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Context-Full Patent Art
Every now and then I see people in the comments who seem to genuinely want a better idea of what one of the posted bits of art here was supposed to be patenting. Giving that context myself doesn't seem in the spirit of the blog, but I absolutely want to encourage people to do the legwork to go sniffing around for original sources.
It's something I have to do a lot in my day job, something I've learned to enjoy, and the thing that led me to start Context-Free Patent Art a dozen years ago in the first place.
Let's start with today's post, which is a perfect example of art that raises more questions than it answers.
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Almost every post on this blog has a header detailing the date of the patent or application and the number, which you can find on the top right. In this case, this image is from Patent Application # 20020022516.
Longtime Context-Free Patent Art fans might remember this image from when it was first featured here over a decade ago. I figured that a lot of the people following the blog now haven't seen some of the gems from years ago, so I'm going to be doing re-runs of some of my favorites this week. There's a bunch more I think would be good to bring back, so I'll use the vintage cfpa hashtag in the future so you know when a duplicate post is intentional (as opposed to me just forgetting I've posted a thing before, which happens a fair bit).
Back to the matter at hand though, if you're ever curious, the US Patent and Trademark Office has a super-handy patent search function. It's pretty easy to find from their main site (uspto.gov), but you can also just bookmark this link to the basic search form:
Check out the search results, click on the link for the .pdf, and you'll get the complete patent/application to peruse at your enjoyment.
In this case, you'll find the patent being applied for covers a method of "Advertising inside electronic games" and you'll learn that:
In FIG. 1, girl 10 is climbing onto a hamburger 11 like one sold at a fast food restaurant. However, in the displayed image, hamburger 11 is as large as girl 10. The person playing the game will therefore perceive hamburger 11 as fantastically large. That unusual scale will help to burnish the image of hamburger 11 in the player's memory as well as draw his attention to it while he plays the game.
Not shown in FIG. 1 are other characteristics which electronic games could apply to hamburger 11 which cannot be shown in unanimated line-drawings. Hamburger 11 will compress as girl 10 steps or pushes on it. That action will be accompanied by squishing and slurping sounds...
Yeah, the explanations are weird too, sometimes.
Sorry for all the words, I just wanted to make it as clear as possible to people that if they're ever curious about stuff they see on Context-Free Patent Art, it's usually pretty easy to find out what the deal is.
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motherstone · 2 days
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What was lost | Faces | From one mother… | What remains
Thank you @chi-the-idiot and @cyberlights for the quality check 🙌
Additional notes:
About Emily: Yes, those are indeed white hairs (largely inspired by my older sister). It was caused by immense stress during the war, and although it has already ended for a couple of years, Emily and Trellis do still reel from their harsh experiences.
About EK: any colored border means it's an event that took place in the past. In this case, this was EK's and Trellis's duel for the throne.
About Karen: how come she overheard their conversation? With the kind of people Emily and Trellis are, and the nature of their conversation, you'd think they'd close the door? Well, instead of getting the answer several months later once I release the complete comic in pdf form alongside with additional content like short comics and minor illustrations, I'll say it now: they couldn't because Emily blasted her door off its hinges a few days prior (Emily + cockroach on the door = no door).
The panel of Trellis and his mom is based on @theeio 's gift art for me back when Supernova was recently released. Thank you Spoon for letting me use it!
As for the symbolism explanation, I was hoping to release it all at once after I've finished the comic, but alas that will take forever. Therefore, I will release it that explains more about parts 1 and 2 in compiled form 👍
Minor announcement: Part 3 will be greatly delayed. This comic WILL be finished, but I will very busy this month of May, and maybe even June, so it may not be released monthly as I had planned. I'm terribly sorry for the inconvenience :(
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anim-ttrpgs · 2 days
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An absolutely incredible review of the beta version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy by review Willy Muffin on youtube, complete with visuals and actual analysis!
I'm going to also add to this post a comment that I left on the video, offering further insight into the design intentions of the game, though the comment might not make as much sense if you haven't watched the video yet.
