#Classification Society

[swan2swan]

Timely reminder that Grimmjow is, in fact, a Vasto Lorde.

We never saw his pre-Arrancar form, but the whole conclusion of his backstory was his men allowing him to tear a piece of themselves off so he could reach the final stage. That's where his mane and spikes came from.

[blood-orange-juice]

Spicy take: I'm starting to think that the concept of "trickster" is about just as meaningful as the concept of Hero's Journey.

Sure, you can fit a lot of stories into it and some were written with that specific archetype in mind but also it conflates Joker, Odysseus, Br'er Rabit and Slavic folktales protagonists and I don't think these should belong in the same category.

Boundary crossing can be done for many reasons and in many ways. The need to lump all such characters into a single category says more about our over-reliance on rigid structures, the lack of play in our culture and a desperate need for something else.

[dectech]

We all know about the fuss around Pluto, how many decry its "demotion" to a dwarf planet, and how it's still an honorary planet in the hearts of many, and I totally get it, but I don't think any of you out there are taking it far enough.

What about the rest of the so-called "dwarf" planets, huh? where's their justice? what about Ceres? Haumea? Makemake? Eris? fucking Quaoar?! why have just eight planets when you can have 18?! Why only invite Pluto to the party if you're already gonna expand the guest's list?!

you know what should be "demoted"? fucking Phobos and Deimos, the two "moons" of Mars. these two motherfuckers are proof that the barrier-to-entry for moons is too low. they're barely visible, they don't effect mars in any meaningful way, they aren't even round since they aren't big enough to round themselves under their own gravity, and one of them isn't even in a stable orbit of Mars! Phobos is gonna get ripped apart by mars' gravity in just a few dozen million years!

the concept of a "Dwarf Moon" is too good for them. they should be called, like, sateloids or something. Lunoids at most. fuck em

[longsightmyth]

Listen listen I am in fact all for egalitarianism and anti monarchy etc etc and to be clear I'm not arguing that being a servant in tudor england was a utopian experience but I need authors writing in the period to understand that dining with servants is still the norm and not a measure of how Radical and Free Thinking your gemstone named plantagenet OC is

[breadandbees]

Snippet from hch4 ch. 10: “From Shouto to ‘Hero’”

According to the U.A. student handbook and policy, there was one loophole to Quirk use in non-designated areas: a special exception.

Exceptions were granted on a case-by-case basis but, in practice, rarely honored unless your parent or guardian was willing to put up a fight. The recent inclusion of exceptions into the handbooks and policies and procedures of Japanese schools was primarily due to health and funding concerns rather than a strict compliance with School Education Laws that the Japanese government had only adopted sometime after the United States and other countries did. Everything detailed within the exception was only valid if the student was on-campus, so school-sanctioned trips were exempt and U.A. would not be liable in case of a miscommunication.

Usually, a doctor’s note and diagnosis was part of the process, as well as a meeting with a parent or legal guardian to confirm the student’s unique situation and the necessity of Quirk use. There were other things, too, but Shouto didn’t remember what else would be relevant enough to warrant wanting to be singled-out more in a school environment.

And then there were all the addendums to that clause Mutant classifications had to adhere to.

Of course, Iida probably read through the whole thing and committed parts to memory that could be reasonably relevant. Maybe he read it because taking instructions seriously—even when it was to read through things no one should ask a student to read through and reasonably expect every single student read through everything and recite it on command—was his thing. But, after Hosu, Shouto was certain there’s more to Tensei’s younger brother than a rule-abiding student.

On the other hand, Shouto himself had read through the whole thing for two reasons: 1) to know which rules he could reasonably get away with ignoring, and 2) because Endeavor's reputation paid the price as his associates fought the battle on his behalf. It only felt right to know what that was about.

So far, U.A. had honored it. He’d been skateboarding to-and-fro without causing an incident that makes Daily Hero News and any of those other news blog sites he didn’t subscribe to.

