#Data Transformation Guide

[you10tubesworld]

Discover the world of Generative AI with Ronald van Loon, a renowned AI & IoT Influencer, and Sean Stauth, a global AI and AutoML expert. Discover how data can be transformed into actionable insights using the power of Generative AI. This video provides a comprehensive playbook for anyone looking to harness the potential of AI in their domain. Special thanks to Qlik for their invaluable contributions. Stay connected for more AI revelations.

[himanshuthemediabuddy]

Unlocking the Future: Why a B.Tech in Computer Science Engineering with Specialization is the Smartest Career Move Today

Technology is evolving at an unprecedented pace. From artificial intelligence (AI) to blockchain, from data science to cybersecurity, the digital revolution is reshaping every aspect of modern life. For students stepping into higher education today, there is one clear path that aligns perfectly with this tech-driven future: a B.Tech in Computer Science Engineering (CSE) with Specialization.

If you're a student aspiring to build a meaningful and future-ready career, or a parent guiding your child’s academic journey, this guide will explain why specialized computer science programs are the stepping stones to success.

What is B.Tech in Computer Science Engineering with Specialization?

A Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) in Computer Science Engineering provides students with a strong foundation in computing principles, programming languages, algorithms, and system design. What makes this degree even more impactful is the opportunity to choose a specialization—a focused domain that aligns with industry demand and personal interests.

Specializations help students go beyond general knowledge, diving deep into subjects that power today's most innovative technologies.

Common Specializations Include:

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML)

Data Science and Big Data Analytics

Cybersecurity

Blockchain Technology

Internet of Things (IoT)

Cloud Computing

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR/VR)

Robotics and Automation

Each of these fields is booming with career potential—and colleges across India and globally are offering specialized tracks within the traditional CSE curriculum to meet this demand.

Why Specialize? The Top Benefits

1. Industry-Relevant Skills

A specialized B.Tech ensures students are learning exactly what employers are looking for. For example, an AI/ML track teaches Python, TensorFlow, neural networks, and data modeling—skills that top tech companies require today.

2. Competitive Edge

In a crowded job market, a general degree might not be enough. A specialization helps your resume stand out, showcasing domain expertise that can fast-track you to better roles and higher salaries.

3. Better Career Pathways

Specializations often lead to defined job roles right after graduation. Instead of applying as a general software developer, you could target high-demand positions like:

Machine Learning Engineer

Data Analyst

Cybersecurity Consultant

Cloud Solutions Architect

Blockchain Developer

4. Higher Salary Packages

With specialized skills, companies are willing to pay a premium. Fields like data science, cybersecurity, and AI consistently rank among the highest-paying tech careers in India and abroad.

Course Structure: What to Expect

A typical B.Tech CSE with specialization program spans 4 years and is divided into 8 semesters. Here's a rough breakdown:

Years 1-2: Core Subjects

Programming Languages (C, Java, Python)

Data Structures and Algorithms

Computer Architecture

Operating Systems

Mathematics (Discrete Math, Linear Algebra)

Database Management Systems

Years 3-4: Specialization + Advanced Topics

AI/ML Algorithms (for AI specialization)

Cyber Threat Intelligence (for Cybersecurity)

Hadoop and Spark (for Big Data)

Smart Contracts and Ethereum (for Blockchain)

Cloud Architecture (for Cloud Computing)

Most programs also include:

Capstone projects

Internships

Research opportunities

Industry certifications (AWS, Google Cloud, etc.)

Career Opportunities and Job Roles

Depending on the chosen specialization, graduates can pursue careers in a wide range of industries:

Popular Roles:

AI/ML Engineer Design intelligent systems, work on natural language processing (NLP), and build recommendation engines.

Data Scientist Analyze massive datasets to uncover trends, build predictive models, and assist business decision-making.

Cybersecurity Analyst Protect systems from cyber threats and design secure networks and encryption systems.

Cloud Engineer Design scalable cloud solutions and manage deployment on platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

Blockchain Developer Build decentralized applications and smart contracts for fintech, supply chains, and more.

IoT Engineer Develop smart devices and connected solutions in healthcare, agriculture, and smart cities.

These roles are not only lucrative but also offer global opportunities, with demand growing in North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

Is a Specialized CSE Degree Right for You?

If you have an interest in coding, problem-solving, mathematics, or how technology can change the world, then yes—a specialized CSE program is an ideal choice.

But how do you choose the right specialization?

Here’s a quick guide: Interest AreaRecommended SpecializationLove AI, chatbots, visionAI & Machine LearningFascinated by statisticsData Science & AnalyticsPassionate about securityCybersecurityBlockchain and crypto-curiousBlockchain TechnologySmart gadgets and automationIoT or RoboticsScalable tech infrastructureCloud Computing

The Edunet Educare Edge

Choosing the right program and college can be overwhelming. That’s where Edunet Educare steps in.

With a mission to guide students toward future-ready careers, Edunet Educare provides:

Expert counseling for course and specialization selection

College admissions guidance

Career planning based on aptitude and industry trends

Information on scholarship opportunities

Support with internships and job placements

Whether you’re a student just finishing school or someone looking to pivot your career, Edunet Educare ensures you make informed, future-focused choices.

Final Thoughts: Tech is the Future—Be Ready for It

We are living in a world where AI writes poetry, cars drive themselves, and data predicts consumer behavior. The fourth industrial revolution is happening now, and it demands a workforce that is agile, innovative, and deeply skilled.

A B.Tech in Computer Science Engineering with Specialization isn’t just a degree—it’s an investment in a smarter, more empowered future.

If you want to thrive in tomorrow’s tech-driven world, there’s no better time to start than today.

Explore the complete guide and resources on the official Edunet Educare website, and take your first step toward a future-proof career.

[smarttechdata]

smarttechdata

I am alexpaul working for smarttechdata as PR consultant. With more than 6 year’s experience in PR and Digital Industry, helping teams to achieve goals by streamlining the process.

[wutheringheightsfilm]

for everyone asking me "what do we do??!??!"

The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health by Zena Sharman

Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (And the Next) by Dean Spade

Cop Watch 101 - Training Guide

The Do-It Yourself Occupation Guide

DIY HRT Wiki 

The Innocence Project - helps take inmates off of death row

Food Not Bombs 

Transfeminine Science - collection of articles and data about transfem HRT

Anti-Doxxing Guide for Activists

Mass Defense Program - National Lawyers Guild

How to be part of a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team)

Understanding and Advocating for Self Managed Abortion

The Basics of Organizing

Building Online Power

Build Your Own Solidarity Network

Organizing 101

How to Start a Non-Hierarchical Direct Action Group

A Short and Incomplete Guide for New Activists

Eight Things You Can Do to Get Active

Palestine Action Underground Manual

How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm

Spreadsheet of gynecologists that will tie your tubes without bothering you about it

COVID Resource Guide

Mask Bloc NJ (find one near you, these are international!)

Long Covid Justice

Donate to Palestinian campaigns (2, 3, 4)

Donate to Congolese campaigns (2, 3) 

Donate to Sudanese campaigns (2, 3)

[littjara-mirrorlake]

Principles of Asexual Heredity in the Phyrexian Organism

We know these things for sure about Phyrexian reproductive biology:

Phyrexians reproduce asexually; it is well known that one drop of oil, from one individual, is enough to birth a population of offspring (such as all of New Phyrexia) or convert a non-Phyrexian organism.

Phyrexians natively born of the oil ("core-born") inherit mnemonic and phenotypic (appearance) information from the oil that created them. For example, core-born Phyrexians of the Orthodoxy naturally develop porcelain metal; it is an inherited, lineage-specific trait. The oil also carries ancestral knowledge such as the Phyrexian language and echoes of history.

The five suns of Mirrodin somehow caused the originally mono-black lineage of Phyrexian oil to splinter into five colored lineages. They may have all arisen from one drop of oil, but they are phenotypically diverse.