Hey, lead writer of Eureka here, first of all I wanna say how good and professional this review is, it’s almost indescribable how it feels to see our project taken so seriously and given real analysis, complete with visuals and everything! We would be super impressed and happy with it even if you didn’t like the game—but luckily it sounds like you loved it hahaha
I’d also like to address a few things throughout the video, not as arguments or rebuttals, just further developer insight for everyone
Re: “Urban Fantasy.” “Urban Fantasy” is basically just another term for “modern fantasy”, just a fantasy story that takes place in the 20th or 21st century and deals with the intersection of contemporary life with the supernatural, and it might be an Americanism, or even a Southern-ism, since it has a lot of connections and origins in the living folklore of New Orleans, so I shouldn’t be surprised it isn’t a term everyone is familiar with. Just think of it as the kind of genre where instead of the vampire living in a secluded scary castle, his name is Phil and he’s your roommate haha. What We Do in the Shadows, Shadowrun, and the World of Darkness games are all some other good examples of “urban fantasy.”
Re: Scooby-Doo. Oh we would LOVE for you to run a Scooby-Doo-like wacky mystery with Eureka. Even though the main tone is dark and gritty and noir, we did intentionally build it so that it could run more lighthearted stuff as well! There’s even a few Scooby-Doo references to be found throughout the text, and if we hit a certain stretch goal on the Kickstarter, we’re going to be adding a bunch of Scooby-gang-inspired traits, including the option to play a Talking Dog!
Re: Combat being the largest section, even larger than Investigation. First of all, that’s kind of an illusion that is the result of the game being unfinished. I have a tendency when I write rules to use really long sentences, overexplain things, repeat myself, etc, and that dramatically bloats the rules text and page count, but that’s why we have an editor! She goes through after the fact and trims most of the fat off my bloated writing style to make it flow smoother and read faster, and take up less space. The PDF that was read for this review has had the Investigation chapter copy-edited (and cut down in size by about 25%!), but the editor hasn’t gotten to the combat chapters yet, so they still have a hugely inflated page count. When she’s done with them, you can expect each combat chapter to also be cut down in size by about 25%, so they won’t be nearly so large a chunk of the book.
Secondly, I’ll explain our reasoning for why the combat chapters and advanced combat rules are such a big chunk of the rules text, it’s intentional design which I will now explain. If anyone still doesn’t agree with that design, that’s fair, and that’s why we made the Basic Combat Rules an option.
The reason that the advanced combat rules are the default, and the reason they exist at all, is because it incentivizes and rewards Investigation. If combat is super deadly, it makes Investigation, snooping, and spying more appealing than kicking down the door and getting your head blown off. But of combat is super deadly, it also needs to be very deep and tactical, because if it’s deadly but shallow, then there’s no player agency. “Combat starts, roll some dice, okay your guy is dead.” That’s no fun. So by adding rules and modifiers for cover/elevation, distance, the difference between a pistol and an assault rifle, etc. we make it so that not only is combat its own high-stakes puzzle, but make it so that when the PCs HAVE to engage in combat, all their investigation can really pay off and save their lives. Spying on a building to find out the number of goons stationed there and how they are armed helps you plan and assess risk, stealing the blueprints to the building helps you know how to get the drop on the goons, and know the best places to attack from so that they are stuck out in the open and you are not, etc. and having rules for those things means that all the PCs’ snooping and planning makes a real mechanical difference in whether they live or die.
That’s just my opinion though, and one of the biggest reasons WHY we decided to write the combat with as much depth as we did.
Anyway, thank you again for this review and analysis of our project, our Kickstarter jumped up by about ten more backers in the evening when this video went up after several days of no new backers, and we have to assume we have this video, and all of you watching and reading this, to thank. You’re really making our dreams come true. :)
Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is kickstarting from right now until May 10th! Back it while you still can!
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If you want to try before you buy, you can download a free demo of the prerelease version from our website or our itch.io page!
If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!
You can also support us on Ko-fi, or by checking out our merchandise!
Join our TTRPG Book Club At the time of writng this, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is the current game being played in the book club, and anyone who wants to participate in discussion, but can’t afford to make a contribution, will be given the most updated prerelease version for free! Plus it’s just a great place to discuss and play new TTRPGs you might not be able to otherwise!
We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.
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vervain-art · 2 months
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DISCORDIA
A mini zine for the villains of FF 1-10. It includes 20 pages of sketches and art from all 10 games.
I'll make it available for everyone after the convention, sooo 13 March.
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blueskittlesart · 9 months
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just ordered the loz comics zine prototype 😁😁
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eddieintheocean · 6 months
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lil guys of the Ediacaran
the Ediacaran period was around ~635 million years ago, happening before the Cambrian. This time saw the rise of the first group of animals and the oldest multicellular life. The fossil record is sparse due to the fact that the creatures did not have hard shells, which are the thing most easily fossilised.
the Ediacaran biota appeared ~570 million years ago, and are very taxonomically ambiguous, they may relate to some groups, like cnidaria and protozoans, but some have suggested completely new phylums that we do not have today.
the majority of Ediacaran biota were sessile (lacking the ability to move by themselves) and were soft-bodied. many also lacked mouths and a gut.
here are some lil guys!