Shouto was under the belief that it was because his father held the mantle of number two, Endeavor was an alumnus, and Endeavor’s associates—his legal and public relations teams—were the top of their respective professions in the nation. At the very least, Shouto hadn’t done anything worth fighting over, which would only tank alumni funding, further corrode faith in the future of Hero society, and jeopardize their position as best Hero school in the nation.

U.A. had survived tough times. They might not survive Todoroki Shouto.

[cloudspotters-club]

Did you know that clouds are classified based on appearence just like animals?

It's true! Besides the 3 height levels they can form in, clouds are classified by shape, texture, size, and general appearence.

The idea of "cloudspotting", or appreciating often-maligned clouds that bring extra beauty to the sky, was made by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, an author and cloud-lover. He wrote the book the Cloudspotters Guide: the Science, History, and Culture of Clouds, and founded the cloud appreciation society, which has the manifesto:

WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.

We think that clouds are Nature's poetry, and the most egalitarian of her displays, since everyone can have a fantastic view of them.

We pledge to fight 'blue-sky thinking' wherever we find it. Life would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day.

We seek to remind people that clouds are expressions of the atmosphere's moods, and can be read like those of a person's countenance.

We believe that clouds are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul. Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see in them will save money on psychoanalysis bills.

And so we say to all who'll listen:

Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and always remember to live life with your head in the clouds!

for more information I reccomend checking out the cloud appreciation societies website:

[just2bruce]

Loose cable connection destroys bridge?

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Office of Marine Safety released a report on the Dali bridge ‘allision’ (not a collision) that destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore MD USA. We all read with amazement at the destruction of this major bridge, which carries much East Coast auto and truck traffic between New York-Philadelphia and Washington DC. The cost to repair it is…

[your-talos-is-problematic]

idk if Barbie intended to be about autism but personally, I find it very relatable to the autistic experience of gender

[elipsi]

ma tutto bene?

[majormeilani]

i have the hc for hat kid and bow kid's planet that they don't celebrate their birthdays on that planet so when they hear that you're supposed to celebrate them through their time on The Planet, they're overjoyed abt it

[archivyrep]

Knowledge, Classification, and Ledo's Record-Informed Epiphany in "Gargantia" [Part 2]

Chambers begins playing the classified record

The video Ledo watches shows something shocking: the Hideauze are humanoid and were originally human! This causes Ledo to come to the realization that he has been killing fellow humans. He regrets his genocidal actions and questions whether it is even worth fighting against the Hideauze at all. Undoubtedly, there is more trauma for Ledo, heightened when he holds the flesh of the dead squid in his hands. Even with this new information, which Chambers had claimed was "manipulated" by the "enemy", without providing any evidence, Chambers continues to argue for the just-ness of a war despite it being based on lies. It is later revealed, when Ledo seems to meet Kugel, his former commander, that upper echelons of the Galactic Alliance knew all along. However, they never informed the soldiers battling on the front lines. Without giving any more spoilers, Ledo remains on Earth without returning to space, with records causing an epiphany and causing the remaining Galactic Alliance mindset of fighting against the enemy no matter the cost to fall away.

Reprinted from my Wading Through the Cultural Stacks WordPress blog, where it was published on June 14, 2023.

All in all, although records, and their concealment, are a crucial part of the series, especially in Ledo's epiphany of sorts, reviewers don't mention them in their publications. However, they note how the premise feels "arbitrarily constructed" at times, while depicting intricate details successfully at other points, as part of a successful sci-fi story, that there is violence throughout, and that the production values are superb in many ways. [3] The focus on how classification of records can impede knowledge is something I haven't seen in an anime or animation series to date. The closest parallel I can come to is the archival work, of sorts, by Ura in Pale Cocoon. What happens in Gargantia is different in many ways, even from the depiction of classified records in The Crown or the classified archives of the CIA shown in an episode of Alias, as Archives in Fiction once noted.

