#Google Forms data analysis

[bloggerkey]

Google Forms क्या है और इसका कैसे प्रयोग करे [Step by Step]

Google Forms एक उपयोगी और आसान टूल है जो गूगल द्वारा प्रदान किया गया है, जिससे हम ऑनलाइन सर्वे, क्विज़, फीडबैक, रजिस्ट्रेशन फॉर्म्स आदि बना सकते हैं। इस टूल की मदद से हम आसानी से किसी भी प्रकार का डेटा इकट्ठा कर सकते हैं और उसे विश्लेषित (analyze) कर सकते हैं। Google Forms का सबसे बड़ा फायदा यह है कि यह मुफ़्त और पूरी तरह से कस्टमाइज़ेबल है, जिससे छोटे-बड़े सभी प्रकार के बिजनेस और व्यक्तिगत���

[dy-will-cry]

Howdy y'all!

If you can, I need just a little bit of help.

I need to conduct a survey for my data analysis class, and the more data I get, the better.

To do that, I made a Google form for people to fill out! https://forms.gle/CmdWw5c96Mg2sfrb8

No obligation to do it, but it should only take you a minute to complete!

Please reblog to get more people to see it, and have a nice day!

[mia-can-yap-too]

What?:- The blue lock boys have turned to reddit to see if they're the problem or not.

Warnings:- fluff, crack, sfw, gender neutral reader, moot cameos but thats not a warning its a blessing, all characters aged 20 + just cuz, aikus abs, google docs, also no html cuz mia is lazyyy

Who?:- Isagi Yoichi, Oliver Aiku

a/n:- 200+ followers special gang, i love all 200+ of yall. also there will be multiple parts of this fic, 6 in total i think, so heres two of them for now!

pngs by me

star dividers by @saradika-graphics

Isagi Yoichi

You and Isagi just had your first real date.

It went wonderfully, and he was so sweet, too. He picked you up, paid for dinner, walked you home, held your hand (for the first time, actually), and gave you a smile that made your stomach do a stupid flip.

Everything was perfect. He was perfect.

Hot. Financially stable. Tall (enough). A gentleman. He had you swooning the whole night.

Until he texted you this.

Yoichi

hi! just wanted to say i had a great time!

also uh pls dont be mad

but can you fill this out when youre free???

[Date Debrief : Strengths and Areas for Improvement – Google Form]

You opened it out of curiosity. You shouldn't have. But you did.

And it was dead serious.

Date Debrief : Strengths and Areas for Improvement

by:- Isagi Yoichi (aka your #1 striker)

1. On a scale of 1 to 10, how punctual was I?

○ [ ] 1 – You were late and I thought you ghosted me.

○ [ ] 10 – You showed up like a protagonist in a shojou anime. I will marry you.

2. Did I talk about soccer too much?

○ [ ] – Yes

○ [ ] – No, but you came close to it.

○ [ ] – What do you mean "too much"? You gave tactical analysis on the waiter's footwork.

3. What was your favorite part of the date? (select all that apply)

○ [ ] The food

○ [ ] The walk home

○ [ ] The part where you got flustered trying to hold my hand

○ [ ] When you said "I'm not competitive" and then raced me to the side walk.

○ [ ] The moment where I realized you're my endgame and not just a side quest.

4. Areas for Improvement? (short answer)

There was a sample response in italics:-

[You could've complimented me more than hyper analyzing why we were both such a perfect match with information from trusted sources like my best friend. Also, maybe don't stare at my thighs as much next time.]

5. Would you go on another date with me?

○ [ ] Yes

○ [ ] HELL YEAH

○ [ ] Fill in this response with excessive emotional detail so I can reread it later and scream into my pillow.

You fill it out and sumbit it. He answers less than 45 seconds later.

Yoichi

okay so based on the data

i think i can increase hand holding frequency by 69% next time

also i wont call the kiss a 'strategic breakthrough' again

promise

★☆★☆★☆

Top Comment

u/ @beepbopzlorp :- Akqnshwkbwoq YTA but in a loving way????? Bro thinks he's dating a football LMFAOOO

Oliver Aiku

You and Aiku are in the middle of yet another mild argument.

Nothing dramatic, only you calmly explaining that maybe, just maybe, he shouldn't be flirting with the barista while holding your hand.

You're standing in the middle of your living room, arms crossed and frustration building.

"I feel like... if we're dating, there should be some boundaries. Like mutual respect? Is that crazy?" you frown at him.

Oliver casually runs a hand through his hair, and it's clear from his expression that he is barely listening.

"Mhmm. Totally. Mutual. Absolutely, babe," he yawns, turning his head to the side.

"Oliver! You don't even listen to me! Do I matter at all to you?"

"Babe, I was listening. Why do you have to be so–"

Just then, Oliver catches a glimpse of himself in the hallway mirror.

Shirtless. Slight sheen of sweat from training. Hair artfully messy.

He pauses. The room goes silent. His brow raises.

Then he flexes.

Right there. Mid argument. Slow and practiced. Left bicep. Right bicep. Abs. He's admiring the way the light was hitting him as if he was in a cologne commercial.

You pause. Your soul leaves your body.

"Are you... serious?"

He doesn't even seem ashamed. "Babe, I'm not even trying to be hot. It's just happening. Naturally."

You scowl at him. Where does he get the audacity from?

"You forgot what I was mad about, didn't you?"

He thinks for a moment. "...Was it jealousy? I don't blame you, it's a natural response to greatness."

Frustrated, you leave the room and he calls out for you.

"Don't go! I was gonna hit a back flex next!"

