#CS 101

[spockvarietyhour]

Terminator Zero "Model 107"

[dameferre]

rereading the captive prince trilogy really is one ‘i want to rip the regent’s dick off and force feed it to him’ moment after another huh

[thecaptainoutoftime]

"The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy, but these are new. They look human… sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot. I had to wait till he moved on you before I could zero him." "Look, I am not stupid, you know. They cannot make things like that yet." "Not yet, not for about 40 years." "Are you saying it's from the future?" "One possible future. From your point of view. I don't know tech stuff." "Then you're from the future, too. Is that right?" "Right." "Right." * Sarah tries to escape and bites Reese's hand* "Cyborgs don't feel pain. I do. Don't do that again." "Just let me go" "Listen, and understand! That Terminator is out there! It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead!"

Happy 40th Anniversary to The Terminator

October 26th 1984-October 26th 2024

[vincent-marie]

"Weary 101 in Ballpoint"

Because I've wanted to draw fan art of Takahata101's Vtuber persona for a while. It's a cool design & I've seen other really awesome fan art before.

Follow & support my work on Patreon, or make a one-time donation to my Ko-Fi.

Support artists for free by sharing & reblogging, but NOT reposting.

[brunhielda]

Terry Pratchett is one of my “intro to philosophy” authors, and I will always love him for that.

He said the real stuff, and it sticks with you.

“People aren’t things. This means you. This means me.” Indeed.

The Granny Weatherwax quote about all evil being rooted in seeing people as things has resonated with me since I first read it, to the point that I've added it to my personal ethos. Just now, however, I've realized something important about this idea that never occurred to me before:

It applies not only to how you see others, but how you see yourself.

I realized today that I've been treating myself as an object for... I don't even know how long. I guess being treated as replaceable equipment by The Economy™️ and almost every job I've had will do that, but it's scary how much a part of me has accepted this notion even as I've been fighting it.

I had come to behave as though I were a beater car, in need of extensive repairs before it could be seen in public without shame. I held off on so much of my life because I thought I had to fully fix myself before I could start trying to be happy.

This. Is. Not. True.

I have to believe it's not true, because I can't keep slogging through life in pursuit of some nebulous standard of presentability. If I keep limiting myself to surviving long enough to be Good Enough, I will never really live.

I could go on with an extended metaphor, but I think that would defeat the purpose, so. Yeah.

People aren't things. This means you. This means me.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[leikeliscomet]

Obviously not expecting a (white) American site to gaf about today so lemme talk a bit more about Windrush Day and the Black British experience:

I feel like the Black British experience is constantly one of work and struggle. Our parents and grandparents lived through colonial and post colonial (using the term lightly) rule just to end up working and serving the imperial core, targeted by the same government that invited them here. A lot of the time its phrased as a choice but in reality what else could they have done? Ts and Cs apply bc for some West African Brits their parents were middle class back home but for me and others our families grew up in poverty in places still recovering from slavery and colonialism.

Britain whitewashes the history of Black immigrants, literally in the sense we're not taught our own history of Black people in Britain and metaphorically by applying British individualist myths; that as long as you work hard, don't complain about it and love Britain you can be British too. But it erases, ignores and distorts the truth that the British state used our community as nothing more than a labour force to rebuild after WWII and actively targeted Black British communities with police surveillance, brutality and systemic racism. All whilst denying it of course and turning their nose up at the very accusation. Very British.

Black British contributions, West African and West Indian to be more specific don't just apply in terms of work but in terms of shaping culture. 'Roadman' has become a meme and a caricature (including by some Americans on here ik u lot love 'chav') with barely any connection to its Black British roots, even when the term gets used as an insult to mainly Black working class men or used as a British version of 'thug'. The grime scene is undeniably a staple of Black Britain yet it is pathologised and judged, moral panics about Black people's violence and yet capitalised and profitted off of by non Black Brits as an aesthetic. Everybody wants the tracksuits, the tunes and the terminology innit. To be 'road' means to be Black British yet when its time to talk culture, nobody wants to credit it us. All of a sudden its 'London culture'.

But it isn't all doom and gloom. There's so much history and culture here in our spaces. I'd be lying if I said growing up where I did was easy. But it has shaped my outlook and made me and I'll carry that with me forever. Our grandparents and parents came here with so little and made so much out of nothing. And I'll always honour that. Justice for the Windrush generation.

