#Data Access Patterns

[rajaniesh]

Unlock Data Governance: Revolutionary Table-Level Access in Modern Platforms

Dive into our latest blog on mastering data governance with Microsoft Fabric & Databricks. Discover key strategies for robust table-level access control and secure your enterprise's data. A must-read for IT pros! #DataGovernance #Security

[blackrabb1t]

warframe is fun idk what i was on in 2018

[adelle-ein]

if ribblr has 1 hater i am that hater

[hrrtshape]

shifting is just picking what happens to you (or, read this if you're confused about shifting and a person who has shifted over ten times will explain it...hopefully).

it's just your mind moving into different experiential realities based on what you're aligned with at any given second.

you are already doing it. constantly. every time you make a decision, change your opinion, react to something differently, you are mentally stepping into a different version of your life.

you pick tea instead of coffee, you're now in the branch where you drank tea.

you believe you're bad at maths, you're now living the sequence where that belief colours your whole experience of maths.

you decide "i'm lucky" and actually internalise it, you start living out a reality structured by that assumption.

shifting is not special. it's literally just continuous relocation of consciousness through choice and belief, tiny or huge.

most people shift so microscopically they don't notice. they call it "change," "growth," "bad luck," "mood swings," but really it's just consciousness slipping sideways into another experiential stream where the variables are a little different.

big shifting, like waking up in another reality, is just doing that same thing but deliberately, with intent, with commitment.

instead of unconsciously slipping into a slightly different branch because you chose a different lunch, you are consciously saying:

"ok. now i experience myself in this completely different set of conditions."

and your brain, because it is literally a data-processing organ, not a fixed meat box, accepts it when you make it real enough to override old data. are you still with me !?!?!?

you shift every second based on decisions, reactions, beliefs.

most shifts are small, unnoticed, cumulative. "big" shifts are just conscious, deliberate relocations into drastically different experiential data. it's not magic. it's normal. it's mechanical. it's the default setting of existence.

every moment you're experiencing a version of your life.

it's not THEE life. it's A life, the one you're tuned into right now based on what you expect, believe, and focus on.

when you shift, you're just moving into a different version of your life experience.

not a new world. not a portal. not a dream.

just a different set of experiences your mind is capable of locking onto, like changing playlists.

you do it already, every time you change your mind, act differently, even notice something new.

you're not jumping through dimensions like a marvel movie, you're just moving your awareness into a slightly or hugely different path that was always accessible.

small shifts = when you start liking sushi after hating it.

big shifts = when you wake up and the whole setup feels different because you deliberately chose a new pattern to lock into.

your experiences are flexible. your mind moves through them automatically. deliberate shifting is just taking the wheel.

now, for "big" shifts.

getting into the big shifts, or living in a completely different setup, starts with the same process as the small ones: some sort of belief and assumption.

if you're shifting into a different experience, whether that's hogwarts, a marvel universe, or a whole new version of your life, it's because you choose to believe that it's possible. just like you decide you're lucky or bad at maths, you decide you're already living in that new life.

it's not about waiting for something to "happen" or needing a cosmic shift. it's simply deciding that this new life is what you are now aligning with.

the key to big shifts is assumption.

you've been shifting already, but the experience you're living in right now is the one your mind is locked into. to get to something drastically different, you just need to fully assume that it's yours. it's like deciding what you're going to eat for lunch. one day it's pasta, the next it's sushi.

it doesn't need to be a complicated, mystical process. you just shift your awareness by choosing the assumption that the new setup is already happening for you.

why it's possible to wake up in a different world or timeline: your brain doesn't care if you're imagining or physically experiencing something, it will treat both as equally real.

once you decide that this new life is your life, your brain accepts it. you're not "leaving" one world and going to another, you're simply locking into a different path that was always available.

everything already exists. it's just a matter of tuning your mind to it.

once you assume it's possible, it's like pressing play on a movie. you commit to the experience, and your brain accepts it because it's designed to process whatever you focus on as reality.

the difference between a small shift and a big one is the depth of your focus and how much you align with that new assumption. the more you assume you're in this new reality, the more real it feels.

how to get there

stop looking at the shift as something you need to "arrive" at or wait for. it's happening now.

you don't need to fight your current experience; you just need to choose to experience the new one. you get there by focusing on the new belief, like a switch, but it's not a sudden jolt. it's a steady, quiet shift of awareness that says: this is my life now.

and the result: your mind doesn't draw boundaries between worlds. once you decide to step into a different version of your life, all that's required is the commitment to live inside it.

the reason it works with fantasy worlds, with totally different setups, is that your mind knows no limits. if you can think it and fully believe it's yours, it is yours. shifting is just you consciously moving into another path you've decided to live out.

why don't i see it? (aka why is my world not changing)

(i will copy and paste something i said previously, but it is 100% applicable here)

our brain files things under "real" and "not real" as if it's got an actual authority on the matter. but. it doesn't have any proof.

your brain doesn't have eyes. now i know you'll say that you do.

but what do your eyes actually do? they see things. cool. but . your eyes don't see truth. they see whatever your brain tells them is real.

example: ever woken up from a dream and for a few seconds, you still thought it was real? fully convinced? because your brain believed it, so your eyes went along with it. your heart raced, your hands shook, maybe you even felt pain. all from something that wasn't real.

or ever had deja vu? where you swear something has happened before, but you know it hasn’t? again. your brain is filling in gaps. deciding what's real for you.

so when you say, i know i'm in my cr because i can see it, what you’re really saying is, i know i'm in my cr because my brain is telling me i am.

but your brain is just following a script. one it's been running since birth. what happens when you stop following it? when you stop taking its word for it?

when you ask what if i already shifted? your brain freezes. because it doesn't actually know. it just assumes. and when it starts to doubt itself, that's when you slip through.

how do you break out of it: stop trying to make reality change. assume it already has. sit in the knowing that you are already where you want to be. no proving, no waiting, no searching. just accepting. reality bends to what you accept as fact.

the only thing keeping you in your cr is that you keep assuming it's real.

why some people shift easily and some don't:

it's not because some people are chosen or have magic brains. it's not because they "tried harder" or found a secret method. it's because some people assume they've already done it, and some keep looking around for proof.

when you're still checking, doubting, testing, your mind is holding onto the idea that you're not there yet.

even if you're doing all the techniques right, if the feeling underneath. it is "i'm trying to shift" instead of "i already have," you're holding the experience of waiting, not having.

people who wake up in their drs didn't stay stuck in the "trying" mindset.

it's not about how badly you want it. it's about whether you accept it without needing anything outside of you to confirm it.

your brain doesn't need to see it first. it needs to believe it first. seeing follows.

to the people who haven't shifted: you're not that wrong, broken, or bad at it. it's just that you're mind is still split, half believing, half checking. half stepping into it, half pulling back. and that's human. that's normal. but the second you stop needing to "see it to believe it" and start trusting the inner knowing, you'll slip through.

do you need to persist in your assumption?

technically, no.

but practically???? sometimes, yes.

here's why: shifting isn't about how hard you push. it's about what you accept as true. if you could snap into a full-body, no-doubt belief that you already shifted, right now, you wouldn't need persistence at all. you'd be done. locked in. experiencing it.

but, because most people have years of habits, doubts, conditioning, it's not always instant. the mind wants to fall back into what feels familiar.

not because it's evil. not because it's trying to sabotage you. just because that's how the brain saves energy: it runs the old script unless you feed it a new one enough times to override it.

nothing can stop you from shifting.

not your doubts. not your overthinking. not your past. not your fears. not your age. not how long you've "failed." not your mental health. not the fact that you woke up in your same bed today. not how "stuck" you feel. not your logic. not your friends, your parents, your teachers, your surroundings. not your subconscious. not the clock. not the calendar. not "missing the void." not "doing it wrong."

nothing.

