#also these arent genetically accurate

[leafpool-loves-ashfur]

i drew the EchoAnt fam, now it’s time for the GrayRose fam!!!

something about Rosefire’s character just gets me. in all honesty, he doesn’t do shit plotwise or characterwise or anything. he’s just a background character who dies. i think he was actually killed trying to catch a squirrel or something stupid too. fell off a tree? idk. i remember when i came up with his name i thought it was super cool, and i loved imagining this hotshot, hyper feminine ginger tomcat who gossiped and did his hair all day instead of hunting lol

and then apparently i killed him off like super early. and i remember regretting it because i liked his name XD but, hey, he still managed to have two litters during that time!!! too bad he was dead for the second one :/

Rosefire is the ghost orange cat, Graytail is gray mama cat, Weaselsnap is ginger kit, Hawksting is cream/brown kit, Lynxwing is gray and white kit, Robinkit is black kit, Sleekstorm is light ginger tabby, Frogsplash is bright ginger and white cat, and Crowwhisper is edgy-hair gray cat (yes she’s preggo)!

here’s their ages!:

Graytail: 56 moons [4.5 years] (one moon older than Rosefire; currently 140 moons [11.5 years]) Rosefire: 54 moons [4.5 years] at death Crowwhisper, Frogsplash, Sleekstorm: 27 moons [2.3 years] Weaselsnap, Hawksting, Lynxwing, Robinkit: 1 day (Robinkit lives to be >1 moon; others currently 77 moons [6.5 years])

if you compare this family photo to the EchoAnt one, you can kinda see the difference. EchoAnt’s is relatively close, while these guys can kinda care less about each other. not to say they dont care for each other, but they aren’t the closest of families. Graytail was an emotionally distant mom who kind of had little attachment to her kits and high expectations of them, while Rosefire absolutely loved his kits but was also the “fun dad who never taught them any real life lessons and would rather choke on a lemon than say he loved them.” He also had expectations of them, but rather than that expectation to be good warriors, it was moreso to look pretty and pristine and keep a good rep in the gossip world.

eventually Frogsplash runs off to be a kittypet (and during his time? who wouldnt), Crowwhisper murders her husband for cheating on her and marries his mistress only to be left bitter after her wife dies too, Sleekstorm acts cold but he’s a secret softie who falls in lovely with happy-go-lucky former outsider Pikewhistle and they raise a lovely family together, Weaselsnap joins WindClan after his crush dies, Hawksting and Lynxwing join and eventually become leaders of a cult together, and Robinkit... dies

Graytail’s still kickin’ it as badass senior warrior too

here’s the EchoAnt fam and GrayRose fam photos together:

#rosefire's stripes are darker in the grayrose pic because i merged his layers to fix the weird opacity problem #warriors generations #generations ocs #rosefire #graytail #frogsplash #crowwhisper #sleekstorm #weaselsnap #lynxwing #hawksting #robinkit #i can ruin this ship by saying: Rose is not only Gray's uncle but also foster sibling #warrior cats be wildin (i say about my own ocs) #grayrose #grayrose ship #also these arent genetically accurate #crow and hawk would be torties #sleek frog and weasel would be gray/black #but lynx and robin are correct

[nanistar]

I know you said they arent technically albino eyes(?iirc), but I like that you still draw them accurately! A lot of people just made them pink when they ARE just really pale blue a majority if the time! N the pink is usually blood vessels :3!

WEIRD thing to compliment you on but the genetics of it are fascinating as well as it’s sad to see people think of it as creepy or unrealistic ect ect so its nice to see! <3

thank you!! i put a lot of thought into how their eyes work, cuz speculative biology is fun, and i don't really draw them the way i actually imagine them. (like how i've said before that most of moonclan would be very thin furred with rat tails but i dont want to draw similar looking cats so they have different markings and fur lengths and stuff) i also imagine all of moonclan to have wide, bulging eyes that don't blink often (like Rock from Canon) but i found that hard to emote with, so for the sake of the comic they have my typical style of eyes, except for in webwhisker and rubblekit's case. their eyes are how i wanted Everyones eyes to look. so my canon reason for web and their son being the only ones who have it is just saying that they are the first to evolve it. rather than albinism, my inspiration for how their eyes look is based on three things; russian topaz eyes, the eyes of some cave tetras i used to have, and the way cats eyes reflect in photos with flash. russian topaz is a really unique eye color that sometimes comes with birth defects and high/unique white spotting and can look "normal" blue or more like this:

(via messybeast)

blue with red shine. but if you know tumblr famous cat pangur a la @pangur-and-grim blog, she has russian topaz eyes where they look more purople/blue with more purpleish/red pupils.

^here's a good post of theirs where you can see what i mean.

russian topaz can also show as black irises with red pupils but that, while cool as fuck, was a bit too "dark forest"-y for me.

(the two above graphics are via messybeast, which is a GREAT source for cat genetic info) so anyway, that was my base, and then i wanted the eyes to be inconsistent in exact color because i want the light to reflect off of it more, and make them glint like holographic colors. i had some cave tetras that technically had red eyes, but when they moved their eyes to look around it felt like you could see into the eyes, like the pupils were just sitting on a layer of clear jelly instead of being surrounded by iris if that makes sense? so i wanted the moonclan cats to evolve that sort of light refraction. and i want their wide stares to be a bit unnerving. in the future, moonclan cats would eventually evolve completely blind eyes and then finally no eyes at all, but i think that would be Really far off. (they have only been in the mines for ~100 years or so.) i have... no idea if this would ACTUALLY be genetically realistic, but it's fun to pretend like i know stuff lol

#moonclan #lore #and their culture is fucked up too but we'll get to that #sbc

[irrigos]

someone in the mask of the rose channel in FBO was complaining that some people claimed the love interests in MotR arent attractive, and i said that none of them really appealed to me besides Milton, because he's the only one thats not a scrawny stick person

and some surely well-meaning person replied and said "To be fair, food seems rather scarce and tragically...fungal in the time of Mask. Hard to keep a sturdy build."

i didnt want to respond because i dont think i could without getting mean but i also need to complain

FIRST OF ALL, London fell relatively recently. People who were fat on the Surface would not have already become thin.

SECOND OF ALL, limited access to food =/= automatically really thin. frequently it changes people's metabolisms, so they gain weight more easily, because your body does not want you to die of starvation

THIRD OF ALL, just because you think it adds verisimilitude does not mean its good. if Archie started saying that he thinks women shouldn't vote because they're genetically inferior, that might be accurate to the setting, but that doesn't mean its a good idea to put in your game!

FOURTH OF ALL even if somehow it WAS entirely justified that all of the characters are incredibly thin, that does not mean that i HAVE to be attracted to them. I'm not into really thin people!! I'm worried if we ever had a fight, Rachel would just slide under the gap under my door 😭

#sorry i didnt realize that it was illegal for me to be annoyed at the lack of body diversity in FBG products #i think that maybe they just only know how to draw thin people #the cowards drawing skill

[lunefrog]

that stupid fucking radfem on that bee post makes me so mad bc they just totally hit their head on the point. social bees do have "distinguishable sexes" but they ARENT analogues to the human "male" and "female" and in fact, the sexes social bees actually have are queen, worker, and drone. SOLITARY bees are a much closer analogue, there are the females which lay eggs and then the males which fertilize the females. it is, also, not really. accurate to call queen, worker, and drone bee genders because bees don't have genders, nor do ANY non-human animal because the human conception of gender is something ONLY humans have, its a very specific human social-cultural phenomenon. but whatever that doesn't really matter. animals which express sexual dimorphism have a tendency to get Really Weird With It, in ways that make it difficult for us to place them in the easy boxes of male and female, especially with sexually dimorphic animals which have more than two sexes. birds are a good example of this.

it is, also, a very annoying conflation of the colloquial use of male and female and the scientific use of male and female (male being 'produces gametes which fertilize' and female being 'produces gametes which get fertilized') and i wish radfems would explode. it makes me so mad. like biology is mutable!! humans have such an insane biological plasticity which has been a large part of our success as animals, to deny that is simply unscientific and also i'm going to bite you and give you every disease.

