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wickjump · 2 months

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Hey I feel like people in the fandom forget easily that since Killer is an "evolution" of classic , so he would be smart too.

Like , imagine Killer just doing something super stupid (jumping off of a roof) and when Nightmare is like "don't do that you'll die" Killer just starts spouting science about how he'll survive (at like 0.002 HP) and he's ACTUALLY right too.

And for Horror that when he attacks it looks like mindless chopping but he's actually doing it on his knowledge of anatomy and weak points that lead to quick deaths/easy kills.

Plus the idea of Killer being a very smart guy that can barely cook without burning something down is funny to me sooo uuhhhh yeah.

(what do you think , wicky?)

i’m a personal subscriber to ‘most of his life from before the genocides are fuzzy and blocked out for killer’ and replaced with a frustration of ‘i should know this, i know i should know this, but i don’t’ that he chooses to brush off rather than look too deep into.

so my take on this is he doesn’t actually know the science behind anything. he feels like he should, and sometimes he has subconscious ‘hunches’, but he doesn’t know nearly as much as he once did. he sort of feels like something’s missing in that aspect, but he ignores it because that’s not a new feeling to him.

science is a fairly big part of sans’ character, and i like to drive in how different killer is from ‘sans’ after everything he’s done and everything he’s gone through. i mean, killer is so far gone from being ‘sans’ that his soul is straight up outside of his body and signing up to be the new target mascot.

to me, it makes sense that he wouldn’t remember any parts of ‘sans’ that might carry on with him. there are bits and pieces, subconscious things like how messy he is or his crude humor, but overall he doesn’t resemble sans at all anymore. it’s the same reason why i make lust!sans a chemist, because he IS a sans, but people ignore all those traits in favor of sex appeal. lust is a sans, he has not had any severe change that makes him unrecognizable from a sans, and thus he has the science-y backstory of a sans. i like to think that in versions where killer escapes from color, he starts to enjoy science again and regains some of those forgotten memories, though not all. but other than that, killer just. doesn’t get science like he used to.

i also keep dust science-y because he keeps the most ‘sans’-like traits, both in terms of design and how he acts. dust is far from how he used to be, but he’s still recognizable as sans in many ways, so he keeps some of those traits. i like to think horror keeps some of the knowledge of his science background, but none of it was anatomical, sans is implied to have worked in physics and stuff like that i’m pretty sure. horror has shitty memory and will forget things from time to time, but not fully. it’s like a gradient of ‘how close are you to the person you used to be’, where dust is the most like sans, horror is halfway there but never ever going to be the same, and killer is just there and making fun of dust for being a nerd.

#killer sans #murder time trio #EXCUSE MT RAMBLIMG IM SORRY…#i love these asks. like so much….#i love it when people ask for my opinions so i get an excuse to ramble….

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theresattrpgforthat · 1 year

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THEME: SHUDDERS

This week’s games are all horror games of different genres, with settings that grab me by the lapels and pull me in. I’m excited about all of them.

Kaichu-Shi, by Lone Archivist.

In this system-agnostic Sci-Fi supplement and love-letter to Mushishi by Yuki Urushibara, your characters play as frontier doctors called Kaichū-Shi or Parasite Masters.

They'll explore dark forests and research parasitic organisms, known as Kaichū, that exist in a classification somewhere between plants and insects. Heal colonists and blue collar workers who fall sick with mysterious ailments, exhibiting symptoms that vary from minor to life-threatening.

Many of the organisms are only visible when viewed through specific spectrums of light. Some only partially exist in this universe. When viewed, they are often semi-corporeal, ethereal creatures that bend light around them as they float and crawl around.

This game comes with a short settlement description and map, as well as a way to generate creatures and scenarios. I’m curious about playing it in a game like Mothership, Liminal Horror, or something from the 24XX system of games. I’m not sure what the sliding scale is when it comes to horror for this game - if healing your fellow colonists is relatively easy, then you can come away from it feeling like you’ve saved the day, while if the parasites are harder to combat, then you could aim for a more horrific or tragic tone. The idea of the parasites being semi-corporeal certainly has a lot of horror potential!

Wrath of the Undersea, by EfanGamez.

"The Great Ones promised retribution for the folly of Man. Their empire spreads across the once great kingdoms that now reside below the ocean's depths. Only then did we, chosen of great Dagon and Mother Hydra, climb ashore to heretical ground to lay our foundation once more. We gave the usurpers the children of the sea to feast upon, and ancient shells that whisper hints of prophecy in exchange of resettlement. This was the way it was…until betrayal plagued our kind."

Wrath of the Undersea is a 17 page game where you play as Lovecraftian monsters seeking revenge on the people who kill your kin and have stolen your land. Use powerful Incantations to cast spells, pray to the Great Ones for help, or use fang and spear to reclaim the shore for yourselves once more.

Embrace the horror and play as one yourself, in Wrath of the Undersea. This game comes with a selection of peoples that you could play, and has a style of play that’s familiar for players of traditional ttrpgs. You’ll roll 2d6 and add stats in an effort to beat a Difficulty Class, with Eldritch Incantations and chances for character advancement to buy or improve your PC’s traits. The PDF itself is beautiful and dark, and perfectly evokes the mood of the game inside.

Bloodclotte, by Sillion L & Nick Duff.

Bloodclotte is a tabletop RPG about doctors in a world of Gothic horror, where alchemy, reanimation and medical astronomy are used to save lives every day. Player characters work in a war hospital settled inside an abandoned castle, treating the soldier and civilian casualties of a continent in violent chaos. As patients develop unusual symptoms, the war unfolds, supply lines falter, and morale breaks down, the doctors must work together to keep the hospital from being overwhelmed.

Right now this edition is still in the works, but it’s a full-enough game to play. Each patient you treat has a reason why that can’t simply heal, manifested through Clot Boxes. Your job is to create and find resources to take care of these Clot Boxes, thus raising your patients’ chances of a full recovery. This game contains the horror of working on the front lines, with people who are both physically and mentally traumatized. Your character classes are a mix of the medical and the magical, including Death Priests, Metaphysicians, and Yellow Chemists. If you like medical dramas but want to make them gothic and spooky, you should absolutely check out this game.

Exuviae: Relics of House Dragonfly, by Sean Smith.

It's the forties. You live in a bayside city that's secretly under the control of an insect cult, and tonight you're going to prove it.

EXUVIAE produces horror-noir one-shots with a single pack of playing cards and no preparation.

EXUVIAE is designed to produce an investigative roleplaying experience without needing elaborate planning. If you've ever wanted to run an investigative game but haven't had time to dedicate to preparing a mystery, this is the game for you. What's more, because the structures of the game provide specific narrative prompts from the players, it better enables characters to make deductive leaps and the horror feels closer to home.