because shifting isn't something you earn. it's not a reward you unlock after completing a list of tasks or becoming a better, calmer, smarter version of yourself. it's not a door guarded.

shifting is just moving your awareness to a different experience. you are the only authority. your assumption is the key, the lock, the door, the floorboards.

even your resistance can't stop it, because the second you decide, even if a part of you is screaming “this is stupid,” your mind begins tilting toward the new path.

moment by moment.

shift by shift.

breath by breath.

the only thing that delays it is believing that something can delay it.

but if you drop that???? if you stop believing anything outside of you has the power???? you move. immediately. automatically. effortlessly.

you cannot be denied access to something that was never closed. you cannot be blocked from a process that is natural to you. you cannot fail at something that is built into the way you already exist.

you shift because you decide to. that's it. that's all.

if you feel like quitting shifting, read upon this: post about quitting<3

and that's really it.

shifting isn't some cosmic lottery. it's not about waiting for a sign or chasing a feeling. it's not about methods or hours or perfect conditions.

it's just a choice. and then you live like it's true, even if everything around you still smells like your old life for a minute.

you don't owe the old version of your life anything. you don't need to explain yourself to your senses. you don't need to argue with your thoughts. you just decide and you stay decided. even when it's boring. even when it's slow. even when your brain wants to reroute you back into doubt.

the shift doesn't happen because you begged for it. the shift happens because you stopped needing permission to believe you already had it.

no chasing. no proving. no waiting. just deciding.

if you're confused about any other aspects, i have some routes for you to follow !!

how to shift

how to have successful shifts (follow up)

i said what i said and then it happened

becoming the laziest manifestor &&& shifter.

how i personally shift all the time and my own method

things that could "possibly" be stopping you and what to do about it

how to set an assumption

&my central masterlist <3

what to do with the 3d

or if you wanna hear my own experience

[kaurwreck]

I think you're right that it's significant, and I think Mori is clever to recognize that Akutagawa is a rook.

Like a rook, Akutagawa is powerful, but generally contained and often undercut by his predictability. However, because he's keenly aware of his own constraints, and because others often aren't (especially regarding variables they've internalized as known), he's able to play into and against his own predictability to paradoxically surprise them.

He moves within the confines of his rigidity to shape outcomes, sometimes more effectively than his more dynamic opponents and peers. Rooks do that too, if you let them.

Me, knowing nothing about chess, probably overthinking the significance of referencing akutagawa in this scene, but is going to look it up later anyways

[nasa]

NASA Inspires Your Crafty Creations for World Embroidery Day

It’s amazing what you can do with a little needle and thread! For #WorldEmbroideryDay, we asked what NASA imagery inspired you. You responded with a variety of embroidered creations, highlighting our different areas of study.

Here’s what we found:

Webb’s Carina Nebula

Wendy Edwards, a project coordinator with Earth Science Data Systems at NASA, created this embroidered piece inspired by Webb’s Carina Nebula image. Captured in infrared light, this image revealed for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth. Credit: Wendy Edwards, NASA. Pattern credit: Clare Bray, Climbing Goat Designs

Wendy Edwards, a project coordinator with Earth Science Data Systems at NASA, first learned cross stitch in middle school where she had to pick rotating electives and cross stitch/embroidery was one of the options.  “When I look up to the stars and think about how incredibly, incomprehensibly big it is out there in the universe, I’m reminded that the universe isn’t ‘out there’ at all. We’re in it,” she said. Her latest piece focused on Webb’s image release of the Carina Nebula. The image showcased the telescope’s ability to peer through cosmic dust, shedding new light on how stars form.

Ocean Color Imagery: Exploring the North Caspian Sea

Danielle Currie of Satellite Stitches created a piece inspired by the Caspian Sea, taken by NASA’s ocean color satellites. Credit: Danielle Currie/Satellite Stitches

Danielle Currie is an environmental professional who resides in New Brunswick, Canada. She began embroidering at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic as a hobby to take her mind off the stress of the unknown. Danielle’s piece is titled “46.69, 50.43,” named after the coordinates of the area of the northern Caspian Sea captured by LandSat8 in 2019.

An image of the Caspian Sea captured by Landsat 8 in 2019. Credit: NASA

Two Hubble Images of the Pillars of Creation, 1995 and 2015

Melissa Cole of Star Stuff Stitching created an embroidery piece based on the Hubble image Pillars of Creation released in 1995. Credit: Melissa Cole, Star Stuff Stitching

Melissa Cole is an award-winning fiber artist from Philadelphia, PA, USA, inspired by the beauty and vastness of the universe. They began creating their own cross stitch patterns at 14, while living with their grandparents in rural Michigan, using colored pencils and graph paper.  The Pillars of Creation (Eagle Nebula, M16), released by the Hubble Telescope in 1995 when Melissa was just 11 years old, captured the imagination of a young person in a rural, religious setting, with limited access to science education.

Lauren Wright Vartanian of the shop Neurons and Nebulas created this piece inspired by the Hubble Space Telescope’s 2015 25th anniversary re-capture of the Pillars of Creation. Credit:  Lauren Wright Vartanian, Neurons and Nebulas

Lauren Wright Vartanian of Guelph, Ontario Canada considers herself a huge space nerd. She’s a multidisciplinary artist who took up hand sewing after the birth of her daughter. She’s currently working on the illustrations for a science themed alphabet book, made entirely out of textile art. It is being published by Firefly Books and comes out in the fall of 2024. Lauren said she was enamored by the original Pillars image released by Hubble in 1995. When Hubble released a higher resolution capture in 2015, she fell in love even further! This is her tribute to those well-known images.

James Webb Telescope Captures Pillars of Creation

Darci Lenker of Darci Lenker Art, created a rectangular version of Webb’s Pillars of Creation. Credit:  Darci Lenker of Darci Lenker Art

Darci Lenker of Norman, Oklahoma started embroidery in college more than 20 years ago, but mainly only used it as an embellishment for her other fiber works. In 2015, she started a daily embroidery project where she planned to do one one-inch circle of embroidery every day for a year.  She did a collection of miniature thread painted galaxies and nebulas for Science Museum Oklahoma in 2019. Lenker said she had previously embroidered the Hubble Telescope’s image of Pillars of Creation and was excited to see the new Webb Telescope image of the same thing. Lenker could not wait to stitch the same piece with bolder, more vivid colors.

Milky Way

Darci Lenker of Darci Lenker Art was inspired by NASA’s imaging of the Milky Way Galaxy. Credit: Darci Lenker

In this piece, Lenker became inspired by the Milky Way Galaxy, which is organized into spiral arms of giant stars that illuminate interstellar gas and dust. The Sun is in a finger called the Orion Spur.

The Cosmic Microwave Background

This image shows an embroidery design based on the cosmic microwave background, created by Jessica Campbell, who runs Astrostitches. Inside a tan wooden frame, a colorful oval is stitched onto a black background in shades of blue, green, yellow, and a little bit of red. Credit: Jessica Campbell/ Astrostitches

Jessica Campbell obtained her PhD in astrophysics from the University of Toronto studying interstellar dust and magnetic fields in the Milky Way Galaxy. Jessica promptly taught herself how to cross-stitch in March 2020 and has since enjoyed turning astronomical observations into realistic cross-stitches. Her piece was inspired by the cosmic microwave background, which displays the oldest light in the universe.

The full-sky image of the temperature fluctuations (shown as color differences) in the cosmic microwave background, made from nine years of WMAP observations. These are the seeds of galaxies, from a time when the universe was under 400,000 years old. Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team

GISSTEMP: NASA’s Yearly Temperature Release

Katy Mersmann, a NASA social media specialist, created this embroidered piece based on NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) global annual temperature record. Earth’s average surface temperature in 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year on record. Credit: Katy Mersmann, NASA

Katy Mersmann is a social media specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. She started embroidering when she was in graduate school. Many of her pieces are inspired by her work as a communicator. With climate data in particular, she was inspired by the researchers who are doing the work to understand how the planet is changing. The GISTEMP piece above is based on a data visualization of 2020 global temperature anomalies, still currently tied for the warmest year on record.

