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promethes · 4 years

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how an idiot like me got into good schools

A quick run-through of my academic history and how I got into good colleges will be below the cut! I’m also including a list of some of the schools I got into for reference. I apologize in advance for how messy this is, but my memory is shitty and I remember random things that I keep throwing in lol. (and for people congratulating me, thank you very much, but I got into all these schools last year lol! so keep in mind I graduated high school in 2019)

If all you came for are the basic stats and you don't want my rambling: I went to a public school GPA: around 4.4 on 4.0 scale (3.9 unweighted) SAT: 1520/1600 APs: 10 (4 3s, 2 4s, 4 5s) Extracurricular: mainly NHS (around 300 volunteering hours), StuCo, Varsity Golf, and Quiz Bowl

EDIT: comments made by the readers who reviewed my application are available here!

First off, I am not an einstein! I am blessed that I pick up on stuff easily and gifted in academics, but I’m nowhere near a genius. For a little backstory, I went to a public school in Michigan for the entirety of my pre-k - 12 education. When I was in the third grade, the district introduced an accelerated program. We took a quasi IQ test and if we tested high enough (I think the threshold was 80%? If I remember correctly I got a 97) we were put in a class that was 2 years ahead in English and Math. We stayed grouped together for the rest of our public schooling, basically a core group of around 20 people. Since we were the first year of the program and our grade was exceptionally gifted for some weird reason, it was a very high achieving group of students, so I’m going to include their stats along with mine for comparison because colleges also factor in your peers when they look at your stats.

I’ll start off with basic stats:

I got a 1520 on the SAT. My grade had around 5 - 10 people achieve over 1500. Some of them had been studying for years, while others (me) did not know that the SAT existed until that year and couldn’t afford any private tutoring and had no patience for the study books from the library. I’m lucky to have an aptitude for the skills they were testing. I did not take any SAT subject tests.

For GPA, I think I ended up with around a 4.4 on a 4.0 scale. I was around 15/350 when it came to class standing, so I was far from the valedictorian. I think our valedictorians got around a 4.6 or 4.7.

I took 10 AP tests. I got a 3 in APUSH, World History, Language and Comp (I fell asleep lol), and Chem (I will get into this class a little later). I got a 4 in Literature (I fell asleep. Again.) and in Psychology. I got a 5 in Calc AB & BC, Comp Sci Principles, and Environmental Science.

AP classes were really pushed in my high school, especially onto my grade, and I don’t like being told what to do lol so I pushed back and took fewer AP classes than most of my peers (valedictorians ended up with maybe 15? It’s crazy) and basically only took classes I was interested in or that I had to take because I had exhausted the rest of the curriculum.

I also dual-enrolled in 2 classes at the local community college since I’d exhausted the curriculum at my high school for things I wanted to do (english and comp sci). I want to make it clear that I never sat down and planned how I was going to maximize my schedule or how I’d take the most advanced classes, I just fell into it since we had already essentially skipped two grades. Most people didn’t dual enroll since they wanted the AP GPA boost.

For extracurriculars, I mainly focused on Quiz Bowl, Golf, NHS (volunteered around 350 hours in 3 years I think) and Student Government. I never had any leadership positions and just kind of fucked around most of the time. Most of my peers held several leadership positions throughout the years and did like a bazillion things. 5 of them even traveled to Europe for some science research thing where they presented their research. I was not that big of a nerd.

In junior year, I stumbled on something called Questbridge and decided to apply because I wanted the money for the scholarship. I became a Questbridge college prep scholar, which then led me to apply for the National College Match. I didn’t rank any binding schools so I didn’t match, but I did apply to several schools with their application. If you are a low-income high achieving student, I highly recommend looking them up. I was the first person in my school to do this program and encouraged my peers to do it too. I think 4 of us were Questbridge scholars.

As you can see, I had good numbers, which probably got me past the first wave of application look throughs. However, I’m fairly confident that what made me stand out was my essays. I always stress this to whoever asks me for advice: do not write a perfect essay, write YOUR essay. I can only imagine how bored those poor people are of reading about someone winning a soccer game or a spelling bee. Add some pizzazz in there. Talk about your flaws and your mistakes and your unique life experiences!