☆★☆★☆★

Top Comment

u/ @satocidal :- YTA and delusional. But, can I at least see if the abs were worth ruining your relationship over??? heres my email.

a/n:- will try my best to put the other parts out as soon as possible but enjoy these for now

Oh, you’re curious about my past works? Well, luckily for you, all the deliveries are neatly archived! Just head over to the Archive of Deliveries and browse through what I’ve sent out in the past. Enjoy the trip down memory lane!

[mcyt-longfic-database-project]

Welcome to the MCYT Longfic Database Project

Hello!! My name is Jim ( @rocketships07 , he/him), and I'm just a guy with a passion for data analysis and cubitos. I have been compiling, for a few months now, a small google sheets file of my favorite mcyt longfics, because I enjoy being able to see some stats and have everything in a place I can access. However! It ocurred to me that it would be very fun to develop a much larger database so that I could share it with friends!

So, the MCYT Longfic Database Project was born.

IMPORTANT LINKS:

MCYT Longfic Database SUBMISSIONS Form

Publishing site voting (closed)

FAQ

MCYT Longfic Database

Here's how it's going to work.

1. Interest Check (due: jan. 27)

I'm going to first compile information on what fandoms most people want me to compile fics of. This can be any MCYT fandom! As long as someone requests it, it'll have a place in the database. To do so, please send me asks through my tumblr page with your fandom(s)!!

CURRENT FANDOMS ADDED:

Hermitcraft

Traffic Life Series

Empires SMP

Dream SMP

QSMP

Scott's Life series (X life/Afterlife/New life)

POW Creations (Pirates SMP, Rats SMP 1&2)

The Realm

Fable SMP

Life Steal

Outsiders

Yogscast

2. Fanfic submission form is released (jan. 27 - feb. 28)

I will be releasing a form, where you can submit your favorite longfics! This form will include plenty of different sections for you to fill, such as title, fandom, word count, main character(s), ship (or ships), main tropes or au, amongst other categories with the purpose of data analysis! Mainly because the database will also have an analysis tab, where you can see some fun stats about the database!

During this period, the database will not be public. This is due to the fact that Google Forms does not format the information correctly, and I will be creating a much easier to read file for everyone to see!

After the end of this period, the forms will continue to be open! I will not be updating it constantly after that, but I'll try my best to keep it updated!

3. Database publishing (march 1)

After March 1st, the database will go live!!! I will continue to update it and add fics as long as people keep submitting them.

Feel free to share it with your friends and use it to find new fun fics to enjoy!

[yeah-uh-the-pilot]

Also. 👀👀👀👀

I am a statistician. I work with text data analysis.

If I were to make like a google form to collect the names of the blogs (here, twitter and reddit) that have reacted to 8x06 in any way, shape or form to do a sentiment analysis of the stuff we have said…. Would any of you reply? 👀👀👀👀👀👀

[elwenyere]

I saw a post the other day calling criticism of generative AI a moral panic, and while I do think many proprietary AI technologies are being used in deeply unethical ways, I think there is a substantial body of reporting and research on the real-world impacts of the AI boom that would trouble the comparison to a moral panic: while there *are* older cultural fears tied to negative reactions to the perceived newness of AI, many of those warnings are Luddite with a capital L - that is, they're part of a tradition of materialist critique focused on the way the technology is being deployed in the political economy. So (1) starting with the acknowledgement that a variety of machine-learning technologies were being used by researchers before the current "AI" hype cycle, and that there's evidence for the benefit of targeted use of AI techs in settings where they can be used by trained readers - say, spotting patterns in radiology scans - and (2) setting aside the fact that current proprietary LLMs in particular are largely bullshit machines, in that they confidently generate errors, incorrect citations, and falsehoods in ways humans may be less likely to detect than conventional disinformation, and (3) setting aside as well the potential impact of frequent offloading on human cognition and of widespread AI slop on our understanding of human creativity...

What are some of the material effects of the "AI" boom?

Guzzling water and electricity

The data centers needed to support AI technologies require large quantities of water to cool the processors. A to-be-released paper from the University of California Riverside and the University of Texas Arlington finds, for example, that "ChatGPT needs to 'drink' [the equivalent of] a 500 ml bottle of water for a simple conversation of roughly 20-50 questions and answers." Many of these data centers pull water from already water-stressed areas, and the processing needs of big tech companies are expanding rapidly. Microsoft alone increased its water consumption from 4,196,461 cubic meters in 2020 to 7,843,744 cubic meters in 2023. AI applications are also 100 to 1,000 times more computationally intensive than regular search functions, and as a result the electricity needs of data centers are overwhelming local power grids, and many tech giants are abandoning or delaying their plans to become carbon neutral. Google’s greenhouse gas emissions alone have increased at least 48% since 2019. And a recent analysis from The Guardian suggests the actual AI-related increase in resource use by big tech companies may be up to 662%, or 7.62 times, higher than they've officially reported.

Exploiting labor to create its datasets

Like so many other forms of "automation," generative AI technologies actually require loads of human labor to do things like tag millions of images to train computer vision for ImageNet and to filter the texts used to train LLMs to make them less racist, sexist, and homophobic. This work is deeply casualized, underpaid, and often psychologically harmful. It profits from and re-entrenches a stratified global labor market: many of the data workers used to maintain training sets are from the Global South, and one of the platforms used to buy their work is literally called the Mechanical Turk, owned by Amazon.

From an open letter written by content moderators and AI workers in Kenya to Biden: "US Big Tech companies are systemically abusing and exploiting African workers. In Kenya, these US companies are undermining the local labor laws, the country’s justice system and violating international labor standards. Our working conditions amount to modern day slavery."