In addition to embroidery, NASA continues to inspire art in all forms. Check out other creative takes with Landsat Crafts and the James Webb Space telescope public art gallery.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[sparrowsgarden]

cat data call!

I run a website mainly devoted to cat genetics and make graphics about cat colors and patterns. I really want some more data (pictures of cats) to work with, but I do not have a cat or easy access to cats (I am allergic to cats).

I put a call out once before looking for hair shaft pics, of which there are very few available for cats! You can get these by parting the fur, holding a piece of paper of behind it, and/or photographing individual hairs on a light or dark background. This is the number one thing I would really, really like so I can make more and better illustrations of them. I will also accept just normal nice cat photos and/or nice photos of your cat's eyes without the saturation cranked up.

I made a form that explains exactly what I'm looking for and how images will be used (with options to give me variable permissions). Please share it with anyone who may be able to help!

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

My dear lgbt+ kids, 

When it comes to healthcare, you’ll occasionally encounter things presented as an opinion or as something up for debate - when there’s actually clear scientific facts on those topics. 

You can probably think of some general examples off the top of your head, like: 

Vaccines (They save lives. In fact, they are one of the most effective tools for reducing mortality rates worldwide) 

Pasteurized milk (Raw milk is not healthier than pasteurized milk, it’s actually unsafe. Pasteurization kills harmful bacteria which can cause severe illness) 

Fluoride (Water fluoridation is a safe and effective public health measure) 

Climate change (It exists and directly impacts respiratory and cardiovascular health)

“Detox” (The liver and kidneys detox your body naturally; detox teas, juice cleanses etc. are unnecessary) 

Cancer (Cancer isn’t just one disease, it’s an umbrella term for many different diseases and that’s why it’s very, very difficult, if not impossible, to just find the one simple fix to end cancer forever) 

Sugar substitutes (They have been extensively studied and are safe for consumption within recommended limits) 

There’s a lot of misinformation out there and it often thrives because it plays on fears (such as the natural fear of illness, dangerous substances and life-threatening side effects). Nobody wants to willingly put themselves or their loved ones into danger - but this absolutely natural desire for protection can be exploited. 

Some common tactics for that are: 

relying on personal anecdotes (emotional stories often feel more reliable or trustworthy than cold, hard data, even though they aren’t) 

appealing to those who distrust authority (the suggestion that governments/scientists/corporations/“they” are conspiring against you feels trustworthy if it seemingly “confirms” fears you already had) 

misusing scientific terminology (Complex-sounding terms can make something appear credible and well-researched, even if these terms are used completely incorrectly) 

giving quick, easy answers or fixes to complex problems (health is a complicated, multifaceted topic and there’s oftentimes no easy-cut answer to why a certain person gets sick or if a now-healthy person will still be as healthy in 10 years. This unpredictability can feel scary, and oversimplified answers can offer comfort) 

While health myths impact anyone, they disproportionately affect marginalized groups - for example chronically ill or disabled people but also our community.  

That’s because health myths (or outright health lies) can perpetuate stigma and create barriers to accessing evidence-based care. 

Myths specifically targeting queer health often follow the same patterns we talked about above. Let's take a closer look at some common topics and break down the facts behind them: 

Pedophilia (There is no evidence linking sexual orientation or gender identity to pedophilia or predatory behavior. This myth is rooted in bigotry and perpetuates harmful stereotypes) 

HIV/AIDS (it’s not “the gay disease” or even a “punishment for being gay”. It’s a virus that can affect people of all genders and sexual orientations) 

Regret rates (Regret rates for gender-affirming care are very low, even lower than for getting a new hip or a tattoo.) 

Regret rates, 2.0 (“Regret” does not automatically translate to “they were wrong about being trans”. A trans person could regret medical decisions for a multitude of reasons (even external factors like a lack of social support or experience of harassment) and still continue to identify as trans) 

Mental illness (The higher rate of mental health issues in queer people is caused by external factors like discrimination and social exclusion, not by the identity itself. Being queer is not a mental illness.) 

Conversion therapy (It doesn’t work. It also causes severe psychological harm including an increased risk of depression, anxiety, and suicide) 

Treating these myths as not “only” homophobia and transphobia but also as health misinformation may feel nitpicky, but I think it’s important. If we don’t, it’s easy to dismiss them as merely a matter of “not accidentally saying something offensive” - but there’s more at stake than hurt feelings. Health misinformation can prevent people from getting the medical care they need and put their lives at risk. And that applies to “Trans people often regret their surgeries” as much as it does to “Covid vaccines are dangerous”. 

So, look out for those typical patterns and warning signs - not only in the general “health and wellness” area but also in discussions about queer issues. 

With all my love, 

Your Tumblr Dad 

[transmutationisms]

@annevbonny yeah so first of all there's the overt framing issue that this whole idea rests on the premise that eliminating fatness is both possible and good, as though like. fat people haven't existed prior to the ~industrial revolution~ lol

more granularly this theory relies on misinterpreting the causes for the link between poverty and fatness (which is real---they are correlated) so that fatness can be configured as a failure of eating choices and urban design, meaning ofc that the 'solution' to this problem is more socially hygienic, monitored, controlled communities where everybody has been properly educated into the proper affective enjoyment of spinach and bike riding, and no one is fat anymore and the labour force lives for longer and generates more value for employers

in truth one of the biggest mediating factors in the poverty-body weight link is food insecurity, because intermittent access to food tends to result in periods of under-nourishment followed by periods of compensatory eating with corresponding weight regain/overshoot (this is typical of weight trajectories in anyone refeeding after a period of starvation or under-eating, for any reason). so this is all to say that the suggestion that fatness is caused by access to 'unhealthy foods' is not only off base but extremely harmful; food insecurity is rampant globally. what people need is consistent access to food, and more of it!

and [loud obvious disclaimer voice] although i absolutely agree that food justice means access to a variety of foods with a variety of nutrient profiles, access to any calories at all is always better than access to none or too few. which is to say, there aren't 'healthy' or 'unhealthy' foods in isolation (all foods can belong in a varied, sufficient diet) and this is a billion times more true when we are talking about people struggling to consume enough calories in the first place.

relatedly, proponents of the 'obesogenic environment' theory often invoke the idea of 'hyperpalatable foods' or 'food addiction'---different ways of saying that people 'overeat' 'junk food' because it's too tasty (often with the bonus techno-conspiricism of "they engineer it that way"). again it's this idea that the problem is people eating the 'wrong' foods, now because the foods themselves are exerting some inexorable chemical pull over them.

this is inane for multiple reasons including the failure to deal with access issues and the fact that people who routinely, reliably eat enough in non-restrictive patterns (between food insecurity and encouragement to deliberately diet/restrict, this is very few people) don't even tend to 'overeat' energy-dense demonised foods in the first place. ie, there is no need to proscribe or limit 'junk food' or 'fast food' or 'empty calories' or whatever nonsense euphemism; again the solution to nutritionally unbalanced diets is to guarantee everyone access to sufficient food and a variety of different foods (and to stop encouraging the sorts of moralising food taboos that make certain foods 'out of bounds' and therefore more likely to provoke a subjective sense of loss of control in the first place lol)

but tbc, when i say "the solution to nutritionally unbalanced diets"---because these certainly can and do exist, particularly (again) amongst people subjected to food insecurity---i am NOT saying "the solution to fatness" because fatness is not something that will ever be eliminated from the human population. and here again we circle back to one of the fundamental fears that animates the 'obesogenic environment' myth, which is that fatness is a medical threat to the race/nation/national future. which is of course blatant biopolitics and is relying on massive assumptions about the health status of fat and thin people that are simply not borne out in the data, and that misinterpret the relationship between fatness and illness (for example, the extent to which weight stigma prevents fat people from receiving medical care, or the role of 'metabolic syndrome' in causing weight gain, rather than the other way around).