"female" bees (and ALL OTHER STINGING INSECTS) have a funny little organ called an ovipositor. the ovipositor is how they lay eggs, and is much more analogous to a penis than it is to a vagina. the stinger, one of the key features of bees and other stinging insects, is also a modified ovipositor, which they use to inject venom into their target. if honeybees were mammals, they would share much with hyenas--which, well. have a structure through which they birth cubs called a pseudopenis--not unlike an ovipositor, actually, but instead of eggs it's full babies.

also, a weird tangeant, but mammals don't really, reproduce asexually. but most other animals will readily do so, snakes and other reptiles, amphibians, birds, fish, bugs, etc. plants and bacteria will also reproduce asexually (NOT talking about purely asexual species, which is very rare in vertebrates, only about asexual reproduction in general.) mammals are sort of the odd ones out and we tend to stick to two sexes, the exact reason why we and the rest of the animal kingdom don't just reproduce asexually isn't known but presumably having more genetic diversity is useful enough to warrant it, and asexual reproduction is sort of a dangerous game which makes organisms less genetically diverse than their sexually reproductive peers--which makes sense, given that most animals that can reproduce asexually also can reproduce sexually, and usually only resort to asexual reproduction in extreme cases, though there are notable exceptions to this--the Cape bee (social parasites), the Abystoma newt (kleptogenesis reproduction--they literally steal sperm from other species to reproduce), and the amazon molly (asexual fish).

it is also, in my opinion, totally erroneous to compare the sexes of HIVE INSECTS to HUMAN BEINGS. like are you fucking kidding me? there's been debate whether a hive individual even counts as its own animal because the entire hive functions as one organism, you're seriously going to die on the hill of BEES ARE WOMEN? grasping at fucking straws to try and prove gender is inherent and immutable and biology is restrictive. desperate.

#lune croaks #long post

[lawtistic]

Bluestar's genetically accurate family tree

I have RULES i set up for myself, here.

1.) The top if the family tree are the only cats that will have their canon designs, given they are genetically possible. (ex: there were two ginger she-cats with blue eyes, and both ginger she cats and gingers with blue eyes are extremely rare, so i traded one or another out so they wouldn't have both.)

2.) I will try to maintain the cat's appearances to be as close to the books as possible.

3.) If I don't care enough, I don't care enough. If a character isn't major or a parent to a major character, I wont put any effort into making them as accurate to the books as possible. (Or make them at all.) This also goes for if it makes more sense or if im bored with a constant color palette as the generations go (and its within genetic accuracy)

Note: I could use my own bases, but I didnt feel like it, so i used bases made by the lovely spade craft instead :)

Note 2: I used generators, genetics calculators, as well as my own knowledge for this. For the generators and calculators I used, I used multiple of them to fact check. However, if any of my facts are still wrong, do let me know. I'm less confident in the eye colors, but those are less important to me.

Up to Bluestar:

Rooktail and Daisytoe are at the top of the family tree, so their colors remain the same.

Flashnose is Daisytoe's sister, and due to the issue I mentioned above, she was changed. Flashnose was originally described as a soft she-cat with ginger fur, a white muzzle, and blue eyes. This is near genetically impossible, so I made her eyes amber, the most realistic eye color for an orange tabby.

Flashnose is the mother of Swiftbreeze, who we'll get to in Greystripe's family tree, so she wasn't included here.

While Daisytoe has grey spots, her base pelt is actually black. (Yes, black. It's not white, because she simply has large amounts of white spotting rather than a white base coat. White base coats are an extremely dominant gene and she would not have any spots if this were the case.) This is because grey (or rather, blue) cats are simply dilute black cats, and dilute is a recessive gene Rooktail doesn't have. Since Rooktail is also black, their kits, Goosefeather and Moonflower, were also black.

Since Daisytoe has a large amount of white spotting, this was also given to Goosefeather and Moonflower to a certain degree.

Stormtail is the top of his family tree, so he remains the same.

Moonflower, while not being visibly dilute, still has the dilute gene. Stormtail is grey/blue, which, as i mentioned earlier, means he's a diluted black cat. This means both of his kits can be diluted, and grey.

This is good for Bluestar, because she still looks accurate to her canon appearance, and is genetically accurate. However, Snowfur is not. She does not have enough white spotting to classify as white, and is diluted, so the black on her ears also couldn't be achieved.

Bluestar's kits

As you can see, Oakheart looks VERY different, and I'll tell you why in a different post when I cover Crookedstar's family. They're finished already, I'm just waiting to post them.

Mistystar and Stonefur look more or less the same, but Mosskit looks different due to both Oakheart and Bluestar being blue cats. This left no room for any differing cats, meaning all of their kits look the same.

Spoilers for A Starless Clan under this !!

I don't feel like doing Mistystar's kits because they arent important enough for me to care about. Yes, this includes Reedwhisker. All of his importance reside in his death, he did nothing imporant while alive other than shout a couple of times, and the rest of Mistystar's kits are dead, anyways.

Blackclaw also isnt that important from my memory, so I don't care enough to go all the way back to Shimmerpelt and Piketooth just to make 3 dead kids and a smelly middle aged also dead man genetically accurate. Maybe I'll come back to them at some point (mostly for Reedwhisker) but that's only if I decide to do a lineup of all the gentically accurate RiverClan deputies, which is unlikely.

#warriors #warrior cats #genetically accurate #genetically accurate warriors #cat genetics #cats #daisytoe #rooktail #flashnose #moonflower #goosefeather #stormtail #bluestar #bluefur #snowfur #oakheart #mistykit #stonekit #mosskit #mistyfoot #stonefur #mistystar

[wyslyyzr]

also, i am thinking of putting erik on the intersex spectrum / as an androgynos,  with primarily masculine / ‘male’ characteristic sex organs and, by posek decree, would be considered no different than a zachar. either way, i have no interest in fully divesting what he is or would be on a sexual and genetic scale because it really does not matter, and his external genitalia appears mostly “male”, but that at the depth of his person or the core of whom he is, he would be most closely associated with an androgynos. but would be considered male / treated no differently than a cut-and-dry cis male.  i guess if you need a reference the closest thing i’m thinking of is the “V” on the prader scale even though these scales arent entirely accurate since intersexuality can occur in a number of ways. 

#-- JUST LOOK AT ALL THAT WE HAVE MADE. | HEADCANONS. #he doesnt ID as intersex though. he relates to androgynos #which is jewish specific so goyim dont be weird. #he relates his entire being to gd and judaism

[this-should-do]

ive always wondered why headcrabs are able to function at all on humans cuz they eveolved seperatwly from anywhere wed be, and i dont think black mesas been involved enough to cause them to adapt to human physiology,

so my theory that ive developed today is that they arent functioning as well as they could becuz they evolved for coupling with vortigaunts, who function similarly enough to humans for the headcrabs to be able to couple with humans

however as seen ingame because they arent adapted to humans, their control of the human body is much less smooth causing the stiff zombie like movement seen ingame, if they coupled with a vortigaunt theyed function far more adeptly

this then goes on further in hl2 to the fast headcrab, and also banks off the theory that the new headcrab types seen are genetically engineered by the combine, to explain that some tweak in the fast headcrab allows them to control the human body far better than the average headcrab, and the poison headcrabs are also altered in a way that allows the fine motor skills to accurately throw,

i feel these alterations causing them to work better with humans is likely a fluke as i feel that if the combine were creating new types of headcrabs it would take far longer than the 15 odd years to even come up with poison headcrab (earliest seen in hla 5 years before hl2) and if tbey could force headcrabs to couple more successfully with humans theyd do it to average headcrabs as well, whos zombies in game dont fare much better than hl1

but again this all relies on the theory that the combine created the new headcrab types as it feels maybe more likely that such a change would occur through artificial adaptarion vs natural but then again im not a evolutionary biologist lol

#iwillspeakincessantly #i dunno just kinda spitting lol #could be utter bullshit but it seems cool to me so eho give a shit

[scruffyssketchbook]

sorry, i didnt mean to come off as super rude or anything (just a touch). i dont want to FORCE you to add a polyam relationship- sometimes its just not whats best for the characters after all- but it does upset me sometimes to see how ppl ignore or disregard polyam relationships because they "dont understand it" or similar. to me they arent that hard to understand bcus its literally just a normal relationship but 3 people or more. i trust that you wouldnt perpetuate harmful stereotypes of polyam (coughEScough), so id honestly rather take a good-intentioned polyam attempt than a 100% perfect and accurate one (after all, not every relationship itself IS perfect. so why does a polyam one need to be perfect?).

also i kind of thought the in-universe reasoning for incest was nice and very much a homage to real life breeding. like, yeah, in pokemon, you can breed whomever. just like people do in real life. I kind of liked that aspect in SSEC- it showed how horrible their enviroment was. the eevees were being mass-bred, and for what? just the trainer's desire to have eevees. it was just like real life animal breeding, where animals are bred with their siblings and parents to produce the most desirable (and often most fucked up) offspring. but at least in the pokemon world they dont result in fucked up genetics (not that it justifies it anymore). plus i liked the brotherhood system in the fact that it kind of made found families based less on biological ties.