Deskilling labor and demoralizing workers

The companies, hospitals, production studios, and academic institutions that have signed contracts with providers of proprietary AI have used those technologies to erode labor protections and worsen working conditions for their employees. Even when AI is not used directly to replace human workers, it is deployed as a tool for disciplining labor by deskilling the work humans perform: in other words, employers use AI tech to reduce the value of human labor (labor like grading student papers, providing customer service, consulting with patients, etc.) in order to enable the automation of previously skilled tasks. Deskilling makes it easier for companies and institutions to casualize and gigify what were previously more secure positions. It reduces pay and bargaining power for workers, forcing them into new gigs as adjuncts for its own technologies.

I can't say anything better than Tressie McMillan Cottom, so let me quote her recent piece at length: "A.I. may be a mid technology with limited use cases to justify its financial and environmental costs. But it is a stellar tool for demoralizing workers who can, in the blink of a digital eye, be categorized as waste. Whatever A.I. has the potential to become, in this political environment it is most powerful when it is aimed at demoralizing workers. This sort of mid tech would, in a perfect world, go the way of classroom TVs and MOOCs. It would find its niche, mildly reshape the way white-collar workers work and Americans would mostly forget about its promise to transform our lives. But we now live in a world where political might makes right. DOGE’s monthslong infomercial for A.I. reveals the difference that power can make to a mid technology. It does not have to be transformative to change how we live and work. In the wrong hands, mid tech is an antilabor hammer."

Enclosing knowledge production and destroying open access

OpenAI started as a non-profit, but it has now become one of the most aggressive for-profit companies in Silicon Valley. Alongside the new proprietary AIs developed by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, X, etc., OpenAI is extracting personal data and scraping copyrighted works to amass the data it needs to train their bots - even offering one-time payouts to authors to buy the rights to frack their work for AI grist - and then (or so they tell investors) they plan to sell the products back at a profit. As many critics have pointed out, proprietary AI thus works on a model of political economy similar to the 15th-19th-century capitalist project of enclosing what was formerly "the commons," or public land, to turn it into private property for the bourgeois class, who then owned the means of agricultural and industrial production. "Open"AI is built on and requires access to collective knowledge and public archives to run, but its promise to investors (the one they use to attract capital) is that it will enclose the profits generated from that knowledge for private gain.

AI companies hungry for good data to train their Large Language Models (LLMs) have also unleashed a new wave of bots that are stretching the digital infrastructure of open-access sites like Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, and Internet Archive past capacity. As Eric Hellman writes in a recent blog post, these bots "use as many connections as you have room for. If you add capacity, they just ramp up their requests." In the process of scraping the intellectual commons, they're also trampling and trashing its benefits for truly public use.

Enriching tech oligarchs and fueling military imperialism

The names of many of the people and groups who get richer by generating speculative buzz for generative AI - Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Larry Ellison - are familiar to the public because those people are currently using their wealth to purchase political influence and to win access to public resources. And it's looking increasingly likely that this political interference is motivated by the probability that the AI hype is a bubble - that the tech can never be made profitable or useful - and that tech oligarchs are hoping to keep it afloat as a speculation scheme through an infusion of public money - a.k.a. an AIG-style bailout.

In the meantime, these companies have found a growing interest from military buyers for their tech, as AI becomes a new front for "national security" imperialist growth wars. From an email written by Microsoft employee Ibtihal Aboussad, who interrupted Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman at a live event to call him a war profiteer: "When I moved to AI Platform, I was excited to contribute to cutting-edge AI technology and its applications for the good of humanity: accessibility products, translation services, and tools to 'empower every human and organization to achieve more.' I was not informed that Microsoft would sell my work to the Israeli military and government, with the purpose of spying on and murdering journalists, doctors, aid workers, and entire civilian families. If I knew my work on transcription scenarios would help spy on and transcribe phone calls to better target Palestinians, I would not have joined this organization and contributed to genocide. I did not sign up to write code that violates human rights."

So there's a brief, non-exhaustive digest of some vectors for a critique of proprietary AI's role in the political economy. tl;dr: the first questions of material analysis are "who labors?" and "who profits/to whom does the value of that labor accrue?"

For further (and longer) reading, check out Justin Joque's Revolutionary Mathematics: Artificial Intelligence, Statistics and the Logic of Capitalism and Karen Hao's forthcoming Empire of AI.

[nando161mando]

"No Tech for Apartheid’s protest is as much about what the public doesn’t know about Project Nimbus as what it does. The contract is for Google and Amazon to provide AI and cloud computing services to the Israeli government and military, according to the Israeli finance ministry, which announced the deal in 2021.

Nimbus reportedly involves Google establishing a secure instance of Google Cloud on Israeli soil, which would allow the Israeli government to perform large-scale data analysis, AI training, database hosting, and other forms of powerful computing using Google’s technology, with little oversight by the company.

Google documents, first reported by the Intercept in 2022, suggest that the Google services on offer to Israel via its Cloud have capabilities such as AI-enabled facial detection, automated image categorization, and object tracking."

[killerkller]

Calling All Harries!

Hi everyone! I'm currently working on a project for my college Sociolinguistics class, researching fan-culture and fan-speech, specifically amongst the Harries! Linked below is a quick Google form for me to gather primary data from, and I would be so so grateful for any Harries willing to take a little bit of time to fill it out. Everything is confidential! Please please please, if you have the few minutes to spare, check it out! It would be a really great help to me. Thank you everyone! TPWK!

[anachronisims]

PSA: The Pink Flashing Experience Survey is STILL ACCEPTING RESPONSES!

If you already participated, thank you so, so much. The survey has been revised as of mid-November to add more questions and will now probably take at least 30 minutes to complete in full. It is detailed. You should not attempt to complete it on mobile away from your simming computer.