people are fat for many reasons, including "their bodies just look like that"; fatness is neither a disease in itself nor inherently indicative of ill health, nor is it eradicable anyway (and fundamentally, while all people should have access to health-protective social and economic conditions, health is not something that people 'owe' to anyone else anyway)

the 'obesogenic environment' is a liberal technocratic fantasy---a world in which fatness is a problem of individual consumption and social engineering, and is to be eliminated by clever policy and personal responsibility. it assumes your health is 1) directly caused and indicated by your weight, 2) something you owe to the capitalist state as part of the bargain that is 'citizenship', and 3) something you can learn to control if only you are properly educated by the medical authorities on the rules of nutrition (and secondarily exercise) science. it's a factual misinterpretation of everything we know about weight, health, diet, and wealth, and it fundamentally serves as a defense of the existing economic order: the problem isn't that capitalism structurally does not provide sufficient access to resources for any but the capitalist class---no, we just need a nicer and more functional capitalism where labourers have a greengrocer in the neighbourhood, because this is a discourse incapable of grappling with the material realities of food production and consumption, and instead reliant on configuring them in terms of affectivity ('food addiction') or knowledge (the idea that food-insecure people need to be more educated about nutrition)

there are some additional aspects here obviously like the idea that exercising more would make people thin (similar issues to the food arguments, physical activity can be great but the reasons people do or don't do it are actually complex and related to things like work schedules and exercise doesn't guarantee thinness in the first place) or fearmongering about 'endocrine disruptors' (real, but are extremely ill-defined as a category and are often just a way to appeal to ideas of 'naturalness' and the vague yet pressing harms of 'chemicals', and which are also not shown to single-handedly 'cause' fatness, a normal state of existence for the human body) but this is most often an argument about food ime.

[luv4arinn]

I Just Wanna Feel

Author’s Note: So—sorry for not posting in weeks, but I had a massive writer’s block, and well… I’m back! I was heavily inspired by THAT Robbie Williams song. Yes, I watched his biopic. Yes, I cried. Yes, I recommend it. And… surprise?! There will be a whole chronology with the others, all themed around Robbie’s songs! Yayy <3!! Consider it a gift? from me for taking so long 🥺. Love you all.

Pairing: Bayverse!Donnie x female reader

Tags: Intense fluff, nerd having an emotional crisis, extreme overthinking, unexpected kisses, Donatello’s mental breakdown, romantic panic, “oh no I messed up” but in HD, happy ending.

The sound of the keyboard echoed through the room—a rhythmic, steady tapping that blended with the low hum of the monitors. The bluish glow from the screens cast irregular shadows across his face, reflecting off the lenses of his glasses with every line of code appearing and disappearing on the monitor.

Donatello was there, as always.

The work was easy. Thinking was easy.

It was like a well-structured algorithm: receive information, process it, execute a plan of action. The world had rules, patterns, probabilities—formulas that predicted outcomes with near-absolute precision. No matter how chaotic a situation seemed, there was always a logical solution waiting to be uncovered.

Computers don’t lie.

Data has no biases, no whims. It doesn’t suffer irrational fluctuations. It doesn’t beat faster without reason. It doesn’t have to remind itself to breathe.

But then…

There’s you.

And everything falls apart.

Not immediately. Not like a fatal error shutting down the system in the blink of an eye. It’s more subtle. Like an unexpected variable in an equation that had, until now, been perfect. Something that doesn’t fit into the rigid structure of his world—but something he can’t ignore either.

He thinks about it often. About how his brain operates like a well-calibrated machine, each thought clicking into the next like the teeth of a moving gear. Logic is his native language. Reason, his compass.

And yet, when it comes to you, all that logic becomes blurred.

The gears grind.

The code becomes erratic.

The equation fills with unknowns.

Because when you step into his space, when your voice disrupts the steady rhythm of his keyboard, when you lean over his desk without a second thought for the scattered circuits and switch off his monitor without warning…

His first instinct is to think. Analyze. Quantify.

What does this mean?

Why does his heart react this way?

Why does his skin register the shift in temperature more intensely when you’re near?

But thinking doesn’t give him answers.

Feeling does.

And that is terrifying.

Because feeling isn’t predictable. Feeling has no neatly arranged lines of code, no graphs to chart behavioral patterns, no equations with exact solutions.

Emotions, in themselves, are a chaotic system.

And you…

You are the anomaly he still doesn’t know how to decode.

Nights shouldn’t feel this short when spent alone in front of a screen. And yet, when his mind drifts to the memory of a laugh, the fleeting image of a glance, the echo of an accidental touch… time dissolves in a way not even quantum physics could explain.

When he feels the weight of his name on your tongue. Like an access key to a system he never thought anyone would try to hack.

And he watches you from the corner of his eye as you lean closer, and in that instant, every variable in his mind shifts. Every equation rewrites itself.

A shiver runs down his shell.

Feeling.

He knows because his chest tightens with an undefined pressure, a sensation he can’t attribute to any specific physiological variable. His heart rate isn’t elevated from exertion. He’s not under attack. He’s not in danger.

So why does his body react as if he is?

There’s no equation to explain this.

Because if there were, he would have solved it long ago. He would have identified the problem, broken it down into its components, eliminated any errors. But every time he thinks he’s close to an answer, another unknown appears, shifting all previous solutions out of place.

Music filters through his headphones, slow and melancholic.

“I just wanna feel, real love…”

A shiver runs down his spine.

His body reacts to the sound before his mind does. It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous. There is no logical reason why a progression of chords and a set of words arranged in a certain way should have this effect on him.

And yet, here he is.

Fingers hovering over the keyboard, motionless—caught between the instinct to keep working and the strange, undeniable realization that… he can’t.

Not because he’s tired.

Not because he lacks information.

Not because there’s a problem that requires more processing.

But because, for the first time in a long time, the data isn’t the most important thing.

The screen flickers with information he should be absorbing, but he isn’t. His glasses reflect numbers and graphs that would normally hold his full attention, but his gaze is empty, unfocused.

The room remains unchanged—draped in shadows, illuminated only by the bluish glow of his monitors and the faint blinking of LED lights from his equipment.

The mission had been difficult. The margin of error had been higher than he liked to admit.

It wasn’t often that his calculations failed.

But sometimes, calculations weren’t enough.

Sometimes, reality simply… refused to adhere to logic.

“Feel the home that I live in…”

His jaw tightens.

He doesn’t know how that song ended up on his playlist.

But he has a reasonable theory.

One that involves Mikey, his blatant disregard for personal privacy, and his insistent need to “help him connect with his emotions.”

(Sure. Right.)

And yet…

The lyrics hit him harder than he’d like to admit.

It’s not the melody itself. It’s not the chords or the rhythm. It’s the way the words seem to slip through the cracks in his mind, seeping into the spaces that logic has never quite managed to seal shut.

“I just wanna feel, real love…”

Donnie exhales slowly, his fingers still hovering over the keyboard, motionless.

He thinks about the battle.

The mistakes.

The risks they took.

Numbers flash through his mind like a simulation running in reverse—impact probability, the margin of error in his calculations, the reaction speed needed to avoid damage. Fractions of a second where the difference between victory and absolute disaster depended on decisions made under pressure.

But more than anything—he thinks about you.

He thinks about the way, at the end of the fight, you rushed to check if he was okay.

About how, without even thinking, your hands—warm, alive—ran along his arm, searching for injuries he had already identified and dismissed milliseconds before with his visor.

He could have told you it wasn’t necessary.

That he was unharmed.

That he had concrete data to prove it.