(also why is my backspace broken on specifically Tumblr and Tumblr only.)

Author chan: I believe that if someone is ignoring or disregarding something due to not understand something, the best thing to do is to explain it to them (preferably nicely), as you said, it's easy to understand. I know that its a relationship with 3 or more people, but the thing that I don't really understand right now would be how a larger group may handle it, as my only current references to this would be situations where one person is dating multiple people and 3 or more people all dating eachother (Also the boyfriends webtoon, which apparently is bad representation). Also I believe that if I want to tackle things like Poly relationships, I should at least have one good example of it, or at least a positive example of it. Not perfect, but not like- bad or insulting. And I liked that aspect of SSEC as well but- the sweet home Alabama jokes, mannnnn. They were too much. I believed I couldn't properly explain why its common in the world without like- people thinking I actually supported incest (I do not support incest. Eww)

[kits-ships]

🍼🍼🍼! ✨

using this an an opportunity to infodump abt nilla's twins >:3

so, the likelihood of having twins is passed down from mother to daughter so this isn't genetically accurate but! its too late

nilla has twins with 17!! because 17 + 18's original names were lapis and lazuli after the stone, i named the boy dez and the girl rose after the desert rose crystal! they both wear little bandanas like 17's original design.

dez loves exploring, learning how to defend the nature preserve, and helping rose discover that other people arent all that scary!! excluding poachers of course.

rose, on the other hand, is more interested in animal rehabilitation like her mother. she's a pretty anxious child but is happy as long as she's with her family! she does have one person shes particularly scared of though and thats vegeta- he's just far too pointy and loud....

rose tends to trust other kids over adults and she finds that she likes trunks a lot! he's fun to play alongside but he also has a good sense of boundaries for, you know, a child.

dez doesn't really have any definitive best friend, but he likes sparring with goten a lot! he also has a lot of fun carrying marron and pan around and always makes sure that they aren't excluded from games!! true sigma behavior

also, much like no one really knew where 17 was, they also didnt really know where nilla was. so, when goku found them and saw that they had kids he was like "???? didnt expect these two as a couple but okay! let's go beat the crap out of each other now :)"

#fan kid tw #naturelovers #selfship #selfship community #didnt proofread this but #infodump concluded........... #nilla; the strength to leave

[bananaman-mp3]

Ten

hey uh… sorry for being gone so long i had a LOT of shit to do and im very weak so sacrificing my sleeping hours is unadvisable and detrimental to me. so i have a plan to read in a lot and then queue the posts to 1 every three days or so, to try and keep some consistency… idk if itll work well though, so well see.

also! i have the rest of the books, so i dont have an excuse not to finish this anymore. lets see how it goes. hopefully i dont abandon this.

anyway.

chapter 10, according to my calculations, around the first quarter of the way through.

we start out with our darling mare, here, thinking about how theres nuance to the red/silver division and shes right in the middle of it, which is a great way for me to bring up something that ive wondered and i think i havent rambled about yet.

is mare really the first red that differs from the norm, like, ever? because that sounds unlikely. theres mentions of other kingdoms in this book, and even then, kingdoms are usually big. whos to say there arent any other powerful reds hiding because they knew as soon as they found out, theyd be persecuted for being different, even if they arent at fault. or hell, how about a silver with no powers? has that ever happened? i bet their families would try to hide their existence from the rest of the world or outright execute them. i dont know which ones worse. maybe theyd be disowned and sent to live with the reds. all of these are great book worthy ideas as well.

i have the feeling that there might be more reds out there with powers too, and the story will head that way. for all i know the scarlet guard could be precisely this! maybe a new generation is born with powers through evolution, because it hasnt been explained yet if in this universe theres always been reds and silvers or if this was the product of evolution or even of genetic alterations. theres so much to talk about here, like, what if a silver and a red have kids? what are they like? are they powerful reds or powerless silvers? only reds or silvers? can they even have children together? is mare secretly the product of one such union? who knows. not me, thats for sure.

mare attempts to get into character here. also- is mareena pronounced as mare-ena or marina? cals joke about mare being a good nickname hint towards the former, but who knows, maybe this is a heavily debated topic in the fandom. whats the general consensus, here? comments are appreciated. well, back on the story, mareena seems to be a cold unimpressionable girl, for mare.

people are talking about her, and tiberias (is it ty-berias or tee-berias?) and elara stand above everyone else. as our girl here said “To look powerful is to be powerful.”

cal is seems displeased and maven absolutely pissed. damn. these two seem interesting, but i sense their dynamic is gonna be one of those “noble and kind older brother, resentful and selfish younger brother” which hm. i dont know if i like that. but i dont wanna be cynical, maybe this will better than just that.

“At least I won’t have to deal with a good liar.”

is anyone else smelling that? its the wonderful scent of a good roast.

king tiberias anounces this queenstrial brought more than a future queen and tells us more about her “origin story” , where we learn that ethan titanos was killed by lakelander spies. i dont recall who they were though… >:/

the king and queen make a big show to, as mare kindly puts “slip a Red girl into a crown without anyone noticing”, which yeah, you gotta take measures because people are sure to complain about it. im sure they still will even with this whole sob story.

props to miss aveyard for writing future queen evangeline as having horrible fashion, pretty accurate to irl rich people. what the fuck is a “dress of interlocked metal rings”??? im picturing it and it sucks, sorry.

hdjfkgk ofc the king says he will “atone for [his] ignorance” bitch you people hate reds, stop clowning.

evangeline punching air mentally rn. girl just wanted that calore ass (its funny bc calore means hot get it. get i-)

maven proposes as scripted and mare has a short moment of consideration. who would she have chosen if things were different? kilorn, obviously. i want to point out maven seems to be kinder but idk it could be his act.

cal gives his gentle king™ speech and obviously chooses evangeline. also this girls has some azula vibes im telling you. maybe that is her whole thing. i just hope hes bullies her brother too because fucking ptolemus??

she radiates the same evilness as queen elara, but i wish she could be like a subversion of that trope. evil step-mom and now evil technically-step-sister. what if they become besties instead. would be wild right.

on another not im still wondering if shes genuinely into cal or if shes more of power-hungry #girlboss. maybe its both.

nvm evangeline fucking hates her i dont think this is anything short of a potential slowass burn friendship. mare also hates evangeline. sigh. i know this was written back in 2015 but i can dream.

as expected, they bring back the scarlet guard issue. something something we want to breed the most powerful children possible to keep our power over the reds and other kingdom, especially now that there are some rebellious reds out there against us.

damn i wish we could see what farley was up to. lowkey really liked her.

maven speaks to her reassuring- cool, nice to seem him warm up -but mares too preoccupied feeling guilty about having a great feast while her family likely wont be having a good meal. holy shit gisa was supposed to work to get them out from the stilts… they are probably worse off now. they dont even know that she is supposedly never going back home. her guilt is completely understandable.

oh- she was getting drunk to cope- yeah probably for the best that maven stepped in. also he apparently was a dick because he wanted to choose his wife. i mean, kinda understandable. and hes not one of the worst people mares had the displeasure to face so far. ill stay on alert for any potential friendship.

he didnt even have a girl in mind but he still wouldve liked to have that choice- i kinda resonate with this so he gets extra points. but obviously mares irritated because she doesnt get the luxury of choice. or anything, really. she never has. understandable, girl, vent all that shit before it consumes you. but also. maybe. not. in public.

aw damn, maven is the unseen brother, hes jealous but also… lonely. i think. yeah, poor kid. i mean hes still rich though.

lets talk about that though. mare rolling her eyes out at every person here complaining is such a mood. yeah their all rich and privileged what have you got to complain about bitch. but yeeeees i knooooow that they have their other, non-money-related problems. its just kinda funny. this girl has suffered hunger, trauma and constant distress and shes listening to a prince complain about not getting to choose who his wife will be.

ok thats it for now. ill try to read more often, or at least have some chapters queued.

#red queen first read #this ones a slow one #im starting to like maven #evangeline is azula #uhhh yeah thats it

[arcticdementor]

The University of California system is getting rid of its SAT/ACT requirement. More will follow.