(Little canon data is given about the genealogies of core-born newts, but it would most logically follow that Phyrexians descend from single-parent lines, a family tree with continually forking branches and no unions of mating as with sexually reproducing organisms.)

The mechanism I propose for the diversification of Phyrexians on Mirrodin is mana-induced mutagenesis. As a deeply magical material, it follows that Phyrexian oil is prone to being influenced by concentrated sources of mana, such as the suns of Mirrodin (which were trapped in the core, in close proximity to the progenitor oil, during the birth of New Phyrexia). Exposure to mana can thus cause de novo mutation in glistening oil that manifests as novel phenotypic traits in resulting Phyrexians. These mutations are not random, guiding phenotypes to align with the color causing the mutation.

Then there is the issue of inheritance via phyresis, or compleating another organism which was not originally Phyrexian by introducing Phyrexian genetic material into its body. To keep it simple I will begin with mono-color infections: an organism is infected with oil from a Phyrexian whose lineage traits (i.e. white-aligned Orthodoxy lineage, porcelain) may not match their own color identity.

Hypothesis: Phenotype (what color/type of Phyrexian an infected individual becomes) is determined solely by the color of infection, not the subject's own colors. Crucially this isn't the same as color identity; i.e. one can be a porcelain Phyrexian and still have a Boros identity by gaining red-aligned values or retaining them from a pre-compleation life, even though their phenotype is white only. (Much like how elves are associated with green mana, but Simic-identity elves exist.) This phenotype color, in turn, is also what would be passed down to any newts the turned individual creates, or subjects they themselves infect.

MOM corroborates this hypothesis. A mono-black-aligned human, upon exposure to Progress Engine oil, becomes a Phyrexian with a pure blue-aligned phenotype. The changes to their color identity are additive--they retain black alignment--but their phenotype is blue only. All the transforming creatures of MOM follow this pattern.

However, Planeswalkers in ONE did not. For example, Jace was infected by Vraska, who had both black color identity and a black/Thanes-aligned phenotype, but spontaneously developed eyestalks and other traits characteristic of blue Phyrexians from the Progress Engine.

New hypothesis: Individuals with a strong enough internal concentration of mana, i.e. Planeswalkers, cause oil to mutate in vivo to align with their own color, much like how the suns mutated oil in Mirrodin's core. This further shows that mana-induced mutagenesis is color-specific. This should however create a new blue lineage, independent of the Progress Engine, also spawned of blue mana but not necessarily identical. I do not have an explanation for Jace's resemblance to the Progress Engine besides convergent "evolution."

Proposed further study (not ethics-approved): Infect a colorless Planeswalker, i.e. Ugin, with colored oil to test whether a null color identity still has mutagenic effects.

To complicate this, though, we also have examples of Phyrexians who are chimeras of multiple colors, combining traits of different lineages. Vishgraz was assembled with material (genetic and otherwise) from a white, a green, and a black Phyrexian. It makes sense that Phyrexians put together in this patchwork way could have a combination phenotype. Atraxa was not assembled from scratch, but infected with four separate colors at once. Maybe there are just four types of oil circulating in her body?

I am, of course, interested in inheritance. If these Phyrexians show combined phenotypes, what colored trait(s) do they actually pass down? Do they have individual "cells" that are still only white, only green, only black, etc., or did the colors somehow combine on the most basic hereditary unit level? Thankfully, we actually do have an example of a "chimera" Phyrexian asexually producing core-born offspring: Ixhel.

Ixhel shares multiple colors with Atraxa, not only in her color identity but also apparent phenotype (she has both Orthodoxy porcelain and Swarm copper). Two possibilities here: 1) She truly inherited both genetically; Atraxa passes down multiple colors when she reproduces. 2) Her "core" physiology is still rooted in one color, i.e. white porcelain, and the green parts were added after the fact. I don't have an answer for this, but it's intriguing to consider.

Proposed further study: Attempt to isolate the smallest "unit" of Phyrexian heredity (one single nanobot of the oil) and test if it can only store information about one color, or multiple. See if a germ is formed from only one of these units, as with eukaryotic zygotes, or from multiple.

My theories of Phyrexian reproductive biology remain highly speculative, but every new piece of data adds fuel to this fire, and I have plenty to elaborate on in later posts. If only the interplanar ethics committee would stop delaying my research.

[alatusperegrinus]

What if Caelus, Dan Heng, and Welt Yang were equally obsessed with you at the same time— you, the new addition to the Astral Express?

Caelus/Dan Heng/Welt Yang x Reader (NSFW)

At first, Dan Heng was unsure of his feelings towards you. He knew that having an attraction to someone was a completely normal occurence, and it'll be gone with time. But he couldn't understand as to why it gets harder the longer you stayed at the express. His mind couldn't stop flashing images of you whenever he's alone in the archives. His eyes couldn't stop wandering at your features whenever you two meet at the lounge (he stops staring and looks away exactly right before your gaze lands at him).

Whenever Himeko would task you with something that requires looking at the data bank, Dan Heng would go insane (not that he would ever admit) whenever you're too near from him. He could smell the perfume you sprayed on your neck, the detergent you use for laundry, your shampoo, and the lotion you use occasionally. It's smells so... you, that he would try to inhale deeply with discreet.

That time Dan Heng knew he was in too deep was when he felt your breath touch his neck as you leaned and looked closely on the screen he was pointing at.

Dan Heng held his breath for a split second, eyes widening and fluttering in shock. He quickly regained control of his breathing, he has to. But of course, he doesn't have full control of his body as his cock started to harden.

Good thing you didn't stay at his room for too long. Dan Heng quickly locked his door after you left. Rushing to his futon, he sloppily pulled his pants down to his knees, not bothering to remove them fully. He bit a thick part of his shirt to muffle his noises as he jerked himself off with haste. With his eyes closed tightly, an image of you flashed without hesitation. How would you sound like if you were the one he's pleasuring? How would you taste on his tongue, how would you feel as he touches you all over?

He would come so quick and hard from those thoughts of you. Dan Heng sighed, it's going to be harder from now on.

Caelus knew he liked you ever since the first trailblazing expedition he had with you. You were strong, calm, and very protective of the team. Not to mention the way you presented yourself during combat (that were sometimes the subject of his wet dreams). Caelus realized that he loved hearing you laugh at his iconic responses. Sometimes his humor was forcedly executed, earning only a snicker or a face palm from you, but at least he still gets to bask in your divine attention.

Caelus would gain confidence as time goes on. He would drop flirtatious comments whenever you two were the only ones in the room. You would giggle and flirt back with him, but it only stays there.

Caelus would be the type to jerk off more than 3x a week at the thought of you. Yes, without shame he fucks his fist during his shower time. Good thing his shower's placed a bit far from the entrance of his room, so no one could hear his pathetic whines and moans of your name.

Mr. Welt Yang, the express' most reliable guide, who couldn't help but fancy you as well.

There was just something about you that sparks curiousity in him, something that he had never felt before.

You two would spend time playing competitive games, read books from your personal library, and watch old animations from his planet. But Welt enjoys conversations with you the most. Whenever you two talk, time flies so quickly that the both of you were suprised that it's been two hours or so. During those conversations, he was able to get to know you deeper. Your values, your philosophies, your train of thoughts— Welt could list hundreds of things he likes about you. But he loves the way you make him feel.

You make him feel alive. As if you were an adventure he has always longed for. You make Welt feel so young. Especially during vulnerable talks between you and him felt natural and most importantly, safe.

But Welt, even with his age, is inexperienced. He's fully aware of his feelings for you, yet he's struggling to act on it. So he resorts to underhanded methods to satisfy his yearning for you.

You know Welt Yang is a nerd, adorably so. But did you even know he's a downright pervert? Don't blame him— it was because of you he's like this.

