#but that’s a retroactive assessment

[sassmill]

As I prepare for my second round of hiring in my administrative role… I look back at the first round I was in charge of and shudder at how much trust was placed in me to do it on my own with absolutely no counsel or assistance. I mean, it went fine, but…. Let’s just say that I have a completely new game plan this time around because I absolutely did not make anything easy for myself last year.

#Rebecca treats me like a real adult which is great but also… she is the same age as my mother and should know that I’m basically a child #the imposter syndrome is real #except this time it’s more like retroactive? #although a year ago I absolutely was aware that I did not know what I was doing #idk #administrative work is a psychological whirlwind #I do feel very confident in my abilities to properly interview and assess potential new staff #now that I’ve been in this position for more than a full year now #but I was still new staff when I was trusted to do it last year #which really says more about how overworked and overtaken our department is than anything else #ah well #museum musings

[brawltogethernow]

I dreamt the other night that there was an extremely mid live action Murderbot TV show adaptation. That's not my retroactive assessment in the daytime. In the dream I was like, "This has multiple very avoidable or outright comedic flaws. I am going to binge all of it." (I'm aware that this is very meta.)

It had a "life on a starship" structure in the style of Star Trek, though it may have technically been set on one of the satellites orbiting Preservation.

The core relationship was SecUnit and Mensah, which was executed with absolute sincerity that couldn't not be charming, and was also where a lot of the more narmish moments were centered.

SecUnit would hack devices by focusing on them, cuing the camera to zoom in on the relevant machine—then the zoom in would continue with a transition to aggressively average CGI of the inside of the machine, which would animate it...being hacked or whatever. I got the impression that happened at a pivotal moment at least once an episode.

Some of the canon characters were present and were well-cast and characterized. However, the "crew" had also been padded out with a handful of original side characters. There was a gruff ship's doctor type (more Kelso than Bones though), a cook SecUnit had an arbitrary rivalry with, and for some reason two teenage boys who were BFFs. The cook existed to facilitate interpersonal comedy, the teens to have sci-fi concepts explained to them, and the doctor to solve like a third of the one-off plotlines at the end of the episode once whatever emotional arc they'd been facilitating was concluded. The new characters were almost all played by white guys like after they cast the canon characters thoughtfully and considerately they ran out of energy/wanted to work in people who were already on the lot.

I dream-watched three random episodes, but unfortunately the only one I remember specifically is the last one, where the plot was Murderbot getting amnesia (because of sci-fi reasons) to back when the company owned it before it hacked itself. The emotional climax was it deciding to help Mensah even though it didn't remember their friendship, by disabling a machine that was harming her—which it did by triggering the hacking animation by slamming its hands against it several times. Like you do when you hack stuff. The amnesia was fixed after this by the medical doctor administering a liquid for it to drink that reportedly had nanomachines in it. I'm pretty sure the prop was one of those plastic cups dentists give you stuff to swish around your mouth in with water in it.

Murderbot was played by a tall and gloriously buff...enby woman...? I don't exactly recall. —Who in behind the scenes content had a startlingly sweet demeanor and higher vocal register than the character.

10/10 dream I am laughing my socks off. I miss the fake show.

#murderbot #the murderbot diaries

[prokopetz]

The most consistent piece of playtest feedback I've been getting on Space Gerbils is that the Action Phase sucks, on two counts:

Blowing your roll in the Action Phase can retroactively make the Operations Phase minigame feel pointless, and there isn't really any provision for addressing runs of bad luck; some playtest groups routinely managed to whiff a 15/16 chance of success three or four cycles in a row, which makes the whole engagement grind to a halt, and there isn't an obvious way to mitigate that when an entire round of prep work boils down to a single roll of the dice.

The first point feeds into the second: the Operations Phase has its positional minigame, and the Fallout Phase has those lovely lookup tables, but then Action Phase hanging out between them is kind of nothing, mechanically speaking. Many players have reported that it feels like the Action Phase ought to have a minigame as well, and that it's incongruous for the portion of the phase cycle where stuff actually happens to be the least mechanically engaging.

There've also been reports, where drafts 0.1 and 0.2 would often become unplayable due to the play grid filling up with broken stations, drafts 0.3 and 0.4 have swung too far in the opposite direction and made complications too easy to mitigate. It's unclear whether this is due to the Action Phase's mechanics not throwing complications frequently enough, or due to the Fallout Phase not assessing those complications harshly enough; probably it's a mix of both.

Fortunately, the game's modular nature means that it's actually fairly trivial to rip out the current Action Phase procedures and replace them with something else; very little of the rest of the system would have to change. The trick is figuring out what that should look like.

The most obvious routes involve introducing individual actions in the Action Phase, but that's exactly what we don't want; mechanically, because we just made each gerbil perform a tactical action in the Operations Phase, and doing it twice in a row would double the handling time of an already ponderous system; and thematically, because acting "as" the gerbils' singular assumed persona after doing all that setup as individuals is kind of the whole point!

In balance, this is a good problem to have, because I enjoy designing stupid minigames.

As for what that hypothetical Action Phase minigame might look like, I keep coming back to the idea of taking a page from Gone to Hell and formalising the presently-optional rule that the players should take turns "being" the bounty hunter persona in each Action Phase. That would definitely help with sorting out the forthcoming rules for GMless play, since the players whose "turn" it isn't could step into the encounter management roll. However, that leaves the off-turn players twiddling their thumbs every Action Phase in GMful play, which in turns means either having two separate sets of Action Phase procedures for GMful and GMless play, or biting the bullet and making Space Gerbils exclusively GMless, neither of which terribly appeals.