EDIT: Wow this blew up. If you're an American or non-British person and you wanna know more I linked some videos that talk about Black Britishness in an easy way, like a Black Britain 101. I have a sideblog for history posts and I have a lot of Black British history stuff on there, mainly post-war if anyone's interested. Also made this list of Black British music recs x

[cuppatealove]

Could somebody give me Dorothy L Sayers 101? I had never heard of her until joining tumblr, where you fine people seem to talk about her a lot 🙂 She sounds like some kind of hybrid of Agatha Christie and CS Lewis! Where should one start with her? And can one pick up any old Lord Peter Wimsey book from the library with no context, or do they need to be read in sequence?

[wolfes]

NEW EDITOR 101: A GUIDE FOR GIFMAKERS by v @shangs

Hi friends! I know I said I would do this way back in April/May when this change was announced but I've been massively busy lately so thank you all for being patient with me :)

Based on the results of this poll, I will be trying my level best to help make a guide for gifmakers to best deal with any problems that have been present with the new editor. However, it's worth noting that I have personally not experienced any of these problems myself and I have no record of any problems from other people that I could send to staff and get guidance on, so for some of these issues I will unfortunately be a broken record.

That being said, I have been using the new editor for a few months now and it hasn't been too bad. So don't be discouraged by the new editor if you still love to make gifs and share them. You may need to adapt a bit, but it's doable!

This is meant to be comprehensive and will be explanation and image heavy. Full guide under the cut.

CONTENTS:

What is the new editor?

Steps to take before posting

Making a post

Troubleshooting

01. WHAT IS THE NEW EDITOR?

Some of you may be asking yourselves what the point of the new editor even is and why it's being implemented in the first place when we already had a (mostly) functional editor. My very limited understanding of it as a CS student is app compatibility and flexibility. I'm not totally clear on the details nor am I 100% certain this is the case, but NPF posts (basically, posts made with the "new editor") first started with the mobile app. I'm unsure if the different post types were simply too unwieldy to transfer to the app - having to make a whole bunch of post types when with the new editor you can now have posts with any elements you want without the rigidity of a set post type - or if it was simply not able to be implemented, but the apps have always used NPF. The majority of Tumblr users are coming from the mobile apps. Then it became a case of having the legacy editor for the web users (which were fewer in number) and the new NPF editor for everyone else. That takes resources to keep around and it's pretty inefficient. Naturally the older editor that was used by less people was going to get the axe, especially since you couldn't tell on mobile that there was even a difference between NPF or legacy posts.

So now here we are and the posts are NPF. This means they're in "Neue Post Format." Basically, every post you make is by default a text post, containing "blocks" of other media - as gifmakers we will primarily be dealing with photos.

I understand that it's frustrating to many to see "our gifs are now rendered as text posts" and ask WHY it's happening when photos should logically be rendered as photo posts - but the fact is, there's now no real delineation between a "text post" and a "photo post." The reason NPF posts are now "text posts" is because that's how they are rendered for desktop themes, not because everyone is going to see your post as text and your gifs are going to be compressed into the quality of a potato (though I know some have seen this issue - more on that later.)

02. STEPS TO TAKE BEFORE POSTING

The long and short of it is that you may have to update your theme. More detail here for those who are interested, but check that your theme supports "new editor posts" or "NPF posts" AND that this is true for original posts (you can read more about why in this ask and, although this may be a bit time-consuming, test it out on your blog). I can say with certainty that my second theme Cygnus supports original NPF posts. This is NOT true of my first theme, though.

You can try to add the NPF Fix by @glenthemes to your own theme (beware if you don't know HTML/CSS) or try this tip by @burningblake for original posts.

Feel free to add theme makers with fully NPF-compatible themes in the notes! I have been happily using my own theme so I can't say to what degree others' themes are NPF-friendly.

03. MAKING A POST

If you're sticking around to post on the new editor and you have trouble ordering your gifs around, here's a little guide on how to post.

If I click on "Photo" from web and open up the editor, here's how it looks:

I went ahead and added three full-width gifs and the editor put them in like so:

You'll most likely also have to order your gifs around in the way you want them. You can go ahead and hover over your gifs to see the button to orient them (the four dots in the top left corner) and the button for an image description (the three dots in the bottom right corner). I've attached images of all three below:

If you hold the orientation button, move your gif around until you see the blue line that shows where your gif will end up in the spot that you want it. For example, I wanted to move the second gif below the first one, so I oriented it so that the blue line would show the marker between the two gifs:

Now my gifs are oriented nicely! Of course, this is a simpler layout, but the principles still hold.