For example, my personal essay wasn’t even in essay format! I wrote it like journal entries, focusing on my sophomore year when my life was Extra Tumultuous and I was going through homelessness. I did not say I was homeless once in the essay. I just did day by day entries of what my life was like during that time and through that the readers were able to see that I loved to read, that I am fiercely protective of my single-parent family, and they saw how I handled adversity. I want to stress that I’m not encouraging poverty porn at all. I did not write it to make the reader feel bad. I simply relayed what I thought about in a day, focusing on both big and small.

I also wrote about funny things related to academics, partly to explain my transcript and partly to be funny. This is the AP Chem thing. I actually dropped out of it after one term (so about a third of the way through) so I could dual enroll in a class I was interested in instead. My chem teacher HATED that since I was good at chemistry (hate it. Hate that subject so much) and tried to convince me to stay. One of the things he said was “You’ll never be ready for college if you don’t take this class! You wouldn’t even be able to pass the AP test!” so I said bet. dropped the class and signed up for the AP test that same day and showed up almost every day for the rest of the year and dicked around the entire class, taking naps in the back of the lab, sitting on his desk, cracking jokes about whatever he was teaching. I got a 3 on that exam purely out of spite with only half the information I needed. So write about stuff like that. It’s fun.

The fact that I had no guidance in writing the essays was actually really good for me since I just kind of let loose. My UChicago essay read like I was on crack, and they loved it so much that they literally mentioned it during the welcome speech for their little college visit in April.

And don’t sweat over the small stuff! The short answers don’t have to be perfect and mind-blowing, just answer honestly. For the “why Yale” supplemental essay I just ranted about how beautiful their library is for a good 300 words (at some point I said I needed my inhaler because it was that breathtaking. I made a Yale admissions officer read that.) I ranted about Howl’s Moving Castle to Columbia. I told them my favorite magazine was the American Girl ones for their arts and crafts! I have a friend at Columbia who literally sent them a picture of her in a duck costume as a supplement. They loved it. So don’t lose your mind trying to sound worldly and educated. You’re like. 17. Just answer honestly and don’t think too hard about it.

I was also extremely lucky to have a dedicated counselor who sat down for hours with each individual student to write fantastic letters of recommendation. She really made it clear what I had achieved and what challenges I’d faced.

So. tl;dr: I got lucky. Unless your parents donated a couple billion to the school, there are no guarantees. Sometimes you can have the stats and perfect essays and amazing extracurriculars and you can still get rejected because they don’t think you’re a good fit with the school compared to the rest of the applicants. There’s limited space in the student body. I got into schools my valedictorians didn’t get into even though I was academically less than them in every possible way. So let yourself shine through your essays and know you’ll end up in an environment that values the person they saw in those essays.

I got into a lot of schools, and don’t really have a record of all of them, but here are some of the top ones I can remember off the top of my head:

Yale, Columbia, University of Chicago (likely letter), Northwestern, University of Michigan, Northeastern, CWRU, UNC Chapel Hill, and a couple other schools here and there that slip my mind at the moment.

#og #college #college masterpost #abt me

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quidfree · 4 years

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Hi! Thinking of Dumbledore + Sirius, do you think Sirius would feel sympathy for Dumbledore if he knew about how torn he was btw his siblings + feeling trapped? I judged him harshly at first, but now I think about the difficulty about losing both parents + sibling, but not wanting to sacrifice everything to step in as parent + guilt that comes with that. I do think Dumbledore loved his siblings + I was happy when his bro said he did a good job with their sis before her death.

hi! this is an interesting one hm

the thing abt dumbledore is that i’m pretty sympathetic to him all things considered- i’ve never really taken the time to explain my feelings about him on here but i definitely don’t think he’s snape levels of “fandom should see he’s irredeemably terrible!”, though i have a lot of qualms about him. he’s certainly not the hero rowling thinks he is, but he’s also not the guy rita skeeter says he is, to put it succintly.