This post is mostly just me thinking out loud, so I don't expect anyone to have an opinion, but as always, I'm open to suggestions!

#gaming #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop rpgs #space gerbils #game design #playtesting #swearing

[sandraharissa]

Giving Silco a bad eye and making this his symbol was such a genius idea, like it’s so delicious on so many levels.

For one it really adds to his look/design. Fans would often joke that he looks like a rat, which is fair and funny, but imo the goal of the designers was to make him look like a shark. He’s got this peculiar nose that gives his whole head roughly the shape of a shark snout, he’s got the broken teeth that look like triangular shark teeth, and then there’s the eye, which has no eyelid and never blinks, exactly like a shark’s eye.

(see Jinx gets it)

Then, on the topic of no eyelid, he obvs never blinks with that eye which gives the impression of constant surveillance and being all-knowing. This ties nicely into the eye being his symbol, the image we see of the open eye that never blinks that is present on all the locations he owns/has influence over/oversees. That was most definitely a part of Silco’s Undercity that he established, keeping ppl in line through fear. It’s reflected in his own man refusing to cooperate with Cait but instead of insulting her or claiming loyalty to a cause he says ‘he’ll kill me’, then we also see it with Babette (who I’m certain knew everything but wouldn’t risk it for Vi and so essentially lead Vi to Sevika/her death) and Huck. It’s most obvious with Marcus, how he thought he could do what he wanted (‘rescue Vi’) against Silco’s interests behind his back cos he’ll never find out, but he does find out eventually which puts Marcus and his daughter in a Situation. This is how Silco does business. (Babette knew and didn’t want to find herself in a Situation in the future imo, telling Vi nothing of value, sending Vi away in a way that wouldn’t cast suspicion on herself and wouldn’t tie Vi to the location of her brothel and essentially leading her to Sevika so she could retroactively claim loyalty even if found out.)

In general the eye imagery is often connected to seeing more than others, the third eye and knowledge. All apply to Silco through his ideas of independence and a unified nation that were revolutionary for the Undercity and ahead of its time. Most notable is the moment when he talks to Vander about Zaun, he looks in the distance as tho he can see it in front of him meanwhile others can’t. Here I could also point to other things like him understanding/being right about the Council like ‘I just need to scare them’ and also the thing Silco himself thinks of as a secret knowledge he possesses aka his monster ideology.

Lastly to me the eye in a big way represents his trauma. It’s literally a wound/disability that is the result of the traumatic event in question but metaphorically it also shows how ever since the traumatic event he’s never been able to see the world in a normal way again but that from then on the way he perceives the world is always filtered through the lens of his trauma. And that is the eye that never closes. But I also think it’s very fitting to give him the one bad eye but keep the other eye normal. I’d say it’s a fair assessment of Silco to say he lives with one leg in reality and the other in his delulu land.

And that also creates a nice contrast with Jinx whose designed so that her right eye is covered most times but just by her bang which could symbolize that she has blind spots and that her ability to see reality is obstructed but otherwise her both eyes are normal. But then she reaches her final form with the shimmer eyes, and even tho from a distance it now looks like she has got the bad left eye, in reality both her eyes are ‘trauma eyes’ now and she can’t see reality for what it is anymore.

#silco #arcane #jinx #my:arcane #silco and jinx #arcane worldbuilding

[whispersinthedawn]

Fluttering fireflies (Pt 1)

“You only have one tail,” Triton said in disappointment.

As the first words that his immortal brother could have said to him, it could have been a lot worse. In fact, if Percy considered all the ways it could have gone, Triton could have begun the conversation by picking out all the features that made him young, weak, an upstart god, and undeserving of existing let alone setting tail in the palace.

And so, Percy cheerfully pointed out, “Look on the bright side. At least I have two eyes.”

“Why does that matter?” the god asked blankly.

Well, it mattered because two eyes weren’t always a guarantee when one happened to be born the son of Poseidon and a mortal turned nature spirit. Then again, when the alternative was being a cyclops, Percy would have preferred being the ordinary merman he was pretending to be rather than one of Triton’s beloved two-tailed merpeople.

“He’s perfect the way he is,” Poseidon interrupted before Percy could open his mouth and let a quip fly.

“Of course,” Rhodes agreed. “I didn’t know you and mother were planning to have other kids though.”

Considering the number of children Poseidon had, Percy rather doubted any amount of planning had been involved, ever, but he held his tongue.

He wasn’t a son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, after all.

“Ah well,” Poseidon hedged.

“Not again,” Kymopoleia burst out, slamming her hands on the table. “Once again, you’ve gathered us here to celebrate your virility under the guise of celebrating a new addition to the family!”

Before Poseidon could do more than puff up in offense, Kymopoleia sneered, “Has it ever struck you that you keep having more kids but none of the old ones ever come to visit? Maybe if you put a halt on having more kids and focused on taking care of the ones you already have, you wouldn’t have to keep creating more to hide the fact that everyone but a newborn hates you?”

“Depends on the newborn,” Benthesikyme input judiciously. “Some of them are born with a startling degree of perspicacity.”

“So you have problems with him too?” Percy asked curiously.

That brought his arguing half-siblings to a stop.

“Too?” Kymopoleia inquired after a cautious pause.

Percy nodded.

“What did he do, promise you the world only to end up locking you up on an island?” Rhodes threw a jibe at Poseidon.

“Call you his prince and then treat you like a glorified errand boy?” Triton shot archly.

“Marry you off to a mortal and forget you exist?” Benthesikyme smiled.

“Or was it even worse?” Kymopoleia grinned with sharp teeth. “Create a being in his image only to retroactively realise that he’s really not all that and the kid’s just too destructive to have around his precious?”