But he didn’t.

Because logic dictates that worry should be extinguished by facts.

But feeling…

Feeling dictates that your touch lingers, even after you’ve gone.

That the sensation of your skin against his stays beyond his capacity for reasoning.

That the light pressure of your fingers on his forearm still burns in his memory, like an unsolved equation looping endlessly in his mind.

“Come and hold my hand…”

Donnie closes his eyes.

He could turn the song off.

He could erase the anomaly from his system.

He could rewrite the equation, adjust the variables, find a way to rationalize what he feels.

But… he doesn’t want to.

Because for the first time in his life, the result of a problem doesn’t matter as much as the unknown.

He doesn’t just want to think.

He wants to feel.

He wants to understand why being with you feels like the only constant that truly matters.

And then—you arrive.

Without warning, without fanfare, without the slightest idea that the world inside Donatello’s mind is teetering on the edge of a collapse even he can’t explain.

The lab door slides open smoothly—barely a whisper against the silence, thick with static electricity and the faint murmur of music in his headphones.

He notices everything.

The shift in air pressure.

The sound of your footsteps, softened against the floor.

The faint scent of shampoo and fabric laced with the chill of the night.

The way the temperature in the room rises by just a fraction of a degree when you step inside.

But he doesn’t turn around immediately.

Because he doesn’t know what to do with the anomaly that you are in his equation.

He doesn’t know where to place you within the rigid parameters of his logical, structured world.

His operating system slows, his brain—so used to processing information with the precision of a surgeon—stalls in an endless loop, searching for a resolution that refuses to exist.

And then—your voice.

“Donnie?”

Soft. Not because you’re hesitant, but because you know him. Because somehow—through a method he can’t quantify—you can read the tension in his shoulders. You can see the way his fingers have stopped typing, even though the screen is still waiting for input.

He closes his eyes for just a moment, as if that alone might be enough to reboot him, to restore the control that feels like it’s slipping through his fingers.

He knows he should say something.

He knows he should act normal.

But his normal means efficiency, speed, precise answers delivered at the exact right moment.

And right now, every command in his mind is failing.

You watch him with quiet curiosity, tilting just slightly toward him—just enough for the air between you to feel heavier, more tangible.

“Everything okay?” you ask, voice soft in that way that completely disarms him. Then your gaze sharpens slightly, scanning him with quiet scrutiny. “Are you hurt?”

He doesn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he looks at you.

His mind runs an automatic analysis of your expression—eyes slightly narrowed, lips barely pressed together, the faintest crease in your right brow, as if you’re already calculating the probability that he’s lying.

Logic dictates that he should reassure you with data. That he should tell you his visor has already run a full diagnostic scan and that his physical condition is optimal. That there is no rational reason for concern.

But then his gaze drops.

And he sees his own hand, still resting on the desk—still tense.

And for the first time in a long time, he chooses to do something without overthinking it.

He looks at you again.

His throat feels dry. Without realizing it, he wets his lips—a quick flick of his tongue over skin cracked from hours without proper hydration.

Then, in a voice so quiet it barely sounds like his own, he asks:

“Can I… hold your hand?”

It’s not the kind of question anyone would expect from him.

And he knows it.

Because it doesn’t fit his usual patterns. It’s not something that makes sense in any logical context.

But right now, logic is utterly useless to him.

Your lashes flutter in subtle surprise, as if the words take a few extra seconds to fully register.

“What?”

His instincts scream at him to backtrack, to rephrase, to find a way to explain what even he doesn’t fully understand.

But he doesn’t.

“I want to…” He inhales, trying to reorganize his thoughts. “I mean, just—”

He shuts his eyes for a second, frustration flickering across his face. He has never felt this clumsy with words before.

When he opens them again, you’re still there. You haven’t moved. You haven’t looked away.

And somehow, that alone gives him the courage he’s lacking.

“I just… want to feel it.”

The truth escapes him so easily, so quietly, that it almost embarrasses him.

Your expression shifts.

It’s not amusement.

It’s not rejection.

It’s something softer. More intimate.

And without questioning it—without hesitation or unnecessary words—you let your hand slide over his.

Not hurriedly.

Not hesitantly.

Just with the quiet certainty of someone who understands exactly what he’s asking for.

And when your fingers intertwine with his, Donnie feels every equation, every algorithm, every carefully structured rule in his mind… simply dissolve.

As if they had never really mattered in the first place.

“Well?” you ask, your voice carrying a faint attempt at lightness.

Donnie knows you’re trying to sound casual, that you’re masking your uncertainty behind a relaxed tone. But he notices.

He notices the delicate dusting of pink on your cheeks, the almost imperceptible tremor in your lower lip, the way your thumb brushes against the back of his hand—like you’re adjusting to the contact just as much as he is.

And something inside him… softens.

His lips curve, at first unconsciously—a smile, small and barely formed. Then, from deep in his chest, a quiet laugh escapes, unbidden and genuine, as weightless as the air after a storm.

It’s not mockery. It’s not disbelief.

It’s something purer. Something real.

—Nothing, —he murmurs, his thumb moving awkwardly against your skin— Just… this is nice.

The confession catches him off guard.

Because he hadn’t planned it.

Because he hadn’t filtered it through his logic before speaking.

Because it simply happened.

And then, you look at each other.

Maybe for too long.

Maybe just long enough for the world around you to blur into a distant murmur, as if nothing else exists except the space you occupy together.

He finds himself mesmerized by you.

Fascinated.

But not in the way he is fascinated by a new equation, by an unexpected pattern in the data, by the perfect symmetry of a well-designed structure.

This is different.

This is raw.

This is visceral.

This is feeling.

His other hand, trembling in a way he doesn’t understand, lifts with a slowness that borders on reverence.

And when his fingers brush against your cheek, the touch is so light it feels like an experiment in itself.

He feels.

He feels the warmth of your skin beneath his fingertips, the way it molds so effortlessly to his touch, the way your body leans ever so slightly toward him—responding to an equation he hasn’t yet written but, for the first time, doesn’t feel the need to solve.

He feels the erratic pounding of his own heart, too fast, too unsteady, as if it has forgotten its natural rhythm.

He feels the heat gathering in his chest, expanding outward like a shockwave, defying all logical explanation.

And then, he hears you sigh.

Small.

Soft.

Almost imperceptible.

But he feels it.

He feels the warmth of your breath against his skin, the subtle vibration of your exhale in the nonexistent space between you.

Feels,

feels,

feels.

As if every one of his senses—once so meticulously calibrated to process information—has now been repurposed for a single objective:

You.

Your warmth seeping into his skin.

Your quiet, rhythmic breathing.

The barely-there weight of your gaze resting on him.

The familiar scent of you, imprinting itself onto some hidden corner of his mind he never thought necessary.

Just you.

Only you.

Nothing else exists.

Nothing else matters.

And then—without thinking, without calculating, without rationalizing it into exhaustion like he always does—

he kisses you.

It’s brief. Just a brush of lips.

A moment suspended between doubt and need, between impulse and fear.

A single heartbeat contained in a single point of contact.

And then—

He hears you gasp.

His entire body locks up. Every muscle goes rigid with a tension so sharp it’s almost painful.

His brain—so efficient, so precise, so relentless in its ability to analyze every variable in a situation—enters a total shutdown.

He stares at you, eyes wide, pupils blown.

Oh, no.

No, no, no.

He misread everything.

What the hell was he thinking?

You don’t see him that way.

Why would you?

Why would you ever?

Shame crashes over him like an unstoppable wave. His stomach twists, his skin burns, his heart clenches into an invisible fist that threatens to crush it from the inside out.

He pulls back, his hands loosening, his voice catching in his throat.

—Oh, God, I didn’t mean to— —he stammers, his voice cracking under the weight of his own panic. His thoughts are a mess of unsolved equations, of probabilities collapsing into a singularity of pure dread— I just… I thought it was a good moment, I—

—Yes.