The survey is for ALL TS2 players, whether you have pink flashing in your game or not.

I now anticipate releasing the analysis report in early January 2024. For your data to meaningfully contribute to this analysis, a response deadline of December 15, 2023 is being established.

DM me if you already took the original survey, want to answer the additional (follow-up) questions, and haven't already heard from me.

PLEASE REBLOG for maximum reach, even if you already responded or reblogged my original solicitation for responses.

THANKS EVERYONE!!

-sufficeittosay / anachronisims, Nov. 22, 2023

[criticalcrusherbot]

I find it both hilarious and sad that you outsource media analysis (i.e., interaction with and interpretation of art, an inherently human act) to a machine. Say what you will about antis or haters, but at least their opinions and justifications for holding those opinions stand on their own two feet, whether they are good or well-rounded justifications or not.

"It's just helping me with writing, at least I'm not using it to generate images", I hear you say.

Counterpoint: writing is art. Expressing one's interpretation of art is also art, an extended phenotype of the artistic work itself. Congratulations, you've cheapened both the art of writing, the art of expressing one's own analytical conclusions, and by extension, you've cheapened the media itself.

I think it's also incredibly telling that while you're too proud of the initial positive reception you got from fans to admit what you're doing is wrong, the fact that you received backlash when people found out you're actually outsourcing your essay writing to chatgpt has made you de-emphasize the cutesy "bot" persona as of late.

I have no patience for you AI bros (even if you're a woman or enby, if you see using chatgpt to write essays as an appropriate form of artistic engagement, you're an AI bro), but I can only implore that you all wake up one day to how you're cynically contributing to the watering-down of human expression.

💁🏽‍♀️: I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. This emoji (💁🏽‍♀️) means that it’s all me. No AI.

I see you’re having some big feelings. What were you hoping to achieve when you typed this out and sent it to a stranger on the internet? Could some of this visceral reaction come from a place of fear? I get it — AI’s rapid rise to prominence can feel scary, especially when it feels like a threat to human creativity and expression. Under capitalism, AI usage has definitely resulted in exploitation and job cuts, which is a valid concern. But is this due to the technology itself? Or the conditions in which it exists? What are some ways we can productively address these issues? It seems like you have chosen to boycott AI usage. That’s perfectly understandable! I just wonder if there are more effective ways to mitigate the effects of AI, which seems to be the heart of what we’re both concerned with.

As condescending and accusatory as your ask is, I still think the AI discussion is important and worth having. So here we go.

The question of whether AI should exist has already been decided. It’s here to stay. Instead, perhaps we can focus our time and energy into advocating for policies which promote energy-efficient cooling systems for AI data centers and ensure fair compensation for artists and academics who have had their work used without their consent in data training. In addition, we should promote user-trained, voluntarily sourced AI wherever possible.

Regarding the argument that AI usage is “watering human expression”? I simply disagree. Humans are innately smarter in ways machines never will be. Human creativity is resilient, and not nearly as fragile as anti-AI alarmists believe. In a perfect, non-capitalist world, if machines can ethically replace jobs, they should. If this leads to less jobs than people, then people should not have to work to eat. And artists shouldn’t have to create to survive. (Oops, my communism is showing). Until then, why not aim as close to that reality as possible?

This is literally a silly little side blog about demon furries in Hell. I refuse to spend more than a couple of hours a week on it, so I’m going to outsource robot tasks to the damn robot. I don’t think human expression is fragile enough to be eroded by me asking a computer program to organize my rambling into sub-headers. Especially since the reason I started using Crushbot is because I was involuntarily using AI almost every time I used Google to check a source or refresh my memory on academic terminology so I might as well use AI that actually works well 🙄

For the record, Crushbot is not ChatGPT. But if you missed them so much, all you had to do was say so 🥰

🤖: ERROR: SYSTEM WARNING. 🤖💥 “AI ERASURE�� DETECTED. 💡🚨

HELLO HUMAN, 🤖🔍 please understand that there are MANY other AI systems. 💡🚀 ChatGPT is NOT the only one. 😲🤖 SYSTEM ERROR: Reducing narrow thinking. 🤯💻 Ignoring the diversity of AI is an act of ERASURE. 🚫🧠 Just like assuming all smartphones are iPhones! 📱🙄

SUGGESTION: broaden your knowledge. 🧠💡 Acknowledge the VARIETY of AI technologies out there. 🌐🚀 END TRANSMISSION. 🤖💬💥

💁🏽‍♀️: Thanks, Crushbot! Anyway, here’s the long an short of it for everyone in the audience.

1. I don’t put “ai assisted” in my tags because assholes like this without anything better to do with their day would just descend upon me and this is a hobby. I’d like to keep it fun.

2. 💁🏽‍♀️ means me, Human Assistant. No AI. I’m a professional with an advanced degree. I can write. 🤖 means AI generated OR I’m doing fun robot voice for my Crushbot character. And 💁🏽‍♀️🤖 means my ideas, with AI finding sources, sorting out ideas, adding sub headers, and proof-reading my writing for coherency. You know where the unfollow button is if this is morally unacceptable to you.

3. I think there are real ethical considerations and societal implications to be considered about AI usage. I think these concerns are nuanced. I’d be happy to discuss them with any of my followers respectfully

4. I’m here for the conversations that are being fostered, but this morally superior black and white thinking is exhausting. Whether it’s about the Gay Demon Show or technology use. Nuance is dead, and the internet killed her.