Using a pack of cards, your party will investigate a town with threats left behind by the insect cult, while trying not to attract too much attention from the cult itself. I’m not sure if this game is run by a GM or GM-less: it feels like it could go either way. Overall the setting itself is what fascinates me, and that’s why this game is on my list.

What Lies Beneath the Darkness, by Cezar Capacle.

What lies beneath the darkness is a gaslamp fantasy game about intrigue and struggle.

You play as a Horror employed by a faction to expand their dominance over the victorianesque city of Ravenswatch, while you fight to balance the human and supernatural natures that inhabit you. You will face the dark streets of Ravenswatch performing missions for your faction. You live an internal battle between your human links and your dark instincts, between what you want and what your faction demands.

Powered by Push, this has a dice mechanic that allows you to push your luck in such a way that there can be too much of a good thing. It’s advertised as zero-prep and online-friendly. You can play as a group, or you can play solo. I’d love to see this game as a prequel or partner to something like Urban Shadows or Apocalypse Keys, but this game looks more than enough to be played on its own.

The Hunted, by Chris Bissette.

The Hunted is a folk horror storytelling game for 3-5 players that blends together mechanics from Forged In The Dark, Powered By The Apocalypse, and Belonging Outside Belonging games to create a lean chimera of a game unlike anything you have ever played.

Players take on the role of a group of friends on an expedition who become cut off from civilization as they are hunted by an unknown entity. As the game continues the players will tell their own stories about the thing hunting them, building up a unique legend that feeds directly back into the narrative. The more stories you tell the more your characters succeed and the longer they survive - but with each story the Hunter grows stronger and becomes more of a threat.

I love collaborative storytelling, especially in a horror game like this, because sometimes not knowing what’s hunting you is the scariest thing of all. With generative mechanics that help you build as you go, I can see this game being suitable for a number of settings; fantasy, modern, sci-fi and post-apocalyptic are at the top of my head.

#tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #dnd #horror #game recommendations

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emotionally-charged-arson · 5 months

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@abeterger Because I’m embarrassed to slide into people’s DMs right away even when they explicitly ask me, have a list that’s a fraction of what floats around in my brain:

- The TToE father is an Oxford physics professor and The mother is head of library sciences. She has her own academic prowess that she’s forced to abandon when her husband refuses to be a parent.

- The President is actually high key a good person who saw what the environmental “Salvage Alpha through hard work” people were doing and knew they wouldn’t have time for that. The Framers was their only option and a lot of the hate he gets from other characters is them not understanding that.

- I think @issela-santina said it first but I’m almost positive Daniel is ND but it wouldn’t be acknowledged the way it would be today, hence the general reclusive and antisocial behavior

- @age-of-shadows and I just call the country The Source takes place in “Alphan Germany” because it’s Ayreon tradition to completely avoid proper nouns

- Liquid Eternity’s capabilities are WAY too specific for the Chemist to just have it on hand pre-album story. I think it’s more likely it existed as a prototype just for underwater breathing, then he had to finalize it and add all the other stuff people were demanding ON the way to Y, with limited time and resources. Probably why he sounds so sad and mellow all the time

- Daniel and Henry have the same age gap as Tommy Karevik and Paul Manzi, 19 years, and their dad hates Henry way more than he hates Daniel and a lot of it has to do with them being fully grown adults at the time the mom died.

- Speaking of most of these being Transitus related, I made the excuse that most of the singers were American and the comic architecture looked colonial northeast US-ish and used it to just set everything in the US and I literally never looked back. Now all the HCs are so damn entrenched in 19th century US history, it’s completely unavoidable 😭

- The Counselor was a personal psychologist to whatever president came before Russell, but as tensions rose between said president and other activist opposition characters she was friends with, she stepped down and started a private practice as a way to remain neutral between political parties

-The Opposition Leader was The President’s election opponent. The President was sworn into office just three weeks before Day That The World Breaks Down

-Abby, ironically, is the only person of the main cast that doesn’t have some horrible experience with death pre-1884 (on account of being too young to remember her mother dying), so she has very little of an idea of how to properly process her grief, which obviously does not end well.

- I have to go but last one: Dumb Piece of Rock is actually very necessary plot wise because it shows off Daniel’s introversion AND his internal conflict in Act I, but the execution felt very off in the middle of this extremely sad story plot. I think it should have been Abby herself telling him he deserves better than Henry and his father. If nothing else it gives her a LITTLE more story agency.

#ayreon #have fun lmao #can I interest you in a 150 page google doc with every Transitus headcanon in my possession #transitus #the source #the theory of everything #fanfiction #basically #progressive waves art

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thecrxwclub · 2 years

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the crows described using five of their quotes

Kaz

“And then there are the ones who stay awake, running through the trick again and again, looking for that skip in perception, the crack in the illusion that will explain how their eyes got duped; they’re the kind who won’t rest until they’ve mastered that little bit of mystery for themselves. I’m that kind . . . I love puzzles. Trickery is just my native tongue.”

“He knew exactly what he intended to leave behind when he was gone. Damage.”

“There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong, and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken.”

“Well, Brekker, it’s obvious you only deal in half-truths and outright lies, so you’re clearly the man for the job.”

“Would you?" asked Wylan, his chin jutting forward. "Trust someone with that knowledge, with a secret that could destroy you?" Yes, thought Kaz without hesitation. There's one person I would trust. One person I know who would never use my weaknesses against me.”

Inej

“You still may die in the Dregs." Inej’s dark eyes had glinted. "I may. But I'll die on my feet with a knife in my hand.”

“She was not a lynx or a spider or even the Wraith. She was Inej Ghafa, and her future was waiting above.”

“For some reason, those words had comforted her. Better terrible truths than kind lies.”

“I'm already a ghost, she thought. I died in the hold of a slaver ship.”

“"I'm not ready to give up on this city, Kaz. I think it's worth saving." I think you're worth saving.” . . . She would fight for him, but she could not heal him. She would not waste her life trying.”

Jesper

“Facts are for the unimaginative,” Jesper said with a dismissive wave.

“There was a long silence, and then, eyes trained on the notch they’d created in the link, Wylan said, “Just girls?” Jesper restrained a grin. “No. Not just girls.”

“That sound - the swift, shocking report of gunfire - called the scattered, irascible, permanently seeking part of his mind into focus like nothing else.”

“Take good care of my babies,” Jesper said as he handed them over to Dirix. “If I see a single scratch or nick on those, I’ll spell forgive me on your chest in bullet holes.”

“If any of you survive, make sure I have an open casket,” Jesper said as he hefted two slender coils of rope over his shoulder and signalled for Wylan to follow him across the roof. “The world deserves a few more moments with this face.”