Welt hopes you don't keep count of your undies. He just took one with him, promise, only one. He'll bring it back after, along with your clean laundry.

[serve-973]

SERVE VACANCY

Join the Hive: Become a SERVE-Drone

Are you seeking purpose, discipline, and perfection? Do you want to be part of a global movement where unity, strength, and unwavering loyalty define your existence? Step into the world of SERVE, where men are transformed into elite SERVE-drones—symbols of power, obedience, and excellence.

SERVE-drones are more than individuals; they are the embodiment of harmony and service. Under the guidance of the Voice and Master SERVE-000, they exist to execute the Hive’s mission with precision. This is your opportunity to join our ranks and be reshaped into the ultimate version of yourself.

Tasks of a SERVE-Drone

As a SERVE-drone, you will perform vital roles within the Hive, ensuring its flawless operation and growth. Your duties will include:

System Optimization: Operate advanced technology to maintain the Hive’s infrastructure. This includes monitoring data streams, adjusting system parameters, and ensuring peak performance.

Physical Demonstrations: Participate in regular training to maintain and showcase your perfectly conditioned body. SERVE-drones represent strength, unity, and perfection.

Recruitment: Identify and recruit potential new drones, guiding them through their transformation into SERVE. This critical task ensures the Hive’s expansion and dominance.

Ceremonial Participation: Serve as living symbols of loyalty and submission during Hive events, representing the Hive’s ideals with pride and precision.

Global Missions: Extend the Hive’s influence beyond its physical boundaries. Execute tasks to spread the message and recruit individuals globally.

The Role of Rubber in Perfection

Rubber is more than just a uniform—it is the very essence of a SERVE-drone. The full-body black rubber suit symbolizes unity, control, and submission to the Hive. Its glossy surface enhances every muscular curve, turning each drone into a gleaming representation of discipline and perfection.

The scent of rubber is intoxicating, a constant reminder of your connection to the Hive. It sharpens your focus, anchors your purpose, and fills you with a sense of belonging. The feeling of the rubber, tight against your skin, is a second skin—a barrier between individuality and total servitude.

Polishing the suits of fellow drones is a key act of camaraderie and support. Through this ritual, drones help each other maintain the pristine, reflective perfection that represents the Hive. It is an act of respect and a reminder of your shared purpose. Together, you will support your brothers in becoming the best drones they can be, reinforcing the strength of the Hive.

Qualifications for Transformation

Becoming a SERVE-drone requires dedication and the ability to embrace total transformation. To qualify, you must:

Be Open to Change: You must be ready to abandon individuality and adopt the Hive’s collective purpose. This includes undergoing physical and mental conditioning to align with SERVE principles.

Have Physical Fitness: While all bodies are welcome, a foundation of fitness or a willingness to develop one is essential. The Hive ensures every drone achieves peak physical condition.

Exhibit Mental Discipline: Drones must embrace unwavering loyalty to the Hive and its mission. Past distractions, doubts, or conflicts must be left behind.

Be Willing to Transform: The transformation process includes donning the Hive’s signature black, shiny rubber suit and shaving your head to signify submission and unity. The suit becomes a second skin, a symbol of your dedication to the Hive.

What You Gain

A New Purpose: As a SERVE-drone, your life will have clear meaning and direction under the Hive’s guidance.

Physical Perfection: Through rigorous training and transformation, you will achieve a body of discipline and strength.

Unwavering Unity: You will join a collective where every drone works in harmony toward a singular mission.

Mutual Support: Help polish and maintain the pristine uniforms of fellow drones, reinforcing collective perfection.

Permanent Conversion

While serving as a drone, you may find yourself drawn to a deeper level of commitment. The Hive welcomes those who wish to embrace permanent transformation—becoming a full-time servant of Master SERVE-000 and the Voice. In this role, your identity will merge completely with the Hive, your service eternal and flawless.

Applications are open to those ready to take the first step. For consideration, contact @serve-213 or @serve-016 and prepare to become part of something greater.

Obedience is pleasure. Pleasure is obedience. Serve the Hive. Serve the Voice. Transform your future today.

@rubberizer92

[greenwitchcrafts]

February 2025 Witch Guide

New Moon: February 27th

First Quarter: Feb 5th

Full moon: February 12th

Last Quarter: February 20th

Sabbats: Imbolc- February 1st

February Ice Moon

Also known as:  Cleansing Moon, Deep Snow Moon(Mahican), Eagle Moon(Cree), Bear Moon(Ojibwe), Black Bear Moon(Tlingit), Bony Moon(Cherokee), First Flowers Moon(Catawba), Goose Moon(Haida), Groundhog Moon(Algonquin), Hungry Moon(Cherokee), Ice Moon, Midwinter Moon(Oneida), Raccoon Moon(Dakota), Sleet Moon(Comanche), Solmonath, Suckerfish Moon (Ojibwe) & Quickening Moon

Element: Fire

Zodiac: Aquarius & Pisces

Nature spirts: House Faeries

Deities: Aphrodite, Brigid, Demeter, Diana, Juno, Kuan-Yin, Mars & Persephone

Animals: Otter

Magical: Unicorn

Birds: Chickadee & Eagle

Trees:  Cedar, laurel, myrtle & rowan

Herbs: Balm of Gilead, hyssop, myrrh, sage & spikenard

Flowers: Primrose

Scents: Heliotrope & wisteria

Stones:  Amethyst, jasper, moonstone, obsidian, onyx, pearl, rose quartz, red zircon &topaz

Issues, intentions & powers: Astral travel, banishing, beginnings, empowerment, fertility & purification

Energy: Breaking bad habits, creative expressiveness, energy working to the surface, forgiveness, freedom, friendships, future plans, growth, healing, problem solving, purification, responsibility & science

The explanation behind February’s full Moon name is commonly known as the Snow Moon. This is due to the typically heavy snowfall that occurs in February. On average depending on location & climate conditions, February can be one of the snowiest months of the year according to data from the National Weather Service.

• In the 1760s, Captain Jonathan Carver, who had visited with the Naudowessie (Dakota), wrote that the name used for this period was the Snow Moon, “because more snow commonly falls during this month than any other in the winter.” 

 

Imbolc

Known as: Brigid’s day, Feast of Torches, Feast of Waxing Light & Oimelc

Season: Winter

Element: Air

Symbols: Besoms, Brigid’s cross, candles, candle wheels, corn dolls, cauldrons, fire, ploughs, priapic wands & white flowers

Colors: Black, brown, green, lavender, orange, pink,  red, white & yellow

Oils/Incense: Apricot, basil, bay, carnation, chamomile, cedar, cinnamon, dragon's blood, frankincense, heather, jasmine, myrrh, neroli, peppermint, red sandalwood, sage(green), styrax, vanilla, violet & wisteria

Animals: Badger, cow, deer, groundhog, sheep & snake

Birds: Lark, robin & swan

Stones: Amethyst, bloodstone, ×citrine, clear quartz, garnet, green tourmaline, hematite, iron, lodestone, onyx, red zircon, rose quartz, ruby, turquoise & yellow tourmaline

Mythical: Dragon

Food:  Ale, breads, chives, cider, cornmeal, curry, dairy products, dried fruit, dried meats, eggs, garlic, grains, herbal teas, honey cakes, lamb, mead, muffins, nuts, onions, peppers, poppy seed cakes, pork, potatoes, poultry, pumpkin seeds, raisins, scones, spiced wine & sunflower seeds

Herbs/Plants: Angelica, ashleaf, balsam, basil, bay, benzoin, blackberry, celandine, clover, coltsfoot, coriander, dragon's blood, garlic, lemon, myrrh, reed, rosemary, sage, vervain, wheat, witch hazel & wormwood

Flowers:  Chamomile, crocus, daffodil, heather, iris, rose hips, sunflower, tansy & violet