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These frondose fossils are very controversial, considering they appear to be leafy plants, but may very well be anything from animal or protist, to stem fungi (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1099727)
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this is an Erniettamorph and we know basically nothing about these! The fossils were found in places where photosynthesis would not have been possible, and one type of these fossils has been found with the tubes completely covered and filled with sand, which makes the possibility of osmotic feeding from the surrounding water difficult as it would reduce the metabolically active volume. (https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0904836106)
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Dickinsonia is a more studied animal. and it probably was an animal, due to cholesterol molecules found in fossils. Fossils range from millimetres to ~1.4 metres, and have near bilateral symmetry and rib-like segments. They were a mobile creature and ate microbial mats (trace fossils have been found which are most likely impressions from feeding) (https://doi.org/10.1017/S175569102300004X) A study from 2022 has suggested that they temporarily stuck themselves to substrate with mucus, which suggests a life in shallow waters (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0016756821000194)
support me on ko-fi?
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databent · 2 months
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why the fuck is it that some people cant seem to acknowledge that people can just... be disabled. not through any fault of their own, not because something "happened" to them, just because, you know, sometimes people have disabilities. like, come on
#.pdf#rd#kd#just a warning these tags are long. like. really incredibly long. i had thoughts.#sorry for the vague ass post i'm just upset about some stupid shit my dad said yesterday.#namely: outright telling me that he doesn't believe i have non-24 (circadian rhythm disorder).#and that even if i do he doesn't believe it's possible for it to actually be a lifelong and disabling condition.#*also: this post isn't meant to imply that disabilities that did have some inciting incident are more accepted or anything.#it's just that i'm frustrated with the “you're disabled? why? what happened?” sentiment a lot of people seem to have.#nothing happened to cause my disability. i'm just like this. no i can't change it. what the fuck do you want me to tell you?#i'd guess it probably has to do with society's focus on work and productivity and career-mindedness above all else.#and when someone comes along that doesn't fit in with the way things are structured it just doesn't compute.#because the idea of people who can't dedicate their entire lives to working is so fundamentally contradictory to their view of... i don't-#-know. meaning in life? fulfillment? that they feel a need to reject the possibility altogether.#this is mainly when dealing with invisible disabilities from what i've seen. because i think there's a tendency to view visibly disabled-#-people as belonging to a different category altogether. which of course is its own issue but i'm not visibly disabled so i don't feel-#-like it's necessarily my place to speak on that.#anyway. i just want my struggles to be acknowledged as real. because they are. and i need people to understand that I Have A Disability.#albeit one many people don't even believe could be real because there's a sort of belief that circadian rhythms are purely a product of-#-external forces like sunlight so “you can't possibly have yours be different and have you tried just going outside more?” sigh.#sorry i also just remembered my dad telling me he doesn't believe i can have something so rare because the chances of having it are too low.#which is some ridiculous logic to me. rare doesn't mean it's impossible. some amount of people have to wind up with it regardless.#i just lucked out i guess.#n24 tag
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thefisherqueen · 1 day
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"Self-censorship was a practical necessity, but it was also part of the process of self-discovery, which makes it doubly unreasonable to accuse writers like Proust or James of failing to support the cause. Far more damage was done by the mutilations and incinerations of embarrassed readers. A diarist might turn his closet into a time-machine, but when it arrived in the future heirs and editors would be waiting to barricade the doors.
Some crude attempts at censorship are easily reversed - hims replaced with hers, and so on - but a great deal of the unread corpus was destroyed forever. Edmund Gosse and the librarian of the London Library organized Symond's papers into a pile in the library garden and set fire to them. Richard Burton's extensive research notes on 'pederasty' were probably destroyed by his widow. Minnie Benson's son Arthur left behind 'a packet of letters of very dangerous stuff' and another packet 'that had to be burned unopened', according to his brother Fred. Edward Lear's papers seem to have been selectively destroyed after his death by the man for whom Lear had harboured a 'twarted, frustrated, impossible love'.