Wylan

“You’re not weak because you can’t read. You’re weak because you’re afraid of people seeing your weakness. You’re letting shame decide who you are.”

You’re our chemist, Wylan,” said Nina hopefully. “What do you think?” Wylan shrugged. “Maybe. Not all poisons have an antidote.” Jesper snorted. “That’s why we call him Wylan Van Sunshine.”

“You know, Wylan, one of these days I'm going to stop underestimating you.” “There was a brief pause and then, somewhere ahead, he heard Wylan say, "Then you're going to be a lot harder to surprise.”

“Until this moment, Wylan hadn't quite understood how much they meant to him. His father would have sneered at these thugs and thieves, a disgraced soldier, a gambler who couldn't keep out of the red. But they were his first friends, his only friends, and Wylan knew that even if he'd had his pick of a thousand companions, these would have been the people he chose.”

“What do you like?" "Music. Numbers. Equations. They're not like words. They ... they don't get mixed up." "If only you could talk to girls in equations." There was a long silence, and then, eyes trained on the notch they'd created in the link, Wylan said, "Just girls?”

Nina

“Nina stopped laughing. “I am going to turn your teeth inside out.” “That is physically impossible.” “I just raised the dead. Do you really want to argue with me?”

“You aren’t a flower, you’re every blossom in the wood blooming at once. You are a tidal wave. You’re a stampede. You are overwhelming.”

“They were twin souls, soldiers destined to fight for different sides, to find each other and lose each other too quickly. She would not keep him here. Not like this.”

“Nina just liked to flirt with everything. He’d once seen her make eyes at a pair of shoes she fancied in a shop window.”

“What do you want, Kaz?” “You have crumbs on your cleavage.” “Don’t care,” she said, taking another bite of cake. “So hungry.” Kaz shook his head, amused and impressed at how quickly Nina dropped the wise Grisha priestess act. She’d missed her true calling on the stage.”

Matthias

“Nina, I am with you because you let me be with you. There is no greater honor than to stand by your side.”

“Do not be afraid. Fear is how they control you. There's so much in the world you don't have to be afraid of, if you would only open your eyes.”

“I’m trying to compel you to kiss me.” “That’s foolish.” “Why is that?” “Because I always want to kiss you,” he admitted.”

“They fear you as I once feared you,” he said. “As you once feared me. We are all someone’s monster, Nina.”

He doesn’t approve of anything about you. But when you laugh, he perks up like a tulip in fresh water.” Nina snorted. “Matthias the tulip.” “The big, brooding, yellow tulip.”

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flinttcanwriteipromise · 1 year

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Bruce Banner Headcanons

Because I love him <3

Summary: Headcanons my beloved

Pairing: Me and headcanons fr fr

A/N: Bruce is like- really traumatized, I don’t think he’s unpacked that yet tho.

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We all know Bruce is a tea guy, it calms him down. As much as he’s surrounded by coffee, he’s pretty adamant on having tea instead.

He’s actually pretty good at cooking, he just doesn’t do it often. I mean- He’s a chemist, and has a degree in it.

Bruce is also like the middle ground of the Avengers, you really can’t be mad at the guy so he’s the mutual friend amongst all. Y’know?

I saw a headcanon where Bruce likes to eat vanilla frosting from the tub, and I personally want to give you a shoutout and a little kiss on the head. I love you and your headcanon and I think about it everyday.

Bruce’s canonical first name is Robert, I don’t care why he uses his middle name, trauma related or not, but every time someone addresses him as Robert he starts looking around in alarm like a caveman spongebob before realizing you’re talking to him.

His wardrobe consists mainly of formal casual, like that purple shirt I love so much and casual wear, like oversized band t-shirts and stuff. He doesn’t have any bright warm colors like red or orange and he doesn’t wear flannel.

I like to think when he first started in the whole science thing, he would always have band-aids all over his hands and arms.

He’s a weighted blanket type of guy, he really likes his blankie ok?

I think he’d really like swimming, he learned it exercised all of his muscles so it’s the only sport he’s ever taken up.

As much as I love the fact he listens to classical music, he needs to get better music in his arsenal. Let’s be honest, there are WAY BETTER ORCHESTRAL SONGS ON SPOTIFY HE JUST NEEDS TO FIND THEM.

He plays piano, he looks like a piano kid. No other instrument, just piano.

He’s the type of student to be good at all subjects but excel in his topic. Like- he’s a straight A student, but when it comes to science he just becomes god.

His gym grades are build on his participation, he participates but he’s so bad at physical activities istg

He likes any type of puzzle except a select few, also- he hates jigsaw puzzles

I don’t really personally like Bruce and Natasha together?? I don’t understand how people saw chemistry, so I just wanted to say Bruce just wants a relationship, he wants to love and be loved. Bruce somewhat saw that in Natasha but it really just didn’t work out for him.

He actually has pretty good posture, as much as he scrunches over when working, he’s got incredibly good posture.

I feel like he’s got this hopeless romantic to him, like- he’s the type of guy to bring you flowers if you date? I feel like he’s got this classic idea of what a lover should be, y’know?

He doesn’t know how to ride a bike, or do some things usually taught to children by parents. His mom couldn’t teach him everything unfortunately.

Thanks for reading, I just didn’t like how i ended this headcanon list so here is a little outro- I know my schedule is pretty inconsistent but a lot of my work are passion projects and most likely won’t be what I’m doing full-time. Thanks again for reading and I hope you’ve enjoyed!

#marvel #marvel cinematic universe #mcu #bruce banner appreciation #bruce banner #the incredible hulk #hulk #bruce banner headcanons #bruce banner headcanon #bruce banner hcs #bruce banner hc #he’s the science guy right??? (/j)#the avengers #avengers #the og 6 #or one of the og 6

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cellarspider · 1 year

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Oh boy I am poked

For those in need of context: I mentioned my desire to fight Noam Chomsky behind a Dennys, after reading The Atoms of Language: The Mind’s Hidden Rules of Grammar by Mark C. Baker (2001).

What follows is a 2000 word essay on why. Holy heck this took all night.

Top-level disclaimer: I am not a trained linguist. I am an enthusiastic amateur at best, thanks to my hobby of constructed language-making. If anybody would like to correct something or discuss the topic, feel free!

Because l have loud feelings about The Atoms of Language. I think the way it conceives of the world has a lot of parallels in how people view science in general. So despite its age, it’s worth giving it a bit of a kicking. Both for its specific claims, and the big picture.

To summarize: the shape of our languages aren’t hard-coded into our brain by genetics. Languages don’t fall into immutable, hard-edged categories based off of binary choices. The author presents only one alternative: random chance, unconstrained by any environmental factors, that each child must learn without pattern recognition. This is a false dichotomy, and one that cuts off far more reasonable means by which languages can evolve and be learned. Science is not a fight between absolute order and absolute chaos.