If you save your gifs as a draft and reopen them or you just notice a large gap like this in between your gifs when you're in the editor, don't worry.

This will not show up in dash view or on a desktop theme that supports original NPF posts. For example, this is how the gifs' gap (without modification) looked in my desktop theme:

With your gifs ordered, the final step is to add alt text. You can read more about alt text and why you should use it here. (Feel free to ignore the sections about the captions on the legacy editor since it is no longer relevant. It's also unnecessary to clearly mark descriptions if they're not in the caption of your post because they will clearly show up under "ALT" on Tumblr.)

If you click the three dots in the bottom right corner as seen above, and click "update image description:"

You can add the description you like and click "update." Your photos' alt text will show up under the "ALT" bubble on Tumblr. This is generally a good practice to get into to make your content more accessible, so I hope you guys will consider using alt text regularly :)

Also, I've noticed that in the editor, if you go back and edit something it will take some time to show up. You may have to refresh the page or load it again after some time, but your edits should be there. I would not go back and edit posts again if you see your posts haven't shown up. I also advise against editing your posts on mobile because it's easier to make a mistake.

And there you go, you've successfully made a post with the new editor!

04. TROUBLESHOOTING

I'm sure you've all been waiting for this. Unfortunately I am probably going to be extremely unhelpful if the editor hasn't been refined in the last few months for those experiencing issues. I'm going to go in the categories that I listed out in my original poll, but keep in mind that I haven't personally seen any of these issues on my end so I haven't been able to contact staff with any evidence that this happened other than my poll.

Dashboard view quality issues: I haven't noticed this issue. I'm not sure if this has been fixed since the original poll was posted. If you're experiencing this issue, this is not something I know how to fix so I would contact staff with screenshots of the issue.

Desktop theme side padding: As noted before, this is a theme issue. If you change themes to something that is NPF-compatible with original posts, there shouldn't be any more issues here.

Small gifs on mobile: In my experience this was happening regardless of what editor was used; it's a bug that seems to have been fixed since this poll was created. If you're still experiencing it, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I would advise contacting staff.

New editor doesn't accept gifs of size 9.8MB < x < 10MB: I haven't experienced this issue so I would say the only workaround would be to either trim the size of your gif so that it is under 9.8MB or whatever threshold seems to be the cutoff or contact staff (I am so sorry for constantly having to suggest this 😭 unfortunately there's no trick I can offer because the new editor has been taking all my gifs just fine)

Logistical issues ordering gifsets: I hope this guide has been able to answer the majority of questions and shed some light on some of the more buggy behaviors of the new editor, but if you have any more specific questions you can feel free to shoot me an ask!

HTML issues / colored text: Unfortunately it seems colored text may be deprecated entirely? This could be for accessibility purposes because I believe screen readers would read out every single letter of gradient text in captions which I imagine can get quite frustrating for users of this technology. I recommend just using the normal rich text editor. If you want small text, you can highlight and click the <s> button!

Other: If it seems like something I may be able to answer, please feel free to ask me. Otherwise... hound staff 😭

Here's where you can hound staff, btw. If you're having major issues I would advise you guys to submit support tickets. That way if there are any widespread bugs, staff will hopefully be able to fix them.

I hope this guide was helpful to you guys in dealing with the new editor, and happy giffing <3

[artofeden]