“What are you anyway?” Rhodes followed up curiously. “A shark hybrid that has lungs instead of gills, a seaweed creature that requires meat to survive, a whale that can’t digest water? What problems has your parentage saddled you with?”

Percy tapped a finger on his chin, taken aback by the plethora of complaints. “Um,”

“He’s a god!” Poseidon input forcefully before Percy could come up with a palatable answer. “The newest one in the world, in fact.”

So new he was only eighteen years old. Practically infantile, really.

“What are you a god of?” Triton inquired, leaning back in his chair with an assessing gaze.

“Don’t know,” Percy answered uncomfortably. “I just make storms.”

And have disturbing dreams, create volcanic eruptions, and accidentally destroy bridges. Percy was destruction in a nutshell, really.

But even offering a watered-down version of his skillset or lack thereof didn’t stave off the outburst.

“So not only is there a new god in town, it’s also my replacement!” Kymopoleia shouted.

“I’m not a replacement!” Percy burst out, shaking his hands wildly. “I’m not even god of all storms or anything! Just hurricanes. On land.”

Kymopoleia stared at him incredulously. “Wow. You’re not even a subordinate. Just born, and you’re already halfway to dead.”

“Stop being so dramatic,” Poseidon commanded. “He’s a god, he’s your brother, and you’re going to include him while carrying out your duties.”

“So … you mean not only do I have a snot-nosed little brother, I have to babysit the kid now?” Rhodes concluded.

“Don’t take it personally,” Percy commiserated. “First I heard of this was when he came to my birthday, for the first time ever, and gave me a sand dollar and a tour around the palace with my family. Funnily, he never mentioned just who was going to be part of this family trip.”

Benthesikyme sighed. “He’s insensitive that way.”

“At least you’re all getting along, even if it’s about how much you resent me,” Poseidon said, sounding unsure whether he ought to be worried about that.

Percy dared to pat his father on the elbow. “Get used to it,” he advised. “That’s how all well-adjusted siblings bond.”

***

An AU where Percy is born the youngest god. Will be ultimately Perpollo but Apollo hasn't entered the scene yet.

Read on Ao3

Next

#pjo #fanfiction #percy jackson #sea fam #god Percy #poseidon #meeting your half siblings #bonding over parental mistakes #teasing #alternate universe

[captainpikeachu]

There is this interesting moment in the scene where Lee is being interrogated by Verdugo, and Lee calls out how the smartest minds at Monarch decided “let them fight” was the best idea and the scene cuts from Lee to Michelle Duvall’s reaction

Upon first watch, it might not seem much more than just a reaction shot, but after finishing the season, you realize the clever little bit of foreshadowing they’re already planting the seeds for.

They put her reaction in that moment, specifically in a moment critiquing what happened in Godzilla 2014, because her sister Sandra died in Janjira in that very movie.

There is an emotional stake for her when Lee is calling out the mismanagement of things that got people like her sister killed. In that moment, Michelle was likely already assessing if she could trust Lee to take action that Monarch wasn’t taking, hence also why she was rather aggressively asking Tim a bunch of questions about how Lee knew all the things Monarch doesn’t even know.

That all makes her “turn” in the later episodes have much more foundation and logic. She was already unsatisfied with Monarch, she was effectively fishing for information, and Lee calling out Monarch for their inaction gave her the signal that she had found a new leader to follow.

I love when shows retroactively upon rewatch makes the episodes even better because you can now catch all the little foreshadowing details they placed in them.

#michelle duvall #sandra brody #lee shaw #monarch legacy of monsters

[yesterdayiwrote]

The big underlying point in all this is that Susie and Toto being married is not a secret, and was known to both FOM & FIA before she was appointed to any role. They have never tried to hide their pre-existing connection and anyone worth their salt would/should have considered and assessed any potential conflicts of interests before an appointment was made...

So, in a similar way to the stewarding issue in Las Vegas, this is yet another example of a potential issue arising from FIA/FOM failing to conduct their due diligence effectively and then retroactively trying to shift the blame onto a third party.

#f1 #Doubly weird that each time recently it's involved the Wolffs #Honestly if she gets fired she will get COIN #I cannot see how she wouldn't win any kind of dismissal case if it got that far

[tieflingkisser]

Gaza’s Famine is Underway

Three months ago the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) process (the official process for assessing famine risk) issued an urgent warning: the entire population of Gaza was “at risk” of famine, and over half a million people were already experiencing famine-level food shortages. Last week, the IPC upgraded that warning, projecting that famine in Gaza is now “imminent.” 1.1 million people, half the territory’s population, are in IPC Phase V, the highest level of risk. Yet the IPC process stopped short of declaring an active famine. So is famine in Gaza looming? Imminent? Or already happening? Here is a quick rundown on how to understand the new projections. Bottom line up front: available evidence strongly indicates that famine is getting underway in Gaza. The window to “avert” it has closed, and the focus must now pivot to containing the damage. As prospects for an enduring cease-fire remain pessimistic, tens of thousands of lives, perhaps more, hang in the balance. 

How are Hunger Crises Measured?

Humanitarian language around famine tends to be cautious and highly technical – and sometimes difficult for people outside the field to decipher. Humanitarian professionals use a 5-phase scale to characterize the severity of food crises, similar to better-known systems like the hurricane early warning system. And like the hurricane warning scale, the famine warning system produces highly rigorous forecasts built on decades of experience and research. A formal declaration of famine (typically made either by the affected country’s government or by the United Nations) hinges on reaching Phase V on the 5-phase IPC scale, specifically once a crisis has breached three quantitative thresholds. Breaching one or two of these thresholds is enough to characterize a population as Phase V, but a formal declaration typically requires evidence that all have been surpassed:

Hunger: At least one in five households facing an extreme lack of food, meaning that their daily consumption consistently falls far below minimum daily nutritional requirements.