on the one hand, i do think canon mostly fails to acknowledge that he was very manipulative/calculating and made a lot of very cold (or just plain terrible) choices- everything to do with sirius, for one, as well as the whole dursley situation. i know there’s a couple of reasons harry had to live with them (supposedly...) and i can’t be bothered to go into them, but even then i never understood why he couldn’t have done to petunia what he does in OOTP (?) sooner- send a letter to scare the shit out of her and remind her to treat harry decently or at least leave him to his own devices. like, there was so much he could have done in the years between the potters’ deaths and hogwarts- that squib neighbour was already spying/reporting for him, so he was fully aware of it all, idk. i just find that whole thing exemplary of his callousness. it’s more unforgivable to me than raising harry knowing he might need to die for the cause- because that was necessary to defeat voldemort, but giving harry an escape from abuse was so avoidable. his handling of other characters also doesn’t paint him in the best light, sirius as most obvious suspect- there’s a good piece on tumblr about sirius being a liability in his eyes because he’s not loyal to dumbledore or his cause above all else, but to the potters (and ultimately harry) and his own code, and i really think it’s the best reading of dumbledore’s handling of sirius in OOTP, because i always found that kind of insane. it’s brain-dead obvious that the worst thing to do with sirius (especially if you were worried about his unhinged state and whatnot) would be sticking him in grimmauld place- even if they had to keep him hidden, they could have let him floo between order hideouts! see other people! prowl london as a dog! it’s insane that dumbledore of all people would be that dumb about it, so it makes the most sense to me as him locking sirius up where he’s the most contained.

on the other hand, dumbledore was both a quirky schoolmaster and a wartime militia leader, and i think a lot of the weirdness in his character is bc rowling set out to write a much more child-like series than she ended up writing. dumbledore is a pretty iconic guy in the books, manipulations included- he’s such a chessmaster, and he has flair, as kingsley would put it. most importantly he clearly tries very hard to orchestrate the best possible outcome for the entire world- not based on arbitrary beliefs or personal whims, but because he’s sort of the main bastion of hope in the wizarding world. i don’t necessarily think his actions in this context are all excusable, but he’s a war-time leader, and pretty much knows it’s all down to him- although the order is certainly competent, it’s a very ragtag group of people dumbledore holds together, and in terms of skill, knowledge and aura he’s their biggest asset. he’s already been through a wizarding war where he probably set out to murder the love of his life, another wizard supremacist wackjob! we know he’s long past egoism- he’s genuinely For The Greater Good, and he clearly cares about harry; his choices are undoubtedly not made lightly. it’s also important to note just how bad wizarding society as a whole is on these issues- even the most muggle-friendly wizards are remarkably ignorant about them (arthur weasley), and everyone else is at least marginally bigoted; bigotry is built into the fabric of their society, and their government is extemely complacent/corrupt, so the order and their ilk are very much on their own, while people like the malfoys are tolerated despite the open secret of their wartime alliances. dumbledore has a tough job, and he doesn’t know all the things the reader knows. so i think the op-eds calling him Just As Bad As Voldemort or whatever are missing any nuance.

then we get into dumbledore’s backstory. it explains a lot about him, i think. it’s interesting to me that he’s so consistent as a character- he has always been about The Greater Good, and he’s always had an ego, but as a child he let the latter dictate the former and as an adult he forever attempted to substract it from himself lest he repeat the same mistakes. some more questionable rep from ms rowling in having her (1) gay character be the guy literally seduced into wizard supremacy by his evil boyfriend, but i always liked that beat of a very isolated extremely intelligent character drawn into a warped sense of righteousness- it’s also very consistent of dumbledore to believe he’s doing the best for someone when he’s not really thinking about that at all, which is the case with his sister. obviously his family’s story is tragic, and then he gets pulled into this fake vision of a better world, validated in his brilliance, and then there’s his mother’s death, and then his sister, and suddenly it’s all come crashing down and he spends the next years of his life slowly realizing he’s the only one who can stop a project he might have been overseeing once. aberforth lays into him for it, and fair enough, but jesus, what a shitty spot to be in fresh out of hogwarts. i don’t know if it’s because i’m an older sibling, but i can understand the horrible burden of knowing that it’s always on you to think of yourself second, even when you’re inches away from the best thing in your life.