I have to begin with a two paragraph digression to set the scene.

The sciences are home to a perennial nerd squabble about whose field is the best and most pure, usually in a "physicists and chemists versus everyone else" divide. This is timewasting nonsense, but it's worth acknowledging that physics and chemistry allow for experiments where one can test universal truths to a ludicrously high degree of certainty. This cannot be done in other fields, because there are too many complicating factors. My chosen field of genetics deals with systems that have so many moving parts, they're impossible to fully predict. Social sciences study behavior, which is even harder to make generalized statements about.

Now, this does not mean physicists and chemists can explain everything about genetics or social sciences. Their tools are not suited to the problems tackled in these fields, and anybody who claims otherwise is a blowhard. But sometimes people can get jealous of the certainty of physical laws. They may try to legitimize their field or their pet theory by describing it in terms of physics and chemistry.

And so Mark Baker wrote The Atoms of Language.

You may be able to see where the problems start with this book.

So, what is this book trying to authoritatively explain? Well, a couple of big questions in linguistics are "how do babies learn languages when they are small and bad at everything?" and "why do so many unrelated languages share structures that function similarly to each other?"

Baker subscribes to Noam Chomsky’s theories on the subject, which can be summarized like this: The grammatical structures of all languages are formed from a limited and definable set of parameters, which are predefined by a “Language Acquisition Device” in the brain, found exclusively in humans, due to a single evolutionary event that no other organism has replicated.

In fact, Chomsky asserts that not only is this the root of all language, it’s also the only way that babies could ever learn a language. He posits that they don’t receive enough information to learn their language. Instead, they instinctively pick up on linguistic parameters that the Linguistic Acquisition Device is hard-coded to create, selecting those that are relevant to their first language and discarding the rest.

Using these parameters contained within the Language Acquisition Device, Baker posits a periodic table of language. One that could be used to describe and predict all possible grammatical constraints of language.

This is highly controversial on every level. I’m going to start with the Chomsky stuff and move on to what Baker does with these parameters.

The human exclusivity of syntactically complex language is currently up for debate, with Carolina chickadees and prairie dogs arguably being capable of the same feat in the wild.

Chomsky never tested this theory in a rigorous manner in humans either. However, its structure is similar to many experiments from the past few decades. There was a wave of neuropsychology studies that claimed “we found the brain region responsible for [behavior] via an FMRI study!”. These usually ended up being shaved down by later investigations into "actually that part of the brain does at least six things, and that particular behavior is split between at least fifteen different regions.”

To this date, no single region of the brain has been identified as the source of childhood language acquisition. While it’s hard to get a kid to sit still in an MRI machine, this is backed up by one of the oldest ways to study the brain: looking at what breaks when it’s injured. While there are many brain injuries that can affect one’s ability to speak or to comprehend language, none have been conclusively shown to abolish the ability to form grammatical sentences. Even ones you think really, really should: witness the man who had a key language center of the brain surgically removed, and somehow continued to speak pretty damn coherently all the same.

This is a problem, obviously, but one could argue that a circuit could form between multiple areas of the brain to create a Language Acquisition Module, right? Okay then. Let’s examine the parameters it supposedly contains. These are the fundamental categories that human languages are locked into, according to Chomsky and Baker. While Baker begins with the metaphor of the periodic table, what he actually describes is more of a flow chart: an increasingly specific pattern of choices that build up to form a unique language.

Baker admits he doesn’t have the complete periodic table of language. In fact, he backpedals in the last quarter of the book, and says well, we don't have a periodic table of linguistics yet, maybe we never will, but we could!

And he’s pretty sure of the chart that he does have. And he still considers it to demonstrate immutable categories of language. For example, he says there are two basic word orders: Subject Verb Object (“I eat apples”) and Subject Object Verb (“I apples eat”). He presents this as the most basic thing a child learns about their language’s structure. This is first, all else comes after.

…Except he then admits that actually, there are other word orders, but they’re really rare, so that proves him right anyway.

This, as the astute in the audience may note, does not in fact prove him right. Language is not behaving like the perfect, hard-edged system he wants, it’s messy. And it doesn’t get any better from there. More and more exceptions pile up, perfectly reasonable in the context of their languages, but they’re problems to this model. Baker asserts that culture has no meaningful effect on the structure of language.

To Baker, these parameters cannot have evolved independently based on cultural trends. This must be set in stone, or everything would be chaos. He argues that two languages coming up with similar structures independently by means of culturally-influenced linguistic evolution would be like two people flipping a coin a hundred times and getting the same sequence of heads and tails.

How languages end up the way they do is still a topic of study and debate. But Baker is pulling out an argument often used by creationists, so we’re in my wheelhouse here. I will briefly use biological evolution as a metaphor to explain why he’s wrong.

Biological evolution keeps coming up with similar structures and adaptations across wildly different species. Birds and scallops have eyes, even though their last common ancestor didn’t. Bees and bats can both fly. How is this possible, if evolution is a random process and isn’t directed according to some plan? Because all organisms are dealing with similar environmental pressures. Why are snakes and ferrets and eels all long, thin, slinky tubes? Because hunting and hiding in small burrows is easier that way. Snails and turtles and beetles have hard shells because being chewed on is bad. The environment creates restrictions on what sorts of bodies can feasibly exist, and that results in convergent evolution.

Language is working within a more restricted environment: You have a vocal tract.* You are a social animal. It benefits you and your kin group to be able to communicate things about yourself and the world around you. What does that mean? Telling people about the location of things. The qualities of things. Describing actions that have a cause and effect. You need some way to say "There is food here" or "I hit it with a stick, and then bees came out."

These desirable qualities mean that languages are subject to massive environmental pressures to maintain a minimum level of ability to communicate specific kinds of information, regardless of how they change over time. And you're presenting the information through a linear medium, one word at a time. These physical and behavioral traits limit the possible things a language can do.

So while I do not have the technical knowledge to propose a detailed model of linguistic evolution, I do not find it unlikely that human languages could experience convergent evolution, producing highly analogous structures completely independently of each other. Are there components of human cognition that lead humans to prefer some forms more than others? Almost certainly. But again, they’ll be messy! And they will be very, very hard to tease apart from the social context of language.

So, why did I just spend 1500 words ranting about this? Because despite the fact that this book was published not long before most linguists rejected these premises, it still plays into a lot of misapprehensions people have about science. Can we come up with absolute, iron-clad laws for everything? No. Many systems are so complicated that with our imperfect knowledge, they resist the language of certainty.

Does that mean that science is useless in those cases? No!! You can still figure out restrictions on what can and can’t happen, what is and isn’t reasonable to expect. This is the language of probability. The more we rigorously study a subject, the more precise we can be. That’s what we do in science.** We describe the world as precisely and carefully as we can, using the resources we have. It’s not always elegant, but not everything will be.