Malnutrition: At least 30% of children under 5 are suffering from acute malnutrition.

Death: At least 2 people per 10,000 population are dying per day from starvation or related health problems.

In humanitarian circles the December warning from the IPC was the equivalent of projecting that a Category V hurricane is headed for the Florida coast. But outside of humanitarian circles it had far less impact. The warning prompted no fundamental change of direction from the U.S. or Israeli governments, and received limited media coverage. The devastating Israeli military offensive continued apace, and the volumes of aid allowed into Gaza actually declined from mid-January through February.  This lack of reaction reflects a major drawback of the IPC system: it makes the data threshold for a formal famine declaration so rigorous that famines tend to be declared only retroactively, after extensively vetted analysis. And up to that point the language remains heavily caveated, sometimes diluting the ensuing public and diplomatic reaction.  This is somewhat by design – famine is a powerful word, and there is an understandable impetus to ensure it is not thrown around loosely. But this conservatism ultimately undermines the usefulness of the IPC scale by making it too slow to confirm when famines are getting underway. By the time a famine is officially recognized, it has inevitably been underway for quite a while already and is already killing many people – a fact that is not widely appreciated by global political leaders. In the case of Somalia’s famine in 2011, for example, half of the mortality is estimated to have occurred before the formal declaration was made. Which brings us to Gaza’s situation today – still short of a formal (retroactive) declaration, but with conditions worsening rapidly and mortality beginning to accelerate.

Deciphering Gaza’s Catastrophe

Notwithstanding the hedged technical language of the official IPC forecast, Gaza’s famine is no longer “imminent.” Its impact is now being felt. If the December IPC forecast was telling us that the hurricane was 50 miles offshore and barreling towards the Florida coast, the new IPC forecast is telling us that its outer bands are making landfall as a Cat V.

[keep reading]

#free palestine #palestine #news

[theweeklydiscourse]

I personally think that "is it fair to manipulate this person to achieve something you consider is a universal good" would have been a more interesting question. But it just seems to be he didn't manipulate Alina at all or he was an evil piece of trash who should have died. What he thinks is universal good is also interesting because he might not be correct and hos intentions and achievements might not align but most people stop on Twitter stop at pedophile or literal Angel.

So true. It’s a question that could start a really interesting discussion within the narrative about the expenses of seeking liberation for a large group. The narrative could be constructed in a way where Aleksander believes he’s working towards a universal goal (S&B attempted this but failed) but is either misguided or is masking a selfish vendetta. The story could interrogate his methods and use it as a basis for character growth. Exploring Aleksander on that front would be FAR more engaging than what we were given in the trilogy.

Unfortunately, the support the text provides for that interpretation is pretty limited as far as things go. And yet, we have people inserting meaning into the text retroactively based on the word of the author as opposed to the narrative we are shown. This creates a big roadblock for actual discussion on his character because people lean towards shallow or downright false assessments of his character (ex. Pedophile, sex trafficker, genocidal dictator) and refuse to read the text with a more critical lens. Conversely, you have the rarer camp of people who might downplay certain unsavoury aspects of the character as a response to an overwhelming opposition.

#shadow and bone #the darkling #s&b critical #lb critical #aleksander morovoza

[messyhairdiaz]

Fuck It Friday

Tagged by @gayhoediaz ✌🏻

Keeping my tradition of giving you a whole chunk of something I wrote and then abandoned lol. Started this way back in October 2021 for Halloween, but very quickly realized that while I actually really love this opening, it is extremely not the tone the rest of the fic would’ve taken—I actually shared a later scene back then, if anyone who’s been following me that long remembers, and it was much lighter in tone. So not wanting to change the beginning and not wanting to change the rest I just kind of. Quit. But I think about it every once in a while, so maybe one day I’ll crack it. But for now, have the opening.

Tagging the usual suspects up here since the rest is under a cut: @rewritetheending @fiona-fififi @comaboybuck @elvensorceress @sibylsleaves @eddiequinns @alyxmastershipper @achillesbuck @clusterbuck @ajunerose @wandiinha retroactively adding @megsvstheworld because I couldn’t remember your new url and tumblr wouldn’t autofill it and then I…forgot to go back and add it rip sorry

Oh, and fyi? This is kind of gory

Buck comes to in the back of the ambulance, lurching up with a hungry gasp.

It’s a good thing, too, because he looks down at his chest just in time to watch the ragged claw marks seal themselves up and fade into pale pink lines, and that probably would’ve been hard to explain at the hospital.

“What the fuck,” Hen breathes.

“Buck,” Eddie gasps, his voice raw like he’d been screaming, and the last several minutes come back to Buck in a blur of pain and motion.

They’d been called to an empty warehouse, the caller not giving much information past “massive blood loss” and “hurry,” so they’d had no idea what they’d be walking into.

Buck’s not sure there were any words that could’ve prepared them.

It was like walking into a horror movie. Buck has seen a lot of blood, and gore, and death in his time as a firefighter, but this…

He could smell blood in the air, so thick the taste was on his tongue. He saw Hen actually cover her mouth like she might be about to gag, something he’d never seen her do.

Worse somehow than the smell and the taste was the sight.

He’d never seen someone in so many pieces. There are so many pieces he’s not even sure if it is just one person. But no matter the number they are far beyond the 118’s help.

It took every ounce of willpower he could muster to not turn tail and run back to the safety of their vehicles.