Hydrogen - H (Atomic number 1) Helium - He (Atomic number 2) Lithium - Li (Atomic number 3) Beryllium - Be (Atomic number 4) Boron - B (Atomic number 5) Carbon - C (Atomic number 6) Nitrogen - N (Atomic number 7) Oxygen - O (Atomic number 8) Fluorine - F (Atomic number 9) Neon - Ne (Atomic number 10) Sodium - Na (Atomic number 11) Magnesium - Mg (Atomic number 12) Aluminum - Al (Atomic number 13) Silicon - Si (Atomic number 14) Phosphorus - P (Atomic number 15) Sulfur - S (Atomic number 16) Chlorine - Cl (Atomic number 17) Argon - Ar (Atomic number 18) Potassium - K (Atomic number 19) Calcium - Ca (Atomic number 20) Scandium - Sc (Atomic number 21) Titanium - Ti (Atomic number 22) Vanadium - V (Atomic number 23) Chromium - Cr (Atomic number 24) Manganese - Mn (Atomic number 25) Iron - Fe (Atomic number 26) Cobalt - Co (Atomic number 27) Nickel - Ni (Atomic number 28) Copper - Cu (Atomic number 29) Zinc - Zn (Atomic number 30) Gallium - Ga (Atomic number 31) Germanium - Ge (Atomic number 32) Arsenic - As (Atomic number 33) Selenium - Se (Atomic number 34) Bromine - Br (Atomic number 35) Krypton - Kr (Atomic number 36) Rubidium - Rb (Atomic number 37) Strontium - Sr (Atomic number 38) Yttrium - Y (Atomic number 39) Zirconium - Zr (Atomic number 40) Niobium - Nb (Atomic number 41) Molybdenum - Mo (Atomic number 42) Technetium - Tc (Atomic number 43) Ruthenium - Ru (Atomic number 44) Rhodium - Rh (Atomic number 45) Palladium - Pd (Atomic number 46) Silver - Ag (Atomic number 47) Cadmium - Cd (Atomic number 48) Indium - In (Atomic number 49) Tin - Sn (Atomic number 50) Antimony - Sb (Atomic number 51) Tellurium - Te (Atomic number 52) Iodine - I (Atomic number 53) Xenon - Xe (Atomic number 54) Cesium - Cs (Atomic number 55) Barium - Ba (Atomic number 56) Lanthanum - La (Atomic number 57) Cerium - Ce (Atomic number 58) Praseodymium - Pr (Atomic number 59) Neodymium - Nd (Atomic number 60) Promethium - Pm (Atomic number 61) Samarium - Sm (Atomic number 62) Europium - Eu (Atomic number 63) Gadolinium - Gd (Atomic number 64) Terbium - Tb (Atomic number 65) Dysprosium - Dy (Atomic number 66) Holmium - Ho (Atomic number 67) Erbium - Er (Atomic number 68) Thulium - Tm (Atomic number 69) Ytterbium - Yb (Atomic number 70) Lutetium - Lu (Atomic number 71) Hafnium - Hf (Atomic number 72) Tantalum - Ta (Atomic number 73) Tungsten - W (Atomic number 74) Rhenium - Re (Atomic number 75) Osmium - Os (Atomic number 76) Iridium - Ir (Atomic number 77) Platinum - Pt (Atomic number 78) Gold - Au (Atomic number 79) Mercury - Hg (Atomic number 80) Thallium - Tl (Atomic number 81) Lead - Pb (Atomic number 82) Bismuth - Bi (Atomic number 83) Polonium - Po (Atomic number 84) Astatine - At (Atomic number 85) Radon - Rn (Atomic number 86) Francium - Fr (Atomic number 87) Radium - Ra (Atomic number 88) Actinium - Ac (Atomic number 89) Thorium - Th (Atomic number 90) Protactinium - Pa (Atomic number 91) Uranium - U (Atomic number 92) Neptunium - Np (Atomic number 93) Plutonium - Pu (Atomic number 94) Americium - Am (Atomic number 95) Curium - Cm (Atomic number 96) Berkelium - Bk (Atomic number 97) Californium - Cf (Atomic number 98) Einsteinium - Es (Atomic number 99) Fermium - Fm (Atomic number 100) Mendelevium - Md (Atomic number 101) Nobelium - No (Atomic number 102) Lawrencium - Lr (Atomic number 103) Rutherfordium - Rf (Atomic number 104) Dubnium - Db (Atomic number 105) Seaborgium - Sg (Atomic number 106) Bohrium - Bh (Atomic number 107) Hassium - Hs (Atomic number 108) Meitnerium - Mt (Atomic number 109) Darmstadtium - Ds (Atomic number 110) Roentgenium - Rg (Atomic number 111) Copernicium - Cn (Atomic number 112) Nihonium - Nh (Atomic number 113) Flerovium - Fl (Atomic number 114) Moscovium - Mc (Atomic number 115) Livermorium - Lv (Atomic number 116) Tennessine - Ts (Atomic number 117) Oganesson - Og (Atomic number 118)

anyway. Have some star projectir stuff.

Did... Did you just list the entirety of the periodic table???