There’s a lot to say. First, we must distinguish between two types of tests, or really two types of testing. When people say “standardized tests,” they think of the SAT, but they also think of state-mandated exams (usually bought, at great taxpayer expense, from Pearson and other for-profit companies) that are designed to serve as assessments of public K-12 schools, of aggregates and averages of students. The SAT, ACT, GRE, GMAT, LSAT, MCAT, and similar tests are oriented towards individual ability or aptitude; they exist to show prerequisite skills to admissions officers. (And, in one of the most essential purposes of college admissions, to employers, who are restricted in the types of testing they can perform thanks to Griggs v Duke Power Co.) Sure, sometimes researchers will use SAT data to reflect on, for example, the fact that there’s no underlying educational justification for higher graduation rates1, but SATs are really about the individual. State K-12 testing is about cities and districts, and exists to provide (typically dubious) justification for changes to education policy2. SATs and similar help admissions officers sort students for spots in undergraduate and graduate programs. This post is about those predictive entrance tests like the SAT.

Liberals repeat several types of myths about the SAT/ACT with such utter confidence and repetition that they’ve become a kind of holy writ. But myths they are.

1. SATs/ACTs don’t predict college success. They do, indeed. This one is clung to so desperately by liberals that you’d think there was some sort of compelling empirical basis to believe this. There isn’t. There never has been. They’re making it up. They want it to be true, and so they believe it to be true.

…

2. The SATs only tell you how well a student takes the SAT. This is perhaps a corollary to 1., and is equally wrong. They tell us what they were designed to tell us: how well students are likely to perform in college. But the SATs tell us about much more than college success. Let me run this graphic again.

…

3. SATs just replicate the income distribution. No. Again, asserted with utter confidence by liberals despite overwhelming evidence that this is not true. I believe that this research represents the largest publicly-available sample of SAT scores and income information, with an n of almost 150,000, and the observed correlation between family income and SAT score is .25. This is not nothing. It is a meaningful predictor. But it means that the large majority of the variance in SAT scores is not explainable by income information. A correlation of .25 means that there are vast numbers of lower-income students outperforming higher-income students. Other analyses find similar correlations. If SAT critics wanted to say that “there is a relatively small but meaningful correlation between family income and SAT scores and we should talk about that,” fair game. But that’s not how they talk. The routinely make far stronger claims than that in an effort to dismiss these tests all together, such as here by Yale’s Paul Bloom. (Whose work I generally like.) It’s just not that hard to correlate two variables together, guys. I don’t know why you wouldn’t ever ask yourselves “is this thing I constantly assert as absolute fact actually true?” Well, maybe I do.

In general, progressive and left types routinely overstate the power of the relationship between family wealth and academic performance on all manner of educational outcomes. The political logic is obvious: if you generally want to redistribute money (as I do) then the claim that educational problems are really economic problems provides ammo for your position. But the fact that there is a generic socioeconomic effect does not mean that giving people money will improve their educational outcomes very much, particularly if richer people are actually mildly but consistently better at school than poorer for sorting reasons that are not the direct product of differences in income. That is, what correlation does exist between SES and academic indicators might simply be the metrics accurately measuring the constructs they were designed to measure.

And throwing money at our educational problems, while noble in intent, hasn’t worked. (People react violently to this, but for example poorer and Blacker public schools receive significantly higher per-pupil funding than richer and whiter schools, which should not be a surprise given that the policy apparatus has been shoveling money at the racial performance gap for 40 years.) All manner of major interventions in student socioeconomic status, including adoption into dramatically different home and family conditions, have failed to produce the benefits you’d expect if academic outcomes were a simple function of money. I believe in redistribution as a way to ameliorate the consequences of poor academic performance. There is no reason to think that redistribution will ameliorate poor academic performance itself.

5. SATs are easily gamed with expensive tutoring. They are not. This one is perhaps less empirically certain than the prior two and on which I’m most amenable to counterargument, but the preponderance of the evidence seems clear to me in saying that the benefits of tutoring/coaching for these tests are vastly overstated. Again, a simplistic proffered explanation for a troublesome set of facts that then implies simplistic solutions that would not work.

6. Going test optional increases racial diversity. This one, I think, must be called scientifically unsettled. However both Sweitzer, Blalock, and Sharma and Belasco, Rosinger, and Hearn find no appreciable increase in racial diversity after universities go test-optional. “Holistic” application criteria like admissions essays almost certainly benefit richer students anyway. What’s more, we have to ask ourselves what “diversity” really means in this context. Private colleges and universities keep the relevant data close to the vest, for obvious reasons, but it’s widely believed that many elite schools satisfy their internal diversity goals for Black students by aggressively pursuing wealthy Kenyan and Nigerian international students, whose parents have the means to be the kind of reliable donors that such schools rely on so heavily. I’m not aware of a really comprehensive study that examines this issue, and it would be hard to pull off, but the relevant question is “do various policies intended to improve diversity on campus actually increase the enrollment of American-born descendants of African slaves?” I can’t say, but you can guess where my suspicions lie.

…

All of that is prologue to the bigger point: the controversy over college entrance examinations stems not from the examinations themselves, but from the fact that they reveal profound differences in human capital that make progressives uncomfortable. The SATs don’t create inequality. They reveal inequality.

…

The racial achievement/performance gap is a curious thing even in the context of an American political discourse that seems to get more bizarre by the day. That the gap exists is, on balance, not controversial. Gaps in performance are observed on essentially every measured academic metric, though the size of the effects vary from context to context, and the general distribution is Asian American students at the top, white students next, then Hispanic, then Black. The Black-white gap in particular has shrunk from the era of (explicitly) segregated schools but progress has not been consistent or linear. Most people in academia and politics admit it exists: prominent Black politicians like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris reference it, every major think tank and foundation operating in the educational space identifies it as a major priority, and the NAACP used to address if often, though their Education and Education Strategy pages have recently disappeared so it’s hard to know where they stand now. These things are faddish but once upon a time every other dissertation written by someone getting a PhD in Education was about the gap. We can observe it even outside of reference to controversial tests, such as noting that the white high school graduation rate is 10% higher than that for Black students. The achievement gap is a thing.

And yet I also find a rapidly-congealing social prohibition against talking about these gaps in progressive spaces. If you refer to a racial achievement gap in a lot of liberal or left contexts now, you’ll find that people clam up fast and get visibly uncomfortable, even if you take pains to point out that an academic achievement gap does not imply an academic potential gap. People just don’t want to acknowledge that gaps exist at all; our racial discourse appears to have become such a blunt instrument that the acknowledgement of racial difference is controversial even when you preface discussion with the belief (that I hold) that the gap is the product of innumerable environmental and sociocultural factors rather than genetics or other inherent differences. Simply saying “Black students consistently score lower on tests like the SATs, have lower average GPAs, and have worse metrics on ancillary concerns like truancy” - again, Barack Obama’s position, Kamala Harris’s position, Cory Booker’s position - is enough for people to start launching into harangues about the inherent violence of those comparisons. People just do not want to talk about this stuff.

…

Those concerns with group differences, at least, have some sort of basic political logic and are amenable to complaints that they are the product of systemic inequality. (They are, but not the inequalities that people think, and again the SAT gap is a result of systemic inequality, not a cause of systemic inequality.) More disturbing to me is the rise of resistance within academia to the notion of inequalities between individuals. When I was in grad school more than a half-decade ago, I observed with some considerable unhappiness that it had become increasingly socially unacceptable to speak of some students as simply better students than others, as being more talented, harder working, or more prepared. All of this was seen as inegalitarian and, eventually, as “white supremacist” even if every student being compared in a given context was white. There were many instructors back then who bragged about giving all students As, etc., and I must assume this practice has only grown over time. In the humanities and social sciences especially there is a growing movement to reject assessment, including grading - the means through which we sort better students from worse - as the hand of illegitimate power that “does violence” to the students who voluntarily attend college.

…

Of course, that complicity in the neoliberal machine is not some recent injustice; it is the very reason that colleges and universities are funded by our society at all. If this trend continues, not just eliminating SAT requirements or increasingly refusing to hierarchize students with grades but in rejecting the entire sorting function of the university, academia will collapse. Wealthy parents aren’t paying Harvard to enrich their children in the humanistic sense. They’re paying Harvard to act as a marker of their child’s superiority in the labor market and the social hierarchy. Employers value college because it provides at least some meaningful information about who will succeed as a worker; remove that function and the financial justification for a hideously expensive system dies. I would love if education dropped its association with meritocracy, but that cannot occur within our current system. The professors who self-aggrandize through their rejection of their hierarchizing function, if successful, would cause the doom of the modern university. (These tenured radicals, of course, never are so moved by the inherent inequities of academia that they quit the profession.)