Your voice cuts through his spiral.

His brain short-circuits.

—It was.

…

What?

His breath halts.

The air thickens, pressing in from all sides, as if the entire universe has stopped—right here, right now, in these words, in this reality he never accounted for.

And then—

You close the distance.

You are the one to bring your lips back to his.

And his mind—his brilliant, overanalyzing mind—

for the first time in his life—goes completely silent.

And he simply—feels.

[dragonnarrative-writes]

Generative AI Is Bad For Your Creative Brain

In the wake of early announcing that their blog will no longer be posting fanfiction, I wanted to offer a different perspective than the ones I’ve been seeing in the argument against the use of AI in fandom spaces. Often, I’m seeing the arguments that the use of generative AI or Large Language Models (LLMs) make creative expression more accessible. Certainly, putting a prompt into a chat box and refining the output as desired is faster than writing a 5000 word fanfiction or learning to draw digitally or traditionally. But I would argue that the use of chat bots and generative AI actually limits - and ultimately reduces - one’s ability to enjoy creativity.

Creativity, defined by the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus, is the ability to produce or use original and unusual ideas. By definition, the use of generative AI discourages the brain from engaging with thoughts creatively. ChatGPT, character bots, and other generative AI products have to be trained on already existing text. In order to produce something “usable,” LLMs analyzes patterns within text to organize information into what the computer has been trained to identify as “desirable” outputs. These outputs are not always accurate due to the fact that computers don’t “think” the way that human brains do. They don’t create. They take the most common and refined data points and combine them according to predetermined templates to assemble a product. In the case of chat bots that are fed writing samples from authors, the product is not original - it’s a mishmash of the writings that were fed into the system.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is a therapy modality developed by Marsha M. Linehan based on the understanding that growth comes when we accept that we are doing our best and we can work to better ourselves further. Within this modality, a few core concepts are explored, but for this argument I want to focus on Mindfulness and Emotion Regulation. Mindfulness, put simply, is awareness of the information our senses are telling us about the present moment. Emotion regulation is our ability to identify, understand, validate, and control our reaction to the emotions that result from changes in our environment. One of the skills taught within emotion regulation is Building Mastery - putting forth effort into an activity or skill in order to experience the pleasure that comes with seeing the fruits of your labor. These are by no means the only mechanisms of growth or skill development, however, I believe that mindfulness, emotion regulation, and building mastery are a large part of the core of creativity. When someone uses generative AI to imitate fanfiction, roleplay, fanart, etc., the core experience of creative expression is undermined.

Creating engages the body. As a writer who uses pen and paper as well as word processors while drafting, I had to learn how my body best engages with my process. The ideal pen and paper, the fact that I need glasses to work on my computer, the height of the table all factor into how I create. I don’t use audio recordings or transcriptions because that’s not a skill I’ve cultivated, but other authors use those tools as a way to assist their creative process. I can’t speak with any authority to the experience of visual artists, but my understanding is that the feedback and feel of their physical tools, the programs they use, and many other factors are not just part of how they learned their craft, they are essential to their art.

Generative AI invites users to bypass mindfully engaging with the physical act of creating. Part of becoming a person who creates from the vision in one’s head is the physical act of practicing. How did I learn to write? By sitting down and making myself write, over and over, word after word. I had to learn the rhythms of my body, and to listen when pain tells me to stop. I do not consider myself a visual artist - I have not put in the hours to learn to consistently combine line and color and form to show the world the idea in my head.

But I could.

Learning a new skill is possible. But one must be able to regulate one’s unpleasant emotions to be able to get there. The emotion that gets in the way of most people starting their creative journey is anxiety. Instead of a focus on “fear,” I like to define this emotion as “unpleasant anticipation.” In Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown identifies anxiety as both a trait (a long term characteristic) and a state (a temporary condition). That is, we can be naturally predisposed to be impacted by anxiety, and experience unpleasant anticipation in response to an event. And the action drive associated with anxiety is to avoid the unpleasant stimulus.

Starting a new project, developing a new skill, and leaning into a creative endevor can inspire and cause people to react to anxiety. There is an unpleasant anticipation of things not turning out exactly correctly, of being judged negatively, of being unnoticed or even ignored. There is a lot less anxiety to be had in submitting a prompt to a machine than to look at a blank page and possibly make what could be a mistake. Unfortunately, the more something is avoided, the more anxiety is generated when it comes up again. Using generative AI doesn’t encourage starting a new project and learning a new skill - in fact, it makes the prospect more distressing to the mind, and encourages further avoidance of developing a personal creative process.

One of the best ways to reduce anxiety about a task, according to DBT, is for a person to do that task. Opposite action is a method of reducing the intensity of an emotion by going against its action urge. The action urge of anxiety is to avoid, and so opposite action encourages someone to approach the thing they are anxious about. This doesn’t mean that everyone who has anxiety about creating should make themselves write a 50k word fanfiction as their first project. But in order to reduce anxiety about dealing with a blank page, one must face and engage with a blank page. Even a single sentence fragment, two lines intersecting, an unintentional drop of ink means the page is no longer blank. If those are still difficult to approach a prompt, tutorial, or guided exercise can be used to reinforce the understanding that a blank page can be changed, slowly but surely by your own hand.

(As an aside, I would discourage the use of AI prompt generators - these often use prompts that were already created by a real person without credit. Prompt blogs and posts exist right here on tumblr, as well as imagines and headcannons that people often label “free to a good home.” These prompts can also often be specific to fandom, style, mood, etc., if you’re looking for something specific.)

In the current social media and content consumption culture, it’s easy to feel like the first attempt should be a perfect final product. But creating isn’t just about the final product. It’s about the process. Bo Burnam’s Inside is phenomenal, but I think the outtakes are just as important. We didn’t get That Funny Feeling and How the World Works and All Eyes on Me because Bo Burnham woke up and decided to write songs in the same day. We got them because he’s been been developing and honing his craft, as well as learning about himself as a person and artist, since he was a teenager. Building mastery in any skill takes time, and it’s often slow.

Slow is an important word, when it comes to creating. The fact that skill takes time to develop and a final piece of art takes time regardless of skill is it’s own source of anxiety. Compared to @sentientcave, who writes about 2k words per day, I’m very slow. And for all the time it takes me, my writing isn’t perfect - I find typos after posting and sometimes my phrasing is awkward. But my writing is better than it was, and my confidence is much higher. I can sit and write for longer and longer periods, my projects are more diverse, I’m sharing them with people, even before the final edits are done. And I only learned how to do this because I took the time to push through the discomfort of not being as fast or as skilled as I want to be in order to learn what works for me and what doesn’t.

Building mastery - getting better at a skill over time so that you can see your own progress - isn’t just about getting better. It’s about feeling better about your abilities. Confidence, excitement, and pride are important emotions to associate with our own actions. It teaches us that we are capable of making ourselves feel better by engaging with our creativity, a confidence that can be generalized to other activities.

Generative AI doesn’t encourage its users to try new things, to make mistakes, and to see what works. It doesn’t reward new accomplishments to encourage the building of new skills by connecting to old ones. The reward centers of the brain have nothing to respond to to associate with the action of the user. There is a short term input-reward pathway, but it’s only associated with using the AI prompter. It’s designed to encourage the user to come back over and over again, not develop the skill to think and create for themselves.

I don’t know that anyone will change their minds after reading this. It’s imperfect, and I’ve summarized concepts that can take months or years to learn. But I can say that I learned something from the process of writing it. I see some of the flaws, and I can see how my essay writing has changed over the years. This might have been faster to plug into AI as a prompt, but I can see how much more confidence I have in my own voice and opinions. And that’s not something chatGPT can ever replicate.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

"No big deal." "Just a cold." "Back to normal."