getting sidetracked- the question was about sirius and dumbledore. the thing abt LMV is that i try to keep my own opinions out of it; the marauders-dumbledore dynamic is a difficult one. they all respect him endlessly, and in school i think they adored him, but as a wartime leader it gets complicated. i think in canon their relationship was better, just a little strained (and a little more for others) bc of his style of leadership- you know, keeping secrets, playing games etc. in LMV, though, his machinations got them personally into some shit, so i wagered things would be more terse. james i think thinks most positively of him, as he is wont to do so, except where he is somehow at odds with sirius, because his loyalties there are clear and he is far more violently protective of sirius than he lets on. lily is a close second, because she’s a big picture thinker and gets how hard his job is, but she tends to be wary of his reasoning. remus is a more distrustful person by nature, and dumbledore using him for werewolf stuff wears him down. sirius is not a fan of authority, does not like secrets, and hates people using him as a pawn, so things are most strained for him, obviously. i think a lot of dumbledore introspection in LMV is from sirius’ POV, somewhat accidentally, so he gets a harsh rep.

to finally get to the specifics of your question: would dumbledore’s backstory get sirius to sympathise? arguably not much. sirius is a tricky guy, esp because i write him in a period that we know nothing about. he’s not a cocky slightly feral 15 year old, and he’s not a traumatised 30 something prison escapee; i try to get a plausible balance, so i don’t lend sirius in LMV so much of OOTP sirius’ world-weary wisdom. he’s 21, and in a war where the other side are wizard nazis he’s mostly related to somehow; he sees things in blacks and whites almost necessarily. so either you’re good or bad, trustworthy or not. peter crossed the threshold, so he’s dead to him; regulus turned himself in, but he’s one of them, so sirius doesn’t know what to do with him. sirius might understand how hard it is to have younger siblings you love fiercely who don’t understand your commitment to a higher goal, but dumbledore was on the wrong side of things that time, so i don’t think he would draw any sympathetic parallels- i don’t see why he of all people would feel bad for where dumbledore’s youthful aspirations of wizarding supremacy lead him, despite his good intentions. he’s not very forgiving of bigotry, i think especially because he’s cut all ties with his own background so harshly.

tldr; i feel for the guy, and his life was fucked, but sirius probably would not, and dumbledore got enough unwarranted hero worship considering his dodgy actions that i don’t resent sirius for holding that grudge.

#qui repond #lmv #sirius #dumbledore #meta #hp #so loong

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orgyland · 7 years

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GUESS WHAT, it's payback time fucker!!!! chieyuki (10, 12, 17, 22, 24), kannaorise (bc if I had to do it so do you - 7, 11, 16, 19, 23), annnnd souyo (3, 5, 18, 21, 24)

*crack’s knuckles* Hear we goe lads

CHIEYUKI

10) Preferred positions?

Look, Chie has certain Expectations of How Things Should Be, especially going into a relationship -- like, does it work the same way if it was a guy? Missionary/lights off/eyes closed? Turns out it’s not a bad position to default to, since she gets to watch Yukiko in anticipation of inevitably fucking something up, or accidentally doing something really, really right. (I agree w/ your general assessment of Yukiko as the more exploratory one, but she’s a romantic at heart -- anything where they’re facing each other, be it in bed or in the shower or in Chie’s lap, as long as she can look her in the eye.)

12) Turn ons

It’s hard not to conclude from canon that the nadeshiko thing does it for Chie, though obviously she knows better than to reduce Yukiko to that Archetype. I think they both bring sensuous qualities to the table that key the other up -- for Chie, maybe the silk of Yukiko’s yukata, the feeling of her hair settling over Chie’s shoulder, freshly-soaped and flushed skin, soft steam; for Yukiko, the comparative roughness of Chie’s fingers, sweat, imperfections, sinew, hardness and exertion. OH AND FISTING AND OTHER LARGE INSERTIONS.