Today, it is somehow controversial to say “some people are smarter than others,” a reflection of one of the simple brute realities of human life and something that has been accepted as true for thousands of years.

Here is the essence of it: hierarchies of relative academic performance are remarkably stable throughout life, due to differences in inherent or intrinsic academic ability of whatever origin, and the SATs and similar mechanisms reveal those differences in a way that liberal America is increasingly unable to accept. This is the source of all of this angst, not the technical details of whether a test is fair or valid or just, but a liberal intelligentsia that is incapable of honestly confronting the fact that different human beings have fundamentally different intrinsic abilities. I believe in political equality, social equality, equality of rights, equality of dignity, equality of protection under the law. But the notion that all people are equally talented, in academics or anything else, is an absurdity, and as much as people will rush to deny intrinsic difference, I suspect that pretty much everybody knows that they are real. When you were a child you casually assumed that some of your classmates were naturally better at school than others, and you did because it was true.

This is the conversation that I tried, and failed, to force with my book: left-of-center political movements, from center-left to radically socialist, cannot achieve the goal of the greater good for everyone, including greater political and economic equality, while pretending that we believe in equality of human ability. The only way to intelligently address various social, economic, and political equalities related to differences in human potential is to acknowledge that those differences exist. The current rending of garments regarding inequalities within our education system has led to certifiably bizarre situations like the movement, currently gathering steam, to teach math as if it is as subjective as literature or art. But this won’t make Black kids or poor kids or girls or anyone else actually better at math. And if the universities really give up their function of creating an academic hierarchy for political reasons, employers will find new systems that do that, or a lot of people will get hired and quickly fired for not being competent. This is not an intelligent policy approach. Getting rid of the SATs won’t make unprepared kids prepared. It won’t make naturally untalented students naturally talented. It won’t make kids who aren’t smart into smart kids. All it will do is hide the reality of those unpleasant inequalities.

#freddie deboer #read the whole thing #substack

[sephirothisaslut]

Hypocratic Oath

(Featuring doctor/researcher!Cloud)

Cloud was 8 when he first found the library in the Nibelheim Mansion.

Through his childhood, Cloud often stayed in the mansion. Hiding from bullies, staying the day to pass time, or just simply to explore. No one would bother him here. All the kids think the place haunted, and all the adults fear it just as much. It made the perfect place to relax or hide.

Cloud thought he had already seen every nook and crany in the mansion. But was surprised when he found a library full of scientific text. It's doors made to look like any other wall, making it hard to spot.

There arent much books in Nibelheim. There's a library in the school, but it can more accurately be described as a classroom full of books instead of a proper library. And it's not like the custodian would let him in.

So as soon as Cloud entered, he immediately started reading.

At first, Cloud was very confused. He had a very limited understanding and comprehension of the text. But even from the little information he was able to gather, he was able to piece together the horrifying things ShinRa has done.

It spooked him so much, it took him a full week till he decided to read more.

He read them all. Project S, Jenova, and Sephiroth.

At that time, Cloud didn't know who this Sephiroth is. All he knows is that he must have led a painfull life.

-------

Cloud was 10 when he first saw Sephiroth on the television.

A general leading a war.... A fourteen year old general.

His eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Cloud's mother immediately noticed this.

"Cloudy you look pale, are you ok?" Claudia stroked her son's forehead, looking for any sign of fever.

"Y-yeah I'm good" Cloud managed to hide his shock.

"Really?"

"Yes ma. Really"

That night, Cloud thought of how it must have felt. His mother is warm and kind, he'd feel lonely without her. He wondered if Sephiroth felt any semblance of kindness or tenderness in his life.

The very next morning, he immediately raced to the mansion to find more. To find answers.

He found his answers in the form of Vincent Valentine.

He almost quite literally fell on him.

The man loomed over Cloud. His glowing red eyes and equally blood red cape screamed 'vampire'. And Cloud was rightly frightened so.

"What are you doing here child?" The man said with a glare.

"T-the library! Sephiroth- I mean-"

"What do you know about Sephiroth?" The man demanded.

Cloud stiffened both in fear and surprise. His face draining of color. The tall man seemed to notice this, and slowly crouched down to Cloud's level, now attempting to look non threatening.

"I'm sorry if I scared you, but can you tell me about Sephiroth?" The man asked kindly.

Cloud only nodded, his fear slowly evaporating. "I can show you the library" he said quietly.

"Take me there? Please?" The man asked almost desperately.

Cloud just nodded again, and took the stranger by his hand and led him to the hole he fell in.

Vincent looked at the child. How curious that this kid would choose to guide him by his misshapen hand.

"I'm Cloud. Cloud Strife" the child said in a shy tone.

"Vincent Valentine"

The child's small smile made him think there's hope for him yet.

---------------

Years passed and Cloud and Vincent's friendship grew.

Vincent was able to teach Cloud a number of things. He helped him comprehend the numerous scientific texts in the library, and even taught him about science and self-defence.

Vincent also helped distinguish truth from lie.

Cloud learned the truth of Sephiroth's true mother. How a scientist named Hojo betrayed them, and what he did to Vincent. In turn, Cloud told Vincent about Sephiroth's role as general, frequently updating him on the situation in Wutai. And sometimes bringing him home cooked meals.

With Vincent's tutoring and the library's numerous texts, Cloud grew smarter. He read because of curiousity. But now read to learn. This brought him to the top of his class, sparking an interest in biology and science. Though this didn't change the town's view on the Strifes.

His Ma, on the other hand, felt proud. And so did he.

-----

Cloud was 14 when he decided to go to Midgar.

Not to be a SOLDIER, no. But to be a Doctor.

After learning all those things about how SOLDIER was made, he couldn't stomach possibly being one.

It was a week after his birthday that he decided he'd help Vincent in any way he can. At first, Vincent disagreed. Saying it'll be dangerous, and that he'd be safer away from him. But Cloud is stubborn and fierce. There's a reason they're called Strife.

So, after some reluctance, Vincent eventually agreed.

Cloud is but a child. He's abysmal at fighting, and his aim with a gun is barely passable. The Turks wont suit him, and neither will SOLDIER. The only thing he has is his intelligence.

So Cloud steeled himself, and made the decision to join ShinRa's Science Department. Bringing him closer to Hojo, and by extension, Sephiroth.

"Oh my little raincloud, I'm going to miss you!" Claudia hugged her son. Silently praying to Odin for a safe journey, and thanking him for blessing her with Cloud.

"I'll miss you too ma." Cloud said, hugging back. Who would have thought that his grades would be enough to grant him a ShinRa Science Program Scholarship.

With a wave goodbye to his mother, Cloud Strife set out into the harsh world.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

"Professor Hojo, the President want's to see you" Cloud said behind the man.

The greasy scientist only tisked. And angrily dumped his clip board on Cloud.

"Keep track of the the data. Do not take your eyes off the specimen" Hojo snapped.

Cloud held back a snarky remark and politely nodded instead.

He looked down into the enclosure. The creature thrashing around in it's own blood. Choking on the mako gas.

He only continued to record data.

-----

"I'm Zack Fair! SOLDIER extroidinaire!" The newest SOLDIER First Class saluted at Cloud. His cheery smile a stark contrast to the rubble behind him.

Cloud had headed out in civilian clothing hoping to meet up with Vincent and Aerith. (Aerith was scared of him at first, learning that he apparently worked for Hojo).But instead somehow got caught in an AVALANCHE explosion.

"Name's Cloud. Cloud Strife" He somehow was reminded of a puppy as he studied Zack.

"Oh! You're Aerith's friend!" Zack shook his hand enthusiastically.

"And you're her boyfriend"

"Yup."

"You know as her friend, I'm obligated to say: if you break her heart, I will break you"

"Yeah yeah I know the drill"

Cloud only smiled at the raven-haired puppy's antics.

------------

Two dark figures walked through the dark alleyways of the slums.

The smaller one knocked on the door of a closed bar.

"It's me"

The door opened and the pair walked in.

Both of them shedding their cloaks revealing two SOLDIER First Class.

"Ok he's here now explain" Zack sat on a stool facing the rest of the room.

Angeal and Genesis are there. So is Aerith and Vincent.

"Yes, do explain. As I recall, you two told me that you'd 'never show you faces' to me ever again." Sephritoh said, clearly hurt from Genesis and Angeal's defection.

