keep this nice and expandable, I'd say that four belts each of iron and copper with refill stops between phases should be good. Excessive for one rocket, but when I want to run five rocket silos for infinite research I'll thank me.

Likewise, three belts of green chips (which get replaced by red and blue down the bus) sounds good. A belt of steel, one of gears, one or two belts of plastic, maybe a battery belt.

While I'm here, I'll throw together some thoughts about where to produce various factory buildings.

Electric miners, pumpjacks, red belts, chemical plants, power poles, inserters, and assembler 2's can all go in phase 1.

Furnaces and oil refineries need to go with the other stone brick stuff, at the phase 1/2 boundary.

Substations, roboports, and logistics chests can go in phase 2, after the red chips.

Blue belts can go in phase 3, alongside electric engines. They both need lubricant. Getting the red belts to the blue belts to lubricate them is gonna be interesting. Is that a low-volume train job or a long-distance bot job? Or an awkward belt job? Or maybe Renai Transportation has some silly solution?

Not much new in phase 4.

Assembler 3's share speed modules 1 with RCUs, so it makes sense to build them together. Shipping assembler 2's from one end of the bus to the other is like the belt thing, but more.

Explosives need coal, which if it's not on the bus are only going to grenades. But they also need sulfur from blue science. Hm.

Nuclear reactor stuff and rocket silos are best handled in temporary production setups. Or maybe even handcrafted.

Oh yeah, labs need to go somewhere too.

#factorio #planning