To judge by the large number of known destructions (most presumably went unrecorded), at any moment in the 19th century someone, somewhere, was burning the papers of a homosexual relative. People who were almost certainly homosexual, like Thomas Gray or Thomas Lovell Beddoes, can now have no firm place in the record, especially since the standard of proof demanded of biographers is far stricter for homosexual than for heterosexual subjects. It is almost as if the surviving testimonies to forbidden love were written 2000 years rather than four or five generations ago. Ancient Greek literature and 19th-century confessional gay literature probably survive in approximately the same proportions."
From: 'Strangers. Homosexual love in the nineteenth century', by Graham Robb
Crying a little at the thought of all the queer records we've lost
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kleiner-detektiv · 8 months
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Just gimme Vol 5 already Dx
I don't want to wait a whole month.
And I don't want to wait half a year for Vol 6 either Dx
I can't reread the previous books again, please >.<
Be aware, spoiler for happy marriage novel vol 4 in the tags.
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shcherbatskya · 1 year
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today i have been asking myself. is this what clodius pulcher would have wanted for me. and if the answer is no then i am NOT doing it.
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eddiemunsonpdf · 2 years
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I wholeheartedly believe the rivalry is going to be one sided . like one of them thinks the other hates them. It’s probably gonna be steve!!! he’s gonna be like well ive lost all my dorky kids and i hate this guy so much I think about him all the time thats how much I hate him!!! see!! He’s so loud and hyper and he knows so much stuff I don’t!!!
in vol2 they’re probs gonna have a “god why do you hate me SO MUCH” moment where the other (eddie probably) just blinks back like . ‘I never hated you. Ive had a crush on you since I wheeled out av projectors for your basketball team’ and Steve has to sit for a moment like ‘oh . OH’ whilst eddie is putting the vest on him
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kirnet · 2 years
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i just finished two finals what the fuck is going on
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liltaz-asatreat · 2 years
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oooh 1 and 11 for the horror fic with Lup and Taako ! :3
Ooh!! I never get to talk about this one :3 I worked really hard on it too, and not a lot of people saw it so I'm just gonna sliiiiide a link right here <3
Also, anyone can send in a question about a fic from these questions here or just other questions in general! I like talking about my fics and never know how to shut up lol
What inspired you to write the fic this way?
So this was back when I first started getting back into writing and had virtually no following of anyone who consistently read my stuff or sent me prompts. Actually, I think at the time of writing it, I may have not even reblogged a prompt list yet. It's hard to say because this was obviously before I got an ao3 account, and when I tried to upload all of the fics I had written by the time I did get an account, somehow the publish date on some of them got mixed up and was set for the day after I actually published them?? And I didn't know how to fix it, so I no longer know the order in which I wrote everything. That's neither here nor there though. Point is, I used a prompt from a pdf of a prompt book I got in an online writing bundle called Roll-A-Prompt Writing Journal Box Set, box set meaning that it had prompts for horror, sci-fi, and fantasy. I used that book a lot in the beginning because it's a really fun book to use the few times I used it. Basically you pick a set of prompts from any of the three genres, and the prompts are ordered in three different aspects of the prompt (in this case, it was character, mood, and word, but there are other options depending on the prompt set you choose), and each aspect has a list of six options. Then you roll a d6 for each aspect, and you generate a prompt by combining the three different options you rolled. Like the monster factory from Wonderland! lol Only, I took it up a level and rolled a d4 to determine what genre I was going to do (usually I use it as a d2 to pick between sci-fi and fantasy), and then I roll a d100 to pick what prompt set I use because there's thirty prompt sets in each genre. I just used this roll as leaving it as is if it landed on 1-30, then if it was 31-60, I would just subtract 30, and if it was 61-90, I would subtract 60, and if it was 91-100, I would just reroll. Then I count that many numbers down starting from the top of the chapter until I got to the right prompt set.
If anyone is interested, I could share it! It is a pdf though, so I think I'd have to send it through email because I don't think that's something I can just share elsewhere.