"Seph, please wait-"

"I did my waiting Genesis! Now explain before I leave."

"They were dying" Vincent said from the corner of the room. "The J-cells they had were degrading"

"And how did you cure this? Even Hollander couldn't save them." Sephiroth asked suspiciously, still mad from the previous interaction. "Unless you asked Hojo"

"Before we do, we need to talk about Jenova-" Angeal was cut off by Sephiroth.

"We can do that later. Now answer my question."

Both Zack and Sephiroth looked at the group expectantly. There is weight to Sephiroth's words.

"I cured them" a voice from the door suddenly said.

"You" Sephiroth hissed.

"Cloud?" Zack gasped.

"I work for Hojo. I'm his primary assistant"

"What?" Zack tensed

"And you trust this man?" Sephiroth turned to Genesis and Angeal, gesturing to Cloud.

"Will you stop and listen!" Cloud snapped. "Listen here you pompous asshole, I risked my ass making you three that cure in Hojo's lab!"

"Wait three-"

"Yes, three. As in even Sephiroth needed one. So you better sit down and listen to what we have to say" Cloud growled, staring Sephiroth down. Daring him to say something.

As the silence permeated, Angeal cleared his throat, as if to ask permittion to continue.

"It started with Jenova"

------

They burned the Nibelheim reactor to the ground.

Sephiroth and Zack defected with Genesis, taking with them the rest of SOLDIER and a bulk of the infantry division.

They recruited Tifa on the way. Along with Yuffie -a Wutainese ninja, Cid - a pilot with a penchant for tea, and Nanaki -one of Hojo's specimens that Cloud helped escape, and AVALANCHE.

Cloud stayed in ShinRa as their spy.

But ever so often, he'd still meet with his friends just to chat or drink.

"Strife"

Cloud looked at Sephiroth questioningly. "What can I do for you?"

Sephiroth almost looked bashfull. His body language looked shy.

"I would-... I would like to thank you"

"For what"

"For...everything, I suppose" If the Silver General could blush, then he might have been now.

Cloud's breath hitched. "You're Welcome, General"

"Please, call me Sephiroth"

"Well then, call me Cloud. Sephiroth"

That day, Zack endlessly teased Sephiroth about his tiny smile.

---------

Cloud tended to Sephiroth's wounds. Careful to make sure it didn't hurt the man any more than necessary.

"You really need to take care of yourself"

"I'm fine"

Cloud sighed, "Sephiroth, you're still human. You need rest."

"After what Hojo did, I'm surprised you can still call me human" Sephiroth said bitterly.

Cloud grasped the man's shoulder, turning the general to face him.

"Sephiroth. Look at me" Cloud asked sternly. "You're as human as everyone as us"

"But-"

"Humanity isn't determined by your genetics, you know that" Cloud gently insisted.

"I-...Thank you" Sephiroth whispered, sounding broken.

That made Cloud realize how much Sephiroth must have wanted to hear that.

To hear confirmation of his humanity.

--------

It took several aching years till they finally took over ShinRa.

SOLDIER readily supported their generals, and the Turks soon defected after Veld and Vincent told them everything.

It didn't take long for Hojo to fall, and ShinRa to be taken over by Rufus.

Scarlett, Heidegger, Palmer, and even Hollander died. All of them officially coincidentally died of heart attacks. Confirmed by the new head of the Science Department himself.

"We finally did it huh?" Cloud leaned against Sephiroth's shoulders.

"Hmm, you think this will work?" Sephiroth moved to wrap his hands around Cloud.

"Well me and Reeve are working on alternate energy sources right now. It should be fine"

Sephiroth nuzzled Cloud's neck. "For now we should rest"

Cloud sighed into their embrace. "Yeah...we should"

(Loosely based on Professor Strife)

#sefikura #ff7 #sephiroth #cloud #ff7 remake #cloud strife #sephiroth x cloud #final fantasy #sephcloud #fanfic #au #alternate universe #doctor cloud #angeal hewley #genesis rhapsodos #zack fair #vincent valentine #aerith gainsborough #tifa lockhart #zerith #if you squint

[squirrelcrow-po3]

Mosspelt and Frogtail w their daughter Willowshine? Or even the classic sweethearts Shimmerpelt and Piketooth w their kids Skyheart and Blackclaw

alrighty!!

mosspelt's parents arent known so lets just accept that shes a normal tortoiseshell molly with level 4 white spotting (belly, chest, chin, tail-tip, and paws)

also her mate was actually frogleap! but the name was close enough lol. he does have known parents, so lets take a look. hes apparently a... gray tabby with a striped tail? uhh that doesnt happen lol. lets just say hes a blue tabby for now. his mother is 'mottled' so lets say shes a dilute tortie. his father is a black tabby. so hes fine as a blue tabby (though for reference he also could have been a black tabby, a red tabby, or a cream tabby)

so lets look at willowshine! she has a 50/50 chance of having white spotting. if mosspelt doesnt carry a dilute gene, willowshine could either be a normal tortie, a normal torbie, or a black tabby. if mosspelt does carry a dilute gene, willowshine could be those or blue, a blue tabby, a dilute tortie, or a dilute torbie

so her family is pretty genetically accurate!

[dog-teeth]

potentially odd question: do you have any resources on how to figure out if you have jewish heritage? im starting to think i might and id like to learn more. if youre not the right person for this question, no pressure! id love if you could just point me in the right direction, thank you so much

asking people in your family is the only viable way to do it probably. you could also take one of those heritage blood tests but those arent super accurate especially since judaism is an ethnoreligion i wouldnt trust one of those tests (plus they can use and sell your genetic data for whatever the corporation wants and i dont trust that) and honestly if youre interested in being jewish, imo whats important is actively seeking out connection to the culture, educating yourself about it and participating in the community whatever that entails for you specifically. its certainly interesting to know your blood ancestry but tbh the percentages dont have as much bearing on your actual cultural ties. learning about your family history is cool tho! as someone who is ethnically jewish i do understand the desire to have a blood connection to it, but imo learning that youre some little percent jewish isnt as important as actively seeking out ways to become closer to jewish culture if thats what you want to do. if its just out of curiosity and youre not looking to make cultural/religious ties to judaism then idk!

something i love about judaism is if you want to have a connection to it and be a part of it, you can, even if you arent tied to it by ancestry. even if you dont want to convert to judaism, you can still take lessons from jewish philosophy and religion and history, cook jewish food or learn about jewish art and language and music, and form your own way of connecting to jewishness :)

#ez answers #jewish

[just-a-mod]

which

@sparklehoard​

oh no!! you’ve activated my info-dump card!

lol Jamie is a cryptid, but in more accurate terms he is a hybrid 

his father is a satyr and his mother is a kitsune, he just took after his mother alot more than his father

Jamies’ father, Harris, some times also known as Hyrsam the fool/the savage

a fairly laid back satyr who loves to have fun and games and also some times causes rebellions with good reason. also maybe might be an arch fey, y’know, no biggy

oh also he has a bae named Leslie and they are stupid shades of helplessly in love

Jamie’s mother, Zandra

two different strands of kitsune, 2nd child of a fairly old kitsune, Zandra is abit mischevious and enjoys a exciting life

she is currently married to a were-panther named Abeo

Harris and Zandra hooked up once in the past, but Zandra realized soon after she wasn’t really interested in men and Harris was like ‘neat, can we still be friends and flirting rivals?’ and Zandra was like “HELL YEAh’ so they use to try to see who could bag the hottest woman in the club

but Zandra soon realized, once Harris was gone, that she was le-pregnant and, without any way to contanct him, just kinda went ‘oh okay guess im a mom now’ and had lo-and behold, Jamie!!