17) Dom/Sub dynamics? Who’s dom, who’s sub?

Hoo boy. Chie’s definitely got a possessiveness sort of deal going on throughout the game that could very easily come through in sex, and maybe even in other aspects of their relationship. The “hey Yu you think Yukiko’s super cute right, ISN’T IT WEIRD SHE DOESN’T HAVE A BOYFRIEND??!” scene can be read a few ways, but Chie springs almost too eagerly into the role of Yukiko’s gatekeeper/protector/final boss of the Amagi Challenge to not have some carryover there. She might relish in that privilege to an extent (maybe on the milder side buying Yukiko an outfit/lingerie to wear for her, for example, or experimenting with like. Semi roleplay on the more extreme side, like “You wouldn’t let a boy do this to you,” but Yukiko would have to really press her to get to that point.)

There’s a flipside to that where the roles could very easily reverse, and I think they would were they to ever go down this road. I imagine it takes form as a kind of deference/willingness and eagerness to please Yukiko on Chie’s part -- more emphasis on the “princess” thing and less emphasis on the “prince” thing.

Also, not necessarily d/s, but they’ve deffos tried spanking. (Chie’s weirded out receiving whereas Yukiko’s more of a fan.)

22) Does one person tend to come first more often or do they switch it up? Does one person have a harder time climaxing? Are there times when they don’t cum?

My handcanyon is that Yukiko is generally more attuned to her own body’s needs, as someone who’s taken more time to explore it on her own, and also that it doesn’t take much for her to get to that point. Chie might make her cum several times before the focus shifts to herself, and even then she still might not cum, or take a while to get there, and then freak out and enter into this feedback loop of Oh God is Yukiko getting tired, Am I Messing This Up, Am I Basically The Worst Partner Ever? It’s something that resolves with time/experience, though Yukiko is still generally first to get there.

Also, no one gets to cum if Chie accidentally sets off a laughing fit.

24) What happens after? Cuddling? Make space? Does someone tend to leave right after?

Definitely depends on what point in the relationship they’re at -- after their first time over at the Amagi’s, after the haze and afterglow’s burned off, Chie’s brain probably kicked into “HOW THE FUCK DO I GET OUT OF HERE WITHOUT GETTING CAUGHT AND MURDERED BY THE INN STAFF” stealth mode, like super paranoid that people were somehow gonna read her mind like “you fucked my daughter. Prepare to die.”

Generally speaking, they both go for a shower together, unless they’re too bone tired to do it -- then it’s falling asleep a sticky, tangled mess while deferring the shower to the morning.

KANNAORISE

Mothr fuck!

7) Foreplay? A lot or a little?

Early on, a lot a lot a lot. Kanji and Naoto are fucking petrified of their own boners, so getting them to do anything about it is a delicate operation. There is absolutely no “Netflix and chill” for them -- Rise has to basically nudge them past the final threshold where, yup, sex is happening now. Like, phase A “study session” phase B “make out for like an hour” phase C “MAYBE touch someones butt.” Later into the relationship it really depends on what kind of time their schedules allow, especially considering the careers they’re pursuing. Like they’re inmates on death row and their partners’ asses are their last meals. But they still like to draw things out as long as possible when they can.

11) Exploratory or traditional?

Like, how traditional can you get with this sort of arrangement. I think they end up passively bucking tradition -- not out of any sense of going against “how things should be”, but just to do what feels right for them. Like, I headcanon that Naoto would take a while to explore stuff like insertion/PIV/breastplay (not so hot on the former two, good with the latter) whereas Kanji would like taking it up the ass too much to not make it a habit. Rise’s definitely the most exploratory of the three of them, either way, and much more likely to vocalize an idea or a need of hers and Make It Happen. (Usually phrased as “haven’t you ever thought about...”)

16) Roleplay?