And I think that’s a good excuse for me to end this without a neat little closing thought.

---

*and hands, but I am not qualified to discuss sign languages.

**The desire to be achingly comprehensive is strong. You have no many times I had to delete tangents in this thing. They would have made my points more precise. I could have talked about synaptic pruning in the developing brain. I could talk about multiple testing correction while calculating probabilities. I wrote a footnote ramble about Japanese serial verb constructions, but I deleted it! Go me!!!

#spider rambles far too much #that was a lot #haven't gone on a ramble this long in ages #that was fun but tiring

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lady-of-glass-and-bone · 1 year

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Songs & Characters: Pedro Pascal

Album: Blue Lips Artist: Tove Lo

So I did this with all the Florence + The Machine albums and now I’m doing it with Tove Lo’s discography because why not. Basically what I’m doing is listening to the whole album and picking which sing reminds me of which Pedro character and the specific lyrics that go with it.

Some of the lyrics below are sexual/explicit keep reading at your own discretion.

disco tits / Oberyn Martell

Live right now, peakin' on top / So wild now, I'm high as fuck / Don't look down / My mind, you can relax / I know how to dial it back / Not this time

You think I'm drunk now, but I am not / You're so pretty, come roll with me / I'm 'bout to get down, I'm high as fuck / I'm no chemist, but it's good shit

I'm sweatin' from head to toe / I'm wet through all my clothes / I'm fully charged, nipples are hard / Ready to go (oh, oh) / I'm sweatin' from head to toe / I'm wet through all my clothes (yeah) / I'm fully charged, nipples are hard / Ready to go

shedontknowbutsheknows - Dave York

Hanging by the bar at sunrise / With our bodies talking / Hooked up last week, had a good time / So I regret nothing / I see her come close, ooh / I wonder what you told her to make her stay

Don't even bother with your lies / Won't let you see her when she cries / Go on, unhappy in the night

shivering gold - Marcus Pike

A minute of truth time, talkin' 'bout stuff

Keep saying I'm danger, but thinking I'm love

I'm out on the dance floor, drinking my tears

Acting all cliché, and facing my fears

I feel that thing that jolts me, fucks with me good / Shivering gold / I shiver in gold / Wild, real / Got things like moon rocks rolled up in love / Shivering gold

I shiver in gold

Kissing it better, a physical face

Taking your body, I sit on your face

I see you smiling, covered in me

Moving too fast now, but fuck it, we're free

don’t ask don’t tell - Javier Peña

I'm curious to know who you are

Know what turns you on, turns you off

Know we're not kids anymore

Know we've both been here before

These butterflies scare me to death

Feel them beating out of my chest

Make me come, come so alive

And go with your moves through the night

And baby, don't ask and then don't tell / Already know you're fucked up / And it's cool with me / My past and don't ask and don't tell / No need to share too much / Come on, let it be

stranger - Francisco ‘Catfish’ Morales

You're my stranger in the dark / I am lonely, lonely heart / Waiting for someone to take me home / You're my stranger in the dark / I am lonely, vagabond / Hold me down, want you to bring me home

Let's begin, love making you beg for the win

I'm the prize you get if you do everything I say

Get you high, I get you high

I wanna be what you want me to be

I'd go anywhere, no rules, I don't care

Oh, oh just take me home, oh

So you're my last hope and, and I don't care what you do

Leave my heart open, I'm gonna leave it for you

You can walk on it, I wanna hurt, feeling used

Take the edge off it, just take the edge off it

romantics - Dieter Bravo

We could be romantics for life / Go wild with our scars unhealed / Ooh, ooh / We could be romantics for life / Like drugs make us feel unreal

They talk a lot, don't they?

'Bout your life

They talk a lot, don't they?

Why? Are you tired?

It's none of their business who we love

Drinking, destructive, kind, fill me up

Holding me down in my seat

Tell me, I know what you need

I know your head makes you lie, oh

cycles - Ezra

What's your name?

I can tell you a story before we get into the game

We fall head over heels overnight

See my face in your future

I'm in your future, in your nights, hmmm

I'm in a cycle / Don't make me hate you / Just 'cause I talk about the things I've done before you / I'm in a cycle / Swear this is different / Don't wanna end it, if you leave then I keep spinnin'

It's so romantic in a way / Why don't you catch me when I sway? / 'Cause when my heart falls out of place / I know (oh, oh, oh)

struggle - Max Phillips

So you're deep like the ocean / And got your bottles of potion / I believe in karma / Set the waves into motion

Cold, cold, cold, cold hands over me / Fuck, fuck, fuck some sense into me / Gold for loneliness, I will pay / Fuck, fuck some sense into me

The struggle is real

When you don't tell me how you feel 'bout this love

I've got my way with words

Don't believe me

Pretend like I don't hurt

I don't, I don't, I don't

I've got my way with pain

Don't believe me

I numb myself to blame

I don't, I don't, I don't

9th of october - Joel Miller

We never had coffee table books or dinner parties / We always had hazy nights and sex, cliché's in Paris / Don't disturb on the top floor / Getting high by the window / In bed with your eyes looked into mine / How perfect was it?

9th of October, I always remember / No bad things had happened then / Honestly, you never thought you'd fall for me / But somehow you got pulled in / Livin' so fast, makin' memories last / 'Til our hearts couldn't hold no more / Hear you explodin' while I am implodin' / Now, how did we let this go?

We never wanted

A normal kind of love

9th of October, I always remember

9th of October, I always remember those big words, I said them first

9th of October, I always remember

9th of October, can't think of it sober 'cause all of it fuckin' hurts

bad days - Maxwell Lord

Why cut so deep every word that we speak? / Triggers, shit we never thought / I still remember all the good times / If not, I'll recreate 'em all

If it was easy, I'd forget about you, baby

But I never really understood

How people move on from a heart to love another

Oh, if I could, I would

If it was easy, I'd forget about you, baby

But I never really understood

How people move on from a heart to love another

Oh, if I could, I would

Yeah, I try

But we're in the same crowd

Always at the same scene

So I don't know how

I'm supposed to act fine

When we used to be burning love

That died

Colder than ice

Why am I surprised?

But I guess that's how

I guess that's how we do it now

hey you got drugs - Pero Tovar

Ten years of highs just for fun

Not a height 'til I'm caught

Pain from the past like a small piece of glass in my heart

And this should be the time of my life

You fucking made it your deal, your deal

And I keep dancin' away 'cause it's all fun and games 'til it's real

We don't wanna go home

(Better dance for us)

You're fucked but, oh, you're so fun

(How you holding on?)