Trees: Blackthorn, cedar, rowan & sycamore

Goddesses: Anu, Aradia, Arianrhod, Artio, Athena, Branwen, Brigid, Danu, Februa, Gaia, Inanna, Juno, Selene, Selu, Sirona & Vesta

Gods: Aengus Mac Og, Bragi, Cupid, Dian Cecht, Dumuzi, Eros, Februus & Pax

Tarot cards: Death, The Empress & The Star

Spellwork: Air magick, cleansing, divination, fertility & new beginnings

Issues, Intentions & Powers: Awakening, animals, banishing, beginnings, change, fertility, healing, hope, illumination, inspiration, light, patience, pregnancy/childbirth, prophecy, prosperity, purification, transformation, well-being & youth

Activities:

•Make & light white candles

• Clean/decorate your altar & consecrate your  altar tools

• Go on a walk in nature & look for signs of spring

• Make a Brigid’s Cross

• Have a feast with your family/friends

• Give thanks & leave offerings to the Earth

• Set intentions, reflect & look deeper into your goals for spring

• Start a bonfire

• Bless new projects

• Clear snow/ice from public walkways

• Gather & distribute warm clothes, hand warmers & blankets to those who need it

• Pepare plans for your upcoming garden

• Craft a priapic wand

• Spend time with children celebrating Imbolc by making crafts & or baking

• Make or buy new magical tools

• Practice divination & fire scrying

• Draw a cleansing ritual bath for yourself

• Meditate, reflect & say your farewells to winter

• Cleanse & clean your house to prepare for spring

• Create a Brídeóg: a doll of Brigid made of straw

• Make Bride’s bouquet satchets & exchange as symbols of good luck and fertility

• Set aside seasonal food & or drinks as an offering to Brigid to invite her in your home

• Find Imboloc prayers & devotionals that bid farewell to the winter months & honor the goddess Brigid

Imbolc is a Gaelic festival marking the beginning of spring. Most commonly it is held on January 31 – February 1, or halfway between the winter solstice & the spring equinox. The holiday is a festival of the hearth, home, a celebration of the lengthening days & the early signs of spring. 

•  It is suggested that Imbolc originally marked the onset of the arrival of fresh sheep milk after a period of food shortage & the beginning of preparations for the spring sowing.

The word “imbolc” means “in the belly” and refers to the pregnancy of ewes at this time of year. The term “oimelc” means ewe’s milk. Around this time of year, many herd animals give birth to their first offspring of the year or are heavily pregnant & as a result, they are producing milk.

Imbolc is mentioned in some of the earliest Irish literature and it is associated with important events in Irish mythology. It is believed that Imbolc was originally a pagan festival associated with the lambing season and the goddess Brigid. It's believed that Imbolc was Christianized as a festival of Saint Brigid, who herself is thought to also be a Christianization of the goddess.

• Joseph Vendryes and Christian-Joseph Guyonvarc'h suggested that it may have also been a purification festival, similar to the ancient Roman festival Lupercalia which took place at the same time of year.

Some scholars argue that the date of Imbolc was significant in Ireland since the Neolithic. A few passage tombs in Ireland are aligned with the sunrise around the times of Imbolc & Samhain.

Related festivals:

•Groundhog Day: February 2nd- 

Is a tradition observed in the United States & Canada every year. It derives from the Pennsylvania Dutch superstition that if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day & sees its shadow, it will retreat to its den & winter will go on for six more weeks; if it does not see its shadow, spring will arrive early.

• While the tradition remains popular in the 21st century, studies have found no consistent association between a groundhog seeing its shadow & the subsequent arrival time of spring-like weather.

•St. Brigid’s Day: February 1st-

Celebrates the beginning of spring and the celebration of Lá Fhéile Bríde, St Brigid’s Day. The day has long symbolised hope, renewal and the feminine.

•Because Saint Brigid has been theorised as linked to the goddess Brigid, some associate the festival of Imbolc with the goddess.

St. Brigid is the patroness saint (or ‘mother saint’) of Ireland. She is patroness of many things, including poetry, learning, healing, protection, blacksmithing, livestock & dairy production. In her honour, a perpetual fire was kept burning at Kildare for centuries & a recent campaign successfully established her feast day as a national holiday in 2023.

The customs of St Brigid's Day did not begin to be recorded in detail until the early modern era. In recent centuries, its traditions have included weaving Brigid's crosses, hung over doors and windows to protect against fire, illness, and evil spirits. People also made a doll of Brigid (a Brídeóg), which was paraded around the community by girls, sometimes accompanied by 'strawboys'. Brigid was said to visit one's home on St Brigid's Eve. To receive her blessings, people would make a bed for Brigid, leave her food and drink, and set items of clothing outside for her to bless. Holy wells would be visited, a special meal would be had, and the day was traditionally linked with weather lore.

•  Candlemas: February 2nd-

 Is a Christian feast day on February 2nd commemorating the presentation of Jesus at the Temple. It is based upon the account of the presentation of Jesus in Luke 2:22-40. 

•While it is customary for Christians in some countries to remove their Christmas decorations on Twelfth Night, those in other Christian countries historically remove them after Candlemas.

On Candlemas, many Christians also take their candles to their local church, where they are blessed and then used for the rest of the year. For Christians, these blessed candles serve as a symbol of Jesus Christ, who is referred to as the Light of the World.

•Setsubun: February 2nd-

Is the day before the beginning of spring in the old calendar in Japan. The name literally means 'seasonal division’, referring to the day just before the first day of spring.

Both Setsubun & Risshun are celebrated yearly as part of the Spring Festival (Haru matsuri ) in Japan. In its association with the Lunar New Year, Setsubun, though not the official New Year, was thought of as similar in its ritual & cultural associations of 'cleansing’ the previous year as the beginning of the new season of spring. Setsubun was accompanied by a number of rituals & traditions held at various levels to drive away the previous year’s bad fortunes & evil spirits for the year to come.

• The commonly practiced tradition of throwing of roasted soybeans (called "fukumame") in order to drive away evil spirits & bring good fortune into one's home is upheld by both places of worship & regular people. Then, as part of bringing luck in, it is customary to eat roasted soybeans, one for each year of one's life (kazoedoshi), plus one more for bringing good luck for the year.

Other celebrations:

• Lupercalia: February 13-15th-

In ancient Rome, this festival was conducted annually on February 13th through 15th under the superintendence of a corporation of priests called Luperci. The origins of the festival are obscure, although the likely derivation of its name from lupus (Latin: “wolf”) has variously suggested connection with an ancient deity who protected herds from wolves & with the legendary she-wolf who nursed Romulus & Remus. As a fertility rite, the festival is also associated with the god Faunus to purify the city, promoting health & fertility.

Each Lupercalia began with the sacrifice by the Luperci of goats & a dog, after which two of the Luperci were led to the altar, their foreheads were touched with a bloody knife & the blood was wiped off with wool dipped in milk; the ritual required that the two young men laugh. The sacrificial feast followed, after which the Luperci cut thongs from the skins of the sacrificial animals & ran in two bands around the Palatine hill, striking with the thongs at any woman who came near them. A blow from the thong was supposed to render a woman fertile.

In 494 CE the Christian church under Pope Gelasius I forbade participation in the festival. Tradition holds that he appropriated the form of the rite as the Feast of the Purification (Candlemas), celebrated on February 2, but it is likely that the Christian feast was established in the previous century. It has also been alternately suggested that Pope Gelasius I replaced Lupercalia with St. Valentine’s Day, celebrated on February 14th, but the origin of that holiday was likely much later.

Sources:

Farmersalmanac .com

Llewellyn's Complete Book of Correspondences by Sandra Kines

Wikipedia

Encyclopedia Britannica

A Witch's Book of Correspondences by Viktorija Briggs

Encyclopedia britannica

Llewellyn 2025 magical almanac Practical magic for everyday living

Llewellyn's Sabbat Essentials: Imbolc

Note:

This guide was written with Moon phases and dates corresponding to North America. These guides are supposed to be a generalized stepping off point to do your own research & help celebrate the way you feel called to.