“Was… Was there an explosion?” Eddie asked hesitantly, eyes searching for any evidence to back that up.

Even Bobby looked shaken as he turned back to them. “Something’s very wrong here, let’s move back to the truck and call in LAPD-“

Whatever he was about to say next was cut short when something massive and grey came out of nowhere and slammed into him, and everything from that moment until he woke up in the ambulance is a confusing blur that he has to be getting wrong.

Because he remembers some sort of… creature. Like a wolf, but so much larger, with teeth and claws that tore at them like sharp knives.

“You stopped breathing,” Eddie says now, almost an accusation, the sound bringing Buck back to the present.

“I’m breathing now,” he assures him, swallowing thickly at the haunted look in his boyfriend’s eyes.

“Uh, guys,” Chim says, and the tone of his voice gets their attention immediately. He’s staring down at his arm, the uniform sleeve shredded to bits.

“Is it worse than we thought?” Hen demands, shifting out of shock at Buck’s rapid recovery and into paramedic mode.

“No,” he says at Hen grabs his arm and starts to assess. “There’s nothing there.”

“What?” Eddie demands.

“That fucking whatever the fuck it was bit me right here on the arm, but it’s gone.”

“That’s not possible,” Hen says, her voice shaky even as she wipes the blood off his arm and reveals unbroken skin.

“And Buck sitting up right when I thought we were about to have to call time of death is, Hen?”

“Time of death…?” Buck mumbles faintly, but other than Eddie’s hand grasping his wrist tightly his words go unnoticed.

“We- we were just wrong, about how severe his wounds were-“

“How’s your leg, Hen?”

Hen stops, her jaw working. “It’s fine.”

“Funny, because I know I saw-“

“Hey,” Eddie snaps, voice quiet, eyes darting towards the cab. “We need to table this. Hen, alert the driver and the hospital that it was a false alarm, Chim, get Bobby on the radio so he knows Buck’s ok.”

Buck feels like he’s tuning in and out. The image of that creature is seared into his brain, the fact that it bit Chim, maybe Hen too, the way they’ve all healed.

It can’t be possible.

But he knows the creature he saw was a wolf. Much bigger than any he’s ever seen before, but a wolf nonetheless.

“Werewolf,” he breathes, eyes wide.

Eddie releases his hold on Buck’s wrist in favor of his hand. “Hey, you’re ok,” he says, and only then does Buck realize he was on the verge of hyperventilating.

“How bad was I hurt?” He asks quietly.

Eddie looks away. “Buck…”

“Eddie, please, I need to know. How bad was it?”

A war plays out in a matter of seconds on Eddie’s face, and then it looks like he has to steel himself. “You were… eviscerated. It was…” he trails off, shaking his head. “Suffice to say it’s a miracle we even got you in the ambulance alive.”

Buck doesn’t know what to do with that. He’s faced death before, but that… He brushes it aside because he has to. “And you? You’re ok?”

Eddie huffs a bitter laugh. “Yeah, I just have some scratches on my back. Somebody had to play hero and put himself in front of me even though that thing had already knocked him on his ass,” he says, a bit of an edge in his voice.

Buck doesn’t remember doing it but he doesn’t have to to know it’s true. “And Bobby?”

“Bit banged up. You’re the only one that was seriously hurt.”

“What happened to it? The were- the creature?” He can’t bring himself to say werewolf again. It makes him sound crazy, even if that’s all this night has turned out to be.

“Ran off. I cracked its skull with my Haligan so I don’t know if it got far.” Eddie looks at the shredded remnants of Buck’s shirt. “Actually, I guess it’s probably fine.”

Buck shudders to think of that thing still out there, after the sight they found and what it did to him.

“Buck, talk to Cap, tell him you’re ok.” Chimney interjects, sounding frustrated.

Buck takes the offered radio. “Hey Cap, I’m fine,”

“What the hell, Buck? You were… You-“

“I know. But I’m fine now, promise. You’ll see for yourself back at the station.”

“Are you sure you don’t need a hospital?”

“I’m sure. We’ll see you at the station.”

——

The perils of a modern design incorporating glass instead of proper walls is there’s nowhere to go to not be gawked at when everyone is nothing but torn clothes and bloodstains.

“Roof,” Bobby said after taking in the sight of them. His eyes lingered on the scraps of fabric hanging across Buck’s chest, like he hadn’t believed he was ok until he’s seeing it.

Buck gets it. He’s still trying to wrap his head around it.

They file out on the roof, Eddie staying glued to Buck’s side, but it’s not like he minds, he can’t imagine not feeling untethered with all that’s happening right now.

Bobby’s still looking at him like he might vanish.

“I’m fine,” he insists.

“Not that I’m complaining, but how?”

“Cap… Did you get bitten, or scratched?” Chimney ventures.

Bobby’s brow furrows. “I think it scratched me, on the shoulder,” he answers, tugging at a tear in his uniform to look at his skin underneath. “I don’t see anything, must not have broken the skin.”

The rest of them exchange a glance, and Chim takes the lead again. “Then why is there blood on your uniform?”

“It’s probably Buck’s, what is going on?”

“We were all bitten or scratched. But all the wounds have healed,” Buck answers. They’d checked Hen’s leg and Eddie’s back on the way back to the station, all there was were the faintest of marks, almost impossible to see if you didn’t know exactly where to look.

“That’s impossible. We must’ve all just thought we were wounded,” Bobby argues, not sounding convinced of his own words.

“You saw Buck. He was… He stopped breathing, in the ambulance, but then he started healing, rapidly. I saw it with my own eyes,” Hen admits.

“Maybe we were dosed with something. A hallucinogen at the scene.”