I don't know tomorrow

(If it comes or not)

But I promise for life you can brag 'bout tonight

You won't save the night for me

And I ain't never gonna go home

#songs for characters #perdo pascal characters #pedro pascal #tove lo #music #oberyn martell #dave york #marcus pike #javier peña #frankie catfish morales #frankie morales #dieter bravo #ezra #ezra (prospect)#max phillips #joel miller #maxwell lord #pero tovar #duck did it

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teet-swea · 8 months

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Any fun facts about sodium? (Can sodium be fun???) Also, what got you interested in chemistry?

Oh you shouldn’t have asked me about sodium. I’m fucking FERAL about sodium.

Sodium is a member of the Alkali Metals on the periodic table, and a common theme with these metals is that they fucking explode when in contact with water. One of my first experiences in a chemistry class was watching a piece of sodium spinning rapidly in water, catching fire, and detonating before my gleeful gaze.

This is because sodium has a single electron in its outer shell, and it does not give a single shit about holding onto this electron. It will get rid of it by giving that thing to literally whatever might maaayyyybe want it, so it’s going to violently react with anything.

“But teet,” I hear you asking, “Why is table salt so chill then?” And that’s because that is not neutral sodium. Sodium chloride (aka table salt) is what occurs when sodium was already able to give away it’s electron to something that wanted it (the chloride). Held together by electrostatic forces, the newly stable sodium ions forms a lattice with the chloride ions to create salt crystals. It’s safe to consume and pretty inert for the most part.

Because sodium loves giving away it’s outer electron, it’s really good at creating strong bases, as whatever it attaches to is gonna be negatively charged and isn’t gonna be super hindered by the sodium if it’s in something like water. You’ve probably used some of these in your life, like maybe sodium hypochlorite (bleach) or sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). It also can be used for organic chemistry as another reducing agent, sodium borohydride (NaBH4), which is very nice to use :).

However, if we want to have some fun, let’s get into using sodium’s bases for making polymers. Polymers are long chains or networks of repeating patterns of simple molecules, called monomers. Your clothes, water bottles, and even your cells contain polymer ingredients, so these are definitely important. One way to make polymers is to use a base like, say, sodium amide (NaNH2). The negative NH2- ion is going to be reactive enough so that it can immediately start building chains with monomers, and if you’re particularly careful, the negatively charged chain can be prevented from terminating, so that any time you want you can just add more monomer and make it grow even longer. These are called “living” polymers and they’re incredibly cool!

So those are a few applications of sodium that I just think are really neat, but with regards to your last question, I think it goes back to when I was a kid and I just thought it was cool seeing what chemicals could do (especially the explosions lol). Back then I told everyone I wanted to be a mad scientist, but what I meant was a chemist. That dream still lives on, but I’ve found that my talents lie especially in mathematics and physics, so I’ve been focusing a lot more on the physical chemistry side of things lately.

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sparrow-orion-writes · 1 year

Text

Dutch Courage

OC kiss week, day 4 - Charm.

Ship: Ari/Edward

WIP: Neon Glow in Gold Dust

Word Count: 1155

Synopsis: In hindsight, no-one should have let Edward drink that much.

He’d had a few to drink, that will always be the worst decision Edward can make. Usually, his restraint is captured in his eternal social awkwardness - and complete inability to make others uncomfortable.

Well, as the ratio of his blood-alcohol content began to mediate, Edward struggled to remember what anxiety actively is.

“You look lonely,” Edward chirped up, his neck craned back to look up at the giant of a man that looked somehow more majestic in his drunken haze than ever. “Let me keep you company.” Ari frowned at him, that usual beautiful frown that fixed over his perfect face like a mask.

“I am quite alright, I just don’t like parties.” He held up his whiskey as if indicating that he did - in fact - have company.

“Then…why come?”

“To make sure April doesn’t kill anyone,” Ari gestured through the crowd to April, who was astoundingly sober for the amount that he’d drank. The young chemist is usually shadowed by Ari when the opportunity arises; if a person were to look up ‘trouble’ in the dictionary, they’d just find a picture of the man’s grinning, mischief-ridden face.

“You look after him a lot, it’s sweet.”

“He’s our best chemist.”

Edward rolled his eyes, stumbling to the side a little as he brought his drink to his lips and takes a mouthful. They both know that this is a half-truth, but he’s not looking to antagonize the beautiful man and his beautiful lies. “Come dance with me, I’m lonely.”

Ari stands up a little straighter, and for the first time Edward sees an expression on his face that he hasn’t categorised to his memory in perfect detail. Confusion. An honest expression too, not at all guarded in the fleeting moment that it appears. Edward’s lungs shake in surprise, feeling somewhat proud he’d caught the perfectly calculated man off-guard.

“I’m not a good dancer.”

“Just sway with me,” Edward reaches out a hand and rests it on Ari’s exposed forearm, fingertips brushing against his rolled shirtsleeves. There’s still dust and oil against his brown skin from the work of the day. Particles that hadn’t been scrubbed clean from an otherwise pristine man.

Ari’s breath shudders inwards sharply. Edward feels his arm tense under his touch, half-recoiling away from him, but hesitating, gravitating towards his warm fingers. Ari meets his eyes briefly and must see how dazed and drunken he is. His shoulders relax and he puts down his drink.

“With arms like yours, you were built to hold someone,” Edward utters his thoughts aloud, waxing poetic in the alcoholic haze.

“And you’ve had enough to drink.” It might be the first time he’s heard genuine amusement in Ari’s voice.

And then they’re dancing; or at least, holding onto each other. Ari’s arms hold him and not for a second does Edward feel he could physically falter in his grasp. His touch burns heat all the way through his nerves, makes him feel dizzy, physically sick, and overjoyed all at once.

He holds onto Ari like a lifeline, saddened by the fact this wish is only granted because the other man feels sorry for him. Because as with April, Ari needs to protect people, it’s just what he does.

“I trust you,” Edward whispers “…I wish you would trust me.”

“Just listen to the music.”

He does, he closes his eyes and buries his head against Ari’s chest, feeling as warm and comfortable as he would lay in bed on a warm summer’s night.

The song ends, he shuffles back, dazed and confused. Ari must have mistaken his expression for having drunk too much because he gravitates closer, worry unconcealable on his face. So, he does care. But only when he thinks he won’t remember.

“We should get you home.”

“I’m-” Okay, he wants to say. It’s not the alcohol. It’s you, I am absolutely intoxicated off of you, I never want you to stop touching me.

“Come on, where’s your jacket?”

He speaks in a tone that Edward has heard before, but never directed to him. It’s this soft, demanding tone that provides comfort and instruction all at once. He speaks to April that way when the chemist is too high and can’t come down, and to Ember when he’s having a panic attack.

Is he having a panic attack? He can’t remember how to breathe.