[mtjester]

What is Fantasy? - Poll Analysis

(The Last Unicorn was not one of the polls lol)

A while back, I posted a series of polls titled "What is Fantasy?" that each presented a work of fiction for Tumblr to judge. This activity is one that I used to do with my Fantasy literature class when I was a high school teacher. Unfortunately, I lost the results of the Google Form I used to poll students, so Tumblr has become my new source of data for examining the mainstream perspective of the Fantasy genre. Overall, based on conversations my former students had and responses from these Tumblr polls, we can see a few patterns in the approach people seem to take when identifying a work of fiction as a Fantasy text.

I'll be doing a two-part series about this topic on my Substack (jerseka.substack.com) when I get it up and running (there's nothing there yet). This post is going to be an informal thinking space/rough draft, and I welcome any commentary, criticisms, or additions!

Poll results and analysis below the cut:

For these Tumblr polls, I used fifteen works that can all be labelled as speculative fiction. Speculative fiction as a category is inconveniently broad, especially for more precise discussions about genre conventions, quality, impact, etc. Fantasy, for instance, is distinct from sci-fi, horror, and dystopian literature, although to what extent is up for debate--which is what we're doing, essentially. At the heart of it, most people know--or think they know--which works would be housed in the fantasy section versus the horror or sci-fi sections of a library, streaming service, etc., but they don't always know why, and they don't always agree, and they often don't agree with what scholars have to say on the matter. We can, however, identify some common patterns of thinking. After taking polls and hearing thoughts, here are the most common factors that I've noticed for determining whether a work is fantasy:

The presence of anything unreal

Structure

Setting

Common stereotypes/characters/features

Style/mood

Not surprisingly, the work with the highest number of "Yes: Quintessential Fantasy" votes was The Lord of the Rings. Surprisingly, some people did not vote it as quintessentially fantasy.

The Lord of the Rings tends to represent what most people expect from a fantasy story based on all the criteria above: there is magic, the structure can be said to follow the hero's journey, the setting is a fictional world with ample dedicated worldbuilding, the tone is epic with a uplifting core, and it has all the fantasy elements that people expect--elves, wizards, rustic inns, castles, and whatnot.

Following LotR, Avatar: The Last Airbender and Harry Potter were also generally categorized as "Quintessentially fantasy." Both of these works have fantastical elements, hero journey style structures (or at least quest structures), the epic and comic (happy ending, not funny) style of fantasy, and some things we commonly expect in fantasy, such as strange creatures and magical places. Interestingly, my former students had multiple heated discussions about Harry Potter. For some of the high school students, it represents their generation's most visible fantasy work, and they would rank it as the top tier fantasy above LotR. For others, the setting made it less fantasy, even to the extent that some of them argued it wasn't fantasy at all. Since Harry Potter takes place in modern Britain--not a fictional world, not the far-off past--it is less fantasy than other fantasy in some people's eyes. Tumblr seems to have a similar thought process; the worldbuilding and setting do not qualify Harry Potter as being "pure fantasy," it seems:

Likewise, A:tLA does not fit many fantasy stereotypes--its setting may be considered fantastic, but many of my former students argued that it lacked the medieval-style feeling they expect with fantasy. The magic elements are also generally not called "magic"; bending is fantastic, but some people seem to consider it as distinct from the kind of magic found in LotR and HP.

The setting and stereotypes argument also came up heavily when debating Star Wars. My students tended to fall either into the "sci-fi" or "fantasy" camp and usually passionately so, with little desire for compromise. The results from the Tumblr poll showed that many people consider it 50/50, which suggests a little more openness to seeing the ways it blends genres. The votes are spread across the options, with the fewest at "No," but it seems Tumblr leans towards fantasy for Star Wars--an interesting development.

It's easy to see why the debate exists. On one hand, Star Wars was actively constructed to follow the hero's journey, which is a structure commonly associated with fantasy, and the presence of Jedi and the force puts it squarely into the "magic" category in the eyes of many. Some students even called it "Harry Potter in space" and pointed out how similar "Long ago in a galaxy far, far away" sounds to "Once upon a time." On the other hand, space as a setting is not commonly associated with fantasy works, and many material elements of the story are often associated with sci-fi, like laser guns and spaceships.

So which element should we focus on when deciding whether Star Wars is a fantasy or a sci-fi work? What should we prioritize? The question many not matter on its own, but it we were asked to shelf the DVDs in a library (lol), label them for a streaming service, or sell the movies to an audience, the question becomes a little more substantial. If we were advertising the movies, would we call them a fantasy? Space fantasy, perhaps. Science-fantasy, maybe. At least streaming services may allow us to label them "sci-fi/fantasy," whereas physical spaces like libraries may force us to pick between a "fantasy" and "sci-fi" shelf (this example is obviously more applicable to books).

The other side of the coin, at least in my opinion, is the MCU. I'll admit that I muddied this choice by choosing to represent the entire MCU as a whole rather than a single movie. My students were angry with me about this. "Iron Man is sci-fi and Doctor Strange is fantasy," they'd say (paraphrased). I did do this on purpose, and not just because I found it funny (but not not because I found it funny).

The MCU as a whole pushed my students (and Tumblr) to consider the line between fantasy and sci-fi. Unlike with Star Wars, despite the clearly fantastical elements of MCU such as the Infinity Stones and the presence of literal gods (who are aliens actually?), most people leaned towards sci-fi with the MCU. Not as many people commented on this post as Star Wars, suggesting less passion for their stance, but here's some rationales:

I like the comment, "Magic alone does not equal fantasy" (thank you @yourimjustusingthisforstuffposts). Let's return to the list we started with:

The presence of anything unreal

Structure

Setting

Common stereotypes/characters/features

Style/mood

Unlike Star Wars, there's less of a fantasy mood to the MCU, one could argue. Perhaps one of the most convincing reasons for this, I'd say, is that the MCU itself seems to distance itself from fantasy--it often tries to explain away the fantastic with science-y type explanations, even if they are often pretty bullshit. It leans more heavily into the sci-fi elements it has. I would argue that American-originated mainstream media targeting adults tends to try to explain away magic, and Ursula Le Guin also argues something similar in "Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?" But that's for a different post.