GOD. Rise probably jokingly brings it up like, once, before Naoto earnestly gets into the role of like, sadistic mad scientist sex Nazi. There’s probably some worthwhile catharsis to be found in roleplaying as their Shadows, even if Kanji’s initially skeptical and also does a pretty lousy job of acting 100% uninhibited. (Though he finds it’s easier when he’s persuaded or “forced” into it.)

19) Kissing preferences during sex

Kanji’s like, painfully romantic. Eyes closed, passionate, long, forceful, grabbing the person by the jaw/the shoulders/the arms and not letting go, etc. Rise’s a little sloppier and a lot more eager, whereas it takes Naoto some time to get out of methodical eyes-open sex detective mode. Eesh.

23) Lust or love sex?

I mean, there IS dumbass hormone-addled lust sex thrown into there, and I think e.g. Naoto is more libidinous than she’s typically portrayed in fanworks, but I otherwise feel like it’s more of a deliberate, cerebral experience most of the time. It’s three people who at one point or another had to wear a mask to deal with a society did wrong by them -- that distrusts them, or condescends them, or shuns them for failing to meet its expectations -- so I imagine sexual intimacy between them is not entirely unlike the intimacy of, say, facing Shadows and all that entails, where you’re making yourself vulnerable and putting so much trust in these people who expect you to do the same. So especially early on, they’re going into that side of their relationship with the necessary care and sensitivity before it’s just Rise getting double-stuffed.

SOUYO

There’s no way this is gonna get as long as yours

3) Neck, ears, or both

Yosuke’s long, constantly craning neck is good for something. Though in all seriousness I feel like Yosuke need to first get over the kneejerk “this shit’s for girls” reaction for stuff like neck, nipples, etc. He likes having his ear kissed and sucked, but not licked, cuz DUDE THAT’S WEIRD.

5) Hands or tongue

I feel like both the boys are very, very handsy, Yosuke perhaps moreso (and less serviceable with his tongue than Yu, who’s probably at least had more practice/experience to bring to the table)

18) Dirty talk, sweet nothings, or no talking (or discussing only technicals)

The Fandom Consensus seems to be that Yu is like a dirty talking sex god and that Yosuke gets a MASSIVE boner for praise, so I’m going to take a bold stance and say that Yosuke takes a while to warm up to talking in general, even when it comes to Technical Discussion, and when he does it’s 50% insinuations. The first time they had sex he probably stopped everything to ask if one of them has to “............ you know.”

21) One round or multiple?

This is pretty situational, but probably starting out Yosuke’s the type who’s just, Spent by the end of things, after kind of putting his all into it every time. I imagine Yu’s concept of a “round” is a lot more fluid, too.

24) What happens after? Cuddling? Make space? Does someone tend to leave right after?

I personally feel like Yosuke is a little more touchy-feely than a lot of people would expect and Yu maybe less so, but I’m firmly in the “it depends” camp. If they were already hanging out, studying, whatever, maybe they wash up and get back to whatever it is they were doing. Bros being bros am I right??

#ask meme #god i might as well just write a fic #tattedmariposa

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gololblr · 4 years

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"Did god have a say in the creation of the world" is a phrase that doesnt seem that odd when first looking at it, but can really mess someone up.

Like, was he limited to making our world with the constants we currently have? Could god have just said, yea lets round the G to 7*10^-11 and everything would still work out?

This also goes into my personal gripe with lines. Draw a line on a piece of paper, yea? Look closer. It aint a line. Its a gradent. There is no point that it suddenly becomes black from white. There's always white in the black, and vice-versa. There's always gray area.

Science knows this fact. They know that there are always more decimals n stuff, but they just choose to ignore it. Pass it off because its too small to matter in the long run? And yet, decimals can still fuck up am equasion a lot. Using 10m/s compared to 9.8m/s compared to (G*M1*M2)/(d^2) doesnt seem like a lot, but it really is a lot. Highschool physics? Literally throw air resistance out the window for the entire class. The only mention is that its not to be taken into account.

Seconds are the same way. If someone asks you to do something at a particular second, its really hard. Even then, theyres still gray area. Even with the implimentation of frames and button presses in video games, theres still a kind of window where its gray. Where its in between two frames. That area still exists.