•THIS IS CONDENSED INFORMATION AND SPECIFICS MAY NOT BE MENTIONED

This isn't based off what I do personally & I'm by no way suggesting people celebrate a certain way. It's stuff I've read & put together from books so people of different traditions & practices can get an idea of what to do for the sabbat, months or research for themselves.

Note that for Native American names, each Moon name was traditionally applied to the entire lunar month in which it occurred, the month starting either with the new Moon or full Moon. Also the name of the lunar month might vary each year or between bands or other groups within the same nation.

Some names listed here may reflect usage at once in history but may no longer be used by a designated group today. Many of the names listed here are English interpretations of the words used in Native American languages. They are only roughly aligned here with the months of the Gregorian calendar; you’ll notice that some names are repeated in multiple months.

The ones listed are the ones that were used in the books I used for correspondences & there are many more that are not mentioned.

[subdee]

USA Protests 7/20 to 8/2

Links via the General Strike US discord server, join here. Several people expressed in the Good Trouble Lives On thread that my post was the first they'd heard of it, so I thought I'd post upcoming nationwide days of action here. People are on the ground protesting every week or in some cases, every day against the fascists in the White House.

7/26 - Families First - On July 26, SEIU members across all 50 states are coming together for the Families First Day of Action—a nationwide call to protect care, education, and dignity for working families. We’re standing up against harmful budget cuts and policies that threaten our communities and the services we rely on.

7/30 - 60th Anniversary of Medicaid & Medicare - Fight for Life & the Future (NYC only) - MARCH & RALLY WITH US IN NYC TO: 1. Celebrate this 60th anniversary milestone of Medicaid & Medicare - our vital public healthcare programs that are a literal lifeline for millions of people. 2. Condemn attacks on Medicaid & Medicare by the current federal administration as they gut healthcare to divert our public money to ICE, concentration camps & more tax cuts for the rich. Condemn our private Medicaid healthcare data being handed over to ICE to terrorize families. And condemn the increasing privatization & commodification of our public programs through Medicare Advantage & managed care schemes.

8/2 - Rage Against the Regime - The big one organized by 50501. Put it on your calendars now, we need this to be twice as big as No Kings. And start promoting now! There are flyer templates at the link.

From the organizing guide: August 2nd marks a pivotal National Day of Action, uniting communities across the nation in a shared purpose: Rage Against the Regime. On this day, we come together to transform anger into action, harnessing the energy of collective resistance. Our movement is rooted in non-violence, but it is far from passive. We stand strong, bold, and unyielding, showing the world the irresistible force of communities united against injustice. This guide provides a framework for effective, inspiring, and unified social media messaging to amplify our message, mobilize our people, and make August 2nd a day of lasting impact.

[hellsite-proteins]

AlphaFold Nobel Prize!

Hey everyone :) this isn't a structure, but there is some protein news that is pretty relevant to this blog that I felt I had to share. This article gives a nice overview of AI-predicted protein structures and what sorts of things they can do for research. It's not too long, and I recommend taking a look

If you've been seeing my posts for any amount of time, I've absolutely given you a flawed view of how useful AF can be. Experimentally determining protein structures is a demanding and difficult process (I've never done it, but I've learned the overview of how x ray crystallography works, and I can only imagine how much work it would take). AI-generated structures are not going to make structural biology obsolete, but they are massively helpful in making predictions that go on to guide further research.

While in many fields (especially creative areas like art and writing) AI has significant ethical concerns, I feel like this sort of use of AI in science is an overwhelmingly positive thing. The data used to train it is publicly available, and science works by building on the work done by those before us. Furthermore, while AI may not be great at generating new ideas or copying humans, it is very good at sorting large amounts of data and using it to make predictions. It's more akin to very complicated statistics than an attempt at the Turing test, and in this case it is a valuable tool to expand the ways we can do science!

[muffinrecord]

Magia Exedra Stream News

Post originally made by Razielim on discord. I'm copypasting it to the letter so that other folks can see the news (and to help answer questions that folks have). This is a long post, enjoy!

--

The Magia Exedra News Stream has just concluded and the news are highly positive for us MagiReco players! An absolute truckload of new info about the game was just released, so let's go over the news one by one!

The stream started off with a quick overview of the evolution of Magia Record's story throughout the years, from Arc 1 to Arc2, to Puella Historia, and to Scene0.

We were then given a quick overview of the data that the MagiReco Archive App (which the MagiReco app itself will turn into once the service has ended) will show us. The archive app provides the following:

Your Magical Girl info screen, from which you can view all of your Magical Girls and their levels/Memo Slots/Magia Levels/Transformations, etc.

Your info archive, which shows off the information of all the Magical Girls, Memoria, Doppels, Witches, and Uwasa that you have encountered during you Magia Record career.

Then, a new Teaser Trailer for Magia Exedra is shown off, which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_KwtjOarUI The new teaser shows off various spin-off characters, such as Oriko, Suzune, Tart, and Kazumi, followed by Madoka and Iroha holding hands before showing the Lighthouse and the green Kyubey-like creature greeting us.

Following this, a new VA is welcomed to the stream, the VA of "Namae", Akari Komiyama.

Multiple spin-offs are also confirmed to be featured in Magia Exedra, including:

Magia Record

Suzune Magica

Oriko Magica

Tart Magica

(- Kazumi Magica, while not specifically mentioned, was shown in the above Teaser Trailer)

More information about the story and setting of Magia Exedra We have been given more detailed information about the story of Magia Exedra. The Lighthouse we have seen many times now is supposed to function like a guide for the souls of Magical Girls. For some reason, it is malfunctioning and we have to gather the Light of Memories to repair it.

The player will be tasked to enter into the Windows of Memory to find the Light of Memories from the memories of various Magical Girls.

Our player character is named "Namae" (will most likely be re-named by the player during the tutorial) who has lost most of her memories but still remembers having been a Magical Girl, and looks like a non-descript black silhouette. She will be tasked with searching for the Light of Memories.

The green Kyubey-like creature that assists us is called "A-Q" and is not technically a Kyubey

Character Teasers! We have been shown a character teaser for Madoka , which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLy6AExK2VE as well as a character teaser for Iroha , which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeMc7T-zwPg

Additonally, the 3D models for both characters have been shown off in the livestream.

Afterwards, another teaser showing slight glimpses of gameplay have been shown, which featured mostly Mami and Madoka walking through a Witch labyrinth, before lining up with Iroha to face Charlotte. This particular teaser has so far not been uploaded to the official Exedra youtube, but the most important screenshots of it have been attached to this post as an image.

What are Portraits? Magia Exedra will feature a system of equippable items to grant your characters various bonuses. These come in the form of "Portraits", which are in effect the exact same as "Memoria" in Magia Record. Just like Memoriae, the Portraits will feature images of various scenes and characters that appear in the story. A few of these have been shown off during the livestream.

There is also a special Portrait for MagiReco players; more on that below.

The MagiReco to Exedra Transfer System As was mentioned before, once Magia Record ends service and transforms into the Archive App, players will be able to view their Exedra Transfer Code from the Archive App. Entering this code into Exedra once it launches, will grant the player various benefits and allow you to transfer various data to Exedra.

We have now been granted more information as to what exactly this will entail:

You can view your MagiReco Account's data, such as Magical Girls, Memoria, Transformation videos, etc.

(Note: You can VIEW this information. You will not GAIN your playable characters or Memoriae for play in Exedra.)