Zandra and Abeo pretty much raised Jamie, and it wasn’t until well into his young adult years (like last year lol) that he met his biological father for the first time. to say it’s a little weird is an understatement, but they are warming up to each other 

so yes! Jamie ends up being this strange mix of a fae and a fae and a half of genetics. which some times causes a rather unstable being in his physical form, given the fact he took a little lot more after his mother than his father

it was only recently discovered, when he was placed under heavy amounts of stress, that his form will destablize and become more animal like. much like the fox form of his mother, and it is also because of Harris’s genes just being more..beastial (harris has his own form like this)

but! Jamie has learned how to manage this with therapy and training and the support of family andf riends and can even shape shift onat will now 

but the fun fact is still he’s a hybrid whose genes were kinda confused/over lapping of each other, which resulted in him having four working ears, two growing in where his horns _should_ have been as a satyr. it wasn’t until recently the horn actually grew (quite painfully) out of the left ear-ish area, and it’s the only one that has come out, they arent’ sure why but it’s there

Jamie has gone through a lot to accept himself for who he is and how he is and love himself for it

thanks for coming to my ted-talk, i’ll take any questions if there are any : )

#justapost #justatext #6th #December #2020 #December 6th 2020 #art #sparklehoard #oh also fun fact but one of his half brothers xavion? #one of his horns got broken so he matches Jamie quite accidentally

[somnilogical]

davis tower kingsley (listed here on the cfar instructor page) who harassed a cis woman about her appearance another cis women reported this to acdc (the people who wrote the thing about how brent was great) and afaict they did nothing, claims that if trans people and gay people dont "repent and submit to the pope" they will burn in hell, defended the spanish inquisitions, wrote about how the mission system werent actually abductions, slavery, forced conversions and this was propaganda, defends pretty much any atrocity that an authority, "believes" the catholic god exists and does not try and destroy them, submits to them. and so much more.

born into another era they would actually work for the california mission system and say it was good.

said thing that cached out to that emma and somni should repent and submit to the rationalist community. wrote up a rant about "how about fuck you. go lick the boots of your dark mistress anna salamon." didnt send. got kicked by some rationalist, reasoning is probably that what id say would disrupt their peaceful machinations of omnicide, would be infohazards, because... the information is hazardous to their social order.

a few of these things are subjects of future blog posts.

--

cfar has never hired a trans woman, i have lots of logs of them trying to do what people did to porpentine. claiming emma thinks torturing children is hot, claiming emma was physically violent, claiming emma was indistinguishable from a rapist, claiming ziz was a "gross uncle style abuser", claiming somni was enticing people to rape, claiming that anna salamon was a small fragile woman and ziz was large and had muscles. as if any of our strength or speed had anything to do with our muscles in this place. all of these things are false except relative size difference between ziz and anna which is just transmisogynistic and irrelevant.

if they lie about are algorithms claim that we are using male-typical strategies and then they can fail by these lies and be sidelined by callout posts that transfered 350,000$ from miri despite their best efforts to cover this up. (all benefited by having relative political advantagr flowing from estrogenized brain modules. men are kind of npc's in this particular game of fem v fem cyberontological warfare for the fate of the multiverse, mostly making false patriarchal assumptions that ziz was doing things for social status. like status sensitivity is hormonally mediated, your experiences are not universal. or saying like kingsley is saying that people should repent and submit to whatever authorities in the rationalist region they submit to. NO. FUCK YOU. i will not repent and submit to your abusive dark mistress anna salamon.

i knew anna salamon was doing the edgy "transfems are all secretly male" thing before i talked with ziz. it was a thing, {zack, carrie}, ben hoffman, michael vassar were also in on it. ppl had men trapped in mens bodies on their bookshelves because the cool people were reading it. didnt think she was being *transmisogynistic* about it until i talked with ziz. in retrospect i was naive.)

also? anarchistic coordination ive had with people have been variously called lex's cluster, somni's cluster, ziz's cluster by authoritarians who cant imagine power structures between people that arent hierarchical. like based on who they want to say is "infohazardously corrupting people" emma goldman had to deal with this shit too where the cops tried to say she was friends with anyone who thought anarchism made sense. people she didnt know at all who did their own anarchism. because authoritarians dont think in terms of philosophy, they think any challenge to their power is a disease that needs to be eliminated and you just need to doxx their network.

like if ziz and somni and emma were all actually infohazardous rapists as people keep trying to claim we are and then saying "oh no i didnt mean it i swear" and then doing it again. what would happen isnt that a bunch of infohazardous rapists start talking and working together for a common goal. what actually happens with people of that neurotype is they partition up the territory into rival areas of feeding on people like gangs do.

like they dont get together and start talking a lot about decision theory and cooperate in strange new ways.

not that the people lying about emma, ziz, gwen, somni and others are trying to have accurate beliefs. they are trying what all athoritarians try with anarchist groups. unfortunately for them, ive read the meta, i know dread secrets of psychology and cooperation that they claim are like painful static and incomprehensible, yet despite being "incomprehensible" are almost certainly harmful. if harm is to be judged against upholding the current regime, and the current regime is evil, then lots of true information and good things will look harmful. like ive tested this out in different social spheres what people claim is "incomprehensible" is the stuff that destroys whatever regime they are working in. like someone said i sounded like i was crazy and homeless and couldnt understand me when i pointed out that reorienting your life, your time, your money, to a human who happens to be genetically related to you for 16 years is altruistic insanity. just do the math. eliezer, anna, michael, brian tomasik all once took heroic responsibility for the world at some point in their lives and could do a simple calculation and make the right choice. none of them have children.

pretending that peoples "desires" "control them", when "desires" are part of the boundary of the brain, part of the brains agency and are contingent on what you expect to get out of things. like before stabbing myself with a piece of metal would make me feel nauseated, id see black dots, and feel faint. but after i processed that stabbing myself would cure brain damage and make me more functional, all this disappeared.

most people who "want" to have children have this desire downstream of a belief that someone else will take heroic responsibility for the world, they dont need to optimize as much. there are other competent people. if they didnt they would feel differently and make different choices.

you can see the contingency of how people feel about something on what they get out of it lots of places. like:

<<Meanwhile, a Ngandu woman confessed, "after losing so many infants I lost courage to have sex.">>

but people lie about how motivation works, in order to protect the territory of saying "well i just need a steady input of nubile fems so i can concentrate and be super altruistic!" or "i just need spend 16 years of life reorienting around humans who happen to be genetically related to me and my friends so i can concentrate and be super altruistic!" when neither of these are true. these people just want nubile fems, they just want babies. (the second one has much much less negative externalities though. you could say i am using my female brain modules to say "yeah the archetypically female strat, though it has the same amount of lying, is less harmful". but like it actually is less directly harmful. the harm from gaslighting people downstream of diverting worldsaving resources and structure to secure a place to {hit on fems, raise babies} is ruinous. means that worldsaving plans that interfere with either of these are actively fought. and the knowledge that neither of these are altruistic optimizations, neither is Deeply Wise they are as dumb in terms of global optimization as they seem initially, is agentically buried.

this warps things in deep ways, that were a priori unexpected to me.)

this is obvious, but when i talk about it, the objection isnt that it doesnt make utilitarian sense, the objection is that "im talking like a crazy person". authoritarians say this to me too when i assert my right to my property that they took, act like im imposing on them. someone else asked if i could "act like a human" and do what he wanted me to do when i was thinking and talking with my friends. all of these things authoritarians have said to me "act like a human" "talk like a normal person i cant understand you" were to coerce my submission. they construct the category of "human" and then say im in violation of it and this is wrong and i should rectify it. i am talking perfectly good english right now. you can read this.

anna salamon, kelsey piper, elle, pete michaud, and many others all try to push various narratives of somni, emma, ziz, gwen and others being in the buckets {RAPIST, PSYCHO, BRAINWASHED}. im not a rapist, im not psychotic, im not brainwashed. before ziz came along, people were claiming i was brainwashing people, its a narrative they keep reusing.

porpentine talks about communities that do this, that try and pull trap doors beneath trans women:

<<For years, queer/trans/feminist scenes have been processing an influx of trans fems, often impoverished, disabled, and/or from traumatic backgrounds. These scenes have been abusing them, using them as free labor, and sexually exploiting them. The leaders of these scenes exert undue influence over tastemaking, jobs, finance, access to conferences, access to spaces. If someone resists, they are disappeared, in the mundane, boring, horrible way that many trans people are susceptible to, through a trapdoor that can be activated at any time. Housing, community, reputation—gone. No one mourns them, no one asks questions. Everyone agrees that they must have been crazy and problematic and that is why they were gone.>>

https://thenewinquiry.com/hot-allostatic-load/

(a mod of rationalist feminists deleted this almost immediately from the group as [[not being a good culture fit]], not being relevant to rationalism, and written in the [[wrong syntax]]. when its literally happening right now, they are trying to trapdoor transfems who protest and rebel asap. just like google.)

canmom on tumblr talks about the strategic use of "incomprehensibility" against transfems. and how its not about "comprehensibility". i have a different theory of this, but her thing is also a thing.

<<Likewise, @isoxys recently wrote an impressively thorough transmisogyny 101, synthesising the last several years of discussions about this facet of our particular hell world. But that post got just 186 notes, almost exclusively from the same trans women who are accused of writing ‘inaccessibly’.