Im honestly no "big brained" individual, but honestly humans are literally like if you hit the "randomize all" option on like the mii creator, but with like infinite possibilities. And honestly, to me thats much more beautiful and poetic than being told im made to fit the mold of some perfect being and its standards.

This goes into my own personal "dice roll" think. Tbh, theres probably some big brain theologian or old dude with a beard thinking about this right now, but in a different context, but my idea is as follows.

You can roll a dice yea? Its got like 6 sides on it. Now you'd think that that means when you roll it, there are only 6 possibilities right? And roll it enough times itll land back the same as when you started? Well in my mind, it can technically land on the same number, but it cant land in the same position. Think about it. Just from the directions of the corners, you can tell its wont. But if you look closer, you can tell it will never be the exact same positioning. If you roll a dice, it may land on that number again, but itll never land in the same spot.

This can also be seen in identical twins. Even though they look the same, they still have differnces. Whether it be a nose .00004 mm to the left, or a scar over their eye, or a hatred of spinach, there will be a difference. Even 2,000,000 years down the road, when someone is born with the same name, and the same face, they wont be the same as you. They wont have the same inteactions, or likes n dislikes. Even if they did somehow do not only gene manipulation and simulations on someone to replicate you, they couldnt possibly have the exact cell mutations or gene replication errors that make the little things in you, you.

You are just as unrepeatable as the roll of a dice, or the exact moment a leaf breaks off and falls. Which brings me to my next point.

I have never witnessed a leaf leave its branch. I have literally sat and watched trees and leaves every fall since i realized how mind boggling it is, and i still have yet to see it.

Dont get me wrong, ive seen falling leaves, seeds, and pinecones. I know gravity works and why fall is so great. Bit i have never seen a leaf cross the threshold of letting go of its branch. I know it exists. I know that wind probably effects it, but leaves will fall even without wind. I cant help but wonder at what causes that windless leaf to fall. Is it a cornerstone cell that just finally gives out? Is it some other kind of thing? What could possibly result in a falling leaf?

What is the exact chemical process that results in decay? Suprisingly, thats a question i can anwser. That is simply the improper copying of dna and stuff.

And yet, we still dont know how our brains work. We can look at cells, we can look at atoms, but we cannot possibly understand why laughter is a thing. We dont know anything about sleep, and even less about anaesthetics. Yet we do them regularly, even rely on them.

Humans survive mostly from two things. Sweating, and speaking. And honestly, those are probably the most horrifying things imaginable for prey. Sweating means we have cazy endurance. We can and will hunt anything down until it physically cannot move, and then kill it. And screaming to eachother at the same time. To be hunted by humans is much more scary then literally anything else. That is why horror mostly stars human-esk creatures that hunt humans.

One of humanity's greatest assests is also one of my biggest gripes. That is our obsession with observation and ourselves. We observe the world, and from that are given measurments and tools. We then use that to help ourselves. But we also have to see things. A famous phrase is "seeing is believing". Perfect example of this. We have to touch things. Even if its just with our eyes. But we also for some reason dont want to process things that arent ourselves.

Think about the non-humans that humans create. All those elderic abominations amd the like. Even the green martian men. They all are humaniods in shape. Even demonic, and cursed things have limbs. They have a head, and they have a brain. Anythign that is supposed to be equal to us or greater to us in power is humaniod. God? Humanoid. Satan? Humaniod. Kuthulu? Generally depicted as humaniod. Honestly the only exception to this idea is the angels in the bibel, like the cherubim and seraphim. Which at least one of them is a munch of rings with eyes and also wings.

Anywho, where was i? Oh yea, lines.

Nobody's perfect. Even in a computer world. Pixels are made of lights, which blend together and create gradents which are imperfect. Imputs are rounded. Time is rounded into frames. Fundamentally we are out of sinc with the universe. We round the numbers to the place we care about, putting a blind eye to those things.