#fuck it Friday #my wips #gonna start using that tag for all my tag stuff like this #anyway it’s kind of cool that I reread this and actually do see that I’ve improved in the year and a half since I wrote it #there’s already things I know I’d word better if I started editing

[posletsvet]

You know, I read a theory that even makes sense that Kenjaku has an agreement with Geto and that Geto is conscious and knows what's going on, but I think Geto doesn't want to wake up because he has no motivation on earth, he lost his daughters and his Friend, I think he knows what's happening but he doesn't want to go back. What do you think of this theory? sorry for the text

Hi there, anon!!

Kenjaku having to enter a Binding Vow with a previous host (even if they manifest as no more than a lingering apparition in a form of muscle memory and whatnot) when changing bodies is quite an interesting suggestion! It somewhat ties neatly into the 'body vs. soul' discourse we've seen established in the manga. The two are repeatedly rendered inseperable within the story, two sides of the same coin, so whereas Kenjaku's Cursed Technique encompasses the physical body, something else may be needed to bind the soul. This would imply that Kenjaku's immortality is not entirely a product of their innate abilities, but a result of innovation and inventive application of those. How much experimentation did it require for them to figure out optimal conditions for that vow? That seems to be very much in Kenjaku's 'mess-around-and-find-out' fashion, if you ask me. And though I myself gravitate towards a different interpretation -- one that views this 'soul-binding' process as an organic, built-in effect of Kenjaku's CT -- since we don't know the exact mechanics of it, this theory has a right to exist!

Moving on to your next point, I strongly agree with your assessment that Geto has no motivation/desire to carry on with his life. Perhaps 'meaning' in this case would be a quite fitting word, too, because if he was to ever come back to life his resumed existence would lack, at least in his own view, that very thing -- meaning. Justifying past actions and past mistakes retroactively, trying to assign some greater meaning to what was rather an impulsive, emotionally driven reaction of someone who was struggling mentally for a long time with no one batting an eye, compartmentalizing complex reality into imaginary categories -- doing all that Geto essentially ran himself into a corner, a mental dead-end. In an attempt to validate himself and perhaps shut out the overwhelming sense of guilt that would otherwise eat him alive, Geto made delusional, twisted reasoning the core truth of his existence, a basis for his purpose.

What I find particularly interesting is that Geto, being himself the victim of the jujutsu society's dysfunctional system, clearly recognised its shortcomings, but attributed those to a factor only partially at fault. The telltale sign of that, as I see it, would be his confession that he never held any spite against those in Jujutsu High. This renders Geto's antagonism towards non-sorcerers misplaced. The system was put in place for a reason, it's true, but those in favour of whom that system was established should not be held accountable for its injustices. Instead of trying to improve the order, Geto opted for eliminating the reason it exists in the first place.

Where that leaves him is caught up in a struggle to achieve the impossible, breach that accursed gap between the ideal and reality. Even if Geto's goal wasn't impossible for anyone but one person alive, Gojo Satoru, his decade-long endeavour to wipe all non-sorcerers out of existence would still be in vain, meaningless. Because that simply would bear no fruit in regard to fixing the corrupt mentality that rules over the sorcerers' world.

And if it all was for nothing, just fumbling desperately for some solution, for some relief of the burden thrust upon his fellow sorcerers, futile in the end? What if what he put his life on the line for was never going to solve anything, what if he was not reaching anything with it? What if he was wrong all along? It is straight-up terrifying, to drown and erase yourself fully in pursuit of your goal and understand that all you've done, you've done in vain, misguided, wrong. And Geto couldn't undo what he'd done. He could not afford to look back, to slow down, to revaluate and reset, try to set things right. Acknowledging his fault would've been like staring into the sun. So he didn't. He kept pushing forward until he simply no more could. That's why, in my view, Geto's plan regarding the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons reads as low-key passively suicidal. He chose a meaningful way to end his life -- one that would entrust his legacy to his family, make his goals, his ideal, known to both sides. In that regard, his death is no different from Gojo's: he dies so that his dream could live on. Little did he know that this too, in fact, would be meaningless.

#jjk #jujutsu kaisen #jjk manga spoilers #geto suguru #meta asks #i guess i can put this tag here? #thank you so much for the ask anon! #it gave me so much food for thought #and please don't apologize you have nothing be sorry for! #actually it's me who should be sorry for making this answer too long #it kinda got out of hand #i hope my rambling would be at least somewhere near to a satisfying answer to your questions #also i nearly brought myself to tears while writing that last paragraph so tread carefully #tw suicide mention

[mmmmalo]

Extended preamble to a obtuse joke which probably isn't real:

One thesis of Slurquest was that Alternia is an apocalypse-scenario built to invoke (and mock) the anxieties of racists and homophobes/transphobes. "Black culture" predominates: rap is honored as an aristocratic tradition, and highblood leadership speaks with black inflection -- the selection of ICP (white rappers) as a medium of these aspects locates some of that anxiety in the mixing of black and white (miscegenation), a fear also seen in the trolls' gray skin tones. Here and there hints abound that "females" are extinct, and that reproduction is strictly homosexual: occluded slurs, references to chastity cages, the coding of the whiteness as Feminine (and blackness as Masculine) such that the nuclear bomb of Fiduspawn miscegenation results in the death of "true" femininity as such, etc.

That last bit's a reading of the Limeblood genocide, which was retroactively prefigured by Calliope (feminine limey) getting "mated" by Caliborn (who was FREED FROM HIS CHAINS as PLANET OF THE APES REFERENCES swarmed his kernel, both images of black liberation). It seemed to me that Caliborn's insistence that all of the Felt were men (and his hatred of women, and his admiration of yaoi's ability to make men look like women) expressed a world building inclination that would retroactively follow Lord English into his molding of Alternia.