For one, it shows the efforts the Galactic Alliance went to in order to conceal the truth. If the soldiers on the front lines knew that they were fighting humans, or more accurately humanoid descendants, there would likely be resistance, perhaps even mass desertion. So, their solution is to distort the reality, paint the "enemy" as a lesser lifeform, something that can't even think, when the Hideauze are just as smart as humans, although they might not seem that way. Secondly, the fact that Chambers immediately determines that the classified record is manipulated because it contradicts Alliance records shows how deeply entrenched his programming is with propaganda from the Alliance itself! As it has been said many times, no program, algorithm, technology, code, or anything is neutral. Rather, it is shaped by human perceptions. That is the case for Chambers.

What Ledo experiences is not a form of record erasure, alteration, or deletion, but, rather, a form of record concealment. The record he views does not have any completeness, as it is choppy, and the video is distorted. The latter may be part of the reasoning what Chambers claimed the records were manipulated, thinking it wasn't accurate. To Ledo, and the viewer, it appeared to be accurate. Furthermore, it was reliable in the sense it was "created by a competent authority, according to established processes", as it was a Galactic Alliance record. It is surprising it was left behind and not hidden. Perhaps the thinking was that it would never be found, so there was no need to destroy it, and it had lost all usefulness to them.

There is no doubt that the record is trustworthy, authentic, and genuine. Chambers clearly believes that the record is counterfeit, i.e. an item which is "falsely represented as the thing it imitates", an "unauthorized copy presented as an authentic original", or something worse: a forgery. Of course, Chambers likely has different definitions than the Society of American Archivists' Dictionary of Archives Terminology. The record, presented in the form of a degrade tape, is further confirmed as genuine by the testimony of "Kugel".

In the end, while there are no characters like Jocasta Nu in Star Wars or Nathan's grandfather in Stretch Armstrong, records remain an important part of the story in Gargantia, serving as an important plot point in more ways than one. There is no storage of records akin to R2-D2. Instead, there is recovery of lost data and records that were left behind/discarded, in an attempt to twist how people viewed the present. That is something unique to this series, as I can't think of any other series off hand, apart from Pale Cocoon, which focus on data recovery, and have declassification as something commanded by the protagonist. In that sense, Gargantia is different. That's all for this time. Until the next post sometime next month, likely on a different topic. Let me know in the comments what you think.

© 2022-2023 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

Notes

[3] See, for example, reviews in THEM Anime Reviews and Anime News Network (also here). As a warning, the sixth episode has transphobic themes which may offend viewers.

[omgsomeonesomewhereonearth]

Non. Binary. Someone whose gender identity does not fall into the traditional binary classification. It's literally right there.

You can't "pin down the definition" because it's not a singular third gender, but a term inclusive of anyone who isn't strictly "man" or "woman". Two people could be nonbinary and yet have entirely different genders.

Some people within the umbrella of nonbinary may have specific terms which describes their own gender identity, ie, "agender", "genderfluid", but I'm not sure why we should want to come up with a specific definition for nonbinary because frankly, I'm not sure I can conjure a concise definition of man or woman either.

i think it's insane that nonbinary people went "hey i'm trans, i'm just not transitioning to one of the two very specific ideas of gender you have in your head" and so many cishet people and transmeds went "ah so you're not trans, you're just quirky." like hello? i literally started the sentence with "i'm trans" are you okay? people can transition in more than just one of two extremely specific ways, carol.

[in-sightpublishing]

On High-Range Test Construction 6: Chris Cole on How to Protect High-Range Tests

            Publisher: In-Sight Publishing Publisher Founding: March 1, 2014 Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada Journal: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal Journal Founding: August 2, 2012 Frequency: Three (3) Times Per Year Review Status: Non-Peer-Reviewed Access: Electronic/Digital & Open Access Fees:…

[roaringroa]

fucking hate doing uni work with people who aren't my designated group project friends cause some people really just blatantly plagiarize and copy from chatgpt like huh you didn't even try to hide it

[cloudspotters-club]

Overlapping cirrocumulus passing by

[cloudspotters-club]

Altocumulus undulatus

march 5, 2017