[csvent-2]

hi, i wan't to throw my 2 cents in.

you exchanged art for rewards. you used someone elses character to earn currency. so it's not unpaid for.

in any situation. if your use someone elses property for profit you ought to allow the owner some compensation. this is living life 101 stuff. updating a toyhouse page is all people want. and it's what they deserve because the character is their property. uploading your art to their th page is completely normal in arpgs and actually a sign of respect.

toyhouse is an imperfect website. i've had pages refresh accidentally or time out while uploading art before. therefore miscrediting myself as the artist and losing the description when submitted. usually i catch it right away but one time i was politely notified of the mistake by said artist and i promptly fixed the error. it's not uncommon. instead of doing that you immediately assumed the worst of the character's owner. it's a shitty way to treat someone.

you're making it sound like because the owner left the art description blank on the character's toyhouse page they're automatically guilty of artificially inflating some value tracker. but on a lorekeeper species, it's impossible to falsify value. these things have to be appraised and updated by staff on the site because it's baked onto the character's page through the back end. obviously if they tried to appraise your art the staff would know it's prompt art and not allow any value to be added. this is really basic stuff. no paypal receipt, no value. you're making an issue of something that hasn't happened and cannot happen.

the owner should report you to staff and you should have your rewards revoked and art removed from the lk site for doing this. in fact the cs should write a rule addressing your conduct as wrong so other normie artists know how to behave if they want to join in.

any arpg player here can see your logic is delusional. this is not a victory for you.

"if you don't like what an artist wants with their art, then just don't work with them" i'll turn your excuse around on you. if you don't like how we do things in arpgs. don't play with us.

if you need your own perfect personal bubble to be comfy you don't belong in arpgs. role play means working together and compromise.

🌸

[cslearninghub]

Quantum Computing 101: What are Qubits?

Curious about quantum computing? Let's break it down!

🔍 What’s a Qubit? A qubit is the basic unit of quantum information. Unlike classical bits (0 or 1), qubits can be 0, 1, or both at the same time thanks to a phenomenon called superposition.

✨ Why Is This Cool?

Superposition: Allows qubits to explore many possibilities simultaneously.

Entanglement: Qubits can be linked, so the state of one affects the state of another, no matter the distance.

⚙️ In Action: This means quantum computers can tackle complex problems faster by processing a huge number of possibilities at once!

Follow for more insights on the future of tech! 🚀✨

Instagram: cs_learninghub YT: CS Learning Hub

[etirabys]

It's very sweet about CS Lewis to idiotproof Paradise Lost against atheists. He didn't have to do that. He was a Christian writer in a Christian society and I assume he could have gotten away with just talking to other Christians about it and ignoring annoying people who wrongly read subversion into Milton. Instead he gives us a Christianity 101 chapter in A Preface to Paradise Lost and says, "this is the theological canon of the church, and here is how Milton hews to it again and again".

So now I think I understand Christianity. Maybe?

CS Lewis, explaining the canonical beliefs: Everything in nature is intrinsically good. Bad things happen when conscious creatures become "more interested in itself than in God", or assumes it can exist independently of God, as when Milton's Satan says that he is "self-begot".

me: Just for fun, let me enumerate the possible answers to 'who begot us?' – (1) conscious supreme being – e.g. Christian God, (2) our parents – e.g. Confucianism, (3) the self, (4) the weight of human history – humanity co-creating itself by maintaining a matrix of culture, (5) Nature – non-conscious but still revered, e.g. planet worship / I hecking love science, (6) null answer – non-conscious material processes.

Lewis: God knows in advance that some conscious entities will voluntarily make themselves bad and also knows what good use He will make of their badness. As [Milton's] angels point out, whoever tries to rebel against God produces the result opposite to his intention. At the end of the poem Adam is astonished at the power 'that all this good of evil shall produce'. This is the exact reverse of the programme Satan had envisaged in Book I, when he hoped, if God attempted any good through him, to 'pervert that end'; instead he is allowed to do all the evil he wants and finds that he has produced good. Those who will not be God's sons become His tools.

me: That's such beautiful cope! I've heard the badly-articulated versions of that Christian belief but it turns out I'm unprincipled and like it when you, Charisma Stat Lewis, say it.

me: It's also hard not to speculate that this belief is more adaptive in a world with e.g. a 50% child mortality rate.