Anyway, I felt like throwing in a little extra, why not? that day when I decided to roll up another prompt and added horror as an option to my d4 roll, and I ended up getting that, so that's what I went with lol I am definitely not a horror person though and know very little about the genre, and I'm unwilling to do anything too gory or gross. The most I can handle with horror is creepy and abstract concepts of other horrific events, and the top thing that came to mind that day that I thought I could pull off was someone torturing students to bring back an old dead god. So I looked up wheel torture methods because I couldn't remember exactly what the torture device I had in mind was called or did, it was the wheel thing that like, you get tied to on the side and it's supposed to stretch your body apart? Idk, it's the torture method that always stuck out most to me besides quartering, and there was no way in hell I was writing that. I get uncomfortable even rolling that idea in my head and have to try really hard to not picture it every time I remember it exists. Anyway, so I looked up wheel torture methods, and the only thing I could find was the wheel that is called a female name that starts with a c then wheel? Cathie's wheel? Cassandra's wheel? idk I don't want to look it up. Last time I looked it up (to write this fic), I literally gave myself nightmares, and I already watched a fucked up movie today. It's past 11pm and I have to be somewhere at 1pm tomorrow, so I have to go to bed soon, but the grossest part of the movie I watched is still playing in my head and aaaahhhhh
So yeah, that's why I went with a hopefully more creepy vibe for most of it (also to build up tension), and I used physical descriptors of the dead bodies in the wheels very sparingly. Probably not the most immersive experience, but hey, I'm not a horror writer usually lol
Anyway, so I needed characters to be in this scenario, and I thought doing a sibling bonding moment would be cool, and it definitely seemed like the kind of weird shit that would happen in Taako and Lup's lives pre-stolen century. Also, it gave me an excuse to end the story with Taako saying he'd always find Lup >:3
I was really proud of how it turned out when I wrote it, and I suppose I'm still proud of it because it's something I wouldn't normally do, and I do feel like it's okay. But I can definitely tell I grew in my writing capabilities since then, and honestly, the twin interactions after Lup gets kidnapped is so cringey lol 🤦🏽‍♂️ I was so worried about trying to make sure that I didn't portray either of them as weak or like a damsel in distress, especially Lup, that I didn't just let her need to be saved. I wanted to show that I still think of her as a badass who can take care of herself, especially because I was really worried about the weak woman trope or whatever, that I didn't let her just need help. I honestly thought about switching the roles, but Lup just seemed like the one to pick up on something being wrong first while Taako got distracted by how hot the professor was than it being the other way around, and of course the person who picks up on it first has to get kidnapped lol
Anyway, I've rambled on about that long enough sldgkhsldaghd
11. What do you like best about this fic?
Honestly, the part where Taako gets hit with Phantasmal Killer. It was interesting figuring out what exactly would be his number one nightmare that Keth could conjure up, and between having an inconsistent childhood where either the twins left places for their own safety or people left them and them only having each other, having Lup being the one to yell at him, blame him for fucking up a great opportunity, and then leaving him would probably be something major psychic damage worthy lol I also really like how I wrote that confrontation in his mind in general, though I feel like I could do it way better now
It's just a perfect way to spin the situation on its head you see, and fuck the both of them up just a little bit <3
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sysig · 2 years
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Such interesting happenings between page turns (Patreon)
#Doodles#More page complaints to fill out Hell Boxes because I hate them and get impatient lol#And then a silly blushy vent pfft sometimes even I think I act ridiculously but I still do it anyway!#Natsuki energy lol#I wonder if the fic ones properly portray my excitement lol it was a very positive reaction#I saw a fic that just by description looked interesting and something I'd be curious enough to read#But then I saw that it was 60k+ words and that curiousity and interest got upgraded to an intense desire to engage#I have however limited myself to only reading after I've done some Other reading! Lots of reading lol#Since I haven't been able to read Animorphs in book form for a while because the library doesn't have more than a handful of copies -#I've been reading the online PDF versions which are good but they're not books y'feel#Well I finally had the galaxy-brained idea to ask what volumes were available and work my way through the digital copies until I hit one#So I had about four books to read through to catch up and I'm through two so far! And they've been really good btw!!#Tobias' book was so good ahhhhh my beautiful boy ;; He deserves the best and I'm so bittersweet happy for him#And then I'll get to both read a physical book and the fanfic that I'm interested in :D Win-win!#I also picked up Frankenstein for the lols since everyone's into Dracula right now haha#The long simple-scribbly set is me realizing some hubris I had set myself up for earlier /that day/#I did literally lay on the floor and laugh#Sometimes it's all you can do#My life has some of the weirdest and most out of left field contrivances for someone who does not lead the most active day-to-day#''Haha like that would ever happen!'' *happens* '':0''#And capping off with yet more pages - I'm so close to being done with my current notebook! So so so so soooo close!
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databent · 10 months
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psychoanalyzing myself through [REDACTED]
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ratgirlcopia · 2 months
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good news i almost finished the main overview-type section of the paper. it now clocks in at a very reasonable 20,000 words.
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