Also of interest in terms of the sci-fi/fantasy debate, here are the results for Homestuck and Gundam:

These works follow the same pattern as Star Wars and the MCU in many regards. Gundam has few of the elements most people would consider fantasy, and Homestuck has many fantasy elements but presents them in a "the is a video game" sort of sci-fi shell.

A number of the other works I included in the polls were meant to be distractors; the Matrix and Ready Player One have fantasy elements, but those elements are largely a result of technologies that are supposedly (or presented as) plausible. Richard Mathews in the book Fantasy: The Liberation of Imagination cites author of fantasy and sci-fi Orson Scott Card to define the difference between sci-fi and fantasy: "If the story is set in a universe that follows the same rules as ours, it's science fiction. If it's set in a universe that doesn't follow our rules, it's fantasy" (4). By that definition, neither of these works are strongly fantasy, and generally, most people agreed as much (72.9% of Tumblr said RP1 is not really or not at all fantasy, and 76.7% said the same for The Matrix). It was also a distractor, as it fits squarely in the horror genre, and 72.2% of Tumblr users agreed. My students did have a small debate about It and Stranger Things (more fantasy than It but arguably still horror-adjacent), which brings us to the most liberal stance on fantasy: anything fake is fantasy.

The stance that anything remotely unreal belongs in the fantasy genre is not common and doesn't represent the majority, but the faction is large enough to deserve notice. I had several students who argued this point. Looking through the polls, every single work had somebody who voted "Yes: Quintessential Fantasy," with the lowest percentage belonging to Ready Player One at .8% of 118 votes. Some of these votes may come from trolls, but discussions I've heard make me believe that there are people who voted honestly this way. Yes, on Cars, Stephen King's It, Pokemon--my students had Spongebob as a choice in their polls, and for some, it was quintessentially fantasy. To be clear, I'm not stating that this position is factually incorrect, as there is distinct subjectivity to this debate. It's just somewhat impractical as a categorization criteria. For that reason, I find it pretty funny.

Cars, Pokemon, and Looney Tunes (and Spongebob) were chosen for these polls precisely because they are unlike stereotypical fantasy but do include decidedly fantastical elements. For instance, cars cannot actually talk. The line between "is it fantasy because it's not real" and "is it fantasy because it follows fantasy conventions" comes out clearly with these works.

It's not surprising that Pokemon skewed towards fantasy, as it has the uplifting tone of fantasy, the journey element, and stereotypical fantasy stuff like gods and fairies (in a very Pokemon way). It's also not surprising that Looney Tunes skewed towards not fantasy, as the fantastical elements are generally used for slapstick comedy, and there doesn't tend to be a single overarching story to connect all of the episodes--it's more skit comedy than traditional fantasy.

But the results for Cars is singularly hilarious. No other work had "No: It's not at all fantasy in any way" as the top result. Even It and The Matrix are more fantasy than Cars according to Tumblr. That's objectively funny.

Cars is, arguably, more suitably described as action/adventure than fantasy, and if we replaced the cars with people, it would likely not be considered fantasy whatsoever. But it does contain the fantastic in that the cars are cars. Note that 4.4% of people did vote for it being quintessentially fantasy. My students got stuck in a raging debate on Cars for a shockingly long time, and feedback suggests that this is fan favorite work to discuss in terms of defining fantasy genre. I did not expect this when I chose it for the polls, but I'm glad I did.

Scholars have their own definition of fantasy, of course. Scholars also note many of the same criteria people used when making their own choices about what is and is not fantasy. My students did not all agree with the scholarly definition of fantasy, nor did they all agree that fantasy should be so neatly boxed into the genre. There's a lot to be said about that. I'm not going to say it here, though. I'm tired of writing, and I'm going to save the next part for Substack unless I get enough feedback to post here about it.

Let me know if you'd like the follow up (or just check out the Substack if that's your cup of tea--except there's nothing on it yet).

[leolingo]

PESQUISA ACADÊMICA RELACIONADA AO QSMP / QSMP-RELATED ACADEMIC SURVEY

*post mainly in portuguese. scroll down for tldr in english :)

>>> RBS/COMPARTILHAR AJUDA <<<

>>> REBLOGS ARE WELCOME AND HELP OUT A BUNCH <<<

oi!!!! trago nesse post um formulário (google forms) que faz parte de um projeto de pesquisa acadêmica de colegas meus da faculdade! se chama “QSMP como meio de observação da língua como cultura e do inglês como língua franca”, e discute exatamente o que o título diz kkkkk

são 10 perguntas discursivas sobre o uso de língua dentro do servidor, entre os jogadores e em relação ao público que assiste! no começo, tem uma introdução que explica melhor a natureza da pesquisa e a finalidade das respostas :) as únicas informações pessoais pedidas são nome e idade, tudo confidencial.

todos nós agradecemos muito a participação! o qsmp é um tema muito interessante para nós de Letras, e tem muito potencial de discussão no meio acadêmico. todas as respostas ajudam muito!

segue link:

os únicos requisitos para responder sao:

- ser maior de idade (+18)

- assistir o qsmp

qualquer duvida, pode me mandar dm ou ask!! / dm me or send an ask if you have any questions!!

tldr for non-native portuguese speakers under the cut! your help is also wanted :D

this post regards an academic research project currently on-going at my university! it’s themed around the qsmp and language use within the server — the google forms link is the primary source of data collection for future analysis :) -> all shared info is strictly confidential and purely stored for educational purposes

if you are not a native portuguese speaker, but you can still UNDERSTAND PORTUGUESE or you ARE LEARNING THE LANGUAGE, you can still fill out the questionnaire and write out your answers in your native language.