The proportion of babies born with a congenital heart abnormality increased by 16 per cent after the first year of the pandemic, according to research at City St George's, University of London and published today in Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Heart defects are the most common type of anomaly that develop before a baby is born, with around 13 babies diagnosed with a congenital heart condition every day in the UK and impacting one in 110 births globally . These include defects to the baby's heart valves, the major blood vessels in and around the heart, and the development of holes in the heart.

In over 18 million births, researchers analysed data from US birth certificates from the Centre of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) between December 2016 and November 2022 to evaluate the effect of the pandemic on the number of babies born with a congenital heart defect.

They compared the number of babies born with a congenital heart condition every month before the Covid-19 pandemic (1st December 2016 to 30th November 2019) with those during the pandemic (1st December 2020 to 30th November 2022).

This data was then compared to the number of babies born with Down's Syndrome - a genetic condition not affected by the virus. This was to help ascertain if any differences observed might have been due to Covid-19, or if they were a result of other factors including limited access to antenatal services during the pandemic.

A total of 11,010,764 births before and 7,060,626 births during the pandemic were analysed. Data was adjusted to account for mother's BMI, diabetes and blood pressure before pregnancy, age, number of times they had given birth and the season in which prenatal care started.

The number of births with a congenital heart condition increased by 16% after the first year of the pandemic, with 65.4 cases per 100,000 live births compared to 56.5 per 100,000 births in the period studied before the pandemic.

The number of babies born with Down Syndrome did not change for the duration of the study, suggesting that the increase in fetal heart defects were not due to a disruption of health services.

Studying this large US dataset has revealed an unexpected picture for how the pandemic has affected the hearts of unborn babies, but we need to untangle the reasons for this link. We need to determine if the SARS-CoV-2 virus directly causes the development of fetal heart problems during pregnancy, and if so, how the virus makes these changes in the heart.

We don't have this type of data set available in the UK, but it's important to see if this pattern is seen in other parts of the world.

Covid-19 is still circulating and is easier to catch in the winter months. These results act as an important reminder for pregnant women to get their Covid-19 vaccinations to help protect themselves and their baby."

Professor Asma Khalil, lead author and Professor of Obstetrics and Maternal Fetal Medicine at City St George's, University of London

Source: City St George's, University of London

Journal reference: Khalil, A., et al. (2024). Congenital heart defects during COVID‐19 pandemic. Ultrasound in Obstetrics & Gynecology. doi.org/10.1002/uog.29126. obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/uog.29126

[stars-obsession-pit]

So a person requested (in messages) me to write a drabble thing based on this prompt. I’m not really into de-aged characters, but I thought of a way to focus it more on Jason’s reaction rather than the childcare part and felt cool with writing that.

So, uh, hope you like this I guess, @phantomrosereader…

Alright. Alright. Alright alright alrigh—

Nope. They’re still there. Fuck. Jason is not at all prepared to be a father. Nor does he want to show back up at the manor right now carrying two children and be forced to explain all this.

Wait, how did the kids even get there? Who was the mother? Why did they never contact him before?

…Did they contact him before? Can he really be certain he’s not missing any more memories?

He forcefully shook his head. No. No focusing on that right now. He’s fine. No spiraling allowed. He has to deal with this first.

Seriously, fuck. How is he a dad?

He… he should look into the mother. At least then he’d have more to go off of when he talks to Alfred. The note did give a name, but it wasn’t nearly enough to go off of on its own. Danny is hardly an uncommon name. Although, it does seem like a guy’s name—maybe Danny is trans? That would narrow the search down, but would that be enough? Even if he could get it down to just a handful of options, he had no way to determine which Danny was his. The kids seemed to have mostly inherited his own appearance…

Wait, that’s it! Genetic tests!

Despite his strained relationship with the other Bats, he still has access to their resources. A test wouldn’t take too long to give results. And also, it might reveal some other info like allergies he’d need to know.

***

Jason frowned at his laptop as his eyes flitted across the details of the error message. Apparently, some parts of the kids’ genes had been completely unreadable to the scanner and thus it couldn’t form a full profile.

Sighing, he clicked the popup closed. He could at least look at what results had come through. Maybe they’d be enough.

That hope dwindled as he scanned the full data, the corruption looking more dire than he expected. Even if the legible parts did succeed at painting a picture of the kids being related, the swaths of gibberish made meaningfully searching for the mother likely hopeless. However, there did seem to be a pattern to the broke areas. Something tickled at the back of his mind. He felt like he’d seen this before. Could that mean the mother was a meta or alien? Those were on a separate database, so that might resolve the issue. But that would require him to go to the manor, and he was still very hesitant to do that.

So instead, he pulled up his own test results to compare. Maybe they’d let him figure something ou—

He froze.

That’s why he recognized the corruption. Ever since his revival, his own genetic results exhibited almost the exact same pattern of issues.

Oh Hell, did the kids inherit the side effects of the Pit from him?

He looked over at the kids, sleeping peacefully in their seats, and prayed that they hadn’t. He didn’t think he’d be able to forgive himself if they had to suffer through the Pit Rage their whole lives just because of him.

He… he had to go to the manor. There was no pushing this off any longer. This situation was far too big for him to deal with on his own. He couldn’t risk leaving his kids to suffer alone.

Hopefully Alfred with his parenting skills and Damian with his knowledge of the Lazarus Pits (and similar experience of being descended from a user of them) would be able to help. Or if that failed, maybe he could guilt trip Bruce into getting the Justice League Dark to help.

[yours-truly-q]

~ Your Eunoia ☆·*○.

☆ Synopsis - Does L care about how smart his partner is? (spoiler alert: he doesn't) ☆ Warnings! - a LOT of low self-esteem from reader, NEOT proof-read (I am very tired, pls don't judge) ☆ Pairing/s - L. Lawliet x gn!reader ☆ Notes - Trying something new style wise, tell me what you think! I've also just got back into Death Note (OH how I MISS YOU L ‼️) w/c - 1.1k

"Why do you like me?" You ask L bluntly, the previous silence being disturbed by your abrupt question. Your eyes flick between L and the coffee table, which had recent crime scene photos resting on it, like you couldn't decide what sight to let your eyes settle on. You were nervous, and maybe L could see that through your fiddling hands and body posture which has you curled into the sofa you sat on, like it could personally hide you from his deductive abilities. You knew better though.

L gives it a bit of thought, hands pausing over a photo at your words, before they continue their descent, fingers brushing the paper. You wonder what he thinks sometimes, how he can find a suspect by their body language and speech pattern alone, what clues he sees as relevant and what ones aren't worth looking at twice. He's so smart it makes you wonder why he would choose you in the first place. You're not particularly smart, you didn't do things he couldn't predict, if anything he sees what you're going to do before you even do it, so why you?

"You're simple and nice to look at." L states bluntly, his voice breaking you out of your thought process.

"Thanks" You roll your eyes playfully at his comment, but consider his words carefully, trying to understand this from L's perspective, what he could mean. 'Simple?' Your face scrunches up in confusion at the word, 'But why does he want that? Does he even want that? If he didn't, then why would he even point it out in the first place?' Your eyes glaze over as you let your head try to break down L's words, hoping that dissecting his reply will lead to a reasonable answer.

"...You're thinking about this too hard." L mumbles loud enough for you to hear, while his large black eyes glance over to you from the corner of his vision. He takes in your expression attentively, before going back to staring intently at two photos that lay side by side.

"Well, it's hard not too when I can't figure out if being 'simple' is a good thing or not." You huff out a laugh, one hand coming up to fiddle with the fabric of your shirt sheepishly. You look away from his form entirely, not sure what to make of this conversation at all.

"It is-" L starts as his index finger taps his lip in thought, no doubt about the case that was presented to him no more than 2 hours ago. "-You are easy to emotionally read, no matter how subtle or obvious your tells are, simple in thought process, so, predictable-" He continues while reaching over the table to grab a file, from the other end of the table, to scrutinise.