Yet dont they add up? I mean in some cases yea, they do. Clocks become slow or fast. Heck even the official weight of a gram has changed. The object that was used to measure a gram actually ended up decaying enough that it messed up the official weight.

Dont even get me started on pi and natural e. Apparently (and i dont know for sure on this) but engineers round those numbers to 3. Like that is just messed up. That will actually, and legitimately fuck up a building or anything else.

Humans are truly odd creatures. Did you know that the current understanding of why we want to closely touch and even harm/kill cute and adorable things and even have the epression "i could eat you up... etc." Is beause we cannot process that emotion and so to relieve ourselves we want to rid the world of its existence? Its freakin wild honestly. We cant process something so we kill it. Itsnt that something just so specifically human?

Humans have such a thirst for knowledge, and yet also a fear of it. Consider comparing people like stalin and hitler and even the church, who burned and banned knoledge, to librarians who kept that knowledge.

Consider the eletric universe theory. Something that goes contrary to the current model of physics, but also works better in some areas. According to that, the sun wasnt always our sun, and also we were originally orbiting a red sun. Something totally wild to think about, but also makes sense. Like why ancient peoples kept talking about a red sun, and venus as a comet. It also states the idea that we didnt always have seasons, and that has something to do with why plants bloom when under red lights. I honestly dont know as much as i would like about this part to explain it better, but oh well.

We have this need to put everything in order, to have perfection. We just want to be the best we can. Specifically better than everyone else. And even if that means killing, harming, or demeaning others. Only if we are on the top, we will be alright.

--- Intermission---

... i just want to mention that i have no degree in this shit and also no sources bc im too lazy and tired to look up that shit. Also, when i say "human" really i can only speak generally. I know for a fact that some peopld break the mold to certain extents n stuff, i just wanted to streamline it a little bit.

---Intermission over---

Our obsession with being the best has led us to ome conclusion. However, that conclusion is contradictory to the question asked. To become the best, we have to work with others. Because "if i cant be the best, then nobody can.". And boom, we got society n shit. We start working together to hunt amd gather, and generally be nice people. Because loosing someone means lossing another source of food.

But im getting off the point. This isnt supposed to be a history of humanity. Everyone already knows that story. Humans started planting things, created towns, created cities, fought eachother and died a lot. Eventually enslaved eachother and finally decided that was a bad thing, even thoug not everyone in the world agrees. Now there's god, and politics, and school, and problems.

But what caused all of this? What was the catylist? What was the starting factor? Can the reason people fight today be traced back to the first accidental killing of a brother like cain and able? Or is it somethig totally recent. Is the reason we have society because two ancient homo sapien families merged? Or was it something else? Why do we wear clothes? Theyrs little to no reason except in the winter. Especially if we started in africa or Australia. I have no anwsers for these questions.

But dont let the past decide who you are. Theres a reason we have memories. Its to improve yourself. We are constantly at a crossroads. Even if you dont realize it.

You can physically do anything. Humans are scary crazy. If you just put enough minds to it, literally anything is possible. Sending someone to space? Yep. Being able to kill all life on the planet? Yep. Be able to eat uncooked broccoli? Definitely. There are of course some holes in that last statement. Like you cant physically eat the planet in 30 seconds, or (at least right now) cant change the way you think about cheeze puffs. Doesnt mean that cant change in the future. But at the moment.

The future is scary too. Genetic engeneering, designer babies, and pollution is all on the horizon. The only thing stopping is it ouselves and maybe god.

If you could ask an animal what god it believes in, what would it say? Is such an easy question for theologians to brush aside. (Not that ive asked one) i can just imagine them quickly responding "animals cant think dumbass" or "animals dont have souls" or "animals arent made in the image and likeness of god". Those are nice anwsers and all, but they dont anwser the question. I asked what god does your pet dog believe in, not why doesnt my dog tell be about every time zeus boned some village girl and how that gives them the right to bone me too.

Thank you for listening to my insane ramblings about the human condition, lines, and other weird stuff i have no sources for. I want to mention that most of this stuff is probably fallacies, but this was never meant to be taken seriously or coherent anyways.

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