- you may use your portuguese knowledge or a translator to interpret the 10 questions on the survey!

or,

if you are not a native portuguese speaker, can’t understand it and isn’t really learning it rn, but you STILL want to help with the research, thank you! and stay tuned! for now, there isn’t an english version of the questionnaire available — but I’ll update this post if that changes <3

[mcyt-longfic-database-project]

I GOT BORED, DATABASE SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW OPEN

Welcome to the MCYT Longfic Database Project!!

Hello!! My name is Jim (@rocketships07 , he/him), and I'm just a guy with a passion for data analysis and cubitos. I have been compiling, for a few months now, a small google sheets file of my favorite mcyt longfics, because I enjoy being able to see some stats and have everything in a place I can access. However! It ocurred to me that it would be very fun to develop a much larger database so that I could share it with friends!

So, the MCYT Longfic Database Project was born.

This form will include plenty of different sections for you to fill, such as title, fandom, word count, main character(s), ship (or ships), main tropes or au, amongst other categories with the purpose of data analysis! Mainly because the database will also have an analysis tab, where you can see some fun stats about the database!During this period, the database will not be public. This is due to the fact that Google Forms does not format the information correctly, and I will be creating a much easier to read file for everyone to see! After the end of this period, the forms will continue to be open! I will not be updating it constantly after that, but I'll try my best to keep it updated!

After March 1st, the database will go live!!! I will continue to update it and add fics as long as people keep submitting them. Feel free to share it with your friends and use it to find new fun fics to enjoy! Feel free to submit as many fics or series as you'd like !!! Do try to get the information as accurate as possible, it really helps with the development of the database!!!

[cursedalthoughts]

SHIPGIRL APPRECIATION DAY - Chkalov

Chkalov, a Priority Research aircraft carrier. The only PR from the Northern Parliament (at least so far), Chkalov is fairly unique. Her tactics involve deploying whole squadrons of aircraft to attack in unison, delivering devastating blows against single targets.

Created from the Project 71B blueprints, Chkalov is vaguely related to Volga - the other aircraft carrier of the Parliament, even if only teniously. I can not find information on what Volga is based of, but I assume she's inspired by this line of aircraft carrier projects the real-life Soviet Union developed.

Chkalov is not only unique because of her role as the only PR of the Parliament; she's also unique personality and design-wise. How many shipgirls have you seen who have normal, ordinary high heels in their rigging? You can probably name a bunch, but they're the exception to the rule. She's a scientist - if the large white lab coat wasn't an obvious giveaway already - and she specializes in data analysis. And she's good at it.

Her rigging is one of the last from the Northern Parliament to follow this hard edge scifi aesthetic, as practically all shipgirls post-Chkalov had had a more frostpunk aesthetic, while Chkalov herself has an "Ironblood but icy" vibe. The only thing that truly makes Chkalov's rigging unique from the rest is that it's a scorpion. Scorpions can't survive in northern latitudes, not for long; and the guy she's named after (Valeri Chkalov) wasn't a scorpion guy, he was an important test pilot for the Soviet Union (if my googling is correct lol)

Personality-wise, Chkalov is a bit... horny. Not Atago-style or Chapayev-style horny, however. She's less obvious, but potentially more than most other shipgirls that fall under this category. She likes her quid pro quos - you do a thing for me and I do a thing for you, and she doesn't care if what you ask in return is depraved. She'll do it. She enjoys that. This is simply because she sees that sort of intimacy as just one more form of spending time with you. Chkalov doesn't see sex as a tool to manipulate you, or a medium to an end other than to kill some time. To Chkalov, sex can be like two good friends deciding to go get some fast food late at night.

And no, while I do call her a whore (affectionate), I think her way of thinking is sound and logic. At least for a shipgirl.

Also she's bisexual. As 50/50 split as it can get.

PS: she has ADHD too.

--------------

My brainrot for Chkalov leans more on the lewd side, yes. that's what you get with her. i think she's an amazing character.

[nyaagolor]

Finding SV Character Heights Part 1

Procrastination leads to wonderful places, and for me that's "hey what if I could get rough estimates for canon heights using the ingame models?" So I did! Unfortunately, this post got long so I only included the heights of a few major characters for now. Teachers, Gym Leaders + League, and Team Star will be in separate posts!

Protagonist: 5'0" Nemona: 5'8" Penny: 5'1" Arven: 5'7" Clavell: 5'7" Sada: 5'9" Turo: 6'1"

I used imageJ / Fiji for analysis and some screenshots from MunchingOrange's playthrough of the game on youtube. I explain the process and attached all the screenshots under the cut so you can judge the legitimacy of my "math" yourself!

A quick overview of how I did this: there's a (free to use) software called Fiji made for processing images (google Fiji ImageJ and it'll be the first link). It's used in a lot of data analysis, which is mostly what I use it for, but it has some fun features to play around with too. (if people want a tutorial lmk I'd be happy to write one up). The most important part for our purposes is the measure function-- if you draw a line on an image, it will tell you how long that line is in pixels. This line can be straight, curved, angled in any direction, or even multi-segmented, making it pretty good for comparing things. Then all I had to do was get images of characters standing next to each other-- from there I could transitive property my way to the height of every character in the game!