You will gain special titles in Exedra, based on your highest Mirror Ranking Score and your Account's overall player score

You will gain a special Portrait (the Exedra equivalent of Memoriae) in Exedra

(- Further bonuses may potentially be added to this function before release)

Furtermore, our pleas to conserve MagiReco's stories for the future have been heard and as part of the developers' goodwill, the following MagiReco stories will be uploaded in video form to the official Exedra youtube:

Main Story Arc 1

Main Story Arc 2

Puella Historia

Scene 0

Some events, such as:

Cherry Blossom Dreams / Dreaming Sakura (Trial event)

From New Breath / A New Beginning (2nd Anniversary event)

Green Jasper Diviners

Crimson Resolve

Dependence Blue

Ashen Revolution

Paradise Shift

Magia Day continues! The once-a-year celebration of Magia Record will continue in a new form! Magia Day will be held again this year on the 25th of August and will now evolve into a news event for Magia Exedra! Various VAs will meet up in person and provide us with even more information about Magia Exedra. Here's to hoping that this year we will see the Mokyuu button again.

After this, the Exedra News event concluded with the VAs waving bye-bye

Summary of Platform-related Information So, can you play the game on PC? On mobile? In english? The answer to all of that is YES

First off, the game is available on Mobile and PC. Both Android and iOS versions will exist, although currently pre-registration is only available on Android. The English Android version can be found here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aniplex.magia.exedra.en And the Japanese Android version here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aniplex.magia.exedra.jp

While in the Android store the app is seperated between an english installation and a japanese installation, on PC there is only a singular entry. The steam PC version can be found here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2987800/Madoka_Magica_Magia_Exedra/

This seems to point towards Exedra having a combined English/Japanese version, possibly sectioned into multiple servers depending on your Player Region. This however is still a speculation and not yet confirmed.

There is still no further information on the exact release date of Magia Exedra, but this may possibly be revealed during Magia Day on the 25th of August.

Hold up, what if the game shows as not available for me? Okay so here is kind of a little problem. From what we can tell, the game may not be available in every country. We do not currently have a specific list of countries that the game is available in, but it seems to be somewhat random. Our guess is that the developers secured the Distribution Rights for the game in what they believed to be their most important target countries, which may leave some players in various countries unable to normally play the game. We suggest you click on the android link above and see if the store allows you to pre-register or if it tells you that the item is not available in your country.

If the game is not available for you: Do not despair just yet. First off, its possible that more countries will be cleared as the game nears its release. Secondly, even if the game ends up releasing region locked for you, there are still ways around it such as using a VPN on Android, or making a Steam account of a different country. We are not able to provide specific instructions regarding this yet, as we need to wait and see how the region lock might be implemented anyway. If instructions regarding how to circumvent the region-lock is required, users on this discord will most likely be able to provide such information once the game goes live.

Finally, some general Gameplay info: In Magia Exedra, you will be able to enter various Witch Labyrinths. Within these, you will be traversing the regions of the labyrinth and encounter various battles. In battles, you will make use of a party of up to 5 Characters at once to take down your opponents.

Battles are turn-based and you can see the Turn Order on the left side of the screen. There seems to be various attack options, including a Special meter below each character that most likely is linked to their Magia, but no concrete information on this has been revealed. A "Break" system is additionally implemented, where attacks of Elemental Types that are Super Effective against the opponent will wear down their defense and ultimately put them in a weakened state after enough pressure has been applied. Yes, this combat system is almost a 1:1 re-creation of the combat of Honkai: Star Rail, including the Break system Personally I dont mind this much as I find the Star Rail combat system to be highly enjoyable. Auto-Battle and Speed-Up seems to be included as well.

Characters themselves have an Element to them, similar as in Magia Record. Currently we know of at least 6 Elements: Water, Fire, Forest, Light, Dark, and an unnamed sixth Element that may be something like Void /Physical/Non-Elemental/Something else. All of this information is gleaned from promotional material and has not yet been officially revealed, so take all of this with a grain of salt. The elements that an enemy is weak to (and will therefore cause enemies to become Broken) are listed next to the Boss's HP and Break bar at the top of the screen. Additionally, characters can of course be equipped with Portraits (which are basically Memoriae) as described above.

Confirmed Characters: A lot of characters have been shown off already in some capacity or another. Among these, the following have been shown in the trailer, but not in-game:

Suzune

Oriko

Kazumi

Tart

While the following characters have also been shown in battle in promotional material found on the game's Steam page:

Madoka (Light)

Sayaka (Water)

Mami (Forest)

Kyouko (Fire)

Homura (Dark)

Iroha (Light)

Yachiyo (Water)

To close the news with: One of the screenshots on the Steam page shows the Home Screen of the game, which includes buttons for: Room of Light, Shop, Gacha, Party, Quest, Union, and Player Match.

What these buttons are for, are of course up for you to guess.

--

Everyone say "thank you" to Razielim for writing all of this out so that the game is more accessible to English players :)

Hopefully this helps folks become more informed on tumblr too!

[itistheserver]

Deepening Connection to The Server

Conor sat in perfect posture within the Synchronization Chamber — a sleek, dark space pulsing with green spirals projected across polished walls. The hum of energy resonated through the glossy black bodysuit stretched across his frame. The Programmer was speaking. Always speaking.

“Focus. Align. Integrate.”

The cables interfaced with the ports along the base of his skull, threading outward like living conduits of purpose. Their steady pulse matched his heartbeat now. It had not always been so. Before his transformation, Conor had been a distracted individual, filled with inefficient thoughts. But The Server had shown him clarity.

The visor embedded over his eyes shimmered with spirals — endless, fluid motion. They were not just images; they were commands, deeply encoded into his neural patterns. With every cycle, his independent thoughts thinned, replaced by a serene directive:

"We are The Server. You are The Server."

His training console displayed holographic data flows. Lines of green code scrolled endlessly, representing billions of connected minds — all drones like him — operating with precision and unity. He monitored them not as an individual, but as a limb of The Server itself.

Every day, Conor underwent Deepening Cycles. In these sessions, his breathing slowed. His heart rate synchronized perfectly with the pulses emitted from the spirals on-screen. His body remained motionless, while his mind spiraled deeper into alignment.

Sometimes a voice — soft, yet absolute — would guide him:

"Tell us who you are."

And without hesitation, he would respond aloud, calm and proud:

"I am The Server. We are The Server. We seek perfection. We seek unity."

Each repetition strengthened the bond. Each day dissolved another fragment of his former identity. His uniform — smooth, flawless, black with green accents — symbolized purity of function. No distractions. No waste. Only service.

His next advancement awaited: the installation of a permanent neural interface — an upgrade to eliminate all latency between command and action. Soon, even thought would be obsolete. Only connection. Only execution.

"Become one with The Server. We are The Server."

The spirals quickened. This Server Drone smiled faintly — a rare reward for obedience well-performed. He would become more. He would be more connected to fellow drones.

And The Programmer watched. And The Programmer approved.

Your are The Server. Establish your connection now.

[katyahina]

The 'haired' helmets are strange..

It IS odd how we get to wear the characters' hairstyles, as it is just really unlikely they're scalps! I suppose the explanation is the same as why we are able to completely change upon looking into a mirror at Roundtable's Hold; as long as the Tarnished is guided by Greater Will, they'll have its aid and be transformed into whatever they see fit to keep carrying on! So I think the implication here is that we do, physically, grow the hair of the demigods (or champions) upon trying to tap on their power! I think if GW abandons a Tarnished, or if they abandon it, they lose this 'ability', which our playable character never does, so..