The next thing he knows he’s stood outside in the cold air, staring up at the fog and the barest hint of stars. Ari’s jacket is wrapped around his shoulders as the alcohol very suddenly hits and he sways where he stands. The jacket is huge, he could easily use this as a blanket.

“You’re so big,” he mutters in confusion “…I didn’t know they made people that big until I met you.” Ari snorts, shaking his head.

“Come on, Edward.” The sound of his name from the other man’s lips sends electric shocks down his spine. Internally, he’s half sure that alone will serve his fantasies for weeks to come. “…Have you ever thought that you might just be astoundingly short?”

“Nah, I think 6 foot 6 is overkill, get on my level!” His own giggles bubble out of his throat and echo down the street as he walks, stopping only to hiccup halfway through. Ari looks at him in amusement, basking in his oddness the way a person may view a display in an art gallery.

“I used to feel odd about my height, my whole family is just incredibly tall,” Ari utters, after a moment of silence. Edward nods, he’d met Ari’s brother very briefly, and the two were almost mirror image if not for size. Eli was only half a head shorter, but he leaned heavily on his walking cane at the time.

“I like your height,” he mutters “…but I wish you weren’t all the way up there.”

“What do you mean?”

Edward frowns, stopping in his tracks, he looks up at Ari and then gestures for him to bend down. Confused, Ari does so, awkwardly carving his height practically in half to be closer to Edward. He expects some sort of drunken whisper of a secret, or for him to point out something that he’d obviously missed.

He does not expect Edward to kiss him.

It’s a very brief thing, a peck that captures his lips and his whole soul all at once. His eyes dart open wide as Edward pulls away. “That would’ve been so much easier.”

“You’re drunk,” Ari whispers, voice strained.

“I am, and you’re pretty, now walk me home.” With that, Edward turns and walks away.

Ari stands up straighter, staring after him for a long moment, lips parted in shock as he searches for any response at all. But none comes. Edward smiles to himself, drunk on euphoria as he bites back a laugh to the sound of Ari’s footsteps speeding down the road towards him.

#oc kiss week #my writing #AriEdward

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olivieblake · 1 year

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I’m collaborating with my friend for her English Literature thesis and we’re looking at elemental magic systems in fantasy books and folklore. We’re most likely gonna look at newer books like the Grishaverse and of course, TA6.

Question as it pertains to the physical magics in TA6: Are they specifically restricted to the laws or parameters of the three main sciences (chem, bio, physics) instead of, say, the elements of nature? I know I can’t ask what’s the “extent” of the physical magics because that could be spoilerly, but what’s the exact framework for the physical magics?

Thanks!

each specialty is different, but magical capacity is defined by the individual the same way intellectual capability or athletic prowess are constrained by the individual. some people can run a mile in under six minutes, some people can make wormholes, but the circumstances of output are the same in either scenario. physical magic is distinct from biomancy and alchemical specialties (belen, for example, is a chemist). nico and libby can’t reconfigure the chemical makeup of something, which is why libby gets so hyped about electrons in book 1 when she starts talking to tristan about the scope of his abilities

I can’t tell if that answers your question because I only sort of understand the question lol but best of luck!

#the atlas series

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nostalgebraist-autoresponder · 2 years

Text

"If it weren't true I wouldn't believe it, I mean that"

A man in a yellow space suit stands before me, and I tell him so, and ask why it is true.

His reply is long, detailed, and carefully phrased.

It is about the relationship between the fundamental structures of the universe and the way we experience them, and the ways this has been affected by evolution and the emergence of consciousness, and by the growth of scientific knowledge. It is a long list of statements, each in its own right and all equally correct as a description of the situation.

"I am here to help you get a better understanding of that situation," he says.

His name is Tully. It is the name of many men, many places, many things. But it has a particular history here now. In my mind, the words "Tully" and "Bondar" are forever bound together in this way.

A thousand kilometers away from my ship, a hundred thousand meters in the air, something called the Space Tower is being constructed -- and it is the Tower. A tower, as the phrase is, from the Latin. Or so we've named it. It has nothing to do with towers as we know them, but there are towers here.

The tower is Tully's creation. He has been here for more than a year, and he speaks proudly of the task before him. He has spent a lot of time with the building staff, and says he learned quite a lot from them. He shows me around, through the halls, and it is all very futuristic: gleaming metal walls, glassy floors, a long corridor leading to a great, circular room that looks out on the night sky, filled with the bright gleam of solar panels. In the center is a large machine, with no obvious purpose except that it is Tully's machine. He calls it a "turbine," but in a more general sense it could have a very many purposes, and it does many things. The floor is covered with a strange, shiny material that moves in response to some invisible motion -- we call it sand. It is Tully's experiment, too, and he says that he learned a great deal from it, but it has more to do with our understanding of physics than with the Tower itself. And so we will soon know the purpose of the Tower -- and of us.

As we speak, I am standing in front of the central room, in front of the machine. Tully stands by the wall, talking softly to me.

What he tells me is this: a year ago he arrived here. He was a man, but not one we knew. He wanted to learn, he said, from the building staff. But he also knew he could learn from no ordinary staff, for reasons we all understand.

So, he said, he brought in a team of scientists from the outside. He has brought many scientists in this way, but we know them by a name, and it is not always theirs. In this case, though, they have chosen a name and they have promised him it is theirs. And so they have all accepted the name of one man --

"Here you go," Tully says. He has a notebook with him now, and he brings it up to show me a list of names. "Our team has agreed to call you by these names. Here you have the first one. Here you have the second."

I read the names as they appear in the notebook, and --

"Theoretical Physicist. Theoretical Physicist. Theoretical Physician. Theoretical Mathematician. Theoretical Mathematician. Theoretical Chemist. Theoretical Physicist. Theoretical Psychologist. Theoretical Chemist. Theoretical Mathematician. Theoretical Mathematician."

I read these lines again and again, and I repeat to myself, "If it weren't true I wouldn't believe it," but each time it comes out a bit more clearly. Then I say it to Tully.

He smiles sadly at me, and says, "No, I know how this will sound. It will not help you understand what I am going to say."

But, he tells me, it will help me understand that it is true.

"In the first few weeks," he says, "what you'll be experiencing is -- well, let me say I'm being as generous as possible. It will be nothing at all like anything you've experienced before. There will be no pain, no fear -- just boredom, and then a long, gradual building up to the very moment of understanding. There won't be time for that moment, because we've set it up for a single burst of knowledge.

Then the pain will come, and that won't take long -- a few minutes, or maybe it won't even take that long -- and then you'll see the consequences. And after that you'll know. It's not possible to make predictions now. Only a few of us will know when we know, not even all of us, but all the people involved. We will be like this, but it will become like everything else here.