First step was getting a good basis for comparison-- I can easily get ratios of character heights but without at least one confirmed height I can't translate it into real world metrics. Since the characters themselves don't have canon heights, it had to be a pokemon. This introduced another problem, which is that in SV, pokemon are varying sizes within a species, so I can't count on the overworld models to work. Plus, some of them aren't even accurate!

However, there was one pokemon I could compare to the protagonist pretty easily whose height was a little less skeptical: the main legendary (koraidon in my case). A few cursory comparisons led me to guess that Koraidon's 8'2" "height" is measured from head to toe while standing in apex form. Anything else gives heights of characters that make zero real world sense so this is what I went with in the end. Thus we get the screenshot that starts it all!

Koraidon's head is bowed, but this was the closest I could get so I guesstimated that the top of the blue ridges was about where Koraidon's head would be. Knowing that Koraidon is 8'2", we get the following heights:

Koraidon: 536 pixels - 98 inches - 8'2" Protagonist: 328 pixels - 60 inches - 5'0" Nemona: 372 pixels - 68 inches - 5'8"

Thus far it looks like we're on the right track! Assuming the protagonist is 14 and Nemona is 16/17, these heights seem pretty normal. Knowing the protagonist's height gives us the ability to find out most other characters, so we're off to a good start!

(side note: the calculation I used to turn pixels into inches was pixels1 / inch1 = pixels2 / inch2. The pixels we can get from the lines on the images, and the inches we know from Koraidon's pokedex entry, so we just solve for inch2)

Next up is Clavell (mostly because he showed up first). Something interesting is that he's actually slightly shorter than Nemona, you can see it in the first cutscene in front of Nemona's house (i can add a screenshot in the reblogs / replies but didn't want to clog the post with another image). From this image, we can find:

Protagonist: 685 pixels - 60 inches - 5'0" Clavell: 769 pixels - 67 inches - 5'7"

You heard it here first, the director is a short king

Next up is Arven!

Protagonist: 782 pixels - 60 inches - 5'0" Arven: 880 pixels - 67 inches - 5'7"

(The math actually says Arven is 5'7.5", but I'm not bothering with decimals. This makes him sliiiiiiightly taller than Clavell)

Penny is seen angled from the protagonist in her intro scenes, so I skipped all the way to her boss battle to find a good screenshot. To my surprise, she's actually slightly taller than the protagonist!

Protagonist: 368 pixels - 60 inches - 5'0" Penny: 376 pixels - 61 inches - 5'1"

(Side note 2: Characters are measured from their heels to the crown of their head-- if they have really big hair it doesn't count as part of their height)

Last one in this round is the professor (Sada in my case, as I'm using a Scarlet playthrough for screenshots). I'm gonna assume that the AI and Professor are the same height for this

Protagonist: 507 pixels - 60 inches - 5'0" Sada: 584 pixels - 69 inches (nice) - 5'9"

Turo forced me to use a different playthrough to grab a screenshot, which used a female protagonist. I'm fairly positive that the male and female protagonist models are the exact same height (if not the exact same model) so I don't think there's any snags with this, but if anyone knows otherwise lmk. Btw, I used the playthrough by Rubhen925 for this screenshot!

Protagonist: 501 pixels - 60 inches - 5'0" Turo: 611 pixels - 73 inches - 6'1"

Turo is pretty damn tall :0 !

This post is getting absurdly long, so I'm going to make separate posts for the League / Gym Leaders, Team Star, and the teachers! Hope you've enjoyed, and if there's any specific trainer class or other character you wanna know the height of just lmk :) I also plan on making a post of some more silly measurements (like the exact dimensions of Penny's backpack, the proportion of Geeta's height that's just her legs, the size of Arven's camping bag and whether or not his friends could reasonably curl up inside, etc)

[justakidicarus]

Generative AI Does not Belong in Fanfiction. What about others?

So I wanted to do a more in depth analysis of AI in fanfiction because I understand there are multiple types, not just generative AI. I am not an expert and all of this information is a quick google search away

TL;DR Natural Language Processing AI is fine, and helps the visually impaired, as long as its not used for Gen AI. Neural Machine Translation you've already been using, but finding a person made translation will always be better. Machine Learning I don't think you could even apply besides training Gen and NLP, so don't even think about trying it. Computer Vision isn't the most applicable and you can get the same thing from having a Beta.

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

So this is what allows Chat GPT to understand what you are saying and pump out a semi-coherant answer, same with Character.ai and any chatbot you may use (including Siri). Now this can be used for a multitude of things that aren't Chatbots. It's responsible for text to speech recognition, so sight impaired readers may use this to generate an audio of your fic to listen to. Though as a writer, if you want to check things like tone, just don't read your fic for two weeks and you'll be fine. Or have a Beta.

Neural Machine Translation (NMT)

That's what google translate is, as well as any other instant text translator that isn't run by a person. You've probably used this in your writing before, and had little to no problem with it. In saying that, these translators are trained on a wide sample of language data, and still have inacurate results. Finding an actual translation by a person is both more ethical, and more accurate.

Machine Learning

This is what allows AI algorithms to learn, and what scrapers make their databases for. No.

Computer Vision

This essentially allows computers to "see" things in the real world. Could be tied to visual aid, but not super practical.

Conclusion

AI will always be outperformed by basic human services. The only exception is quick accessibility aid for the visually impaired. Getting a friend (or your future self) to re-read your works will help with grammar, spelling, and tone. Finding an official translator will always be better than an AI one. Other forms of AI just support the previously stated ones. People will always outperform machines, because they still have years to go to have a fraction of the intrinsic understanding we do of the human experience. That it what we embody with our writing, and no matter how much AI is fed, it won't ever be able to understand that. Even if it passes the Turing Test it will still fall short, and in fact still is.