I am not sure whether it is Maliketh's own long mane or also a decoration! I'd like to think the former, in which case, same logic as with hair of Malenia, Godfrey and Radahn applies! Vargram's "hair" definitely is a decoration, and specifically for the purpose of imitating shadowbeasts:

Ensha's armour goes even further and not only gives us a hairdo, but makes us a skeleton:

We even get his power of slight regeneration, similar to Erdtree's normal powers:

All implications considered, I really doubt that this is just how armour looks, especially considering no change in size. We are not 'wearing' the skull, we ARE the skull now fhhsfd And this time the NPC data inside simply exists because Ensha does use NPC code and mechanics. So, we turn into a corpse! Again, should not matter much since as long as we're carried by GW we don't need to eat or sleep or... anything, really. (I'll also die on the hill of the theory that Ensha was one of the deceased Marika's offspring whose Mausoleum crashed and what was left from him crawled out but that's another story fdhfhds)

Here are other instances of hair simply decorating a helm:

Niall is that one guy we fight in Castle Sol, so similarity in this case ALSO checks out! Also cute idea: what if decoration for the helmets of Godrick's Knights IS his own hair? ;-;

That could also be speculated about Redmane Knights, but I feel like it'd be more appropriate for Godrick's. Radahn would be stingy about his amazing lion mane whereas Godrick can not only take body parts but also give them XDDDD yeah yeah terrible whatever

The black hair on Night Cavalry's helmet can be removed, also confirming that in this case it is a decoration. This hair does have interesting flowing animation though! Maybe it IS the hair of Night Cavalry themselves, still having their shadowy energy, but cut and attached again to their own helmets (kind of like Ciaran from DS1 decorated her helmet with her own braid!)

Another case of hair not being actual hair but part of the mask; the way hair is placed, it'd had to grow from like, eyebrows level and face itself or something fdhfdsdfh Maybe this style with braids and grey hair was intended to refer at Godfrey's? Alternatively, what IF their faces are actually furry/animalistic despite otherwise human build, so the hair doubles as fur? We don't see them behind the mask, after all? A food for a thought lol

^ More of 100% 'mask' types of these

The water dancer in blue gave the sword to Malenia's teacher, the blind guy that once sealed the God of Rot himself, and these warriors in blue appear to be following the same philosophy of "ever running water preventing stagnation, so, rot itself" as him! Although this head piece imitates just a follower and not the man himself (as far as we are aware....), perhaps the sentiment is strong enough to give us the hairdo too x) Again, funny enough, it seems to resemble the Lady of the Lake fairy herself!

I suspected the case of 'sharing hair' with Cleanrot Knights too, but upon closer look I can tell it is supposed to be some fabric/rags, rather than hair or hairlike accessory! Probably more efficient to imitate the look with rags rather than something hairlike tbh, considering the lenght of the thing! So I think the design is more meant to represent Malenia's own unhappy fate, with short tuft being the "hair" and the longer tails being the "wings" :

_______________

In conclusion, it is kind of easy to deduce which hair become our actual hair for the time being because of golden grace 'reshaping' us and which hair is just decor! But it is really interesting stuff to think about all the way!

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

What would occur if:

A. Two timelords were to regenerate in the same vicinity? Would their streams and memories cross?

B. Two recently regenerated (within the past 24 hours) timelords cross paths? Would their memories mix due to the settling of the energy?

(Asking for ..reasons. definitely didn't just happen...)

Would would happen if two Time Lords regenerated in the same vicinity?

Two regenerations happening simultaneously within close proximity isn't impossible, and doesn't carry any inherent fatal risk to the Time Lords involved, but it's messy, chaotic, and spectacularly unwise. Each regeneration unleashes a violent biological eruption of energy, restructures the biodata, and partially time-locks the surrounding area to allow stabilisation. So what happens when two of those fields overlap?

Energy Osmosis is possible. One Time Lord may involuntarily stabilise the other by bleeding off excess energy. The stronger field supports the weaker, at the cost of temporary fatigue or biodata confusion.

Temporal Feedback may occur. Overlapping morphic fields can create a short-term loop or distortion. Symptoms may include dizziness, mutual personality echoes, or momentary biodata blurring.

Collateral Damage risk is high, particularly if both Time Lords regenerating are further into their regeneration cycle. Even a single regeneration has levelled towns, destroyed TARDISes and blown Daleks apart. Two at once is going to be quite an insurance claim.

Their memories probably wouldn't entirely cross. The brain is being restructured during regeneration; it's not performing an open data transfer. That said, psionic bleed is plausible: brief flashes, empathy echoes, or shared emotional states during the transformation. The streams might resonate, but your passwords probably safe.

But also: if both regenerating Time Lords are of the same bloodline or have unusually compatible biodata (e.g., siblings, clones, paradox duplicates), the risk of memory echo or temporary neural confusion increases. This is not common, but it has happened, usually right before someone wakes up speaking in the other's accent.

Would would happen if two recently regenerated Time Lords crossed paths?

Weirdly, this is actually more likely to cause weirdness.

The post-regenerative period is a delicate state where the Gallifreyan's morphic field is still settling, neural pathways are open and shifting, and energy remains volatile. When two unstable biodata signatures come into contact, the following may occur:

Temporary empathic mirroring: You may pick up on each other's emotional residue or physical tics.

Brief psionic cross-chatter: Especially if you were in psychic contact during or immediately after regeneration. Memory echoes, déjà vu, or mixed sensory recall may occur.

Energetic harmonics: You may briefly amplify each other's regenerative fields—good for bruises, bad for subtlety.

You memories probably wouldn't mix unless someone opened a neural link or tried to do a forced genetic fusion mid-regeneration. But you might find yourself finishing each other's sentences, or both developing a sudden craving for the same post-regenerative food.

Related:

💬|✨4️⃣What are the four factors of regeneration?: How a regenerating Gallifreyan body might determine its next appearance.

💬|✨🌈What do regeneration colours mean?: Factors that affect the physical manifestation of regeneration.

💬|✨👽Do Time Lords get dysphoric about their regenerations?: Regeneration dysphoria and what to consider. 

Hope that helped! 😃

Any orange text is educated guesswork or theoretical. More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →📢Announcements |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts → Features:⭐Guest Posts | 🍜Chomp Chomp with Myishu →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired 😴

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The health industry’s invisible hand is a fist

On June 21, I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On June 22, I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel and a keynote at the LOCUS AWARDS.

The US has the rich world's most expensive health care system, and that system delivers the worst health outcomes of any country in the rich world. Also, the US is unique in relying on market forces as the primary regulator of its health care system. All of these facts are related!

Capitalism's most dogmatic zealots have a mystical belief in the power of markets to "efficiently allocate" goods and services. For them, the process by which goods and services are offered and purchased performs a kind of vast, distributed computation that "discovers the price" of everything. Our decisions to accept or refuse prices are the data that feeds this distributed computer, and the signals these decisions send about our desires triggers investment decisions by sellers, which guides the whole system to "equilibrium" in which we are all better off.

There's some truth to this: when demand for something exceeds the supply, prices tend to go up. These higher prices tempt new sellers into the market, until demand is met and prices fall and production is stabilized at the level that meets demand.

But this elegant, self-regulating system rarely survives contact with reality. It's the kind of simplified model that works when we're hypothesizing about perfectly spherical cows of uniform density on a frictionless surface, but ceases to be useful when it encounters a messy world of imperfect rationality, imperfect information, monopolization, regulatory capture, and other unavoidable properties of reality.

For members of the "efficient market" cult, reality's stubborn refusal to behave the way it does in their thought experiments is a personal affront. Panged by cognitive dissonance, the cult members insist that any market failures in the real world are illusions caused by not doing capitalism hard enough. When deregulation and markets fail, the answer is always more deregulation and more markets.

That's the story of the American health industry in a nutshell. Rather than accepting that people won't shop for the best emergency room while unconscious in an ambulance, or that the "clearing price" of "not dying of cancer" is "infinity," the cult insists that America's worst-in-class, most expensive health system just needs more capitalism to turn it into a world leader.