"WOW, just call me stupid why don't you?" You joke quietly with a silly smile slapped across your face. Though L makes a mental note to pick apart the emotional and mental connotations that that comment comes with, along with your expression, later.

"-, and, to me, accessible." L finishes, opening the file and taking in the information it presents him, though, before he starts reading, he stares at you with a prominent expression and says.

"You're simple, and that very thing is a quality I appreciate and look for in my environment when all I see is complexity." Then L looks down to his file, like he never said anything in the first place. He almost looks distracted, even though you know for a fact he is nothing of the sort, like he's not listening and you take a moment to admire him, as subtly as you can, in all his glory. The way his black hair shines in the white fluorescent light of the hotel room, how his finger brushes over his lip in thought and most of all, how his dark eyes scan over pages of facts and data. He's so pretty so it's not fair how he's so smart on top of all of that.

'What do you have to offer to him? What do you do for him? What makes him stay?' You look away from L as you let the thoughts quietly fester in your mind, because, they were right, weren't they? Even if what he wanted was simplicity and you were, apparently, that very thing, It's not like you were easy to interact with or be with as a partner. Insecurity lurked in every corner of your mind tainting each thing you said, did or even thought. No matter how far you ran from it, it would always find you and curl its sharp, venomous claws into your heart. So maybe you were simple, but you were in no way easy to handle, and you were just waiting for him to get sick of you and your constant self-doubt.

A small hum brings you out of your thoughts once more, before you notice L placing down the file he was reading, onto the table, and shuffling towards you. He crouches in front of your chair, in his typical L stance, while his eyes bore into your own with a certain intensity you've only seen very few times.

"Do not think that because you doubt yourself, that you are less deserving of my affections. Your value isn't determined by your flaws, nor your failures; nor is your worth in this relationship determined by how much you 'contribute' or 'bring' to the relationship. Your insecurities don't take away from the amount of fondness I harbor for you." His voice holds an air of unwavering certainty, like the mere idea that this could be a false statement was a crazy thought. L's normally deadpan face softened as you scanned his expression, eye brows, lips, nose, for any sign of deception. Then the moment you gazed into his eyes, you saw it, a warm tenderness that L unusually didn't show so freely, but here it was, just so you could confirm that he meant this, confirm how he felt. He was committed to you, and maybe this was his silent way of showing it.

"You will see your worth, for yourself, one day, but for now simply remember that, once again-" L leans in closer to you, chest almost brushing your knees to emphasise his words even more. "-your value isn't determined by your flaws, nor your failures." His voice carries a weight to it that you couldn't name if you tried, but his eyes tell you all you need to know. So even though you're uncertain, even though you don't feel that you're enough, you nod because you know that even if you don't feel worth the trouble, L does and maybe that, in itself, enough.

☆ Bonus!

"...so you like me because I'm stupid is what I'm hearing?" You joke again while leaning towards L in your chair. Whatever tension that had been building between the you two immediately dissipates as you let out small giggles.

"You know that's not what I mean, but if you wish to take it that way then who am I to correct you?" L reaches for his cup, but it can't hide that rare smile of his, that spreads across his face.

[reachartwork]

What is Super Danmaku Maker?

Yes, I really do have this many projects, I'm one of those people who procrastinates by starting new projects. Anyway.

Super Danmaku Maker is a danmaku (bullet hell) engine that I’m designing to be a flexible, multipurpose tool for creating any kind of shoot-'em-up (shmup) project. Whether it’s individual spell cards, full boss battles, levels, or even entire games, the goal is to provide an easy-to-use, node-based interface that caters to both beginners and experienced designers.

Computational Efficiency via Precomputation One of the primary architectural goals of Super Danmaku Maker is to make bullet patterns computationally cheap at runtime. This is achieved through precomputation: bullet patterns are calculated as compositions of mathematical transformations during the design phase using calculus. It turns out that it is useful, actually! Instead of simulating the motion of bullets or tracking them individually as objects, we turn bullet patterns into lookup tables.

Instead of performing complex calculations every frame for every bullet, the engine simply "looks up" where the bullet should be based on the precomputed data. This trades off some load time for designers and additional disk space for buttery-smooth performance during gameplay. With this approach, the engine can easily handle 20,000+ bullets onscreen at once at a stable 60+ fps during testing. For comparison, Touhou's bullet cap of 2000 bullets is easily broached and hard caps at my screen's refresh rate (144 fps).

A Spiritual Successor To An Extremely Obscure Freeware Game Super Danmaku Maker draws inspiration from Fraxy, an obscure tool for creating top-down shooter boss encounters I used to be obsessed with as a kid. While Fraxy focused primarily on designing Gradius/R-Type/Darius-style bosses, with other functions developed via some crazy hacker bullshit, Super Danmaku Maker expands the inbuilt scope significantly:

Design enemies, bosses, full levels, and entire games.

Create player characters and weapons, complete with custom behaviors and abilities.

Support for arbitrary keyboard and mouse input, making it possible to design unconventional control schemes.

The vision is for this engine to act as a highly specialized, high-level programming language (or in layman's terms - a game engine) built on top of C# for shmup creation. Beginners will find it accessible and intuitive, while power-users can push the boundaries of what’s possible with crazy wizard bullshit and advanced setups that even I can’t anticipate right now.

Node-Based Interface The core of Super Danmaku Maker is a node-based interface, similar to Blender’s Geometry Nodes. Instead of writing complex code, users will connect and configure nodes to:

Define bullet patterns.

Build complex behaviors for bosses, levels, and player characters.

Experiment with bullet path changes like speed changes, rotations, curling motions, and more.

Define bullet & entity behavior in response to arbitrary triggers (such as distance from an object, distance from the edge of the screen, timers, collision, etc.)

This visual, modular approach empowers creators to focus on the art of designing fun and challenging gameplay, without needing extensive programming knowledge.

Future Sharing and Online Play Although the exact details are TBD, the long-term goal is to enable designers to share their creations easily through an online portal. Players would be able to download and play these custom levels and games without needing to install additional tools.

Okay, that's all. Stay tuned!

[codemerything]

A structured way to learn JavaScript.

I came across a post on Twitter that I thought would be helpful to share with those who are struggling to find a structured way to learn Javascript on their own. Personally, I wish I had access to this information when I first started learning in January. However, I am grateful for my learning journey so far, as I have covered most topics, albeit in a less structured manner.

N/B: Not everyone learns in the same way; it's important to find what works for you. This is a guide, not a rulebook.

EASY

What is JavaScript and its role in web development?

Brief history and evolution of JavaScript.

Basic syntax and structure of JavaScript code.

Understanding variables, constants, and their declaration.

Data types: numbers, strings, boolean, and null/undefined.

Arithmetic, assignment, comparison, and logical operators.

Combining operators to create expressions.

Conditional statements (if, else if, else) for decision making.

Loops (for, while) for repetitive tasks. - Switch statements for multiple conditional cases.

MEDIUM

Defining functions, including parameters and return values.

Function scope, closures, and their practical applications.

Creating and manipulating arrays.

Working with objects, properties, and methods.

Iterating through arrays and objects.Understanding the Document Object Model (DOM).

Selecting and modifying HTML elements with JavaScript.Handling events (click, submit, etc.) with event listeners.

Using try-catch blocks to handle exceptions.

Common error types and debugging techniques.

HARD

Callback functions and their limitations.

Dealing with asynchronous operations, such as AJAX requests.

Promises for handling asynchronous operations.

Async/await for cleaner asynchronous code.

Arrow functions for concise function syntax.

Template literals for flexible string interpolation.

Destructuring for unpacking values from arrays and objects.

Spread/rest operators.

Design Patterns.

Writing unit tests with testing frameworks.

Code optimization techniques.

That's it I guess!