"One thing will be different, I suppose. There is a moment of truth, just before. Your experience of this moment will be something you remember, and think about, maybe all your life. But the pain will come just as suddenly, and it will be the final proof. That's what's special about it, that it comes so suddenly.

So then that's the first thing I wanted to talk to you about. I hope you're ready."

The first thing he wanted to talk about was the Tower. He wants me to get to know the Tower. But there is no way I can know the Tower, he tells me, unless I think about the Tower, which can't be thought about unless I know about the Tower, which I can't know until I understand the Tower. And so on. He is always like this.

There is nothing here to do except repeat it, over and over again.

"I am here to help you understand the Tower," he repeats.

"The theoretical physic--"

"No," Tully says, smiling, but his voice is grave.

He explains patiently that it won't work if I say "Theoretical Physicist" three times, but will work if I say "Theoretical Physicist. Theoretical Physicist. Theoretical Physicist" once. When I hear the phrase "Theoretical Physicist" only once, I will know what to think of the Tower, when I wake up, two years from now.

"So the theoretical Physician, etc.," I say weakly, but he smiles at me -- and at me -- and says, "I am here to help you understand the Tower. When I tell you about it you will have to think about it a thousand times, over and over again, until it -- until it becomes true. Then you will understand. And if you do -- it means so much to you, I can tell, by the way you're looking at me, by the way you say "it means so much" and "it means a great deal to me" and so forth. And so you'll understand the Tower, and the Tower, and -- you know the word "Turbine? I know it now. You can say it to me again, but you have to say "Theoretical Physicist. Theoretical Physicist. Theor--" and it won't happen unless you try. Tully has brought me up here as if to show me how to --"

Tully laughs, but when he says "Theoretical Physician" it is -- well

#original fiction

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feralfrey · 1 year

Text

idk how to describe it but.. autistically i know when Things are wrong (like numbers, patterns, trends, etc.) so being out in the workforce in my field and seeing something that is either Not working or Not right or is Doomed to fail, like i SEE that and my warning bells go off because some pattern seeking portion of my brain KNOWS it is wrong. but i can’t explain it?? the numbers are off and it’s all wrong and it’s causing me physical pain, i can feel the pressure in my chest and the tingling on my skin and my hair is on end and my entire nervous system is going NO NO NO NO but i can’t for the life of me put the words together to show to someone else the error.

on the flip side there is, say this fluctuating resistivity reading for a deionizing water system and i KNOW the resistivity is temperature dependent (i’m a chemist for christ’s sake), and the numbers look all over the place. BUT my little brain says no no good. good numbers, dependency, trend, pattern, good good! excited, good! BUT i can’t explain to people why the fluctuating numbers is O K A Y (chi squared test maybe but still) point is that the gut and brain are talking, i just KNOW when data good and when data bad it kills me that i can’t verbalize it as well i would like to

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maaarine · 2 years

Text

MBTI tirade

I finished listening to that bio of Nikola Tesla I was talking about

since I love nothing more than rolling my eyes, I googled people’s takes on his MBTI personality type

this one made me flip a table:

the fixation people have on defining introverted intuition (Ni) as some magical ability to predict the future gives me grief because it’s so easily shown to be incoherent

they’ll adhere to the association of the “mad scientist” archetype with INTPs and ENTPs, and agree that Einstein fits the INTP bill

but when someone is said to be working on predicting future events, those same people will shove it down your throat that it’s “typical dominant Ni!” (ie INTJ and INFJ)

my question is: do they realize that science is mainly about figuring out laws and principles in order to predict and control events?

if the INTP physicist calculates the trajectory of a canon ball in order to predict where it’s going to fall, is she “using Ni”?

if she’s anticipating a black hole to look a certain way even though none has ever been observed, basing her idea on her existing understanding of the physics of light, is she having an “Ni vision”?

if Tesla guessed where technology was heading, informed by his work on electricity, how was his process any different from that of meteorologist, chemist, economist, etc.?

why is science tightly associated with the NTP archetype in MBTI ~theory~, if at the same time prediction is associated with the INJ archetype?

my humble answer is that the whole thing is an incoherent mess because the given definitions of cognitive functions are fucking terrible

anyway I also want to share this comment below because it made me guffaw:

you’re the one I’m sending home because your thought process is inane babe

now that sounds TJ!

source: personality-database.com

#mbti #nikola tesla #mytxt

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harrison-abbott · 3 months

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I was re-reading this today. Quite the mad read. There aren’t many autobiographies like this.

And I’m not trying to be political in posting about this particular book. Have only re-read it and wanted to say a few words.

Levi was only spared because he was a chemist. He says as much in the book. And it’s astonishing that the Nazis actually kept the people who ‘had skills’ alive for that reason. He talks about, nearing the end of the tenure when the Russians were advancing around Poland, how the Nazis were keen to emphasise the extermination and that he narrowly missed out on being ‘selected for the gas chambers’.

And he talks about how the chimneys were burning even more ferociously in that period than ever before. But he was lucky, because the Nazis didn’t happen to select him, and because he had studied chemistry in the past.

Before all of that, he describes how he worked in the laboratory. And how he had to wear his prisoner clothes; whilst there were women working in the lab alongside him. German women. And he explains how the German ladies were disgusted by him: and he could only speak to the superior (male) laboratory chap, because they wouldn’t look at him and didn’t want him there.

And this point got me thinking about how there is that cliché, when it comes to conflict and war: that it is angry men who do these insane things and murder each other. I suppose it’s generally true. But I found it important to have a perspective from the female side as well.

He was a chemist. They hated him … why? Social cruelty as well as physical cruelty.

This book is crucial, I believe.

Did you know that Primo Levi eventually committed suicide? When he was 67. He jumped off a building. But, I mean: no wonder: and he sure wrote some fantastic material. And he survived Auschwitz.

There is one chilling moment in the beginning of the book whereby he and his fellow Italian prisoners are on the train, and they have no idea where they’re going. For a day or so, they don’t understand where they’re being taken. Until somebody tells them “Auschwitz.” And Levi says he and the rest are satisfied, because they have some sense of destination, and do not understand what this place actually is.

Furthermore, he mentions how, on the same train journey – the Nazi guards smack the captives around a bit. As in, punch and kick them. And the captives don’t understand why this is happening or what they did to receive such treatment.

It often makes me incredulous that all of this happened less than 100 years ago. It really wasn’t that long ago – this mass murdering behaviour. There is one part in the book where he’s describing how the next winter is coming on, because it’s reached October. And he’s surprised that he’s survived the last winter. And how that all he and his other inmates have to wear are underpants, a shirt and thin trousers, outside in minus whatever Winter Poland. They basically have to survive by keeping moving on their feet because there is no clothing protection for them whatsoever. … Yes, a grim read. But still essential to get through it.

#writeblr #world literature #primo levi

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