Lewis: Also, The apple wasn't magic. THE APPLE WASN'T MAGIC. The only point of forbidding it was to instill obedience. The disobedience was so heinous precisely because obedience was so easy.

me: it was a shit test

Lewis: The Fall consisted of man's disobedience to his superior and was punished by man's loss of authority over his inferiors – chiefly over his passions and his physical organism. "Man has called for anarchy: God lets him have it." After the Fall, understanding ceased to rule and the will did not listen to understanding.

me: okay so what about the physical organism

Lewis: Man used to control his erections before the Fall

me: what

Lewis: That's right. No accidental boners. No morning wood. No dead bedroom subreddits. You can clench your fist without being angry and you can be angry without clench your fist. The will controls the fist. The sexual organs used to be like that.

me: That follows splendidly from "man was punished by the passions overruling the will" and yet I wasn't expecting that at all. Probably because I'm female? I annotated your "the will did not listen to understanding" with "we didn't have akrasia before the fall", because akrasia is a big problem for me. But being horny isn't.

me: I mean, obviously some women are really horny and causes them to act in unwise ways, and some men aren't horny. But "single men under age 25 are the most societal-problem-causing demographic" is well known, and even outside that age range, men seem to be, like, "cursed with horny" in a way that requires managing & makes them miserable on a day to day basis... so it makes sense that male interpreters would identify that with the Fall. It's conceptually congruent in a way "the Fall caused childbirth to be painful" isn't.

Lewis: Anyway, the Fall – people overcomplicated it. The apple is just an apple. It's not an allegory. The Fall consisted of Disobedience – doing what your superiors told you not to do – and resulted from Pride, which is forgetting your place. This is what the Church has always taught. Milton states it in the very first line of his poem and all his characters reiterate it from every possible point of view. Don't read false emphases into Milton! This is what he is saying: obedience to the will of God will make you happy and disobedience will make you miserable.

me: Well, obviously you know that your modern reader doesn't like this. You're pleasantly cognizant of atheist readers who are into self-governance and equality.

Lewis: The modern idea that we can choose between hierarchy and equality is not quite right. The real alternative to hierarchy is tyranny. If you will not have authority you will find yourself obeying brute force.

me: I simultaneously have a suspicious-resistant feeling and the perception that, when people in my milieu disagree with this, your view is the baseline from which we deviate minorly. Any form of functional social arrangement is going to have something that looks like authority and obedience.

Lewis: Understand this: Milton's poem belongs to a hierarchical conception of the universe where everything except God has some natural superior and everything except dead matter has some natural inferior. Superiors should rule over inferiors. When Milton protests an instance of rule (he was against the monarchy of the Stuarts) he is disagreeing that the Stuarts are superior while still thinking that hierarchy is cosmically good. The justice or injustice of any given instance of rule depends wholly on the nature of the parties, not on any social contract.

me: I have little respect for Confucianism because it strikes me as so overtly a system of thought with no internal merit or wisdom on the micro, whose only function is to make society run on the macro. (I'm sorry to say "only" there, because that's a big function.) What you describe has the same feel. This isn't a great label for it, but I'd call both Confucianism and Christian hierarchy 'biological philosophies', in that of course this is the philosophy that materially deprived apes who want both power and stability would equilibriate on: a system of subjugation and cope. The hierarchical conception itself is "understanding ceasing to rule".

Lewis: [Lewis would doubtless totally own me. But he doesn't directly address this in anything I've read by him, and I can't simulate him in enough detail to generate his response.]

[expertmodegaming]

Kamiya's Return

There are very few figures in the video game industry with a reputation similar to Hideki Kamiya, the former chief designer of Platinum games has been responsible for titles Bayonetta and Wonderful 101.

He has worked on some truly iconic projects, so with the recent announcement of his new studio Clovers inc. he will be revisiting one of his most famous works in the form of a sequel to OKAMI, it was announced at The Game Awards 2024 and is set to be published by Capcom.

And it would appear that no one is more excited for the future that Kamiya himself; he had this to say in the studio's press release, "

A lot of thought—not to mention all sorts of feelings—went into my decision to split off from the crowd and strike out on my own. I’ve spent a long time searching for a place where I can make games that I believe in, and according to my own convictions. Luckily, some stalwart allies who share those convictions reached out their hands. Now I believe I’ve found the place I was searching for. A place where I can make games that I can proudly share with the world. CLOVERS may be small in size, but we’re big and strong in spirit. You can count on us to strive to fill your gaming lives with joy with the same convictions I’ve had since I first entered the games industry. The games industry is a vast field, and we’re hoping to sprout in it like a four-leaf clover. I hope you’re looking forward to seeing what we do."

Clovers is based out of Tokyo and Osaka, and are expected to increase their staff size in the future.

So to close out I will leave you with their mission statment;

"Our logo is a four-leaf clover with a letter C forming each of the leaves. These Cs represent four individual principles that combine to make one whole. These four Cs bring us together, just like they do in our logo. In fact, you could call us C-LOVERS!