Anyway, all that in mind, I was reading a book on transgender history and learned of a legal setback in 1950's California wherein it was declared that "transsexual genital modification would constitute 'mayhem' (the willful destruction of healthy tissue) and would expose any surgeon who performed such an operation to possible criminal prosecution." Wasn't familiar with that definition of the term before. And to distract myself from the sobering awareness that "mutilation" has been a pejorative assessment of gender affirming surgery for about as long as gender affirming surgery's existed, I thought: dang, "Land of Colours and Mayhem" works as a description of Alternia huh. Colored people and trans people...

Anyway, putting aside your personal opinion on how much of a stretch that is, MY chief reservation stems from the way Sburb's planets are usually designed to provoke their players -- so for Caliborn's planet to nominally invoke the reactionary nightmare that he himself would later construct (and that he himself represents on occasion) would be in conflict with my current model of the game. Dunno what to make of that, if anything

#race mapping #transphobia cw #homestuck commentary

[ozimac]

Causality

Associative Accounts of Causality Judgments, Escobar & Miller (2012)

Rational Rats: Causal Inference and Representation, Blaisdell & Waldmann (2012)

The chapter "Associative Accounts of Causality Judgments" by Escobar & Miller (2012)* critically examines the efficacy of associative models in understanding causality. It begins by highlighting the mental processes involved in comprehending causal connections, emphasizing Thorndike's law of effect and the reinforcement of actions with positive outcomes. The text delves into key concepts such as contiguity, contingency, and association, drawing from Hume's perspective on inferring events and addressing the challenges posed by temporal contiguity. The Rescorla-Wagner model is introduced as an efficient tool for explaining conditioning phenomena. The narrative explores associative phenomena in causal learning, tackling acquisition, extinction, and contingent models. Stimulus interaction effects like conditioned inhibition, stimulus competition, and retroactive interference are scrutinized. Retroactive revaluation is an associative learning phenomenon where the perceived strength or significance of a cue, not present during training, is retrospectively altered based on subsequent learning experiences with other cues or events. The article also discusses retrospective revaluation as a phenomenon challenging traditional models, prompting modifications to better account for future evidence. It raises philosophical questions about why some relationships are interpreted as causal and introduces the concept of causal power, suggesting that knowledge about causal relationships differ from covariation.

Overall, the chapter discusses considerations in previous methodology, potential biases in assessing causality, and challenges in generalizing past findings to real-world scenarios. It questions the applicability of the associative framework, the conceptualization of causality as a special instance of associative learning, and the implications of retrospective revaluation effects. Finally, it invites exploration of biological relevance and belongingness concepts when studying causation, and specifically considers instances where stimuli of high biological relevance may deviate from typical associative principles in causal judgments.

-

The chapter "Rational Rats: Causal Inference and Representation" by Blaisdell & Waldmann (2012)* explores causal model theory using the study of rat behavior and its parallel to human studies. It begins by highlighting the importance of causal reasoning in comprehending the world, drawing from Humean philosophy and modern learning theories. It also discusses the advantages of causal models over associative knowledge, emphasizing their ability to represent causal directionality, power, differentiate between causal and noncausal covariations, infer hidden causes, exhibit parsimony, and make predictions.

The focus then shifts to investigating whether rats engage in rational causal reasoning processes or rely solely on covariations. Experimental evidence (Blaisdell et al., 2006) suggests that rats demonstrate basic forms of causal reasoning beyond associative accounts, aligning with causal model theory. The chapter explores whether rats form causal models, understand actions as causal interventions, and differentiate between observed and intervened events in their causal inferences. The authors stress the concept of self-generated actions having a special status in causal reasoning, supported by experiments demonstrating rats' recognition of the deterministic and independent nature of their actions (see Leising et al., 2008). Transfer effects and hidden event cognition are also discussed, revealing rats' ability to deduce hidden causes in various scenarios. The chapter emphasizes that rats' causal reasoning surpasses simple associative theories, advocating for an interpretation of causal model theory in nonhuman animals’ causal reasoning over associative interpretations (use of covariations).

My thoughts

Now, the Escobar & Miller (2012) chapter was a bit dense for me, as I have a very general understanding of causality. However, both articles touch on this idea of observation vs. intervention in causal learning which I find quite interesting. An observation of event A consistently occurring before events B and D might be perceived as the common cause of both effects (B and D). However, the authors point out that such observations alone may not enable the subject to establish whether A directly causes B. To explore the causal structure more conclusively, one potential approach is to intervene on one of the potential causal links while keeping all other factors constant. “Actions can also be viewed as a special type of event; the consequences of actions may be learned faster than if the situation were merely observed” (e.g., Leising, Wong, Waldmann, & Blaisdell, 2008).This makes sense to me, as I feel like you’d be more likely to remember, or learn, an answer in a class if you raised your hand and got it wrong (or right) than if you merely observed that happen to another student. I wonder, though, if observation of that circumstance (i.e., another student raising their hand and getting an answer wrong) would help more than if a professor just said the answer themselves. That being said, I wonder if another rat observing the intervening rat in the Leising et al. study would also produce the same response as that intervening rat themselves. That is, would the observing rat recognize the causal relationship between the lever -> tone without intervening themselves, or is this understanding unique to personal actions and their consequences? 