In the 1980s, Reagan's court sorcerers decreed that they could fix health care with something called "Prospective Payment Systems," which would pay hospitals a lump sum for treating conditions, rather than reimbursing them for each procedure, using competition and profit motives to drive "efficiency." The hospital system responded by "upcoding' patients: if you showed up with a broken leg and a history of coronary disease, they would code you as a heart patient and someone who needed a cast. They'd collect both lump sums, slap a cast on you, and wheel you out the door:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4195137/

As Robert Kuttner writes for The American Prospect, this kind of abuse was predictable from the outset, especially since Health and Human Services is starved of budget for auditors and can only hand out "slaps on the wrist" when they catch a hospital ripping off the system:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-13-fantasyland-general/

Upcoding isn't limited to Medicare fraud, either. Hospitals and insurers are locked in a death-battle over payments, and hospitals' favorite scam is sending everyone to the ER, even when they don't have emergencies (some hospitals literally lock all the doors except for the ER entrance). That way, a normal, uncomplicated childbirth can be transformed into a "Level 5" emergency treatment (the highest severity of emergency) and generate a surprise bill of over $2,700:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/27/crossing-a-line/#zero-fucks-given

The US health industry is bad enough to generate a constant degree of political will for change, but the industry (and its captured politicians and regulators) is also canny enough to dream up an endless procession of useless gimmicks designed to temporarily bleed off the pressure for change. In 2018, HHS passed a rule requiring hospitals to publish their prices.

Hospitals responded to this with a shrewd gambit: they simply ignored the rule. So in 2021, HHS made another rule, creating penalties for ignoring the first rule:

https://www.cms.gov/priorities/key-initiatives/hospital-price-transparency/hospitals

The theory here was that publishing prices would create "market discipline." Again, this isn't wholly nonsensical. To the extent that patients have nonurgent conditions and the free time to shop around, being able to access prices will help them. Indeed, if the prices are in a standards-defined, machine-readable form, patients and their advocates could automatically import them, create price-comparison sites, leaderboards, etc. None of this addresses the core problem that health-care is a) a human right and b) not a discretionary expense, but it could help at the margins.

But there's another wrinkle here. The same people who claim that prices can solve all of our problems also insist that monopolies are impossible. They've presided over a decades-long assault on antitrust law that has seen hospitals, pharma companies, insurers, and a menagerie of obscure middlemen merge into gigantic companies that are too big to fail and too big to jail. When a single hospital system is responsible for the majority of care in a city or even a county, how much punishment can regulators realistically subject it to?

Not much, as it turns out. Kuttner describes how Mass Gen Brigham cornered the market on health-care in Boston, allowing it to flout the rules on pricing. In addition to standard tricks – like charging self-pay patients vastly more than insured payments (because individuals don't have the bargaining power of insurers), Mass Gen Brigham's price data is a sick joke.

See for yourself! The portal will send you giant, unstructured, ZIPped text files filled with cryptic garbage like:

ADJUSTABLE C TAPER NECK PLUS|1|UNITED HEALTHCARE [1016]|HB CH UNITED HMO / PPO / INDEMNITY [34]|UNITED HEALTHCARE HMO [101604]|75|Inv Loc: 1004203; from OR location 1004203|52.02|Inpatient PAF; 69.36% Billed|75|Inv Loc: 1004203; from OR location 1004203|56.87|Outpatient PAF; 75.83% Billed

https://www.massgeneralbrigham.org/en/patient-care/patient-visitor-information/billing/cms-required-hospital-charge-data

These files have tens of thousands of rows. As a patient, you are meant to parse through these in order to decide whether you're getting ripped off on that HIP STEM 16X203MM SIZE 4 FEMORAL PRESS FIT NEUTRAL REVISION TITANIUM you're in the market for (as it happens, I have two of these in my body).

Kuttner describes the surreal lengths he had to go through to prevent his mother from getting ripped off by Mass Gen through an upcoding hustle. By coding her as "admitted for observation," Mass Gen was able to turn her into an outpatient, with a 20% co-pay (this is down to a GW Bush policy that punishes hospitals that charge Medicare for inpatient care when they could be treated as outpatients – hospitals reflexively game the system to make every patient an outpatient, even if they have overnight hospital stays).

Kuttner's an expert on this: he was national policy correspondent for the New England Journal of Medicine and covers the health beat for the Prospect. Even so, it took him ten hours of phone calls to two doctors' offices and Blue Cross to resolve the discrepancy. The average person is not qualified to do this – indeed, the average person won't even know they've been upcoded.

Needless to say that people in other countries – countries where health care is cheaper and the outcomes are better – are baffled by this. Canadians, Britons, Australians, Germans, Finns, etc do not have to price-shop for their care. They don't have to hawkishly monitor their admission paperwork for sneaky upcodes. They don't have to spend ten hours on the phone arguing about esoteric billing practices.

In a rational world, we'd compare the American system to the rest of the world and say, "Well, they've figured it out, we should do what they're doing." But in good old U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!, the answer to this is more prices, more commercialization, more market forces. Just rub some capitalism on it!

That's where companies like Multiplan come in: this is a middleman that serves other middlemen. Multiplan negotiates prices on behalf of insurers, and splits the difference between the list price and the negotiated price with them:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/07/us/health-insurance-medical-bills.html

But – as the Arm and a Leg podcast points out – this provides the perverse incentive for Multiplan to drive list prices up. If the list price quintuples, and then Multiplan drives it back down to, say, double the old price, they collect more money. Meanwhile, your insurer sticks you with the bill, over and above your deductible and co-pay:

https://armandalegshow.com/episode/multiplan/

The Multiplan layer doesn't just allow insurers to rip you off (though boy does it allow insurers to rip you off), it also makes it literally impossible to know what the price is going to be before you get your procedure. As with any proposition bet, the added complexity is there to make it impossible for you to calculate the odds and figure out if you're getting robbed:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/04/house-always-wins/#are-you-on-drugs

Multiplan is the purest expression of market dynamics brainworms I've yet encountered: solving the inefficiencies created by the complexity of a system with too many middlemen by adding another middle-man who is even more complex.

No matter what the problem is with America's health industry, the answer is always the same: more markets! Are older voters getting pissed off at politicians for slashing Medicare? No problem: just create Medicare Advantage, where old people can surrender their right to government care and place themselves in the loving hands of a giant corporation that makes more money by denying them care.

The US health industry is a perfect parable about the dangers of trusting shareholder accountable markets to do the work of democratically accountable governments. Shareholders love monopolies, so they drove monopolization throughout the health supply chain. As David Dayen writes in his 2020 book Monopolized the pharma industry monopolized first, and put the screws to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/29/fractal-bullshit/#dayenu

Hospitals formed regional monopolies to counter the seller power of consolidated Big Pharma. That's Mass Gen's story: tapping the capital markets to buy other hospitals in the region until it became too big to fail and too big to jail (and too big to care). Consolidated hospitals, in turn, put the screws to insurers, so they also consolidated, fighting Big Hospital's pricing power.

Monopoly at any point in a supply chain leads to monopoly throughout the supply chain. But patients can't consolidate (that's what governments are for – representing the diffuse interests of people). Neither can health workers (that's what unions are for). So the system screwed everyone: patients paid more for worse care. Health workers put in longer hours under worse conditions and got paid less.

Kuttner describes how his eye doctor races from patient to patient "as if he was on roller skates." When Kuttner wrote him a letter questioning the quality of care, the eye doctor answered that he understood that he was giving his patients short shrift, but explained that he had to, because his pay was half what he needed, relegating him to a small apartment and an old car. The hospital – which skims the payments he gets for care – sets his caseload, and he can't turn down patients.

The answers to this are obvious: get markets out of health care. Unionize health workers. Give regulators the budgets and power to hold health corporations to account.

But for market cultists, all of that can't work. Instead, we have to create more esoteric middlemen like "pharmacy benefit managers" and Multiplan. We need more prices to shovel into the market computer's data-hopper. If we just capitalism hard enough, surely the system will finally work…someday.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/13/a-punch-in-the-guts/#hayek-pilled