Our Four Cs are… Challenge: The unstoppable drive to try new things. Creativity: The urge to continuously create. Craftsmanship: An unshakeable devotion to detail. As for the fourth C… each of our creators adds a precious C of their own to the mix. These form The CLOVERS Spirit that we all hold dear to our hearts.

We promise to take new challenges head-on, to sweat the details, and to create gaming experiences that only we can create. It’s our mission to make the games you’ve always wanted to play."

[rabbiteclair]

least competent team member came to me with "hey, I have this story where whenever we retrieve user information, if the database says their role is 'Manager', we want the API to return 'Administrator' instead. do we have any examples of how to do that?" and I don't know how to explain to him that this is just like... programming. it's programming. CS 101 shit. allow me to explain to you the arcane secrets of the fucking If statement, young padawan

[ask-a-goldsmith]

In writing my last few posts, I have realized that there is quite a lot of basic(to me) knowledge required to understand most of this stuff. I've done my best to explain as I go, but I think this deserves its own post. So, here we go!

Junior Gemology 101

This post is mostly about diamonds! I am well aware it's called Junior Gemology, but 90% of what I deal with on a day-to-day basis is diamonds. Also, a lot of this applies to coloured stones too, so no need to repeat myself.

What is a diamond, actually?

Diamonds are carbon! That's all there is! Except for inclusions. And coloured diamonds. Those have little bits of other materials in them. And are also a topic for later. I digress. Like always.

Specifically, diamonds are carbon atoms bonded together covalently in a tetrahedral shape. Confusing enough yet? This means that each carbon atom is bonded to 4 other carbon atoms. It's ok if you don't get it, I spent about 3 hours trying to understand diamond structure before things started to make sense. This website has a 3D model of the tetrahedral structure seen in diamonds and is what I used to finally wrap my head around it. The important part is: diamonds are made of carbon atoms connected in a pattern. If the pattern was different, It wouldn't be a diamond! If the carbon was bonded in hexagonal rings, it would be graphite! Same atoms, veeeerrrryyy different result.

What makes diamonds so darn special?

I've told you what a diamond is - so why do people care about this very specific pattern of carbon? The answer is(mostly) that humanity LOVES shiny things, and diamonds are great at being shiny. Why have diamonds become THE shiny thing to have? A combination of some REALLY successful marketing campaigns and some of diamond's unique characteristics. These characteristics include things such as their hardness, brilliance, and fire. I went deeper into these characteristics and what they mean in terms of telling diamonds from other stones in this post, but I'll give you a quick run-down here.

Diamonds are very(and famously) hard. They're a 10 on the Mohs scale, and almost nothing is harder than them. This doesn't mean diamonds are impervious to damage - while they are very hard, diamonds can also be brittle, and a hard smack in the wrong place can chip, crack, or even shatter a diamond. Trust me, I know. I've broken a few by accident.

Brilliance and fire are what give diamonds their characteristic bling. Though they are classified as different things - brilliance being the bright white reflections of light and fire being the rainbow reflections - they're both caused by diamond's Refractive Index. Refractive index(RI) is the measurement of the speed at which light travels through different materials - for our purposes though, think of it as how much a ray of light bends when it moves from one material to another. Diamonds have an RI of 2.42, which causes high brilliance and a medium amount of fire. RI isn't super important for most people to know - it really only comes into the conversation when comparing diamonds to simulant materials.

What are the 4 Cs?

The 4 Cs are the meat and potatoes of diamond basics - Carat weight, Colour, Clarity, and Cut. These four terms are used to describe diamonds worldwide, each describing a different part of a diamond's look.

Carat weight is the weight of a diamond. Pretty self-explanatory. What's not clear is what a carat actually is - no, not a carrot. A carat. A carat is 0.2 grams. Therefore, a 5 carat diamond(good lord) would weigh 1 gram. With me? Why do we weigh diamonds in carats instead of grams like sane people? Because way back yonder, carob seeds were used as a counterweight to weigh diamonds, and language did what language does.

Image from loosegrowndiamond.com

Colour refers to - you guessed it - the colour of the diamond. There are two basic systems that GIA(The Gemological Institute Of America, and the accepted authority of these things in North America) use; the normal colour range and the coloured or fancy diamond range. The normal colour range is used for stones that are colourless, light yellow, or light brown. These are the most common colours of diamond, thus the "normal" colour range. These stones are graded alphabetically D-Z, with D being colourless and Z being quite noticeably yellow or brown. Normal range colour grades are sorted into 5 groups based on the general amount of colour; colourless(DEF), nearly colourless(GHIJ), Faint(KLM), Very Light(N-R), and light(S-Z).