If rats are capable of recognizing causal relationships by observing interventions, it prompts the question of transferability of knowledge across individuals within the same species and even across species. How do animals perceive and process causal information that revolve around a different species – such as, a pet cat watching its owner pour his or her food from a plastic bag into their empty food dish. Will the cat understand this causal relationship (i.e., owner -> food bag -> pour into food dish) even when they do not see it happening (e.g., they come across their previously empty food dish, now full)? Would that be an example of hidden event cognition? Of course, this would be without considering any contextual signs (e.g., hearing the food rustling in the bag and being poured into the dish). I wonder too, if a cat observed this causal chain once and only once, and then just continued to find its food bowl full after last seeing it empty, would they ever forget what caused that to happen (transfer effects)? Would this count as transfer effects because the cat itself did not intervene, but rather, observe? Or, would their knowledge of that causal chain be strengthened with each time that they found the full food bowl? That is, will they be reminded of (and further, strengthen) that causal model with each presentation of just the outcome? 

On a similar note, to me, when speaking of causality, I can’t help but think of Bayesian inference. Does causal discounting occur when you’re weighing out your priors and judging them by their probabilities? To discuss this further, let’s refer to the example about watering your front yard used in the Blaisdell & Waldmann (2012) paper when discussing transfer effects:

“[i]f I water my front yard and then notice that the sidewalk is wet, I infer that it was I and not rain that caused the wet sidewalk. If on the very next day, however, I notice that the sidewalk is wet and I know that I haven’t watered my lawn that day, then I infer that it must have recently rained. Discounting of rain occurs in the instance in which I intervened, but that inference does not carry over to the next day on which I did not intervene; thus, no discounting is expected”

The initial intervention of watering the front yard establishes a causal belief, acting as a prior. On the next day, the absence of personal intervention shifts the inference, reflecting an update in the Bayesian model based on new evidence (wet sidewalk) and prior knowledge (previous day's intervention). Bayesian reasoning allows for this dynamic adjustment of causal beliefs in response to changing circumstances (contexts) and we must call upon these different adjusted beliefs when making causal inferences. Of course, our prior knowledge influences our causal inferences, but how exactly is that knowledge weighed in our knowledge bank? Are causal relationships that have been observed (or intervened) more often hold more weight, or does context triumph all? Do causal models encompass all the potential causes and their effects, in some sort of flow chart-like representation? Or is it more-so like a ranking (ordered from most to least likely)?

* Chapters from Zentall, T. R., & Wasserman, E. A. (2012). The Oxford handbook of Comparative Cognition. Oxford U. Press. 

[beesmygod]

Romance languages have evolved & simplified so much in their lifetime and the X should be at best viewed as just a step in that process, but it's getting more and more stupid to hold on to as an end goal & the retroactive justifications are like some assimilationist neo-Indigenismo. The languages also have their own historic linguistic reform movements that take generations of study to assess unwieldy or patriarchal language, not just getting mad at too-simple noun classes existing.

well said

[dear-systems]

"OSDD-1b systems can experience [...] occasionally grey-outs, where memory is impaired but not completely absent, and some say they can experience retroactive amnesia or generalized memory loss but not cleanly between different system members as they switch."

Hi! We saw this quote in your most recent post and wanted to ask something about it. We have all these issues- grey-outs, retroactive amnesia, generalized memory loss, etc- and we've been trying to figure out if we're DID or OSDD for a long while now. Is it true that these symptoms wouldn't qualify for DID? We do have members that black out when out of front, and subsystems that have internal member-specific amnesia, but said amnesia doesn't entirely apply to front because I'm almost always in front so all memories of front go through me, so to speak. Do you know if all this would have any alignment with DID? Sometimes it feels like OSDD doesnt encompass our experiences (and since the last therapist we saw tried to dx us with schizophrenia, we're hesitant to get professional help)

thanks for reading! sorry if this is too complex a question ^^;;

None of the mod team are medical professionals, so unfortunately we cannot help with this. It’s understandable to not want to seek out a therapist, but unfortunately, we’re not qualified to assess you, especially not from an anonymous tumblr ask.

Your experiences are valid and real regardless of the words for them. Medical labels are just labels for facilitating medical treatment and insurance paperwork; you can use whatever terms you like from a community standpoint, but medical diagnoses have to be left to medical professionals.

#use whatever terms help you for as long as they help you imo #but we dont feel qualified to tell you about your experience

[teaveetamer]

In addition to racism, the whole "bad thing is wrong because it's factually incorrect instead of being morally/inherently reprehensible" mindset that Cap and the Edelstans have kinda applies to their views on imperialism, war, and genocide wouldn't you say?

I didn't want to go into it on that post because it was going to get off topic, but yes, I would agree with that. And it retroactively makes so many of the circular arguments make so much more sense. You literally cannot convince them that imperialism is bad because they genuinely don't believe imperialism, as a concept, can be bad. All actions are inherently morally neutral, and so you decide if something is good or bad based on who is performing the action, who they are performing the action on, and why. E.g. it's wrong for Faerghus to commit genocide against Duscur because Faerghus is factually wrong about who caused the Tragedy, but it's okay for Edelgard to commit genocide against the Nabateans because she is """factually correct""" about what Rhea did.

You will never be able to make them see their hypocrisy because they genuinely don't believe it's hypocritical. They do not seem to understand that an action in itself can be immoral. If they believe it is justified, then it is moral.

Ironically, for all they like to tout the "moral greyness" of the game, it's not exactly a viewpoint that allows for much nuance. Dimitri killing enemy combatants during a war is worse than Edelgard committing genocide, because Dimitri is a "bad person" doing things for "unjustified reasons" and Edelgard is a "good person" doing things for "justified reasons" in their minds. Even though, again, I think most of us would assess killing enemy combatants in a war as less morally reprehensible than committing genocide (for what I hope would be painfully obvious reasons).