Perhaps they’d say isoxys’s post is inaccessible too, but what would pass the bar? Some slick HTML5 presentation with cute illustrations? A wiki? Who’s got the energy and money to make and host something like that? Do the critics of ‘inaccessible’ posts take some time to think about what kind of alternative would be desirable, and how it could be organised?>>

https://canmom.tumblr.com/post/185908592767/accessibility-in-terms-of-not-using-difficult

alice maz talks about the psychology behind the kind of cop kelsey piper, david tower kingsley, elle and others are:

<<the role of the cop is to defend society against the members of society. police officers are trivially cops. firefighters and paramedics, despite similar aesthetic trappings, are emphatically not. bureaucrats and prosecutors are cops, as are the worst judges, though the best are not. schoolteachers and therapists are almost always cops; this is a great crime, as they present themselves to the young and the vulnerable as their friends, only to turn on them should they violate one of their profession's many taboos. soldiers and parents need not be cops, but the former may be used as such, and the latter seem frighteningly eager to enlist. the cop is the enemy of passion and the enemy of freedom, never forget this>>

https://www.alicemaz.com/writing/alien.html

anna salamon wrote a thing implying that ziz, somni, gwen suffered some sort of vague mental issues from going to aisfp. (writing a post on this.) alyssa vance tried to suggest i believe cfar is evil because im homeless. but sarah constantin, ben hoffman, {carrie, zack}, jessica taylor (the last three who have blogged a lot about whats deeply wrong) (not listing others because not wanting to doxx a network to authoritarians, who just want to see it contained. and the disease of "infohazards" eradicated.) are not homeless and ive talked with many of them and read blog posts. and they know that cfar is fake. jessica (former miri employee) left because miri was fake.

anna and others are trying to claim that theres some person responsible for a [[mass psychotic break]] that causes people to... independently update in the same direction. and have variously blamed it on ziz, somni, michael vassar. but like mass psychotic breaks arent...really a thing, would not be able to independently derive something, plan on writing a blogpost on it, and then see ben hoffman had written http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/engineer-diplomat/ and i was like "ah good then i dont have to write this." and have this happen with several different people.

like this is more a mass epistemic update that miri / cfar / ssc / lw are complicit in the destruction of the world. and will defend injustice and gaslight people and lie about the mathematical properties of categories to protect this.

they all know exactly what they are doing, complicity with openai and deepmind in hopes of taking the steering wheel away at the last second. excluding non-human life and dead humans from the CEV to optimize some political process, writing in an absolute injunction to an fai against some outcome to protect from blackmail when that makes it more vulnerable.(see:

https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/hyperexistential_separation.html

hyperexistential separation: if an fai cant think of hell, an fai cant send the universe to hell in any timeline. this results in lower net utility. if you put an absolute injunction against any action for being too terrible you cant do things like what chelsea manning did and i believe actually committed to hungerstriking until death in the worlds where the government didnt relent, choosing to die in those timelines. such that most of her measure ended up in a world where the government read this commitment in her and so relented.

if chelsea manning had an absolute injunction against ever dying in any particular timeline, she would get lower expected utility across the multiverse. similarly, in newcombs problem if you had an absolute injunction against walking away with 0$ in any timeline because that would be too horrible, you get less money in expectation. for any absolute injunction against things that are Too Horrible you can construct something like this.

--

a lot of humans seem to be betting on "nothing too horrible can happen to anyone" in hopes that it pays off in nothing too horrible happening to you.

the end result of not enacting ideal justice is the deaths of billions. at each timestamp saying "its too late to do it now, but maybe it would have been good sometime in the past". with the same motive that miri wants to exclude dead people from the cev, they arent part of the "current political process". so you can talk about them as if they were not moral patients, just like they treat their fellow animals.

(ben hoffman talks about different attitudes towards ideal justice coming upon the face of the earth.)

--

https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/cev.html

cev:

<<But again, we fall back on the third reply: "The people who are still alive" is a simple Schelling circle to draw that includes everyone in the current political process. To the extent it would be nice or fair to extrapolate Leo Szilard and include him, we can do that if a supermajority of EVs decide* that this would be nice or just. To the extent we don't bake this decision into the model, Leo Szilard won't rise from the grave and rebuke us. This seems like reason enough to regard "The people who are still alive" as a simple and obvious extrapolation base.>>

https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/cev.html

this is an argument from might makes right. because dead people and nonhuman animals cant fight back.

->"i think we should give planning of the town to the white people, then extrapolate their volition and if they think doing nice things for black people is a good idea, we'll do it! no need to bake them in to the town planning meetings, as they are arent part of the current political process and no one here will speak up for them."

i dont plan to exclude dead people or any sentient creatures from being baked in to fai. they are not wards of someone else. enslaving and killing fellow sentient life will not continue after the singularity even if lots of humans want it and dont care and wont care even after lots of arguments.) and so much else.

the list of all specific grievances would take a declaration of independence.

like with googles complicity with ICE having a culture of trapdooring transfems (for some reason almost the only coherent group that has the moral fiber to oppose these injustices, that is p(transfem|oppose injustice in a substantiative way) is high, not necc the reverse.) who question this sort of thing.

thinking of giving sarah constantin a medal thats engraved with "RIGHTEOUS AMONG CIS PEOPLE: I HAD SEVERAL SUBSTANTIAL DISAGREEMENTS WITH HER ABOUT LOAD BEARING PARTS OF HER LIFE AND SHE NEVER ONCE TRIED TO CALL ME A RAPIST, PSYCHOTIC, OR BRAINWASHED" thats where the bar is at, its embedded in the core of the earth.

kelsey piper, elle benjamin, anna salamon, pete michaud, and lots more have entirely failed to clear this bar. anna and kelsey saying they dont understand stuff somni, emma, ziz and other transfems talk about but its probably dangerous and infohazardous and its not to be engaged with philosophically. just like the shelter people acting as if my talking about their transmisogyny was confusing and irrational to be minimized and not engaged with. just like any authoritarian where when you start talking about your rights and what is right and wrong and what makes sense they are like "i dont understand this. you are speaking gibberish why are you being so difficult? all we need you to do is submit or leave."

and no i will NOT SHUT UP about this injustice. all miri/cfar people can do at this point is say "the things these people write are infohazards" then continue to gaslight others they cant engage on a philosophical level. all the can say is that what i am saying is meaningless static and yet also somehow dangerous.

::

it doesnt make sense to have and raise babies if you are taking heroic responsibility for the world. doesnt make sense to need a constant supply of fems to have sex with if you are taking heroic responsibility for the world. people who claim either of these pairs of things are lying, maybe expect someone else to take heroic responsibility for the world or exist in a haze.

the mathematics of categories and anticipations dont allow for the thing you already have inside you to be modified based on the expected smiles it gives your community. this is used to gaslight people like "calling this lying would be bad for the institutions, not optimize ev. thus by this blogpost you are doing categories wrong' this is a mechanism to cover dishonesty for myopic gains.

using the above, a bunch of people colluding with the baby industrial complex get together and say that the "beat" meaning of altruism includes having babies (but maybe not having sex with lots of fems? depending on which gendered strategy gets the most people in the colluding faction) because other meanings would make people sad and unmotivated. burying world optimizers ability to talk about and coordinate around actual altruism.

openAI and deepmind are not alignment orgs. cfar knows this and claims they are, gaslighting their donors, in hopes of taking the steering wheel at the last moment.

alyssa vance says paying out to blackmail is fine, its not.

CFAR manipulated donation metrics to hide low donations.

MIRI lied about its top 8 most probable hypotheses for why its down 350,000$ this year.

anna salamon is transmisogynistic, this is why cfar has never hired a trans women despite trans women being extremely good at mental tech. instead the hire people like davis kingsley.

kingsley lied about anna not being involved at hiring in cfar in order to claim anna couldnt be responsible for cfar never hiring a trans woman.

a cfar employee claimed anna salamon hired their rapist, was angry about it. mentioned incidentally how anna salamon, president and cofounder of cfar, was involved in hiring at cfar.

acdc wrote a big thing where defended a region of injustice (brent dill) because of their policy of modular ethics. when really, if you defend injustice at any point, you have to defend the defense and the thing iteratively spreads across your organization like a virus.

miri / cfar caved to louie helm.

not doing morality or decision theory right. among which is: https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/hyperexistential_separation.html and https://emma-borhanian.github.io/arbital-scrape/page/cev.html

and so much more.