Image from GIA article 4Cs Color

Stones that fall outside this range (stones that are too yellow or brown for the scale or show any colour other than yellow and brown) are graded using the fancy colour grades. Fancy colour grades are an entire thing, but generally pretty self-explanatory. The grade will include 1 or two colours(the more dominant of which goes last) and an intensity descriptor such as light, intense, fancy deep, etc. For example, a stone may be graded as a fancy greyish blue - this means that the stone has a middling amount of colour and is blue with a hint of grey. Easy peasy.

Clarity is how many inclusions are in a stone. Well, technically it's more complicated than that, accounting for placement and contrast and type of inclusion etc etc etc. Really, clarity is how many inclusions you see in a stone. Inclusions are things in the diamond that are not diamond, such as included crystals, or imperfections in the diamond itself, such as cracks(called feathers) or chips.

Clarity grades are, frankly, confusing as fuck. There are 11 grades, broken down into 6 grade groups. From highest to lowest, they are; Flawless, Internally Flawless, Very Very Slightly Included(VVS), Very Slightly Included(VS), Slightly Included(SI), and Included(I). VVS, VS, and SI are each broken into 2 grades - 1 and 2. I is broken down into 3 grades - 1, 2, and 3. The lower the number within a grade, the better the grade - a VS1 stone would be less visibly included than a VS2. You know what'll help? Visuals!!

Images from GIA D&DG Chapter 11. Credit to John Koivula/GIA

The diamond on the left is graded as a VVS2 - the red arrow points to the inclusion that gave it this grade. The diamond on the right is graded as an I2. No red arrows are required - this stone has many highly visible inclusions. If you want a little more info (and examples) of clarity grades, GIA has a lovely little tool that explains it quite well.

Cut refers to the shape of a diamond - specifically, the combination of shape(face-up outline) and cutting style(the arrangement of the facets). A classic round brilliant is what most people think of when they think of a diamond, but there are dozens of different cuts. When talking about cut grade, cut refers to how well executed the cut is. Are the proportions ideal? Is everything symmetrical? Is the polish well done? These determine the cut grade of the stone. Cut grades are as follows, best to worst; Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, and Poor.

What are the parts of a cut diamond?

Specifically, the parts of a round brilliant diamond. Round brilliant is the name of the most common cut of diamond. Think of a diamond. Is it round? That's almost definitely a round brilliant. Think I've said round brilliant enough? Round brilliant. Whew. Done with that now. This is best explained with diagrams.

The parts we're most interested in are the table, crown, girdle, and pavilion. The way those 3 parts are shaped and proportioned has a huge effect on the looks and value of a diamond.

Knowledge Check

Let's say you're looking at a 1.01 carat round brilliant diamond - it has a colour grade of F, a clarity grade of SI1, and an excellent cut grade. So, what does this mean to you?

Round brilliant is the cut of the diamond. It has a round outline and a brilliant cutting style. 1.01ct is a fairly large diamond - this one in particular is 6.42 mm in diameter (that's a quarter inch!). This stone is colourless - F is the lowest colour grade in the colourless range, but it is still classified as colourless. The diamond will either have one large or several small inclusions that are easy to see under 10x magnification, but hard or impossible to see while looking through the table of a stone with the naked eye(they may be visible through the pavilion with the naked eye). The diamond will be very well cut - the best cut grade possible, in fact! There will be no visible variation in the girdle outline, and all the facets will be well-placed and symmetrical.

It's up to you to decide if this stone matches your criteria - is SI1 a good enough cut grade for you? Is 1.01ct the right size? How "good" a stone is depends on what you want - there will always be bigger, clearer, more colourless diamonds on the market. What makes a stone "good" is if it's the right fit for you. Another stone may be better quality, but if it's out of your price range, then it's not a good stone for you.

In Conclusion

So, you made it this far! Congrats! Hopefully, I haven't bored you too much. We've really just scratched the surface - this was enough information to give you a good idea of what's going on and allow you to navigate the mysticisms of those strange numbers and letters you see associated with diamonds. All information was taken from the GIA Diamond Essentials 130 and Diamonds and Diamond Grading 230 courses and my 6ish years in the jewelry industry. If you have questions about specific pieces of information or want more resources, send me an ask! I will be delighted to answer.